that little bitty track meet...

"Could've been the three or four six-packs, I don't know,
but look at the mess I'm in" -- a phrase from the chorus of "Wasn't That A Party", is repeated several times during the song, and it clearly says "mess I'm in," but one version on You Tube sings that line as, "...look at the state I'm in" and you see a photo of this kid standing in front of a map on the wall, pointing at a state, circled in an ongoing magic-marker line....

Creative types building on the ideas and images of this song. 

One commenter typed,
For some reason the line, "someone took a grapefruit, wore it like a hat" cracks me the hell up.

It cracks me the hell up as well; like the internet commenter, I too find it challenging to specify the reason.

Like if the song said, "Someone put a grapefruit on their head" -- you would see an amusing mental image, but it would not be as funny.

It's the plodding, gently factual, earnest relating of the information, step by step, I think, that makes it better:

someone took a grapefruit, [serious, plain, could be called dull]

wore it like a hat 

[OH! change of pace -- ha ha, now we're happy....]

...someone under my kitchen table
[is kind of funny -- you can imagine]
talking to my ol' tom cat...
[makes it funnier]
...the cat was talking back!
[building up to Even Funnier]

...along about then everything went black,
[collapsing in giggles -- 'Yeah I'll bet!']

Build up - build up - swoo-oop down, and flow --
coulda been the whiskey
mighta been the gin --
a softly pleasurable roller-coaster -- a sweaving ride, but not scary....

(To sweave:  to simultaneously swoop, swing, and weave....)

The first time you ever hear this song, it's a process of --
What?
What?
Wait-a-minute....
because you cannot believe what they're saying....

In the 80s, I always heard the line,
"My head is like a football"
more as
"My heads-a like-a football" --
sung that way, has more of a jouncy, assertive rhythm....

----------------------------

"Wasn't That a Party" is, technically, a two-step, but it's too fast to really do the two-step to it -- must swing into the local version of the "jitterbug" or the more complex "shag"....

--------------------

...sitting in
the back yard
blowing on a  si-ren
from somebody's
PO - lice car...(!?)

So you see, Your Honor....

-30-