I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC-“Jackson Park Express” (2014).

The final song on Mandatory Fun is a nearly 9 minute epic which is a parody of Cat Stevens’ style of music.  I would never have guessed that without having read this information online.  However, on listening to it more and more I can hear a lot of Cat Stevens-isms (piano lines and style of chord progressions, although definitely not in the singing style).  I also don’t know if the content is meant to be in reference to the Cat (well, a twisted version of the Cat, of course).

I typically love Al’s longer epic songs, but this one didn’t grab me at first.  Yet after a few listens, I’ve really come to appreciate the twisted humor going on here.   The song starts with some simple pretty acoustic guitars but quickly turns epic with swelling strings and backing vocalists.

The story is about two people on the Jackson Park Express bus in Chicago.  The entire relationship that unfolds is entirely in the narrator’s head.  He bases everything that happens upon the looks she gives him and implies everything through his own looks to her.  As with many Al songs, it starts not just mundanely, but actually sweetly.

I was riding to work on the
Jackson Park Express
Seemed like any other day
Then my whole world changed
In a way I never could have guessed
Cause she walked in
Took the seat right across the aisle
I knew we had a special connection
The second I saw her smile

Pretty nice, right?  And so we see the two communicate (in his mind) nonverbally

She smiled as if to say
“Hello, Haven’t seen you on this bus before”
I gave her a look that said
“Huh, Life is funny, you never know what’s in store
By the way, your hair is beautiful

Again, pretty sweet, until we get to the first wonderfully odd Al line (about her hair)

“I bet it smells like raisins”

And it just gets funnier as it goes on:

Then, she let out a long sigh
Which, I took to mean, “Uh”
“Mama, What is that deodorant you’re wearing?
It’s intoxicating
Why don’t we drive out to the country sometime?
And collect deer ticks in a zip-lock baggie”

I gave her a penetrating stare
Which could only mean
“You are my answer, my answer to everything
Which is why, I’ll probably do very poorly
On the written part of my driver’s test”

The song gets really dark and creepy, with (hilarious) lines like:

I gave her a look, that said
“I would make any sacrifice for your love–
Goat, chicken, whatever

And the far more creepy:

Whoa-o-Oh, “I’d like to rip you wide open
And french-kiss every single one of your internal organs
Oh, I’d like to remove all your skin, and wear your skin, over my own skin–
But not in a creepy way”

This is also Al’s most “sexual” song ever, with a line about french kissing (true, it is her organs, but whatever), and this hilarious dramatic pause:

Then, I glanced down, at her shirt, for a second
In a way that clearly implied–
“I like your boobs”

and this other hilarious dramatic pause:

I want you inside me…
oh, like a tapeworm”

But the romance was not to be.  She leaves the bus, despite his nonverbal pleading

Think of the beautiful children we could have someday
We could school them at home, Raise them up the right way
And protect them from the evils of the world
Like Trigonometry and Prime Numbers, oh no
Baby, please don’t go”

There is to be no romance on this bus line.

This is truly a love it or hate it song, but as with most of Al’s epic songs, the more I hear it, the more I love it.  And I can’t wait to see if he plays it live.

[READ: August 3, 2014] On Loving Women

This book is a collection of brief stories about women’s first crushes on other women.  I don’t know how the collection was compiled exactly, but it appears that various women told Obomsawin their stories and she made these fun little comic strip panels out of them.  (Helge Dascher translated them into English–she also did Pascal Girard’s book, that I posted about yesterday).

Each story is named (presumably) after the woman who related it to her.  And each one becomes a simple (but not overly simple) version of the attraction.

Mathilde is obsessed with horses and falls for girls with horse faces (the drawing that accompany this are funny because Mathilda is drawn like a kangaroo or something and the girls she likes are horses.  The ending of this one, about how she learns sign language was very touching.

Indeed, in all of the stories, the women have animal heads and human bodies (but not weird hybrid creatures, just cute cartoony creatures).

Maxime’s Story is about how she dropped acid and fell in love with a woman (but that didn’t happen the next time she dropped acid).

Sasha’s Story is about her first crush at 4 years old and how the people she was closest to didn’t like her advances until she got to college and became the most in-demand girl for all the other curious girls.

Marie’s Story is one of her family not understanding her desires.  It is one of the saddest in the book.

Diane’s story is about how she had a reason to go to school–because every year she would pick a girl and fall in love with her.  She said she later watched the film Girls in Uniform, but turned off the TV at the good part.  Later in life she finally got to watch the whole thing with her girlfriend.

Catherine’s story (she is an owl) is that she was always different.  She falls in love with her teachers which is not such a good thing.

Charlotte’s story is about going to a convent school.  By ninth grade she had fallen in love with a girl who would rest with her in bed–and no one was the wiser.

October’s Story is another one about a convent school, where she felt guilty when other girls would touch her, but she enjoyed the feeling so much.  Later she ran into an old crush and their romance started like she always imagined it would.

Jeane’s Story is also about convent school (how much did the convent promote lesbian experimentation?).  She had dated guys but it was not until she saw a girl in school that it was love at first sight.  This one is very short and very sweet.

M-H’s story is very funny, mostly because of the drawings.  M-H had done drugs and is drawn crazily. She had slept with lots of men but finally decided to date some women. She goes to a lesbian bar and is picked up by two women which opened up an entirely new (and wonderful) world to her.

What I especially enjoyed about this collection was that most of the stories are positive–and most of them end happily.  The stories also seem to be from older women, experimenting with something that was quite taboo.  Hearing these stories of fulfillment is really quite touching and I imagine the women are pretty delighted to see their stories in print in this book.