103. He's got a Type 2 personality

103. "Queen of the Broken Hearts" by Loverboy

You'd probably think that if I'm going to choose a Loverboy song to be on the list, it would be "Working for the Weekend." Why? Because it starts with three glorious clunks on a cowbell! It's also got a driving beat, galloping guitars, and lung-busting screams in the lyrics--"You wanna be in the show-oh? Come on, baby, lets GO!"

Quantum Records--BOTH sides are the A side!

Although, now that I think about it, "Working" doesn't have anything near the lyric-scream ratio found in "The Kid is Hot Tonight."

Musical Law of Thermodynamics--As the entropy of the title increases, so do record sales.

On just WhOA-ohs alone, "The Kid" crushes "Working" when it comes to lyric-scream ratios. But that's partly because Canadian bands measure their ratios on the Metric Scale, which can really only be understood by science nerds who measure everything in Metrics. How tall is it? One Metric. How fast is it? One Metric. How heavy is it? One Metric.

Yes, indeed, scientists love to measure all kinds of stuff. It's 93% (that's in Metric percentages) of what they do. The other 7% is classified. And do you know how often they measure all this stuff? Well, scientists would say "every Metric," but I'd say "a shitload." Because Mr. Brown and Mr. Divesti turned me off to science in junior high, there's no way I'll ever be able to figure out the algorithm to convert Canadian Metric lyric-screams into commonly understood units of measure like Pounds and Gallons and Feet and Seconds and Tablespoons and Pinches and Smidgens and Angles and Watts and Volts and Acres and Dollars and Hands and Horses and Hair Breadths and Football Fields and Olympic Swimming Pools and Grand Canyons and Dog Years and Shakes of Lambs' Tails and New York Minutes and Swedish Miles and Bakers Dozens and Bushels and Pecks and Carrots and Cubits and Firkins and Farthings and Shekels and Talents and Shibloms and Shiblums and Klicks and Jiffies and Drams and Machs and G-forces and Furlongs and Fathoms and Knots and Fortnights and Stones and Proofs and Scovilles and Bauds and Bytes and Parsecs and Star Dates and Kellicams and Kelvins and Roentgens and Langleys and Stokes and Richter Magnitudes and Bortle Classes and Bristol Types*. You know, something SIMPLE for crying out loud!

Anyway, "Working" was probably my favorite Loverboy song until that "Chippendales" skit on SNL--which is near the tippy-top of my Top 200 SNL skits list. See, the problem is that whenever I hear "Working for the Weekend" now, I think of that skit. And then I think of how I look so much, much more like Barney than Adrian. Also, the song does not conjure up Arimo Mafia and junior-senior high school time-period memories like "Queen of the Broken Hearts" does. And obviously, that's a factor that weighs heavily in any selection for this list.

Not to be confused with Queenie Henderson of the Broken Hearts

Since "Queen of the Broken Hearts" was one of the vinyl singles I purchased with my own money to play at the school dances, it got OODLES of play on the home stereo, especially when I lifted weights in my bedroom, which was just the oversized hallway in our basement.

That's right. I lived in the basement hallway.

Why? Because when Randy left the day after he graduated, Mom came to me and said that the twins, who had been sleeping in the hallway, needed more privacy while they were dressing because they were getting older, and so I was now going to be kicked out of the bedroom where I had lived since I was three years old and take up residence in the hallway from that very day until I went to college. Of course, this meant zero privacy for me too. But that was okay, since I didn't care if my sisters saw me in my Fruit-of-the-Looms. After all, they saw me in my swimsuit on a daily basis when I was lifeguarding during the summer. (Mom used to tell me to put a shirt on when I walked around shirtless at home. My retort was that I got paid hundreds of dollars to walk around all day in public with my shirt off, so why couldn't I have it off in the privacy of my own home?) The twins had put up these big bed-sheet curtains in the hallway to try to give themselves some privacy, but I left them open and just dressed in the furnace/fruit room. I had my bed and a little area next to it where I could put the stereo and my weights. I had the stereo speakers on both sides of my bed so I could lay in bed and listen to the stereo effects on records and FM radio stations. And anytime I wanted to work out, I could crank up the music and do a ridiculous number of barbell reps to get my biceps and triceps and pecs and lats all buffed up.

But I digress.

"Queen of the Broken Hearts" was also one of the songs I listened to anytime I felt really pissed at being rejected by my high-school crushes because they liked some other boy better. (Prepare yourself. There's a whole Quimby of these songs coming up on this list.) The lyrics are best sung with a scornful tone that says, "Oh, you think you're soooooo special!" Basically, take the attitude you hear on Billy Joel's "Big Shot" and lay it on just as thick with this song.

You were born with it.
And now you got it.
And oooh you flaunt it!
And you don't care,
'Cause nothin's gonna bring you down,
No!

Hey, kids! Do you like playing hide-and-seek with raven-haired Amazonian beauties that are holed up in their secret, high-tech desert-mountain lair and will only emerge in the daylight to sexy-pose and strut on boulders but can be lured out at night to flashdance in a spotlight whenever loud rock music is played on dust-covered instruments by sweaty men that like to point and clench their fists? Does your idea of dressing up for a date in the desert involve leather pants and chest hair? Most importantly--and I can't believe I even have to ask this question--do you like bandanas?

You do?!

Then prepare yourself for eleven score and tensome eyeblinks of sheer rock 'n' roll wonderment!




* No, I'm not making this up. Bristol Types are part of an actual scale that measures the hardness or the softness of human stools. And from the look on Mike Reno's face throughout the above video, I'd say he's holding back a Type 2 and moving light speed towards a Type 1. (I blame it on dehydration.)