Ever have an old song pop into your head and then it’s just there all day?
For those of you reading this who are old enough to get the reference, today’s blog post title comes from a Todd Rundgren song from the early 80s, “Bang the Drum All Day.”
Todd Rundgren was known as a bit of a musical wizard, an intellectual type not easily pigeonholed. Described on Wikipedia as “unorthodox,” Rundgren had two big hits in the early 70s, “Hello It’s Me” and “I Saw the Light,” both pop confections that still sound timeless today.
Ten years went by and Rundgren hit the charts again with the purposefully moronic “Bang the Drum All Day.” Favorite lyrics include the following:
Every day when I get home from work
I feel so frustrated
The boss is a jerk
And I get my sticks and go out to the shed
And I pound on that drum like it was the boss’s head
Because I don’t want to work
I want to bang on the drum all day
I mean, come on. Who wouldn’t like that guy? Well, okay, maybe a few bosses…
“Ready for your next assignment?”
This afternoon I tried to find a clip from Charlie’s Angels that said “Good morning, angels. Ready for your next assignment?” But to no avail. Instead I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole featuring Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Farrah Fawcett. It’s been hours!
I’m kidding, of course, but today I did feel a bit like Charlie’s Angels must have felt sometimes when they heard his voice piping out of that vintage Western Electric speakerphone. A sense of “another one?”
In short, I’m ready for a different kind of assignment.
And this month, that assignment is called getting ready for a book launch. In just about five weeks, I’ll be publishing Hot Scenes, my first novel since the (much different) Whizzers. I’m grateful I get to do this, as of course I should be.
So if I seem inattentive to this blog for the next couple of months, the reason is simple: it’s almost launch day!
You can preorder Hot Scenes for Kindle, or better yet, wait for the paperback version. Whichever you prefer, I hope it gives you as many laughs reading it as it gave me writing it.
