I always ruin things.

Okay, thought of something to write about.

The other day, Ben and I were at the Dirt Mall. Apparently, at the Dirt Mall way south of us that we never go to, they now have a little stage for either a live band, or... wait for it... karaoke.

I know, it's blowing your mind, the possibilities. I just heard Danhole's head exploding somewhere north of here.

Anyway, I think they were doing karaoke when we were there that afternoon. Either that, or their cover band sucks total ass. Regardless, there was a lady on stage, doing her rendition of "You Were Meant For Me," by Jewel.

I didn't particularly care for her take on the song, but it wasn't terrible; I'll give the woman credit, because she could carry a tune much better than I ever could. But, as I am wont to do, listening to a song, no matter the singer, took me back down Memory Lane. This time I went down that road to a simpler time, when Jewel was still living in her van, I wasn't up to my eyeballs in student loan debt, and no song could escape a rewrite by one or more of the Suspects.

Take, for example, "Santa Monica," by Everclear, which fell victim to myself and Amanda, aka the Sack, when we introduced the themes of a person's visage and the act of sitting into our new lyrics. I'm sure you can guess which words in the line "I am still dreaming of your face" were replaced in our version.

We did that shit all the time, mostly changing songs to be about sniffing glue, sexual innuendo, mad cow disease, and Sacky's half-Jew pride.

So, it should come to as no surprise to anyone that "You Were Meant For Me" did not escape this same fate. I shan't post the butchering we did to those two particular lyrics. But, I can at least tell you that one of the lyrics was modified along the lines of the Everclear one, and the part where she sings "I'm half alive, but I feel mostly dead" was, well, similar to the Everclear one as well. I guess some themes are more prevalent than others.


Heh-heh. Blog five!

Back to where I was originally going with this: we're walking through the Dirt Mall, and Ben puts his arms around me and stops to listen to the lady singing. As she's finishing the song, Ben leans in close and tells me that it's about us.

As romantic as the whole scenario was, what with us standing together in a sea of humanity, listening to a love song about people being meant for each other, all I could do was stand there, silently think about Jewel singing this song about oral sex instead, and burst out laughing. This effectively sucked any and all romance out of the Dirt Mall.

Needless to say, this required a maximum of explanation to effect a minimum of boyfriend ego bruising.

I told you I was always ruining shit!