ring like fire when you lose your way

exec sum: a love letter to slate.com. deep thinking and the grateful dead, too!

doing some spring cleaning on my bookmarks toolbar – save the thoughts of love for later, I just want the perfect browser – and came across a link to “today’s papers.” drew a blank till I clicked through and recalled how cool news aggregation could be. cruised around the slate.com site and clicked through to some posts on the music box feed.

one article was prompted by a recent performance by the formerly grateful dead in hartford. like one of the group’s shows (and most of my ill-typed college papers and for that matter this post), the article took a sudden turn and ended very differently than it began. in a twist reminiscent of the dead’s co-opting of disco on terrapin, slate goes all facebook-y with a hilarious “what your favorite dead song says about you.” one “profile”:

“Touch of Grey”: The Dead’s only mainstream hit. The song made the Billboard Top 10 in 1987, though you first heard it at a show in ’86, shortly after Jerry returned from his diabetic coma. Today, you’re a senior partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, with more than a touch of gray about the temples. But during that year between college and law school, you apprenticed at Garcia, Lesh & Weir, LLP. You recall the experience with fondness, though also with regret. A few years ago, your name was bandied about when a prestigious judgeship opened up. Knowing, however, that there were lingering questions regarding June 16-18, 1987 (the Ventura County Fairgrounds shows)—questions for which you had no good answers—you quietly withdrew your name from consideration.

Yearbook quote: “I will get by. I will survive.”

bookmarks might have hip for the haight, but this piece earned slate a few slots in my google reader sidebar