He played the Balalaika… then ate it!
I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I clapped.
He wasn’t finished yet.
Everyone in the alien dinner theater scowled at me while he started again, from the beginning.
I couldn’t see why this guy was such a big celebrity on this planet.
Until he started to sing. It was the most amazing performance I’d ever heard.
But the local aliens at my table weren’t too impressed. “Anyone with two heads can sing harmony like that,” they muttered.
Several recursive years ago Ferlinghetti wrote “‘Don’t let that horse eat that violin!’, cried Chagall’s mother.” (Collected in “A Coney Island of the Mind”)
Years (and I mean years) later Joni Mitchell sang “My analyst told me…” ending with “an’ dontcha know? two heads are better than one?”
The neat thing is about this piece. I can actually >see< the balalaika. And the high vibrations resonating in the quantum strings. And its place at the nth-entry on the menu (complete with the warmed cinnamon and anise sauce). Nothing however touches Rod Steiger’s performance where he describes the death of Strelnikov (Pasha). Hmmmmm, what does >>this< < have to do with anything? (Zippy says, “E-E-A!!”)