Never Question My Methods

It is Friday, after all.

GlaheMusetteOrch-BeerBarrelPolka1939

The lyrics to Beer Barrel Polka (Roll out the barrel / And we’ll have a barrel of fun) used to show up in comic books – - Mad Magazine, Dick Tracy, various others – - and I had no idea what it sounded like. It was especially confusing to me because it just kept showing up in different books, so it had to exist. Having no clue what the song was, I just made up the melody. My version was not particularly catchy, and I would venture to suggest that it did not make any musical sense: it’s an approximation of a song.

This strange little snippet stayed in my head for at least two decades. Hopefully it will go away eventually, as it’s more of a dirge than a polka.

Today, of course, a someone would just Google the lyrics. Or, in my case, listen to a bunch of polkas on archive.org and stumble across the lyrics accidentally and have a minor cultural epiphany. Which do you think is more fun?

The song’s history is pleasantly convoluted, and involves Liberace. Spoiler: it’s not a German song.

(And here’s an article about he polka’s contribution to graphic design. You’ll thank me for it.)

In which, I just post the customer comments from Amazon’s page for the Build Your Own Stonehenge kit.

“I didn’t expect a lot from a Stonehenge kit that would fit inside the tiny mini-kit box, but was delightfully surprised.”

“After I assembled the model and set it on a sunny windowsill, it cast perfect Stonehenge-esque shadows, and I was very pleased with it indeed! [Yes, I actually fiddled around with the placement so as to orient it in the same way as the original - though I don't know if I'll be able to make myself get up at dawn on the solstice to check out the accuracy of the positioning!]“

“Super item. I’m a wargamer, and this fits well as “terrain” for my early celt/Irish/British warriors!!!”

“Pay close attention to the Product Dimensions: 3.2 x 3 x 1.3 inches.”

“I don’t have to wonder how it is that this Stonehenge came to be – - I made it myself! Tirelessly scoring, folding, and often times re-folding, just like the druids of yore! My paper Stonehenge is also a magnet for people seeking ancient mystic knowledge. Not real people, mind you – - people I made out of paper! Who I sacrifice to paper gods!”

. . . I made that last one up.

In which, googling this website’s domain name unleashes an amazing batch of gibberish:

1.Never question my methods
2.Never act with out telling me
3.Never ask to get a new power! U only get 1 no changing! only i can
4.if u want to quit just ask
5.when in my presence b in uniform
6.to join u must stay active ad check the fourms every now and then

Also: “NO NEWBS!!!!!!!!! UNDER NO SERCUMSTANCES”

From the Penguin Forum. This irritable little fascist eventually was banned from the forums. But not before somehow attracting a few team players:

“Just call me windmaster dude. I’m in.”

I have no clue what an ice helmet or a blue sarf will do for me, but I have to play this game.

This is the new penny.

It looks like a token to a really lame carnival ride. Perhaps one that looks like a crate and just shakes left and right.

Listen, pigeon. I know you’re bored and hungry and self-hating. I know you waddle around in a dusty feathery loneliness, clucking, disconsolate, revolted at all your peers in your peer group. I know you fly sometimes but mostly look around for bread crumbs or puke to peck at. Transform yourslf. Become a dove or a sparrow. A weed, a twig in the shade, a lusty imprecation. Just quit bugging me. I have  better things to do than to care about you. I have my whole life to lead.

(“Compassion” from Delinquent, by Mina Pam Dick. Who also can be found here.)

This is either the best commentary on the uselessness of trying to get stuff done right, or maybe it explains why a jillion Toyotas were just recalled.

I remember playing it and feeling like someone in a toy factory was laughing at me. Might be fun after a few beers, though . . .

And Never Question My Mehtods weatherman Mr. Freeze is here with our up-to-the-minute report:

So I’ve had to give this a lot of thought, because I’ve spent a fair amount of time shopping for housewares. Confused? Don’t be. Apparently, if you need a new wastebasket or placemats, part of the price is your sanity as you listen to most of what the nineties had to offer, as loudly as legally possible.

Take my hand, gentle reader, as we take a brief trip through this musical past. But be mindful of which links you click on, as some of these songs will sap all joy from your brain, and your heart. Also, you will lose all sensation in your fingers. Now, to begin . . .

1. Cantaloop, US3

(PAIN SCALE: 5.5 out of 10)

Aargh.

I realize that this song seems completely innocuous Most people cannot hear it because it is so repetitive and dull that feeling any way about it would require more effort than just ignoring it. But my loathing of it is complete: I just hate everything about this song.

I hate having seen people dance to it. I hate the fact that people would tell other people about it, which was strange because it was in the GAP, the Starbucks, and I think I had to hear it at least once every week in high school. You do not need to refer someone to something which is inescapable.

