Your Attention, Please!
We interrupt this string of House on the Rock entries to bring you this bit of news that is just too quirky to wait for the end of the tour:
I ordered two CDs for my brother for his birthday and had them sent, gift-wrapped, from Amazon. They were Wesley Willis Greatest Hits and Wesley Willis Greatest Hits, Volume 2. Wesley Willis was a local Chicago music phenom and, let's just say, an acquired taste. I had given my brother a copy of his greatest hits CD as a Christmas present a few years ago, but, alas! He had loaned it to a friend and that was the last he ever saw of it. So I figured a replacement would be a perfect birthday gift. When I found that there were MORE compilations of Wesley Willis's "hits," I added onto the treasure trove.
They arrived to him in good order, but he plucked them out of his mailbox as he was heading into work at one of his several jobs--this one at a local coffeehouse and watering hole. He stuffed the wrapped CDs in his messenger bag, planning to spend the evening after work listening to the oeuvre of Monsieur Willis. Alas, yet again! Sometime during his shift, the CDs were pilfered, gift-wrap and all, out of his bag! He called me that night, angry but chagrined. I told him not to worry... stuff like this happens, and, while it sucks, it's just stuff. And Christmas is looming...
Well, he just called me. Turns out that he has a shift at the same place this morning, and when he arrived this a.m. he found the CDs, unwrapped, under the bar. Only one of them--the original greatest hits album--was out of its shrink wrap. A guy had brought them in last night, saying that he had picked them up out of the closet by mistake, and that he was horrified to discover that they were not his... so he was returning them!!
Now, really. The CDs were gift-wrapped with a tag addressed specifically to my brother on them, and they were INSIDE his bag, so there is no way this guy could have picked them up by mistake. The most hilarious thing about the whole incident is that the guy obviously opened the first one, popped it in the deck, and was so horrified at what assailed his ears that he didn't even bother to open the second one--he just gathered the two of them up and BROUGHT THEM BACK to the scene of his crime! Too funny!!
Sometimes the karma police have a grand sense of humor!
I ordered two CDs for my brother for his birthday and had them sent, gift-wrapped, from Amazon. They were Wesley Willis Greatest Hits and Wesley Willis Greatest Hits, Volume 2. Wesley Willis was a local Chicago music phenom and, let's just say, an acquired taste. I had given my brother a copy of his greatest hits CD as a Christmas present a few years ago, but, alas! He had loaned it to a friend and that was the last he ever saw of it. So I figured a replacement would be a perfect birthday gift. When I found that there were MORE compilations of Wesley Willis's "hits," I added onto the treasure trove.
They arrived to him in good order, but he plucked them out of his mailbox as he was heading into work at one of his several jobs--this one at a local coffeehouse and watering hole. He stuffed the wrapped CDs in his messenger bag, planning to spend the evening after work listening to the oeuvre of Monsieur Willis. Alas, yet again! Sometime during his shift, the CDs were pilfered, gift-wrap and all, out of his bag! He called me that night, angry but chagrined. I told him not to worry... stuff like this happens, and, while it sucks, it's just stuff. And Christmas is looming...
Well, he just called me. Turns out that he has a shift at the same place this morning, and when he arrived this a.m. he found the CDs, unwrapped, under the bar. Only one of them--the original greatest hits album--was out of its shrink wrap. A guy had brought them in last night, saying that he had picked them up out of the closet by mistake, and that he was horrified to discover that they were not his... so he was returning them!!
Now, really. The CDs were gift-wrapped with a tag addressed specifically to my brother on them, and they were INSIDE his bag, so there is no way this guy could have picked them up by mistake. The most hilarious thing about the whole incident is that the guy obviously opened the first one, popped it in the deck, and was so horrified at what assailed his ears that he didn't even bother to open the second one--he just gathered the two of them up and BROUGHT THEM BACK to the scene of his crime! Too funny!!
Sometimes the karma police have a grand sense of humor!
Labels: petty larceny, Wesley Willis
posted by Cathy VanPatten at 11:45 AM
7 Comments:
Which reminds me of when I was living in Charlottesville and professional thieves broke into all the cars in the neighborhood, including mine. They took my tape deck, a nice wooden cassette storage box, and left the cassettes themselves laid out in a neat row on the driver's seat.
I was less upset about being robbed than the critique of my musical tastes.
Ouch!
Kinda like in The Big Lebowski, when little Larry and his joy-riding friends took the briefcase but left the Creedence!
That's hilarious!
Now I'm off to Amazon to see if I can sample it because I've just gotta hear the music that turns thieves honest!
Now that I've sampled it... um, acquired taste, indeed! It might not be so bad if he wasn't so often off-key, but I suppose that's part of the charm?
Could be worse...you could have been listening to Hasil Adkins!
Or, God forbid, Metal Machine Music.
Hasil Adkins!! LOL! Back in the day, I used to know the guys behind Norton Records--the folks who kind of "discovered" ol' Hasil.
Yep... acquired tastes, all!
One acquired taste near and dear to my heart is The Shaggs. "It's Halloween" and "My Pal Foot-Foot" are true classics of the arcane and nearly unlistenable.
Oh, my, yes! The Shaggs, before whom even the mighty Lester Bangs would bow! And they STILL maintain a sizable cult following!
I'd heard OF them long before I HEARD them, thinking "Oh, well; here's another strange American phenomenon, then my friend Jim slipped me a CD. First thought: WTF? Second thought: Well, ya knowwwwww...there's something here, though I'm not sure what.
Yep, an acquired taste, but ultimately rewarding.
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