One Star Watt

Last night I went to DC to visit my friend Keith, whose birthday is tomorrow. Everyone say happy birthday to Keith! Keith is the best. He does not judge you for thinking tapioca pudding is a good late night drunk person food. He is also the ideal person to accompany you when you go the wrong way on the Beltway at 3 in the morning. This is because he knows all the words to every Meat Puppets and Shangri-Las song, and those CDs happened to be in my car. The Shangri-Las help me and Keith relive our teenage years - growing up in small mid-Western towns in the early 60s, drinking malt milkshakes, putting nickels in the jukebox. Keith likes to question why the rebellious leader of a motorcycle gang is hanging out in a candy store. I respond that when I say I’m in love, you better believe I’m in love L-U-V. He had never heard the PSAs at the end of Myrmidons of Melodrama, so that was a treat. Mary Weiss advises the young lady on a date not “to barge on ahead like a baby elephant.” In the early 60s, baby elephants were controversial figures, infamous for their wanton and whorish ways. They were thought to be perverted and sick little beasts capable of corrupting women from good middle class families. But then in the late 60s, Keith and I launched the baby elephant civil rights movement, redeeming baby elephants from their undeserved reputation. However now the public service announcement’s baby elephant simile doesn’t make as much sense. Just try to understand it in its historical context.

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