Entry 58: The Doobie Brothers and Brian Wilson

I saw the Doobie Brothers and Santana at the Hope Estate Winery last weekend. It was pretty fun. Santana was headlining and the crowd was more into Santana, but I might have to give the nod to the Doobie Brothers as to who was better. Santana was cool, but he gets a little too “jammy” for my taste sometimes. Also, he would go off on these new age, spiritual spoken-word riffs from time to time (“look in the mirror tomorrow, feel your positive energy for peace and togetherness”). I’m sure they would’ve been really awesome if I was high on mescaline or something like that, but I wasn’t. I only had a mild wine buzz going.

The Doobies are a band I got into ironically, but then came to appreciate genuinely. There are several bands/artists like that for me, Toto, The Offspring, Lady Gaga (although that new “Born This Way” song is pretty awful), and Neil Diamond, to name a few. The story of the Doobies is that my friend J and I were watching an episode of “The Simpsons”, on which Reverend Lovejoy narrates a flashback scene of when he first came to Springfield as the young hip optimistic reverend looking to make a difference, and in the background “Jesus is Just Alright with Me” is playing. After that, J made me a Doobie Brothers mixed CD kind of as a joke (it’s titled “All the Doobies Anybody Needs”), but they have some genuinely good songs – Old Black Water, China Grove, etc. I mean they aren’t exactly the Beatles, but they can rock it.





Since they were the opening band, the crowd wasn’t really that into it when they started, so I probably looked way too excited when they fired into the aforementioned “Jesus is Just Alright with Me” as their second song. I and some middle-aged woman were the only people dancing in the venue at that point, I think. You see this woman at every concert of a band that’s at least 30 years old, by the way. She’s in her mid/late-40s, wearing something that is just a little bit too revealing, she’s a little drunk and dancing maniacally from the get go. I like this woman – she’s thinking, “Fuck it. I’ve got three kids and a balding husband at home. I’m having a good time while I have chance, even if I’m the only one.”

My favorite part of the show was the Doobie Brothers’ encore. Before they even came back out, I was yelling “China Grove! China Grove!” which made my companions laugh because they had no idea what I was talking about (they didn’t know much Doobies), and because we were approximately a quarter mile from the stage. But, the Doobies came back onstage, faked like they were gonna do a slow song, and then bam! China Grove.



My least favorite part of the show was when a woman asked me to move or sit down because she couldn’t see. She had a baby in her lap. Who brings a baby to a rock concert? That doesn’t sound like fun for you, the baby, or the person who you just told to move.

In other news, an article on a crossword puzzle appeared recently in the sports section of the New York Times. It talks about how San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson always wanted to be an answer in the puzzle, but he wasn’t famous enough, until some constructors came up with the idea to make a puzzle with a same-name-baseball-pitcher-musician theme (Brian Wilson also being the name of the main songwriter of The Beach Boys). I did the puzzle. It was a really good, but here’s the thing. I had that idea two years ago!

Not only did I have the idea, but I made a very similar puzzle and sold it to a very shorted lived crossword puzzle computer app thing. I even used Brian Wilson as one of my answers (and Kenny Rogers which also appears in the NYT puzzle). The NYT puzzle is better than mine. It’s more intricate and has a very clever “revealer” answer (“perfect pitch” which can apply to baseball or music), but I wasn’t trying to make my puzzle NYT quality. My puzzle was part of a 15-puzzle package*, so I had to crank it out quickly. If I had spent a little more time on it, and submitted it to NYT, who knows? Anyway, it was a weird feeling for me to see this puzzle being praised in the NYT when I did a similar one two years ago that nobody knows about it. It’s not bitterness (the NYT constructors made a great puzzle, that I enjoyed), but it’s a sort of missed-opportunity regret. Anyway, below are the players I used in my puzzle.







Anyway, it’s quickly becoming winter here, which is like spring/summer for all you PNWers. I’m still generally wearing short sleeves, but it’s too cold to swim in the ocean. I went for a run today along the beach and was damn near blown away. It was w-in-dy. Some guy had a massive kite connected to a harness he was wearing, and he would jump and let the wind carry him 10 yards or so at a time. It looked like fun.

My work has been going slowly. I think we (meaning me and my supervisors) bit off a little more than we can chew with our last idea. It’s a piece of an algorithm that’s pretty simple in theory, but the intricacies of actually coding it are completely bogging me down. I feel badly because each time I meet with them I have to tell them that I’m not finished yet, but I’m the only one doing the actual nuts and bolts work, and it’s not easy. At least, it’s not easy to do quickly and correctly. Anyway, my next meeting is in a week, so hopefully I will have some results to show them by then.

Well, that’s all for now.

*Somewhat amusing story. The woman in charge of this crossword puzzle app thing was asking for 15 puzzles, all of the same theme, from which she would possibly buy 10. I had a hunch that this opportunity wouldn’t be around long (it wasn’t), so I asked a friend who was into crossword puzzles and sort of dabbling in constructing, if he wanted to make some sports puzzles. He said, OK, so I made 9 puzzles and he made 6. The editor, who specifically said that she didn’t look at who made what puzzle, picked all 9 of mine and one of his. Ha-ha. I felt kind of guilty about it, but what can you do?