GLOAMING IS A GOOD WORD TOO: Via our frequent commenter Bill, here's an interesting piece by blogger Brendan Wolfe, whose blog is called "The Beiderbecke Affair" after the famous jazz musician (or perhaps an obscure television show?). It's a list of the songs he chose for the occasion of proposing to his beloved Molly (who said yes).

Wolfe has a gift for writing. I especially liked this passage about Thelonious Monk's lovely ballad “Crepuscule with Nellie”:

"I love his decision to use the otherwise obscure word crepuscule. It may mean “twilight,” but its consonants are too jagged and sharp for anything that’s, you know, just pretty. Baudelaire dug this sort of ambiguity, too, and he began his poem “Le Crépuscule du soir” with a reference to the “charming, friendly evening of the criminal” (or “Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel”)."

Wolfe's list is not especially similar to the sort of songs I would choose in connection with a proposal, but I generally like what he has to say about them. I don't like "Bette Davis Eyes" as much as he does and I can't imagine anyone preferring the version of "You Were on my Mind" by Jay and the Americans over the nearly perfect original by Ian and Sylvia.

This may come as a shock to you, but I did not make a mix tape when I asked my wife to marry me (let's just say that I was WAY too spontaneous to think that far ahead). But I did send her a card with some flowers a few days after she said yes and included these lyrics by Jackson Browne in the card:

"Give up your heart and you lose your way
Trusting another to feel that way
Give up your heart and you find yourself
Living for something in somebody else"

NOW WHEN I WAS A YOUNG BOY AT THE AGE OF FIVE, MY MOTHER SAID I WAS GONNA BE THE GREATEST MAN ALIVE: Tuesday night, Your American Idols will be singing selections from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll" list. It is a classic week for "go ahead, define yourself as an artist" selections. Here's some suggestions for what I'd like to hear:

• David Cook: Big Bopper, "Chantilly Lace"; Rolling Stones, "Miss You"; any of the Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters songs listed, but especially "Mannish Boy".
• Syesha Mercado: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "Tracks of My Tears"; Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Piece of My Heart"; ? and the Mysterians, "96 Tears"; the Replacements, "I Will Dare"; Little Richard, "Long Tall Sally".
• Young David Archuleta: Would love to hear Metallica, "Enter Sandman"; Johnny Cash, "Folsom Prison Blues" or the Ramones, "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker"; the Kinks, "Lola"; the Wailers, "I Shot The Sheriff" (seriously, the list of inappropriate songs for YDA is endless); we will see him close his dead, dead eyes and sing Paul McCartney, "Maybe I'm Amazed"; Simon and Garfunkel "Bridge Over Troubled Water"; Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On" or the Penguins, "Earth Angel".
• Clifford the Crunchy Muppet: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"; Madonna, "Like A Virgin" (ala the John Wesley Harding cover of "Like A Prayer"); Del Shannon, "Runaway"; Prince, "Little Red Corvette"; Toots & the Maytals, "Pressure Drop"; Joy Division, "Love Will Tear Us Apart"; Woody Guthrie, "This Land Is Your Land".
  

So: what should they sing, and what will they sing?

e.t.a. Sepinwall on this disappointing season: " The contestants look unhappy, the songs and song choices are poor, and things have gotten so dull that Paula Abdul's meltdowns - last week, she either was reading her notes from dress rehearsal or developed the ability to predict the future - are among the season's few highlights."

DROPPING THE GAY BOMB: Big thumbs up for Gossip Girl, which managed to balance the au courant (Vanessa Anne Hudgens and Elliot Spitzer jokes) with the meta (the whole bit with Eric being rumored to be Gossip Girl as a response to the internet notations) and rewarding forward momentum in the major plotlines both adult and teenage. Though anyone could have figured out the "big secret," even though the particular contours of the secret remain to be revealed.

I CARRIED A WATERMELON ALL THE WAY TO KOL NIDRE SERVICES: On Friday night, the family of Showtime channels (mine free for three months with my new cable installation!) offered a true abundance of riches as my own personal introduction to Showtime subscriberhood.

To wit: first, I got to watch my favorite movie from 4th grade -- The Jazz Singer. Complete with Laurence Olivier doing the Brooklyn cantor thing, Neil Diamond's hair and sparkly shirts doing whatever the hell they were doing back in 1980, and "America" being sung the non-dead, dead eyes way. Right from there, we shifted into Dirty Dancing, my favorite movie from the summer I turned 16. (Oh, how I loved this movie -- and still do, shhhhhh -- but I am quite sure that I've bored you all on this topic more than once.) From Jazz Singer to Dirty Dancing -- it was as though someone had programmed the Kim's Childhood Channel -- all that was missing was Grease 2 plopped in right between Jess Robbins and Frances Houseman. (Poor, poor Mr. Cosmo.)

What would the Showtime Your Youth Channel be airing this week?

IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG, I DON'T WANNA BE RIGHT: Mildred Loving, plaintiff in the landmark case of Loving v. Virginia, passed away yesterday. Loving (nee Jeter), a black woman, didn't know it was illegal when she married a white man, and her description of what she did -- "we loved each other and got married" -- was decidedly unheroic. Yet it was Loving who wrote to Bobby Kennedy that Virginia's anti-miscegenation law was wrong, and it was Loving's too-right-to-be-true name that topped the case that said, once and for all, that a marriage applicant's race is none of the state's business. Mildred's husband, Richard, died in 1975, but at least Mildred lived long enough to see the notion of opposition to interracial marriage disappear from both the law and all but the most stubborn corners of modern culture.

Hat tip: Russ.

SAVE THE MANATEES: Two tidbits of TV news from The Hollywood Reporter that are of interest:

• A survey of the shows "On The Bubble," bringing the welcome news that pickups for Reaper and Boston Legal are "likely," and a fourth season of HIMYM is "considered a given." (Still in danger? Eli Stone, and I think the world needs more SpyDaddy singing.)
• On a less exhilarating note--The highest paid showrunner in Hollywood? No, not David E. Kelley, the increasingly ubiquitous Greg Berlanti, or one of the folks from CSI, but rather Family Guy/American Dad overlord Seth MacFarlane--$100 million to lock up all the "remember that time when...." jokes you could ever want or need until 2012.
  

THE POWERS THAT BE THAT FORCE US TO LIVE LIKE WE DO: This weekend, the NYT sent a flotilla of reporters (though they didn't ask NBA players) to go out and review Red Lobster, the Cheesecake Factory and other casual dining chains in the region, and other than TGI Friday's they're mostly favorable. ("Naturally, we had the Bloomin’ Onion ($6.99), the chain’s signature appetizer. A softball-size onion is sliced into fingers, opening it up like a flower. This is dipped in a thick, spicy batter, deep-fried and served with a chili-rich rémoulade. No way around it, the thing was tasty. Oily, delicious and no doubt quite bad for you, but good.")