Who does the best cover?

Jimmy Webb was a great songwriter, but no one could ever do it better than Glenn Campbell. Though the James Taylor version is listenable.

What is really sad, is how unappreciated a guitar picker he was. Though you wouldn’t know it from the Wichita Lineman video.

And yes, the lyrics, can’t be beat: “And I need you more than want you…and I want you for all time…”

[Update a couple minutes later]

The genius of the Campbell arrangement was the morse code background in the chorus of the radio hit, though you won’t hear it in the linked video above. It’s sad and frightening how many memories listening to that song brings back. Reading the comments of people much younger at the video of the ’68 hit is even more poignant.

That is, I am so deviant, that I share virtually none of these deviancies:

Straight men enjoy a wider variety of erotica than imagined, including sites devoted to elderly women and transsexuals. Foot fetishes aren’t a deviance; men are evolutionarily wired to look for small feet, which are a sign of high estrogen production, which itself is a sign of fertility. Gay men and straight men have nearly identical brains, and their favorite body parts, in order of preference, line up exactly: chests, buttocks, feet. Straight men prefer heavy women to thin ones. Straight women enjoy reading about and watching romances between two men — it’s not about the sex, which is downplayed, but the emotion, which is the focus. (The largest audience for “Brokeback Mountain,” says the book, was straight women.) Straight men have a fascination with other men’s penises, which may be conscious or unconscious.

For the record, I am a very straight man, who has zero interest in elderly women, transs3xuals, feet, chests, and a negative degree of interest in other mens’ junk. I don’t even like to see it in porn, particularly in a woman’s mouth. Few things make me go for the fast forward faster than fell@tio. But apparently, I’m weird in that regard, judging by its prevalence. I would also note that I’ve never done a single one of the top ten searches sited in the article.

Just in case my readers had been wondering.