When I was one year old it was a very good year

You gotta hand it to Frank Sinatra for implying that your life is over after you turn...(I don't know) like 40 years old.  After he sings the verse about when he was 35, all is darkness, like gee whiz, it's over, IT'S OVER!!!!

Yeah, right ole blue eyes.  Listen to this first if you don't remember the song. Maybe you shouldn't blame FS for it after all he just took the song and made it a monster hit, in 1966 when he was 51.   The song was actually written by Erwin Drake, who lived to be almost 100. 

 

When I was one year old, it was a very good year
It was a very good year for screaming a lot
And getting what I want
I’d crawl on the floor
And eat old dog food
When I was one year old

When I was two years old, it was a very good year
It was a very good year for toddling about
without a ghost of a clue
I’d put glue in my hair
And bump into things
When I was two years old

When I was ten years old, it was a very good year
It was a very good year for collecting stamps
And torturing my sisters
I’d wear the same socks for a week
And bathe every third day
When I was ten years old

When I was twenty-five, it was a very good year
It was a very good year for writing research grants
And having them turned down
After a very long  process
I was constantly wearing a frown
When I was twenty-eight

But now the days are short, I’m no longer very cute
And I think of my life like three day old burgers
That I left out in the kitchen
In trash bags by the door
I watch TV and curse
Donald Trump on the tube
And my car needs a lube
And maybe some tires from Goodyear.
How can we elect such a rube.

The Ballad of Keith Moon

Keith Moon was the original drummer for the Who.  He was a talented musician but in just a few short years succumbed to alcoholism and drug abuse. He also liked to blow up toilets while on tour and was a notorious character.  

Harry Nilsson, rather a famous hell-raiser himself, and kindred spirit, owned a nice flat in London that he wasn't using so he allowed first Mama Cass (Cass Elliot of the Mamas

and the Papas) to use it.  She died from cardiomyopathy while there and never finished her ham sandwich.  She was 32. 

Years later Nilsson allowed Keith Moon to use the same London flat, but as before bad things happened.   Moon had been prescribed a drug to help him with his urges to drink, clomethiazole. 

Unfortunately he did not take them as directed.  While the doctor said that at most you could take three in any 24 hour period, Keith took 32 of them.   This was enough to kill him and three of his friends.  One has to wonder what Moon was thinking.  Suicide seems one plausible way to explain this unhealthy behavior.     It seems likely (in my opinion at least and from the distance of many years) that Keith was a bipolar manic depressive.   Self-medication is kind of what often happens with these people, and consequences are often afterthoughts.  He was 32.  

In any case his short and explosive life is the subject of what I'm calling "The Ballad of Keith Moon" set to the music of "The Beverly Hillbillies" TV show of the 1960s.  

The Ballad of Keith Moon

Come and listen to a story about a man named Keith
A talented drummer, and smart ass Wembley kid,
And then one day he joined the band The Who
And so he played for the band and blew up things too...

Toilets mostly, Hilton crockery,  Holiday Inn.  .

Well the first thing you know ol Keith’s a millionaire,
Innkeepers said "We don’t really want you there"
Said "Howard Johnson’s is the place you ought to be"
So they loaded up the truck and moved to a new hotel

Hojo’s, that is. Swimmin pools, destroyed guitars.

Well next thing you know old Keith is taking drugs
And Alcohol nearly replaced but all his blood
He got bored with Cherry bombs and wanted something stronger
And Innkeepers said you can stay with us no longer...

Dynamite, high explosives,  TNT

Now Keith’s in a bind cause no one wants to rent him rooms
Crockery costs money and disturbs the other guests
So Nilsson said “Hey Keith why don’t you stay with me
While I’m off in Californy you can use my place for free

Just don’t blow up my toilets, okay?

So Keith by this time is trying to clean up his act
But 32 clomethiazole was just bad for his digestive tract
Just six is enough to kind of do you in
But 26 more and they’re calling next of kin

Dead,  Rigor Mortis, dirt nap.


