Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

The American people are not always the brightest of the bunch. We distract ourselves with minutiae, can be incredibly shortsighted, and often act like a bunch of fickle mush heads. I include myself in that collective “we,” as I spent more time than yesterday than I care to admit checking the status of the big toe of LeSean McCoy, the Philadelphia Eagles starting running back, because his ability to play for my pretend football team could make me a small amount of money and, more importantly, convey a windfall of nerd bragging rights. Yes, we are people of the land, the common clay of the West.

Yet even the most linguistically challenged American moran can smell bullshit when it’s being served up as an electoral appetizer. And no one has served up more bullshit than Herman Cain, a man who built his fortune throwing a bunch of cheap crap on dough and saying said dish could not be refused.

His entire campaign has been one smelly serving after another, from his knowledge of foreign policy to his economic plan to his ability to keep his hands to himself. What’s kind of unique about Cain is that his strategy for covering up each scandal is bury it under an even bigger dung heap of stupidity. The current affair conundrum is the perfect example. After getting accused for harassment and infidelity, a woman comes forward to say she and Cain have had an affair for thirteen years, and affair the conveniently ended just as Cain decided to become president.

Rather than denying it—a usually fruitless but expected tactic—or admitting it, the King Solomon of Bad Decisions decided to cut this turd in half and say he didn’t have a romantic relationship with the woman, but helped her out financially because they were friends. A creative out for sure, and one that could possibly have worked until his wife said she had no idea Cain was friends with this woman.

That is where Cain’s Tower of Bullshit Babel finally collapsed. Men will be friends with women. They will help their female friends. They may even be friends with women their wives don’t particularly like. But no straight man would secretly give money to another woman behind his wife’s back for more than a decade without some kind of slap and tickle going on. Maybe it’s not full-blown according-to-Hoyle carnality, but there’s going to at least be a soiled dress, a spoilt cigar, or an uncoiled dong.

This is what I don’t understand about candidates. They know that the press will uncover almost anything about their past. If you were running on a vegan platform, the New York Times would produce that hot dog you ate five years ago when you were really drunk and starving and the scent of steamed cow lips and assholes was overpowering. Bad touches, bad grammar, racial slurs, racist pastors, drunk driving, draft dodging, South American strolls, South American snorts, shady investments, shady associates, and especially extramarital excursions will all come out. I think Obama got elected primarily because he could string two sentences together and appears to have given his presidential pardon exclusively to his wife, an old-fashioned concept so revolutionary in modern politics it seems like meeting someone who churns their own butter.

If anything, this is where Gingrich probably has a big advantage. Everyone already knows what a hypocritical asshole he is, which eliminates the element of surprise.

Okay, now that I feel so great about our democracy, I’m ready for music.

1) “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea,” The Cure. Who better to lift one’s mood than Robert Smith, because you know there's at least one other person in this world more depressed than you?

2) “O My Soul,” Big Star. I don’t always listen to power pop, but when I do, I choose Big Star. Stay catchy, my friends. Seriously, there should be a talk like the Dos Equis Guy Day. Or better yet, Talk Like the Guy Talking About the Dos Equis Guy Day. I know that would be a capitulation to advertising invading creativity, but those commercials are funnier than 75 percent of the sitcoms on TV. I would come up with something for myself like, “He once K.O.’d a man with a punchline.”

3) “Looks That Kill,” Motley Crue. A song I love from a band I hate. They are the embodiment of everything stupid about 80s metal: faux Satanism, lyrics that made Winger look literary by comparison, the inability to discern between sexy and sexist, self-destructive behavior, monstrous egos, and a bewildering look that borrowed from the New York Dolls, S&M shops, American Indians, and The Road Warrior and/or the NFL. But holy hairspray, this song rocks my face off. No intro, no lead-in, they just kick the door in and start spraying riffs and drums.

4) “S.S. Fort Jams,” Fang Island. When I lived in Da U.P., I had NFL Sunday Ticket. It was ridiculously expensive, but we were in the Packers TV market, had little competition for our entertainment dollars (especially since moose wrestling was free), and our household would suffer a severe economic setback if I hung myself out of boredom. One of the things I loved was that, if you had the Ticket, you could watch compressed recaps of all of the NFL games. They literally cut out all of the commentary, commercials, and assorted grabass into about 25 minutes of pure gridiron goodness. That’s kind of what Fang Island does with prog. They squeeze out all the fruitiness into a concentrated few minutes of pure jamming. Plus they have a guitarist who plays in a star-covered wizard's cowl, which is almost as cool as an eye-covered wizard's cowl.

5) “Rag Mama Rag,” The Band. One of those songs you have to really stop and listen to in order to appreciate. There is so much stuff going on here and everything fits together perfectly, kind of like The Lovely Becky’s holiday cookies when they in their original, not pulverized form.

