Wet Leg – "Chaise Longue" (2021)

All day long

On the chaise longue

My dog spends all night – but not all day – on a chaise longue:

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Chaise longue is French for “long chair.”  It’s my favorite piece of furniture because you can make the transition from reading a book to taking a nap without ever leaving a chaise longue – it’s perfect for either activity.

I don’t see why a chaise longue is classified as a chair.  To me, a chair is something that you sit on with your feet on the floor.  

It’s possible to sit in a chaise longue with your feet on the floor.  But doesn’t that sort of defeat the  purpose of a chaise longue?

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Have you ever thought about how many different types of furniture have English names derived from French words?

In addition to chaise longue, there’s armoire, bureau, couch, etagére, and wardrobe (among others).

Many of the terms we use for lingerie are derived from French words as well: e.g., brassiere, bustier, negligée, peignoir . . . and, of course, lingerie itself.

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“Chaise Longue” was released as a single in 2021 by Wet Leg, a British musical duo consisting of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers.

Teasdale has the primary role in the Wet Leg videos I’ve watched, all of which are pretty damn twee.  She’s front and center in the “Chaise Longue” video, doing the singing while Chambers stays in the background, wearing a bucket-shaped straw hat that completely obscures her face.

Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers

The two women became friends while they were in college in the UK, and I can picture them meeting at a party at school.  Quiet little Hester sitting in a dark corner  when Rhian sashays over and sits next to her.  “Check out what the guy with the red hair is wearing,” Rhian says after a moment. “Do you think they make those pants for men, too?”  Hester would snort, and then sit and wait for another bon mot from Rhian she could laugh at.  After that, they would be fast friends.

Teasdale is super cute, but I feel like she would be super annoying to be with.  She usually has this incredibly smug and self-satisfied look on her face – I’m guessing that men have been kissing her ass for a long time, and that such ass-kissing has convinced her that she is the cat’s pajamas.

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I decided to feature this song on 2 or 3 lines after hearing it on Drew Carey’s “Friday Night Freak-Out” show on Sirius/XM radio.  (It may be hard to believe, but Drew Carey – of all people – consistently plays more interesting music than any other Sirius/XM DJ.  Go figure.)

I was planning to quote these lines at the top of this post:

Is your muffin buttered?

Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?

But upon further review, I decided not to because those lines aren’t original to Wet Leg – they were “borrowed” from a famous scene in the 2004 Lindsay Lohan movie, Mean Girls.

Click here to watch that Mean Girls scene.

Click here to watch Wet Leg performing “Chaise Longue” a month ago in Hollywood.  (Based on their outfits, I'm guessing they shot a cheerleader-porn video after that show.)

Click here to view the official music video for “Chaise Longue.”

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:

Procol Harum – "Shine On Brightly" (1968)

 

And even my befuddled brain

Is shining brightly, quite insane

From the Guardian (formerly the Manchester Guardian):

Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is the most-played song in [UK] public places of the last 75 years . . . . The song is followed by Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” at number two, while the Everly Brothers' tender fifties hit “All I Have to Do Is Dream” is at number three. 

The rankings were compiled by Phonographic Performance Limited, the company that licenses songs on behalf of recording artists.  They are based on the number of times the records in question have been played in public – whether on the radio, or in restaurants and bars, or in elevators, dentists’ offices, or airports.

It’s a very good song – musically and lyrically – but it’s worn out its welcome as far as I’m concerned.   I’ve heard it waaaaay too many times.  Enough already!

By the way, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is not the most-often played record in the United States – that honor goes to “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” by the Righteous Brothers (which edged out “Yesterday”).

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Most people don’t know much about the recorded oeuvre of Procol Harum – the group was named after a friend’s Burmese cat – other than “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

Procol Harum

But that’s not the only very interesting track the group recorded.

For example, there’s “Conquistador,” which was Procol Harum’s second highest charting single.

I bought the group’s sixth studio album, Grand Hotel, largely on the strength of its title track.  (I doubt I listened to the rest of that album more than once.)

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I’ve recently heard a couple of other Procol Harum songs that I like on the Sirius/XM “Underground Garage” show.

I think my favorite is “Shine on Brightly,” the title track from their second album, which was released in 1968:

Like “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Shine on Brightly” features a Bach-like organ part and rather pretentious lyrics.

