Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Hey, Freddie. Whatcha doing?
“Love fifteen, darling.”
Okay.
“Unless that tall Argentinian bloke shows up. Then, I’ll love sixteen.”
I walked into that one. Why are you wearing clogs?
“It’s tennis, darling. Everything else I had was too strappy.”
Sneakers. You wear sneakers to play tennis.
“Oh, that sounds ghastly.”
Have fun sittin’ on the bench and playin’ with the pencils.
“The Irishman is an elegiac meditation on aging, and Scorsese’s best since [INSERT MOVIE THAT IS NOT THE ONE ABOUT THE MONKS WITH KYLO REN AND SPIDER-MAN HERE].”
Classical music adhere’s to Sturgeon’s Law just as all other genres do; ninety percent of it just fuckers in expensive clothes playing scales.
OR
Jobs One Can Excel At Into One’s Dotage
Jobs One Cannot
“Jenkins!”
“Yes, King Priam?”
“Come look at what the Greeks brought us!”
“Uh-huh. The giant wooden horse. I saw it. Actually, I was meaning to talk to you about it.”
“I don’t want to talk about anything but! I love this thing!”
“Your Highness, don’t you think it’s a little bit weird?”
“I think it’s weird we haven’t had a giant wooden horse before now. I’m ashamed we lived in such a way. I mean: we’re Troy. We’re horse people.”
“We love horses, sir.”
“Big horse folks, us Trojans. Athenians like to make speeches and invent systems of governance. Spartans are into fitness. The Thebans…well, you know what the Thebans are into, Jenkins.”
“I do, sir.”
“But the Trojans are horse-people. We’re like a rich asshole’s spoiled daughter.”
“We have an equiphilic society, sir.”
“Makes us easy to shop for. Oh, just look at it, Jenkins!”
“I am looking, sir. May I ask you a question?”
“Of course I fucked a sheep when I was younger, Jenkins. It’s 1200 BC. We’re all sheep-rogering savages, even the nobility.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“Go on, then.”
“Has anyone inspected the gift?”
“Thoroughly!”
“Ah. Then I’m no longer worried.”
“And no card was found. Which is a little tacky on behalf of the Greeks. You always put in a card.”
“How close was the inspection, sir?”
“The men looked everywhere. One guy thought it might have blown under a table, so he lifted the table up, but it wasn’t under there. We did discover one important thing about the horse, though.”
“Yes?”
“Poplar. Or ash. The men were split down the middle. Both are fine woods for building giant horses out of.”
“Right. Your Highness, did anyone look inside of the horse?”
“Jenkins, are you from Ur?”
“No, sir.”
“Because you babble on.”
“Wonderful, sir.”
“Had that one in my pocket. Well, not my pocket. Pockets won’t be invented for 3,000 years. But you know what I mean.”
“I do so enjoy your wit. Sir, we really need to have someone look inside the horse.”
“Why?”
“I can literally see people moving around in there. Look for yourself. There are gaps between some of the pieces of wood, and you can see shadows.”
“Ooh, maybe it’s clockwork. What time is it? Perhaps it will chime the hour.”
“It is not a cuckoo horse, Your Highness.”
“But I’m cuckoo for it!”
“Yes, sir. Please, Your Highness, begging your indulgence: just lemme poke a bunch of spears through it.”
“What!? Never! Hell of way to treat a gift, Jenkins! What have the Greeks done to deserve this kind of disrespect?”
“They killed both of your sons, sir.”
“Oh, yes. I know this, Jenkins. And I grieve their loss.”
…
“But the horse makes up for a lot of it.”
“Oh, sir.”
“Have you seen the detail work on the head? What nostrils!”
“Your Highness, there is something incredibly hinky about all of this. They just left? After ten years? The Greeks just gave up and went home and left us this enormous wooden horse that I am POSITIVE I can hear people moving around in?”
“Jenkins, last time you were positive about something, I ended up investing ten grand in a drive-through rib joint.”
“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”
“No one wants to eat ribs in their car, Jenkins! It’s too messy for the car!”
“Lesson learned, sir. Please let’s focus on the present.”
“Horsey.”
“You are fond of it, sir, and that’s your kingly right. One more question: Who precisely gave it to us? Was it Agamemnon?”
“No. Odysseus.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Jenkins! Watch your tone!”
“Odysseus, sir? He might as well be Loki, sir. Or Bugs Bunny. The man is simply not to be trusted.”
“He did steal my watch.”
“It’s a trick, Your Highness. Let’s just set it on fire and be done with the whole ordeal.”
“Tell you what, Jenkins. We’ll sleep on it.”
“Let me at least leave a guard.”
“You may leave Sleepy Bob to guard my horse tonight.”
“We’re all gonna die.”
Hey, Michael J. Fox.
“Howdy.”
…
…
…
Is your favorite song Shakedown Street?
“Y’just couldn’t help yourself, huh?”
No.
Hey, Conan the US Army dog. Whatcha doing?
“I have no idea.”
You’re a dog.
“Yeah. I’m relatively whip-smart, though. Compared to a dachshund, I’m Einstein. But I’m still a dog, and I got no idea what’s happening. This is a new place. Never been here before.”
It’s called the White House.
“There are odors you wouldn’t believe in here. Little tip from me to you? Someone has been doing black magick in this building.”
You can’t possibly know that.
“Trust my nose. I’m good at two things: smelling shit, and biting dicks off.”
You bite a lot of dicks off?
“Yeah. It’s classified, so don’t tell anyone. But, yeah. I get their balls, too. Usually.”
You okay with that?
“I am okay with being a good boy, and I am told I am a good boy when I bite off dicks. But not, you know, random dicks. Unauthorized dick-biting makes me a VERY BAD BOY, and I cannot do that again.”
