(2015)

So I’m outside the pad here and a car goes past blasting My Pal Foot Foot. Loud. Way loud. Even set off the (admittedly hair trigger) alarm on the neighbor’s SUV. I bet that never happened in your neighborhood, a whooping old school car alarm set off by the Shaggs. I bet it never even happened in your universe. It did here, in mine. Terrified, I ran inside, shut the curtains and waited for the Four Horsemen. They never came of course. Instead I’ve had the Shaggs bouncing off the inside of my skull all afternoon. A shambling, down beat stuttering, in tune only on Jupiter (or beyond) kind of earworm, alleviated only by the world’s greatest trumpeter next door stretching A Night in Tunisia on the rack. The tune cracks, bleeds notes, then dies a descending death where the bridge ought to be. I make the sign of the cross and light a candle.

And now this post is the second time I’ve written about the Shaggs. Here was the first.