You Can Get Anything You Want at Alice's Restaurant

A Thanksgiving tradition of ours every year is to listen to Alice's Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie. I'm not even sure where or when this tradition started; I think it came from a radio station in Ohio that always played it on Thanksgiving.

Anyway, it's a classic, and I highly recommend it for your holiday enjoyment. If you're an iTunes kind of person, I'll even make it easy for you, with a link directly to Alice's Restaurant on the iTunes Music Store.

And even if you're not, here are some of the favorite lines around my house.

...and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw ours down.

...Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.

...and he started jumpin' up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

... and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage."

...just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant." And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it, they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in, singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day, walking in, singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out? And friends, they may thinks it's a movement.

Update: sorry folk(s), I didn't notice this before, but it looks like those capitalist pigs at Warner Bros. won't let Alice's Restaurant be sold on ITMS as a single $0.99 track; you have to buy the whole album. It is wrong, very very wrong, but I leave the link so you can listen to the free 30-second sample while you go download the whole thing illegally somewhere.