The last time I went inside? Jesse Malin. The time before that? Easy Tiger-era Ryan Adams. So, good for the writer of this Muzak article.

The idea that piped-in music could actually be hip is a relatively new one. Perhaps I'm just getting old and out of touch, but lately I've been hearing songs I like in the Container Store. Eight times out of 10 they still subject you to James Blunt, but just when you're ready to hang a noose around that Elfa closet rod, along comes Arcade Fire to set everything right.

The sea change, for me, came on a recent flight on Delta. It's been my experience that music, like food, is best avoided on passenger jets. So imagine my surprise at actually enjoying Delta's boarding music — even writing down the names of songs to buy later: Grant Lee Phillips's Fountain of Youth, M. Ward's For Beginners, Jeremy Messersmith's cover of the Replacements' Skyway (my favorite song by my favorite band). When was the last time you discovered great music on an airplane?

Bu there are money quotes on the negative side: "I've walked out of otherwise appealing shops that elect to blare Maroon 5. I've hung up on reservations lines that put me on hold to Groovy Kind of Love. … The quintessential background record of any era, Sade's Smooth Operator (1984) was also the perfect theme for its time: languid, sexy, and reeking of money. [Fantastic Sade rant follows.] … Where would your neighborhood tapas bar be without the worldly stylings of the Gipsy Kings, the Buena Vista Social Club (the Gipsy Kings of the 90's), and Amadou & Mariam (the Gipsy Kings of the 00's)?"

My favorite: "From Bali to Bodrum, every high-end sandal emporium and beachfront sushi bar seems to play the same 12 songs by the same six Brazilian singers — particularly Bebel Gilberto, the Brazilian Sade. The samba is as ubiquitous as the caipirinha. (Don't get me wrong, I adore Brazilian music, even after 3,500 listens. Not knowing Portuguese, I used to think it the most romantic music of all. I've since learned that every song is about soccer. But I love it no less.)"

Woke at 3 a.m., listened to Raitt and Ronstadt, felt groggy but good.

i could walk from here to heaven
set off to be free
i could run miles to a place
wearied, tennessee
lay down at the roadside
the next returnee

(more…)

When I don't have the answer, I don't have it. I'm nowhere near it. I can't picture it, can't smell it, can't hear it, can't imagine it. If there is any chance at all of having it, at least one of those conditions is true. When none are true, it's killer. I can't sleep, don't eat right, can't sit down or can't stand up, can't deal with it and can't tell anyone I can't deal. This doesn't apply to the little stuff, the dailies, the problems that get labeled problems. I'm talking about the things where a label would be inaccurate or a lie. I don't know what word to use. What's a word for that? Condition, maybe. Not when it means my terms, not when it means ailment, and especially not when it's absolvingly passive and bucketed in concrete, but when, vacuumed out, it means the sum of circumstances and nothing more. Circumstance at its core is no cop-out. Everyone is standing around, and I'm standing with them. Then count ways in which we stand, verging on infinite, and condition isn't bullshit either. Its roots are in agreement. I can't claim condition and not accept participation. I've got to scrawl my name. So, when I don't have the answer and don't have it, that's why I want it so damn bad.

Every night now, sleep feels like something other people have. Last night I slept with the blinds open, yards of purple glass six floors up where only the glow and the mile-off apartments where those people sleep can see the snooze lighting every few hours. I don't know why, except to try something different and to hope sleeping with the sky and waking up with the sun felt comfortable. But the sun didn't come out today, and I was awake before it would've shown anyway. Again, don't know why. While I can't physically go without sleep, though, I can go without knowing why I can't sleep. It's that work and love and Halloween feel the same way that's more the trouble. The Halloween thing is stupid. What kind of idea person can't come up with a costume for years. But the bigger deal stuff has the same issue. Years go by and so much is good and still that amount is ultimately wrenching and small compared to what's unresolved. You tell me to have patience, that this is a conceit, that I can't expect to wake up one morning and realize the answer, but I want to know why else I should wake up.

How to get anywhere from here, I don't know. Distraction isn't enough. Pushing the rock up the hill harder obviously doesn't work either. How do you work toward realization? Acknowledging participation seems like a start. But I've been there a while now, years. To anyone who's met me more recently, the frustration must make no sense, and I'm so sorry for that. When you know what's missing is all around you and yet beyond your senses or words, you — I — just want it so damn bad.

Maybe. Folks are searching the Web for Patrick Cooper again, my site reports claim, and that only means one thing: trouble in Alabama. And trouble in Alabama only means one thing: trouble for me. A federal jury has convicted Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford of all 60 conspiracy, bribery, fraud, and money laundering counts he faced. The conviction automatically removed Langford from office and installed an interim.

But there now appear to be searchers and commenters looking for Langford's mayoral runoff opponent and this Patrick Cooper's Google PageRank-nemesis "Patrick Cooper" to return to politics. Cooper has been active this fall in getting out the vote. Let's keep it that way.

From NPR's excerpt of his new book, I Am the New Black:

There are many reasons why you might be reading this sentence. You're obviously curious about me, or you wouldn't even be holding this book. That's cool with me, I'm happy about that, Mr. or Mrs. Whoever You Are. If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that curiosity might kill cats, but it doesn't kill people. Unless you're curious about doing things like bungee jumping high on crack to see if you really need that harness, curiosity will not kill you! I tell you what will kill you — people will. We've got a long way to go to change that around, but I hope we do. For now, I can say this and I know it's true: Curiosity makes you smarter. Don't fight it! Learn to learn, learn to ask questions. Clearly, you've got questions about me. In this book you'll find some answers.

In a Brian's Song kind of way. And I've never even seen Brian's Song. Meet Josh, who plays baseball and lives in an assisted-living facility.

(From other ESPN E:60 videos: Chris Cooley, good to watch this week.)

What I liked most was the editing. It was different — same hospital, same characters, different views, different movements, quicker cuts and pans through intermediary scenes, and less or no movement in moments that mattered most. The quiet as described took hold in its own way, with pulsating thought ferrying you between clarity, peace and rest. Staring for eight hours wasn't as quiet as talking all night.

… to figure out local Internet advertising.

Yesterday, Jess sent me a link to a machine that automatically spreads butter. Please. "Almost anything going on a griddle could benefit from a trip over this wheel of deliciousness." Pictured: Buttered lobster roll.

Last week, my brother sent me a link to a transparent toaster that lets you watch your bread brown between pieces of glass. "Don't you want to see the magic happen?" Yes, yes, I do. Whenever good folks finish inventing this device, my brother plans to give me one for Christmas.

The people's consensus? I am a lazy cook but love bread. True.

And this is coming from a guy who swore off Wrangler's the second they used the Fantasy Records-licensed cut of Fortunate Son. Levi's meets a wax cylinder recording of Walt Whitman reading his America. From Slate's Ad Report Card this week:

Whitman is an involuntary spokes-celebrity here, and perhaps you deem this ad a desecration of all he stood for. I can't say I blame you. But were you forced to choose a clothing line for our favorite barbaric yawper to rep, you might choose this one. Levi's is the rare American brand that was actually around when Whitman was alive. And there's logic to this match between a quintessentially American poet and a quintessentially American product. Whitman's verse allows Levi's to evoke not only its proud history but a forward-looking present — the pioneering, American mindset that Whitman captured and that Levi's hopes to embody.