Modesto — Beck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aDVJCgx6wQ8

When people are crying and laughing at the same time, it's usually because they find something so funny they're brought to tears. Beck's odes to America's dustier corners usually bring me around the other way - by being so pitiably sad that I can't help but laugh. Modesto and innumerable others like it in Hansen's catalog marry the dismal and the absurd: "unglued, depressed / the meatloaf in my chest" is emblematic of the myriad contradictions and idiosyncrasies at play here. But they go on and populate the song to such a degree that it's almost like the twin threads of humor and despair aren't merely related, or even conjoined - they're the same thing. It's a very Beckishly bizarre juxtaposition in the way it's written, but the inseparability of sorrow and comedy is a much more broadly human concept. I listen to this song and hear myself chuckling side-by-side with that gut-feeling of empathy for the singer's misfortune. It's a parody of a tragedy, like an off-kilter episode of This American Life about suburbia's best-humored deadbeats. And it ends with him "choking on a breathmint".

How woefully, hilariously fitting.