Youdopia, I want to share one of my favorite songs with you. Mr. Bad Example by Warren Zevon. It is funny, frenetic and fantastic cheesy. The video is from an appearance on Letterman, as if that’s not obvious, but you can hear the original by clicking on the image above. Yes, I love easter eggs. I also love nonsequitors. This song was written in one night, while consuming turkish coffee nonstop. I love it. Because I love you, I’ve provided the lyrics so you can read along as he sings it. It’s fast and seemingly all sung in one breath. I love it. Enjoy the good music.
I started as an altar boy, working at the church
Learning all my holy moves, doing some research
Which led me to a cash box, labeled “Children’s Fund”
I’d leave the change, and tuck the bills inside my cummerbund
I got a part-time job at my father’s carpet store
Laying tackless stripping, and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture, and took it to Spokane
And auctioned off every last naugahyde divan
I’m very well aquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I’m proud to be a glutton, and I don’t have time for sloth
I’m greedy, and I’m angry, and I don’t care who I cross
I’m Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time, and I don’t care who gets hurt
I’m Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I’ll live to be a hundred, and go down in infamy
Of course I went to law school and took a law degree
And counseled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement, swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen, and fewer still are called
Then on to Monte Carlo to play chemin de fer
I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair
I put my last few francs down on a prostitute
Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute
Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig
And headed for the airport and the midnight flight, you dig?
And fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide
Looking through the want ads sipping Fosters in the shade
I opened up an agency somewhere down the line
To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines
But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut
And whisked away their workman’s comp and pauperized the lot
I’m Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time, and I don’t care who gets hurt
I’m Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I’ll live to be a hundred and go down in infamy
I bought a first class ticket on Malaysian Air
And landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear
I’m thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals
I’ll see you in the next life, wake me up for meals
I got the lyrics here.
This song is the adult version of all the decedent ideas we talked about as teenagers. I can still feel the heat from your fathers wood stove. I can still taste the drugs in my primal inner cord. One song can bring you to the past? All I see is the dining room table, that table, where we set out our treasures. That couch and chair were we talked endlessly, and that fucking TV that fed us bullshit. I don’t understand it. But I like it.
I miss the decadence and limitless potential of youth. I miss the decadence and limitless potential of my twenties. I miss the decadence limited potential of my thirties. I miss decadence now, but I love making more money than I’ve ever made, and taking care of my family.
I would love to go on a bender with you like the old days, without our table treasure though… too old and fat for that one. I would love… ah yes..
My last true debauch was my 31st birthday. Literally outdid Hunter Thompson.