all I want is to be a happy man

OK, before we get to the meat, the tender, juicy, medium-rare kangaroo meat of this post, it's time for some genius points to get handed out. Guaranteed, authentic, redeemable-at-participating-Duane-Reades Genius Points. And this challenge is time-sensitive. We'll call it a Bungle Blitz. Here's how it works.

1. Steve "Rim" Jobs will be delivering his keynote speech at MacWorld San Francisco Tuesday, January 10th at 12 noon HST (HaloScan Time). Dorks like me the world over are giggling with anticipation for what he might unveil. Rest assured, he will unveil something. Even if it is just his shimmering iRod. What I want you to do is guess what new products/alliances/religious tenets he will announce.
2. All answers are due by noon HST.
3. You will receive three points each for every correct guess, and two points for every guess that makes me laugh out loud (LOL). Only the first guesser of any particular item will receive the points.
4. For the laughter-generating guesses, I really need to actually laugh or at least smile. I will try to be fair about this.
5. For some speculation to get you pointed in the right direction, click here.

Thanks!

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Now on to the meat. Yesterday we posted the complete words to the namedatlyric challenge of a few weeks back. Nobody got it. Too bad. The song in question is "Chaos of the Galaxy/Happy Man" by Sparklehorse, from their truly excellent 1999 album, Good Morning Spider.

Remember 1999? You were thinner, wilder, full of hope. You were still at an age where you considered radical new haircuts and moustaches on a daily basis. Girls occasionally looked you in the eye when you walked past them on the street. You had a little change in your pocket going jingalingaling. Your biggest fear was Y2K. Your greatest regret was not having enough great regrets. It was a simple era and you were a simple man, at home in your time. Happy with what the day gave you.

Or maybe not. Maybe there was something bothering you. Maybe you were a miserable fuck. Maybe you were constantly thinking the world owed you a little something more. Maybe somebody broke your heart or maybe you broke theirs. Maybe you woke up in a cold sweat thinking about how irreparably you'd screwed up your life. Maybe you couldn't find the guts to take what you wanted. Maybe you were already looking back to simpler times. That's pathetic.

I don't really care. Whatever the case, hopefully this song will take you back a few years and get you bouncing in your seat a little bit as you shovel The Man's coal through another long afternoon.

Now I will tell you what I like about this song. First off, I don't know much about Sparklehorse. I know the main guy's name, Mark Linkous. I know he's kind of a troubled loner and he's had some health problems. I don't know what he's done lately. But I borrowed and burned a couple of their CD's from a friend a few years ago, and they are just dandy. You should buy them.

To the song:
The lyrics are weird and interesting, although I can't say I understand them. Waking up in a horse's stomach is a bizarre image. It reminds me of something I read in Jarhead. There was some military legend about a German sniper in WWI who disemboweled a dead horse, climbed inside its skin, and fired his rifle through the horse's mouth, acquiring targets through the horse's eyeholes. That has no relation to the song other than in my head, but I like the connection I've formed.

Normally I hate sound effects in songs. Is there anything cheesier than the motorcyle peeling out in Billy Joel's "Movin' Out"? I don't think so. I seem to remember reading that Bruce Springsteen considered adding car noises to "Born to Run" before deciding against it at the last minute. Good decision. Anyway, this song is a mess of sound effects, distortion, and unlistenable static. When I first heard it, it really annoyed me, because you can hear a really good song buried underneath all that bullshit. But eventually, I grew to like it.

I grew to like it because I imagined that he created this song to evoke the feeling you get when you're driving down a dark country road late at night. You're a little creeped out, you're a little sad, and you need a good song to come on the radio to pull you out of it. Of course, you're in the middle of nowhere, so finding a good song on the radio is no small task. The slow organ sounding thing at the beginning of the song sets the mood, and then the fuzzy first verse signifies that moment when a really good song starts finding its way to your ears through the static. You get excited, your mood starts to lighten, but you're also frustrated because you can't quite hear clearly.

The song continues along this way, and you start to get used to the low sound quality, but then it eventually fades out completely around 2 minutes in. Exasperated, you're ready to give up on the song, but then all of a sudden your station comes in crystal clear at the 2:20 mark. It's also the moment when the song itself takes off, and the end result is a moment of complete triumph.

Eventually the song cuts off abruptly and the creepy organ takes over again. You're left somehow not quite satisfied, wondering about what could have been but also kind of pleased with what is. Like real life.

Rock on with your jock on!

***

I watched the Joe Theezmann leg-snap video on the internets today. It's still pretty gross 20 years later. Also, the football players and their uniforms then didn't look that different from today's. Much less noticeable difference than in baseball and basketball. Maybe it's cuz the NFL guys were already balls-deep into steroids in 1985.

Jim Burt was one wide-ass motherfucker.