Well ladies and gentlemen, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
There comes a time in all of our lives where it wouldn’t hurt to explore the melodic collection of tones produced by a Yoda flute to assist in the ride to sleepy town.
Yoda, yoga, take your pick.
A few months ago I found myself needing to go to bed and get some sleep. Whereas I usually drift off in a matter of minutes, I couldn’t expunge the cacophony of thoughts which were bouncing around in the confines of my cavernous skull with the velocity of a spirited, multiplayer game of Pong.
Not being one to self-medicate into REM with the wide variety of spirits and pharmaceuticals which have been known to aid in the process, I opted for a method to help shut down the thoughts. I knew that once I could do that, sleep wouldn’t be too far behind.
As dictated by the good people at Apple, I submitted my thumbprint for verification to my iPhone, and I opened up my iHeart Radio app in search for some calming tunes. I don’t have any of that stuff in my own personal library, so I was going to have to rely on others for the selection. One of the first selections I found was a station dedicated to yoga flutes.
Keep in mind that this stuff wasn’t produced by a bunch of 4th graders learning to the play the recorder either. I’ve got to wonder why that’s such a tradition here in ‘Merica, but that’s a different post for a different day which will probably never come.
None the less, the yoga flutes worked. The thoughts stopped racing through my head and I was off to sleep in no time. Since then, I’ve located a few other stations which play calming music which I occasionally play as I’m drifting off.
Okay let’s do a quick subject change to something that isn’t altogether unrelated.
Earlier this week, my alarm went off at 5 am like it does every weekday. In response, I submitted my thumbprint to my iPhone to prove to the good people at Apple that I was the one soul on the whole planet wholly authorized to disengage the alarm. I then dragged myself out of bed, and did what anyone does in the morning upon leaving the mattress.
A matter of minutes later, I made my way to the kitchen and the garage where I would endeavor to put some kibble in the dog’s dish and make my lunch for later in the day.
Keep in mind that these are all automated behaviors which don’t require a whole lot of upper brain function or heavily firing synapses. Otherwise, my brain is still booting up and preparing to handle the high velocity game of inter-cranial Pong. It’s not really prepared to handle any real thought at this point.
So as I sat there at the fridge assembling my lunch, I received a news update from the other C-suite member of the organization who was awake and already fully engaged in their own game of high velocity Pong.
“Kirk Douglas passed away.”
“Why in tarnation are you telling me this?” My language wasn’t as polite, and my response was not well received. A moment of intense fellowship ensued and was concluded with my sarcastic expression of gratitude for the 5 am celebrity update. For the next hour, all I could think of is Rich Little yelling the word “DIMPLE!” in his best Kirk Douglas impersonation.
The whole event was followed by a 48 hour silent treatment, lightly dusted with a few mono-syllabic utterances.
At one point during that time, it crossed my mind to send a text: “Hey Spartacus is showing at the Rialto tonight. Wanna go see it?”
So I told you that story in order to steer things back to the yoga flutes.
Kirk Douglas made a film with his son Michael called It Runs in the Family. I haven’t seen it, and for what it’s worth, I would expect the two collaborated on several projects over the years. If memory serves, it seems like Michael was behind One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in which Kirk was to play the role that Jack Nicholson played. Seems like by the time that movie was put into production, Kirk was too old to play that particular character. For the record, that’s the first R rated movie I ever watched.
None the less, the only reason I’m even discussing the subject matter is because of the flutes.
Sometime last week, as I was a mere moments from totally losing consciousness as the flute noises emanated from my phone, the savants at iHeart Radio decided to mess with my somber.
Just to reiterate, it’s generally bedtime and I’m playing relaxing music. iHeart Radio knows this because they can tell where I’m located. They can tell that I’m playing relaxing music. They can tell that I’m using their sleep timer.
Do they understand under this particular condition, that playing a commercial designed to reboot my brain is probably not a very good idea?
Of course not.
The commercial was a brilliant display of idiocy on iHeart Radio’s part because they scheduled it during sleepy time on a station designed to help people chill. It featured the aforementioned actor Michael Douglas reading a political spot for Michael Bloomberg.
Man alive if there was ever a candidate who needed a 100 ounce jug of cool refreshing soda, Bloomberg is the guy.
I guess I’m going to have to buy some relaxation tunes for my phone just so I don’t have to listen to that crap at the point where I’m done taking inventory on sheep. Certainly celebrity endorsements are pretty darned boring, but they surely aren’t going to help me sleep.
RIP Kirk Douglas.
