Unrehabilitated

Okay, I’m on such a roll down memory lane, here’s an extra bonus track.

Because—remember—it wasn’t just the Summer of Love; it was also the peak of the Vietnam War, our most recent implementation of a conscripted military.

So it seems appropriate to close out the week with the quintessential anti-draft protest song, Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”. If you do not know it, you really owe it to yourself to listen, all the way through. Yes, it’s long. But Guthrie is a storyteller, an easy-going, folksy storyteller, who builds context on his way to the punchline.

(As an aside, I saw the film Alice's Restaurant at a cinema in Tokyo, with Japanese side titles. I really wondered how some of the dialogue was translated, and what the locals thought of it.)

A while ago I used the expression “extra primo good” in an email to a friend in the UK. He replied saying that he knew it from Trading Places, and asking if it was something in general use or if I’d got it from the film. Well, I’ve been using it for so long I’d forgotten whence it came, but indeed, it was from TP.

So it is for phrases from “Alice’s Restaurant” that I use when the occasion warrants. Viz.”

“Wait for it to come around again on the guitar.”

“Eight by ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is.”

“The judge walked in with a seeing-eye dog.” (I actually experienced something like this during an arbitration session. I was convinced that the arbitrator—a retired judge of severe superannuation—would be too senile to follow the evidence. But I hadn’t even got back to my seat from having given testimony before he told the plaintiff that he was dismissing the case.)

“Five-part harmony.”

“Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?”

“I’m not proud.”