Mr Bad Example Lyrics

(Warren Zevon/Jorge Calderon)

I started as an altar boy working at the church
Learning all my holy moves doing some research
Which led me to a cash box labelled "Children's Fund"
I'd leave the change and tuck the bills inside my cumberbund

I got a part-time job at my father's carpet store
Laying tackless stripping and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture and took it to Spokane
Auctioned off every last naugahyde divan

I'm very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I'm proud to be a glutton and I don't have time for sloth
I'm greedy and I'm angry and I don't care who I cross

CHORUS
I'm Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I llike to have a good time and I don't care who gets hurt
I'm Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I'll live to be a hundred and go down in history

Of course I went to law school and got a law degree
And counselled all my clients to plead insanity
Then worked in hair replacement swindling the bald
Where very few are chosen, fewer still are called

Then on to Monte Carlo play chemin de fer
I threw away the fortune I made transplanting hair
I put my last few francs down on a prostitute
Who took me up to her room to perform the flag salute

Whereupon I stole her passport and her wig
And headed for the airport and the midnight flight, you dig?
Fourteen hours later I was down in Adelaide
Looking through the want ads sipping Foster's in the shade

I opened up an agency somewhere down the line
To hire aboriginals to work the opal mines
But I attached their wages and took a whopping cut
And whisked away their workman's comp and pauperized the lot

CHORUS

I bought a first class ticket on Malaysian Air
Landed in Sri Lanka none the worse for wear
I'm thinking of retiring from all my dirty deals
See you in the next life, wake me up for meals
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