Cheap Trick – "Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School" (1977)

I like you and you like me, yes?

Sorry but I had to gag you

Unlike the ephebophilic title character of today’s featured record, I did stay in high school – where I not only got all A’s in my high school mathematics classes, but also co-captained the school math team.

Those mad math skills come in very handy when it’s time for me to fill up my car with gas.

You might think choosing where to buy gasoline for your car isn’t that complicated.  But you would be wrong!  

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Let’s begin at the beginning.

My car takes 89 octane gasoline – often called “plus” or “mid-grade” to distinguish it from regular (87 octane) and premium (93) octane.

Did you know that if you mix gasolines with different octane levels, the overall octane number in your tank will be an average of the fuels you've mixed?  For example, mixing equal amounts of 87 and 93 octane will result in a blend with an octane rating of 90.  (That’s because 87 plus 93 equals 180, and 180 divided by two equals 90.)

So one way for me to get the 89 octane gas recommended for my car is to fill my tank with two parts 87 octane regular and one part 93 octane premium – 87 plus 87 plus 93 equals 267, and 267 divided by three equals 89.

Why would I want to go to the trouble of doing two transactions at the gas pump – filling my tank two-thirds full with 87 octane gas first, and then pumping enough 93 octane gas to end up with a full tank of 89 octane – when I could simply fill my tank with 89 octane fuel?

Check the prices for all three grades of gasoline the next time you stop by your local gas station.  I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that you’ll find that the price that the price for 89 octane is much closer to the price for 93 octane than it is to 87 octane.

For example, the Shell station nearest 2 or 3 lines world headquarters currently charges $3.01 for regular, $3.81 for mid-grade, and $4.01 for premium.

If the mid-grade at that station was priced in proportion to its octane content, it would be priced at $3.34 instead of $3.81.  This means that you can save money by mixing your own mid-grade at the pump.

Say you need 12 gallons of gas.  If you fill up with mid-grade at that station, you’d pay $46.72.  But if you bought eight gallons of regular and four gallons of premium, you’d pay only $40.12.

By mixing regular and premium in a 2:1 ratio rather than simply filling up from the mid-grade pump, you’d end up with the same amount of 89 octane fuel but you’d spend 14% less!

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How many of you shop at grocery stores that offer discounts on gasoline based on how much you spend on groceries?

In my area, one of the large grocery chains has a deal with Shell.  For every $100 you spend at one of that chain’s stores, you save 10¢ a gallon when you buy gas at a local Shell station.

Let’s say you spend $500 on groceries in a month.  That means you can save 50¢ a gallon on your next fillup.

But you can only use that discount once.  If you buy five gallons, you save $2.50 – but if you wait until you have room in your tank for 15 gallons, you save $7.50.  So it’s best to wait to use your discount until your tank is almost empty.

I have on occasion made people who are riding in my car very nervous because I will drive until I have only a few miles’ worth of gas left before I fill it up in order to save as much money as possible.

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I had a little less than a gallon left in my tank when I decided to fill up the other day.

I was sitting on an 80¢-per-gallon discount for Shell gas.  The easiest thing for me to have done would have been to go to the nearest Shell station and fill my tank with 89 octane mid-grade, which would have cost me $3.01 a gallon with my grocery-store discount – or $45.01 for the 15 gallons I needed.

Would I have saved money by mixing 87 and 93 octane?

Ordinarily, that would have been the way to go.  But if I bought ten gallons of regular and five gallons of premium, my grocery-store discount would have applied only to my purchase of regular.

Let’s do the math.  Ten gallons of regular at $2.21 a gallon ($3.01 minus the 80¢ discount) plus five gallons of premium at $4.01 a gallon adds up to $42.15.  

That’s a 6.4% savings.  Not bad, but could I do even better?

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I usually fill up my car at the neighborhood Marathon station, which consistently sells gas for significantly less than the Shell station.  (Both Shell and Marathon offer gasoline that meets the “Top Tier” standard established by leading automobile manufacturers, so I’m happy to buy either brand.)

But I can’t use my grocery-store discount at Marathon stations – it’s good only at Shell stations.

Gas at the Marathon station currently costs $2.83, $3.23, and $3.49 respectively for regular, mid-grade, and premium.  

So filling up with 15 gallons of Marathon mid-grade would have cost me $48.45 – quite a bit more than I would have paid for Shell gas if I had applied my grocery-store discount.

If I mixed my own 89 octane at the Marathon pump by buying ten gallons of regular and five gallons of premium, I would have paid only $45.75 – still almost 8% more than what I would have to pay at the Shell station.

So did I go to the Shell station and fill up my car with a mixture of regular and premium? 

