Michael Stipe and me

During my quest for a hot body today at the gym, I was listening to my ipod (for which I bought a cover finally--$1 at the "Everything's $1 Store" where everything is not in fact a buck) and the REM song "Strange Currencies" shuffled in. It's not the best song to really get you going and if you're not careful, it can make you remember boys from your youth and cause you to stumble on the elliptical machine and fall down and hurt your nose. Except I don't know if you could call it a love song or if it's more of a stalker song. He sings "I don't know why you mean to me" which isn't very flattering to the adored and then "...you will be mine" which makes me think of him hiding behind a building and watching the silhouette of this person in the lighted window above him. But the song makes me want to just sit down with Michael over coffee and talk for a couple of hours, because all of REM's songs are like that--lovely and sad and aching. But then I imagine that he's so shy that he would just sit across from me with his arms crossed, answering my questions with one word answers and twisting a paper napkin in his hands. So, it probably wouldn't go well. And then I remembered how the other morning while I was brushing my teeth, I found myself wondering what Richard Gere is up to these days. I silently congratulated him for not being one of those Hollywood figures who you see in People magazine every week, pretending to pump gas under the heading "They're Just Like Us!" And then I realized for the 500th time that my head is too filled with packing peanuts of pop culture. Why don't I read The New York Times every day? Why do I not know more about what's happening with those trapped miners (who I incidentally only learned about b/c the news was on one of the 25 TVs at the gym)? Well, part of the reason I don't read the newspaper is because even glancing at the headlines on any given day causes me to feel like shouting at everyone around me about how the world is totally fucked up.