The idea for this new song was triggered by my recent experience signing up with Facebook. Once signed up, I was informed by my younger brother that having only 9 or 10 friends is pretty pathetic. I would periodically check out my Facebook homepage and see that Dan and Eric were now friends, or that Kris and Miki were now friends, which only heightened my sense of insecurity (these thoughts were transcribed into the song’s lyrics in a more-or-less literal way). For the record, Stradlater’s roommate is Holden Caulfield. Lyrics, production notes, and a YouTube video are here.

Also for the record, the video was shot with my low-resolution Flip camcorder and my iMac built-in iSight camera recording simultaneously; the iSight clip is then superimposed onto the desaturated (B&W) Flip clip in Final Cut Express. Various iMac images, some taken by me and others taken from a Google image search, are also interwoven into the video, with the iSight clip always superimposed. Several images taken from the web, appropriately distorted via PhotoShop to match the perspectival conditions they appear in, can be seen every now and then superimposed onto the moving images — the original 45 of Eleanor Rigby rests on the shelf between my speakers; and a copy of Alice in Wonderland or Catcher in the Rye sits on my desk.

Stradlater’s roommate © 2011 Jonathan Ochshorn (remixed Sept. 2, 2019)

VERSE 1:
looking for a friend is tough
do you know of any
nine or ten is not enough
when others have so many
dan and eric are now friends
so are kris and miki
i can’t tell what this portends
maybe i’m too picky

CHORUS 1:
never thought i’d end up like eleanor rigby
wondering what went wrong
waiting at the window screen for someone to pick me
singing where do i belong

VERSE 2:
like alice in the rabbit-hole
in the deep well she falls
mr carroll couldn’t know
that what were wells are now walls
what size do you want to be
the caterpillar asked her
doesn’t matter much to me (she said)
but changing’s a disaster

CHORUS 2:
never thought i’d end up like poor little alice
looking for some fun
everyone she meets is crazy or dripping with malice
and there’s nothing to be done

BRIDGE
i’m not the kind to complain
i’ll take the good with the bad the sun with the rain
but will this rain never end
here it comes again

VERSE 3:
holden’s in a jam again
life sucks what a pity
school’s done so he takes the train
back to new york city
all the women he meets there
leave him sad and lonely
he tells himself he doesn’t care
cause everyone’s a phony

CHORUS 3:
never thought i’d end up like stradlater’s roommate
feeling so alone
finally gets the nerve to call up jane for a new date
but her mom picks up the phone

CHORUS 3 (repeated):
never thought i’d end up like stradlater’s roommate
feeling so alone
hanging it up after calling jane for a new date
when her mom picks up the phone