This is my 12th Thanksgiving week in New York. Watching the sun try to rise over a slightly rainy, heavily overcast sky on a Monday morning, I’ve decided it’s one of my favorite weeks of the year.
It’s raining just enough to make the streets shiny and the oddly balmy weather feels like about half of my Thanksgiving weeks here. Only a few cars on the road, the half-hearted swooissh of their tires sounding like even they are winding down for the holidays.
Galaga.
While writing my morning post, it dawned on me why I knew the music playing on the driver’s radio so well. It was an orchestral version of the music from an 80’s arcade game that had swallowed whatever portion of my paper route money was left after buying jelly beans and lik ‘o stiks.
The song before it was the full series of Ms Pacman music. Not just the intro, but the intermissions as well (yes I had made it through all of them).
When I got into the cab, the driver and I had language barrier issues, and I was sleepy enough to prefer drifting into the twilight haze between waking up and being awake.
So I did what I often do when I’m outside the US — told the driver to just turn up whatever he was listening to. I’ve learned a lot about local music preferences around the world this way.
But this was home – in New York, it’s usually angry political talk radio, religious services, classical music, or occasionally something from the driver’s personal collection, such as Bollywood hits or bluesy jazz.
Today it was an album of 80’s video game hits. It’s the beginning of a sleepy Thanksgiving week. I gave in, put my head back and let the swirl of colors and sound ooze through the goo of my mind. The post could wait til later.
The Donkey Kong intro sounds nice with a bass drum instead of the gorilla foot stomping noise.
