Old Jokes Are Best

That's an article of faith with me. So, it seems, is "Write what you don't know."

It's no secret among my nearest and dearest that I'm allergic to cable television. Never subscribed to it, and probably never will. The notion of paying good money to watch cheesy commercials every ten minutes rubs me the wrong way, and, besides, I have a dim memory of a promise made to the general public some thirty years ago that television one paid for would be commercial-free. I'm therefore just about as au courant when it comes to the medium as I am in matters of sports and rock-and/or-roll.

So it should come as no surprise that, when a parody of Lewis F. Muir's "Waiting for The Robert E. Lee" (of which there's a lovely midi here) popped into the noggin yesterday, it was based a joke that was old and tired when Jim Carrey made The Cable Guy ten years ago:

It seemed like a pity
To dip in the kitty,
But Sex and the City
Was raunchy and witty;
So I broke down,
Rang up my cable guy--
Made a decision
To pay for my television:

"When can you get here
To hook up my set here?
I'm starting to fret here--
Break into a sweat here,
'Cause I can't stand
Waiting around to see
The glories of cable TV."

That was April the 1st--
Tuesday, April the 1st.
Then came the 3rd,
4th,
5th,
6th.
He promised the 7th,
And then the 11th.

It's the 24th of July--
Still no sign of the guy.
How I berate
Fate,
Waitin' like a moron,
Waitin' for my cable TV.

Lyric © 2005 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov