It is what it is<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is what it is.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not what it might have been.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not what it had been.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t what it could be.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not what it ought to be.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t be what it might have been.<\/p>\n

It was what it ought not to have been.<\/p>\n

It will be what it ought not to be.<\/p>\n

It ought not to be what it is.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s surely not what it was.<\/p>\n

It can\u2019t ever be what it had been.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll never be what it could have been.<\/p>\n

It ought never to have been what it had been.<\/p>\n

It was what it was.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not what it was.<\/p>\n

It is what it is.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The Partridge Family<\/strong><\/p>\n

I hate the fact that every Friday night<\/p>\n

in 1971 when I was ten<\/p>\n

I watched The Partridge Family<\/em> on TV.<\/p>\n

I fell for it. \u00a0They travelled in a bus,<\/p>\n

that family band, and did \u201cperformances\u201d<\/p>\n

in Caesar\u2019s Palace or back in the garage.<\/p>\n

It was a family<\/em> show, a lot of cheese,<\/p>\n

and so the single mother, Shirley Jones,<\/p>\n

would smile and sing but never did get laid.<\/p>\n

It would have been the fellow named Kincaid.<\/p>\n

He was that iffy dude, their manager,<\/p>\n

played by David Madden, who was not<\/p>\n

averse to making guest appearances<\/p>\n

on Love Boat<\/em>\u2014let us speak no more of that.<\/p>\n

My problem was I actually believed<\/p>\n

the Partridge Family played their instruments.<\/p>\n

Do you remember David Cassidy?<\/p>\n

He looked like he had eaten Vaseline,<\/p>\n

but Danny Bonaduce was the worst,<\/p>\n

and Danny Partridge, the character he played,<\/p>\n

was a little douche bag with a bass guitar,<\/p>\n

as charming as a lump of soda bread.<\/p>\n

He shuffled around in a psychedelic shirt.<\/p>\n

In later life, the actor got involved<\/p>\n

with drugs and lived inside a car behind<\/p>\n

Grauman\u2019s Chinese Theatre for a time.<\/p>\n

He was arrested once, in Phoenix, for assault<\/p>\n

when he punched out a transvestite prostitute<\/p>\n

he\u2019d taken for a girl. \u00a0Well whadda ya know?<\/p>\n

For Danny Bonaduce, that<\/em> was real.<\/p>\n

For me, the time I wasted Friday nights<\/p>\n

watching the Partridge Family play the songs<\/p>\n

they couldn\u2019t really play was not ideal.<\/p>\n

What good did it do me in the end?<\/p>\n

I even used to know the lyrics. \u00a0Now<\/p>\n

I\u2019d rather drink a beaker full of Fleet<\/p>\n

and go to get my colonoscopy<\/p>\n

than be reminded of the matching vests,<\/p>\n

the tambourine, and Danny\u2019s red guitar,<\/p>\n

and how, back then, I thought it fit and meet<\/p>\n

that such as these should sing of happiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is what it is It is what it is. It\u2019s not what it might have been. It\u2019s not what it had been. It isn\u2019t what it could be. It\u2019s not what it ought to be. It won\u2019t be what it might have been. It was what it ought not to have been. It will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3191"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3286,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions\/3286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}