Though I recently broke my vow never to perform karaoke inside the lower 48 recently (short story:  excellent co-performer, and frankly, I'll continue to believe that I nailed the line "Tin ROOF...rusty!" until video surfaces to prove otherwise), there is something liberating about singing in the relative safety and anonymity of one's own car.   

A person does get busted from time to time, belting out something while stopped at a stoplight.  

During my Puddle of Mudd phase I was piloting my trusty minivan through South Tampa with the windows down  –– totally owning every bad word in  "She Hates You" –– when I glanced to the side.

The word "horrified" doesn't begin to cover the emotions writ large on the faces of the mixed bag of college-age guys in the muscle-car idling next to me.  What, they didn't imagine I'd have felt those naked and frank emotions? Or expressed them with such raw honesty?  Beige-haired lady in a minivan can't hate? Jeesh. 

Bring on "Carpool Karaoke," a late-night television feature that's displaced my previously top-seeded musical favorite "Lip Synch Battle with Jimmy Fallon."  

Oooh, which one to choose? Chris Martin of Coldplay on a longish road-trip?The one where Iggy Azalea and James stop to try on bridal dresses? James driving Michelle Obama around (Secret Service in pursuit) and picking up Missy Elliot? Man-wrestling with the Red Hot Chili Peppers? 

Too hard to pick, but here's a trio of my favorites:

It wasn't original when Shakespeare put on the show. But a person has to wonder how many –– so many! –– different ways can storytellers present that sad tale of star-crossed lovers...

The kids can be members of rival gangs in Spanish Harlem, they can be old people, they can be soldiers. Maybe they survive and have a happy ending. Maybe they burst into spontaneous song and dance.  Perhaps Romeo and Juliet work at the same diner. They can be a dog and a cat, they can be, oh hell, garden gnomes, or, surprisingly good in a novel as a zombie and a warm-blooded girl.

Creativity isn't about creating something from nothing. It's like recombinant DNA, picking up a little bit of this and merging it with a little bit of that. Sometimes you get an awkward chimeric failure, other times, a handsome mule of a hybrid.

Which plots (or songs) prove most inspirational? That's a whole other question.

Too late, I know, but if Buffy has taught me anything, it's that a girl can dream. 

Maybe it's perhaps a genetic predisposition that makes a person lean toward word-playful, irony-appreciating deep-voiced performers. John Gorka, dude. Leonard Cohen. Richard Shindell. Jeesh. Talk about Wonderbread white. But alas. 

Perhaps it started with the environment. For me, those long, looooong school-bus rides listening to dopey 1970's music on the radio. Thank you, Mrs. Gamble, by the way, you were a pretty cool bus-driver.  I only wish I could erase Wildfire from my inner jukebox.

With that said, when this came on the NPR Tiny Desk Concert, I was captivated. On the third listen, I browsed what passes for the liner notes and realized of course. This is the same guy I wanted to hear when he was the lead singer for The National. Sigh. 

Short on time? Skip to the area of 8:45 for "Need a Friend." It's amazing how over-produced their album sounds on this particular tune.

My favorite skipper, however, not a fan. Hmmm. He favors the B-52's and the Doors and rarely accepts a substitute. 
​

Side-note: I categorically deny ANY interest in hearing even one more thoughtful/sensitive singer-songwriter with three names. That third name seems to break the bass spell.  

It was a long offshore voyage that included a lot of adventures, beginning with Pappa Joe having decided it was time to quit smoking.

A few peevish days into it, and having scrounged every fleck of dried old tobacco from the bilge, I believe they made a foray into Key West for smokes.  

Later in the voyage, they nearly sunk off the coast of Venezuela. Spent the night holding Island Woman off the rocks and had to limp into shore to effect repairs. 

​Which led to a midnight bunk, dodging commercial traffic out of –– was it Maracaibo? to avoid having to hire the required but extravagantly expensive harbor pilot. They returned home with both passports, which was a bit of serendipity.

