Simon and Garfunkel - "Punky's Dilemma" WTF?

Paul Simon is only 2nd most notorious baby boomer pot fiend, other than Paul McCartney of course.

HS

It's about the Vietnam-era draft.

I just wrote about this in my diss.

Xgau:"Paul Simon's "Punky's Dilemma,"...seems the essence of lightheartedness on casual hearing but is really a poignant and ironic presentation of a young man's military alternatives: resisting or playing along with the draft."

Then he goes on to demonstrate how Streisand fucked up her cover of it: "In order for this irony to come across, however, it must be sung by a man."

In Streisand’s semi-defense, she does change “If I become a first lieutenant” to “If I become a famous lady” and slips in a minor gender reversal in the same verse.

Lois Lane changes the line to “If you become a first lieutenant.” But her use of the first person in the previous verses suggests she missed the irony as well.

Here's Lane's version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq1bO8lwOoI

I think this was one of the songs written by Paul for use in The Graduate, but Mike Nichols rejected it, preferring to use the already-existing Sound Of Silence etc, to which he'd already cut various sequences in the working version of the film. I've always thought it was a shame it wasn't used: the song's title fits the film perfectly, and the opening lines and those shots of our hero floating in his swimming pool seem made for each other.

I always liked this song when I was a kid, since I've always been a big fan of English Muffins (though with butter, not jam). Also liked the Simon & Garfunkel song about the zoo, since I liked zoos so much. (I hadn't thought about that in decades.)

this is a great tune and fun to play (and yeah I've always considered it a close companion to "At the Zoo" too, oddly - voted for that one in the poll as a matter of fact)

also yeah duh its about a guy who wants to skip the draft and get high