Originally Posted Wednesday December 26, 2007
This is a song about Benjamin Belson, a teenager who appeared in several episodes of 3-2-1 Contact in 1980. After his brief stint with the series, Benjamin went on to live a fairly mundane life. His first job out of college (MSU) was keeping the books for a large New York department store. Early in his twenties, he began investing extra money in several building projects and eventually moved on to working in real estate exclusively. He acquired all the usual amounts of money, in all the usual ways, in the usual amount of time. Our particular glance into his life this day finds him doing a little soul searching.
The song is a pretty simple construction. It's built around a horn sample from It's Hard by The Who. The vocal samples come from an early 80's interview with Sci-Fi author Walter Tevis, as well as dialogue from The Tick television series.
Sensible Shoe
Benjamin Belson
A middle-aged real estate tycoon
He's a multimillionaire
He is suffering from sexual impotence
He has just recently undergone a painful divorce
He is bored with making money
He finds life in New York, a city which he loves very much
More and more dispiriting as New York loses its
Vitality and balance
New York is a dying city.
“I have been living a lie
My entire life has become nothing but
Numbers, and deductions, and IRAs...
(Two Hundred and Fifty-Five)
...And granted I've been doing my parents' tax returns since I was six
but even then I knew I had a higher calling...
I can't hide from it any longer
I am going to become a super hero!”
Christ in Heaven!
Look at yourself
You're built like a sensible shoe
You shouldn't be jumping around town
In a body sock fighting crime!
Time's up!
Here's the way I see it:
You're either a man with a job
or an idiot in a bunny suit
But you can't be both.
A middle-aged real estate tycoon
He's a multimillionaire
He is suffering from sexual impotence
He has just recently undergone a painful divorce
He is bored with making money
He finds life in New York, a city which he loves very much
More and more dispiriting as New York loses its
Vitality and balance
New York is a dying city.
“I have been living a lie
My entire life has become nothing but
Numbers, and deductions, and IRAs...
(Two Hundred and Fifty-Five)
...And granted I've been doing my parents' tax returns since I was six
but even then I knew I had a higher calling...
I can't hide from it any longer
I am going to become a super hero!”
Christ in Heaven!
Look at yourself
You're built like a sensible shoe
You shouldn't be jumping around town
In a body sock fighting crime!
Time's up!
Here's the way I see it:
You're either a man with a job
or an idiot in a bunny suit
But you can't be both.