Man, you dodged not one, but two bullets today.

Wednesday night I woke at 2:30 in the morning, saw the dimmest outlines of the ceiling fan above me as I came to full consciousness, and realized I had the Wooo OoWoo WoooOooo parts of Sex Dwarf looping through my brain. I think it had been part of a dream, because it had already gone through several loops by the time I was awake enough to figure out what was going on. So, I almost gave you this video of live Soft Cell, but I’m not going to do that. Isn’t that nice? Sugar and spice?

(Seriously though, if you click that link and get a bad case of the Woo Ooo Woo WooOoo’s for the next week, don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

I also discovered, a few weeks ago that I could watch whole episodes of South Park online. You’re asking yourself, “Wow, how far behind are you?” I’m that far behind. I’d kinda lost touch with the show after about season 4, so I’ve been catching up on episodes when I get little bits of time. Little by little I’ve come to realize that Butters is Muh Main Man. I think it was season 8, probably the AWESOM-O episode, when it hit me.

This is where brutal, loud, profane satire connects with sweetness and comfort. Among the things I find endearing about Butters is that he sings Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now to himself. Sappy? Easy Listening? Yacht Rock? I can’t answer those charges. All I can tell you is that that tune’s catchy as all hell, it hits me square, and Chicago’s horn section wins. This is not irony or kitsch talking here. Everyone’s got a secret, a secret that may one day destroy them, and this one’s mine: I fucking dig Chicago, at least up through Chicago X, and maybe even a little farther. I’ve been whistling that to myself as I’ve pedaled my ass around D.C. this week.

So you almost got live Chicago, circa 1976, with Peter Cetera sporting a satin-polyester varsity jacket and a feathered mullet for the ages, doing If You Leave Me Now. Not so much Woo Ooo Woo WooOoo as Woo Ooo OOOOOOOO.

Nevertheless, I feel the need to leave a hook in you, one that you’ll struggle to remove for the rest of the weekend. And for that, I’m going back to Peoria, Illinois, into my grandparents’ basement during the early 80’s. I can see the pool table, a couple chairs, the unfinished wooden body and neck of an electric guitar stripped of its guts, a macrame hanging lamp, my uncles partying with their friends. The smell of beer, dust, and Central American marijuana is close and alive. It was there that I, on the cusp of my teenage years and as yet unaware of the coming punk revolution, heard Billy Squier for the first time. That first album, Don’t Say No, had more hooks than a bait and tackle shop, and didn’t have a bad track on it. Yeah, that should do the trick.

If you’re interested, I ran across this acoustic version he did at a show in 2008 that’s really sweet, but I wanted to send you off on your weekend with the original. No need to thank me, the look on your face is thanks enough.

Hopefully the gun I’ve been under for the last couple weeks will ease up, and the unbearable lightness of posts will get heavier. In the meantime, spank someone who deserves it. In a loving way, of course.

Tags: Entertaining Interludes

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