Housecleaning

I recently spent some time updating Que Sera Sera, which was long overdue. I finally added a Cringe page, made a new About page, and severely edited my archives. I left the Links page as is, for the time being. To be honest, my Links page is about as useful to me as my coccyx. I think I clicked on it last maybe a year ago. I feel like I should just take it down, but I also don’t feel like messing with it at the moment.

And before anyone complains, I left the black background with white text because I like it that way. Apparently no one else does, but this argument didn’t stop me from wearing culottes on the first day of sixth grade, either.

Do Re Mi

So my cousin, the one who was on Star Search three years ago, is now on Nashville Star. I refuse to watch American Idol, and I’m sure as hell not going to start watching this, but, you know, family and all. Hers is not really a style of music I care for, but she does an amazing job of yodeling that part of “Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” and I would say I’m pro-yodeling.

In other country-ish music news that’s a bit more my speed, I am also pro the new Drive By Truckers record. But like this was any big surprise. Those dudes cannot make an album I don’t like.

My co-worker has been listening to her Elton John’s Greatest Hits CD this week, which means I have been listening to her Elton John’s Greatest Hits CD this week. Three things:

• It never fails to make me laugh to picture Elton John returning to his plough, as he claims to do in “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” Right. Your plough. You, Elton John, have a plough. That you are going back to. Because you have had enough of the penthouse. Okay, sure, honky cat.

• That part in the live version of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me,” when George Michael breathlessly announces, “Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Elton John!” and the audience freaks out. First of all, I love how George Michael says that. My friend Brian Byrne thinks that we should try to work this into regular conversation, like maybe when your waitress puts your food down in front of you. I’m pro this. But the thing that really stands out to me here is how crazy the crowd goes when he says it. Those people go absolutely apeshit. I cannot remember the last time I was ever that excited about anything, and that sort of bums me out.

• Another thing that bums me out is why the hell isn’t “Levon” on here? What a grevious oversight. That song is awesome. One time I personally led a revolt in the bar of a Holiday Inn Select when my friend Josh told the Elton John impersonator we were all there to see that it was my birthday, which it was not, and Faux Elton John held his microphone out to me and said, “Happy Birthday, how old are you, love?” And I shouted, “Thirteen!”, and then he told me I could request a song, and I said “Levon!”, and he put his hand over the mic and hissed, “I don’t do Levon, say something else.” And, because I was drunk and sitting at a table of at least ten other drunk people, I felt confident standing up and yelling, “Levon! Levon!” and then everyone started chanting it with me, and he ignored us all and launched into Philadephia Freedom for the second time that night, but then, in a beautiful moment of drunken solidarity, everyone else in the Holiday Inn Select bar started SINGING LEVON, totally drowning out Faux Elton John and his backing tape. Man, I love that memory! Now I’m not bummed out anymore.

The Courage of Shutting-Up

One thing that continues to amaze me is how many people are led to this site by searching for “poems for an ex-boyfriend.” I’ve covered this issue before, which probably only exacerbated the situation, but it remains one of my top five search strings of all time. To these searchers, I must ask: are you fourteen? Because that is the only excuse for this. If so, I would advise you to go ahead and write a poem yourself, don’t send it, and then, twelve years from now, read it at Cringe.

But if you are not fourteen, I feel very strongly that I must say: dude, you do not want to send a poem to your ex-boyfriend. I hope the people in your everyday life are telling you this as well, because seriously, what a horrible idea. Your ex-boyfriend does not want to receive a poem from you. In the long run, you do not want to have sent one. I don’t speak from experience here, because I have never sent a poem to an ex-boyfriend. I find it a good rule of thumb to not send anything to an ex-boyfriend, Here Is Your Stuff Back delivery aside. I think I once copied down my favorite poem—a poem not written by me—and sent it to my then-boyfriend, but I was a little drunk, and we were still dating at the time, so it was easily chalked up to a cute thing we could hurry and forget about, together, not some awful emotional stain on a piece of spiral notebook paper that will linger in his drawer for years, or, worse, become a story he tells at the bar, a story his friends request by saying, “John! Tell the one about the poem that crazy girl sent you!”

Here’s the thing: as much as guys like to whine about how “girls only like assholes,” 99% of the guys making this complaint only like crazy chicks. But guys like crazy chicks ONLY AT THE BEGINNING. You don’t want to be remembered as the crazy chick due to some breakup shenanigans. And nothing says crazy chick like a poem. See: Sylvia Plath. Sure, Sylvia Plath is revered and taught in universities, but is Sylvia Plath still getting pipe? No, because she wrote a bunch of poems and then stuck her head in an oven. All Sylvia Plath has now is a bunch Maggie Gyllenhaal-wannabes trying to carve her words into their soft inner thighs with the sharp china toe shoe of a ballerina figurine. There is no ex-boyfriend in the world worth that kind of rep.

I feel like this would be as a good time as any to explain my ex-boyfriend labeling system. It goes like this: you can only have one ex-boyfriend. He is the most recent person you dated, but are no longer with. The minute you and your boyfriend break up, he becomes your ex, and the previous ex then becomes, depending on the frequency and warmth of your current relationship with him, My Friend John, My Old Boyfriend John, or This Guy I Dated Once. I have all three of those guys. I do not send poems to any of them. I feel we are all the better for it.

But since there seems to be a real void to be filled here, since people fourteen and not-fourteen will not stop googling, I whipped up the one poem that should cover all the bases for you:

I thought about you the other day, for the first time in a long time.
Your favorite song was playing;
The light from the setting sun was leaning into the room just so.
Also, I was going down on a hobo.

Use it if you must, but if you do, you better attribute that shit.