(no subject)

[leftyjew]

Does anyone know the meaning of Paul Simon's "Call Me Al"????
I read somewhere that the chorus is an inside joke, that the first line was chosen becuase it's like a classical joke itself, but what is the underlying meaning?

lyrics

A man walks down the street
He says why am I soft in the middle now
Why am I soft in the middle
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don´t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
Bonedigger Bonedigger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly Beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know I don´t find this stuff amusing anymore

CHORUS :
If you´ll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me
You can call me Al

A man walks down the street
He says why am I short of attention
Got a short little span of attention
And why are my nights are so long
Where´s my wife and family
What if I die here
Who´ll be my role-model
Now that my role-model is
Gone Gone
He ducked back down the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
All along along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations

CHORUS :

A man walks down the street
It´s a street in a strange world
Maybe it´s the Third World
Maybe it´s his first time around
He doesn´t speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound
The sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterlings und orphanges
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

CHORUS :

Comments

[bluejeanjexy.livejournal.com]

He starts out really dissatisfied and confused and just generally unhappy with his lot in life and realizes he is without things he feels he deserves. He sees all this stuff around him and doesn't appreciate any of it, but then he realizes things are just fine the way they are, everything has it's place and it's great.
He says, "Hey, Hallelujah."