While washing his hands

...my dad had a lyric come to him out of nowhere -- "look at that GRASS," he said, surprised even as it left his mouth. There was no grass to look at. Somehow, the Randy Newman song "I Love L.A." had loosed itself from the bottom of his mind -- we've been listening only to classical music so far in isolation -- and began to float unsteadily towards the surface. "What's the rest of that line?" he said, frantically.

So I put on "I Love L.A." and at 6:30 am my dad and my mom and I -- me in a separate room -- kind of jerked our bodies around and were overcome by the feeling and the half-irony and the concrete details of this song. Like the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner," this song is a road trip and a heartfelt tribute and transcendent, in a tongue-in-cheek way. I've noticed that in isolation, old things we used to love and haven't thought of in a while do begin to loosen and float to the surface. My mom, for instance, remembered a joke while scouring the internet for toilet paper. Our exchange went like this:

Her: "I'm looking for some of that John Wayne toilet paper."
Me: "John Wayne toilet paper?"
Her: "It's tough, it's rough, and it don't take no crap off anybody."

Anyway, here's "I Love L.A." Randy Newman is a good soundtrack for this moment.