The Bloody Leotard

Dear Friends,

The June Hard Taco song is called, “Big-Calved Woman.” It’s a little misogynistic, has only two chords, and features a rather grating vocal track. If that doesn’t scare you away, what if I tell you that it is performed by hornets and Chinese puppets?!  (These are your deepest fears, according to the “browser cookies” in your computer.)

If you were able to ascertain my darkest secrets by querying my cookies, you would discover that I have been harboring a lot of guilt for something I did when I was 17.  I broke a ballerina’s leg. This particular dancer was male, but he was wearing a frilly pink tutu, so one could feel justified referring to him as a ballerina. The injury took place as the result of me running my parents’ station wagon into him in a parking lot, pinning his legs between two cars. It was probably the first time he had ever held his feet in fifth position.

The maimed ballerina was an aspiring comedian working as a “ballet parker” at a Milwaukee club called Comedysportz. I spent many evenings and weekends at that club because I was on the Nicolet High School Comedysportz team. Every Saturday morning, we would match our wits against one of the other schools, and by “wits” I mean “ability to think of terrible puns while cross-dressing.” It was the only sport I did in high school and shut up, it is too a sport. Competitive improv a sport in the same way that beer pong is a sport. Some people are certainly better at it than others, but everyone finds themselves hilarious after playing for an hour. Also, as it turns out, both increase your risk for having your legs crushed in a car accident.

You're Going to Feel My Finger Now

Dear Friends,

    On December 7th, 1941, a Japanese fighter pilot crash landed on Ni'ihau, the smallest and westernmost Hawaiian island, mistakenly believing it to be uninhabited. The remarkable events that transpired on that tiny island over the next six days have become known as "The Ni'ihau Incident." I'll let Wikipedia tell you the story. Since reading this, I have been obsessed with the idea that this needs to be made into a stage play. I couldn't write a play to save my life, but I can write songs (especially if lives are on the line), so I composed a song about what it would be like if there was a play about the Ni'ihau incident.

The Boggy Man

I was 19 years old and seriously considering medical school, so my dad made arrangements for me to  spend an afternoon shadowing a colleague of his in the family medicine clinic. The first patient we saw was an elderly gentleman presenting for a routine health maintenance examination. Dr. Bower wasted no time introducing me as "Student Doctor London," and announced that I would be assisting him with the rectal exam.

 The misleading title made me a bit uncomfortable, but I loved the idea of "assisting." It implied that a good rectal exam requires teamwork, and I was part of that team!

So here I was, snapping on a latex glove and squirting lube on my right index finger. This is how the first patient encounter of my life would begin.

"Do you feel it?" Dr. Bower asked, "Do you feel the prostate?"

"Maybe," I said, "Actually, I'm not sure."

"You'll know you're there, because it feels just like the tip of your nose."

I carefully brought my ungloved left index finger to my nose and gently rubbed it back and forth. I was surprised to discover that the tip of my nose had a subtle divot that I had never noticed before. 

Postcards from Panama, Part 3

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for April is called, “Spinneret.” It is so energizing that after you listen to it, you will be able to go to your middle school gymnasium and beat your best time at the shuttle run. 

With warmest regards,

Zach

Postcards from Panama City, Part 3

(You may enjoy re-reading Part 1 and Part 2 beforehand)

3/11/2011

Dear Karen,

I have great news. I hired a secretary to take dictations for me. He is bilingual and does secretarial work full-time for only $300 a month! I will have him sign his name after mine at the bottom so you can see how different our handwriting is. 

I’m very excited about this, because now I can finally get some exercise while I write! As you know, there are three forms of exercise: strength training, toning and cardio. With my body type and long term goals, I have decided to focus 100% of my efforts on toning. I have a "toning diary," which is a piece of graph paper where I will log objective and subjective observations about my muscle tone. 

With warmest regards,

Michael 

y Hector

Numerators of the Lost Ark

Dear Friends,

Your name is Carmencita Calderón. It is 1930, and you are the dance partner of Cachafáz, the most notorious tango dancer in Buenos Aires. His pock-marked face and slick choreography are legendary, but you do not love him. No, your heart belongs to a man they call El Vasco, another professional tango dancer who left Argentina ten years ago to seek his fortunes in the smoky nightclubs of Paris.

After sending you not so much as a letter for years, your lover returns unexpectedly and sweeps you up in a particularly fiery tango. But Cachafáz is a jealous man. He challenges El Vasco to a high stakes dance-off, to the death. You know this is a battle your love cannot win. You must beg him to flee, flee the country this very night and never return!

