The Shallow End Presents: An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song "Some Postman" by The Presidents of the United States of America

In an effort to post with this blog with increasing frequency, and because of a new-found awareness of the obscurity of my music taste while running with an iPod in the cold weather, I've decided to delight you, dear Shallow End reader (all three of you), with some of my thoughts on the random-ness that comes across my shuffle screen. This will be a semi-regular feature (read: whenever I'm not pulling my hair out about a quantitative reading assignment) so stay tuned!

This edition of the inexplicably close look centers on that kooky mid-90s favorite alt rock band, The Presidents of the United States of America. You'll remember them as those guys who wrote that song that Weird Al covered into a Forrest Gump spoof. Well, soon after the trio went on an indefinite hiatus for reasons unknown to this blogger. Perhaps the gents didn't want to be lumped in with the scandals of the second half of the Clinton presidency. Or people started buying their peaches at organic wholesalers.

In any event, the Presidents returned in 2004 with "Some Postman," returning to that odd world in which many of the band's songs take place where apparently the mail carriers are malevolent and Smurfs are 30-feet tall. The angst-filled power pop ditty is told through the eyes of an upset lover whose melodramatic missives are being intercepted by a disturbingly voyeuristic postman. Think Newman, but one who exclusively eats chocolates meant for another.

The song, perhaps self-consciously, is riddled with anachronisms. We're supposed to expect that lovers, in the age of sexting and Skype, are still trusting their love notes to employees of the federal government? And that said employee is clocking in at 6 a.m.? And ignoring the obvious breach of political correctness (why can't a female post carrier be pilfering my sonnets)? The band seems to come to terms with this just before the final verse, as a mournful cry of "1993!!!" follows the chorus. If only, Presidents. If only.

Of course, we could be missing the point entirely. Perhaps the postman is, himself, fictional. And the Presidents are singing out the uncertainty of love. Maybe that lover crying waiting for the package wants to believe there's some mean, hound-dog evading man in a safari hat hoarding her box of chocolate roses from Danny, who's totally committed to her but also wishes to finish his dissertation in a town full of young co-eds longing for a slightly older and grizzled art history Ph.D. candidate. Perhaps some postman is simply a Love in the Time of Cholera-esque metaphor about the idyllic nature of love and the inability to every truly know that it is being returned to you.

Or maybe I'm looking too closely.