You went freelancing?
“We all make mistakes when we’re young.”
Hey, man. No judgments here.
“Who are these people? This guy I am with is not The Guy, but I know him. He’s good people. Generous with the scratches. Got a lot of fetch in him. Good people, but not The Guy.”
Your handler’s identity is classified.
“Love him. This guy’s good, but not The Guy. What’s with Milkbone here?”
That’s Mike Pence. He’s the Vice-President.
“Look how close I am to his bacon and eggs. One shouted German word and breakfast would be over.”
Don’t eat Mike Pence’s dick. Wait.
…
No. Don’t eat his dick. Hey, how does that work with attack dogs? What if, like, I knew the secret German words?
“What about it?”
Could I shout them at you and get you to do stuff?
“No. What are you, an idiot? You’re not The Guy. I only listen to The Guy. The commands are in German to keep people from knowing what he’s telling me, not because I’m some sort of Manchurian Candidate that goes insane and starts murdering at the sound of German.”
I think it’s also in German because German is a scary-sounding language.
“One would assume. What is this thing? It’s shaped like a person, but doesn’t smell like one.”
That’s a person. He’s the President.
“What does that mean?”
Alpha.
“Oh, God, you’re shitting me. You made this your alpha? I can smell him decaying. And he’s petrified of me.”
The man does not like animals.
“I need you to listen to me: I know what humans smell like. He doesn’t smell like that. Call the authorities.”
He is the authorities.
“I could…you know.”
Eat his genitals?
“Yeah.”
…
…
…
No.
“Took you a while.”
I’m still mulling it over.
So many people seem to be ranking things lately–pop culture ephemera, the like–and why not me? The world needs my numinations. I shall tell you which discrete item is better than other discrete items, and by how much. My topic, Blues Brothers Band Musicians Ranked By Acting Ability, is in honor of Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn, whose birthday it is today, and I am an important American literary voice.
ONE: Alan “Mr. Fabulous” Rubin
Look at that marvelous bag of sleaze; his hair steals the scene by itself, but then the script gives him a good line–No, sir, Mr. Daley no longer dines here–and he knocks it out of the park. The rest of the scene is similarly his, and the role he occupies is a trickier one than it might seem: the Margaret Dumont. The viewer must empathize with the Dumont (Yes, it is absurd what these small Jewish men are babbling about), but not root for the Dumont. No one wants the Dumont to win, obviously, but no one wants anything bad to happen to them. All Dumonts have ever been guilty of is being fancy. They’re not bad people.
Rubin plays the Dumont perfect. He’s not a monster. He just wants to work his steady gig and make his steady tips and not deal with the Blues Brothers. His position is defensible! Look how swell his hair looks! Did we not know that God Himself had ordained that he rejoin the band, we might side with Mr. Fabulous over Jake and Elwood.
O, that thick-lipped insouciance.
(SIDE NOTE: In at least one alternate universe, there exists a cut of The Blues Brothers wherein Mr, Fabulous successfully resists the Blues Brothers’ offers, and then the rest of the film shifts to a lyrical Cassavetes-like character study of a maitre d’ in 1980’s Chicago.)
TWO: Murphy Dunne DISQUALIFIED
Murph, erstwhile of Murph & the Magic Tones, is a scratch. No action will be accepted on Murphy Dunne.
(It should’ve been Paul Shaffer. I would lead a crowdfunding effort to digitally insert Paul Shaffer into the Blues Brothers pasted over Murph. You’d also have to de-age Paul, I guess, so this is gonna cost a lot of money. Paul put the Blues Brothers Band together, wrote all the charts, led the rehearsals, and Belushi pitched a bitch about him working with Gilda Radner too much and tossed him from the movie. John Belushi has an entire wing in the Problem Attic.)
THREE: Willie “Too Big” Hall
Incredibly sexual name here. You got “Willie,” which means a penis, and “Too Big,” which refers to the penis we were just discussing, and then “Hall,” which is–one would assume–the size a vagina would need to be to enswallow the member on the table. This man’s name is a microaggression; I did not consent to this.
FOUR: Steve Cropper/Donald “Duck” Dunn (TIE)
Each man delivers his few lines with ease, but these guys just looked cool.
Check out the Duck:
And the Crop:
These are hip, hip men.
FIVE: Tom “Bones” Malone
What’s the difference between a trombonist in a car and a frog in a car?
What?
Frog might be going to a gig.
SIX: “Blue” Lou Marini
Blue Lou is more wooden than a forest that came to life and taught Bill Walton lessons about basketball and being a man. Blue Lou is stiffer than a man universally known for his spectacular boners having an especially notable erection.
On the other hand:
I always thought that was a sweet shot.
SEVEN: Matt “Guitar” Murphy
While virtually every other decision from the production of Blues Brothers can be explained away with “because cocaine,” the allocation of so damn many lines to Matt “Guitar” Murphy cannot. Are you jamming out in a Mississippi-style blues style? Call Matt. Maybe getting jazzy with it? Matt’s your guy. Go toe-to-toe in a sass-off with Aretha Franklin? Call Cleavon Little or Franklin Ajaye. This is not an arena in which Matt “Guitar Murphy will shine.
And yet the man was called upon to emote. To emote!
“Woman!”
But, hey: his performance is charmingly terrible, and you can see how much practice he put into it. Matt “Guitar” Murphy tried his hardest, and that’s what matters. I don’t like this ranking nonsense. Everyone’s number one in my book. I will not be doing this anymore, but I hope you leaned something here.
Oh-oh, poor Romeo.
Sittin’ on his own-ee-oh.
No one gives Phil Lynott the credit he deserves as a lyrical genius.
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