The following may or may not contain a Kyle Eastwood interview, spin cycles and narcissism. Reader discretion is advised.

Everything you need to know about someone, you can learn in their first 10 words. (Of course, the journalist, or least his massive ego, is the exception.)

"…Doo doo doo — Hi, is this Kyle? … This is Tim calling from The Badger Herald."

"…What?"

With some people, it's even less.

****

Aug. 3: Your intrepid ArtsEtc. editor slumps outside, carrying the 50-or-so-pound weight of having slept approximately 10 hours in as many days. I hope you have laminated our registration issue.

But you're wondering about that weight. Or at least, why I clumsily tried to pique your interest.

The point is, eventually, somewhere in an up-and-leaving off-off-Willy Street neighborhood, I dragged my baggage into the black hole that is the local Laundromat.

****

One of the many pitfalls of a mind of mediocre inclination to music is that dial tones often set the, er, mood for entire conversations. It also just so happens that I have almost been caught humming "Strangers in the Night," based on the slightest provocation.

Never by a blood relative of Clint Eastwood before, though.

I was not despondent, however — there was hope that someone who would cheerfully headline an event OnMilwaukee.com has called "the Lollapalooza of smooth jazz" would be able to ironically enjoy my inadvertent swan song. Or perhaps a man who must have grown up hearing about between two and four different Dirty Harry jokes about 12 million times would simply develop an immunity to poor taste. But, alas for my insecurities, Kyle Eastwood seems to have neither inherited nor rejected his father's storied hangman intensity, and I was given a moving target from the start.

Mais, Paris! The merest mention of the City of Light sets every heart aflame. Informed that Mr. Eastwood had just returned from France, I was certain he would have many amusing David Sedaris-esque stories to tell.

"I've actually lived there for about four years now. …There a lot of good musicians there, and here."

I should have known no one romanticizes a city they live in.

****

Except when it's Madison.

The homey haze of the florescent lights was irresistible, and after plunking down my 20 quarters, I quickly collapsed into (no, not onto) the nearest bench and curled up with the book I was supposed to review last week.

"Come here often?"

****

I was firing blind. But I was sure the next question couldn't miss, and I wasn't wrong:

"Jazz."

"Both my parents were really into jazz. It was all the music I heard until I [turned on] a radio."

But the spark didn't catch until he experienced it himself, going to the Monterey Jazz Festival near his Carmel, Calif., home and seeing the Golden Age musicians — like Louis Armstrong, Dizzie Gillepsie and Billie Holliday — making history. There was almost a tint of nostalgia to his still carefree Californian accent.

But the younger Eastwood deftly, and probably rightly, dodges all lines of questioning that would typecast him as "living in the shadow of fame."

Despite taking a year off from film school to pursue his music career, he was adamant (well, comparatively) about not being steered to either path. Even having impressively scored several of his father's recent films, including "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima," creating variations on his themes leaves no hint of bitterness in his voice.

"I was always into music, always into film."

Stifling a sigh, the sensationalist in me slumped in his chair.

****

"Come here often?"

I may have almost fell off the bench.

OK, the person (unfortunately for this tale, neither dressed in a raincoat and derby hat nor wearing the last clean pair of chaps) who suddenly appeared across the table didn't actually say that. In my sleep-deprived delirium, however, the mere fact that someone in the second-least likely place to make meaningful human contact, after the elevator shaft, had spoken to me was too much to handle.

Sadly, it was all downhill from there, but since the alternative was to expend all energy trying not roll one's head in time with the twirling towels, our only choice was to keep the dialogue going.

****

The influences on Mr. Eastwood being impossible to extricate, I appealed to the argument of the ignorant masses as to the relative irrelevance of jazz today: too many sub-sub-genres, and too much electronica.

"The problem really is the music business in general. … And jazz hasn't been popular since, well, the '50s."

But if there are enough jazz lovers in humble Wisconsin that it can host both the West Bend Jazz Festival and a blues fest in Sun Prairie on the same day, there must be hope. Is our great state the new hotbed of hot brass, now luring in the big names?

Well, not yet, at least.

"I've never been up there before. I thought it might be fun."

****

There is no scent stronger in the laundry room than anticlimax. Oh, there were obligatory jokes about drying times and the occasional eye contact as the buzz of the lights lifted us from our reading material. But my first normative breach, much like my inadvertent humming, failed to make we strangers do more than exchange glances. As I gathered up my sheets and edged to the door, and as I tensed my arm to replace the handset, against all logic but that of my bleeding heart I signed off: "Maybe I'll see you here again sometime."

Tim Williams ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English. E-mail him if you too hum in the Laundromat.