The Wide Angle: C.C. DeVille and a tennis racket

Published 6:30 am Saturday, January 23, 2021

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As we all exhale in the aftermath of this year’s election (sans anymore storming of anything), I find myself a little miffed that nobody asked me to perform at President Joe Biden’s inauguration hootenanny Wednesday night.

It’s not like I have any applicable talents that would lend themselves to such an occasion, but they could have asked anyway.

I do spin a pretty good yarn from ye olden days, but maybe that’s not discerning enough for such a high-class crowd.

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Apparently there’s no need for a class clown either, something I continue excelling at, which is a shame because if there is any place that could use some humor, it’s Washington DC. “Haha humor” I mean, not “groan and roll your eyes” humor. There’s a difference.

As I watched the festivities unfold along with the siege-like fireworks show that would have made the French Revolution proud, I thought of what I could bring to the occasion.

A duet with Lady Gaga maybe? With her singing on piano and me strumming away on a tennis racket?

That was always my instrument of choice as a young and talentless musician. I couldn’t so much as strum an actual guitar without devastating bat populations, but I was at my best CC Deville when I picked up a tennis racket or hockey stick. There wasn’t a lick I couldn’t rip into the living room of my air-guitar performance with my trusty Fender 40 string tennis racket.

Actually, I was an overarching musician, though I wasn’t near as good at the imaginary pencil-stick drum kit that I hammered away at in Spanish class.

The tennis racket howled in my hands as I hit every chord of Heart’s “If Looks Could Kill,” or Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil.”

Sadly, that’s where my musical talent died rather pathetically. It’s hard to be a rock god in a small high school weilding the power of a trombone. What I didn’t know is that if I would have applied myself then it could have been a start. One doesn’t simply pick up a trombone and create the next rock powerhouse apparently.

Apparently things require work to succeed. If only I would have taken my cues from my class antics.

So we’re back to what I could have contributed. A little stand-up routine, firing off one-liners and mad burns? I have gotten pretty good in the wit department. I mean, people are laughing and I don’t think it’s just at me.

It’s not like there’s nothing to laugh at in politics. I mean everything is worth laughing at. How can it not be?

Still, I tend to be exhausting, so related my third-grade teacher, or at least I suspect she said something along those lines. It wouldn’t suprise me and I suspect it wouldn’t surprise my parents either. There was precident. My second grade teacher Mrs. York often had to deal with my pencil-flying antics.

In fact, I would wager they know things told to them by fellow teachers they haven’t told me at the risk of hurting my meager feelings.

As it turns out, I have really nothing to offer such an occasion, but I do offer President Biden the opportunity to shoot the breeze when he needs to get away from things. I once shot the breeze with Kenny Rogers for before a show at the South Dakota State Fair.

I can talk about nothing forever … wait! Come back, I have a whole lot more nothing to tell you.