In the Post story on a YouTube star, now getting requests: "It's like you are a kid playing with Legos and someone says, 'Build this house for me.' And you are like, 'Oh, okay, I get it. I'm in construction now.' "

Last week's thing was an attempt of sorts to get back to playing with Legos. To get out of a blockquote slump, literally and figuratively, start with a thought and pour all shapes and colors of loose bricks onto the table to see what you build. What results — a baseball park, a North Pole workshop, the house where you stay at the beach — is going to look ridiculous on the table next to the formal, instructed constructions, but at least you remember how to create. You remind yourself you can.

The thought last week was considering heart as distinct from self. The former's part of the latter, but they're not the same, not when a mind and body (and soul, as one friend added later) are in there too. Each of the self's parts also has to live in the world, and the heart, the most involuntary and reactionary of the bunch, has to work hardest to fit in.

The songs sitting in the back of my mind at the time and through the past couple weeks have been two from odd corners of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, which I finally saw, years overdue. Early in the movie, there's Not for the Season (lyrics and concert video) eventually released outside Wilco, and I've been struggling to interpret it: "Summer comes and gravity undoes you / You're happy because of the lovely way the sunshine bends / Hiding from your close friends / Weeding out the weekends." Then chorus: "Candy left over from Halloween / A unified theory of everything / Love left over from lovers leaving / Books, they all know they're not worth reading / It's not for the season."

SongMeanings.net has no great answers on it. Says the most recent song commenter, "This song means to me that Jeff Tweedy is a freakin' genius." But another reader points in a direction, "The words are kind of depressing, but there's a kind of unexplainable hope in there." It's attempting to explain that hope that turns up a good try at a meaning. A Stylus piece says of the song, "The eighteenth century literary critic Motoori Norinaga coined the term mono no aware to describe Japanese literature that emphasized the deep impression of time's passage and combined a serene acceptance of life's transience with an appreciation of 'the gentle pleasures found in our mundane pursuits.' "

You know this blog and you know me — I like and fight with this idea. In an old posting, it was the almost-quiet of Springsteen's County Fair that caught my attention one night, walking in late. The annual arrival of the fair and its traditions — known too well, in good ways — are set against the last line (lyrics and music), home and holding the girl in the yard after the fair, "Oh I wish, I'd never have to let this moment go."

You clearly can't hold on, but you count on the fair and night returning. There are different verisons of Not for the Season out there, studio and live. I think I like the rock one the best, a beat ongoing. Audio is here.

But onto the other I Am Trying to Break Your Heart song that's been on my mind, a rare cover: Be Not So Fearful. Mp3 here, lyrics are here, yes.

Got down to Navy Yard on a beautiful post-storm Friday night and spent hours walking through the experience. The crowds were big but spread out comfortably over the nine floors of the unfinished building above the Metro, and area artists packed the space from wall to wall. Overwhelming? Yes. Excellent? Yes. Started with finding Gonzaga's own Ed Johnston, showing on the 4th floor, and then made it through about half the building with friend Kathleen, representing for the other Big Shiny tower and a friend of the Johnstons from back in the day.

I'll post the pictures of Ed's cool work tomorrow or Monday, but for starters, here's the rest of the show we saw. It was absolutely worth going. Finding the neighborhood alive and busy with the Nats stadium dark was fun — and only the start of the experience. To start with…

All kinds of city art around. This one at a distance looked like a river.

Sounds of birds, sounds of bees coming from inside the hives, buzzz…

Post Secret guy and his team had lots of postcards and a secret booth.

No wonder she didn't want to marry him. (Admission: Had to Wiki it.)

Pure bug beauty.

Duck duck goose, apple apple Mentos, etc, with prices in progress.

Just to the right of this display was one for queens.

From the card: "Little Cabin on the Hill (2009). Antique wood, old keys, violin strings. A bluegrass piece by Lester Flatt and Bill Monroe. Oh, someone has taken you from me, / And left me here all alone / Just listen to the rain beat on my window pane / In our little cabin home on the hill."

The line for the bar, opposite the hard-rocking accordion-led band.

The Coopers were all in town last weekend and saw a Nats win, the combined odds of which are about five billion to one.

The Dunn slam was wicked, probably my favorite Nats homer since the Zimmerman walk-off against the Yankees. After the O's intentionally walked Zimmerman to get to the big guy, the crowd wanted the come-from-behind shot bad. And everyone played well. Take the AP's sentence on the grand slam setup, "With Washington trailing 5-4, pinch-hitter Anderson Hernandez led off the seventh with a single against Chris Ray (0-1). Willie Harris singled, Cristian Guzman sacrificed and Ryan Zimmerman was intentionally walked to load the bases." Want to engage the fans? Be consistent.

Meanwhile, Kearns ran into everything to catch stuff, and Martis was less wild than he could've been and redeemed himself for giving up a hit to the opposing pitcher by getting a nice hit of his own. Hanrahan looked surprisingly confident with two strikeouts in a 1-2-3 9th.

Other highlights: Good to run into Penn Beth in the concourse. Teddy held a wide, wide early lead in the President's Race, but he lost when he stopped to beat up the Oriole Bird. Worth it. (Update since writing but before publishing: Meghan links to the video.) Missed her National Anthem, but the ending of God Bless America from five-year-old Kaitlyn Maher was way above expectations. Bird beating, kid song pix here. No idea if the kid behind Rob is about spit up a tater tot or what.

