[(Produced by Brian Eno)] [(Recorded at Abbey Road Studios.)] [(High-fidelity, Dolby Atmos stereo, immersive mix.)] [(In the baroque pop cabaret rock dance style of Panic at the Disco)] [(Start)] [Intro] 🎭 [BPM: 120, Key: C minor, Mood: Theatrical, Quirky] About a dozen Cacophonists consolidated at the Northridge Chuck-E-Cheese One fine Sunday afternoon last month, by all appearance Just another group of gift encumbered suburban zombies Blithely attending a birthday for a little boy under the reservation "Al Riley." [Verse 1] 🌀 [BPM: 130, Key: C minor, Mood: Whirlwind, Energetic] But when Reverend Al finally shuffle entered in costume That this tiny tot was either side of thirty-five didn't faze the Cheese-oids As much as his ensemble, for his entire head was swathed in white gauze Taped and tied from the neck up until he resembled nothing less than An Egyptian mummy or Claude Rains in "The Invisible Man." [Chorus] ⚛️ [BPM: 140, Key: D minor, Mood: Cosmic, Anthemic] Arterial bluish stage make-up scarred the visible epidermis Of his eyelids and lips teasing the most discriminating gawker Seductively through the only open breaches in the dressing The effect was like a melon sized boil, pus-slick and corporeal white Planted atop a buttoned fifties plaid sport shirt and torn chino's [Music Break with Spoken Word] 🔮 "Oops," anywhere in a nuclear power facility 🌌 "A long, long time ago, dynamite had indeed won the first Nobel prize." [Verse 2] 🥁 [BPM: 125, Key: D minor, Mood: Sarcastic, Humorous] As if struck by divine intervention the eyes of children, Cheese-oids And Fanny Packer wearing parents locked into non-blinking mode Each smile faded and every pallor bleached with vampiric precision From arm's length to the farthest corner, one by one Until the ambient fun factor had dropped fifteen decibels [EDM/Dance Breakdown Solo] 🎶 [BPM: 150, Key: E minor, Mood: Energetic, Dance] (Instrumentation: Synthesizers, Electric Guitar, Bass, Drums, Theremin) [Verse 3] 🎷 [BPM: 128, Time Signature: 7/8, Mood: Jazz, Longing] Al shuffle-limped through the battlefield silence of the game room Hunched over a carton of low-fat twinkies, nervously plucking the box And littering the shreds behind in a snaking trail of nervous humiliation He was also hugging a large, shaggy white-paper donkey pinata Which I led by the foreleg like a demented leash [End] 🌀🔮 [BPM: 110, Key: C minor, Mood: Whirlwind, Mystical] Julia aided in elbow-steering the mummyhead, and the three of us clopped Pathetically, relentlessly, endlessly like post-punk wise men Looking for an ethereal forty-watt light bulb in a crib In the crowds stillness we were surfing that edge Where it had yet to be determined whether we'd pushed the envelope too far [**(In the baroque pop cabaret rock dance style of Panic at the Disco)**] [Intro] 🎭 [BPM: 120, Key: C minor, Mood: Theatrical, Quirky] much as a water balloon, filled past its recommended pressure, jiggles ominously under the faucet. At any moment I expected a child to burst and begin shrieking in a psychotic snap that would jump from tot to tot like an explosive chain of lethal transmission, crashing & burning their fragile intellects with the subtlety of Ebola in extreme amplification. [Verse 1] 🌀 [BPM: 130, Key: C minor, Mood: Whirlwind, Energetic] The prospect of Chuck-E-Cheese-Corp. kicking our asses in a half-decade long judicial battle paled in comparison to the imminent and mountainous psychotherapy bills we'd be levied for the rest of our garnished minimum-waged lives. Especially if any therapist paraded a Ken-sized doll of "Al Riley" and asked the hot potato, "Show me where Al touched you," and each and every fucking rug rat pointed to the brain. [Chorus] ⚛️ [BPM: 140, Key: D minor, Mood: Cosmic, Anthemic] Trust me, when a child fingers you accusingly and babbles something along the lines, "The monster touched my soul," your only chance is an L.A. based trial and Marta Waller giving commentary spin six hours daily on KTLA. And then maybe -- maybe -- you can make bail and abscond to Ojos Negros by nightfall. A place where the beer may be warm but you can kill anybody you want 'cause.... well, there's nothing else better to do. [Verse 2] 🥁 [BPM: 125, Key: D minor, Mood: Sarcastic, Humorous] I mentally defrosted some contempt in anticipation of leaving this joint a charred and smoking ruin. There wasn't gonna be any V-Chip for this nightmare, ya fuckers. But to our surprise the children accepted the brutal vision with the vapor weight of a cable channel, oohing and ahhing his passing like he was the White Power Ranger or something. [EDM/Dance Breakdown Solo] 🎶 [BPM: 150, Key: E minor, Mood: Energetic, Dance] (Instrumentation: Synthesizers, Electric Guitar, Bass, Drums, Theremin) [Verse 3] 🎷 [BPM: 128, Time Signature: 7/8, Mood: Jazz, Longing] Hell, he coulda been. He was bandaged as one would expect a man after having crushed a dixie cup against his forehead -- With a sledgehammer. Instead, it was the parents who stared, mortified, mouths frozen agape in horror. Having apparently tripped the circuit breakers in their frontal lobes they were incapacitated beyond covering their own eyes much less their children and reduced to producing scraps of handwritten directions and double-checking their right turns, Northridge and Bosnia having the same number of syllables. Hell, stranger Things've happened. [Verse 2] 🥁 [BPM: 125, Key: D minor, Mood: Sarcastic, Humorous] I mentally defrosted some contempt in anticipation of leaving this joint a charred and smoking ruin. There wasn't gonna be any V-Chip for this nightmare, ya fuckers. But to our surprise the children accepted the brutal vision with the vapor weight of a cable channel, oohing and ahhing his passing like he was the White Power Ranger or something. [EDM/Dance Breakdown Solo] 🎶 [BPM: 150, Key: E minor, Mood: Energetic, Dance] (Instrumentation: Synthesizers, Electric Guitar, Bass, Drums, Theremin) [Verse 3] 🎷 [BPM: 128, Time Signature: 7/8, Mood: Jazz, Longing] Hell, he coulda been. He was bandaged as one would expect a man after having crushed a dixie cup against his forehead -- With a sledgehammer. Instead, it was the parents who stared, mortified, mouths frozen agape in horror. Having apparently tripped the circuit breakers in their frontal lobes they were incapacitated beyond covering their own eyes much less their children and reduced to producing scraps of handwritten directions and double-checking their right turns, Northridge and Bosnia having the same number of syllables. Hell, stranger things've happened. [End] 🌀🔮 [BPM: 110, Key: C minor, Mood: Whirlwind, Mystical] We hobbled to our table in a perverse banquet room interrupted every ten minutes by the unintelligible squawk of the animatronic band on stage -- the kind of non-union, scab robots that keep Mr. Lincoln at Disneyland on his paternalistic toes. Supposedly the jingles are top forty sing-alongs reworked into crass advertisements for the Chuck-E-Cheese empire but one would be hard pressed to name any of the tunes given the unintelligible squawk. A volume request only raised the bombast from a gibber to a squelch which was just as well for as far as I could tell the quintet hadn't demonstrated any rehearsal chops since their aborted Cheesalooza gig earlier in the winter.