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Greil Monaco's No-Life Top 10-- The Even-Less-than-Usual Edition

I always feel bad about stealing Mr. Marcus' dormant gimmick (although not bad enough to quit, obviously), but I feel worse than usual this time because I have even less than usual to offer. You'll see.

1) Dick Cheney's "Shotgun Boogie." Listening to Dick Dead-Eye coldly demote his victim from "good friend" to "just an acquaintance" within seconds, I thought how lucky Patrick Leahy was that Cheney wasn't armed during their Senate showdown. I was surprised that the Veep of Darkness didn't take the same mea culpa approach he took to explain the Leahy incident: "I don't think I shot him-- I don't remember doing it, anyway. I may have done it, I probably did. Anyway, it was long overdue and I'm glad I shot him." And while Harry Shearer started his radio show this week with a bang (nyuk nyuk) by playing "Shotgun" by Junior Walker and the All-Stars, no one seems to have played the perfect song: the lovely ditty by Tennessee Ernie Ford mentioned (and linked) above. It even has an appropriate verse about meeting "a purty gal" who impresses Ernie with the size of her gun.

2) The above reminds me . . . When the author of The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire died (coincidentally, almost 13 years ago, on Feb. 24, 1983), a New York anchorman-- don't know who-- told his audience that the theatrical world had just lost a giant: the great playwright, Tennessee Ernie Williams.

3) My own mea culpa. Sometimes, you miss having an editor. Okay, no, you don't, but I wish somebody had told me before I posted my comics script last week that "Dog on Fire" is not only the name of a song by They Might Be Giants, but that the song is the theme for The Daily Show! Shit, I suppose I'll find out next that I also didn't make up the name "Couch Pundit." (Actually, Steve Perry came up with the name-- too bad he didn't know the Giants song, either.)

4) I still love Beaver. I'm finally getting around to the DVD set of Leave It To Beaver, and it's so nice to see the shows without the time-compression they get from TV Land, which makes faces look like they're swimming around on the kids' heads. The earliest episodes are the best, when Jerry Mathers' cuteness and Tony Dow's earnestness were completely genuine. Here's a sound clip from one of my all-time favorites, "Beaver Gets 'Spelled," where Wally forges a note from Mom. The last voice in the clip is that of the steely Doris Packer, the toughest TV prinicipal ever.

(From the unaired episode "Wally's Secret Underwear")

5) I turn 52 next Monday. And every birthday, I have the same question: How is it possible for the years to fly by, yet the days just drag . . .

If you actually made it to the end of this, I'm sorry, but you have to admit: you were warned.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 20, 2006 11:18 PM

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