Little Miss S

I have, at many points, vowed eternal love for Pandora.com. My favorite thing is to be minding my own business and be suddenly confronted with a song I love and probably haven't heard in many, many years. I just got hit with one such song: Little Miss S by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. I used to have the tape. I bought it used at The Emporium. Little Miss S was probably my favorite song on the album. It's like greeting a long-lost friend when one hears a strain of music, forgotten but familiar, and clicks over to see what it is. The heart leaps upon the realization. No, seriously.

The funny thing is, listening to it again, recalling the lyrics, I've no idea why I ever liked it so much. I think part of it was merely the title. I am, after all, a little miss S. But check out the lyrics. Those don't describe me in the slightest. Never could, never would. What's fascinating, though, is that I think Edie Brickell foresaw the future in some fashion. This song doesn't describe me, but it gets someone like Paris Hilton spot on. It absolutely describes the celebutante (don't you just love that word?) in all her trashy glory. How'd she do it? I suppose there's nothing new about the concept of a talentless rich girl, living fast and leaving a good-looking corpse, but they really seemed to be a somewhat recent phenomenon, didn't they? They fascinate me. They hold such power over the general population; somehow convincing us that they are beautiful, or talented, or important, when they're really probably just dysfunctional messes, begging for fleeting attention in place of meaningful relationships. We live vicariously through them when in fact we probably have much better lives. Think about it next time you wish you were rich and famous. Would you trade that life for your friends, your family? I don't think I would.

I guess there wasn't really a grand and glorious point to this, but I told myself that I'd wait until something really caught my attention before talking about it here. Nothing like the emergence of an old friend to take you out of yourself, at least for a little while.