"A Whiter Shade of Pale" is probably my favorite song of all time. Mostly for its stately processional melody, but also for its elegant gibberish. What the hell is going on in this song? What light fandango have we skipped, exactly, and why? Things are definitely fancy--we're at a wedding, maybe, or at the coronation of a king circa the late 1600s, or maybe it's something a little more complicated like out of Eyes Wide Shut. We're more than a little out of it. It's pretty far into the night, but we look great and everything feels important. The situation seems dignified even if we don't.

If there were a 13-episode TV series about my life, I'd want each episode to end with one of these jams.

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