Why? #1: I recently overheard two people (purposely vague) talking about how they MUST sleep while wearing socks, and I find this to be bizarre if not borderline psychotic. I know it’s a matter of personal preference, but how in the name of all that’s holy could somebody prefer such a thing? It’s crazy. Why not a windbreaker or a snoozing Stetson? Just the thought of wearing socks to bed makes me edge toward a panic attack. Also ridiculous: sleeping in the nude every night. And, on the other end of the spectrum: getting all trussed up in a full set of 1950s button-up pajamas. Why would you wear a suit to bed? There’s only one proper dress code for the dormancy period: t-shirt and underwear. Who’s with me?! …Hello?
Why? #2: I’m sure there’s some nerd-as-all-fuck reason for it, but I’ll ask anyway. Why is there a NUMBER LOCK key on the computer keyboard? What possible reason would the average person have to turn off numbers? Why not a VOWEL LOCK? Or a PUNCTUATION LOCK? Other crap I don’t understand on the keyboard: END, SCROLL LOCK, and PAUSE BREAK. I have no idea what any of that is and don’t want to know. I have a feeling it’s all a holdover from the days when computers used punch cards and that sort of thing. Am I wrong about that? Regardless, the NUMBER LOCK key is the worst of them all. It’s always getting engaged by mistake, and triggering momentary confusion, followed by fast-moving white-hot rage. Especially when I’m attempting to enter a password and none of the numbers are going in. Man, I’m getting all worked up just thinking about it.
Why? #3: At this point, in the year 2020, why does it still feel like I hear the Spin Doctors on a daily basis? They’re always out there, everywhere I go. It feels like those two or three radio hits have soaked into the universe somehow, and I just encounter it all like oxygen. I hear them in grocery stores, blasting over the PA system at gas stations, as bumper music on TV and radio talk shows… Why them? Of all the big ’90s bands the Spin Doctors MUST be the ones I hear most often. Everywhere I go… everything I do… there they are again! It’s not that I hate them (not really), I just find it curious how something like that could happen. How does such a deep, deep saturation occur? We’re not fully conscious of it but I believe we’re all living under the spell of the goddamned Spin Doctors every day of our lives. Sweet sainted mother of Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong!
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I always wear socks. The Postman Always Wears Socks.
Um — how many times does he ring? – jtb
The Num Lock key thing goes back to the old IBM keyboards that were all jacked up, so you are pretty much right on that one. I haven’t heard a Spin Doctor song on the radio for at least 15 years. Weird.
Since I just saw an article on Digg – what’s the story on people who wear shorts/flip-flops/no coats in the winter?
We recently moved to Tucson, AZ, and everyone here wears a full snow suit whenever the temps drop below 70. Parkas, knit caps, scarves—the full regalia.
This is especially weird to me because we moved here from the Mojave desert where people seemed to have more of a sense of appropriate seasonal attire. As an aside, my husband is one of the weirdos who wears flip-flops and shorts when it’s 50 degrees out. There’s no middle ground.
I hear the Spin Doctors all of the time too, not on the radio, though. It’s always as Muzak in a store.
Last winter when we had that polar vortex or whatever it was called – I saw two people walking downtown wearing shorts and no coat. I don’t know how they didn’t end up with frostbite.
I tend to run hot. Last night it was 53 F in my bedroom and I was still a little warm.
I sleep in a t-shirt in the late fall to early spring, no shirt once the weather warms up. I wear lounge pants / pj pants all year round. I do that because they keep my legs from sweating on to one another and becoming all slippery and gross. No socks. I also sleep with a single, light weight comforter and top sheet in the winter. When it’s warmer generally no covers or possibly a top sheet.
I use the home and end keys regularly when writing. I keep the number lock on at all times. I get more frustrated with caps lock. I use the tab key frequently and the caps lock comes on when I miss the tab key and I end up retyping more than I’d like.
I recently heard that Little Miss Can’t be Wrong was about the writers mother.
Jeff, thanks for the update. In order . . .
When I was a young man I spake as a young man, and the blood circulated freely through my vascular system, warming my extremities, including my penisilar peninsula and my tootsies. Now, as I grow old, my vascular system works like the plumbing in a cold water walk-up in a bad part of Brooklyn. Socks help. Back then, I slept without a stich but with a warm woman — now alone with underwear, shorts, a t-shirt from one of several reputable bands and yup – socks.
And let’s get this straight: Hollerith cards as a primary data input source went away a decade before personal computers with sophisticated operating systems and fancy keyboards came along. The num lock key extended the use of the keys of the numeric keypad before keyboards offered dedicated cursor navigation keys. (Also, as a bonus, if you take away the k, it sounds like the capital of an ancient, obscure Southeast Asian land.)
And the music you hear depends on the channel or stream you tune to. I never hear the Spin Doctors, although some perfectly good pop music (e.g., “Every Breath You Take”, “Brown Eyed Girl”, “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” slowly begins to turn to shit after the 800th playing. And oddly enough, NPR rarely plays the SDs. Even during subscription drives.
So it goes.
John
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
And plus, I remember when Brooklyn had bad neighborhoods.
1) Beautiful reference
3) Most of my information is 30 years old
Yes, I miss the Traveling Wilburys. what of it?
jtb
I used to listen to NPR in the 90’s until I realized my car was pulling hard left.
Hmmm. Sounds like an operator problem. Sometimes when you crank the wheel too far to the right all the time, it seems like the entire world is pulling left.
Nope, NPR left me. Since the mid-90’s it has shifted considerably further left-wing. Thanks for playing.
