What’s wrong with this song? It has provided endless entertainment for some of us over the years. And the disco version. Mwah! The “fevered iron” and “striped pair of pants.” Come on. There is no way this was the worst
song ever written.

Actually it does sort of have something to do with OKC.
This would be an excellent name/theme song for the new
park that’s going to be somewhere downtown there. I can
see this all coming together. It’s like a subliminal
park thing that was just kind of floating around that you
probably weren’t aware of. A kind of visionary thing that
hadn’t really gelled.

Allow me to second Mr Duck’s recommendation for “MacArthur Park” as the name of that new downtown park. Instant name recognition, and during the State Fair people can bring cakes. (Which, of course, will be left out in the rain, because it always rains on the State Fair.)

For that matter, assuming those clods at ABLE can be kept off the premises, we could have a vendor at one end selling warm wine.

(And at this point, Steve says: “My God, what have I done?”)

Just tell me what the cake is all about and I’ll take back my criticism. For for almost 40 years I’ve wondered “what the heck is this song about?”
As for naming the park that is beloved so much by the mayor after this weird, incomprehensible song, yes, I’ll add a third to Mr. Duck’s suggestion. We could even push for creation of a sculpture portraying a giant melting cake (with an umbrella hanging overhead?) Let the “MacArthur Park” campaign begin! And yes, Mr. Duck is correct – this post is completely appropriate for OKC Central. It relates to Core to Shore, MAPS 3, and heck, maybe even the NBA.

There has been much discussion of said cake, though I have always believed (as suggested here) that Webb was borrowing a line from the poet W. H. Auden, who used it to describe his personal appearance: a face, he said, “like a wedding-cake left in the rain.” As a metaphor for Things Gone Horribly Wrong, it’s hard to beat.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what the “cake” meant. At least
that’s not what I’ve always thought the cake meant.

I’d prefer a sculpture of men playing checkers.(see song) They could
be friends of the guy outside the Edmond Library reading the paper. (see Edmond Libary picture)

If someone seconds your recommendation, does that mean that
the person agrees with what you said? If that’s true then
I would assume that someone agreed with me because they
know my mom is reading this blog. I think it’s the second
time anyone has ever agreed with me & I don’t remember when
the other time was. Maybe it was something about weather.
I don’t know. It was a long time ago.

Other Sculpture Ideas:

General MacArthur
Some Kind of Arrow Pointing to Phoenix (see background on
song By The Time I GEt to)

Sirens are going off and it’s 12 noon, so I guess the time
stamp is an hour ahead of time. Does someone need to fix
that?

Whoops! I forgot to add a big bronze iron and pants.

@Genghis: This is a WordPress issue: it’s never been able to deal with DST, and since it’s distributed worldwide, there was no point in adding a module to fix it.

It’s a simple change in the admin, so I assume whoever manages these things for Opubco can do the fix whenever (s)he gets around to it.

[...] song is not Jimmy Webb’s Los Angeles epic “MacArthur Park,” as evidenced by this departure from his usual subject matter in order to bash one version [...]

For what its worth, from Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Park_(song)

“The inspiration for “MacArthur Park” was the relationship and breakup between Webb and Susan Ronstadt, a cousin of singer Linda Ronstadt. MacArthur Park was where the two occasionally met for lunch and spent their most enjoyable times together. At that time (mid-1965), Ronstadt worked for a life insurance company whose offices were located just across the street from the park. Webb and Ronstadt remained friends, even after her marriage to another man. The breakup was also the primary influence for “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” another Webb composition.[4]

The song begins as a poem about love, then moves into a lover’s lament.[5] When asked by interviewer Terry Gross what was going through his mind when he wrote the lyrics, Webb replied that the lyrics were meant to be symbolic and referred to the end of a love affair.”

also from Wiki…

The original Richard Harris version “MacArthur Park received the Grammy Award for “Best Orchestration” in 1969.”

Obviously someone left a cake outside and it got rained on. Duh. Next question.

I laughed. Read lackmeyer’s comments at dustbury. Obviously,
he’s (lackmeyer) being nice to me, since my mother is reading this blog.
Very charming

Unfortunately, I know that tactic!

However, I’m beginning to think he might know who Don
Quixote is. But I’ll have to think about that some more.

“As for Genghis, well, I can never tell if he or she is for real, playing us all on the highest level of online mockery, or is simply quite the duck.” (quoted from the
dustbury thing.)

I’m simply quite the duck.

Alright duck!
Gotta be nice when the mothers are reading. None of us want to look bad to our moms!

Youze guys. Steve relishes in posting riddles, if you haven’t figured that out by now.

My 2 cents: I liked the original tune better than Donna Summer’s. Not that I’m contributing a damn thing to this discussion, because I’m not.

Now, you guys go on trying to figure out what the heck is in Steve’s mind when he makes posts like this. It’s fun to watch.

No riddle on this one. I was brain dead after a long week, didn’t want the blog to go dead, and made what I thought was the laziest, weakest post on this site in a long time. Give it up to Genghis and Charles for making it interesting. If Genghis had a blog I’d almost certainly make it daily reading.

<—csl

My mother says this isn't the laziest weakest post you've
had in a long time. There were a couple of others that fit the bill.

By the way, I have a blog. It's not very good, but I'm
flattered you'd read it!

Also, thanks to Doug Loudenback for explaining the riddle thing. I haven't been here that long to have figured that out by now and I guess everyone else knows your favorite song, too. Somebody referred to that somewhere. Somewhere here or somewhere else. Around here. Anyway, there was a reference to it somewhere. Here's hoping it's not that song
from West Side Story or the one with Linda Ronstadt singing tto the mouse.

Over and Out!

testing testing