No way, José!

What I did instead was to go to the Shell station and buy ten gallons of premium, which cost $2.21 a gallon with my grocery store discount.

Then I drove a few blocks to the Marathon station and bought five gallons of premium at $3.49 a gallon.

The total cost?  $22.10 plus $17.45 for a total of $39.55 – that’s an additional savings of  6.1%.

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Some of you may think all this is waaaaay too much trouble.  You’ll prefer to just fill up your tank with 89 octane mid-grade rather than mixing your own by purchasing regular and premium separately at the same station – much less going to two different stations.

Either you’re made of money, or your parents didn’t grow up during the Depression – neither of which is true for me.

There’s one other thing.  I’m as big a fan of free-market capitalism as you’ll ever meet, but I get a nice warm feeling inside when I figure out a way to stick it to a big business – even when only a few dollars are involved.

So screw you, Shell Oil (which had $284 billion in total revenues in 2024)!  

And up yours, Marathon Petroleum (which brought in $138 billion in that year)!  

2 or 3 lines (with total revenues of under $100 last year) is bending you over in the prison shower and having its way with both of you – and I’m telling all my loyal readers how to do the same!

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Click here to listen to Cheap Trick’s somewhat creepy “Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School,” which was released in 1977 on the band’s eponymous debut album.  (Somehow that album failed to crack the Billboard 200 album chart.)

Click here to buy “Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School” from Amazon.

Cheap Trick – "ELO Kiddies" (1977)

 

So you missed some school?

You know school’s for fools

Today money rules

My obsession with rewards-offering credit cards started out innocently enough.  I signed up for a few airline-branded cards that offered 50,000 free miles to new cardholders – good enough for a free roundtrip.

Then I got a credit card that offered a 1% rebate on all my non-airline-related purchases.  Life was good!

But eventually I was seduced by the appeal of a dizzying array of niche credit cards, each of which offered a unique discount – money for nothing.

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Did you know that Amazon has a credit card that gives Amazon Prime members 5% back on Amazon purchases.  Walmart offers a card that does the same when you buy from Walmart.

I don’t do the majority of my shopping at Amazon or Walmart, but I obtained cards from those two companies and set up my online accounts with them so that my purchases were billed to those credit cards instead of to my regular 2% card.

I also picked up an REI card, which gives you 5% back on REI purchases.  I do relatively little shopping at REI.  But if I use my REI card to pay my cell phone bill each month, I get free insurance on my cell phone – no more paying the cell phone company $10 or $15 a month to protect me if I break or lose that b*tch.

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About a year ago, I was filling up at my local Exxon station when I saw a brochure offering an Exxon/Mobil Mastercard.  That card gives you 10 cents off a gallon when you use it to charge Exxon/Mobil gas – which usually works out to be a bigger discount than the 2% rebate I get by using my regular credit card.

But for the first 60 days after you activate your Exxon/Mobil card, you get an additional 30 cents off per gallon.  If my math is right, that’s a total of 40 cents a gallon . . . which is about 10% off the current inflated price of Democrat gasoline.

Shortly after I got my Exxon/Mobil, I learned that BP offered a similar card – so I got one of in case I needed to buy gas at a BP station.

By the way, there two grocery store chains I shop at regularly have programs where your grocery purchases can earn you discounts of up to $1.00 per gallon on gas at Exxon/Mobil and BP stations, respectively.  That’s why I buy gas from those stations whenever possible.

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So far, so good.  But one day I got an e-mail from Amazon offering me a 10% discount on gasoline purchases for a 90-day period.

That’s few cents a gallon more in savings than my Exxon/Mobil and BP credit cards offered.  So I quickly switched to using my Amazon card to fill up.

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The Amazon card also promised me a 3% discount on restaurant and grocery store purchases.  That trumped my Harris Teeter credit card, even on purchases at Harris Teeter grocery stores – which is my go-to for the wild-caught salmon I eat three or four nights a week.  

But I also have a Citibank-issued Mastercard that gives me a 5% discount on whatever is my biggest purchase category each month – which is almost always groceries.  

The only catch on that card is that if you spend more than $500 on groceries in a billing cycle, the discount reverts to 1%.  (That’s chump change, bro!)

I try to keep a running mental tally of my monthly grocery purchases so I can switch credit cards at the appropriate moment.

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Every time you make a hotel reservation these days, you’re offered the opportunity to get a Hilton or Marriott or Wyndham or Holiday Inn credit card.  

If you take the company up on the offer, you’re given a sizable number of points good for free hotel stays.  Since I was thinking I might be staying at a Hilton-branded hotel for some time while the 2 or 3 lines organization was moving into its new digs, I jumped at the chance to get a Hilton card.

Later, I found out that I could save some jack by staying at a nearby Marriott property instead of the Hilton I had originally made a reservation at.  Naturally, I applied for a Marriott card.  

But much to my dismay, the bank that issued the Marriott-branded card turned me down!

My credit score was a few points higher than my SAT number – so what the f*ck was that all about?

“We have denied your application for a Marriott Bonvoy credit card because you have recently applied for an excessive number of new credit cards,” I was told.

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I bought Cheap Trick’s third studio album, Heavn Tonight, shortly after it was released in 1978.  The first track on that album was the brilliant “Surrender” – “Mommy’s alright/Daddy’s alright/They just seem a little weird” – and I just had to have it.

But I was not at all familiar with the rest of the band’s oeuvre until I started listening to the “Underground Garage” channel on Sirius/XM – you hear quite a few Cheap Trick songs there.

“ELO Kiddies” is the very first track on Cheap Trick’s eponymous debut album.  It’s a little bit m-o-n-e-y!

Click here to listen to “ELO Kiddies.”

Click here to buy the record 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:

Cheap Trick -- "Surrender" (1978)

Mommy's all right 

Daddy's all right

They just seem a little weird

Some of the Internet song lyric sites spell "all right" as "alright" in the lyrics for "Surrender."  But I've got news for you, boys and girls: "alright" isn't a real word.  It's a misspelling.  

Cheap Trick was formed in Rockford, Illinois, in 1973.  They may be the biggest thing to come out of Rockford since the Rockford Peaches, who were one of the founding members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.  (The Peaches, which won four championships during the league's 12-year existence, were featured in the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own.)

Rockford (the biggest city in Illinois outside of Chicago and its metropolitan area) fell on hard times about the same time that Cheap Trick was at its peak of popularity.  The city was a regular on "Worst Cities in America" lists in the eighties and nineties.  As of 2009, Rockford had a 12.5% unemployment rate, and fewer than half of its high-school students were graduating.  

Lead guitarist Rick Nielsen, a Rockford native, has remained true to his roots.  In 2007, Nielsen announced that he was going to build a $25 million restaurant and hotel named Rick's.  Some of his famous collection of rare and exotic guitars -- he owns 2000 guitars altogether -- would be displayed in the new restaurant.  Alas, it appears that the project never got off the ground.  

Here's a five-neck Hamer guitar that Nielsen plays:

"Surrender" is featured in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which I would rank as one of the top five high-school movies of all time.  In this scene, ticket scalper Mike Damone (played by Robert Romanus)  is trying to unload a couple of tickets to a Cheap Trick concert on a girl at his high school:

"Surrender" is my favorite Cheap Trick song.  Heaven only knows what the words mean.  Click here to see what Rap Genius has to say about the lyrics -- which isn't much.  (Feel free to sign up and contribute your own comments if you have some brilliant insight to share -- or even if you don't.)

I have a vivid memory of listening to the Heaven Tonight album -- "Surrender" was its first track -- one night in the summer of 1978, shortly after it was released.  Back then, I played in a weekly pickup co-ed softball game with a bunch of other young Federal Trade Commission attorneys, after which we adjourned for pizza and beer.  On this particular evening, a few of us didn't stop drinking just because the bar closed for the night -- we ended up at my place.

The front of the Heaven Tonight album

That summer, I was housesitting a very nice suburban home near the DC-Maryland line.  The couple who owned the house were members of a prominent Washington family who had gone off on an extended vacation.  The husband must have been a hunter -- I remember finding a frozen duck in the basement freezer that night, which inspired us to engage in an impromptu game of bowling.

One of the softball players who was at the house that night was a law student intern named Dianne.  Dianne was a delight -- she had a great sense of humor.

The back of the album

That sense of humor came in handy a few years later when she was delivering her first child.  After the baby was born, Dianne excitedly asked her husband who she looked like.  "Actually, she looks a lot like the mailman," her husband answered.  

I remember totally punking another female law student one day in the office.  (I didn't accomplish very much work in my first few years at the FTC.  No one seemed to care very much.)  Dianne had helped me set up this particular practical joke, which was so crude that I still blush today just thinking about it.  (If you're a male friend of mine, e-mail me and I'll share the details.  If you're a female friend of mine, e-mail me pretending to be a male friend if you want the scoop.)

Anyway, the other female law student was as shocked by the fact that her friend and fellow feminist Dianne had chosen to help me pull off this stunt as she was by the stunt itself.  "So much for sisterhood," Dianne said with a shrug.

Here's "Surrender":

Click here to order the song from Amazon: