Am I a stone? Or am I a sponge?

I'm silently vibrating with utter dork-dom, sitting here trying to fix my younger brother's resume and listening to the newest Bell X1 which the Redhead passed off to me the other day. She's trying to convince me to go to their concert that's coming up here in Boston in a couple weeks and I'm trying to work up the financial cajones to go.

But what's important about this is that during final refrain of the song "Bigger Than Me", the lead singer repeats the line "Am I a stone?/Or am I a sponge?"...which makes no sense unless you've seen the movie Withnail and I. Which I have, many, many too many times. In the film, the climax involves the protagonist/quasi-narrator, "in a corner, naked" with a portly homosexual man propositioning him (if one can still be propositioned when one's trapped in a corner -- I think at that point one's more in a "threatened" situation), saying "Are you a stone, boy? Or are you a sponge?". Essentially what Uncle Monty means here is: do you shy away from experiences, close yourself off from living in every way life has to offer? Or are you egalitarian and open to adventure, soaking up every new idea and action like...a sponge?

In the movie's context, the question seems sordid and sinister. The tone in Monty's voice would keep anyone from declaring themselves one or the other. Stones are stolid, unimaginative, miserly, somewhat petty; sponges are lustful, gluttonous and unthinking. But in this song, there's a certain uplift, a charming self-inquisitiveness about it, as though Paul Noonan were a teenager debating what kind of person he wanted to be.

(By the way, the song "Just Like Mr. Ben" totally steals the Al Green rhythm-line from "I-I-I-I...I'm so in love with you/whatever you WANNA do/is all right by ME-he-he").