substitute

So, Muriel Spark died after a long and illustrious career. I was reminded that the band Public Image Ltd. named themselves after a novel of hers, which then made me think about literary-rock connections. I started to make a list in my head of Musical Groups Named After Things Literary. Add any you can think of! Note: I cheated and used Wikipedia for some of these. I'm not quite that smart!

Public Image
The Soft Machine
Steely Dan
The Boo Radleys
The Velvet Underground
Pere Ubu
The Thompson Twins
Aerosmith (disputed)
Steppenwolf
The Grifters
Heaven 17
Love and Rockets
Eyeless in Gaza (double Huxley/Milton score as pointed out by someone else)
As I Lay Dying
Veruca Salt
The Grapes of Wrath
Collective Soul
The Doors (double Huxley/Blake score)
The Fall
Hot Water Music
Moby

My father was a true Southern California, born in Pasadena in 1921. Like everyone else he was car-crazy. Later in life after living in Europe he became crazy for tiny little European sports cars.

He made this list for a piece he wrote in the Los Angeles Times late in life in which he talked about the cars he'd owned. He was astonished at how many there were, and especially at how many enjoyable sports cars he had as a graduate student. I personally got to drive the '67 MG (he says it's a '68 which I think is a mistake), which was a delight; he didn't get rid of it until the 1980s sometime. The 1990 Volvo my mother still has. I inherited both T-Birds in series.

The Fiat station wagon famously died by dumping its engine on Irvine Avenue with a uniquely Italian flair. I wish he'd kept any of the cars before that. Wow, what a list! The Renaults were, of course, purchased in France and all the Italian cars when he was living in Italy.

1. '30 Ford Model A phaeton
   
   
2. '30 Ford Model A 2-door touring car
   
   
3. '36 Ford V-8 coupé
   
   
4. '30 Olds coupé
   
   
5. '47 Crosley
   
   
6. '38 Lincoln touring convertible
   
   
7. '40 Chevrolet coupé
   
   
8. '47 MG-TC
   
   
9. '51 Sunbeam Talbot
   
   
10. '48 Morris Minor convertible
    
    
11. '51 Morris Minor sedan
    
    
12. '52 MG-TD
    
    
13. '55 Austin Healey
    
    
14. '56 MG Magnette
    
    
15. '60 Chevrolet Corvair
    
    
16. '58 Chevrolet station wagon
    
    
17. '59 Alfa Romeo Giuletta Sprint coupé
    
    
18. '62 Fiat 600
    
    
19. '60 Fiat 1800 station wagon
    
    
20. '70 Opel Kadett statio wagon
    
    
21. '73 Volvo 144
    
    
22. '67 MGB-GT
    
    
23. '77 Renault 6TL
    
    
24. '70 Jaguar XJ
    
    
25. '84 Ford Thunderbird
    
    
26. '87 Renault II
    
    
27. '90 Volvo 740 sedan
    
    
28. '91 Renault 19 Chamade
    
    
29. '93 Ford Thunderbird LX

If you're interested in the document we found in the files, a scan is behind the cut ( like so )

Weird and cool: Coming into the living room and seeing my 76-year-old mother watching Nick Cave on the TV. And liking it.

Weird and funny: Getting two text messages from bikupan that appeared to be from a year ago, one saying "What, no potato salad? Bah!" and the other "Is something wrong?". I vaguely remembered going back and forth about my accidentally vegan potato salad recipe last year and having some technical snafus. But no, she really did send those last night, and it wasn't a temporal wormhole in the SMS system.

Neither weird, funny, nor cool: My re-discovery tonight of the fatal flaw in desktop computers nowadays: they're all I/O bound. Here I sit with an 800 MHz PowerPC and 1 gig of RAM in my lap and I can't do jack. Why? Because there's disk intensive activity going on. The window manager slows to a crawl, none of my apps respond except in annoying bursts, and inexplicable errors occur probably due to clicks and keyboard presses out of focus because windows are changing erratically. It's like I'm connecting to my own computer over a crappy old 14.4 modem link. RAAAAAAR. I want IDE to go away. [/geek]

Neither weird, funny, nor cool: I am reading a book about the Vietnam war. Bad: we're doing it again. Worse: we're doing it again much more stupidly . I'm experiencing nostalgia for the sincerity, honesty, and sense of duty of CIA and military officers from 1966. YOW!

Weird and funny but not cool: Bro 'n' ho couple arrive in D's tonight and she asks D., who is behind the counter: "Do you have Chocolate Tea?" A moment of silence, and D. says "Umm, no?" Customer says: "Could you do that, like, put mocha in tea?" D: "I guess, yeah!" Customer: "Would that be disgusting, do you think?" D: "Yes, it would."