Laughy

Oh, he’s the laughy boy, sir, wherever he is, God bless him!

“They’d—oose—to be—tar-ri-ble—boy-ish—when—I—know’d—’em.” One of the laughy gurgles came after the words, like one that had been separated from its companions.

Now he was all for joining immediately, since neither of them saw any point in the unpleasant school or in the laughy, crinkly-haired headmaster whose only concern appeared to be that cannabis should not be smoked in the lavatories.

Tomorrow, the men of Wilco[…]will fly to Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, before playing a few dates in Spain and Portugal in support of Wilco (the album), their laughiest disc to date. The album’s cover features a camel standing on a sunny roof next to a table with a cake on it set for six, which could easily be read as symbolic of the sweet life the band is now enjoying after wandering a desert of tough times, or it could be symbolic of absolutely nothing. Either way: laughy. Even laughier, the record opens with a winking, clamoring boogie called “Wilco (the song),” in which Tweedy advises, “Tired of being exposed to the cold? / …Put on your headphones before you explode / Wilco will love you, baby.”

Then Buggy found himself doing something he hadn’t done in a long time: He started to laugh. At first, he thought it was the laughy-gas taking effect, but then he realized it was something else. He realized that what he was witnessing was actually pretty funny.