"I'm just a sweet transvestite..."

Okay, not really, but I'm listening to the Rocky Horror soundtrack.

So I was watching season two of SNL yesterday afternoon, and on one of the episodes - it was the episode just before the Christmas of '76 - Frank Zappa was the musical guest. I had only really heard one whole Zappa tune before watching that episode, I had only heard snippets of songs from the radio ad for the Zappa Plays Zappa concert a while back.

The first thing that seemed to grab me was how skinny Frank Zappa was. It started out with Frank singing, and then he yelled, "Take it away, Don Pardo!", and Don Pardo announced the sentances on the blackboard that Frank pointed to with a wooden pointing stick. I can't really remember what the sentances were, but one of them had something to do with 'selling the rights to your soul'. Later on in the performance, the camera panned over to one of the monitors, where some kind of paste was oozing out of something above the monitor, which freaked me out a little, but the music was brilliant.

Something tells me that Frank Zappa was an under-appreciated genius. Dad once said that he was a musician who basically gave the musical finger to people who didn't like him, or something like that.

Frank appeared in one of the skits, too - the 'Killer Christmas Trees' skit. They had two Christmas trees and Frank as the suspects lined up for the witness to see to point out the killer. One of the cops (I think he was portrayed by Dan Aykroyd) said, "Simon says, shake your branches!" The 'trees' shook their branches and Frank put a hand by his chest and wiggled his fingers. The cop said, "Simon says, shake your ornaments!" The 'trees' shook thier ornaments and Frank played with the buttons on the coat he wore in the skit. Then the cop said, "Kill the person next to you!", and the tree beside Frank 'killed' him - but it didn't really kill him, folks!

I might have to start listening to Frank Zappa. The library by our house has a couple of Zappa albums, actually...

And my left eye is freakin' sore. Thanks, O Changing Weather!