Gag Me With A Coincidence

(June 24, 2007)

When people are struck dumb by an absolutely astronomically unlikely event (say, I give them a promotional keyring flashlight with a built-in measuring tape on the very day they are going to measure a shelf in dark closet) I try to reassure. I say that it's okay, this kind of thing happens to me all the time. They rarely believe me.

I'm tellin' ya, this kind of thing happens to me all the time. One morning, someone might say "We need a new drummer, do you know any free drummers who like Oasis?" and by evening I'll have met a sad, lonely drummer, wearing an Oasis shirt, whose entire band just moved to Hoboken on him.

So here's one....ready? I will show you how this happens. Three parts: The Zappa family, Kilroy was Here, and Mad Libs.

Ready? Yesterday morning I went for a walk. I stopped at Urban Renewal, my favorite thrift shop, and found Moon Unit Zappa's novel America The Beautiful. I went home and read some last night.

I'm pretty sure I could write a book. If I cut out all this music crap and really focused, I could totally write a book. But I think I only have, pretty much, one story to tell.

So I planned on looking up Moon Unit to see if she followed America The Beautiful with another novel. Is this her one story? Is she a "writer" or did she only have this one semi-autobiographical story to tell?

America The Beautiful is good. It's funny, albeit very disturbing in parts, from a normal, non-insane woman's point of view. What I mean is...well let's just say I hope for Moon's sake that it's more "semi" than "autobiographical" during the parts where the protagonist (whose name, I cringe to report, is America) calls her ex-boyfriend hundreds of times, at all hours of the day and night, leaving messages that veer from "I love you baby" to "You asshole, are you GAY?!" **Shudder** This is why women are insane.

Because of Moon, Joe and I fall into a discussion about writing, and lyrics came up, as they are wont to do in our house. We had just had a discussion about lyrics on Friday night.

Now, Joe is not the first musician to ask if I would write some lyrics. But I'm not a lyric writer. It is perceived, for some reason, that I could be, but every attempt I've secretly made has resulted in my being embarrassed to be around myself, let alone show them to anyone human. My teddy bear, Orson, even gets a pitiful look in his plastic eye. I mean shit, I have high school journals spilling over with similar drivel. It sucks! Believe me. I can't write lyrics. But I'd like to, and lyrics had been on my mind since Friday night, when Joe broached the idea that he wanted me to try some of what he described as "Jabberwocky lyrics." Now that sounds like fun. But how to coax inspiration?

So while on my walk (the one where I bought Moon's book) I had an inspired thought, something to get me going creatively, kind of like a Brian Eno Oblique Strategy -- Mad Libs! What if I write something, then take out all the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and then open the dictionary, filling the parts of speech back in, leaving what comes to chance? What kind of nonsense would it make? And doesn't that sound cool? Motherfucking Mad Libs. Haven't thought about Mad Libs in years.

Anyway, I didn't finish Moon's book or go buy Mad Libs on Saturday night because Joe and I took a duck boat tour. Yes. A duck boat. Tour, as in what a tourist might do. Yes, I have lived in Boston since the early 90s. But Anngelle's boyfriend Paul had emailed earlier in the week saying "let's do a duck boat tour for Anngelle's birthday!" We said "Okay!" (Funnily enough, the birthday girl didn't, uh, make it to the departure site in time for the tour so some of us took her birthday duck tour without her. We had tickets worth like $30, so we took it anyway and had a great time. Met up after for snacks and drinks.)

While on the duck tour, the driver, Jailbird George, whose underwear I could see under his orange shorts-jumpsuit when he leaned out the boat to yell "shut up!" to an obnoxious honker, explains why there are little "Kilroy was Here" cartoons written on the duck boat ceiling. I'd seen that Kilroy drawing, but I associate Kilroy with Styx. I stare at it and marvel that I'd had no idea what it meant all these years! Kilroy was Here!

Today, I finish Moon's book. Right now, just before writing this entry, I look her up to see if she has written anything since America the Beautiful. Maybe something called "Star Spangled Banner" with a character whose last name is Banner.

Wikipedia informs me that she has written only this one book, but the Wiki entry reminds me that "Valley Girl," of course the song where I first heard of Moon Unit (I was in 7th grade!) is on the Frank Zappa record Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch.

I laugh with delight at the title, as I always do, and click on the link hoping to see the cover art, which I fucking love. Hub got all the Zappa in the break -up, and I haven't seen this cover in ages. With glee I click on the link.

Hey, you can do it too, it's the Internet. I can link Moon's page and you can follow me. First click Moon's Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Unit_Zappa

Then click on the Ship Arriving Too Late title.

When the Wiki page for Ship Arriving opens, click on the word "Droodle." I cliced on "Droodle" because I had never heard the term before. The Wiki says "The cover art for the album shows the classic Droodle (from which the album gets its name), whose shapes also suggest the letters 'ZA', as in 'Zappa'."

Do you have the Droodle Wiki page open?

Do you see where it says "See also"?

Does it say "See also Mad Libs and Kilroy was Here?

You can't make this stuff up, guys.