Record keeps on spinning

[austin_dern]

We'd also wanted to go to Ann Arbor, because it's been ages, and a visit there is usually energizing. Unfortunately, it was Saturday, and there was a home game. We weren't stupid enough to brave that, although I suppose it might have had a certain glorious absurdity to the whole proceedings.

There was an obvious alternative, though. We hadn't been to Downtown East Lansing in months either, mostly because it's been such a grueling semester for bunny_hugger at work. And Michigan State wasn't playing a home game so the streets would only be as impassible as college town streets normally are. We motored down to one of the parking decks in a teasing light little snow that I really, really hope wasn't an indication of a soul-crushing winter of blizzards. We'll see.

bunny_hugger's main interest was in finding records, and East Lansing has got two pretty nice used record shops, including one that's just records, no CDs, no DVDs, no nothing but records. (Well, OK, they have some CDs, but for local bands.) It's been around since 2008 despite all sense, including its location, suggesting it should have lasted maybe three weeks before imploding so I suppose it's sustained as part of the Lansing area's general hip quota. I found the section where they keep oddball recordings, including one of sea shanties of the 19th century which was recorded suspiciously close to the release of the Gregory Peck Moby Dick, which I managed to resist.

What I didn't resist at the other record shop was a compilation album of Bernard Herrmann film scores, with a wonderfully gruesome 70s color picture of Norman Bates's Mother as the art. That's the sort of thing that just leaps into my hands. bunny_hugger was more interested in normal things, like Sparks albums, and she had a pretty successful time of that.

And we closed the afternoon at a coffee shop where she and her fellow TAs had gathered to grade and complain about students, back when she was in grad school. It was cool enough we went to the proper indoors, rather than the enclosed patio that's right up against a fireplace but not particularly heated, where they'd always sat because it allowed smoking and one of her friends partook. I could imagine hanging out in there quite easily.

The French Republican calendar month of Fructidor was translated into Italian as Fruttidoro, into German as Obstmonat, and into Dutch as Vruchtmaand. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Inside the Atom, Isaac Asimov. It's a little bit of an antidote to the concentrated craziness of Booth's book, I admit. (Sure, that biodynamic agriculture guy is the John the Baptist of our age. Yeah, why not?)

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I'm still not used to football games making a difference for campus traffic, as Baylor's stadium has been four miles away from the campus since before my parents were born. Next year they move into into a new stadium, directly across the river with a walkable bridge beside campus. Such an odd notion it would be, campus traffic and football games.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Rutgers, when I was there, had half their home games at the Meadowlands, which was great from a campus traffic consideration since once the buses carrying fans left you'd never know anything was going on. Of course, it also made it more obvious as the meager crowds the Scarlet Knights could attract tried to make Giants Stadium look like it was even remotely fillable that the team was mediocre and utterly ignorable.