Totally Random Beatles Thought

So I love the song "In My Life," and I love the Beatles version and the Judy Collins cover, but I really love the Beatles version better, b/c it's happy and speedy: it would be so easy to make the song maudlin or meditative (it's the kind of thing parents sing to children. Well, okay, I sang it to my children). There's that falsetto at the end, and then the voices joining in, happy.

I have no idea why I needed to say that, other than that it's sometimes nice to think about why one loves something.

Which reminds me of this book I'm reading, Wake Up, Sir, by Jonathan Ames. My friend David had interviewed Ames and really liked The Extra Man, and because he's smarter than I am I decided to read it too, and while it stayed with me, it wasn't a world I particularly wanted to inhabit again. But I was in the bookstore and saw another book by him, which I didn't buy, but then I went over to the "A" section in Literature and remembered seeing a good review. And I love Wodehouse, and he manages to pull off this really odd feat of being arch and absurdist but also sad and perceptive:

I girded myself so as not to be weepy. It's always unnerving when people are loving. The slightest act of kindness--taking the time to put a lunch together, write a note!--directed at my person and I fall apart. Goes against one's core beliefs about one's self. Sets off a skirmish on the inside. I'll be the first to admit it: my whole unconscious--well, I'm somewhat conscious of it--outlook on life is built on the premise that I can't stand myself and should be shot. SO if people love you, it makes it difficult to go about your business of being blissfully self-destructive and impulsive.