There was a guy in high school, Mark, who always smelled of smoke from the pack of Parliament Lights he kept on him. He was a black belt in karate, had a twin sister, and our senior year, he convinced me to sing the national anthem with him at a girl's volleyball game. With arms around one another, each with one hand on the cordless microphone, our bass voices spit out the most horrendously offensive version of the "Star Spangled Banner" since Roseanne. We had practiced singing together only two times, both of which were in my Jeep on the short drive from my house to the high school gym. The one or two beers we drank were meant to cool our nerves, not to provide the fuel for an obnoxious teenage prank. It just kinda came out that way. We missed notes, laughed from embarrassment, and the arms around each other thing looked more like late night karaoke than patriotism and school spirit. The audience was less than impressed.Mark was always wildly obsessed with two artists who I never paid much attention to while in high school - Cat Stevens, who I now have a great appreciation for despite the Ovation, and Randy Newman, who I couldn't understand for the life of me until the past year or so. Who woulda thought that "Sail Away" was written as a jingle for slave traders to recruit naive Africans? Not fans of "You Got A Friend In Me" and certainly not little ol' moi. "Rednecks" is the only song I own that I can't play at full volume in my apartment.Point of the story is that I've been obsessively listening to Newman's 1974 album, Good Old Boys, as of late and, Mark, you were ahead of your time, my friend. I'm late to your game. Looking back at the ol' national anthem incident, it probably woulda made a good story for a Randy Newman song about two idiot Midwest kids.MP3: Randy Newman - Mr. President (Have Pity On The Working Man)