When hearing it, I cringe, I squirm, and I go back to this time in elementary school where everyone was brought into the multipurpose to watch the sixth graders breakdance to “Beat It”. In Arlington, Virginia.

Granted, I would probably kill for video footage of that now.

Cantaloop, to someone who was trying to cultivate a more fuller appreciation of hip-hop, just past his father’s collection of Afrika Bambata and RUN-DMC records, was pure torture. A safe, out-of-the-box rendition of two musical forms, neither of which were intended to be that sanitized and omnipresent.

We must move to the next example, lest Cantaloop sap any more strength from my bones.

2) Misery, Soul Asylum

(PAIN SCALE: 6.5 out of 10)

Hey, Can You Turn That Off?

I had skateboarding buddy who would pretend to like Soul Asylum in order to meet girls. For all I know, he still does.

This, to me, was like cutting off your ear in order to hang out with Van Gogh. It makes no sense and it only hurts you. It’s disgusting and it’s embarrassing. And it means that you can’t really hear anything.

I can’t really explain the following analogy, but this song fills me with a kind of panic that I think I would feel if I entered a room with very busy wallpaper, and a lot of crazy quilts and stuffed animals.

And then the door shuts behind me, and the door has a totally different pattern of wallpaper, with a poster of me stranded in that same room.

I think it’s just that the song  is this patchwork of stop-start-stop-rush-to-chorus. The lyrics and sentiment are about as profound as a troll doll.

It makes me feel sick, I need to move on  . . .

3) Feed the Tree, Belly

(PAIN SCALE: 6.625 out of 10)

Please Turn That Off.

I can’t listen past the first twenty seconds. There’s this weird guitar build-up in in the opening of the song. It’s the kind of sound that could open a superhero cartoon show in the early eighties, one that would have the same plot every time and the same animation cells repeated, and that’s not so bad. Right? Right?

Sure, except those shows are horrible and while devour your sanity, like a swarm of carpenter bees unleashed on a child’s linkin log cabin.

Then it yields to those distinctively 90s lyrics, whose only virtue is that they don’t have to specifically make sense, be some kind of come-on, or be an homage to christian faith, which must be at least three fourths of what was on the radio throughout the 00′s.

Which is to say, I don’t find this song contemptible. But listening to this song is like watching a friend wear an unflattering hat. And that is somehow worse than just feeling immediately irritated, panicked, or sick. This is a creeping plague of embarrassing hats, the kind that ruins empires as it makes kings look foolish and the townspeople sad.

4) Alone, Live

(PAIN SCALE: 9 out of 10)

Oh, fucking hell.

For a joke, my mother and father in law put this on their stereo, saying, “Hey, we found this at a thrift store and thought you might like it.” That’s all I remember. Apparently I curled up like a cockroach and fell over. My body shut down. I was eating soup for weeks, trying to remember what colors looked like.

Every day I don’t hear Live is another day that I am grateful for.

The vocals are like this painting I once saw in a horrible diner in North Carolina, where the eggs tasted like cigarettes, and the biscuits tasted like cigarettes, and the pancakes tasted like cigarettes. A painting of a sea storm at night, an enormous wave about to slam a fishing a boat into a rock cliff, while tiny fisherman in tiny yellow raincoats presumably felt bad about the whole thing.

The painting was hung on fake wood paneling. I would write more, but I’m not feeling great. Lightning Crashes is right up there, too.

5) I Wanna Sex You Up, sung by Some Kid at the Camp I Went to When I Was 12

(PAIN SCALE: 10.25 out of 10)

That Which I Cannot Link To, But Must Live with the Painful Memory of Forever

All I knew about him was what he told me, which was that he sang the national anthem at hockey games and really liked math.

He was short, fat, pale, he had unflattering wire-rim glasses, green Jams, a hypercolor t-shirt. He had a neon green baseball hat that never came off. Sometimes, he would turn it to the side for more of a rappy flair.

Come to think of it, he would probably be a really big deal now, if he still wears these same clothes.

He sang everything with an extended (the word “prolapsed” comes to mind) R&B flair. And he just loved I Wanna Sex You Up, which he sang twice, daily. Generally when other people were around. Everytime he sang, I felt that I would die, friendless, at a summer camp far away from home.

The thought of this strange, gum-drop shaped creature procreating, and celebrating it in song, at the age of eleven, can and still does horrify me.

And so we have come to the end of my least favorite songs of the 90s. I would see you to the door, but I’m pretty sure I’m just going to collapse here and vomit for awhile. Ummm. Bye!

Brilliant.

Note the look that Ernie gives the camera when Bert says he’s putting work in like a slave.