John's Journal

Yesterday, I posted a list of ten songs I'd recently listened to, and challenged you to guess the songs that preceded the first song on the list and the one that followed the last. The clues:

• Both songs were reasonably well known
• Both were by familiar artists
• Both had appeared on animated shows created by Matt Groening
• Both songs started with the letter A

tomthedog stepped up to the plate, guessing "American Music" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for the first, and "Atmospheric Conditions" by Beck for the second. Both were excellent guesses, although wrong. The actual songs:

• "Angel of Harlem" by U2
• "Atlantis" by Donovan

(Note: quibbling about whether these songs qualify as "reasonably well known" is not allowed.)

U2 appeared on The Simpsons in the ninth season episode "Trash of the Titans." Donovan appeared on Futurama (singing a parody of "Atlantis," not coincidentally) in the episode "The Deep South." Interestingly, tom got the shows right in his guesses; that is, Tom Petty appeared on The Simpsons (in the episode "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation") and Beck on Futurama ("Bending in the Wind").

Speaking of Donovan, one of the clues I was planning to use last night was that both of the artists were Irish, but when I check Donovan's entry in the All-Music Guide, it said he was Scottish! He was still Scottish when I checked his Wikipedia entry, which puzzled me, because I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he was Irish, but the facts is the facts, so I dropped that clue. Then, this afternoon, I happened to hear "Domino" on the radio, and I realized that I was getting Donovan confused with Van Morrison.

The moral of this story is that Donovan and Van Morrison are not the same person.

Ten books I intend to read during 2006:

1. Christopher Moore, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
2. Elliott Hester, Adventures of a Continental Drifter: An Around-The-World Excursion Into Weirdness, Danger, Lust, and the Perils of Street Food
3. Louis Sachar, Small Steps
4. L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
5. James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
6. Timothy K. Beal, Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith
7. Eiji Nonaka, Cromartie High School vol. 1
8. Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
9. Matthew Bogdanos, Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures
10. Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness