Monday, June 18, 2012

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

We all know the song: "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", right? I always used to think of it as a wistful, nostalgic song about the beauty and likability of the city, but what if it's (Gasp!) something else entirely? What if, rather than being a complimentary song about the virtues of a great metropolitan area, it's a warning about the predominance of organ theft? (Horror movie music stab, please!)

Maybe the writer of this song had producers and recording studio contacts who were also engaged in black-market human organ trading, and it was indeed these nefarious individuals who were behind the urban legend of the waking-up-in-a-bathtub-full-of-ice-missing-a-kidney, etc., thing, and that he wanted to warn people to stay away from San Francisco for this reason, but that he was too closely watched to feel safe enough to say anything about it directly (or else perhaps his organs might be "donated"). So to warn us all of the sinister fate awaiting us in this California municipality, he wrote this mellifluous song, and hoped that we might all "read between the lines", so to speak.

But for maximum impact, if he truly wanted us to determine his clandestine encoded message, he really should have had subsequent verses and choruses of the song relating to other organs, e.g.: "I left my spleen in San Francisco", "I left my kidney in San Francisco", "I left my pancreas in San Francisco", etc. Then we definitely would have gotten his warning! (Plus, the song might have been an even bigger hit!)