Workin' at the car wash, girl.

I was quite proud of myself for washing the salt off the cars.

This was no small feat, if you've followed the progress of my achin' back from physical therapy to hospitalization to the current day. I thought it was taking a chance, but all the local car washes are still closed due to Governor Corleone and the Chinese Virus of Death, and I couldn't bear to see the cars look like lumpy pretzels in May, so the time had come.

Sunday was a gorgeous day, so I got to work. I wanted to make a good job of it. First I vacuumed out all the dog hair, little rocks, etc. from the interiors and cleaned inside, getting all the windows. Then outside I splashed, soaped, splashed again, and wiped down in a frantic hurry, aiming to leave no streaks. Finally, I cleaned all the exterior windows again with glass cleaner to ensure clarity. Lookin' good!

I was stiff the next day, but that good kind of muscle stiffness that says "I accomplished something," not the bad kind of back pain that says, "Is the surgeon available?"

The worst thing about the job was the music. Every house around me has hooked up a sound system in the back deck. So far they have not started vying for supremacy but I think that'll happen this summer. As it was, I only had to hear the neighbor's choice and it sucked. I know it's common that once you reach thirty, then forty, and so on, to think that the kids today listen to crap, but it is absolutely crap these days.

Don't take my word for it; use any search engine and ask "Why does modern music suck?" and get enough results to read and watch for the rest of the day. The usual suspects are all there and all true -- musicians valued for looks over talent; Auto-Tune voices that make everyone sound like a computer singing through a kazoo; stunted and shriveled range of musical notes and song subjects; moronic and uninspired lyrics; sophisticated but unimaginative use of synthesized sounds. To me, it comes to this: Pop musicians used to want to write a song with a great hook that would get people to remember the song; now they just write the hook and nothing else. One snippet of melody, repeated eight hundred times. Loud rhythm that never varies, so one may presumably dance with one's arms in the air as if one simply did not care. This is music for Club Lobotomy, not a lazy Sunday afternoon, and yet there we were. Worse, the family all went inside and left me with their stupid music.

I guess there's probably only one song that really goes with car washing, though -- yes, the immortal Rose Royce and their megahit "Car Wash"!

Not really my kind of music either, but compared to modern pop it's Beethoven.

The song "Car Wash" was of course from the soundtrack to the 1976 comedy film Car Wash. I don't know if you've ever seen it. I don't know if I have, either. I mean, yes, but it was years after the release and I had to be talked into it. Of course, with a cast that included Ivan Dixon, Richard Pryor, Irwin Corey, George Carlin, Garrett Morris, and Danny DeVito, it probably wasn't too hard for me to be talked into it, but I know we were drunk at the time. I remember liking it but maybe it was the beer. That was a long time ago and I haven't seen it since.

Maybe it was actually D.C. Cab we saw, come to think of it. In fact, I know it was. I think I saw Car Wash some other time.

Kids, don't drink and watch movies. You forget what you saw.

Anyway, I'm very glad the cars are clean and winter salt is gone, even if we have nowhere to go. Oh, and P.S.: Friday night it's supposed to rain and the temperatures are supposed to drop to freezing, so there's a chance the town will be salting the roads again. In which case, I may have to put a car in drive, lie down in the driveway, and run myself over.