Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

I want to write about the Republicans and their weekend hoedown, but I am still laughing too hard. My. Sides. I haven't been this entertained since the Christmas where I got my first chemistry set.

So I default to a random eleven. As always, these are actual songs on my i-pod, and this idea is a blatant rip-off from here. He's much more prolific and funny, so I'm going to pay any royalties.

1. "Crystal Wrists"-Peter Murphy. I'm watching David Letterman at the moment, and they just showed a woman in the audience who is wearing the exact same scarf that my wife has. For the first five years that I knew Kristen, I never saw anyone else in that scarf, but in the last year it's been all over the place. If you saw the video of Sarah Palin pardoning a turkey before Thanksgiving while another is being drained of it's blood in the background, then you've seen the scarf. I saw file video of Paul Harvey attending an honorary street-naming in his honor over the weekend, and he's wearing the scarf. I've seen it one hundred times since October. I can't find a video of this song anywhere on the web, but if one exists, I bet Peter Murphy is wearing the scarf.

2. "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville"-REM. None of the members of this band strike me as scarf-wearing types (and we have an official theme!). I used to live in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park in the mid-90s, and every time I left my parents house after a visit my nephew would sing "Don't go back to Oak Park" over and over again, not because he didn't want me to leave, just because he liked to try to drive me crazy every single moment.

3. "Rebel Rebel"-David Bowie. Love this song. "You got your mother in a whirl/She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl." I once tried to write a parody of this called "Rubble Rubble" (about the Flinstones-Rubble is Barney's last name), but it didn't go well. This was waaaayyyy back in college and someone else suggested "Rubble Rubble" be about The Hamburglar, and proceeded to sing it, with every word being "Rubble", since that is all the Hamburglar ever said. It was hysterical. You had to be there.

4. "Intervention"-The Arcade Fire. This song has been waning on me for a while. Too much organ. Takes itself way too seriously.

5. "Is It Any Wonder"-Keane. As much as I like this song, I couldn't tell you another one by this group to save my life. And wouldn't that be interesting? I was walking in a dark alley when all of the sudden a thug popped out from behind a dumpster, stuck a gun in my back and said "Tell me two songs by Keane or your toast." There's a point in this song about an empty spire in an old cathedral, which has always made me think of the Sagrada Familia, which is the strangest building I've ever seen in person.

6. "Black"-Pearl Jam. How much more popular would Pearl Jam be if Nirvana never came along? Both groups have (had?) the annoying habit of giving songs titles that appear nowhere in the lyrics (um, but not this one...), which no one should have been allowed to do once Led Zeppelin broke up.

7. "Penny Lane"-The Beatles. If I had to pick a street in my hometown to try to write a song about, it would probably be "West", and it would be pretty boring. I grew up in a really boring place.

8. "Chicago"-Sufjan Stevens. The ultimate road-trip song, I think (and I thought that well before Little Miss Sunshine). The first time I heard this song while on the road I was driving out of Joshua Tree National Park in the middle of an August afternoon. It was 110 degrees, I had been in the park for a couple of hours, getting out of the car every once in a while at points of interest. In the time I was there I never saw another human being. I did, however, see five scorpions.

9. "Heroes"-David Bowie. I remember this song from the concert for Freddie Mercury in the spring of 1992 at Wembley Stadium. Bowie had just finished singing "Under Pressure" with Annie Lennox (who had painted a mask over her eyes and looked likean over-sized performing raccoon) and launched into this as soon as she sauntered off the stage. I don't know who played guitar on the studio version, but Brian May played it like it was a siren at the concert. He's probably the most under-rated guitarist in the history of rock-and-roll.

10. "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us"-Robert Plant and Allison Krause. I have long ignored the Grammy Awards but was pleased mightily to see the album this song appears on (Raising Sand) win mutiple big awards. It was the best album of last year, hands down, and I've read that they are in the studio recording a follow up. Hard to believe when I was discovering Led Zeppelin in the early 80s that my favorite Robert Plant performances would come almost thirty years later.

11. "The Unforgettable Fire"-U2. I was wondering if they were going to pop up, since I am watching Letterman mostly to see them. The band is appearing on the show every night this week, and as pretentious as they can seem at times, they are still probably my favorite. I haven't heard anything off their new album (well, at least for another two minutes, I think) but I have to assume that it will be worth being up this late for. I have to see them live one more time-saw them in '93 on the Achtung Baby tour and in '97 on the Pop tour (the giant lemon? Not a good thing; the '93 show blew the other one away)-but have missed them the last few times they have been on the road.

I completely forgot about the scarf after number two!