Track 2

"B-B-But Tom Waits never plays clubs."

It was a sheepish response to a joke gone horribly wrong.  Any kind of witty Aaron Sorkin-esque banter was conspicuously absent, and nothing was going to summon TV ready dialogue now.  It was supposed to be a joke but now she was shooting daggers at the man driving the car with her eyes.  It was a look with the unspoken words, "Fear me Theseus for I am the Mighty Minotaur! You abandoned my hatred! Look into my eyes!"  What to do next?  He might not survive the trip to the restraunt.

His only shot was to babel incoherently.

"You know there are these two classic episodes of Austin City Limits that get played PBS at least a few times a year.  They are from the seventies or eighties so you get all kinds of weird lighting artifacts from the camera overexposing the video, since it's filmed in a darkened theater.  One is a concert by Stevie Ray Vaughn, you know for people that are way to into to Stevie Ray Vaughn, except he's been dead for a while now and I think we're starting to move beyond the generation of people who are way too into Stevie Ray Vaughn, so maybe they don't show that one as much anymore."

An awkward silence followed.  What an awkward place to pause.

"The other episode is a Tom Waits concert.  Well, it's no so much a concert as is it performance.  There are some songs but there are also equal parts of him telling stories that don't going anywhere in the persona of a 50's beatnik over sparse jazz sounds.  I've never been able to decide if it's brilliant or just bizarre.  I'm prone to like time Tom Waits so it might be brilliant, but it's definitely bizarre.  The man seems obsessed with hobos, like John Swartzwelder level obsessed."

Stony silence.

"John Swartzwelder was one of the most prolific writers of Simpsons episodes.  He liked to work hobos into his scripts whenever possible.  There are all kinds of weird stories about his reclusive personality, like how he would primarily write on a typewriter in the same booth at diner that would let him smoke in LA."

Nothing.

"Tom Waits smokes a lot during the Austin City Limits episode.  There's probably about 4 or 5 breaks during songs/beat poems to light up new cigarettes.  It plays to that gravely voice that he has.  Back in the early to mid 70's, he had performed using a more conventional singing voice.  But, as one reviewer put it, he didn't want to be Billy Joel, so he started 'singing' using a six pack a day hobo's voice to differentiate himself."

She didn't even flinch when he took his hands of the wheel to make air quotes.  Her rage had risen to the level of disregard for personal safety.

"Of course he's an eccentric guy.  Remember when Keira Knightly comes across him in the desert in Domino?"

The level of rage in her look went from white hot to icy cold.  The car was turning into the bottom circle of Hell.  He decided to change tactics.  This was a mistake.

"I don't see what you have against him.  Dan Rydell likes him.  It's not as if he is actually stalking you and watching you undress from outside the window."

Ice crystals were starting to form on the car's interior windows.

"Or was it that I brought up Keira Knightly knightly.  I don't know why you hate her either.  You love British period pieces, and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting Keira Knightly in a British period piece.  I mean Mary on Downton Abbey is practically her clone.  If Downton Abbey was a movie instead of a TV show, Mary would have been played by Keira Knightly."

"WHAT!?"

Unsure as to whether the mention of Keira Knightly or the dead cat had finally elicited an aural response.  He pressed on.

"The only album by Tom Waits I own is Alice, which is music he made for a German stage adaptation of the Lewis Carroll stories.  That's why the song is is in german, it's from the perspective of the rabbit.  But actually most what he says is gibberish, something he calls subvocalizing.  One thing I'll say, is that recently people like to take Lewis Carroll and turn it into this twisted, weird world.  Which, you know maybe it was, but they try really hard, it's not like the source material needs to be made weirder.  But one thing I'll say for Alice in Wonderland - the animated movie - is that what is scarier than taking something that's weird, and making it for kids, there's sort of a demented brilliance to that.  You can Tim Burton or Tom Waits it all you want and try to make it seem scary or unusual - or you can make little kids laugh and squirm at truly weird stuff.  They may grow out of being scared by interested by it, but hopefully they'll circle back around and realize they never understood it, and that it's still weird and maybe a little scary.  Most people assume, 'Oh, kids movies aren't for adults.'  But when you pay attention they really are.  Besides, it was supposed to be nonsense for kids, just with a bunch of allusions sprinkled in for adults.  The brilliance of most of the good Disney movies when they aren't afraid to go dark with something."

Something was about to go dark in the car...

One last tactical change.

"You know Lewis Carroll started out at Oxford.  He gets referenced in Inspector Lewis sometimes.  Do you want to watch an episode when we get back home?"

"I don't know, is he solving murders in Indiana now?"

Gulp...