At least we choose an iconic female artist figure with our eyes wide open. We know that singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell is perhaps moderately craaazy, from an interview she gave an LA radio station recently in which she came off as part tortured artist, part the eccentric old cat lady down the street.

Still, there we were barreling down the freeway to San Jose last week with our boyfriend Thing, like two whores in a rental car speeding to a spendy client. Our destination: the San Jose Arena, where Joni played a rare public concert, billed between bluesman Van Morrison and the immortal Bob Dylan in what was being referred to as a "geezer tour".

We guess we qualify for that appelation, since we had last seen Joni in 1983 at an outdoor concert outside the Beltway. Thing was there, too, but we didn't know each other then: probably a good thing, as we would have loathed each other. Now we think he's the cat's meow, even if he did think the ASL signer for the hearing-impaired was just a young man who gesticulated wildly.

In San Jose, singing "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", only Joni could have a hockey stadium full of people listening in rapt attention to a lyric by William Butler Yeats. And, when she sang from Night Ride Home: "I love the man beside me, we love the open road. No phones till Friday --- far from the overkill, far from the overload", she was singing exactly our song.