Wouldn't It Be Nice

Jen and Oni left for their big Southern California vaca at 4:30 this morning. Those wretched beasts. Not only do I miss them already, I’m wickedly envious.

I think they’re mostly going to beaches, checking out big waves, watching surfers and the like. OK, that’s what I would do if I was in Southern Cal.

I’ve only been down that way, San Diego is their destination, once. I was visiting friends who were originally from the frozen wilds of Syracuse. They were there for grad school. These folks weren’t beach goers, no. Greg and Karen were hill-climbing/backpacking/camping types. After giving me a brief tour of San Diego (Botanical Gardens! A real Mexican restaurant! Drive in movie theater! All awesome BTW), we were off to the Grand Canyon with stops along the way for hiking and camping at beautiful (but NOT beach) spots.
Yes, the whole time I was all, in my head ‘natch, this is beautiful and good and expands my horizons! It was mind bending, fun and fabulously, breathtakingly GORGEOUS. Of course it was, even without a beach.

BUT, had the trip been ALL about me, I would’ve sat seaside at dawn and again at sunset, shooting pics of the light as it reflected and refracted through the wave’s curls. In between, I would’ve done the Botanical Gardens, art galleries and maybe even driven up to Los Angeles to, ya know, see it before it falls into the ocean.

There’s a website devoted to surf reports and it even has webcams. Too cool!

Between Jen and Oni's tantalizing trip and my recent Beach Boy Neurotologist visit, that new Beach Boy movie is in my mind. I want to see it even though I’ll miss all the prime Brian Wilson song track action. I was never a fan of the Beach Boys though. Ever. Never. In fact, I found their music cloying and way too mainstream. Plus, their fans were all, it seemed, flat, dull, tedious and destined for frats and sororities. This opinion was fueled, in no small part, by the fact that the bullying boys and girls, the ones who plagued me for years, were all big Beach Boy fans. Every last one of em.

Also too, I was into songs which had, to my mind, more emotional heft. You know, like Eleanor Rigby versus Wouldn't It Be Nice. 19th Nervous Breakdown versus Barbara Ann. I was so turned off by the fans as well as the mondo candy coating of their tunes, I never listened to the entire Pet Sounds album.

Later, much later, a hipster friend of mine was going off about how incredible Pet Sounds was. Groundbreaking, he said. If I could’ve done the Spock-one-raised-eyebrow thing I surely would have. With my hip pal's strong recommendation, I finally gave the entire album a listen and…eh. Still not sold. Maybe, within the context of the time, 1966, it was all that and a bag of chips. Maybe it’d never be that for me. Would love to be able to hear it now just to see if my opinion, in all these hundreds of intervening years, could have changed.

In any case, it’s gonna be funny to have Jen and Oni gone for a whole week (8 days!). The cats and I miss them.

Whine, snivel, kvetch. *sigh*