As a lyricist, I have always admired Mr. Cole Porter: Let's Do It, You're the Top, and I Get A Kick Out Of You are some of my all time favorite lyrics. Even when you're not listening to the music (click here), I Get A Kick Out Of You is totally worth reading, so check it out:

I Get A Kick Out Of You
by Cole Porter

My story is much too sad to be told,
But practically ev'rything leaves me totally cold.
The only exception I know is the case
When I'm out on a quiet spree
Fighting vainly the old enui
And I suddenly turn and see
Your fabulous face.

I get no kick from champagne.
Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all,
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a kick out of you?

Some get a kick from cocaine.
I'm sure that if I took even one sniff
That would bore me terrific'ly too
Yet I get a kick out of you.

I get a kick ev'ry time I see
You're standing there before me.
I get a kick though its clear to me
You obviously don't adore me.

I get no kick in a plane.
Flying too high with some guy in the sky
Is my idea of nothing to do,
Yet I get a kick out of you.

Poor Cole; a pathetic, love-sick homosexual strung out on uppers and downers with crushed legs from a horse-riding accident is so sad, it would make almost anyone cry.

But, when I look at the dramatic curve of Mr. Porter's stanza's, conceptually I am disappointed, he goes from alcohol to amphetamines to an...airplane? It doesn't make any sense, it's a mechanical device, I'd follow the logical progression of drug addiction. If I was Cole, I would not mess around with aircraft, I'd go right for the main-line, that's why I decided to rewrite the last line. Instead of, "I get no kick in a plane..." I would write:

"I get no kick in a vain.
Strung out on dope I am clearly a joke,
So tell me why should it be true,
That I get a kick out of you."

Just a friendly suggestion.

by TJ Richter

Please note, I could have followed Cole's weak moralistic approach, keeping a safe distance from the subject matter, "Some get a kick in a vain/Strung out on dope it is clearly a joke..." but believe one should be upfront with one's vices and kept it in the first person, what a fucking pussy ; )

© April 11, 2009 Theodore J. Richter

WORKING IDEAS

I Get A Kick Out Of You Like A Degenerate Sea-turtle w/Jet Packs Strung-out On Intergalactic Narcotics (working title)

So I want to bump this concept up to a higher level, with the goal of making the young girls cry in performance (ha, if I can pull it off). I envision a degenerate, space age sea-turtle junky with rotten teeth, rusty jet packs, strung-out on intergalactic narcotics, and poisoned by interstellar dumping from swimming in the hyperspace gutter. I am covered in garbage, what a sad sight mess-of-a-creature I am, and this is my costume (with garbage truck and junkyard video projections on my body with a smoke machine). I look up from the hyper-space gutter, into an inter-species sex shop window and see a mermaid love-doll made in Lithuania who has eyes for a stud-ly, Asian sumo doll. I am misguided sea turtle, hopelessly in love with the mermaid, sing I Get A Kick Out Of You to her with an Ethel Merman vocal processor voice and a down-tempo Aphex Twin beat as toxic fumes from another dimension singe my sad-assed turtle ass. Blah, blah, blah...

by TJ Richter

© April 11, 2009 Theodore J. Richter

...and I have a secret Lithuanian love you'll never know of.