Could you repeat that?

Oh Friday, how you please me with your end-of-week-ness. Hey, that sounds like "end of weakness." Cool. Maybe I can turn that pun into a timely phrase sometime, like, "Well that certainly was a weak end to a weekend" on a boring Sunday night. I'll have to store that one in the recesses of my brain for later use. Hey, "recesses of my brain" sounds like...just kidding. I know what it's like to have to hear those kinds of thoughts all day long, so I'll spare you from the looniness. So yes, it's Friday, and I'm here to write about some random things that have made their way into the "Possibly Blogworthy" category on my internal list.

I've spent some time in this space discussing music and lyrics before, but I have a new topic I want to touch on: not understanding them. Please allow me to clarify. I don't mean "not understanding" in the sense of "what the hell is he talking about?" If so, I'd have plenty of fodder with Bob Dylan alone, not to mention the entire "Magical Mystery Tour" album. Nor do I mean, "Oh, he says that? I always thought he said something else." That's a whole other post waiting to happen. No friends, but "not understanding," I mean literally not being able to make out what the person says and just throwing one's hands up in defeat. I have two recent examples to illustrate the point I'm so cloudily trying to make.

First off, my good friend Jon made me a mix cd with a song called "Hum Hallelujah" by Fall Out Boy on it. I listened to it a few times and liked the tune, but I could barely make out any of the words (besides "hum" and "hallelujah"). I knew it was in English, so I expected to be able to decipher them with repeated listens. No such luck. If I wanted to sing along, I'd have to speak Gibberish to attempt to mimic the meaningless sounds I was hearing. The main problem is that the lead singer has no regard for meter whatsoever. I thought I made out one line (at around 1:15 in the song) to be the nonsensical, "Two two, a deal was born," but it turned out to be, "Til tonight do us part." Read those two sentences aloud and see how very different they sound in terms of meter. He sings the word "tonight" with the emphasis on the first syllable (TOO-night), and it's hard to recover from that. The most indecipherable line comes a little later (at around the 1:40 mark), and I played it over and over again in the car with my lovely wife until we were able to form our best guess. We came up with, "We'll blow your ears out just to shine his shorts." We didn't really think that was what he was saying, but that was our best guess in an attempt to make the sounds match up with words. So when I looked it up, I expected to have a few of the words right. We did, if we all agree that "a few" can mean "three." The real line? "We're a bull; your ears are just a china shop." Dr. Mr. Lead Singer of Fall Out Boy: Please make your lyrics either obtuse and cryptic or hard to audibly decipher. Choose one. Both is unfair to your listeners. Oh well, I guess I can't blame him for his thick Scottish accent. What's that? They're from Illinois with no discernible accent? Oh that's right; there's no excuse whatsoever for singing in made-up sounds purported to be real English words. If you're interested, here's the song with some pictures of the band serving as a makeshift video:

The second example is more dire. I subscribe to Paste Magazine, largely because each issue comes with a cd of around 20 songs of new music that they like and feel like sharing. They're almost exclusively from bands I've never heard of, and it's expanding my horizons. Well, in this most recent issue, there's a song calling "Standing Bird" by a band called LOVE PSYCHEDELICO. Yeah, they capitalize their name for some reason. Anyway, I listened to the song, and while it's not right-on with the type of music I normally enjoy, I liked it and thought it was a cool and different sound. There was one problem with it though. I said to my lovely wife, "Honey, there's one song on here that I honestly can't tell if it's in English." There were definitely some English words, but the rest of it really just sounded like...not a language. I tried again, and eventually gave up and searched online for the lyrics. What I found was indeed surprising: I was right. The song is a mix of Japanese and English, which I learned is fairly common in Japanese pop music (or J-Pop, as it's called). I'll include the video below that has subtitles so you can see what I'm talking about and why I was so damn confused.

That's different, isn't it? I found the lyrics written out phonetically somewhere, but I have a feeling I'm not going to spend the time learning them in order to sing along. The most confusing part of all of it is in the English word choice. For instance, the chorus ends with "somewhat of ride and roll." Now I speak English - fluently even - and I have no idea what that means. Oh well, now we're being bilingually obtuse.

One quick and random thought before moving on: I realized something very, very distressing, and therefore I must share it with you all. For those of you who have visited this site more than once, you may know that I occasionally wish people I know Happy Half-Birthdays. It's not an important thing by any means, but when I remember to do it, I do. Well, I realized that my sweet little pup Hallie (gulp) doesn't have a half-birthday. Her "birthday" is Halloween, and there is no April 31st. That sucks. Everyone should be entitled to a half-birthday. Who can fix this? I'd write to my Congressperson, but I'd first have to know who that is, and even then, I bet s/he would claim that s/he had "more important things to do." Let's see if s/he gets my vote again...whenever we vote for those people.

Car Watch time, boys and girls! (Insert excited "Yay" here.)

My Aunt Lynn is on the cusp of becoming a regular Car Watch contributor, and I wish to support that new hobby. She saw a bumper sticker that told people, "Life is short..play naked." Play what exactly? Scrabble? Music? Doctor? Ice hockey? Or is "naked" the name of a game of which I'm currently unaware? Since I'm left to guess, I'll have to go with...ice hockey. That way it be both a fun sporting event and double as an anatomy lesson.

My favorite brother Kevin called me one morning this week to report a car item as well. It was a red Corvette with the plate, "JOE'S EGO." Yes, he'd hand-drawn the apostrophe. I applaud your self-awareness, Joe. Most people in your position might opt for the "Damn I'm good" or even the "Sit down, hold on, shut up" sticker to let us know of their egomaniacal ways. But not you, Joe; you are clear in your motives, and I'm quite proud.

Lastly, my homey Rockabye texted me with a plate: "SOLM8S" it said. "That's cute," I said as I showed it to my own beloved, but I didn't think it was anything particularly special. Five seconds later, I got another text from him saying that he'd accidentally forgotten a letter. The plate actually said, "SOLM8TS." "Ah, now I see why he sent it," I said. The case of the superfluous T. Soul matets? Mateys? Amber suggested that it could be "s.o.l. for shit out of luck," which caused me to use my pirate voice and say, "Ay, you're shit out of luck, mateys. Arrrrr." I've said it countless times, folks: If the plate message you want isn't available, either find another variation that still gets the point or simply let it go.

Before we end this session, I have to publicly offer gigantic congratulations out to my friends Dusty and The Mills, who got engaged during this past week. We very happy and excited for them, and you all should be too. That's right, I'm dictating your emotions now. Mazel tov, my friends. Ok that's it for now. Happy 7/11, everybody. May you all be open 24 hours today, and may your weekends avoid weak ends. Damn that's a good one. In all seriousness, be happy and healthy. See you next week, and remember to email ptklein@gmail.com with whatever takes your fancy and strikes it.