Oy

I recently returned from a week in California, which I spent in the company of She Who Must Be Obeyed and the Nicest Chap in the World. Apart from the company, the browsing and sluicing, and the rather vague but pleasant wandering around we did, it was a most uneventful trip. Why, in God's name, anybody would voluntarily live there is beyond me. L.A., the poet informs us, is a Great Big Freeway; and, while I don't quarrel with this characterization, it seems incomplete. I would add that it's also a Great Big Sauna and a Great Big Snoozefest. Old Sol was doing his best to incinerate the citizenry, but every goddam bar and restaurant had its doors and windows open wide, as if the weather was perfectly fine. Apparently, to a Californian, sweating like a pig is natural and an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. I was chagrined to find the womenfolk uniformly unattractive; most of the inhabitants had skin like rawhide. I was reminded of the words of the lyricist (me):

On a scrofulous morning like this,
When the sun is a big melanoma machine.

During the week, three ideas came to me for parodies, but I haven't worked any of them out, mostly because they're of songs I don't know--always a problem, that--and I'm too lazy to buy the sheet music. Instead, I wander the streets muttering, Me, I'm not Rambo, until I'm heartily sick of that one. Still, there's no cure for being pestered by a song parody but to write another song parody, so I suppose I'd better buckle down to it.