I Aaaaaaam, I am Superman...and I can do anything

Disclaimer: This segment contains descriptions of me in my underwear.

I sometimes have to stay in the hotel where I work, for different meetings or things during the day or whatever. I like to check into the rooms with access for handicapped people. It's just because, in addition to having the best parking spaces, it turns out they have the coolest showers too. I know there are some people who would at this point say something stupid about how it's not fair that handicapped people get all the good stuff. If this is what you're thinking now, I am choosing to ignore you.

Anyway, I checked into a room on the 9th floor and got up and took a shower and while I was getting dressed I pulled back the blinds to let in some light. I stood there for a minute looking out the window, in my underwear, high above the city, and it occured to me that this is probably how Superman feels.

And then it occurred to me that here, alone in my room in my underwear, I am Superman.

Favorite ABBA Songs

I work with lots of young folks and it seems like talk with young folks a lot. You can talk to a person like ten or even fifteen years younger than you, for a long time, on any topic you can imagine, and you wouldn't hardly be able to tell the age difference. Except for one topic, and that is music.

I talk to kids all the time who never even heard of the Doobie Brothers. It's sad. It almost makes you want to form some kind of charity association and have a telethon for them.

I don't know why it's this way, because I listen to stuff that was recorded before I was born, like Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley. But anyway, that's not what I'm talking about.

It occurred to me tonight that, unless they're too young to remember, Most everybody has a favorite ABBA song. Sure, they're cheesy and most of their music sucks, but they recorded like a bajillion songs and most everybody has at least one that they like.

For me, it's "Waterloo". "Waterloo" is kind of bouncy and happy and I never heard it enough to get totally sick of it. The title does conjure images of a bloody Napoleanic defeat, but other than that it just kind of makes you feel good.

Well, there is another bad thing about it. Like many ABBA songs, "Waterloo" can get stuck in your head. This can be excruciating. It's especially annoying when you don't know all the words.

Waterloo!
Couldn't (blah blah) if I wanted to!
Waterloo!
(blah blah blah blah blah) forevermore!

Some people might not like "Waterloo" though. There's lots of different ABBA songs, and most folks have at least one that they like. Or one that they hate less than the others.

Here's what I hate, though. When you ask someone what's their favorite ABBA song and they say "Dancing Queen". Because this was like their biggest hit, and if you asked them to name any ABBA song at all, then most likely this would be the only one they would be able to think of. Anyone who says this completely lacks imagination. But they also have bad taste, because that song sucks.

You are the dancing queen
Feel the beat
On the tamborine

That's just so stupid. There's not even a tamborine in that song. And who plays the tamborine anyway? The only time you ever even see a tamborine is on the Archies, but I suspect that that was just so the illustrators could show off the curves on Veronica's cartoon body when she shook it against her hip. And the little red-haired girl on the Partridge Family played a tamborine too, but I think that was just to keep her from looking bored while the rest of them...pretended to play their instruments, too. But I don't ever remember even once hearing a tamborine in any of the songs by either the Archies or the Partridge Family (here is a picture of Tracy Partridge, does she look bored?)

Well, since I think about it, there is one instance I can think of where someone actually played a tamborine (outside of kindergarten, I mean). Linda McCartney. But that was because she had no musical talent. I'm not saying anything bad about Linda McCartney, now. First of all because she's dead, but mostly because Paul McCartney has enough loose change in his sock drawer to have me killed. Linda knew she didn't have any talent, and the only reason she was in that band was to hang out with Paul, but that's cool. It's not like she was stealing someone else's job, and the music never suffered, and plus they were married like 150 years.

But now that's way off-topic, but the point is that I just hate that song "Dancing Queen". I would rather hear those four people in ABBA scractching their fingernails against a huge Swedish chalkboard than hear that song. And I would rather someone tell me that they never heard of ABBA than tell me that "Dancing Queen" is their favorite ABBA song.

ABBA was probably the only Swedish musical group to make it big in the United States. Was Lawrence Welk Swedish? Anyway, most Americans probably couldn't even name a single other Swedish person. Ingrid Bergman? The Swedish Chef? I don't know, really. All I know about Sweden is meatballs and massages. And I hate those meatballs.

From the Mail Bag (November 20)

I for one love ABBA! Just for the record I can't tell you one favorite ABBA song...

I can how ever tell you that I love:

The winner takes it all
Fernando
Knowing me knowing you

and another one that I can't think of at this time...but I will let you know...

November 28:

The whole point of my email about ABBA songs was to tell you that I have favorite ABBA songs even though I am 24 years old.

Sorry, I didn't get that. Well, my point about ABBA is not that young folks can't HAVE favorite ABBA songs, but that the ones who DON'T have them are too young to remember them. Kids today........

Shining A Light Into The Cave of Late-Night TV

I write a lot about late-night TV, but that's only because I stay up all night.

I never noticed before how many ugly people you see on TV late at night. There's low-budget local commercials and infomercials. Cheesy B-Movies. Talk shows. Realty-type game shows and home video things, and COPS and practical joke shows and those real-life court things. Watching TV late at night is like shining a flashlight into a cave somewhere.

There are some good-looking women on. There are those commercials for 900-lines to talk to "real local girls". Or their breasts. But they all look trashy and I don't find that attractive. There's a real cute girl in a Wal-Mart commercial. Like, get attached to her, because we're going to see her in a lot more stuff. And here's a really beautiful woman singing gospel songs on the Pentecostal Channel, but it looks like it costs more to fix her big hair than my car is even worth.

There is a very cute girl on this one commercial, and she's riding around in a boat and smiling real pretty and I'm like, yeah, she's cool.....and then in the voiceover she starts talking about this great drug she's using to treat genital warts. It's like watching a Sara Lee commercial and having a worm crawl out of the cake, or a beer commercial with all the good-looking people on jet-skis and volleyball and bikinis, all start heaving. Maybe I would feel differently if I ever actually needed to take that drug, but I just can't shake the feeling that they're trying to make Herpes sound like fun.

It's not that I have an obsessive fantasy life, or even that I have to see good-looking people all the time. It's just that most of these people are so deeply unattractive that one has to wonder what inspired them to go on TV in the first place.