Camper Van Beethoven - Take the Skinheads Bowling

Anthem of Absurdity

For Joel Huval, who always got the joke

1. In a world teetering on the edge of chaos, Camper Van Beethoven’s Take the Skinheads Bowling is a bat signal for anyone who embraces the absurdity of life as a survival tool. In fact, this song, with its nonsensical lyrics and jangly guitar riffs, might just be the closest thing we have to a modern-day absurdist anthem.

   Alfred E. Neuman, Weird Al Yankovic, and Frank Zappa walk into a room. What happens next? It’s not the setup for a punchline. It’s a fever dream I had once of strange bedfellows riffing off the same inane chorus: “Take the skinheads bowling, take them bowling.”

   Neuman, forever the idiot savant with his dopey grin, bangs away at a drum kit while Weird Al shreds an accordion solo. Frank Zappa, the magnificent maestro of musical chaos, conducts the cacophony like a mad scientist tweaking a control panel of human emotions. The result? Art. And it’s not just weird for the sake of being weird; it’s weird with purpose, an exploration of how the irrational parts of life make us human.

   Some people say that bowling alleys got big lanes
   Some people say that bowling alleys all look the same
   There's not a line that goes here that rhymes with anything
   Had a dream last night but I forget what it was

   
   -Camper Van Beethoven, Take the Skinheads Bowling

   Why bowling? It could’ve been tennis, or maybe they’d take the skinheads to an art museum, but there’s something uniquely absurd about the imagery of skinheads — symbols of fear and hate — pushing around balls on waxed lanes, trying to knock over pins. The ridiculousness disarms you. There’s no power in their shaved heads or hate-filled hearts when you picture them fumbling around with rented shoes and gutter balls. They become the punchline, stripped of menace, reduced to a farce.

2. In times of trauma or emotional fatigue, humor is the weapon we wield to stay alive. The world is an absurd place. Camper Van Beethoven knew this, even if they weren’t trying to unlock the ontological riddles Leonard Cohen grappled with. They made a song that clowns everything and nothing all at once, and that’s the sensational beauty of it. It’s the musical equivalent of Alfred E. Neuman’s “What, me worry?” You look at the darkness, shrug, and laugh in its face.

   Within that idiotic grin lies the whole point. Life doesn’t always make sense. We create rules, then we build systems, and then we try to assign meaning to it all. But there are times when none of it works, when the center cannot hold. You can either break under the pressure of trying to make sense of the world, or you can lean into the nonsense and laugh. Camper Van Beethoven invites us to do the latter.

   Had a dream last night about you, my friend
   Had a dream, I wanted to sleep next to plastic
   Had a dream, I wanted to lick your knees
   Had a dream, it was about nothing

   Camper Van Beethoven, Take the Skinheads Bowling

   We live in an age that requires explanations for everything, yet curiously cannot stand complex explanations. If you can’t explain it in a meme then it doesn’t matter. But what about the things we can’t explain at all? What about the moments in life where there’s no rhyme or reason, where things just fucking are? Absurdity isn’t only a comedic tool; it’s a coping mechanism. When we laugh at something absurd, we’re acknowledging the truth that not everything makes sense, and that’s okay. We survive by laughing at what we can’t understand. Take the Skinheads Bowling is existential therapy wrapped in a fantastic melody.

   Think of it this way: I once read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest INSIDE a mental health facility. That’s hilarious. It’s not supposed to make sense, and that’s exactly the point. The boundaries between sense and nonsense blur, and suddenly you’re left with something that’s so ridiculous it’s freeing. Camper Van Beethoven understood this, whether they set out to or not.

   Some people shy away from humor because they’re afraid of its sharp edges. They worry about the smile lines forming at the sides of their mouths, those visible signs that they’ve been laughing at life’s absurdities. I welcome them. It means I’ve survived. In fact, it’s through laughter that I’ve beaten back the darkest corners of existence. I’ve been told suicide can’t be funny. As someone who’s survived two attempts, I can confidently say that’s false. There’s humor in everything, if you’re willing to find it. For instance, Lindsay Lohan once had a miscarriage. The coroner still hasn’t ruled out suicide. Dark? Absolutely. Funny? Hell yes. Because when we make fun of our deepest fears, those fears lose their teeth.

3. There’s an inherent joy in embracing the absurd, and Take the Skinheads Bowling is a celebration of that joy. The world is filled with bowling alleys, skinheads, and strange experiences that defy logic. But Camper Van Beethoven tells us not to fear it, not to turn away from the bizarre. Instead, roll with it —literally. Take those skinheads bowling. They lose their menace the moment they pick up a ball too heavy for their weak little arms to throw properly.

   Humor is the best invention we’ve got in this mess of a world. It keeps us from drowning in seriousness, in the weight of expectations and the endless grind of trying to figure out the point of it all. No one makes it out alive, so we might as well spend our time here laughing at the cosmic joke. Camper Van Beethoven knew that, and in Take the Skinheads Bowling, they gave us an absurdist anthem to remind us that life’s too important to take seriously.

   Take a cue from Camper Van Beethoven: embrace the absurd. Laugh at the ridiculous. And if you ever find yourself at a bowling alley with a group of skinheads, know that you’ve already won. Because in the end, they’re just people in ugly shoes, trying to knock down a bunch of pins, just like the rest of us.