In memory of Heath Ledger, here’s a list of 79 more stars killed by drugs . . .

Why it’s great: Love makes you hot, cold, dizzy, happy, mad . . . I can’t explain it . . .

Got a feeling inside (Can’t explain)
It’s a certain kind (Can’t explain)
I feel hot and cold (Can’t explain)
Yeah, down in my soul, yeah (Can’t explain)

I said … (Can’t explain)
I’m feeling good now, yeah, but (Can’t explain)

Dizzy in the head and I’m feeling blue
The things you’ve said, well, maybe they’re true
I’m gettin’ funny dreams again and again
I know what it means, but …

Can’t explain
I think it’s love
Try to say it to you
When I feel blue

But I can’t explain (Can’t explain)
Yeah, hear what I’m saying, girl (Can’t explain)

Dizzy in the head and I’m feeling bad
The things you’ve said have got me real mad
I’m gettin’ funny dreams again and again
I know what it means but

Can’t explain
I think it’s love
Try to say it to you
When I feel blue

But I can’t explain (Can’t explain)
Forgive me one more time, now (Can’t explain)

I said I can’t explain, yeah
You drive me out of my mind
Yeah, I’m the worrying kind, babe
I said I can’t explain

— The Who

Among other accomplishments, Dan Fogelberg wrote “Longer,” one of the two worst songs I’ve ever heard, the other being “Sometimes When We Touch” by Dan Hill, who is unfortunately still alive.

Aside from that, he seems to have been a very decent man.

Ike Turner, whose role as one of rock’s critical architects was overshadowed by his ogrelike image as the man who brutally abused former wife and icon Tina Turner, died Wednesday at his home in suburban San Diego. He was 76.

— Associated Press

The news of Ike’s death hit me like a slap in the face . . .

Ex-Blondie singer Deborah Harry, who played a solo show here in Orange County last night, is 62 years old . . .

He stayed behind the assembly hall,
It was there he made his bed,
Oftentimes he could be seen returning.
Until one day he just appeared
With a note in his hand which read,
“The soles of my feet, I swear they’re burning.”

Oh, the leaves began to fallin’
And the seas began to part,
And the people that confronted him were many.
And he was told but these few words,
Which opened up his heart,
“If ye cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any.”

— Bob Dylan, “The Wicked Messenger”

I play the piano for fun. I’m self-taught . . . I can play notes but I don’t know the first thing about proper technique, which is why I’m not very good.

I don’t know why I never thought of it before, but last night as I was struggling to play a new piece, I decided to move the piano bench farther back than I usually do.

Wow! Big improvement! For 40 years, I’ve been sitting too close to the piano.

It’s the kind of thing that a qualified instructor could point out at the first lesson, but when you have to figure it out yourself, it takes a little longer . . .

My son’s just diagnosed and fixed a problem with my wife’s laptop PC . . .

“I should join the Northwood [his high school] Tech Squad,” he says, “with all the guys who tuck their shirts in.”

“That reminds me,” my wife says to him. “What clubs are you in at school?”

“What clubs am I in?” he says. “How about none?”

“You need to be in a club,” she says.

I say, “He’s in football and roller hockey.”

“He can be in those,” she says, “but he still needs to be in a club so he can get to know people.”

For some reason, this launches the boy into a Rodgers and Hammerstein tune . . .

“Getting to knooooow yooooou . . .”

“Can you look it up,” my wife says, “and see what clubs they have at Northwood?”

“No,” I say. “I’m busy.” Which I am.

“When can you do it?” she says.

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I need it by tomorrow.”

The boy’s now coming to the end of the stanza . . .

“. . . my cup of tea.”

How he knows that song so well, I have no idea, but maybe there’s a musical theater club we can get him into . . .

Ain’t getting old, ain’t getting younger though
Just getting used to the lay of the land
I ain’t tongue-tied, just don’t got nothin’ to say
I’m proud to be livin’ in the U.S.A.

— Neil Young, “Hawks and Doves”

We were at my son Casey’s 8th grade graduation this morning when one of his teachers came up to me, obviously revved up about something, and asked, “Did you hear what happened at the assembly yesterday?”

From the breathless tone of his question, I assumed at the very least that someone had lost a limb.

“No,” I said, “what happened?”

He told me they had a performance by a street percussion group called Street Beat, and as part of the show, they asked for a couple of volunteers from the audience. Casey plays the drums, and a lot of kids were yelling and pointing at him to be selected, so he was.

What they did with the volunteers was, the Street Beat guys would play something and the kids would try to match it. My kid was able to match everything perfectly, the other kid wasn’t, so they sent the second boy back to his seat and invited Casey to sit in and jam with them on the next song.

Keep in mind this is street percussion, where they use found objects as instruments, so his “drum set” consisted of a gas tank, an upside-down bucket and a water-cooler-size water bottle.

According to the teacher, he was awesome! I wish I’d been able to see it. I’ve been to all of his activities and performances since birth. I noticed he got a lot of comments about it from kids who signed his yearbook.

So his junior high career had some ups and downs, but I’m glad he was able to close it out on a high note.

I asked him, “Did everyone go crazy when you finished, like in Napoleon Dynamite?”

“Sort of,” he said.

My son had an Irvine honor band concert last night. Along with the junior high group that he’s in, there were groups from the elementary and high schools.

I was looking through the program to see if any of his junior high friends had brothers or sisters in the other groups. That turned out to be an impossible mission.

To explain why, I’m going to plop my finger down at a random spot in the program and read off a list of the kids’ last names.

OK, here we go — Kim, Lin, Chang, Kim, Chang, Kim, Yang, Choi, Chiang, Chen, Tang, Huang, Lee, Tran, Lin, Lee, Yang, Lin, Yi, Oh, Krolewski (Krolewski! “He’s a white boy,” my son explains.) Kim, Song, Chen, Yang, Lin, Kim, Thomas, Tran, Chung, Chan, Lee . . .

When I was in school, it was a first-day ritual for the teachers to read through the roll call, recognize last names, and say things like, “Epps. Do you have a sister named M–?”

That’s a thing of the past obviously, at least in my neighborhood . . .

Eddie Van Halen says he’ll enter rehab

— Associated Press

This is sad news, and Eddie’s sweet, elderly grandma (pictured at right) says she wishes him the best.

Wait a moment . . . I’m being told that the person in the picture is not Eddie Van Halen’s elderly grandma, but is in fact — Eddie Van Halen!

Sweet Jesus! This is certainly another blow to the theory that being rich and famous will solve all of your problems!

He said he heard about a couple living in the USA
He said they traded in their baby for a Chevrolet

— Elvis Costello, “Less Than Zero”

PUEBLO — Three people were arrested on charges of swapping a 5-month-old boy for a downpayment on a used Dodge Intrepid and cash, police said Tuesday.

— Vail Daily

What is the point of this story?
What information pertains?
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly
Into our hearts
And our brains.

— Paul Simon, “Train in the Distance”

My son’s junior high school has two bands, Symphonic Band and Concert Band. You could think of them as the varsity and the JV. Membership in the Symphonic Band is by audition only.

Because the boy changed instruments from saxophone to percussion last summer, after the Symphonic Band auditions, he has to play in the Concert Band this year.

I don’t think he’s happy about it, but he’s taking lessons and practicing and trying to get better.

This week, we had All-City Honor Band tryouts. All five percussionists from the Symphonic Band tried out, and four of them made it. My son also tried out and made it — as first chair. He’s the best junior high percussionist in Irvine.

Don’t give up on your dreams, kids!

I too played percussion in junior high and high school, where I was known far and wide as the Fast-Hand Mallet Man. So the kid has good genetics, obviously . . .

Danny Flores, composer of “Tequila,” a huge hit for the Champs in 1958, has died. He was 77.

— Orange County Register

Flores died in Westminster, about 20 miles from where I live in Irvine. He had been suffering for years from Parkinson’s disease.

He made about $70,000 a year from the European rights to “Tequila” but in one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” moves that you kick yourself for later, he had long since signed away the rights to U.S. royalties, an error in judgment that the Register attributed to the fact that Flores was — wait for it — a heavy drinker in the early days of the band.

From Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn:

• You Fucking Mooks
• The Chocolate Cheeseballs
• Tony and the Tugboats
• Jerks from Nowhere
• Free Human Freakshow
• Bucky Dent and the Stale Doughnuts