Here are those lyrics to “Shine On Brightly” – hopefully Procol Harum’s copyright lawyers won’t have a conniption fit as the result of me quoting them in their entirety:

My Prussian-blue electric clock’s

Alarm bell rings, it will not stop

And I can see no end in sight

And search in vain by candlelight

For some long road that goes nowhere

For some signpost that is not there

And even my befuddled brain

Is shining brightly, quite insane

The chandelier is in full swing

As gifts for me the three kings bring

Of myrrh and frankincense, I’m told

And fat old Buddhas carved in gold

And though it seems they smile with glee

I know in truth they envy me

And watch as my befuddled brain

Shines on brightly quite insane

Above all else, confusion reigns

And though I ask, no one explains

My eunuch friend has been and gone

He said that I must soldier on

And though the ferris wheel spins ’round

My tongue it seems has run the ground

And croaks as my befuddled brain

Shines on brightly, quite insane

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What the hell all that is supposed to mean is beyond me.

If I ever get the chance, I’ll ask Keith Reid – who wrote the lyrics to “Shine On Brightly” and pretty much every other Procol Harum song – what he had in mind.

Reid has said that “the dark tone of his lyric writing derives from his familial experience of the Holocaust.”  Reid’s father was a Holocaust survivor – as was the mother of Kiss co-founder Gene Simmons.

Gene Simmons

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Reid is purely a lyricist – he’s never performed with Procol Harum.  (He’s not a singer and doesn’t play an instrument.)

Robert Hunter had a somewhat similar role with the Grateful Dead – he wrote the lyrics for a number of their most famous songs but never performed with the group (although he did record a number of solo albums).

Click here to listen to “Shine On, Brightly”:

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:

Poutyface – "Never F*ckin' Know" (2021)

 

I guess we’ll never f*ckin’ know

I tried to piece it all together

I wish I could rеmember

The late David Cornwall wrote spy novels – including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley’s People, and The Little Drummer Girl – under the pen name John le Carré.  

Cornwall worked for British intelligence for several years before deciding to become a full-time novelist.  When he was 85, he wrote an autobiography of sorts titled The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life.  In that book, Cornwall talked about some of the real people and actual incidents that were the inspiration for certain of the characters and events in his novels.

Cornwall assures his readers that he never “consciously falsified” an event or story in The Pigeon Tunnel, and I take him at his word.

But he was keenly aware that the dividing line between fact and fiction in his books and those of other writers is blurry and full of holes.  From The Pigeon Tunnel: 

These are true stories told from memory – to which you are entitled to ask, what is truth, and what is memory to a creative writer in what we may delicately call the evening of his life? . . . To the creative writer, fact is raw material, not his taskmaster, but his instrument, and his job is to make it sing.

“Was there ever such a thing as pure memory?” Cornwall asks.  “I doubt it.”  He continues:

Even when we convince ourselves that we’re being dispassionate, sticking to the bald facts with no self-serving decorations or omissions, pure memory remains as elusive as a bar of wet soap.  Or it does for me, after a lifetime of blending experience with imagination. . . .

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A lot of the stories I’ve told in 2 or 3 lines over the past dozen-plus years never happened that way.

But while they aren’t true in a literal sense, that doesn’t mean they aren’t true – or that I’m a liar.  

Do you believe the Bible is literally true?  If not, would you say that Moses and the Prophets and the four Evangelists lied?

It has recently come into vogue among journalists to make pronouncements that particular politicians have lied.  (Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.)  

Such pronouncements are just as misleading as the half-truths that are the stock in trade of most politicians.

Politicians almost never tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth – and neither do journalists.  Both groups are often guilty of giving their audiences part of the story and leaving out the rest – usually because they are trying to persuade that audience to take a side.  

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The point I’m trying to make is that there is really no such thing as objective truth – truth is essentially subjective.

You’re fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

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Poutyface doesn’t really lie in “Never F*ckin’ Know” but it’s clear that we can’t be sure that her account of the party she attended is accurate.

That’s because she got so drunk that she has no memory of what happened until she woke up the next morning.

Poutyface

She tries to piece the evening together from various clues she discovers the next  morning.  

