Musical Monday

First, no ten-minute songs today. I was going to write a post about the soundtrack for my WiP, but changed my mind in the middle of things, and went with this, instead, which actually does figure in my WiP.

True story: Many years ago, my wife and I took a trip to Martha’s Vineyard from our Long Island home. Reason: I had an interview to be the new director of a major conservation group on the island. We fought our way through the heavy traffic of the Long Island Expressway (aka, The World's Longest Parking Lot), across the Throgs Neck Bridge, and finally onto I-95. Once cleared the brutal traffic of the Cross Bronx/Bruckner Interchange, we switched the radio from the All News, All The Time (where we were getting a steady feed of traffic reports) to a rock station. This is the first song we heard. 

We should have gone home right then and there. We didn’t. We schlepped up to the Vineyard, took a ferry, and I had my interview. We spent the night in a B&B and came home the next day (and, for the record, Martha's Vineyard is beautiful).

The interview went well enough that they asked me back for a second round a few weeks later. It was at that point that I learned the salary for the position was – wait for it – $17,000. If Room and Board had been included, it might have worked -- maybe -- but it wasn’t. I'll also point out that this was not so far in the past that $17,000 was a lot of money. After a lot of discussion with my wife, we decided to go back for the second interview anyway, on the notion that maybe the salary was negotiable (it wasn't), and that maybe there would be a way to live on 17K/year. So, we set off, cleared the traffic, cleared the bridges, got on I-95 heading north, switched from all news to the rock station, and the first song we heard was:

I kid you not.