This, dear friends, is the story of “El Vasco,” the Hard Taco song for March that will break your heart into mil piezas de dolor, a thousand aching splinters.

Numerators of the Lost Ark

The so-called Golden Ratio, (a+b)/a = a/b, has been used as far back as Euclid to make the world’s most beautifully proportioned rectangles. In his seminal textbook Elements (~300 B.C.), Euclid describes an incident in which King Ptolemy spends a whole Saturday working on a new rectangle and neglects to use the Golden Ratio to choose its proportions. Ptolemy invites Euclid to brunch at the palace to show off the rectangle, and all Euclid can do is smile politely and comment about what a nice personality it has. And you know what’s also nice, Your Highness? (a+b)/a = a/b.

Dry Heaves for the Packers

The evolution of a Packers fan between 1997 and 2011.

Dear friends,

This month's Hard Taco release is a (nearly) 7 minute opus called, "The Pottage Point Centennial Band." I realize that only unemployed people have enough free time to listen to something that long, which is why I waited until this year to release it.

But before I can write another word about it, let's talk football, because I have a hard time talking about anything else these days.

Nicholas Dodman is an an animal psychologist who wrote a book entitled, "The Dog Who Loved too Much." I haven't read it, but the first chapter was described to me as follows: The author has a patient, a dog, who loves her owner too much. When the owner leaves the house each morning, she becomes so worried that he won't return that she loses control of her bladder. She paces around the house peeing on everything. When he finally comes home at 5 pm, she is so overjoyed to see him that she throws up. The joy is so pervasive that she vomits constantly until he leaves again the next morning, at which point the bladder problem kicks in again.

That is how I feel about the Green Bay Packers. It is a special kind of staggering love that only emotionally disturbed dogs and true sports devotees can experience. We soar, we suffer, and we soar again, and all of it is unhealthy.

Insert not Make Dangerous in Flammable Substance

Dear Friends,

     The Hard Taco song for January, “A Man and His Jeweler” contains no less than three explicit lyrics. This is a bit of a departure for me, because in real life, the dirtiest words I use are zounds, poppycock, criminy, and during Michael Jackson impersonation contests, smooth criminy.

     This song goes out to my late Grandma Shirley, who would have loved cash-money-bling-bling rap if she had lived to see its heyday.

     This being the 104^th Hard Taco Digest, I humbly accept my place among the pantheon of the world’s most successful writers of unwanted emails. Today, I’d like to honor the men and women whose shoulders I stand on with a tribute to some of my favorite writers of indecipherable spam.

   Spoiler alert: the unifying feature of all great spam is the liberal use of the double exclamation point!!

“Electronics and Other Goods”

by m439sfd@nouuunns.com

Friend, are you doing? Honest, Does you approve online purchasing? I often shop goods store in a network, and mainly electronic products, even refrigerators ,yacht!! All products are sold regular discount, so see if you must need commodities at this website. Click and please make a talk!!

Sacred Blood Pact or Profane Phlegm-oath?

Dear Friends,

I. You're going to need this: ( )

It's an electronic representation of an opposing thumb and index finger, ready to pinch you. Why do you need electronic pinching? Because there is a glistening new Hard Taco album, “Approach Approach Conflict," and nothing could be dreamier.

The President of the United States has already released this statement:

"Holla, fellow Americans. At this time I wish I was in a deep coma, so I could finally listen to Hard Taco's Approach Approach Conflict 24 hours a day without missing state dinners. I only regret that strangling all nine Supreme Court justices won't free up enough seats to appoint all the marvelous musicians who played on this album. Somebody e-pinch me!"

Get some Hard Taco CDs today, because otherwise I’ll stop bugging you.

II. What is up? Therefore, up is what. Q.E.D.

Remember 17 years ago, when I guaranteed one new Hard Taco song a month, even though I despise doing it with all my heart? I was hoping you’d forget by now, but a promise is a promise. (A = A. Q.E.D.) Whether it was a sacred blood pact or merely a profane phlegm-oath, I suppose I’ll have to make good.

The Hard Taco song for December is called, "Secret Chaver." Unless you're that guy at the soup kitchen who actually ladles the soup, there is no better use of your next four minutes than listening to this song. (Yes, I'm talking to you, guy who buses trays at the soup kitchen.)