High Times, Hard Times--the year 2003

Last Friday, heading back to Brooklyn, I was standing next to a young couple. Evidently, she had pulled him onto the local train at the last minute, and he was chiding her for not waiting for the express, as he had wished, "This is gonna take fuh-evah. you're re-tahded. you're so dumb. you're fuckin' re-tahded. . . ." Every time he called her retarded she smiled and kissed him. It was absolutely adorable. It made me think of this song, a song that I listened to in an endless parade of smokey, luxury autos and denim emporiums, a song for the shame desert that was '03, the year of the invasion of Iraq and the return of the ruffled mini.