Yeah, the thanks for playing shit is a favorite right wing game: say something wildly untrue and outrageous in public and troll a concerned citizen into attempting to correct you, then say “thanks for playing”. Unfortunately, democracy isn’t a game and Jefferson and Adams, who agreed on almost nothing, both stressed the need for constant vigilance. I read history for a living, and continue to notice right wingers keep misunderstanding the second law of thermodynamics: they forget which way time flows. . . You can affect the future: change it if you want, but you can’t change history to suit your fascist whim. I was there, and in 1970, NPR replaced the National Educational Radio Network based on the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. NPR at the outset, and for years, was a bunch of New York and northern Midwest (mostly Michigan) hippies who opposed the War in Vietnam. NPR spent a huge percentage of its early budget covering congressional hearings on the war. Frank Church must have been interviewed four days out of five every week for a few years. NPR almost went out of business in 1983, because hippies don’t run businesses very well, Ben and Jerry excepted. After PBS bailed their asses out, NPR promised to run the network like a business, which included more balanced reporting. They have maintained that business model since.
NPR called out both lies Barak Obama told and all 2,357 Trump has told, so it might seem that they tilt left. They, like Dr. King, and, presumably all decent people, believe that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Not a bad hope in an era of hate.
John
Oddly, I just wore socks to bed for the first time last night. My feet were so cold I couldn’t get comfortable. I asked myself if this was the beginning of the end and came to the conclusion that it probably was. Sigh.
I am curious why you wear a t-shirt to bed, Sounds about as comfy as the old poop-flap special.
I had my doubts about your Spin Doctor observation, but since I’m in the biz I looked it up and you are right. These songs are still in fairly heavy rotation on AC (your mom’s) stations in many markets. Somehow Hootie is hanging on too.
The only acceptable sleeping attire is the birfday suit. Anything more and the claustrophobia takes over.
Num Lock is a holdover from the good old days of personal computing before the days they your keyboard had ridiculous things like a volume control.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single thing from the Spin Doctors so you must be listening from an alternate universe.
I wrote the Spin Doctors portion of the update very quickly as I was headed out the door to work and obviously didn’t do a good job of it. I don’t hear them on the radio, I hear them in grocery stores and blasting at Sheetz while I’m pumping gas and as bumper music on TV talk shows and places like that. It feels like I encounter them constantly. I’m not listening to a radio station that has them in heavy rotation. If that were the case, I’d understand why I’m hearing them so often. I’ve adjusted the update slightly, to hopefully make it more clear.
One of the few compensations of the aging process is that the rock concerts, fireworks, cranked-up home speaker systems, chainsaws, football and basketball games, illegal motorcycles and rogue headphones of your youth have reduced your hearing to a narrow band which only enables you to hear your loudest drunk uncle, and now the son of a bitch is dead.
They play music in grocery stores?
John
Been sleeping naked since the day I got married. My body has got to breath man. 33 years of sleeping bliss.
Sometimes, if it’s cold, I wear socks to bed, but I usually spend an uncomfortable few minutes trying to take them off with my big toes when they get too hot.
Boxers on my own, or naked, if I have company.
Spin Doctors must love royalties!
Yeah, I’m guessing that’s why Jeff hears them all the time. Bands who mostly write their own songs make a decision when they’re signed by their first label about how they want their songs credited. The Doors, for example, decided to credit all the songs any of the members wrote to “The Doors” (They also decided that any original member of The Doors could veto any commercial use of any of The Doors’ music — more on this later). The Spin Doctors decided to credit “Spin Doctors”. This turns out to be a big deal if your music has legs. For “radio” play, for example, the performer doesn’t get paid — just the writer and the song publisher (50/50). For covers and commercial use, it gets complicated, but the writer or writers always get a piece of the action.
I don’t know much about the Spin Doctors, but the band obviously decided to put all their music up for sale or rent, so the original band members (or band members at the time of release of an album) could all get paid. Again. And again. Three chords, three hits, six figures, or seven.
The doors turned down $75,000 from Buick in 1968 for use of “Light My Fire” in a TV commercial. In 1968, $75K was a pisspot of money, even for a successful band. In 2003, Cadillac offered the three living members of the Doors and the estate of Jim Morrison $15 million for a series of commercials using Doors music. Morrison’s estate and John Densmore vetoed the deal, and the case went to court where a nasty battle ensued, but the judge ruled that the original oral agreement of the band to allow any member to veto held sway. Densmore’s view is that he was voting on behalf of Morrison, who wasn’t in a position to raise his hand in objection. Densmore’s book about the fracas is pretty entertaining and a pretty good example of an artist standing up for his art.
To my knowledge, none of the Spin Doctors has written a book or even issued a statement. I suspect that any recorded statement would include the sound of an old-time cash register, but that’s just a guess.
John
Here’s a 2014 interview of John Densmore by the CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi, talking about the book Densmore wrote and the conflicts the book describes. (Mr. Ghomeshi is apparently not a great person when it comes to treating women well, but he was a very good interviewer for the CBC for many years — life is complicated). I think Densmore’s decency and integrity shine brightly in this interview, as does a little bit of the humor and ironic wit that has kept him sane into his eighth decade.
John
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-b5Sj1H5k0
Wear a pullover baseball shirt and usually pj bottoms in the winter. Absolutely no socks ever though…I mean feet gotta breath at some point man! Just undies in the summer….unless it’s the 3rd full moon of the month, in which case I’m getting lucky and going au naturale.
Like many here, I usually sleep nude.
In the colder months, I may find occasion to pull on a sock, but only one.
And not on my feet …