mustard: because I am sick of ketchup, though somewhat almost-ironically this album cover is bright red

Van Halen, Diver Down.

Wow, here we go . . .

I grew up in Ohio, so I had no idea what the "diver down" flag meant until my boys from VH brought it to my attention.

1982, the "(Oh) Pretty Woman" video causes a stir & is banned from MTV. & wow again, how tame that seems now.

This was a few years before Van Halen overtook the world with "Jump" & then somehow managed to get a really cool hard-rocking singer & mellow out into a top-40 band, but we'll get into that later.

As Diamond Dave himself said of this album, it's impossible to listen without moving your feet.

Cover-heavy, this one also has a great version of the strangely-punctuated Kinks song "Where Have All the Good Times Gone!" (yep, that's an exclamation point, not a question mark) as well as the ultimate take on the classic "Dancing in the Streets."

Juniors:

You have finished up the Part with the Big People

Some of You are Sick of the Capitalization, Which seems Random but is in Fact related to the Adjectives & Nouns.

Glumdalclitch is the only sympathetic character this far, he maintains.

We focus on the idea of perspective, one of the most important things in this life.

At some level, everything is about the place from which you experience it.

Time for a 1/2-time break from Lemuel & the rest, but we'll get back at it for Thursday


Sophomores:

"The Bet."

I bet.

You bet.

We bet.

2 millions, he says, for 15 years.

& then he doesn't even take it.

We'll write about this later.

be cool