Turn it Down Yo

Alec Baldwin says they’re ruining music, they play it so loud and so ubiquitously. Anyway, that was his Tweet from yesterday, minus that last word. You have to be so succinct when you tweet he probably didn’t dare go for a word so thick with u’s and q’s, never mind that ‘ly’ suffix that makes it an adverb.He’s right of course about the music that’s playing everywhere. Bad enough you have to sit next to people on the bus the syncopation of whose music is so loud even coming through theirs skull that it comes through your skull too and makes it think it’s at some dance club, poor skull, alas poor Yorick I knew him well.Also: the last thing I want to hear when I sit down at the dining section of, say, my local Whole Foods is some warmed-over music from the 60's.Music from the 70's I could stand. Who can get sick of Bohemian Rhapsody with its low growls and high falsettos? But Downtown? They’re truly playing Downtown by Petula Clark on the loudspeaker?The day I heard that I felt like picking up my whole lentil-and-sprout salad and heaving it against the wall -  which in a Whole Foods would be like taking a Jesus statue and putting one of those hats with the straws and the beer cans attached on its head.Since that day I've never again tried to eat there. I’d rather start the day equipped with my own food, wolf it down in my car come lunchtime, then walk into any old joint, even a McDonald’s where you can get some Newman’s Own coffee and that apple-walnut-yogurt cup and listen to the old guys all joshing with each other, happy as clams to be out of the house and away from their wives for a while.Yeah give me that anytime: the patter of old guys, or teens skipping school, or young parents begging their kids to stop making a choo-choo train of their french-fries on the germy tabletop.What can I say? Call me a curmudgeon, a Scrooge, an Andy Rooney, but to me music is really personal. If I'm not at a concert where we’ve all paid actual money to hear this one particular show I say keep it away from me.Unless of course it's Queen making the music and the song is Bohemian Rhapsody. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ&ob=av3e]