American Hi-Fi -- "Flavor of the Weak" (2001)

Her boyfriend

He don't know

Anything about her

He's too stoned

[WARNING:  This is a very high-concept post.  It will probably go right over your head.  Hell, most of it goes right over my head and I wrote it.]

A year or two ago, this post would have been very different.  It would have been seamlessly integrated into a series of related posts, and its contents would have been oh-so-cleverly tied to its featured song.  The result would have been a tiny mirror reflecting the Zeitgeist.

Don't expect any such a thing today, boys and girls.  I'm far too busy living the life of a flâneur these days to put any real thought and effort into 2 or 3 lines.  

And why should I?  Give me one good reason.

The great unwashed masses simply clamor for more, and more, and still more of me, and seem not to care a whit that they are being given watered-down vins de pays instead of the grands crus classés they were once served.

The dazzling style and brilliant substance that were the hallmark of this blog have been sacrificed on the altar of the great god Three-Posts-A-Week.

Everything gets chopped up with an ax and burned as fuel so the 2 or 3 lines train runs on time, arriving at the station at precisely 12:01 AM every Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday.

If you really appreciated 2 or 3 lines, you would buy the featured song every so often.  Or if spending 99 cents would break you, you could simply click on an ad or two -- is that too much to ask of you plague of schnorrers who swarm around me like privy flies around an oft-used outhouse?

It seems that it is.  So be prepared for more incoherent rants and narcissism that knows no bounds.  It's the abstract expressionist school of writing -- throw a few bucketsful of words on the page, willy-nilly . . . sprinkle in some random Cape Cod photos to keep the ladies happy . . . and walk away.

Open a bottle of wine and take the rest of the day off, Mr. 2 or 3 lines -- you've earned it!

(Sigh . . . )

It's Friday night as I write these words -- another seemingly endless week is over, and a feeling of Weltschmerz weighs heavily on my soul.  Ennui, too.  (One language isn't sufficient to express my deepest thoughts these days -- I really need two or even three to get the job done.)

That Weltschmerz is first and foremost the result of my own private Vergangenheitsbewältigung.  On the surface, the creator of a wildly popular blog like 2 or 3 lines should be riding high like the Übermensch he is.    

So why do I suddenly feel so hors de combat?  Why does the center not hold?  I seem to have misplaced my Gemütlichkelt -- perhaps never to be found again.

I try to rouse my spirits by repeating the old rallying cry: épater la bourgeoisie!  And I still take great comfort from Schadenfreude, of course.  But I can't deny that something is very, very wrong.  Where, oh where has my joie de vivre gone?  Where, oh where can it be?

("Cherchez la femme," you suggest -- sotto voce -- to your companion.  Indeed, mon ami -- indeed.)

Stacy Jones of American Hi-Fi

"Flavor of the Weak," which was released in 2001 on American Hi-Fi's eponymous debut album, was written by frontman Stacy Jones, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Jones is first and foremost a drummer -- he played drums in his two previous bands (Letters from Cleo and Veruca Salt) and also plays drums for Miley Cyrus when she tours -- but he doesn't play drums for American Hi-Fi.

The song is the last one sampled on the Super Mash Bros track, "I'm An Adler Girl," a mashup that is just under three minutes long and which features samples from an eclectic group of songs -- including songs by Limp Bizkit, Mariah Carey, the Beastie Boys, Tommy Danger, and A-ha. (Don't tell me you've forgotten A-ha's big 1985 hit, "Take on Me"? It was only a #1 or #2 hit in the US and almost every European country worth mentioning -- including A-ha's native country of Norway.)

Anyone out there know what "I'm An Adler Girl" means?

I have no idea, despite an exhaustive research effort -- i.e., I entered "Adler girl" into Google, looked at the first screen of search results, and promptly gave up when I didn't get anything relevant.  (That's pretty much the way I do legal research when a client has a question.)

But it must be something pretty important, because the Super Mash Bros put a track titled "Adler Girl Part II (I Can Change!)" on their next album.

Here's the music video for "Flavor of the Weak."  (This song is really the mirror image of Taylor Swift's "You Belong with Me," which was featured in the previous 2 or 3 lines.  The only difference is that the singer in this song is a boy instead of a girl, and the object of the singer's crush is a girl, not a boy.)

Click below to order the song from Amazon: