Pondering the imponderable

This afternoon I am sitting here pondering my own little mind full of hobgoblins as well as studying just what my foolish consistency did to bring about such a state.

The Texas Legislature is in session so don’t get me started on states.

No, really. I think about the great questions that have come to haunt me from the many years past. For instance:

Where did all the yellow go?

I refer to the jingle Pepsodent toothpaste ran on the TVs and radios of the 50s and 60s which goes like this:

“You’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”

Where is all that yellow? What’d they do with it? It’s hard to hide something that has to be exceedingly large.

And that person purported to be “The Most Interesting Man In The World,” why is it with every possible delight seemingly at his disposal would he settle for a Mexican beer? You know there is a reason why lime slices are given with south-of-the-border brew? Because most of those cervezas taste like crap!!! Well Dos Equis isn’t really too bad compared to some of the others. But this most interesting amigo also admonishes us to “stay thirsty.” Humans normally can survive three-to-five days without drinking water. I don’t know how beer figures into this. But going without something to drink is downright insane not to mention uncomfortable as hell. So why would one want to stay thirsty? Oh well, the ad just says their pitchman is interesting, not “the smartest man in the world.”

Those points I ponder are not limited to jingles and other crapola of the ad world. What about songs?

What about songs. Now if you want to travel down that road of no return absurdity, you will have no further to go than the lyrics of the 60s Jimmy Webb song MacArthur Park.

It is bad enough to consider:

  “Between the parted pages and were pressed/In love’s hot, fevered iron/Like a striped pair of pants”

Okay. I have no idea what the symbolism means. Sure, I can read, but if one wants a pressed pair of striped pants it sounds like those buddies need to be dry cleaned.

And,

  “MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark/All the sweet, green icing flowing down/Someone left the cake out in the rain

  “I don’t think that I can take it/’Cause it took so long to bake it/And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo”

  You bet your ass “oh noooooo.” Though this was hardly considered an example of the “psychedelic” music genre of rock, one wonders whether Webb had been trampling through the cow dung patch and came upon those little “magic” mushrooms.

  Don’t get me wrong. Webb is a very talented songwriter. He has written some of my favorite tunes, largely ones with a country bent or in between. For instance, the Glen Campbell hit “Galveston” and the country superstar collaboration “Highwaymen” — Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings — took its name from the Webb tune they recorded “Highwayman.” Webb also wrote pop hits such as the 5th Dimension’s “Up Up and Away.”

  So Jim Webb deserves my What Was He Thinking award — although Webb has said everything in the song was really there, cake and all.

  It is when a person ponders the larger-than-life matters in life, that he or she is on the road to something, well, at least larger than half-life. Sorry. I think next time we have spring showers I will go buy a cake and put it in the rain.