Tuesday night I was flipping around the channels and came across a show called “Independent Lens” on PBS. This particular show, called “Off the Charts,” was about the song-poem industry and, God help me, it was just about the funniest documentary I’ve ever seen. In a nutshell, this “music” business asks people to send in their poems which are then set to music for a modest fee. Your very own song for $79.99. The poems are awful. The music is perfunctory crap. Put them together and you get songs so bad, it’s good. Here’s a sample lyric from the song-poem classic “Blind Man’s Penis”: “Warts love my nipples because they’re pink.” Oh yeah!

Normally I wouldn’t interrupt the punditry to take note of this, but then I’m reading Lileks today and he’s talking about a new CD: “The American Song-Poem Anthology” (including “Blind Man’s Penis”!) This must be some kind of divine intervention, so I’ll be on Amazon tonight placing my order. I can’t wait to hear “Jimmy Carter Says Yes” and “I Like Yellow Things.”