 

Bad Songs Suck So Much (Parody)

(to the tune “Sad Songs Say So Much” by Sir Elton John)

Don't get me wrong, there are Elton John songs I love, but alas, this is not one of them.  After having this song drilled into my brain from elevators and stores for months and months, I had an inspiration....
 
Guess there are times when we all have to feel a little pain
And banging on kitchen pots
Can’t be the only way to drive the people insane 
And it’s songs like  these that cause our ears to bleed as we listen to the radio
And it does no good to  plug em with your finger
Our eardrums vibrate and
And your mental circuits one by one begin to blow

Turn them off, turn them down
Turn off those Bad songs
Before all your hope is gone
Why don’t you tune out and turn them off

They reach into your brain
And your reason starts to slip a clutch
When all hope is gone
Bad songs suck so much

If someone else is suffering enough to write it down
When not a  single word makes any sense
Then it's harder to have those songs around
Feel sick inside when the line finally gets to you
and it feels so good when they stop
And you don’t suffer enough to sing the blues

Bad songs, they suck
Bad songs, they suck
Bad songs, they suck
Bad songs, they suck so much

Chickens and Guns, a Recipe for Disaster

 When the chickens get guns ya could says the jig is up.
  bock bock bock POW!
  And so ended the murderous life of Colonel Sanders.
He was being held at gunpoint by a hen and six half grown chicks. 

They were demanding safe passage to Hindustan where no chicken or cow need worry.
You wonder how a chicken could chickengunya?    Well they lie on their backs and hold the gun up with one foot and pull the trigger with the other one.
 Who woulda thought chickens were that smart.
Or that mean.

Well we always knew they were mean.
You think they are saying BOCK BOCK BOCK, but no they are using the F word more or less continuously.
"Garcon! Garcon!  I would like to order some of your Chickengunya

"Excellent choice, Monsieur, it comes with the gunya sauce drizzled lightly over their little heads.
A side of parsley and two tiny potatoes nestled next to the heads, and voila.
C'est un shame you have to eat it rather than frame it and hang it on the wall.

Stanley the Hindu was from Hindustan
He looked like a boy but he was actually a man
His mom named him Stanley because she said that she can
Some carnivores showed up, got scared and they ran
Don't mess with Stanley the Hindu from Hindustan.

A few pigs with Bristles

With apologies to Edna St. Vincent Millay


First Pig

My GI tract burns at both ends;
to eat it all was

wrong, dude,
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
I so love that spicy food!

Second Pig

Safe upon the solid rock the fugly mansions teeter,
Come and see my shining

palace built entirely of saltpeter!




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Larry

We were very tired, we were very hairy--
We had gone back and forth all night along with Larry.
We were bare and bright, and smelled like dogs
As we looked into a fire, and ate like hogs,
We necked on a hill-top falling asleep in a swoon;
And the whistles kept blowing, in the blue lagoon.

We were very tired, we were very wary--
We had gone back and forth with some dude named Larry;
And you drank a snapple, and I ate a pear,
Bought from a grocery we had found somewhere, 
And the sky went on, and the wind got wet,
And the sun rose vaguely in a bucketful of sweat.

We were very tired, we were very drunk,
We had gone back and forth with Larry in a funk:
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" and scribbled some screed,
And bought a foreign paper, which neither of us could read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the Snapples and pears,
And we had to give her all our money, plus our subway fares.

Thursday

And if I laid you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I did not lay you Thursday--
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I laid you Wednesday so send the bill to me.


To the Most Impossible Whim

How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo or Toledo
Whether or not this blessed ship
Will be hit by a

torpedo?

Now it may be, the Romans in me
will squish between my toes;
but how shall I tell, unless I kill
The Carthaginian

foes?

The fabric of my faithful basketball
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I dribble here,--but oh, my dear,
If I should ever

travel!