Counting our “lucky stars” with Buffett

Hello everyone, I have returned. Last you heard from me, Jimmy Buffett was enjoying some gumbo at his beach house on the moon. That is quite a sentence, I must admit. However, as I’m sure you, my dear readers, are well aware of at this point, there is always more to discuss. So, I give you “Beach House on the Moon, Part II.”

Apologies, math majors, but I’m afraid this isn’t your song. “Math Suks” (yes, it’s spelt that way), is a song in which Buffett explains his disdain for mathematics, and everything having to do with it. He hammers home his point with lyrics like, “geometry, trigonometry and if that don’t tax your brain, there are numbers too big to be named.” Those lyrics are stupid, I know, but also accurate for me. I’m afraid I’m terrible at math and always have been; middle and high school felt like a purgatory of algebra. So, though this song isn’t technically the best, it’s funny and resonates with me. I’ll tell you who it didn’t resonate with, though: the US National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Education Association. These groups said that Buffett’s song allegedly had a negative impact on children’s education. Now, this could be me, but I’m not quite sure if the children of the ‘90s were Buffett’s core audience and would’ve taken this song to heart.

A song that describes the bliss of having a little extra change is “Spending Money.” He makes it clear that it has “no relation to the meaning of life,” however, it never hurts to have a little money to burn. The instrumentals and whistling emphasize the carefree nature of this song.

Written by his close confidant, Mac McAnlly, “Semi-True Story” is a song that takes a little inspiration from the many tales that Buffett has told. As is the case with most stories, the best ones are a mix of fact and fiction, where the truth blurs into the myths, such as Buffett’s incident with Sherrif Bufford Pusser that was already detailed in the song “Presents to Send You.” Overall, it’s a nice little song, and Buffett’s story telling nature can easily be described by the line, “I made up a few things and there’s some I forgot.”

“Lucky Stars” is one of those songs that describes how the world is in disarray; things aren’t going right, and all you can just think is it, “looks like it’s going to be another one of those days.” However, it is always good to remind yourself of the good in life, like you got a roof over your head, people who love you and a bed to call your own at the end of the day. It’s a nice little song about just being able to appreciate what you have now in the moment, despite everything going on.

You ever take a moment to stop and just really take in all that’s around you? You might end up asking some questions like “why does the sun set in the west? And why does my heart keep beating in my chest?” At the end of the day, some things are beyond me, and that’s what “I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care” is for. It’s a song where it may be ignorance or apathy, but stuff goes on around us and, in the end, most of us have no clue what is even going on. Buffett thinks about these great questions, but offers very little answers, resorting to just taking a nap under a mango tree (that doesn’t sound all too bad). Overall, this is a fun, fast paced Buffett song, and it ends with Buffett proclaiming “uh oh, that’s the end of this record, I gotta go out on the town!”

However, that isn’t the end of the album. “Oyster and Pearls” is the true ending of the album, a song that reflects on what make us humans so uniquely crazy and what drives some of us to be different from the rest. The song is symphonic in how its instrumentals are based on strings and the piano, making it feel bigger than it is. Buffett appears to look at us fondly, saying that “it’s something more than DNA that tells us who we are, its method and its magic, we are of the stars.” We are otherworldly, but some of us break history, while others prefer to stay unknown, leading to what Buffett describes as how “most are fine as oysters while some become pearls.”

A fine album indeed, though I have to report that it isn’t a no-skip album to me, shocker, I know. One song stops that for me, which is “You Call it Jogging,” which I acknowledge is a fun song, but it isn’t my jam. However, even if it were a liked song and it made this a no skip album, I’m afraid that wouldn’t make it a part of my self-described Jimmy Buffett Renaissance Era. The era of three no skip albums between “Fruitcakes,” “Barometer Soup,” and “Banana Wind” has ended. This album was good, but the highs weren’t as high to me as the previous albums, and the sound felt different, with the only song feeling like it could’ve been a part of the Renaissance Era being “I Don’t Know and I Don’t Care.” This album is the beginning of what I dub the Millennium Era, but the boundaries of this era remain to be seen. Until then, I feel a certain wanderlust, who knows where it may take me, perhaps the “Far Side of the World.”