For example, she knows she drank waaaaay too much not only because she can’t remember anything that happened in the last eight hours or so, but also because she is still drunk when she wakes up.  (I know that feeling, although it’s been many, many years since I had so much to drink that I still felt out of it when I woke up the next morning.)

Did she sleep with some random stranger while non compos mentis?  It’s certainly possible – her clothes are somewhat dishabille and someone has left Tylenol and a sympathy note on the nightstand that’s next to the bed she finds herself in.  

What is certain is that she has thrown up all over herself at some point:

I wash the puke out of my hair

It's like I wasn’t even there

As she is cleaning herself up, her hostess walks by and offers this cheery comment: “I’m just glad you didn't choke on your own vomit and die.”

Click here to listen to “Never F*ckin’ Know.”

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:

Steppenwolf – "Rock Me" (1969)

 

Rock me, baby

Rock me, baby

All night long

I’m sure you’re familiar with all of the following recording artists, who have collectively sold many millions of records:

– ABBA

– Joan Baez

– Bee Gees

– Whitney Houston

– Janet Jackson

– The Notorious B.I.G.

– Nina Simone

– Steppenwolf

– Cat Stevens

– Donna Summer

Nine of those ten artists have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, while the tenth has not.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland

Can you guess which is the one who has not yet been honored by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

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Believe it or not, the one artist on that list that most deserves to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is the one that is still waiting to be inducted.

I’m talking about Steppenwolf, who were nominated in 2017 but failed to be voted in.

But while Steppenwolf has a song in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – “Born to Be Wild” was included in the first group of individual songs to be inducted into the Hall in 2018 – Steppenwolf as a group is still on the outside looking in.

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Don’t get me wrong.

I can’t get enough of “Dancing Queen” and “Stayin’ Alive,” and I’m second to no man when it comes to my love of rap music.  (In addition to the Notorious B.I.G., the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has inducted several other hip-hop superstars – Jay-Z, the Beastie Boys, Tupac Shakur, and N.W.A. among them.)

But if you’re going to put disco and rap performers in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, why not throw in some country-western artists and an opera singer or two while you’re at it?

The last time I checked, the Pro Football Hall of Fame didn’t include any rugby players, and there were no fast-pitch softball players in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

So why are Whitney Houston and Cat Stevens and Donna Summer in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame while Steppenwolf isn’t?

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“Rock Me” was the first single from Steppenwolf’s third album, At Your Birthday Party, which was released in 1969:

I bought the album when I was a high-school senior, and purt near played it to death.  Many times I put it on and listened to it straight through – it’s a good album.

Click here to listen to “Rock Me.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Cheap Trick – "Taxman, Mr. Thief" (1977)

You work hard, you make money . . .

Now the taxman is out to get you

Have you filed your 2021 tax return yet?

If not, you are f*cked six ways from Sunday, buddy!

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Actually, things aren’t that bad for you procrastinators . . . as least not yet.

While today used to be the deadline for filing your federal tax return with the IRS, you now have until Monday, April 18, to git ’er done.

(Almost!)

You can thank the District of Columbia for those extra days.  In 2005, DC made April 16 – the day in 1862 that President Lincoln signed a law that freed about 3000 slaves in Your Nation’s Capital – an official DC holiday.  

For some reason, the federal government observes that District of Columbia holiday – maybe because the federal government is headquartered in Washington.

Because April 16 falls on a Saturday this year, the legal holiday is today.  Because of that, the nationwide deadline for filing federal tax returns this year is Monday, April 18.

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Unless you live in Massachusetts and Maine, of course.  They celebrate a state holiday called Patriots’ Day on the third Monday in April – which is April 18 this year.  So residents of those two states don’t have to file their federal taxes until April 19.

The Battle of Lexington

Patriots’ Day commemorates the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord – also the battle of Menotomy, another skirmish between the rebels and the redcoats that took place in Massachusetts on April 19.

(I’ve heard of Lexington and Concord, but I’ve never heard of Menotomy.  Have you?)

But if those battles took place in Massachusetts, why is Patriots’ Day a holiday in Maine?  Because Maine was part of Massachusetts from colonial times until 1820, when Maine became a state.

