The Unfinished Symphony
Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor is commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony because he started it in 1822 and didn’t finish it even though he lived another six years.
People with nothing better to do have speculated as to why Franz didn’t finish and one of the theories is that he lost interest in the symphony after his initial outbreak of syphilis (and I did not make that up) which I think proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that throughout history musicians have been getting laid more than the rest of us.
Little known historical fact:
Schubert took up the harpsichord to “get chicks” after some of his Vienna buddies, who could barely play the opening bass line from Satisfaction, started a garage band and were immediately swarmed by 19th-century Austrian groupies and Franz wanted in on the action.
(Look at that illustration at the top of this post which I believe is a depiction of Schubert playing his version of Crocodile Rock and then look closer at the women in attendance and tell me Franz ain’t gettin’ some after his performance. Face it: chicks dig musicians.)
The first caveman to hit a rock with a stick probably got laid that night when some adventurous cave girl got a funny feeling in her nether regions (a phrase that really makes me want to visit the intriguingly-named Netherlands) and said, “Yeah, I’m going home with Grok the drummer tonight” while all her jealous cavegirl friends tried to talk her out of it because if they weren’t going to get laid, they could at least stop her from having fun.
Which is why young women go out in packs: at least one of them won’t get laid that night and she acts as a moral anchor and keeps her friends from getting swept away by the sensuous strains of a song like Louie Louie and then having wild sex with a lead singer who appears to be wearing a waiter’s jacket because you know that friend is going to wake up in the morning with a splitting headache and see that jacket wadded up on the floor next to the bed and think: “Just what the hell did I do last night?”
“Me gotta go now.”
Anyway…
I can see how Franz lost interest in Symphony No. 8 because he was consumed with worry about his nether regions and wondering just what the hell had happened to his dick, a body part many women accuse men of thinking about way too much which is totally ridiculous because we don’t think about it; it does all the thinking for us.
So where were we before you started all this malicious gossip about musicians?
Right: starting things and not finishing them which often happens to me even though my nether regions are just fine. It happens because I write down ideas in hopes that they’ll grow into columns and/or cartoons and sometimes they don’t, but they hang around bugging me like a dog that wants to be taken for a walk, so I’m currently going through the Word document where I keep all that stuff so I can share some of it with you, then forget about it and move on to other more worthwhile projects.
And we’ll start with…
Tucker Carlson’s a fucking idiot
According to an article in the Kansas City Star, here’s what Tucker Carlson recently had to say about the Taliban:
“They don’t hate their own masculinity. They don’t think it’s toxic. They like the patriarchy. Some of their women like it too.”
Hearing Tucker Carlson talk about masculinity is like getting marriage advice from a Catholic priest; neither of them have any personal experience.
Government assistance…it’s bad when other people get it
Just in case you missed it: a while back the Kansas City Star ran a story about the owner of a local restaurant who went on Fox News and complained about the lack of workers and restaurants having to raise wages to get them to work and the culprit in the situation was the federal government handing out too much money to those workers.
But…
The restaurant owner failed to reveal that his restaurant received nearly $1 million from the Paycheck Protection Program and Restaurant Relief Fund.
Turns out some of the same restaurants that have complained about the government money being given to workers were just fine with the idea of government handouts when the money was given to them.
According to the Star more than 300 restaurants in the Kansas City area were given nearly $100 million to help them get through the pandemic which those restaurants weren’t keen to talk about.
When the Star attempted to contact the top 10 recipients, all declined to comment or could not be reached for comment so let that be a lesson to you: when 60 Minutes knocks on your door make sure you’re in the bathroom and stay there a really, really, really long time.
The media tends to have a short attention span so when the shit hits the fan, go on vacation or into rehab because by the time you come back or get rehabbed we’ll forget what we asked you and if you don’t believe me, just ask yourself what’s the latest news on Jeffrey Epstein’s murder.
The Lampreys of Life
(I started this when Andrew Cuomo had trouble with his nether regions and, just like Franz Schubert, never got around to finishing it.)
Lamprey: an eel-like aquatic jawless vertebrate that has a sucker mouth with horny teeth and a rasping tongue. The adult is often parasitic, attaching itself to other fish and sucking their blood.
It has come to my attention as I journey through Life that a whole bunch of people seem to have no talent other than attaching themselves to anything or anybody that seems to be a success or on the verge of being a success and then detaching themselves as quickly as possible the minute anything goes wrong.
It happens in the music industry, the publishing industry and in this case…politics.
I have no idea if Andrew Cuomo harassed all those women although I gotta say when 11 women tell similar stories I tend to lean in their direction.
I once drew a cartoon about Bull Clinton (OK, that was supposed to be “Bill” Clinton, but apparently there’s such a thing as “Freudian typos”) and I had him saying it was his word against hers…and hers…and hers…and hers…and hers.
If I had any idea where that Clinton cartoon is I’d post it here, but it’s down in my basement buried under all the sports equipment I no longer use, but can’t bring myself to give away because you never know, maybe they’re going to start a 75-and-over Men’s Baseball League so in that event I want to be ready to limp up to the plate and take my cuts.
Anyway…
Now stories are coming out about how badly Cuomo treated his staff and what a pompous horse’s ass he is…none of which seemed to bother the Democrats even a tiny little bit when he was giving his popular press conferences during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Back then Democrats wondered if they should switch horses in the middle of the stream and dump Joe Biden and climb on Cuomo’s back.
All of which reminds me of Bob Dylan’s Positively 4th Street, which for my money is the greatest Fuck You Song ever written (although Carly Simon and You’re So Vain gives it a run for its money). Here’s part of what Bob had to say:
You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'
Now that Cuomo’s in trouble, the Democrats who were so busy kissing his ass want nothing to do with him and are calling on him to resign. (And he did.)
Unrelated Flight of the Conchords video alert
So when I was looking up the Bob Dylan video the first thing that came up was a video I recently watched from the HBO series Flight of the Conchords which was about two guys from New Zealand trying and failing to become rock stars and one of them (Jemaine Clement) deciding he could make money by becoming a male prostitute.
His buddy (Bret McKenzie) sings this song to him and I included this video because you will not hear a better piece of music today, even though it’s a parody (it’s loosely based on Roxanne) and I can pretty much guarantee you that you’ll be humming “You don’t have to be a Prostitute” before the day is over…plus it’s hysterical.
That’s it for today
OK, then. Thanks for letting me clear out some of my unused ideas which means I can move on to other, more important and possibly more rewarding projects:
I’m learning to play the harpsichord.