My iTunes library is back in action, as I finally upgraded to a shiny, speedy MacBook Pro. After moving 20 boxes of records and 4 enormous bins of CDs across state lines to the new apartment, my husband and I have rethought our commitment to physical media. Sure, the best of the vinyl will stay - it is an artifact, a piece of art and history, and often not available on CD. Some of the CDs hold strong sentimental value, having lived under car seats during college road trips, been acquired in smoky clubs with crumpled ten dollar bills, lugged from one apartment to the next (and the next, and the next....) The rest (I'm talking to you, Abba Gold) will get ripped (at full-fidelity) and purged. Our next move will be lighter.

Today, iTunes shuffle brings me...... "Dog" by El Perro Del Mar, who I first heard on a compilation for Believer magazine.

My first thought was: Julee Cruise, Twin Peaks, foggy mornings, roadhouses. She has that kind of ghostly voice (that kind of ethereal reverb, harmonies, looping instrumental arrangements). The lyrics could mean anything; the song is still lonely and a little messed-up.

Hear it here.

This is what happens when you decide to spice up your life by taking a second job:

You get up early, dress in bland, office appropriate attire and circle your Honda up five flights of parking garage to job #1. Then, a few hours later, you run up the parking garage stairs, pop the Honda trunk, change Mister Roger's-style from blouse and flats into sweatshirt and sneakers and speed to job #2. You get home at midnight, eat cold, leftover Thai take-out, go to sleep and dream of the extra cash you're banking.

But you don't blog. Because there is no time.

And then, five months later, you quit both jobs and move back to Brooklyn.

Last night someone put a few dollars in the jukebox of a quiet bar and played an entire Frank Sinatra album. Not necessarily in memory of Joey Bishop.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUen0YDjHMQ]

Just because... it's Thursday night, the bar is empty, the beer is lukewarm, the Red Sox are winning, the dart board is well-lit, the corners are not, and, even if you've heard it a thousand times, there's something that stirs the gut when Sinatra sings,

it's up to you... New... York...

I bought this CD for my mother after seeing Dolly Parton perform at Radio City Music Hall.

The day of that show, I bought a ticket, raced out of work, onto the subway and up to 6th Avenue and 50th Street. I sat in the second to last row of the uppermost balcony of that magnificent hall, literally on the edge of my seat, rapt.

I found the CD in the glove compartment of my mother's car while driving through Wyoming last week. I was driving alone. My husband and sister were in a second car. On the road from the jackalope capital of the world to the small town I grew up in, I listened to Dolly. And again, she brought tears to my eyes.

It's her voice, the way she balances showmanship with genuineness, the way she emphasizes the r's, how she stops just short of overdoing the ornamentation.

We'd fight but never lose!

Dolly Parton made me cry on the prairie. I was homesick. I wanted to be 8 years old, trying to catch grasshoppers while wading through tumbleweeds.

Still, I would love to hear her remake this album without the complex arrangements. Just Dolly's voice and her guitar.