smooooooth jazz.

Can someone please explain to me what is with this smooth jazz crap? This morning some 1960s mood music was streaming through the speakers in my office... not exactly my ideal start to hump day. Thankfully Amen Omen was the song waiting for me on my iPod... and I laaaauuuughed at the irony.

I'm on hold right now with one of our service providers and considering I just saw the second mark hit 7 min, 44 sec... I thought this would be a nice little opportunity to squeeze in a vent. Besides, I just got back to my desk after listening to a psychologist talk about coping strategies for on-the-job stress, i.e. journaling. I feel like admitting to "journaling" (face it, bloggers, all you really are are glorified journalers) is almost as taboo as admitting that you're an alcoholic. Hello, my name is Melissa... and I'm a journaler, I love cats (and dogs), books are my favorite, and I bake muffins for my coworkers. I'm pretty sure that's ten times worse than just admitting that I have a drinking problem. Too bad I don't care.

Anyway, I just got off the phone with Arnie, the support guy... I rrrrreally think it's written in the job requisition that in order to be an on-call technical support person, you're required to have a name like that, or Belinda, Ronnie, Wally, Crystal, Vu, Darwin, Sasha... I could go on. Today Arnie had to help me log back into one of my accounts because I got locked out of our site. Damn passwords. Thanks to this little incident I spent the better part of 15 minutes with Kenny F-ing G making lurrrv to his tenor sax in my ear. Now don't get me wrong, I love a good swanky jazz sax from time to time, but my God, Kenny G is an abomination to jazz. The only thing I like about him is his hair. Obvs. But every time I hear his music, I'm launched back in time to my grandparents' living room, listening to my grandma hum to her heart's contentment and all I really wanted to do was put my face in a pillow and scream. So back to square one: what's the deal with elevators, hold-lines, grocery stores, dentist offices, etc. (you get the point) playing this crap? In college, my Jazz History professor's reasoning for this (after he got done tearing this genre to shreds) was that it's neutral... OK, I get that you probably don't need a fight to break out in the produce isle over some questionable Chingy lyrics, but come onnnn. I don't think a little Led Zeppelin would hurt mixed in with some Susan Boyle every now and then. I also can't really imagine being a professional smooth jazz player actually has that many perks anyway. Picture a guy walking up to a pretty lady holding his flute and asking her out... Ha. Now, picture the same scenario but put John Legend or Joe Perry in his place and guess who will get the girl 10 times out of 10. He's not holding a flute.