I'd like to be a good American and write an elegy to the automobile

But no matter where it takes me I don't really feel any different

I got one foot in the black and white two dimensional ghosts of Lithuania

And the other foot in sunny California where the people are all friendly

As they drive their Mercedes to the mini-malls and take a lunch

Or network with you or drive past and kill you for no reason

These are my ghosts: Uncle Emmanuel, Uncle Eli, Aunt Mia

And my grandparents, Jenny and Tobias, none of whom I've ever met

I saw some letters once that they wrote to my dad in Palestine in 1940

Not too long before they all were shot

My only link to them is my dad, he knew them, he knew me, now he's gone too

Sometimes I want to get next to them, sometimes I want to drive them all away

Say, you're not my ghosts, I live in Sunny California, I drive a 1992 Red Chevrolet

I drive fast, and I drive as far west as anyone can drive

Eight thousand miles from Lithuania and if I could escape

By driving further then I would, but it doesn't get me anyplace new

I guess if I was a true American, I could write an elegy to the automobile

But when I jump in it doesn't get me any place different

Sometimes I want to dance on Hitler's grave

And shout out, "Groucho Marx, Lenny Bruce, Leonard Cohen, Philip Roth

Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, Leonard Bernstein, Harry Houdini, Sandy Kofax!"

And then I want to sing as loud as I can

Watch the chandeliers sway dangerously overhead

Proclaiming Kristallnacht is over

I say Kristallnacht is over!

The only broken glass tonight

Will be from wedding glasses shattered under boot heels

We're not the ones in the museum, it's you

Your curious mustache and your chamber of horrors

I've a friend my age whose parents met in Auschwitz on the Day of Liberation

She lives in San Francisco, a good job, just moved into a new house

I've a friend who lies in her hospital bed

After fifteen operations from a botched appendectomy

I go to visit her with a heart heavy from the things on my mind

And she cheers me up

I saw my dad tell jokes, teach me how to laugh

Thirty years after his parents, brothers, and sister were all shot

Murdered in the streets of Lithuania

I see trees growing tall and the sun coming up, the ocean roaring home

And know I must go on I must go on

I must go on

It would be cowardly to stop

It would be an aberration to do anything else

Amid something you tried to remember for days

The fog is suddenly lifted

The haze is gone from your mind

And it's no so much that your memory finally heeded

But you gave up needing to need it

Hey, the fog has gone

Hey, the fog has gone

It's time for you to come out

There's no longer a reason to die

When something is over, something else begins

The end of the century is coming

Like a blind woman relentlessly spinning

But before it's sewn shut

You wanted to scream: Hold on just a minute, was this just a dream?

Or is there something to learn

Besides who got the gold

And who's been losing and winning?

But a century's a man-made process

An attempt to stick order on chaos

We're born with ten fingers

So we count up to ten

But if everyone counted the cracks on the wall

We might all count to three and then it wouldn't be

The end of the century at all

Hey hey, the fog has gone

Hey hey, the fog has gone

It showed signs early today

I knew when I woke in my bed

That something was going on

Throw up the window

I want to scream out your name

Hey hey, the fog has gone

Hey hey, the fog has gone

C'mon we'll drive up the coast

Its a Tuesday or Thursday

But I can't remember, and I don't care

We'll drive to Seattle or else Oklahoma

Or else if we wanna boat to Hawaii

Or maybe Japan with the kings of karaoke

Come out!

Come on out girl, you gotta come out now

Maybe the only thing jumping in the car and driving can get us

Is an empty tank of gas

But it sure beats sitting around here

Maybe we'll get lucky, find our own private river valley

Or at least an all-night diner where they know how to poach an egg

Maybe we'll meet some good people along the way

And anyway, you know I'll never leave you

I'll never leave you