Song of the Day 5/9: Trout Fishing in America, “The Window”

There’s an apocryphal story about the Russian space program. The United States, according to the legend, spent millions of dollars trying to invent a ball-point pen that would work in the zero-gravity environment of space. The Russians, faced with the same situation, spent nothing. They just used pencils.

So while the CIA came up with all sorts of intricate schemes to kill political enemies — think of the exploding cigars they wanted to give Castro — the Russians simply throw people out windows.

The USSR is no more, but KGB man Vladimir Putin still relies on its classic methods. Three Russian doctors in recent weeks, all of whom complained about the country’s slipshod response to the new coronavirus, found themselves subjected to the Law of Gravity. Two are dead, one — who took the precaution of only being on the second floor — is in critical condition with a broken skull. One them found herself defenestrated while on a conference call at her hospital.

The editors at Vox, perhaps a bit nervous about their 11th-floor offices in Washington, ran a story last week headlined Why are Russian coronavirus doctors mysteriously falling out of windows?”, and offer three theories. I read it just to find out what they had concocted for the other two.

Trout Fishing in America, a duo that records children’s albums, has the perfect song for this. Though it’s ostensibly a “nursery rhyme polka,” a quick listen will demonstrate that they take a distinctly Russian approach to their material.