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The Boston Marathon takes place on Patriots’ Day.  Since 1959, the Red Sox have had a home baseball game on Patriots’ Day.

And because the finish line of the Boston Marathon isn’t far from Fenway Park, the Red Sox schedule their Patriots’ Day game to begin at 11:00 am, which is before the marathon runners get to the finish line – so the baseball crowd is inside the stadium when the marathon crowd starts to arrive. 

I’m sure you remember the terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon of 2013, which injured hundreds and resulted in the deaths of three people.  

Two police officers subsequently died from wounds they suffered at the hands of the terrorists.

One of the terrorists was killed while resisting arrest.  His brother has been sentenced to death.  (A federal appeals court overturned his death sentence in 2020, but the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the verdict last month.  However, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has imposed a moratorium on federal executions pending a review of federal polices and procedures related to capital punishment.)

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Back to Emancipation Day.

Lincoln freed the slaves in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862.  

About five months later, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in the 11 states that seceded from the Union – not including Tennessee and the parts of Louisiana that were then under Union control – as of January 1, 1863.

The slaves in Tennessee and those parts of Louisiana and in the slave states that did not secede from the Union – Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia (which essentially seceded from Virginia in 1861) – were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.  

Several of those states (Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia) freed their slaves before the Civil War ended.  But the slaves in Delaware and Kentucky were not officially freed until the 13th Amendment was ratified in December 1865.

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“So where does Juneteenth fit in all this?” you’re probably asking yourself.

Good question!

On June 19, 1865, a Union general in Texas issued a proclamation reiterating the purported emancipation of slaves in Texas by President Lincoln some two and a half years earlier.  Freedmen living in Texas began to celebrate their emancipation on “Juneteenth” beginning one year later, and in 1979, Juneteenth became an official Texas holiday.

Other former slave states celebrated the freeing of the slaves on other dates.  For example, Florida commemorated emancipation on May 20 annually, while Mississippians celebrated on May 8 and Viriginians  celebrated on April 3.

But it was “Juneteenth” – a date with no legal significance whatsoever and which had symbolic significance in only one state (Texas) – was chosen as the date for a federal holiday commemorating the emancipation of the slaves in 2020.

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This post was intended to be about taxes – not about holidays that celebrate the emancipation of the slaves.  (Or Patriots’ Day.)

That’s why our featured song is Cheap Trick’s “Taxman, Mr. Thief,” which was released in 1977 on there band’s eponymous debut album.

I bought Cheap Trick’s third album (Heaven Tonight) largely because it included “Surrender,” a brilliant little record that really should have been included in the first class of 2 OR 3 LINES “SILVER DECADE” HALL OF FAME inductees.

But Cheap Trick has recorded a lot of other great songs – “ELO Kiddies” and “He’s a Whore” (also from the first album) and a cover of the Move’s “California Man” among them.

Who can forget the scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High where Mike Damone tries to scalp tickets to a Cheap Trick concert?  (You can click here to watch that scene if you did forget it.) 

“Taxman, Mr. Thief” is clearly un hommage to George Harrison’s “Taxman,” which was included on the Beatles’ 1966 album, Revolver. 

American rock stars today don’t have quite as much to complain about when it comes to income taxes as the Beatles did in 1966.  “There’s one for you, nineteen for me” was no exaggeration – the top tax bracket in the UK back then was 95%.  

The U.S. income tax system isn’t that onerous.  But despite what some people believe, it’s extremely top-heavy.

Did you know that about 60% of American households paid zero federal income tax last year?

In 2018, the richest 1% of Americans earned not quite 21% of all income, but paid just over 40% of all federal income taxes.  

The top 10% of Americans paid about the same amount in taxes as the other 90% combined.

By the way, I’m not in that top 10% (much less the top 1%).  I’m retired, so my annual income is quite modest – as is my tax bill.  

Not that I’m complaining.  There are a lot of people much worse off than I am – you don’t have to worry about 2 or 3 lines using crowdfunding to feather its nest.

Click here to listen to “Taxman, Mr. Thief.”

Click below to buy the record from Amazon:

Electric Six – "Danger! High Voltage" (2002)

Fire in the disco!

Fire in the disco!

Fire in the Taco Bell!

