HUNTERS KILL THEIR FRIENDS AND LOVERS - TOM LEHRER LIVES! NPR LIES!

Above, the elusive Tom Lehrer. He's the guy who never put a photo of himself on the cover of his albums. He rarely appeared on TV (due to the "sick" nature of his songs) so it's something of a miracle that a video performance in Denmark was recorded AND preserved. He retired soon after, choosing the security and pension of being a professor to the iffy world of singing the same songs over and over in smelly nightclubs. Not everybody enjoys "touring."

Just what people enjoy...is often pretty peculiar. Some would say that enjoying Tom Lehrer is peculiar, as some of his songs are grim with black humor. Or black with grim humor. This particular number, "The Hunting Song," merely takes a poke at the peculiar joy that hunters get from killing. Hunters are really killers. They're joy is NOT the hunt, it's the KILL. Once in a while, they kill one of their own. Awwwwww. Oh deer....

NPR recently broadcast Lehrer's Denmark show, declaring that this was something RARE, and you could ONLY get to see it thanks to Public Television. Sad to see NPR lie like that. You expect it from the other NPR : Nasty Prevaricating Republicans. The little white lie here is that Tom's show has been available on YouTube for over seven years. NPR chose to interrupt Tom's skimpy (well under an hour) program for their usual agonizing, tedious fund-drive whining. If you pledged $100 or whatever, you'd be given a copy of the show on DVD. A show most anyone knows how to copy (removing the pledge drives) for FREE. 

Of course the point is to support public television, so tossing in a "treat" for a donation is just human nature. Still, NPR didn't have to keep claiming (erroneously) that their DVD was rare, and the FIRST TIME the show was being made available to the public. Your honors, submitted as evidence, is the page on AMAZON for an item called...

It's a double-disc set. The first CD is audio. The second is, yes, a DVD with EVERYTHING that NPR claimed had never been available for sale before. Fer Chrissake, this thing came out in 2010. It's been available for NEARLY A DECADE.

NPR, why did you have to lie?

At least the lying was for a good cause. NPR is a fine, fine network. I know for a fact (as I got the tedious fucking phone calls from friends and relatives) that a lot of people had not seen Lehrer before. "Hey, are you watching PBS? They got Tom Lehrer on! A rare TV special that's never been aired before!"

If a few people actually decided to throw $100 or whatever to NPR, fine. It was just a white lie. (Or is that a "lie of no-color?") These days, it's a bit of a surprise that ANY station would offer Lehrer, as his material, even after 50 years, is STILL pretty sick and offensive. To some. 

The best thing about the broadcast is that they were able to get Tom to do a voice-over, a restrained little bit of a shill for public television. It was nice to hear Tom's voice. He didn't sound 91.He sounded like he could easily belt out "The Hunting Song." It's still a killer!  

Of course, hunters killing friends, relatives or other hunters is just a spit in the toilet compared to the other "hunters" who use their fabulous automatic weapons to mow down shoppers in Walmart, school kids in a school, dancers in a disco, or people watching a C&W concert in Las Vegas. Then we have the ever-present threat of bombs blowing shit up, and some suicidal hacker managing to activate the button on a Nuke supposedly in a fail-safe location. And so...here's a download of WE'LL ALL GO TOGETHER WHEN WE GO. 

WE'LL ALL GO TOGETHER WHEN WE GO -- Nuclear Humor from Tom Lehrer - listen online or download. No password. No dodgy foreign website full of spyware or malware.