In which we chew some bubblegum music

Like so many people, I patiently wait for my jetpack, my flying car, and my gold made-in-America TrumpiePhone. No doubt you do too. It's lonely, living on the edge. 

Music (audit edition): Obviously on a Beach Boys roll, next up was Bruce Johnston's "Surfin' Round the World." This album sounds as if Johnston was asked in the morning to write a record's worth of surf music, and then recorded it all that afternoon in one take. For Johnston, who subbed in for Brian Wilson on the road and wrote the songs that make the whole world sing, including "Disney Girls," this was an early effort, best forgotten. 

Following Johnston in the queue was a solo album by Ron Dante, lead singer of the Archies. If you've ever wondered where one goes from "Sugar Sugar," I can assure you, it's more of the same, only not as...good? Not terrible though; you can listen to it without your brains falling out. But that is, of course, the faintest of praise. 

Listening (audiobook edition): I finished listening to Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers on the way to Lexington. It's the third in her Wayfarers series. I enjoyed the first two more, but this one was fine. It's a rondo, circling from character to character, and it takes a while for the narrative to gel in one's mind, but finally it does come together. I've seen Chambers described as an author of cozy science fiction, a category I admittedly had never heard of, but it's not inappropriate. A lot of SF is dreary and dismal, and as far as I can tell, Chambers doesn't write that sort of book. Good for her.