Well, Sure I Know What It Looks Like; But What Is It, Really?

Disseminated by Soul Coughing
Electric Feel by MGMT
Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine by The White Stripes
Insister by Tapes and Tapes
I Got A Woman by Ray Charles
Got to Get You Into My Life by The Beatles
Super Sex by Morphine
Universal Mind Control by Common

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, I am all worked up over my own iPod list, confident in its prescience. What’s that? What’s that, O Magic iPod? An electric feel? Getting into someone’s life? Mind control?

Super sex?

Well good golly, Miss Molly, as my mother used to say.

After a difficult week of decidedly too many economic uncertainties and simply not enough beer, we’ve come to Friday, and you know what that means!

That’s right, kids! Time for another story!

As has been well documented by, well, me, I played in an Old Tyme Band (yes, the “y” is necessary, but no one knows why) in high school. The leader of the band, a 60-something-year-old man by the name of Aloysius, could play anything – anything – on the accordion and would gleefully shout the chord changes to us over his shoulder in a German accent.

Sure I know “Autumn Leaves”! Just shout the chord changes to me, Al!

The drummer, a 17-year-old who pledged his love and who-knows-what-else to me in Polish often yelled (in Polish, of course) obscene directions to the dancers, encouraging the women to lift their legs a little higher.

The trumpet player and I, also 17, had known each other since 14 and spent our breaks (one 10-minute break every two hours, whether we needed it or not) chasing each other around dirt parking lots…

There was an array of players of course, and the band could go from four to a dozen players easily, dependent on how much the ballroom was willing to pay. Sax, trumpet, and tuba players from the U of M drifted in and out, bringing coolers of beer and weed with them. We even had Eddie Berger, a jazz great in Minneapolis, join us for a bit, shortly after rehab.

So one summer, we played a parade. A polka band – accordion, clarinet, trumpet, and drums – in a parade. On a float.

Behind the goats.

Nervous, pooping goats.

At some point, I believe I began to joke – as is my wont – about being stuck behind the business end of a herd of goats and continually having our float pulled through mounds of pellet-shaped shit.

Aloysius beamed a sweaty, Teutonic smile at me from behind his accordion. “Ach,” he sputtered, “Das ist gut for you! Tink of dem as smart pills!”

Smart pills.

Even today, that makes me smile.

That load of crap in front of you? Looked at in the right light, it’s only going to make you smarter.

I hope your weekend is full of shit that makes you smarter.




Come on back any time. I’ll be here tomorrow, too…