If you didn't die laughing or walk away in disgust when I told you how I used to dance and lip-synch to ABBA, I guess I can trust you, right? When I say my tastes in music are eclectic, people think I'm kidding. I'm not. Why I like this one, I'm not sure... maybe it just has happy, silly associations...
Now, this next video needs a little introduction. (Or not, if you're already a devoted Tom Lehrer fan or got here by searching for "free math tutorials that are guaranteed to confuse me for life and ensure that I will grow up to be a writer, not a mathematician.")
Let me tell you the story of how I claimed payment for a commissioned autobiography I didn’t write.
I was young, fresh out of college. The would-be subject of this tome was also young and still in law school. I can’t recall how he got my name. He had a proposition to make - a possible job offer, that is. He wanted someone to write his life story.
Looking back, it should have taken me about two seconds to say “Life story? What the hell are you talking about, Junior? What wet-behind-the-ears law student has lived enough to make a book of it?”
We went to lunch, I think. Then he drove me to his apartment, a modest but neatly furnished thing that didn’t scream “campus housing” at the top of its lungs. Except for the fact that it was behind a security gate and a fence wrapped in barbed wire. To this day, I wonder if the barbed wire was meant to keep the world out or the students in. The place looked, to me, like a fancy prison camp. I later learned that roving bands of students would drive around town, looking for campus parking stickers on cars parked at bars and turn them in. I suspect the penitents were beaten with hymnals, lectured in tongues, and subjected to the forcible laying-on of hands. Really, really big praying hands…
I don’t remember Junior’s name to save my life. He was a large young man - not at all fat, just tall, rounded, and rather soft. We sat in his living room - by which time I was on the edge of my seat, not with anticipation, but merely a desire to get on with it and get this over with. We talked; or rather, he talked. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He began to lay out his plans for the book.
Blah blah blah blah blah…blah blah…blah blah blah - he sounded like one of the adults in a Peanuts cartoon special. I began to wonder if he’d notice if I fell asleep on his couch while he did his level best to convince me what an interesting writing project our collaboration would be. Blah blah blah… How he managed to turn his choice of me as his autobiographer into something that sounded so condescending, I’ll never figure out. Must’ve dozed off while he explained that theory. I did sort of pick up the hint that I ought to be feeling honored and eager to begin work immediately.
I blinked. Somehow, blessedly, we took a break from talking about him, him, him and moved on to the subject of music. He had a favorite tape, which he insisted on my hearing. It was political satire from the 1960s: Tom Lehrer. One song struck me as a fitting anthem for our afternoon: The Masochism Tango. As Tom sang:
Bash in my brain,
And make me scream with pain,
Then kick me once again,
And say well never part.
I began to laugh. My sentiments exactly. Junior was pleased that I appreciated his taste in music. My eyes frantically searched for an “Exit” sign. I looked at my watch. “Oh, my, look at the time! I really have to go,” I said. He kindly let me borrow the tape. I think he was hoping for a second chance at convincing me what a fascinating fellow he was.
There wasn’t enough money in the world to induce me to attempt to write the book Junior had in mind. “Live a little,” I told him later. “Go outside these four walls, outside the classroom - get a life. If you still want to write your autobiography in ten or twelve years, look me up. We’ll talk.” Pompous windbag.
He made a life of writing manuals look really good.
I kept the tape as payment for an afternoon wasted.
Nearly a decade later, I got hooked on Gemstone III, a multiplayer online role-playing game. I only enjoyed the role-playing, mind you - the hack-and-slash and stats-keeping bored me to tears and made me want to throw things. But it was either that, or sit in the town square looking pretty until the real players deigned to return from their adventures. And so, clad in the Death Robes™ (hey, they looked pretty - what’d I care that they subtracted 10 from my hit points?), off I’d go to play orc-bait for a few big, burly, handsome Ranger types just smitten enough with me in my Death Robes™ to stand back and allow me the coup de grâce. Along the way, I’d provide the comic relief - leading our party in singing a rousing few verses of The Masochism Tango - punctuated by my Ranger buddies’ lectures on why I ought to be wearing chain mail and mithral instead of silk to go out hunting the nasties. Eventually, thank G-d, I was hired a freelance designer on a contract basis, and granted "phenomenal cosmic powers." That meant that when I was done building dank, dark hundred-room dungeons with blood-streaked walls and halls littered with inventive torture devices, and once I'd finished stocking them with torkaans and ghouls and whatever other horrid beasts I could find to chill the souls of intrepid adventurers, I could make utterly impervious chain mail and mithral that looked just like those cute little Death Robes™, and everyone could hunt happy.
Here's one of my favorite Tom Lehrer songs, set to scenes from Star Wars. I like to hum this while I'm cooking on the gas grill. I like to hum it during the President's speeches, too. It scares me to be humming it when the man says "noo-kyu-lar." It's all funny until the guy with the power to launch missiles says "noo-kyu-lar."
Moving right along...
When I got my very first (toy) record players, I also got a hand-me-down stack of 45s to play on it. My mother's old music collection, to be exact. I treasured it and still do; it contains such gems as "Transfusion" and "The Mummy" right alongside "Look Homeward, Angel" and "Wake Up, Little Susie." And somewhere in that stack, I discovered "The Unicorn," the Irish Rovers' famous tale of God's beloved unicorns' and their untimely demise in the flood. THE flood. You know. They literally "missed the boat." Anyway, even if that and "Here's to the Horses" (...that pull the Budweiser, here's to the ribbon 'round the Blue Ribbon can...here's to the ladies that pour golden rivers that fill up the glass of the beer drinkin' man!) were the only two of their songs I ever heard played on the radio, they wrote and sang some fine tunes, and they are more fun than a barrel o' monkeys in concert. "Lily the Pink" is one of my personal favorites.
If you don't hate me yet, you will after this. My ten year old can sing along - and does, with gusto. The Stan Rogers original is better, but hard to find. And I've heard worse renditions, that's for sure.
Okay then...enough is enough. Until later!
