Wow…I made one New Year’s resolution, which was not to make fun of dead people. I’ve been doing that lately.  Not real dead people, but iconic ones. People get all dippy when a famous person dies and before you know it another Facebook saint is canonized. Even people who absolutely despised them in life find wonderful things to say about them post-mortem. Drives me nuts. If you hated somebody while they breathed, why love them once they’ve stopped?  Anyway, to get back to my story, I saw some weirdness by Beach Boys fans on Facebook this morning. Now I like the Beach Boys well enough….like some of their stuff, but I hate some of their stuff too because it’s truly awful, which by definition makes me not a Beach Boys fan, who like everything they ever did, even Student Demonstration Time, and who see nothing unusual about spending your adult life in a sandbox also utilized by the cat. I see a piano in a litterbox and I think something’s wrong. Not so the Beach Boys fan. In fact the only thing that gets them riled up is a picture of Mike Love. It certainly did this morning. He was pouring champagne and wishing them all a Happy New Year. Bad mistake. They hated him. Really hated the guy. I had no idea anybody could hate Mike Love or hate anything Beach Boy. Hate seems like such a strong word for such a mild topic. And when one of the angry fans called him the original Abominable Snowman I was completely bewildered. Abominable Snowman?  A Beach Boy? One was from the Himalayas, the other Hawthorne. One is covered with hair and the other wears a bald guy hat. How does that make sense? But it all made sense to the Beach Boys fans. Some kind of in-concept, that I was not in enough to understand. It was weird and cult-like and creepy. A harmless kind of creepy, maybe, but still creepy. So, of course, I had to go and write a nasty comment, all about how strange and disturbing Beach Boy fans are. It was uncalled for, I admit. But irresistible. I’m weak, I gave in, got very literary and sarcastic. And now perhaps a few Beach Boy fans are listening to Pet Sounds and feeling self-conscious as they get all moon eyed humming God Only Knows. Maybe I dampened the innocence of staring at the album cover and thinking wouldn’t it be nice if they were feeding one of the goats too with Brian and Dennis and Carl and Al and Mike Love (who isn’t  actually feeding the goats, which is why goats as well as Beach Boys fans hate him). Subtextually, of course, I was actually making fun of the iconic Brian Wilson…if you make fun of Beach Boys fans you are making fun of the Beach Boys and by default making fun of Brian Wilson. Who isn’t dead, I know, but might as well be. Which is how New Year’s resolutions go right out the window.

Dennis feeds an invisible goat while waiting for the drugs to wear off.

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