You think eight seconds is nothing? Don’t tell that to the bull.
Eight seconds is an eternity at the rodeo. Unless you’re in the stands, drinking beer, then eight seconds is nothing. I still wouldn’t tell that to the bull though.
Eight seconds can make a difference. Or it can make no difference at all. One person’s bucking bull is another person’s paper skeleton.
I tried repeating “Sound of the Beat” three times to see if it made a pop song. It’s about eight seconds too long for the Residents’ Commercial Album, but I tried it anyway. I found out “Sound of the Beat” is more arrow than boomerang, thruway than cul-de-sac.
Only one direction to travel in a Palberta album — forward through biodiverse fronts, dodging volleys of culture shards, viewing shadow-torn portraits through the guarded gates at the embassy — one or two minutes at a time. Hey, where’d that overhead aircraft go? Or was it just another passing cloud?
Like the Residents, Palberta gives us that strange feeling that we’ve heard this one before. And it’s not the first time: “Stayin’ Alive,” “Big Time,” “Hot Cross Buns.”
“Sound of the Beat,” dear god, that sounds familiar…time for some hits…got this, this, this. What is it? Something my music teacher warned me about? Something Rob Lowe told Rolling Stone? Something that narrator sold me in a car commercial?
Keep coming back to commercials, commercials… I expect my dog to lick my face as I turn and see a Mir Shlufn Nisht poster on the wall. It’s late morning — which means TV, sunlight and cereal — I’ve moved from ugly dreams into daylight, from jungle to desert, forty years pass by in eight seconds. It’s not transwarp, but the ride is dramatic enough that those in the stands whoop, clap and drink to that. Buzzer sound, next.
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