6) “Spoonman,” Soundgarden. Not only the sole rock song to feature a guy on lead spoon, but also the only song ever written about a guy playing spoons. It makes me wonder if he has a whole collection of spoons. “We wanted to give the song more of a baritone, so I went with my grandma’s silver serving spoons, with a little ladle overdubbed for effect.” It also seems like a song that would have been ripe for a Weird Al parody called “Kazooman.”

7) “Honky Tonk Woman,” The Rolling Stones. I suspect that 50 percent of my dislike for the Stones stems from the tongue logo, and the other half comes from Mick Jagger. I hate watching him perform; he moves around the stage like a duck with a live Roman candle up its ass. I like Keef, I like Charlie Watts, I like Ron Wood, and while Bill Wyman is a cradle robber, he has the decency to keep his mouth closed. But the logo and Jagger make me think of Mick licking every time I hear them.

8) “Crash,” Dave Matthews Band. Goonies hate. If they ever made a movie about Stuff White People Like, any DMB album could serve as the soundtrack. It takes a lot to make me think, “Boy, I really wish I was listening to Coldplay instead of this.”

9) “Ohio,” Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. The really scary thing about Pepper Spraying Cop isn’t the act itself—history is full of authority figures abusing their authority. It’s when people like Megyn Kelly say that the abuse of that authority is perfectly acceptable. (I also don't trust people who replace a perfectly good vowel with a "y." What have you done with than "a"!) Because once you accept that a bunch of peaceful protesters can get blasted in the face with pepper spray, it’s not too great of a leap to think it’s okay for them to get tased, bashed, and eventually shot in the face, and before you know it a never-again moment like Kent State is back in fascist fashion.

10) “The Quest for the Wizard's Rod on Wank Mountain, Part LXIX: Into the Crypt of Phrygian Fartblasting,” Dream Theater. I would rather be pepper-sprayed than listen to this. At least that doesn’t last as long or sting as badly. Let’s try again.

10) “Favourite Food,” Tokyo Police Club. These guys are half the age of Cream Beaters and have already eclipsed them in songwriting ability. Speaking of youngsters, I went Christmas shopping at a store that rhymes with Pest Pie. I was looking for a gift for Libby, a Disney princess camera that she saw and begged us for. It was on sale, so, dutiful dad that I am, I went to the store and approached some blue-shirted Bieber to help me find it. He asked if it was for me, because that is such a clever and completely original joke. He couldn’t find it, and he proceeded to ask no fewer than four other Pest Pie employees, all dudes, if they knew where the princess camera was, and he started each query the same way, “Hey, [INSERT NAME OF SLACK-JAWED DRONE], you look like a pretty princess. Would you know where this camera is?” Four times. And better yet, his fine fellows asked me if it was for me. HA HA, IT IS FUNNY THAT A GROWN MAN WITH A WEDDING RING AND SOME GRAYING HAIR IS BUYING A PRINCESS CAMERA. IT MUST BE FOR HIS PERSONAL USE! I swore that the next guy who made the same stupid joke was going to get slashed across the jugular with the sharp shards of the princess camera packaging. Then, after listening to the same routine four times, I found the camera on my own. This is why people shop on Amazon.

11) “Roundabout,” Yes. The main fantasy football league I’m in involves ten guys. The most recent member is the oldest, Andy. He’s the cousin of one of the other guys and only a few years older than me, but for some reason one of the other guys started calling him Uncle Andy and the nickname stuck. He also at one point asked him, “Uncle Andy, what were the 60s like?” which set off a reaction of Uncle Andy is old jokes that have lasted about a year and a half.

These are not the same repetitive princess camera jokes; we put a lot of creativity into how old Uncle Andy is. For instance, his opponent this week named his team “1492” and wrote “In 1492, Uncle Andy sailed across the Ocean Blue.” Among other references, we have placed Uncle Andy at the Battle of Hastings, the first Thanksgiving, the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War, the assassination of William McKinley, and the Great Depression, of which we asked for tips for surviving fiscal crisis that didn’t involve cooking and eating members of the Little Rascals.. We have asked him what the world was like before electricity, running water, female voting, and football. He has been accused of being senile, confused, sleepy, and of very untoward behavior toward flappers during the Roaring Twenties. As I was typing this, someone sent an e-mail mentioning that Uncle Andy used to race chariots when he was a teen.

At this year’s draft, I had my iPod and asked for requests. Uncle Andy asked for Yes and I put “Roundabout” on. Not sixty seconds in the selection was voted down and Uncle Andy banned from making any musical recommendations. For once, I found myself having to come to his defense, much in the way I would help someone across the street or open a jar of pickles for them.

Have a good weekend.