[NOTE: You may find today’s post boring – you may even hate it.  But I’m very pleased with it because it doesn’t simply recount some incident from my life, or analyze the lyrics or musical structure of a song – which is what many of my 2 or 3 lines posts do.  For better or for worse, today’s post is much more a creation of my imagination.  I started with nothing more than a photo of a bumper sticker, and ended up with something that I never saw coming until it was too late.]

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While I was riding my bike near the University of Maryland today, I came across this bumper sticker on a parked Chevy Trax:

I caught a glimpse of the guy who was driving the car, and I can say with a high degree of confidence that at least one of the statements on that bumper sticker is a lie.  (Maybe both, but at least one.)

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“Danger! High Voltage” was released by the Electric Six in 2002, and made it all the way to #2 on the UK pop singles charts early the next year.  It didn’t sell at all in the U.S.  (What is wrong with you Americans???)  

The critics mostly loved the record.  One British publication called it “insanely catchy,” which is true enough.

It’s a great record, but its music video makes “Danger! High Voltage” exponentially greater.  (If the record is “insanely catchy,” the music video is “insanely insane.”)

I was unfamiliar with “Danger! High Voltage” until I heard it Drew Carey’s Sirius/XM radio show (“Friday Night Freak-Out”) a few weeks ago.  Drew, I’m sending you a heartfelt “Thanks, bro!” for sharing so many great records with me!

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The woman in the “Danger! High Voltage” is a French actress named Tina Kanarek.  (She isn’t singing on the record – apparently Jack White of the White Stripes is singing the vocal part that she lip-synchs to in the video.)

Tina Kanarek

There is little information about Ms. Kanarek on the internet.

The South London Theatre’s website has several photos of her performing in that community theatre’s  productions back in the sixties and seventies, and a brief bio:  

Tina was a Gold Medal graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which she attended with certain other fine actors who might still be recognized, such as Albert Finney, Alan Bates and Peter O'Toole. Her professional career was cut short by a serious bout of hepatitis which she caught on tour, so that most of her work after that was in the community theatre. 

Here’s a photo of her from a 1968 production of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone: 

And here’s a photo of her from a 1971 production of Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw:

She was SEVENTY-TWO YEARS OLD when the “Danger! High Voltage” video was made.

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Here’s an exchange relating to Tina Kanarek that I found in an online discussion forum:

Cougar Hunter:  Bizarre video.  But, are you also attracted to the woman?  I love her.

(I second that emotion!)

Scott K: IMO, she’s past the point of do-able.

(I have two things to say to Scott.  First, you are clueless when it comes to what makes a woman hot.  Second, there is no hyphen in “doable,” YOU MORON!)

BrendanO: That’s a great “Wrong hole!” face she makes.

(That may be the funniest line ever written.  But if you don’t get it, you’ll have to ask a friend what it means because I’m too embarrassed to explain it.)

Isvoid:  It’s time she walked out on the ice to be eaten by polar bears and then picked clean by arctic buzzards.

(Isvoid is as clueless as Scott K.)

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I was very unhappy to find out that Tina Kanarek died in 2006.  I can’t imagine I will ever find a woman who’s my age and so dementedly attractive.  (Would “attractively demented” be better?  Neither one sounds quite right, but hopefully you catch my drift.)

Of course, if I had been thinking straight – thinking with the big head instead of the little head – I would have realized that Tina would be NINETY-TWO today if she were still alive.  (The video was shot twenty years ago, after all.)

It’s possible that she would have been just as hot at 92 than she was at 72, of course.

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Tina Kanarek’s cause of death was breast cancer.

Once you’ve watched the “Danger! High Voltage” video, you’ll probably wonder if her cancer might have been caused by the electric-light bra she wore in it – I know I did.  

(Dick Valentine, the other character in the video, is wearing a sort of codpiece that lights up in similar fashion.  Unlike his co-star, he apparently he suffered no ill effects – at least he’s still alive.)

[NOTE TO EDITOR: BE SURE AND DELETE THIS LAST SECTION – WHICH IS IN VERY BAD TASTE – BEFORE PUBLISHING THIS POST.  ACTUALLY, MAYBE YOU SHOULD DELETE THE ENTIRE POST.]

Click here to listen to “Danger! High Voltage.”

Click on the link below to buy that record from Amazon: