Survival Of The Fittest

"Hey. Hey, man, I just wanted to say thanks. Thanks for, you know, thanks for inviting me to this party. I don't get to go to parties a lot, you know, I mean I do but mostly like my kid brother's friends' birthday parties and shit, and that's not the same, know what I mean? I mean, here we have beer and stuff, and people who aren't twelve, and I'm not wearing my stuff.

"My stuff? Oh, yeah, I do some stuff for parties, just small-time stuff, get paid a bit here and there, you know. I—hey, yeah, okay, it's my clown stuff, ha-fucking-ha. I know. I've heard it all a hundred—no, a thousand times. Very fucking funny.

"Yeah, yeah, Miracles, totally hilarious. 'Fucking magnets, how do they work?' right? I bet... I bet that's all you've ever heard of the song, though. Right? Am I right? Tell me if I'm not right here. Or, like, even if you've listened to it all the way through, have you ever really stopped and thought about it? Have you ever really and honestly and with an open—with an open mind really stopped and considered what ICP is saying in that song? Because, man, I know it's easy to laugh at them, but that's exactly what they want you to do. They want you to laugh, because they're clowns, and that's what clowns do. But clowns want you to laugh because it makes it easier to hear the truth.

"So, okay, so I'm going to tell you the truth now, okay? I'm going to tell you the truth about Miracles, but I'm also going to tell you the truth about miracles, because man, that shit is real, okay? Yeah, yeah, laugh away. That's okay, that's just what I said: you laugh and then it's easier to hear the truth. I don't take it personal.

"Okay, so—hey, thanks, man, I don't usually drink beer but thanks. Is this O'Doul's? This looks like—oh, no, wait, 3.9%, okay, that's fine, okay, where was I? Okay, so let's talk about Miracles. Like, obviously it's a song by ICP. It's... wait, you over there, you serious? You've never heard of ICP? Insane Clown Po—yeah, yeah, see? I knew you knew them.

"So Miracles is this song that's actually really positive. ICP do all sorts of dark shit but there's a reason for it. It's all pretend, all about giving people a healthy outlet because, you know, because it's okay to pretend you're fucking Freddy Krueger or whatever as long as you don't hurt anybody, that's fine, like really when you think about it pretending you're a clown who kills people with an axe is a pretty funny thing to do when compared to, I dunno, when compared to shooting meth. But anyways, Miracles isn't even dark at all. It's really blunt and direct and people still have no idea what to do with it, because it's the sort of message that nobody in our society today is used to hearing.

"So let's fucking do this, okay? Let's fucking do this. We're doing this live. So at the start of the song, ICP say they've got a theory. That's a word chosen really carefully, you know, because it has multiple meanings. There's 'theory' in the normal sense, which is just, you know, just an idea, a thing you think might be true, but there's also 'theory' in the sense of, like, evolution is a theory, you know, or gravity. That sort of theory is science-speak for, 'We're pretty sure this is how the world works, but there's always a chance we get surprised.' So right off the bat, ICP is invoking—they're invoking science, and they're claiming a certain parity with Darwin and shit.

"And that carries through as we get into the song proper. Right away, ICP challenges the idea that they're ignorant. It is right fucking there—they say, 'If magic is all we've ever known, then it's easy to miss what really goes on.' That's not glorifying ignorance, it's a pretty clear warning that if all you look to is the inexplicable, then you're, you know, then you've got no idea what's happening around you at all. And you don't have to go far to see that, I mean, you know, just look at what's happening in our country right now and you'll see that. There are all these people, these people flying under the—flying flags like they're good Christians and shit, but all they do is look at the things the Bible says and take them completely literally. They look at the North Pole getting warmer and the polar bears dying and shit and they say, 'Well, God works in mysterious ways,' and they don't get that they're fucking us all over by doing that, and that's not at all what ICP is about. So that's why they start the song with this line, so you know that they are not saying ignorance is good.

"But, but, but. But you see, there are many different kinds of ignorance and blindness in the world, a whole lot of ways that, you know, that you can just close your eyes and decide you don't want to see anything, and ICP isn't gonna have any of that shit either. So like, maybe you're someone who thinks they're pretty smart, maybe you, maybe you even have a degree in something, maybe you're a biologist or some shit, but—hey, look, biologists listen to ICP too, you know, all sorts of people listen to ICP and that's because their appeal isn't just the clown stuff, that's the surface for sure, but they tap into emotions and...

"Okay, okay, yeah, you do that. You walk off. You walk off but don't you fucking dare turn around and tell me ICP is preaching ignorance. Who's choosing ignorance? You. It's you. You don't want to listen, fine, cool, man, that's your choice, man, but realize that and own it. Say, 'I had the chance to go out of my comfort zone but instead I chose the bliss of ignorance,' and I'll have way more respect for you, because you're, because, because at least then you're not, you know, you're being honest with me, and you're being honest with yourself. Right?

"So okay, I got a little off track there, but so after this whole thing in favor of science, ICP totally shifts gears, and in the same breath challenges the listener. Violent J says that he's seen every type of miracle, and then Shaggy says he's seen miracles every day. And you know, that right there, that weeds out certain assholes who aren't open-minded, you know, and that's really funny because actually these people don't realize they're being exactly the same as those fundamentalist flat-earth idiots. They're taking something literally that's meant as metaphorical and allegory, and then they're like, 'Oh, this obvious metaphor doesn't make any literal sense.' And like, maybe that's a little better than following the metaphor like it's true, but it's almost as stupid, you know, dismissing something out of hand just because you don't understand it at first. Like, if I give you a book in German, can you read that shit? Hell no. But if you spent a few years really focusing on it, you could learn. The book isn't meaningless just because you don't know German, and ICP aren't idiots just because you wouldn't know a metaphor if it smacked you in the face.

"And that gets really obvious when they start actually talking about the miracles they actually mean. Like, okay, so, okay, let's look at the list. We've got the oceans, right, so big you can't even really comprehend them, and then you've got the stars, and when you think about the stars, and the galaxies, and the whole damn universe, then all of a sudden that ocean doesn't seem so big, right? Think about it: the universe is so big that everything is in it. Everything. But what's outside it? How could the universe have come into being? If there was something before, what was it? What comes after? We don't know. We have ideas, and there are people, really smart people, who spend their whole lives trying to understand it, but we still don't know. Einstein didn't know. They cut his brain up—and like, you think ICP is weird, a bunch of scientists actually fucking cut up Einstein's fucking brain and gave it out to each other like party favors or some death metal band or some shit, and, like, that's for real, that's not pretend clown murders, and that's fucked up.

"So all these fucking scientists with pieces of Einstein's brain, they don't know what's outside the universe, they don't know a whole bunch of shit, and that might as well be magic. Now, let me be clear, that doesn't mean it will always be magic. The first time some caveman saw a tree get struck by lighting and set a forest on fire, he—or she, like, is caveman gender neutral?—but so this, so this caveperson, this Neanderthal motherfucker, thought that the lightning was Zeus raining retribution on the masses, because that made more sense than anything else. The lightning was a miracle. But now we know better than that, we know about atmospheric conditions and static electricity and pressure and cold fronts and all that, so now we know that it isn't just Zeus getting pissy. And someday, maybe that'll be how the universe is, or whatever's at the bottom of the Mariana—Mariana? Marianis? Marinara? That big hole in the bottom of the ocean, yeah?—maybe someday it'll be like that and they'll look back and laugh at how ignorant we were, but for now that shit all might as well be magic for all we know.

"So that's what ICP is saying here. They're saying the world is a big huge crazy beautiful place, and that there are so many things we don't know yet, and it's important to actually see those things. If no cavemen ever wanted to find out more about Zeus, if they just saw the lightning and the fire and accepted that that was how the world worked, how everything is, no chance of doing anything about that, then we never would've moved out of caves, you know? Cigarette lighters wouldn't exist. You take a cigarette lighter back in time, back to the caveman days, they'll think you're a wizard. They'll think you're Zeus or something, but now you can buy that shit at Circle K for a buck. That's how it is with the universe. We've got to keep wondering who Zeus is, and keep finding out, chasing those miracles.

"So ICP brings that into even clearer focus when they take a stand against drugs. This is, I mean, okay, it's easy to look at this and think it's just some hippie bullshit, you know, especially if you don't know shit about ICP, right? So they need to take a little time and get everyone up to speed, and also it's actually pretty important to note that they aren't for drugs. ICP jokes about fucking people up a lot, but meth and heroin don't joke about fucking you up, they just do it, and then your teeth fall out and you die. ICP is actually—what? Beer? Hey, okay, hey, fuck you, man, you know? There is such a thing as moderation, you know? And beer isn't meth. Like obviously you're dumb as shit if you go drive around after drinking, like that's how people mow down whole families and end up with their brains all over someone's tree house and all that shit, but you can drink responsibly and you can even get kind of drunk kind of more responsibly, you know? And I'm not drunk, I have had like one quarter of this fucking beer, okay, because I've been so busy telling your goofy asses about Miracles. So chill, dude.

"I totally lose track of what I was—wait, no, drugs, okay? So ICP says don't do drugs, because ICP are actually a Christian band. And I mean, you can be a Christian and do drugs, and that doesn't mean you're a bad person, but part of being a Christian is trying to do the right thing, to be good to your neighbors and yourself. That's true even if you're into weird shit, if you curse and dress like a clown and joke that you're gonna cut up Eminem and shit.

"So ICP tells you, really clearly, that they're not just spinning stoner bullshit. Like, I know a lot of what I'm saying sounds kind of like that, like, 'Oh man, what's outside the universe?' 'Oh man, have you ever really looked at your hand?' 'Dude, what if everyone sees colors differently?' and ICP is once again telling people to be open-minded and actually think a little about what they're hearing.

"Then they bring it back around. They bring up mountains and trees, because those are things that, you know, that almost everyone has a pretty good idea of, and they rhyme that with 'seven seas' to come full circle. We're back to the ocean, the deep, unknowable ocean, back down into the depths, plunging down where the light never fucking shines, and they evoke this brilliantly through the power of understatement.

"Let's do a little experiment here, okay? Bear with me a sec. Okay, so I say, 'everything chilling underwater,' okay, and probably something comes to mind for you, right? You think of something. Maybe you think of a fish, or an anemone, or a killer whale, or like, like, fucking coral—coral's an animal you know?—or like one of those big toothy eel things that lives in rocks, or giant fucking squid. And probably every one of you motherfuckers with an imagination is thinking of a bunch of different ocean shit. And that's the whole point. Through a specific and intentional lack of detail, Violent J invites the reader to supply the marvels themselves, using what knowledge they already possess in order to again force the listener to confront everyday things they normally take for granted.

"Then we move through weather phenomena. Lava, snow, rain, fog, all things that are, you know, like, on a certain level—wait, like, superficially they're totally different, but these are things people encounter every day. I mean, so, lava most people probably don't see a lot of, but I bet there's some places in Hawaii where they get a shitload more lava than snow, so it's not that weird to put it in a song—if anything, it just makes you really think, makes you realize just how big the world is and what all is going on in it. So some of this stuff is everyday, and some of it's really weird, and that's part of the miracle, part of the real beauty of it all.

"And that cultural inclusiveness carries through to the next line, and becomes even clearer, when giraffes are contrasted with cats and dogs. We've got an animal—a weird animal—that like fucking everyone knows what it looks like, but you never see giraffes except maybe in a zoo or something, where you feed them a cracker and look at their blue tongues. You ever seen one? Those are some weird shit, man, but I say that, but maybe some kid lives in Africa and sees giraffes all the time, and maybe this kid thinks that there's nothing in the world weirder than armadillos. I mean, think about it, armadillos are pretty weird, you know, they're like some fucked up scientist spliced a rat and a turtle, and they also can give you leprosy. Yeah, that's right, leprosy. Like in that movie, that—Anastasia, that was it, that knockoff Disney movie where Rasputin's melting from leprosy. That's why you never fucking eat an armadillo, ever.

"And like, domesticated animals, that's incredible too. That's evolution for you, right there that's evolution, humans see these animals and we use 'em to make our lives better, we choose which ones get to reproduce and which ones don't, and soon we've got a whole bunch of different types of dogs that are totally different. But in some parts of the world, even that's weird.

"So that's where the next bit comes in, where Violent J says he's seen eighty-five thousand people coming together as equals, like yeah on one hand he's talking about a concert or The Gathering or whatever, but on the other he's also talking about the human condition. That's why he leaves it open, to make you ask, 'Oh, what's with this eighty-five thousand figure?' and try to figure it out, and then you realize that it could be any peaceable assembly, that people are equals, and the only thing that sometimes stops us from acknowledging that is ourselves.

"That's where kids come in. When kids are born, they're not full of themselves, they're not stuck up. Kids see everyone the same, and that's magical. It's magical how pure people are before they're fucked up by the world, but at the same time, you know, at the same time that innocence stems from ignorance, which we've established ICP is not about. That's the real conundrum, then: how can we idealize both the pursuit of and the total absence of knowledge? And of course, there isn't any easy answer to that.

"This conflict carries through into the next verse, which once again takes us out of the atmosphere and into space. And the examples here are picked really carefully. The sun and the moon, man, everyone knows the sun and the moon, everyone sees the sun every day, and the moon you can go see almost any time. I bet the moon's out right now, you know? And then Mars is added to that, and that pushes us a little, we think, oh, Mars, yeah, Mars. Mars is, you know, Mars is kind of the obvious planet, the one that's closest to us, but you don't really think of it as something you can actually see. But you totally can, even without, I mean, even in ways besides looking up what the rovers sent back. You can get a telescope, or if the weather and the time of year is just right, you can even just look up into the sky and see Mars, and how fucking cool is that? All this science fiction shit about Mars, and you can just fucking see it from right here.

"And then we go further, we go all the way zooming out to the whole Milky Way, and then we bring in shooting stars. And then comes the part that loses some people again: UFOs. But UFOs, like, do you know what UFO means? 'Unidentified Flying Object.' All sorts of shit can be a UFO, right, like a UFO doesn't just mean a flying saucer full of little green men, and those little green men, we know they're not from Mars. People laugh at Violent J cutting in with UFOs, but what they don't see is that UFOs represent a call to learn, they represent the unknown, the mysteries left in the world. And ICP isn't saying we should ignore those mysteries. It's totally the opposite of that. They're calling on us to dig in, to explore and discover and learn, to trust in ourselves and our abilities as humans, and humans, when you think about it, are pretty fucking miraculous analysis machines.

"So right like that, we're back to rivers and the growth of seeds, and I think even someone pretty dense can figure out the reproduction motifs and metaphors there. We also see further association of the natural with the man-made, as Niagara Falls is compared with the pyramids. And then, there's another of those little test moments, where Violent J uses intentional vagueness to invite the listener to supply their own detail.

"'Everything you believed in as kids.' That's powerful, man. What did you believe when you were a kid? I bet all kinds of crazy shit. I mean, the obvious one is Santa Claus, but there's other stuff too. Like, okay, like if you made a face like this, right, like maybe your mom said it would get stuck that way forever, right? So what did you do? You stopped making it, or maybe you were a twisted little shit-eater and you did it more 'cause you wanted to look like Quasimodo. It doesn't matter. What matters is, you listened to your parents and to the adults, to the people who'd come before you, and a lot of what they taught you was good, but they also told you a lot of bullshit. There's all sorts of stuff you probably assume you know but only because that's what your parents told you, but your parents also told you Santa Claus ate the fucking cookies. That's one of the big issues ICP is grappling with here, the push and pull. Those miracles you believed in when you were little, those still feel good, you still have good memories of waiting for Santa, and that's okay, but at the same time, that's the past tense there. You don't believe that stuff anymore.

"And yet, it still counts as a miracle. The belief was the miracle, and you're not diminished for having moved past it. You can look back fondly on what you once thought, and enjoy the naïveté that allowed it, even while continuing on. And at the same time, it's a really good reminder to stay on guard, because you never know what the next Santa Claus will be, and it's not all stuff where it's that harmless and innocent. Like, smoking. For ages they thought smoking was just peachy keen, and that's what people got told, and now we know smoking fucking kills you. But if you'd listened to your body, you'd've known before that smoking wasn't good, because you can feel that. Just, society told you for ages it's okay, it's good, and you believed in Santa and now you're dying of lung cancer.

"That's part of what we see with the rainbows. Rainbows are a really loaded image, you know, because rainbows are interesting and they're something almost everyone's seen, but a lot of people don't really know why they exist, they don't know about prisms and light refracting and shit, like think of the Double Rainbow guy. So a rainbow is this big blinking sign, and people make up all kinds of shit about it that isn't true, but all that crazy shit doesn't make the rainbow any less of a miracle. Does a rainbow lose its majesty just because there's not a pot of leprechaun gold at the end? No, of course not. In fact, part of what's miraculous about a rainbow is that you can't ever get to the end, and you realize eventually that that's because of perspective, how the moisture lingering in the air looks different seen from different angles. This thing that seems simple, it can indeed 'blow your brains' because it expands and expands, one thing leading to another forever, always something new to discover and each answer raising new questions.

"After this is a bit of the song that's maybe a little harder for people to understand, when Violent J tells a story about getting attacked by a pelican and Shaggy points out his cowardice. The thing is, this is a point where ICP really enters into the song and lets you know they're being serious. See, ICP are characters in their own music all the time, like, they're constantly talking about all this shit they do but most of it's obviously over the top and fake. This teases the listener: it starts out with something fairly normal, feeding a pelican, then progresses into a strong but cartoonish image, the pelican trying to eat Violent J's cell phone. This suggests that the whole episode may be a contrivance, but Shaggy then verifies the seemingly-implausible story, offering further details. In this way, ICP place themselves within the song not in their personas, but as a couple of goofy dads. It's a little hard to come to grips with at first, but when you do it's an absolute game-changer. It's a brave moment, a moment when they have something they want their fans to hear, so much so that they set aside their customary irony and hyperbole and show their true selves, which may not be at all what the listener expects.

"A big part of the timing of this move is found in the way, in the immediately—in how music comes up right afterwards. Because of course, that's where it all gets personal for the listener, because yeah, you can think of sea creatures or Santa or whatever, maybe it's raining while you're listening, but maybe it's not, maybe you've got some strong walls inside and you just don't connect to shit like that, but you are listening to music. They know, they set it up like that, by the very act of encountering the line you're exactly where they want you, experiencing the magic of music.

"Music is invisible. You can hear it, obviously, and you can feel it—but that's, you know, that's 'feel' in two ways, like on one hand maybe someone turned the bass up too high so you actually feel it when it makes your guts rumble, but on the other you feel music in here, in your, well, not your heart-heart but your metaphorical heart, like music is something you go to so that you can feel. It's this great emotional thing, this thing that can help you get through some real tough shit, and I'm sure there's some great research about all of that but I don't know what it is, so it's as good as a miracle to me. And music sticks around, gives people a voice forever. The Beatles are all—I mean, John Lennon and George Harrison are dead, right? I think it's just John and George—and anyways, people are still listening to their shit, there are people out there who are having shitty days and maybe thinking they'll go home and blow their brains out, but in the fucking supermarket they hear John Lennon singing some shit and they realize life's okay enough to go on another day at least, and John's been dead as shit since way before I was born, and that's a miracle, you know?

"So you're sharing this miracle with ICP, listening to them and understanding where they're coming from and what they're talking about, and then they ask you if you believe. And how can you respond in any way but the affirmative? I mean, you know, they've just demonstrated it to you. They've laid out their definition and walked you through all the steps and helped you do the math, so if you say no, you're just being a contrarian fuck. But the second question, do you notice miracles? That one's rhetorical. Nobody's perfect about that. Everyone can take some more time to appreciate the shit in their life that goes right, to marvel at the wonders of the world and then go beyond just marveling and find out what makes those things what they are, and what allows them to be. Once you start the thread unraveling, it never ever ends. It's miracle after miracle, each thing you clear up just raising more questions.

"There are a few things here that can lose certain listeners, like maybe you get really pedantic and go, 'Music isn't just "in the air," it actually travels via sound waves,' and maybe you have some cool shit to demonstrate this, like how sound waves go faster and further underwater or something, but that's part of the process. That's just what ICP want you to be thinking and doing. Pushing things further isn't working against their goals, but in tandem with them. Science and magic aren't opposed; science is what lives behind and underneath magic, science is magic, pure motherfucking magic, in that it lets us see the world with fresh, involved, interested eyes.

"Jesus, this beer is pretty good, can someone—can someone maybe go get me another? Yeah, yeah, same type if—what, out? Okay, well, you know, well something sort of similar, then, something like this. We're through the chorus, man, we're gonna get through this, thank you. Thank you for listening, thank you so much. It's just, you know, a lot of people, people like that motherfucker who walked out, a lot of people—hey thanks, yeah, that's perfect, thanks, and hey, is there more beer in a can or a bottle? They're the same? That's a miracle for you—I was, um, so, thanks. A lot of people just judge by what they hear about things, you know, don't give anything a proper chance, so it really, it means a lot to me that you're willing to listen.

"Okay, so, right, where was I? Hey, this stuff is pretty good. This is PBR? This isn't half bad, you know, I thought this was just for hipsters and truckers and shit, but this is pretty okay. Okay. Okay, so, we're on to the second verse, but we're still talking about music, right? Here, Violent J is making more explicit what I was talking about earlier, the interplay between music and emotions. Music is like love, music gets into your head, into you. Music can change you, can shape your mood. You ever listen to a sad song when you're down and it just absolutely crushes you? It's kind of like that. And music fills a room not in a physical sense, but in a more metaphorical one. If you're listening to something with a bunch of friends, or, fuck, if you're at a concert then this is really true, music can create this sort of shared mental and emotional space. You ever notice how it's like that at concerts, one guy gets crazy and then everyone else starts getting crazy too? That's what Violent J is talking about here. It's a vibe, a mentality, and music is what can facilitate it. And I mean, you know, I know that sort of thing comes up in other situations too, I mean, there are all sorts of really shitty things people do to each other when they get too stuck on being part of a group, but what's special about music is a lot of the time that's not at all how it goes. Instead it's this huge positive thing, even when the music itself is really aggressive and violent, like ICP is really about brother-and-sisterhood, caring about each other.

"So then after another exhortation—yeah, yeah, I fucking said—okay, so 'exhortation' is, like, it's when you want someone to do something, like you beg and plead for them to do something but in this more dignified, Old Testament sort of way, you know?—so after they remind you yet again, because I'll be honest there are a good number of people who listen to ICP who don't really look past the surface much so sometimes they have to say things again and again—but anyways, after they remind you to look around and keep an eye out for miracles, they launch into another list with some pretty strong connotations.

"'Water, fire, air, and dirt' isn't just, like, some random collection of things. Those are the classical elements, I mean usually people say 'earth' instead of 'dirt' but it's all the same thing, you know, more or less. So, again, this is ICP tipping their hands that they're not totally ignorant. They're invoking a system that was at the core of a lot of ancient... ancient Greek, I think? That was at the center of all these old beliefs. Just like that, we're back to the mythical elements of the song, back to the idea that humans have always come up with explanations for the inexplicable, and that that does not cheapen the eventual, more considered understanding that is eventually developed.

"Okay, and then we come to the most misunderstood line in the song. It's, okay, yeah, say it with me, okay? Say the whole fucking thing with me, ha ha, let's get it over with. Let's fucking do this, and then, then I'll blow your minds because—and you should know this by now, if you've been paying attention you should by now have a pretty clear idea already of where this is going, because it's not at all what you think and it's not at all what it's reputed to be—so, yeah, I'll totally change how you see this, and you'll never be able to see it the same way again. So come on, say it with me, one last time:

"'Fucking magnets, how do they work? And I don't wanna talk to a scientist, y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed.'

"Okay. Right. Okay so—so, hey, shut up, okay? Listen. You had your fun, and yeah, you know, yeah, it is a funny fucking line. That's on purpose. It's absolutely on purpose because ICP is in the business of being funny and entertaining. That's the deal with clowns, you know. That's what the role of the court jester was, historically. The jester was the one who could tell the court what it needed to hear, whether or not it was what it wanted to hear, and could get away with it, because he knew how to present things properly. That's what diplomacy and communication is about, at its core, you know, it's about presenting things in the right way so that people are willing to listen and actually hear it. And so that's what ICP is doing in this song. The whole thing, they're saying all this deep and actually kind of saccharine stuff, and you know, the sort of—most juggalos wouldn't really want to just sit and listen to that if you said it straight. A lot of people come to ICP because they're feeling lost or scared or alienated and what appeals to them at first is often the dark, weird stuff. Like, 'Yeah, I'm a freak, and these guys are freaks too, you know, so we get together and have our whole freak power thing going on.' But then, over time, you realize that what's important isn't the freak part, or the.. or the power part, it's the together part, and all these people who are hurting all come together and really rally behind each other. They stick with each other and learn from each other and realize the world isn't actually such a scary awful—

"What? Magnets? Magnets, right, magnets. Okay, see, I wasn't on a tangent because magnets have a lot to do with this, magnets come together and attract from opposite poles. But that's not the entire point of the reference. How many of you, off the top of your heads, really know how magnets work, you know, in detail? Anyone? And then, you know, even if you do have a pretty good idea of how magnets work, right, even if you know exactly how fucking magnets fucking work, do you know why? What makes these materials so special? How is the strength determined? There's a ton of stuff behind this, like, you could—lots of people do spend their whole lives on this and that's what their lives are devoted to, you know, just studying magnets and figuring out how they work.

"Oh, but I hear you now, 'those people spending their whole lives studying magnets sound a shit-ton like scientists,' you say, 'so what's up with the trashing on scientists?'

"Well, the thing is, science in theory is a very different beast than science the institution we actually live with in the real world. Alright, look at... look at the EPA right? Look at how fucked up the EPA is right now, like, they have a guy in the EPA who doesn't believe in what the EPA is doing. But why doesn't he? Does he go, 'sorry, guys, but I'm gonna kill the whole fucking earth because I want to make more money and I'm gonna be dead by the time it's a problem anyways?' Fuck no. He hides behind science. You know all that shit where you can find, you know, you can find an idiot with a PhD to go to bat for anything. Like, okay, like, do you know what homeopathy is? I just learned this a few days ago, I was reading online, and homeopathy doesn't just mean rubbing herbs up your ass to cure poison ivy or whatever, it's actually a really specific theory with a really specific process and stuff but at the same time the entire thing is one hundred percent, pure, certified bullshit. See, the thing with homeopathy is it's based on the same basic idea as inoculations, like, you put a little bit of something into your body to create a reaction that protects you against the bigger thing. The problem is, it just makes no sense.

"Like, so, the concentrations of shit they put in homeopathy are so tiny there is absolutely no way they could do anything. We're talking, like, a billionth or a trillionth of the, like, homeopathy Tic Tac you spent ten bucks on, that's all the 'active' ingredient is, and all that ingredient is is some bullshit that would have an effect if you ate a lot of it. Would you solve world hunger by giving one dude in Africa a single grain of rice? No, because that doesn't do anything, I mean, not only does it not do anything for the world, it doesn't even do anything for the guy. He's still starving to death. Homeopathy is just the science of doing that to treat every single problem and then letting the placebo effect carry you. But there are whole schools out there about teaching people how to do it, because that lets them pretend. Like, you know what, I could be a homepathic doctor. I could be like, 'pick the tubes with the prettiest colors, then take however many pills you feel like, I mean, fuck, eat them like fucking Skittles if you feel like it, you do you,' and it'd be exactly as fucking useful as these people who get so-called doctorates in this bullshit.

"So what does this have to do with magnets? Everything. That's why ICP doesn't trust scientists. It's not that science itself is bad, so much as that anyone can be a scientist and science can easily be manipulated to fool the ignorant idiots who just read the headlines. Like, you know, you know cancer has been cured like a bunch of times, right? Like you open the paper and it's like, 'we have cured cancer and aging and death,' but then you actually read the article and you find out that it's sort of true, but only one super rare type of pancreatic cancer in rats and aging in freeze-dried amoebas or something, and that's great and all, like, maybe it helps and someday in fifty or a hundred years people will also not get this one incredibly specific type of pancreatic cancer, but it does exactly jack shit for us right now except sell the newspaper.

"And that, I mean, that's the mild stuff. Let's go back to the EPA thing again. Look at how many people there are out there who think that everything bad happening in the world is just an act of God, eh? I mean, okay, here's a joke, okay:

"So, there's this huge flood, right, like maybe it's hurricane season in Louisiana or something, and this old lady is sitting on her front porch, and her neighbor rolls by in a truck and he's like, 'Holy shit, the water's coming, you need to get out of here. You want a ride?' and the old lady, she's like, 'No, God will protect me.' So the neighbor drives off.

"A few hours go by, and the water gets, you know, it gets real deep, and the old lady has to go upstairs, and she's sitting by the window, and this rescue team comes by in a boat, and they're yelling at her to jump into the boat, because the hurricane is still going strong and it's only gonna get worse from here, and the old lady, she's just sitting there shaking her head, like no way is she gonna get in the boat, and the rescue crew are shouting at her, asking her why, and she just says, 'God will protect me.'

"So it's a few hours later, now, and the old lady is sitting up on the roof of her house, watching cars and trees and shit float past, and the water is still rising, rising and rising, and soon she only has this little circle at the very top of her roof left, but a helicopter comes flying in out of nowhere, like, the hurricane is raging but this helicopter crew is out here risking their lives to save people, and they're screaming at the old lady to grab the ladder, and she's just sitting there, shaking her head. She shouts back at them, even though they can't even hear her over the huge fucking hurricane, she shouts, 'God will protect me.'

"So then the helicopter flies away, and the water rises, and the old lady drowns and when the water comes down they probably have to pull her bloated, rotting corpse off the neighbors' picket fence or something. But our story doesn't end there, oh no it does not. You see, the old lady, for all she's a super obstinate bitch, she was actually a pretty good person in her life, you know, she backed cookies for orphans and shit, never said bad words or snorted blow, and so she ends up in Heaven. And there, right there, is God, and the old lady is relieved but she's also kind of pissed, so she stomps up to God and she's like, 'Hey, God, what the heck? What in tarnation happened to protecting me?' And God, he pauses, looks at her for a second, and then it clicks and he goes, 'Oh, it's you. What are you doing here?' And she goes 'I'm here because I died because you didn't do anything to help me during the hurricane,' and God frowns and goes, 'What are you talking about? As I recall, I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter.'

"So, right, so okay, this is a funny joke because—what? Yes, Yes I do believe in God, and no it is not sacrilegious, you see, like all the best jokes this reveals something about human nature, and specifically in this case this joke isn't making fun of people who believe in God, but hypocrites and lazy idiots who think that God will just do everything for them. If you need to piss, do you just sit there and go, 'Oh, it's okay, God will magically warp the piss out of my bladder and send it down to Hell to rain on Satan's tea party?' No. You do that, you end up sitting in a puddle of piss. It's not different at all with bigger stuff. God gives us the opportunity to fix our shit, but that also comes with the opportunity to not do that and just let it get worse and worse. Science is part of our ability to fix things, but when it gets misused and co-opted and twisted and transformed into a tool of ignorance and manipulation, it does a ton of harm.

"Of course Shaggy is pissed at the motherfuckers behind that. I bet you are too, right? I know I am. And I think that's a good thing. That's the farthest thing in the world from glorifying ignorance. And the real, you know, the real kicker is that it's incredibly hard to know what to do about this. Like, obviously it would be best if each of us could go and conduct research into each and every little thing that's important to the world and to our understanding thereof, but we can't. There's not enough time in the day—in life. So all we can do is sort of try to at least learn how to tell the good from the bad when it comes to the people we're forced to trust, how to tell a motherfucker who spent thirty years learning about magnets because that's what she loves from a motherfucker who spent thirty years pretending to learn about magnets because some guy from the magnet company wants people not to know that magnets make your testicles literally turn into raisins. It is a tough, anxiety-producing situation.

"So, okay, so fucking magnets, right? Fucking scientists. Let's move on.

"The next few things listed out have their own significances. The solar eclipse has long been an event laden with all kinds of crazy spiritual significance because, I dunno, people don't see the sun for a few minutes and they think the whole world is going crazy. I mean, you guys—you must all remember, right, last summer? That was some crazy shit, people absolutely lost their shit over the eclipse, spent hundreds of bucks on those stupid eclipse glasses and half of their were from China or some shit and didn't work and would burn your eyeballs out anyways, and the whole country was obsessed with it. Now, realize ICP wrote this before that all happened. How? Because it's the same thing, again and again. An eclipse is something that your average, random person on the street treats pretty much like a miracle even without any sort of outside intervention or prompting. It's a perfect example of the ways we want to put all sorts of significance on things that are just part of how the world works.

"They bring that even closer to home when they talk about bad weather. I mean, you know, that's even how bad weather is put in some insurance contracts. You've heard that phrase before, right, 'Acts of God?' That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. A tree falls on your house, man, that's a miracle. It's not, you know, it isn't a good miracle per se, but it's a miracle nonetheless, at least that's how we treat it. That's why a guy can go on the news and say that hurricanes exist because God wants to drown the gays, or drown us for not drowning the gays or something, and instead of he entire world laughing him out of the room, a bunch of people go, 'Oh, yeah, that sounds kind of reasonable I guess.'

"But then we move away from these inexplicable—or at least, you know, at least inexplicable to the casual, uneducated, motherfucking-scientist-hating observer—events, to something a whole lot more positive: a bunch of people all coming together due to a shared passion for a certain thing, and managing to put aside all the stuff that would probably normally make them totally hate each other, but putting that all on hold to just enjoy their shared thing in the same place and time. That, my friends, that is a miracle I can get behind.

"We've established that miracles are a pretty mutable concept, and that even the most basic of things can seem, and in some ways become, miraculous when subjected to proper focus and appreciation. Given that, why not acknowledge the miracle that is human unity for something other than violence or ostracization? People coming together out of love should absolutely be worthy of praise and recognition, and one of the most miraculous things about ICP is that they've managed this in large part through total dedication to their very particular theme and aesthetic. Like, I mean, look at how people react when you say you're into ICP: they laugh their asses off. But, but you see, that's the point. That's where the clown thing comes in, it's like, you know, come on and laugh, see if I care. I want you to laugh. The whole point of this is to make you laugh, because it really is funny.

"Even the name for fans is funny. I mean, 'juggalos?' That's great. It's combining, you know, gigolo—that's a male prostitute if you don't know—with juggler, splicing something really crude and risqué with something that's kind of almost wholesome. And that, that mixing of crude, crazy stuff with actually fairly legitimate and almost touching stuff, that's what it's all about. And that's how Miracles goes, too, because the next line is Violent J thanking his mom for giving him life, and reiterates clearly that the important part of the message here is not taking anything for granted. And this is all paired with a clever little twist, the caterpillar undergoing metamorphosis.

"This serves two purposes: first off, it hearkens to a common childhood experience, you know, I mean, when's the last time you really spent much time thinking about butterflies? Probably when you were a kid. But it's also a metaphor, for the process of growing up. The relationship between children and parents is at the core of this song, and we see that come even clearer as it's explained that, you know, Shaggy and Violent J have kids too, and these... these kids look a lot like them. But, you know, whatever their kids look like or act like now, they're going to grow up and find their own paths. Maybe they'll end up thinking the clown thing is really dumb and, hey, you know, that's okay. As long as they appreciate the world and engage with it in an active, intellectually-curious way, I think ICP wouldn't have any complaints.

"That's where the song goes: a call to action. If you don't like your situation, change it. Go out into the world and find what speaks to you, and pursue it as far as you can. That's what ICP is all about. It's about empowering those without power, letting them laugh at themselves and the world and letting them be okay with things, you know, things that maybe normally they wouldn't feel good about. They say they invite you to explore the world 'without explanation,' but that doesn't mean un-critically. What it means is, they're encouraging their fans, and, you know, sort of giving permission to the sort of person who needs someone to expressly give them permission for this sort of thing, to make up their own minds. It's calling on people to actually think, to exercise their own independence, but a lot of the people who make fun of it aren't the sort of people the message is aimed at.

"It's like, see, the thing with ICP is a lot of mainstream people hate them because the whole deal challenges a lot of preconceptions and social norms, and people get very uncomfortable when their cozy little ways of living get messed with. And then, on the other hand, you have people way outside the mainstream, and they, well, a lot of them already more or less know this stuff, or think they do, and they feel either like they're being condescended to or they feel insecure because it reminds them of how they used to be, or they don't get the process or don't look past the surface and never even realize what the aim of it all is. That's why ICP has to spell it out so directly in this song, and that's one of the big reasons this song is the one that everyone knows. It's not an accident at all. Like, maybe you watch the video to laugh at the stupid clown rap guys, but if you listen—and they have all sorts of crazy lines that simultaneously develop their themes and bait the causal listener into paying closer attention—then you maybe end up going, 'Hey, you know what? These guys aren't so crazy after all.' It helps bridge the gap, at least when it comes to the open-minded.

"So, that's basically it. Miracles is about how important it is to be open-minded, to think analytically for yourself and not to blindly conform.

"Someone get me another beer.

"Thanks. Thanks. Yeah, more PBR is just fine. Yeah, I won't spill it this time. I just got into it, you know, I just got into talking about the song. Listening? I don't care. I think people are—hey, you listening? Yeah, thought so. But anyways, I know you all aren't really standing around to hear about Miracles. I mean, I promised you an actual, genuine, personal miracle story, and when I promise I'm going to tell you a story, then I'm going to tell you a story. And this one's a good one. I just need to catch my breath a bit here. Just a moment.

"So, okay, so I have asthma, see, and it doesn't really get me that much when I'm talking, usually, which is good because, I mean, I like to talk a lot, but sometimes it sneaks up on me so I just like to take little breaks every now and then, just for a sec or two. Besides, you stuck with me this long, you're with me to the end, right, fuckers? Right. So here we go: an actual, honest-to-God miracle.

"Okay, so I probably look, you know, I look like I'm mostly Hispanic, right? And I am. Mostly. But I have a couple pasty-ass European ancestors and one of them was this, shit, this great uncle or something, except add some 'third's and some 'twice removed's and maybe a few more 'great's in there, but that's a pain in the ass to keep track of, so let's just say he's my great uncle. Anyways, he was German, and he was sort of a big deal back in the early Forties. See, at that time, Germany was in this weird spot, sort of like where we're at today, if you believe what everyone says. There was a bunch of poverty and anger, and different forms of media were given more or less attention.

"Now, one of the big things that got a lot of play was symphonies, and my great uncle was a conductor of Der Wolfgang—except they say it more like, uh, like 'Vulfgong,' right—Der Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart memorial orchestra or some shit, in Berlin. And this orchestra, it hadn't been much of anything at first, like it was part of a lot of that sleazy cabaret scene that was going on in Germany in the Twenties and Thirties, but my great uncle rose through the ranks and really whipped it into shape at the perfect time. You see, a lot of music at the time was considered too liberal or weird or decadent, but classical music wasn't like that at all, classical music, especially that featuring old German composers, was a serious source of national pride in a country desperately in need of something to latch onto.

"Now, maybe a bunch of you assholes slept through history class, but a big issue in Germany was that Germany lost World War I and was forced to take the blame for the whole thing, and to pay all sorts of sanctions and reparations and shit that wrecked their economy. All of this stuff led to people offering simple, attractive messages getting into power more easily, but it rippled through every side of the culture.

"Now, my great uncle's specialty was Beethoven's symphonies. Yeah, yeah, I know: why was the Mozart memorial orchestra known for Beethoven? I don't know, man, I'm not some kind of orchestra trivia master. They were, though, to the point where I think that some of their old recordings are worth a ton of money now. They're really rare, though. They only ever came out before the end of the war, so you need an old-ass record player, plus the hundreds of dollars to track down a copy, because most of them got destroyed in the bombings. But that's all later on.

"When he was just starting to hit the big-time, my great uncle put on a special performance of Beethoven's Ninth, at this huge opera house in Berlin, and everyone who was anyone in pre-war Germany went. And, of course, you know who was someone in Germany then? That's right. Adolf fucking Hitler. Yeah, my great uncle was putting on Beethoven's Ninth for Hitler himself, with all these crazy Nazis there too. Now, you know, it wasn't like it was only Nazis, but there were a lot of Nazis around, and this naturally had everyone pretty nervous.

"I mean, think about it. Yeah, a lot of Germans were into Nazi shit at the time, but for a whole lot of different reasons. Some of them were real believers, a lot of them were stupid, a bunch just followed along, and a whole hell of a lot were afraid of what would happen to them if they didn't goose-step along with all their neighbors. Everyone except the real nasty true believers had a pretty respectful fear of the SS. I mean, the Gestapo wasn't just there for show, they would fuck you up if you did something wrong.

"And, well, my great uncle was doing some things the Gestapo would've been pretty interested in. See, he'd been raised to—to have a certain set of beliefs, you know, a certain set of core values that didn't include stuff like genocide. He got a lot of this from his father—his father, while he was still in my great uncle's life, was...

"Ah, shit, this is a bit of a tangent, I'll give you the quick version. I promise I'll tell you the full story later, okay? It's pretty interesting. But anyways, my great uncle's father had actually moved around through Asia a lot in his younger years, and had moonlighted as a monk in this isolated Japanese monastery. He turned away from that for a while, but eventually he went back to it, and he abandoned my great uncle and his mother—my great uncle's mother, his dad's wife, not his dad's mother, right? I mean, sort of abandoned them. He left them his money and house, and they weren't in, you know, in any huge danger, but I always thought that was sort of a shitty thing to do, you know, ditch your kid to go become a monk again, especially since the mom died a few years later. I mean, there were some extenuating circumstances...

"Never mind. Another day, another day.

"Where I was going with all of this is that my great uncle, in this big old mansion his dad had left him, was harboring a whole lot of Jews. Like, there were the old typical tricks, hiding people in the attic or the crawl space, but basically all of his staff were also Jews, just everyone pretended they weren't. And his orchestra? You guessed it: all Jews, except for my great uncle. He had some connections, you know, some old buddies in the paperwork office, so at a glance it seemed like everything was in order and these were a bunch of full-blooded Übermensches playing Beethoven, but nothing could be farther from the case. In fact, their growing popularity had them all pretty scared because, you know, it was a lot harder to get away with this sort of thing when you were in the spotlight. Like, how long until someone notices that nobody remembers growing up across the street from anyone in the orchestra? How long until someone thinks it's funny that there's no real record of these talented musicians before they picked up this gig?

"So, as this huge concert—which, I remind you, is gonna be played in front of Adolf fucking Hitler—is getting going, there's naturally a whole lot of ambivalence and fear going around. Like, before this whole thing, they'd been having some real serious talks, you know, like, 'Do we actually maybe try to suck a little more? How do we avoid drawing unwanted attention? What's the Goldilocks Zone where we're successful enough everyone leaves us alone but not so successful they stop leaving us alone again?' My great uncle, of course, he's the leader sort, so he's trying to calm everyone down. I maybe haven't made it clear, but they were not at all prepared for this, like, they got a couple really good reviews in the paper, then suddenly they're sold out, then suddenly, oops, Himmler or something was there and went and told Der Führer that everyone simply must check out this wonderful tribute to the spirit and racial purity of the German people.

"Anyways, everyone's freaking out. The night that this performance with all the Nazis is supposed to go on, in fact, a couple of the cellists get it into their heads that they maybe can't do this sober, so a few hours before the thing, they go out and get their hands on a bunch of black market vodka and get absolutely blitzed. My great uncle, he doesn't realize what's going on because he's pacing a hole in the floor at the venue, wondering just how they should approach this. I mean, obviously they can't just suck on purpose, because then they'll have personally offended Hitler. I don't really think I need to say this but, you know, if you're in charge of an orchestra being used to harbor Jews, you probably don't want to personally piss off Hitler.

"In fact, he gets so nervous that he calls together the whole orchestra to sort of brief everyone, except there are already a bunch of Nazis hanging around. And like, these aren't the rich, complacent, orchestra-loving Nazis. These are the Gestapo, hanging out to make sure that nobody's planning to get cute and try anything on Hitler.

"Like, you ever see Inglorious Basterds? You know all that crazy shit that goes down, trying to kill Hitler and end the war early and shit? Well, that's not fake—I mean, like, obviously it's fake, you know, how it all goes down in the movie, but the basic idea is based on a lot of stuff people actually came up with. The thought was that you could just chop off the head, meaning Hitler, and everything else would just crumble. So, the Nazis didn't want this, and of course Hitler didn't want this either, so there was a bunch of security everywhere he went. And even with that, people got close more times than you'd think.

"Where was I? Right. My great uncle gets the whole orchestra together to sort of give them this pep talk, but there are a bunch of Gestapo guys hanging out sort of watching, so he has to be real coded about it. He's all, 'Okay, guys, we have to do well tonight. I mean, real well tonight. We don't want to give anyone the wrong idea about how very much we love our people and casting them in a good light, do we?'

"And of course, all the musicians get what he's really saying, I mean, it's their asses on the line at least as much as his, so they're like, 'Yeah, man, chill, we got this, we know this is a big deal, we definitely absolutely one hundred percent will not embarrass ourselves in front of Der Führer,' and my great uncle's like, 'Great, great, okay, we'll go out for a nice big celebration after and—wait, didn't we have two more cellists?'

"So everyone kind of looks around, and this one other cellist, this really scrawny kid who's so small his cello is almost bigger than them, he's the only one not doing that, he's looking just at his feet, real closely like he's grown some extra toes. So my great uncle goes over to him and says, 'Hey there, you wouldn't happen to know anything about where the rest of your section got off to, would you?' and this kid looks around and then leans in and whispers in my great uncle's ear, he tells him that they went to go get fucked up on black market vodka.

"Naturally, this is not what my great uncle wants to hear at all. In fact, this is basically the second worst thing to happen today, and when the only thing worse than what's happening is Hitler and a whole bunch of Gestapo goons crashing your party, you know whatever's going on isn't a good time. So my great uncle says to everyone, he says, 'Okay, guys, get some rehearsing in, chill out, break a leg, I'll be right back,' and then he cheeses it for the exit.

"But the exit is, you know, it's being watched by a bunch of Gestapo guys. And the biggest, burliest Gestapo guy gets right up in my great uncle's face, and my great uncle, he was a brave man, you know—I mean, fuck, there's a reason this story is something the family's passed down for like seventy years—but he's not a really big or tough man. So this Gestapo guy has like a foot and a half on him, looks like he could break him over his knee.

"'Going somewhere?' the Gestapo giant says.

"'Actually, uh, well, yes,' says my great uncle.

"'That's news to me,' says Mr. Gestapo. 'I have orders to keep this building totally secure until the show begins.' He sort of squints at my great uncle. 'Hey, aren't you the guy in charge? You wouldn't be thinking of trying to run away, would you?'

"'No, no,' says my great uncle, 'wouldn't dream of it. All my life I have wanted nothing more than to perform Beethoven for Mr. Hitler. It is an honor which I never dreamed I would actually receive.'

"The Gestapo looks at him like maybe he's not buying it, you know, maybe he's reading a little sarcasm or brown-nosing there, so my uncle powers on in a hurry.

"'I mean,' he says, 'the thing is, I really, really do not want to mess this up. That would be bad, you know?'

"'Oh,' says the giant guy, 'yes. Yes, it would be very, truly, absolutely, terminally unfortunate if you and your musicians were to disappoint Der Führer, especially with him bringing so many of his closest advisors and associates.'

"My great uncle swallows hard and is like, 'Yes, yes that would be bad.' Then he goes, 'So we have to make sure that doesn't happen, right?' And before this Gestapo meathead can argue much, he continues.

"'A couple of my players had some issues with the resin for their bows,' he says. 'This is a pretty common issue, but unfortunately it's also one that requires some specialized tools to deal with, so I need to go get some more resin or some more bows or ideally both.'

"The Gestapo looks him up and down, thinks real hard, and then goes, 'Yeah, sure, okay.' So my uncle sighs because, like, he's home free now, just has to go retrieve his drunk-ass cellists and then he's not quite as fucked. But then the guy he was talking to snaps his fingers.

"He snaps his fingers, and he yells out, 'Franz,' and this weedy, ratty little Gestapo guy comes from under some staircase or something. 'Franz,' says the big guy, 'kindly escort this very respected conductor so that he can buy his... resin and bows to play tonight.'

"Of course, this is a disaster. The whole reason my great uncle isn't just telling the truth is that if he does so he's hanging the cellists out to dry, and if the powers that be pay enough attention to them and figure out what's going on, then maybe they start to wonder about everyone else in the orchestra, and then, oops, it turns out they're all Jews. But now he's committed to this lie, and this Franz guy is going along for the ride, so now he's actually in more trouble than before because the lie is gonna come out one way or another, right?

"But what can he do? He can't just go, 'Oh, no, sorry, I have to go solo.' That would tip his hand right away. So he smiles and nods and then he and Franz are off on their adventure.

"Now, Franz, my great uncle quickly realizes, Franz isn't one of those true believer sorts. Franz is a rat in more ways than one. He's probably in the Gestapo just because that's the best gig going and lets him steal shit. Franz isn't very talkative, but my great uncle can tell right away he doesn't give a shit about this escort mission except for maybe how it can get him something, and my great uncle, he starts to think maybe this whole thing is just to get Franz out of the other Gestapos' hair.

"So, thinking quickly, my great uncle goes, 'Hey, Franz,' and Franz is like 'Yeah?' and my great uncle is like, 'We could get this done a whole lot easier if we split up, and you bought the bows while I bought the resin.'

"Franz thinks about this for maybe half a second and is like 'That is emphatically not what I was told to do,' and my great uncle is like, 'Well, yeah, but we're in a time crunch and also I'll give you, like, whatever a grand in today's money is in Deutschmarks and you keep the change and we don't tell anyone you did anything but what you were told to do, okay?'

"So Franz is like, 'What type of bows and where do I buy them?' and my great uncle gives him this list of complicated shit, like get two viola bows and three violin bows but they have to have horsehair only from black horses, and also maybe a spare chinrest, and Franz sort of nods along and then is off to this store to get this stuff while my great uncle runs for the black market like he's coated in honey and there's a bear after him.

"Now the black market is, like, it's not just one big place, you know, it's this part of town where people are kind of selling illegal shit out of their basements and stuff, but my great uncle is pretty well known around here because he obviously has to buy a bunch of stuff to quietly feed all the Jews hiding in his house. So he's able to put the word out, and people are like, 'Oh, yeah, we saw those cellists, we thought it was weird they were here.' And so before long, my great uncle rounds them up, and one of them is mostly okay but the other is so drunk he can barely stand.

"My great uncle looks at them, and he's livid, I mean in the real literal sense, he is turning red like a tomato, but he keeps very calm and tells them to get their asses to the opera house and into their seats, quietly and subtly, and get ready to play Beethoven for Hitler or lord help him he will make them wish it was only Hitler after them.

"So they take off, and my great uncle makes his way back to the meeting spot, and there's Franz with all these bows and shit, and Franz says, 'I bought some resin too.'

"'What?' says my great uncle, realizing all of a sudden that he forgot to buy resin himself.

"'I said I bought some resin too,' Franz says. 'It turns out they sell resin in the same place they sell bows. What a crazy illogical surprise.'

"'Oh,' says my great uncle. Franz gives him this sort of knowing look that says he's fucked.

"'The thing is,' Franz says, smiling this weasely little Nazi smile, 'that made my trip more expensive. So I had to dip into my personal funds. If you could reimburse me, oh, twice again what you gave me, I think we'd be squared away and nobody would ever have to know.'

"So my great uncle isn't so rich money is meaningless, right, but he's pretty well off—his dad was an unbelievably rich businessman before he went and became a monk—and it's not like he really has a choice, because there isn't really a good ending when you're getting extorted by the Gestapo, so he pays Franz, and Franz gives him a nod and everyone's basically alright with how things turned out, you know, my great uncle got his cellists back and Franz made a bunch of money and the rest of the Gestapo got rid of him for a couple hours. Everything he bought is the cheapest garbage out there, but it doesn't matter because my great uncle doesn't actually need it. Everything's fine.

"Everyone goes back to the hall, and the giant Gestapo guy seems a little surprised to actually see my great uncle again, and says a couple musicians came in late but are getting set up now, and Franz says everything was good, so my great uncle goes into the back and starts getting ready.

"It seems like everything's in order, except that the one cellist, he's so drunk he can't even sit straight. So my great uncle leans in and whispers to him, 'Okay, you're in the back tonight. You are not to actually play. Just pretend. You can do that?' and the guy swears up and down he can.

"By now it's pretty late, and all the important Nazi guests are turning up. And then, before you know it, there's Hitler himself, and he wants to be introduced to my great uncle. He shakes my great uncle's hand and lets him know that he's heard so many good things and his expectations are so terribly high for tonight, and my great uncle is like 'Uh huh, uh huh,' trying not to piss himself. There's a picture, actually, I don't think it's been widely distributed, but my folks still have a copy at home, keep talking about donating it to some historical society but it's faded and the quality is shit.

"So the orchestra sets up, and my great uncle gets up there and turns and does the bowing thing, and the lights go down and all these Nazis are watching this Jewish orchestra get ready to play Beethoven. My great uncle is up front, and the lights dim, and he starts conducting, and it's actually going okay mostly. Like, it's not quite right, because there's one cellist who isn't playing, and he's not even really conducting, just kind of waving his baton, but Nazis like the idea of classical music more than the actual thing, you know? Like, Nazis fucking love pretending they're hot shit when it comes to old Roman statues and that sort of junk, but they only know the super basics of it, so the Nazis are all blown away by this Beethoven performance.

"So as it's going on, my great uncle's getting more into it, you know, I mean it sucks playing for Hitler but it's still playing, right? So the whole group is getting into the groove, everything's going great, they get through the whole Ode to Joy bit and the Nazis are eating it up, and the lights come up and everything was awesome. But the problem is, it was so awesome that Hitler wants to come up and shake my great uncle's hand again, so here comes Hitler and all these Gestapo goons, and meanwhile the drunk cellist is tipping over in his seat.

"Hitler smiles, and reaches out his hand, and right then the cellist falls over and lands on his bow and it snaps and the tension in the strings launches a chunk of it and it goes flying right for Hitler. So my great uncle sees this out of the corner of his eye, and panics, and does the only thing he can think of: he jumps to intercept it. Only, the chunk of wood falls short and nobody really sees it, but they sure as shit do see my great uncle slam into Hitler like he's trying to get a football away from him.

"It takes like half a second for dozens of Gestapo guys to pile on my great uncle and pull him off Hitler, and he's sputtering something about bows and apologizing and freaking out while they make sure Hitler's okay. And all the while, the rest of the orchestra is looking on in horror, trying to figure out what they should do, but my great uncle recovers enough to catch their eyes and give his head this sad little shake, because there's nothing they can do at this point, just throw their own lives after his.

"And sure enough, he gets arrested by the Gestapo and dragged off to a cell, where they feed him boiled cardboard and shit—I mean, not literal shit probably, but you never know with Nazis—while he waits for his trial. And of course, it's a total kangaroo court, and they find him guilty of trying to assassinate Hitler and also probably tax evasion and liking French food and all sorts of other heinous shit, and they say that he's going to be executed, publicly, with Hitler right there in attendance.

"Now, when it comes to a spectacle, you know who's good at delivering? Hitler. Like him or not—and it better fucking be 'not'—Hitler knew his way around working a crowd. Of course, somewhere in there someone actually talked with Hitler, and it turned out Hitler had seen what had actually happened, but by this point he's too committed. Like, it would be embarrassing to explain the truth, especially after somebody's death was ordered over it, so Hitler decides to just ride it out. But he decides he'll make it a good, honorable sendoff via electric chair.

"So they drag my uncle out of his cell—it's only been a few days at this point, Nazis are pretty good about efficiency, especially when it comes to murdering innocent bystanders—and pull him up to this platform they've set up in the middle of a square in Berlin, and they strap him into the electric chair, wipe down his head, like, you ever see The Green Mile? Like that.

"Hitler himself is right there, standing in front of my great uncle, and Hitler asks if he has any last words, and he says, like, 'No,' because what else can he say? He's still covering for the rest of his orchestra, they're fucked if he does anything to piss off Hitler even more. So then the guy flips the switch and sends a million billion volts of electricity or whatever through my great uncle, and he's twitching and convulsing and howling on the electric chair, there's steam coming out of his eyeballs and smoke coming out of his nose and shit, and they just keep going until he slumps over in the chair, thoroughly fried.

"What? What do you mean, that's a shitty ending to the story. No, no, I hear you, I get it, all that and then he's just killed by Hitler, yeah, that would be a shitty ending. I agree. But—but. But. But it's not the ending, see?

"I told you, this is a story about a miracle. This bit, what comes next? This is why you never read this story in any history book. It's something that basically everyone who goes real deep in World War II stuff has heard about, and there are still some surviving film copies, but the quality's all fucked up and mostly just some stills have been shown, and most of the written material about it got lost in the bombing runs later.

"So, my great uncle's lying there, smoke coming out of every pore in his body, and the crowd's flipping its shit in celebration, because they're a bunch of bloodthirsty Nazis, and this goes on for a few minutes, and Hitler's really working the crowd, and then my great uncle blinks.

"He blinks, and he shifts around a little, and he tries to scratch his head, but he can't because his hands are tied to the chair. And Hitler, Hitler starts to realize something's going wrong, because the crowd gets real quiet all of a sudden, and Hitler turns around and realizes that my great uncle isn't dead.

"So, Hitler's all, 'What the fuck happened?' and the electric chair guy can't figure it out, everything was set up perfectly—you see? I told you this was a miracle—and Hitler has no clue but he's good at thinking on his feet and working a crowd, I mean, credit where it's due, nobody works a crowd like ol' Adolf, so he goes, 'Ah, countrymen, behold.'

"The crowd starts quieting down, and Hitler, still winging it, goes, 'You see, I misled you today to prove a point. This man was not a criminal after all. He is in fact a true German patriot. He is a paragon of all the qualities of the Übermensch, except, you know, those ones about being fit and blond and blue-eyed, and I called you all here to witness how impervious he is to anything the foolish Allies could throw at us. Their "Captain America" has nothing on this man, and he is but a simple musician.'

"This more or less makes sense to most of the Nazis watching, and the ones who know better, what are they gonna do, mouth off to Hitler in the middle of this rally? Fuck no. So before my great uncle knows it, he's off the electric chair, and now he's not being executed after all, Hitler's pinning a medal on his chest and he's shaking hands with all these famous Nazis and he's gonna be sent back to his orchestra to, you know, to keep things going. In fact, Hitler has a whole new job for him and his crew.

"You see, the alliance with the Japanese is pretty important if Germany has any hope of winning the war, and Hitler wants to shore it up a little, make sure there's no funny business. He was actually impressed by how the orchestra did, and at the same time he's sort of freaked out by how my great uncle just shrugged off being fucking electrocuted, like without any brain damage or anything, just a couple burn marks on his head, so Hitler thinks, what the hell, let's kill two birds with one stone. So he politely 'invites' my great uncle to take his orchestra to Japan to play for Hirohito.

"Obviously, this is absolutely not what my great uncle wants to be doing. It is basically the opposite of good news. He's, you know, he's harboring a bunch of Jews and trying to stay under the radar and now he can't even walk down the street without random-ass Nazis Sieg-Heiling him everywhere he goes, and the fate of Germany's most important military alliance rests on his shoulders. So he goes back to his orchestra, and he does the old good-news-bad-news routine, and everyone gets very, very drunk, except that one bastard cellist who's been told he has a problem and alcohol ain't the solution.

"On the other hand, this level of fame, it has some benefits. One of them is that my great uncle can get away with a lot of shit he couldn't before, and he uses this to make some connections, bribe some Nazis, and get all the Jews hiding in his house who aren't part of the orchestra on a ship to America.

"With that weight off his shoulders, he starts to think that, you know, maybe this Japan thing won't be so bad. In fact, specifically, he starts to think that maybe it's a huge opportunity. It's hard to disappear from Germany, especially when you're suddenly a national celebrity, but what about Japan? The Japanese probably have sort of a vague idea who he is, but do they give a shit? Probably not. So he talks with the orchestra, and they all agree that that's the plan: they'll play for Hirohito, but then instead of flying back to Germany, they'll hitch a boat to one of the territories Japan has occupied, and from there sneak their way into Allied land.

"So now—wait, fuck, it's what time? Are you kidding me? It feels like we just got here. Okay, yeah, okay. I'll get my stuff, and we can finish this on the ride. We got a DD, right? Who's the DD? Okay, okay, sweet.

"Yeah, don't worry. I'll finish, I'll finish. I won't leave you hanging. Wouldn't dream of—hey. Hey, asshole, people do so want to hear this. This is a story about death. And Hitler. Hitler kills someone in this story. This is the story of how my family was persecuted by Hitler, so fuck you if you don't want to hear that.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. No, no, it's fine. Don't apologize. It's fine. I'll tell you the rest in the car.

"Okay. Seatbelts. Everyone wearing their seatbelts?

"I don't care if it's lame, man, seatbelts are important. Do you want to—you know what? Fine. Fine. If we crash—no, I don't think you'll crash, I trust you, if I didn't trust you I wouldn't be riding with you. But, okay, if some jackass hits us, the people without seatbelts are gonna discover exciting new careers as hood ornaments.

"Whatever. Your lives, man. Now where was I?

"Oh, right, yeah, that's right. So, my great uncle and his Jewish orchestra was en route to Japan, to play Beethoven for Hirohito with Hitler's compliments.

"Now, nobody involved thought that it would be, you know, easy to give both the German government and the Japanese government the slip and escape to, I dunno, China or Korea or something, but they were pretty dismayed when they saw how the trip was actually going to play out. See, for all Hitler knew that my great uncle hadn't actually been trying to kill him, and for all he'd been surprisingly lenient about the whole affair, he still was starting to get an idea that maybe there was a chance that something screwy might be going on with this orchestra. So he didn't just cut them loose in Japan.

"Hitler arranged every single step of the way—well, you know, not Hitler himself, Hitler wasn't their fucking travel agent, but he sure delegated that role to someone he trusted. So the flight they took, it was full of German officials and SS types and Gestapo bigwigs, and there weren't any real opportunities to get clear of these German intelligence sorts. Every step of the way, they were surrounded by these blond-haired-blue-eyed military types, on the bus, on the train, in the hotel. Look out the window, what do you see? A bunch of Nazis in the hot tub.

"Now, my great uncle figured out pretty quick that there was about zero chance of the orchestra ever being unattended for long enough to sneak out en masse. He was starting to despair, and he'd only been in Japan for a day and a half, when who should he happen to see strolling by outside but Franz, the ratty Gestapo dude he'd paid a shitload of money to back in Berlin.

"So, my great uncle, he waves Franz over, and they do a little catching up, you know, the sort of catching up two people who each know secrets about each other and are looking for the knife in the back do, and pretty soon my great uncle finds out that Franz is actually there as part of the orchestra's entourage. He's not a big player or anything, but he is there to help make sure things go smoothly. And Franz, because he's an entrepreneurial sort, he's done a little extracurricular spy-work, and he's found out what the itinerary is for the whole trip.

"This is a real stroke of luck. It doesn't solve any of the issues with logistics, of course, but it presents some opportunities to start to solve those issues. My great uncle, he already knows that Franz is loyal above all else to the Deutschmark, so he strikes a deal, real blunt and direct, and he buys Franz's copy of the schedule. He pays a lot for it—too much, really—but it's a small thing.

"Now, what the plan is is this: the orchestra will play for Hirohito in two days, then a day later will fly back to Germany. They'll be guarded for almost the whole time, but the detail assigned to handling them right after the show is really small. They're thinking, probably, that there's no way they'd try anything in the middle of Tokyo with all their instruments, so of course that's exactly what my great uncle decides to do.

"It just so happened, as well, that a dozen or so miles outside Tokyo was the temple where my great uncle's father had trained and served as a monk. My great uncle hadn't brought that up so much because it didn't really go with his all-white hero-of-the-Reich image, but he sort of casually slipped it into conversation now, and it turned out that his father actually had enjoyed a certain measure of fame in his day, though nobody had seen him for over a decade now. So, my great uncle was able to actually negotiate a change to the schedule, setting up a little side trip to the monastery with his orchestra in tow.

"A shitload of Gestapo went along too, naturally, but that wasn't a huge problem, because my great uncle knew at least the basics of Japanese from when his father was still in his life. He drafted up a note and, under the guise of leaving an offering, passed it off to one of the monks at the gate.

"The monks were all very, very excited to meet him. He didn't speak Japanese half as well as he read and wrote it, and he didn't do that well either, so it wasn't a great communication. They kept gesturing to this door and saying something to him, this unassuming scuffed up wooden door, but when he tried to open the door it was locked and they all tisked at him and told him something and laughed. Still, he was pretty sure they'd help.

"See, what his note said, it said—it said that they needed help, the orchestra, and they needed to get the fuck out of Japan. It said when and where the show would be, and what the security would be like, and it asked for help arranging an escape plan. All they needed was a bus to get them from the concert hall to a train station, and then from there they'd go to a port and charter a ship. My great uncle knew that, even with Japan and Germany allied, the Gestapo would have a hell of a time tracking them down once they got out of Tokyo, and Japan was pretty keen to show that they weren't the, you know, the bottom in the alliance, so there was a real good chance they'd jerk Hitler around a little instead of just helping him right away.

"So, that was that. The plan was laid, so my great uncle and his orchestra decided to just try to enjoy their time, as much as they could, you know. The Gestapo guys didn't really care much for the monastery tripe, and they sure didn't like shuttling these musicians around everywhere, but since the orchestra was technically Hitler's honored emissaries there wasn't much anyone could do. So the orchestra, all these Jewish guys, they started to get a little bit cocky, a little bit drunk on their power. They started doing whatever they could to give the Gestapo a bad time, having them run stupid errands, taking little side trips, spending ages in the bathroom so it seemed like someone was missing. It was like, like a school trip or something, except if you manage to piss the teachers off just a bit too much then Hitler has you killed.

"Anyways, before long, the big night came. There'd been a little misunderstanding, though. See, my great uncle, he'd thought they were going to mostly just be playing for Hirohito and the Imperial Family, but actually the word about Hitler's special musicians had gotten around, and it had become this whole big thing. So it was thousands of Japanese people packing this arena, like, this was before the Beatles, and it was Beethoven so, you know, nobody was screaming or anything, but that didn't make things better.

"No, see, thousands and thousands of Japanese people, including Hirohito, plus a bunch of Gestapo hanging around all over the place, that was a sort of high pressure situation. Everyone started freaking out a little. The cellist, you know, the one who got this whole thing rolling by being a dipshit, my great uncle sees this guy sort of hanging out in the very back, behind everything. My great uncle gets an idea that that's probably not a good sign, so he heads over that way, and sure enough the guy has this flask he snuck in from somewhere.

"He's sucking on this flask like he's a baby and it's his pacifier, and my great uncle snatches it away but by that point there are only a few drops left. He takes a whiff, and it's, well, it's the strongest sake he's ever smelled.

"This is bad. Getting away with a cellist out of the picture in front of a bunch of Nazi poseurs had been stressful enough, and now there's so much more actual focus. So, thinking quickly, my uncle decides the only choice is to take the cellist out back and make him throw it up. Like, it's not quite bulimic purging, exactly, more like when a frat kid gets way wasted and pukes it all back up so they don't die. Anyways, my great uncle makes some excuses, says his cellist is a little anxious, and makes for the toilets, ditching the flask in a viola case on the way.

"The cellist, of course he's swearing up and down he's fine. He's not drunk, he says, and my great uncle goes, 'Yeah, maybe not yet, but what about in fifteen minutes?' and this guy doesn't have a lot he can say about that. They duck into a stall, and they're totally mystified by the weird-ass Japanese squat toilet, like, every toilet at the hotel was Western-style, the Gestapo have made damn sure that there are Western-style toilets everywhere they went, and now there's this squat toilet and they don't know how to deal with it.

"Time's ticking, though, so my great uncle gets the cellist to bend over the toilet and shoves his finger down the guy's throat. This guy, though, he's got a real funky gag reflex, and he's got a real strong stomach, so he's just sort of choking and gurgling, like hurk, hurk, hurk, and it takes a while before he actually yaks in the toilet, and then, shit, they can't figure out how to flush it. So this toilet is totally obviously full of alcoholic barf, and but it is what it is and they're on soon, so they think they'll just sneak out all subtly, and they open the door and right there is Franz, waiting his turn to piss.

"Franz looks at them, and my great uncle looks at Franz, and Franz sticks out his hand and my great uncle just slaps this thick wad of bills into it. Then they rush back towards the stage, and they're like halfway there when my great uncle slaps his forehead and goes, 'Ach, I don't even know what I was paying him for.'

"That mystery has to wait, though, because, because, because the show is about to start. My great uncle and the cellist race out, and my great uncle takes a real long time bowing and straightening his suit while the rest of the orchestra is getting all tuned up and doing a bit of slapping some sense into the drunkard cellist.

"Then it's time to begin.

"They're actually doing two symphonies tonight, Beethoven's Sixth first, and then his Ninth, so they've got a real long night ahead of them. My great uncle's waving his baton, making a real show of things, I mean he's sort of almost doing his job but he's also kinda hamming it up for the Japanese people, and he's pretty sure they're eating it up but can't totally say. He's a little worried that maybe the Germans in the audience aren't going to think quite so highly of it, but as far as he can see, they don't really care about the music, they're just watching them like hawks.

"They play for like two hours straight, and when they're done, the applause is absolutely thunderous. The members of the orchestra bow, and my great uncle bows and in broken Japanese he dedicates the performance to Hirohito, and it seems like everything went great. Then the whole crew walks off stage, leaving their instruments.

"That, of course, is the real genius of the plan: nobody would expect the orchestra to just leave all their shit behind when it's their livelihood. But of course, that's exactly what they do, because it works two ways. It keeps them from being encumbered and confuses pursuit, and if it turns out their plans fell through, it gives them plausible deniability.

"Their plans don't fall through, though. They all duck backstage, and right there is a door, and right outside the door is this bus with monks hanging out in it. Even the bus driver is a monk, and my great uncle swore up and down this monk driving the bus was wearing aviator sunglasses. All the members of the orchestra get onto this bus full of monks, and it peels out of there and races straight for the train station. My great uncle, he's not sure what exactly his dad did for these monks, but they are taking this whole thing incredibly seriously, they are putting their all into this.

"They reach the train station, and everyone sneaks off the bus, and all the monks, they pull off their robes and they're wearing Western clothes underneath, and the bus takes off again, all these monks dressed in suits and ties acting as a decoy to buy more time.

"My great uncle and his musicians slip into a boxcar full of piles of hay, and the train starts moving, and they finally relax. My great uncle wipes the sweat off his forehead, and the drunk cellist pulls out another flask from somewhere and starts passing it around, and everything's great until the train's next stop. There, the door opens, and who should walk in but Franz.

"At this point, my great uncle's doing some quick calculations, trying to figure out if he's better off buying Franz off or throwing him off the train or what, and he walks over to Franz but Franz just holds up a hand and sadly shakes his head, so my great uncle makes to grab him but right then all the piles of hay go flying everywhere, and, oh shit, there are a whole lot of Gestapo agents with very large guns who've been hanging out the whole time.

"So at this point the orchestra realizes it's absolutely fucked and cooperates to avoid making things worse, and in the blink of an eye they've been spirited back to their hotel and thence to Germany.

"The whole time, the atmosphere is glum, and there's actually this big hanging question, everyone wondering why they're even being sent back to Germany instead of shot and dumped in a ditch somewhere. Well, it turns out the answer is this: Hirohito fucking loved their performance of Beethoven, absolutely adored it, and so when he heard Hitler was throwing a tiffy about the attempted escape, he put his foot down and made some sort of threat or promise—my great uncle was never quite sure what leverage was put into play, but it was something big—and more or less demanded nobody be executed.

"Or, almost nobody. My great uncle had unfortunately stepped on some toes with his little monastery adventure, and Hirohito agreed that somebody had to take the blame, and he said my great uncle was more like a hype man than an actual part of the performance—I mean, obviously he didn't, you know, say 'hype man' because this was the Forties—but anyways, it was agreed that my great uncle should probably be put to death for the good of the country, the alliance, and really the whole world.

"All this time, Hitler had been stewing a little about the botched initial execution. He was thinking, you know, if that hadn't been fucked up, then none of this other stuff would've happened. Worse, it was just embarrassing to have a national hero, the pudgy German Captain America, go rogue. So Hitler decides the only way to fix it is to do a mulligan, and really absolutely fry my great uncle to death on the electric chair.

"They don't waste time messing around with the whole prison song and dance this time. My great uncle is cuffed and dragged straight from the airplane to this big platform, the same platform as last time, in the center of Berlin. He doesn't even have time to say goodbye to anyone because, you know, he doesn't think the Nazis are going to be that fast, like, Nazis are known for efficiency and all but this is something else. So he's sitting there in the electric chair, and Hitler's there going on and on and on in that crazy raving Hitler way he has, and my great uncle is torn between freaking the fuck out and trying not to cry and this sort of resigned dignity, like, 'Well, I guess we had a good run, almost made it.'

"Hitler finally finishes up and gives the signal, and the switch is thrown. The Nazis have actually, like, they've souped up this electric chair after last time, because, see, they did some testing, fried a couple other people on it, and they've confirmed that it should've worked fine. The way they have it rigged now, it could kill an elephant. That actually happened once, you know: this circus had an elephant which wasn't cooperating and was mean as shit, so Thomas Edison electrocuted it. You can see it on YouTube, I swear to God.

"That's the sort of power we're talking about here, major, heavy-duty, elephant-frying waves of electricity. And all this power is going through my great uncle, he's twitching and screaming and smoking, his eyebrows catch on fire and burn off his face. And Hitler just keeps the power on full blast, on and on and on, my great uncle slumps to the side and stops twitching and still the execution goes on, it goes on for so long that it's starting to get a little awkward even for all the Nazis in the audience, but Hitler's the sort of guy who gets this intensity about executing people, you know, it's not really the sort of thing you feel comfortable getting in the way of if you're the average German Nazi, it's just really awkward not to listen to your orders, easier to just go with it.

"But finally even Hitler's had enough, so they turn off the electricity and un-strap my great uncle from the chair. There's this dude there with a coffin, they're gonna have a parade and parade the coffin through the streets as like a warning to traitors or something, so they throw my crispy great uncle into the coffin and slam the lid on and get going.

"This parade, it was a pretty big thing. By this point, Germany was having some issues in the war, this was meant to be good for morale, so Hitler went all out. And people were getting, well, they were getting pretty into it, I mean not all Germans are bloodthirsty Nazis, but the ones who come out to Hitler's executions mostly were, so these Nazis are having a pretty good time, but then something goes wrong. There are four pallbearers, and suddenly the two on the left sort of stumble, and then before you know it they've lost control of the coffin, it's fallen to the ground, and my charred great uncle rolls out into the street. Nazis scream, and then, all of a sudden, my great uncle, he screams too. He stands up and screams and shouts, he shouts, 'Oh scheiße, I'm going to be late, I'm supposed to play for Hirohito.'

"Now, Hitler, he's riding along at the head of the parade on this open-deck car, working the crowd, but he notices that all of a sudden the crowd's attention is pretty split. He's not really sure what's going on at first, but finally he gets the picture that something behind him has gotten fucked up, so he tells the Nazi driving the car to turn it around. Thing is, there are so many Nazis everywhere freaking out, it's pretty hard to turn the car around, so it's taking a while, and everyone behind is flipping their shit about my great uncle, because by now he's standing up sort of stumbling about, brushing all this ash off himself, and under this layer of ash he's totally fine, just a little bit pink like maybe he's sunburned or something, the only real damage seems to be that his eyebrows are gone.

"Hitler finally makes his way through the crowd, and he sees this, and his jaw just drops, he has no fucking clue what to do with this situation, and now that he's here all the Nazis are looking to him to tell them what to do. So Hitler, he's pretty good at thinking on his feet to a point, but in this situation he just goes back to what he's done before, the old 'It's just a prank, bro,' and he's like, 'Ah, see, it was all a trick. Even that much electricity cannot kill our Übermensch, who was definitely, definitely not a traitor and in fact represented us very well to Hirohito.'

"The Nazis, they think something's a little fucky with this, but what are you gonna do, mouth off to Hitler? So they start screaming and cheering, Hitler starts doing his rally thing, my great uncle, he just sort of hangs around confused clapping, and then after a while these Gestapo guys come along and escort him away.

"Now, if you think they watched him closely before, you wouldn't believe how much attention they're giving him now. And the first, the very first thing they do, is they send this musicologist guy in to talk to him in his cell. This musicologist, he takes one look at my great uncle and he sneers, and my great uncle is like, 'What?'

"Well, this music geek Nazi, he goes, 'I know you. You, sir, are a fraud.'

"'What?' says my great uncle.

"It turns out that these performances my great uncle has been putting on, they've been recorded, and this guy has watched all of them, and he's noticed something that none of the drunk Nazis have: he's noticed that the renditions of Beethoven, they're actually terrible. I mean, we're talking Beethoven as played by a bunch of scared Jews for Hitler, minus a couple cellists, and then Beethoven as played to a surprise arena audience when the guy in front is just waving his baton like a madman.

"This guy, he has a few thoughts about what's actually been going on. He smiles, he gives a little chuckle, and he says my great uncle is a spy for the Allies. What he's been doing, according to this musical Nazi, is actually transmitting secrets in code with his baton, getting out information he's gleaned from his privileged position.

"Of course, my great uncle denies it, but it turns out that there have been major leaks following both of the concerts, stuff only someone in deep could know. Thing is, it's stuff even my great uncle doesn't know, and maybe his confusion shows some, because this guy, he suddenly looks a little unsure.

"'Well,' he says, 'we'll see. I have a little test in mind, one I think Der Führer will go for. Maybe you will be vindicated, but probably you will be damned.'

"Then he leaves. My great uncle, of course, he's despairing. But right then, someone else comes into the room.

"Who is it? Why, who else could it be? It's Franz. Franz, this ratty Gestapo guy, he's looking around even more furtively than normal. He's up to something. My great uncle just sighs.

"'Why are you here?' my great uncle asks. 'I have no money with me. Surely anything you want that I own, you can steal.'

"'Actually,' Franz says, 'I'm here to apologize.'

"'To apologize?' My great uncle, he can't believe his ears. And Franz leans in real close, and whispers in his ear.

"'Yes,' Franz says. 'You see, the truth is, I'm working for the Allies. All along the way, I've done what I can to help you, but in Japan, my hands were tied. Someone, I don't know who, someone at the monastery leaked your plans. But the money I've collected, I've used it to get your orchestra members to safety. Even now, they are on a U-boat that is defecting to join the Americans. This will not stay secret for long, so I too must disappear.'

"My great uncle is just sitting there wide-eyed, his jaw dropped, he can't say anything.

"'But,' Franz says, and his voice goes all sad, like he's holding back tears, 'but I cannot save you. I can do many things, but I cannot save you. Maybe you can save yourself, but I do not think so. I think they will kill you no matter what you do. I will be here for a little more, and I will watch everything, and if I get a chance I will help, but...'

"And my great uncle hugs Franz, he tells Franz that it's okay, thanks him again and again for saving the orchestra, and Franz gets all choked up and departs.

"Time passes, a good bit of time. Like a week, two weeks, and then this music-loving Nazi comes back, and he's sort of grinning, looking real smug.

"What he says is this: my great uncle, even though he's obviously a spy for the Allies, he'll be given a fair shot. He'll have this one chance to redeem himself. But they don't expect much from it.

"See, they went and dug up his files from school, and they found something out: he actually washed out of the academy. He'd been on track to graduate in the bottom quarter of his class, but then, out on a walk right before finals, a thunderstorm had rolled in, and he'd been struck by a freak bolt of lightning. Now, weird thing, it hadn't seemed to do any major harm to him, but he'd completely forgotten all of the work he'd been doing, totally lost the movements he'd only barely hung onto in the first place, and he'd been laughed off stage. He'd only really managed to get where he did because his dad had left him an absolutely monstrous sum of money, and he'd hired some actually really skilled Jewish musicians, as part of a ploy to save them. That's why, the whole time, it seemed like nothing he did mattered: it didn't really.

"This, at least, was the theory this musicologist had going on—and, yeah, he said that whole bit about the Jewish musicians, only he probably called them 'filthy Jews' or something Nazi-ish like that, and he also let slip that they had all, every single one of them, vanished.

"But, just to be fair, they were going to let my great uncle prove them wrong. The test was this: he would conduct the national orchestra. He would lead them through Beethoven's Ninth, and if he performed well, if he actually pulled it off, then he would be allowed free, the blame would fall the Jewish orchestra he somehow—surely unwittingly—had employed, and he would be treated as the hero of the Reich he so obviously was. Hitler himself would apologize.

"So of course, when he hears that an apology from Hitler is on the line, my great uncle knows he's totally fucked, like there's exactly zero chance that that's gonna happen. He figures, probably, the musicians have all been ordered to screw up on purpose. He thinks they'll keep him here, make him go without food and sleep, give him no time to practice.

"But they don't do that. They move him to a nice, clean, well-lit room, they give him the best gourmet food Hitler's personal chef can cook, they give him all the equipment he wants, all the time, the music, it's all his.

"And then the day comes.

"My great uncle is marched out in front of the national orchestra. The audience this time is just Hitler and a bunch of Gestapo and a bunch of classical music geeks, like these real geeky music fans all decked out in swastikas and shit, and my great uncle gets out his baton, he swallows, he goes up in front of the orchestra. He takes a deep breath. He starts.

"Needless to say, it's a shitshow. But—but, the thing is, it's not because the orchestra is sabotaging him. He wishes it was, but the truth is, he's just not all that good. He's not abysmal, he's mediocre, but he's so nervous that that's not even coming through. Everything's off-key, out of time, and the whole time he's watching the faces of the audience.

"Now at first, it seems sort of like Hitler's getting into it, but we've already established Hitler doesn't actually know jack shit about music. But as it goes, even Hitler starts to look a little perturbed, starts to frown, and by the time they're going into Ode to Joy, wheezing their way along, Hitler stands up and screams, 'Stop, stop.'

"Everyone stops, except my great uncle just keeps on pathetically waving his arms. He looks around the audience, desperately searching for a friendly face, and there, over there by the exit, he sees Franz, but Franz just sadly shakes his head. There's nothing Franz can do now. This is it.

"'Well,' Hitler says, 'you have done a real number on us, little spy, but now your time is at an end.' And the musicians all scramble away and there, right there hidden behind the piano, is an electric chair. It's been there the whole time, lurking, waiting for my great uncle to fuck up. He sees it, and he swallows, and some big Gestapo guards—real big, so big that that giant Gestapo who first introduced him to Franz, he's there and he's the shrimp of the group. These huge-ass Gestapo shove my great uncle into the chair and strap him down and throw the switch.

"This electric chair makes the last one look like kiddy shit. When the switch is flipped, the entire city of Berlin goes dark. Every bit of that power is being poured straight into this electric chair. It actually makes the British fuck up a bombing raid, because Berlin is so dark they can't even see it, they blow the fuck out of some little dairy farm twenty miles away because it's the only light they can see.

"But if they'd been inside, they'd've seen light, because my great uncle is glowing. You ever put a flashlight behind your hand and see the glowy red bits? You know that bit in Home Alone where the guy gets zapped and you can see his skeleton? Now imagine both of those things happening at once, and more, so much power being poured through my great uncle that all the hair on his body flat out disintegrates, so he looks sorta like Voldemort in the movies. All the Nazi bigwigs in attendance, they have to turn away it's so bright. The guy who flipped the switch, he pulls out a welding mask so he can look, and he keeps the power flowing until my great uncle hasn't moved a single muscle for five minutes straight.

"Finally, he turns the power off. Everything is still and silent. Everyone's blinking the afterimages out of their eyes. You could hear a pin drop. It takes a while for everyone to realize that they also can't see because the lights are still out. Someone has to go find the fuse box, and it's, like, it's in the basement or the attic or some shit, somewhere totally illogical where nobody ever thinks to look, so it takes a while. But finally they get the lights back.

"My great uncle is just lying there, crispy and limp, but Hitler himself stands up and walks up to him and touches him. Hitler pulls his fingers away, looks at the ash on them. Then he winds up and slaps my great uncle hard across the face.

"And my great uncle, he jerks upright, and he goes, 'Hey,' he goes, 'What the fuck was that for?'

"Oh, shit, right, take a left here. Mine's the one at the end, yeah, the very end of the cul de sac. Yeah, thanks again, man, thanks for the ride. I've had a—I've had a great time. And—oh? The story? Right. Shit, I won't leave you hanging.

"Okay, so Hitler, he's not an idiot. I mean, okay, he is an idiot, but a certain type of idiot, one that does have some basic pattern recognition skills. So as my great uncle slowly stirs into consciousness, Hitler snaps his fingers, and all of a sudden in marches a whole column of Gestapo with rifles.

"'Well, little spy,' says Hitler, 'you have once again thwarted the electric chair, but I assume you are not bulletproof. And if I am wrong, and you are? Then we will see if you can be drowned. And if you cannot be drowned, we will throw you into a volcano. You will die. There is no avoiding that.'

"My great uncle swallows, because, you know, obviously he's not bulletproof.

"Yeah, this one. Right here, thanks. Thank you guys. Tonight was, it was awesome. Lemme just unbuckle. Yeah, just getting out of the car. Don't worry. I'll finish. Just want my family to see me, know I made it home okay, you know?

"So Hitler is looking at my great uncle, who's still, you know, still tied to the chair. Hitler looks at him and he says, 'But, before you die, there's one thing I would love to know.'

"'If I tell you, will you not kill me?' my great uncle asks. But, Hitler shakes his head. It's too late for this to end in not-killing, far too late. My great uncle looks around, looks at Franz, but Franz won't meet his eyes. Franz is looking around like maybe he wants to leave real quick when this is over.

"'Now,' Hitler says, 'this is the third time we have electrocuted you to death. For a third time, you have not died. We have learned that you were struck by lighting, and it did not even leave a mark. This could be of great use to the Reich, but our scientists are baffled by it. They say it is impossible. But I have seen it with my own eyes.

"'So what I will do is this: if you tell me your secret, while you will die, I will see to it that nobody else is punished for this. We will not track down your filthy Jew orchestra. We will not hunt your family. All you must do is tell.'

"And my great uncle, he thinks real hard, and finally, he sighs and he says, 'Okay. Okay, I'll tell you.'

"So, Hitler sticks a cigarette in my great uncle's mouth, and he lights it, and he steps clear of the line of fire, walks over and stands behind the firing squad.

"'Speak,' Hitler says. 'With your last words, you will spare others.'

"And my great uncle, he looks past the firing squad and locks eyes with Hitler. He looks Hitler straight in the face, knowing that he's about to be executed, and he wishes he could come up with something clever and poignant, some crazy lie, or something that could save his life or whatever, but all he can think to do is tell the truth. So he says...

"He says...

[+] He says...

'I guess I'm just a bad conductor.'"