Stories and links that are kinda sideways about mental health

Some are about booze and cartoons

Jun 10, 2021

Boozy existentialism

There are some songs where the lyrics owe a whole lot to the instrumentation and melody. “American Pie” is one. I just… man… I just freakin’ hate that song. I really do. The lyrics are just the dumbest. He rhymes chance with dance. He rhymes DOORSTEP with MORE STEP! It makes me angry. I might have to take a walk. But the sing-songy melody arrangement and the singalong chorus written by, I think, Satan all conspire to make it inescapable.

Same goes for the classic by Ms. Peggy Lee.

I mean, honestly, what the fuck is even going on here?

I remember when I was a very little girl
Our house caught on fire
I'll never forget the look on my father's face
As he gathered me up in his arms
And raced through the burning building onto the pavement
And I stood there shivering in my pajamas
And watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over I said to myself
"Is that all there is to a fire?"

Yes!

She then proposes to break out the booze and dance. This is one jaded very little girl.

I love this song. It’s weird and catchy and it is karaoke gold.

I’ve been humming it to myself in stores lately as I get used to masklessness. And as I get used to the cessation of the covid virus in general. Because there are no parades, no french kissing parties.

Is that all there is to a pandemic?

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Here’s a PJ Harvey cover. It’s okay. Not boozy enough for my tastes.

Patty

I can’t help but think about Peanuts. I grew up thinking of Charlie Brown and company as a comic strip but also not a comic strip. It was transcendent. There was Peanuts and then there was everyone else who wishes they could be Peanuts. Garfield was Coca-Cola but Peanuts was water. Peanuts was the surface of the world. We bathe in Peanuts.

Now I live in Saint Paul, where Charles Schulz spent much of his childhood. I live not far from Mattocks Park, which is around the corner from the former Schulz home. It’s the place, pretty much, where the Peanuts kids all went skating. You can stand there and imagine all the characters playing in that park.

So it’s always on my mind. And because I’m me, I often think of the more melancholy elements of it. Recently, I wrote about Patty, not Peppermint Patty, just Patty. She was the earliest star of the strip and then got sidelined hard.

A LETTER TO CHARLES SCHULZ FROM PATTY, NOT PEPPERMINT PATTY, THE ORIGINAL PATTY

Imagine this: imagine if The Beverly Hillbillies, a very popular and successful television show, already had Jethro and then introduced a character called Peppermint Jethro. Oh, everyone loves Peppermint Jethro! He got a lot more screen time than Jethro and got a whole back story about living across town and being an underachiever in school but he was very loyal to Jed Clampett and had an endearing nickname for him. And Peppermint Jethro got all these funny lines to say and even a fawning sidekick. And there were no scenes for Jethro, you just had to assume he was in the mansion somewhere, in solitude. Forsaken.

Michael Bonfiglio has a new documentary coming soon about Schulz and I’m looking forward to it.

I don’t know what’s happening here.

On Top of Everything Else, the Pandemic Messed With Our Morals

The traumas of the past year have left some people wrestling with an awful question: Am I still a good person?

We’re only beginning to understand pandemic trauma. Every COVID-19 death has unleashed a river of grief still flooding over the bereaved. Millions of coronavirus survivors are still ravaged by what the disease did to them. Even those who haven’t personally been touched by the virus have had to contend with lost jobs, anxiety, and missed opportunities. But for some people, the past year has also fundamentally broken their moral compass.