1. i swear to you that, while listening to the radio on my way in to work, i heard “the moviefone guy” on 97.9FM refer to Ron Howard as “pwned” in regards to Cinderella Man. pwned! i am not prepared to have wacky irc-originated internet slang in fluent use by radio morning-show deejays. i’m just not.
  2. perhaps in reaction to radio-related language shock, i switched to the iPod shortly thereafter, which was conveniently loaded with hip-hop. near the very end of my commute, as i was coming upon the workplace parking lot, it happened upon a song i particularly like, and so i’d turned the volume up really loudly. (i don’t have an external subwoofer, so it wasn’t into ‘rattle the license plate’ decibel territory, but it was vibrating damn near everything else. i love my speakers.) i turned into a spot, pulled back out slightly to adjust the angle, pulled back in, and realized that i was hearing someone else’s music over my own. someone else’s “music” — because of course it was not actually music at all, it was smooth jazz. it was loud enough that i could hear the melody and figured out that the song it was supposed to be (but of course was not, because it was smooth jazz and therefore not actually music at all) was “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing.” i could practically have sung along with it. then i got out of my car and realized further that the music was coming from inside the car in the spot next to mine, which had the engine turned off, the doors locked, and the headlights on, but no one was anywhere near. either that was the world’s most offensive car alarm ever, or some sort of freakish urban nightmare of mine come to life. seriously, SMOOTH JAZZ. (i must admit that i really, really wanted to go in to the security desk at work and ask them to page the owner of a beige monte carlo that their smooth jazz was on. if only our building had a PA!)