Because You Can't Make This Up if You Try...

Overheard in My Hometown...

(Regarding our county in Northern California)
"You know what they say...come on vacation, leave on probation."


(About the drug counselor for their group sessions)
"Why the HELL does a counselor need to go see a therapist? God damn!"
"Maybe she goes to him and takes notes..."

(At work, regarding superhero names)
"If you want to be a superhero, you have to have a name that rhymes.  You know, something like Captain Carrots."
"Captain Carrots doesn't rhyme.  It's alliterative."
"...Did you just tell me that I can't read?"


(At work, regarding a co-worker's 21st birthday)
"I wanna go somewhere cool, like Amsterdam!"
"Where is Amsterdam?"
"I dunno, Germany I think."
"It's in the Netherlands, guys."
"How am I supposed to know that? I'm not a geologist!"

Music seems to be a recurring theme here.  Lyrics are bugging me lately, which is odd considering I'm a big fan of opera, in which the characters sing the same damn lines over...and over...and over again, until the audience hangs themselves with the wristbands from those weird little binoculars you can rent from the lady next to the season sponsorship booth.  I guess if it's in a different language it sounds better.  Hello, Giuseppe Verdi?  Would not be the most memorable of composers if he were born in Brooklyn and called Joey Green. Just saying.

Be that as it may, Latte-land just finished shilling Taylor Swift's newest album, Speak Now.  An odd title, considering the girl has sold eight bazillion albums and won every award known to mankind, including an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize, so who exactly was stopping her from speaking ever? But whatever, it's Taylor Swift, and she is an unstoppable force of nature.

Nowhere does she prove her utter invincibility than on the ubiquitous track from her earlier album, Fearless.  You know the one.  Yes, you do.  Admit it, you're humming a bit right now.

Romeo take me somewhere we can be alone
I'll be waiting, all we have to do is run
You'll be the prince, and I'll be the princess
It's a love story, baby just say yes.

Innocuous and bordering on vapid, and yet the minute those guitars start, even the most vociferous Taylor Swift hater gets this...soft little look on their face, and by the time he tells our heroine to go pick out a white dress, some if not all are admitting that the girl can write a catchy ballad, and maybe she's not terrible, or whatever, they have some Bon Iver to go listen to instead while they do their Literary Theory homework.

Yes, dear Readers, I have been that Taylor Swift hater on many occasions, softened by her literary love story.  Until, as any good English Lit. student will do, I sat down and really looked at the lyrics to Love Story, examining the text for evidence of gender essentialism, colonialist overtones, and Freudian slippage.  Three minutes later, I had determined the lyircs were bilgewater.  It's less a story about teen love and more a story about the twit in the back of your sophomore English class who used to fall asleep and wake up in the middle of an in-class discussion about the book she hadn't read to contribute something that had already been stated by eighteen separate students.  If Taylor Swift really, truly embodied that awkward teen phase as described above, I have a feeling the song would have gone like this.

It was 'bout one when class first started
I close my eyes and the daydreams start
You're standing there
In the classroom door with Bieber hair

See the lights, see the students, the binders
See you make your way to your desk in the third row
Little did you know...
That while we were supposed to take some notes on subtextAnd metaphor in Romeo and Juliet
I was doodling on my notebook,
Hating that class was slow....

Romeo, save me, from Ms.Wilson's English class
(Is it just me, or do you look a bit like Jacob Black?)
I've got my SparkNotes; for today I'm all set
It's a love story from a book I haven't read yet

I'll sneak out of my homeroom to see you
We'll keep quiet, 'cause we're dead if they knew
It's just the same
As the balcony, but way more lame


Yeah, you were Romeo, I was the Scarlett Letter
(when did Hester Prynne take the place of Juliet?)
Guess I was chilling in the stockades
Rocking those crimson clothes...

So I said, "Romeo take me
from freezing cold New England's chill
I'm stuck in Hawthorne,
but Shakespeare really fits the Bill
Don't be afraid, it'll turn out all right, I bet
It's a love story in a book I haven't read yet.

Romeo, tell me,
What the hell's the Friar's deal?
This prose is difficult,
Are they for reee-eal?
Dude, I don't care
'Cause we're such a matched set
Like the love story in this book I haven't read yet."


I got tired of waiting
So I did a little reading ahead
I guess I was mistaken
'Cause in the end we both wind up dead.

So I said, "Nevermind, Romeo, no suicide for me today
Thought this was a romance; God this is an effed-up play
I just want a prom date, please don't drink the Kool-Aid."
Then the boy turned around and this is what he said

"Romeo and Juliet was homework from three weeks ago
We're reading Great Gatsby, if you have to know."
Daisy and Jay - hey, sounds like a duet!
It's a love story from a book I haven't read yet.

But what's with Hester Prynne, I just can't tell you...