mr. rogers, this is not your neighborhood
To entice me into working hard with the piano my mother would tell me that famous people I admired like Michael Jackson and Mr. Rogers played the piano. Shut up, it was 1982. I had, in my four year old head, dreams of being a famous musician, dressing like a third world dictator, and dating beautiful women, namely Carrie Fisher. Who knew, twenty-two years ago, that Michael Jackson was a crazy, pedophile and Carrier Fisher was slowly eroding her septum with cocaine?
Did she get to party with Rick James? Cocaine is one hell of a drug.
My piano days ended abruptly one day during first grade when I discovered that Mr. Rogers DID NOT play the piano on television. Indeed, someone else was playing the piano off stage. That was not his house, that was not his neighborhood and he did not play the piano. Andrew then took me to the neighborhood on Long Island that the set is modeled after. I wept; I had been betrayed.
I was not the kid who believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, the toilet monster, or that Walter Mondale had a shot in hell in 1984. I have always been a curmudgeon. I thought: �I will never forgive Mr. Rogers; never!�
Lutherans, even from an early age, tend to deal exclusively in absolutes.
So, today I went to the Mall to look for a light purple Kitchenaid stand mixer for HRH, my sister. I always park in the covered parking provided by Overlord & Taylor and walk through their store.
Today they had a man playing their (beautiful) piano. He was wearing a black tuxedo with gray and silver accessories; he looked like he was in a very tacky wedding. I thought to myself, �That is what I would be doing if Mr. Rogers had not shattered my world in first grade. I would be playing the piano in Overlord & Taylor in a rented tuxedo for tips. I forgave Mr. Rogers today. I even thanked him.
Well, I do not know if he was playing for tips but I threw a handful of change into the Steinway just in case. He had the lid opened so I assumed that he was working for tips. Do not look at me that way; it is not as if I gave it to some homeless person or John Kerry. That change would have just ended up wearing a whole in my pocket or being stuck in the vacuum cleaner.
Thank God, that Bill Gates knows how to spell �vacuum� because I did not. I was about to look antediluvian by writing �carpet sweeper.�
Also, has anyone else noticed that the girls who wear shirts that say, �Hottie� on them are never actually hot? It is especially gross when their stomach sticks out of the bottom. My mother loved us too much to let us out of the house dressed in clothes that did not fix. Where are the parents?
In the previous entry I discussed, or discounted, my religious beliefs but really what I meant to communicate is, �I have religious beliefs about the ethical questions of the day but you do not win hearts over by being an asshole.�
