My Alyson Michalka / Giant Clown Hammer Fantasy

This is a little convoluted, but it’s a glimpse into my gray matter and that’s nothing but convolutions.

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This is one of my favorite fantasies—I’ve got dozens of these things. I’m thinking of retiring this fantasy, however, because it has a little pathos in it, at the end, and I don’t really like pathos at all.

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This fantasy starts with me booked to appear on the David Letterman Show to promote some best-selling book I’ve written. Also on the show that night is the actress/singer Alyson Michalka who is booked to promote some new movie she has coming out. On the morning of the show, during show prep when Alyson and I are sitting around backstage in the green room, word gets around that the show’s musical guest for that day has cancelled at the last minute. As the producers scramble to get a replacement, Alyson and I put our heads together. She’s a great singer, I point out, and I’ve been playing guitar for years as a hobby. If they can’t get a replacement musical guest, maybe the two of us can save the day by doing a musical number . . .

So we talk to the producer and he thinks it’s a fun idea and Alyson and I quickly rehearse something cool, like, for instance, a duet version of “Whipping Post” which I just happen to know.

So we rehearse, say, “Whipping Post” and some other songs and everything goes really well and Paul Shaffer even asks us to sit in with the band for the whole show and play through the commercial breaks.

During one commercial break, Alyson and I do a little schtick, where I start to play and sing a sappy, old, folk song/love song kind of thing and, as I get started and the audience realizes what a sappy song I’m performing, Alyson picks up a giant clown hammer and gestures behind me. As the audience applauds and cheers, Alyson brings down the giant clown hammer and bonks me on the head. I immediately launch into a better song, a cool song, maybe something like Mott The Hoople’s cover of “Ready for Love” as a duet with Alyson.

The cool songs go well and the audience enjoys themselves and everybody comes away from the show happy. That’s pretty much how the fantasy ends. Everybody’s happy. Cool fantasy.

But—

Now, there are a lot of sappy songs that fit such an occasion, that call for a bonk on the head with a giant clown hammer, but for personal reasons I usually imagine myself starting to play and sing Bread’s “Diary.” The trouble is, having a fantasy like this means I’ve been thinking about these darn lyrics every time I run through the fantasy. I like the fantasy, but the actual lyrics to “Diary” are pretty much pathos-driven. Most people just know the chorus (“Wouldn’t you know it/She wouldn’t show it”) and maybe the first verse, but actually the final verse reveals what’s really going on and it’s not so much a love song as a loss song. I’m retiring this fantasy. Here are the complete lyrics:

I found her diary underneath a tree
And started reading about me
The words she’d written took me by surprise
You’d never read them in her eyes

They said that she’d found the love she waited for

Wouldn’t you know it
She wouldn’t show it

When she was confronted with the writing there
She just pretended not to care
I passed it off as just in keeping with
Her total disconcerting air

And though she tried to hide the love that she denied

Wouldn’t you know it
She wouldn’t show it

And as I go through my life
I will give to her my wife
All the sweet things that I can find

I found her diary underneath a tree
And started reading about me
The words began to stick and tears to flow
Her meaning now was clear to see

The love she’d waited for was someone else not me

Wouldn’t you know it
She wouldn’t show it

And as I go through my life
I will wish for her his wife
All the sweet things that she can find
All the sweet things they can find

Wouldn’t you know it
She wouldn’t show it

Wouldn’t you know it
She wouldn’t show it

Wouldn’t you know it
She wouldn’t show it

P.S. It occurs to me that some people might be wondering why a forty-seven year old guy like me even knows who Alyson Michalka is. It also occurs to me that some people might suspect they know why a forty-seven year old guy like me knows who Alyson Michalka is. The actual, real reason has a little politics in it, a little philosophy in it and a little Hilary Duff in it. I’ll talk in Wednesday’s post about why I started watching some shows on the Disney Channel.