Finally, the Hangin' Out on E Street video series gives me a favorite. After Gaslight Anthem, Pete Yorn and a host of others have produced basic and/or timid covers, new-to-me Serena Ryder makes Racing in the Street her own in just the right way. Across the top, the changes aren't too dramatic, but she tweaks phrasing throughout and the details add up to more. The end riff is also intriguing because it doesn't mimic the song's original solo piano play-out at all but works in the few seconds we hear it. Play that sucker out. Via Steve and Paul's Facebook feeds.

She has gone the way of Carl Kasell. As I wrote here in August 2007, when I was debating whether to give Carl the boot, she was the only other person on my Facebook list I'd never met or talked to. I kept her around as much for her random personality as her pantlessness.

From the blog archive: "Her name is Colleen, and she lives in Illinois. She's 19, attractive and — in some of her photos — has lost her pants. Google confirms Colleen's a real person. Her favorite interests are vampires, horror movies and baby animals. Her middle-of-the-night befriending message begins 'Hey punk,' and that's enough for me."

But now she's gone. Colleen grew up, moved out of her hometown, transitioned from Hooters to nursing school, demoted the vampires, and put on more pants. Her feed got ordinary. We wish her the best.

The never-met-in-person-or-talked-to list now stands three. Two are USAT readers who sit on a readers list, and one is a Life reporter to whom I need to introduce myself. Personal consistency rocks onward.

Somewhat like a ninja. 11g will be pleased, courtesy #usatau training session with American University's David Johnson today. (Original.)

(11g, the keeper of all my mannerisms and pants and haircuts, will be sad with no pushed-up sleeves. No worries, that was minutes later.)

Potentially ax-wielding drunks and horrible baseball-inflicted deaths.

Say you have to write a story about how America's economic crisis is affecting very small businesses. Your story has to involve the phase, "78 percent of all American businesses have nine or fewer workers, constituting about 18 percent of the total workforce."

Boring, yes? But if you are Neely Tucker, while Post Style editors can sometimes assign you to essays that bring out a bit too much of your purple tendencies (from a memorable July 2005 story on the topic of shade, "Why are there odes to the sea, to the stars, to a Grecian urn, and so few to shade?"), this kind of business stat is a great place to begin. The stat has to be your story, but at the same time, it can't be.

So, this morning, you write my favorite lede of the week, describing how the security system works at a hard-luck auto repair shop.

Part 1 is Sasha the Rottweiler, who once went through the plate-glass window after a burglar. If you walk in to see about your muffler job here at Kenilworth 66, Sasha will probably be asleep on the couch. You are advised not to knock on the glass.

Part 2 is John the Homeless Guy (last name withheld at owner's request). John lives in the Dodge van on the back of the lot. He keeps an ax — "a personal security device" — tucked beneath the chassis. When sober, he runs off the men who sometimes come to steal things off the lot after dark. He regrettably was either not present or not sober The Night Those &#%s Stole the Coke Machine.

Now, if you can use great storytelling to write about statistics, how can you use statistics to write about the most pulpy baseball deaths ever? Slate explains how two librarians say they aim to provide warnings…

… but there aren't any recommendations for making the sport safer here, no real signs of impassioned outrage, and no warnings to suburban parents about aluminum bats. Death at the Ballpark is fundamentally a reference book — a list carefully organized into categories like "Thrown Ball Fatalities, Amateur Fatalities — Position Players" and "Thrown Ball Fatalities, Amateur Fatalities — Baserunners." Often, however, the authors pause for a half-page to narrate a death in noirlike detail. The opening paragraph of one entry ominously begins, "Patrick J. McTavey, 38, worked home plate during a heated semipro championship game on Long Island, NY, on September 26, 1927," and ends: "It was the last call he ever made."

Anyone got a bed near Monmouth? Got news late Sunday about this:

Dear Mr. Patrick Cooper,

I'm pleased to let you know that your abstract titled "Springsteen and the struggle with the distributed narrative" has been accepted for the Glory Days Symposium to be held September 25-27 in New Jersey. …

Don't know yet if I have to write a paper. Hoping a Powerpoint deck and some good arguments will do the job. Guess I'll find out…

My brother forwards one of Jalopnik's Top Ten Worst Car Commercials of All Time, and it sparks a hunt to solve a mystery from my youth.

The commercial is for the 1980 Datsun 280ZX 10th Anniversary Edition, sibling to the 1980 Datsun 210 station wagon, the heck of a car that carried me from birth (see #15, Cooper creation story) to D.C. license (see the "bitch with the big hair" story, some day to be posted here).

The ad is fantastic, from the production to the song to the lady to the mustache to the lack of doors to the kiss back to the song. Black gold! But what grabs me the most is the momentary shot of the ignition, so instantly familiar with the metal and ACC label. But what does — what did in the old Datsun, "Little Blue" to us (sometimes) — ACC stand for?

Yahoo Answers tells me ACC stands for "Accessory." The more I know.

P.S. Our 1980 Datsun 210 wagon looked sort of like this, but not really. Ours was blue with wood panels, had hubcaps, had no crazy roof rack or Nissan badge or right mirror or rear wiper, and was so much cooler.

Even better than one last week where I dreamt painters came to my apartment before I was ready for them… as in real life I napped and put off getting ready for painters to arrive. (Ended up getting ready just in time, and the painters and the subsequent carpet cleaners all did nice work.) Anyway, the new dream? Nolan Ryan pitching to Pete Rose in guest appearances in a 2009 game, where Rose was back in baseball, apparently. I have no recall of the resolution of the at bat.