Also, Pappa Joe nearly got pulled overboard by a billfish. He wanted to boat the fish; the fish wanted to ocean the man. 

Two men on a stout 36-footer with a damaged rudder making their way upwind from the lower reaches of the Caribbean? Of course some song was going to get stuck in someone's beezer. Why not that most appropriate of lyrics: "The weather started getting rough/the tiny ship was tossed"?

Any sailor with the slightest lick of whimsey has chanted those words from time to time.

Of course, with the Google these days it's a cinch to get the rest of the words. Offshore, back in the day, sleep-deprived and salty?  Upon reaching shore, I imagine these were his first words to the nice fella at the gas pump in Marco: "Hey, you know Gilligan's Island? Yeah, what comes after 'Sit right down and you'll hear a tale/A tale of a fateful trip'?"

The Five-Man Electrical Band* sang it up already, but signs. It's hard to resist snapping pictures of them.

My interest in signage is not just local.  

After brainstorming a playlist for the Flying Scot Wife-Husband Championship regatta party –– Bon Jovi! The Carpenters! Sir Mix-a-Lot! Weezer! Pure Prairie League! –– well, I am not done with it, but the internal jukebox is pleading for a break.

Thanks to the civilizing influence of National Public Radio, here's the music that I am listening to now:

Ah road-trips. Nothing compares to that moment when you have to stop the car, wrestle open the map and try to match the spidery black roads with reality, and knowing that you have no real idea where in the hemisphere you are located.

Granted, maps are full of promise and romance. So many options! Secrets revealed! Knowledge! But how restful it is to have an authority on board.

Even though I second-guess the GPS, it's a relief to have those satellites and that digital power backing up my navigation.

A qualified relief, anyhow.  

We logged something like four thousand miles over the past three months in the Winnebago. The first leg took us north to Canada, where we discovered that Alice, our GPS (named for the naughty song) was blind north of the border.  Luckily we'd been to the Buffalo Canoe Club before, so getting there was painless

Given the price of these things, Jeff went shopping. For $99 –– on clearance –– he got a new unit that covered all of North America and Puerto Rico. Only $99! On clearance. The brand-name led us to dub her Mary. 

I fired Mary up for the third leg of our trip (The Farm to Bar Harbor), trying to get used to the different set up (new neural pathways have never given me a bigger headache than when switching operating systems). But when Mary's target arrival time held steady at 10 hours during the first two hours of our trip –– I had to retrieve Alice. ​

Ten hours versus seven hours. Disturbingly differing itineraries. Two insistent machine voices telling us to "Turn Left!"  I shut them both down and got us across Maine the old-fashioned way.

Turns out that Mary might have been on clearance for a reason. She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Some people need noise in order to concentrate, while others do best in silence and isolation. This, by the by, might be roughly the difference between extroverts and introverts. 

At school, I'd occasionally sit in on a random lecture in fluid dynamics or organic chemistry –– not to listen and learn, mind you, but because I needed a threshold level of activity around me so I could bang out a paper or two. Sometimes the library is just too quiet.

This still holds true, and I'm happy to find a perch to work where people are buzzing about. But most days, I make my own buzz with playlists. With a theme. Here are a couple of selections from my current project. Sense a topic?

For the past week or so, my favorite skipper has been up at the crack of dawn, packing his lunch-cooler and hitting the road to go work on the latest creation. At sunset, he returns covered in sawdust, tired but happy, with inch-worm progress to report.

And some photos:

After finishing the frames last week, this week has been about stringers. These are like the skeleton of the boat, a big curved ribcage that will support a tight skin of okume plywood.  

The obvious musical accompaniment to the project would be Elvis Costello's "Shipbuilding," but that's too mournful. Jimmy Buffet's "Boats to Build"? No. (Actually, NFW.) Even the wonderful Lyle Lovett's "If I Had a Boat" is de trop. 

Oh, I know: the strangely soothing ambient sound of the belt sander: eeear. eeeear. chitter-chitter, eeear.