I Really Hate That Song

I could not care less if Bon Jovi lived or died. The band, I mean. Or the man, I guess. I'm quite neutral on the subject of Bon Jovi (Except as it pertains to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. We'll talk another time about that). But for nearly 36 hours I had what turned out to be a Bon Jovi song wedged in my brain and I thought I would have to submit to a frontal lobotomy to get it out. It's still kind of there, way in back. Pisses me off.

I'll be there for you
These five words I swear to you
When you breathe,
I'll be the air for you
I'll be there for you

Strange, inexplicable (and in this case, nearly unendurable) mental gremlins basically have their way with you when you are in the throes of a fever. They are part of what makes the flu so terrible. Lying in my sister's bed for an entire night and day, my joints packed with hot, ground glass, teeth chattering, far too weak to speak or do anything except lurch to the bathroom, bent over double, I was the victim of these mental torture-trolls as much as I was a victim of a genuinely diabolical bug.


I'll be there for you
These five words I swear to you

Spare me.

The night before this...this thing took hold of me, I had been watching a favorite DVD. The movie itself is wonderful. But it has previews before the main feature, and sadly (for me) one of the previews is for what appears to be a staggeringly banal and embarassing movie featuring Ashton Kucher. Ashton Kucher playing the guitar and singing very very badly.


I'll be there for you
These five words I swear to you
When you breathe..

This is the stuff of an acid trip taken down the wrong street in Mexico using a bad map in a car with a cracked head and distributor cap issues. I don't know at this point that this is a Bon Jovi song. I am just blindly groping around for the remote to get past the previews and get to the real movie.

But it must have stuck with me, because as I lay there, on the icy bathroom floor, the damned thing kept playing in a wobbly loop in my head. And since I had never heard the original, it was Ashton Kucher's version that I heard. Over and over and over.

Ashton Kucher
Ashton Kucher
Ashton Kucher

Just drag me out the back door and shoot me, now, now, now.

I'm grateful to my sister. She drove me to her house following an impromptu dinner with a mutual friend. I was very suddenly not feeling well, and she drove like a homicidal maniac to get me to her house before I imploded. I flopped, moaning, on her couch through that night and kept her family awake, I am certain. Her dog was such a pathetic little pal, tucking his cold nose into my slumped form on the bathmat.

The worst thing...no, ONE of the worst things... was that all the next day (She had shuttled me into her own bedroom at that point, while we waited for Zorro to come home and fetch me), she was cooking something that on any other day would have made me swoon to think about being invited to share. Something Mexican and spicy and tantalizing. But for me, on this day, in the throes of the clock-cleaning illness, was evil, nauseating, and horribly retch-worthy.

Days later, the song still caroming around my head, I called my brother and sang the lines over the phone.

"Bon Jovi. I think. Sounds like Bon Jovi to me," he says.

Bon Jovi. Curse you, Bon Jovi. Curse you, Ashton Kucher. Curse you, all interchangeable members of the Mediocre Rom-Com genre, AND metal bands in general.

Next year, I am getting a flu shot, because I'll be damned if I am going to be listening to Ashton Kucher and Bon Jovi for three days after Christmas ever again. Not gonna happen. I'm getting that flu shot.

These five words I swear to you