The World’s Best Ex and I were out smoking on my back patio, doing out best to ignore the screaming and so forth issuing from the sports field next door (my side yard borders the back of a high school). Apparently the teenagers are having a football game. Oh joy, oh rapture.

Then I heard something really atrocious — the wailing of an electric guitar along with the screaming teenagers. For the first several seconds, I thought perhaps a neighbor with a garage band had hooked up an amplifier and was broadcasting their annoyance at the noise coming from the football field. The guitar seemed to be playing something vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“What the hell is that?” I asked Robert, who I noticed looked just as annoyed.

“Sounds like Jimi Hendrix,” he answered. “Probably the most famous guitar version of the National Anthem.”

Horrible. Just horrible. If that slaughter of The Star-Spangled Banner is any example of his guitar-playing, it’s no wonder I can’t stand Hendrix.

(At least there’s some good news: only 8 days left until third season of BSG!)