The admittedly sardonic lyrics in this tune might make it seem like I think life is meaningless. But that is far from the case. Now, I don’t know what it all means… and I don’t think anyone can tell us or that we’d even understand if they did. But meaningless?

No.

That said, I was a lot more habitually sardonic in 1980 when I wrote this song. And I did consider myself a hedonist… but I was lying to myself, even on that count.

Having Fun

There’s a startling new religion
sweeping through the subdivisions
Having Fun is what they call it
Soon you’ll be a Fun-a-holic

Well, there isn’t any priesthood
doctrine’s anything that feel’s good
It’s the one true religion
There’ll be no more revisions

Having Fun (on the job)
Having Fun (while at play)
Having Fun (all night long)
Having Fun (all through the day)

Well, we’re all upon a journey
going back unto the Funhead
When we finally arrive there
we’ll have all the Fun we wanted

There are some say Fun is boring
but to them I’ll give this warning
Have Fun while there’s time
because the Fun stops when you die

Having Fun (on the job)
Having Fun (while at play)
Having Fun (all night long)
Having Fun (all through the day)

Having Fun
Having Fun
Having Fun

Blog Within a Blog…

One of my friends died unexpectedly a few days ago. It wasn’t natural causes. It was an accidental drug overdose.

He was an amazing man in many ways. Not an intellectual, but whip smart. He was, as he sometimes liked to say, the baddest white mofo in all of Compton when he was growing up. Which probably wasn’t too hard. There weren’t many white mofos in Compton. But he did grow up wild, got into drugs and what it takes for a poor kid to get money for drugs.

Still, after some very hard knocks, he got clean and sober and remained that way for over a decade. In fact, he was one of the people who gave me the courage to quit drinking in the mid-90s. I figured if he could turn his back on some very hard drugs, I could certainly crawl out of the bottle.

But, like so many of us who are drawn to substance abuse, he was a very complex and volatile guy; a very moody guy, at times.

Those of us who knew the public side of him rarely caught glimpses of this troubled man that he usually kept hidden. But his closest friends knew that he wrestled with some very powerful and troubling demons. Still — all too often — he seemed to want to fight that fight in private, away from those who might help him. Call it ‘drug shame’ if you will — but in the last several years he would disappear from those who loved him most when the demons got the best of him, sometimes for weeks or even months.

When he moved in across the way from a friend of mine, a former college teacher, who knew my friend through me and through the coffee house where we had all met, she was delighted, because she knew the affable, often wildly funny public side of him. But she didn’t see him much. He was a contruction crane operator and when he worked he worked a lot and hard.

The last few days, she didn’t really think twice when she saw his front door open and music coming through the screen door when she left for work and came home in the evening — figuring our friend was simply taking a few days off. But when a note on the door went unanswered, the landlord finally let himself in.

He leaves behind his mother and stepfather, his grandmother, and a teenage daughter he cherished dearly.

And a lot of confused and and very sad friends.

I’d like to turn to you out there and give you some advice, a warning, anything… but, honest to God, I just can’t think of what to say.