Compared to all the weirdoes who recently crouched in the woods dressed as clowns to torment their neighbors, a man roaming while whistling “Closing Time” sounds downright adorable. But according to Time, there’s at least one Oregon resident who is not much of a Semisonic fan. Apparently, a Forest Grove woman recently called police to report a man who was whistling the 1998 hit that was as popular with frat boys as it was just about any other person in a bar. She tried appealing to the man’s sense of reason, but the “jackass guy” did not heed her request, possibly because she didn’t quote the song’s ever apt lyrics “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”
Oregon police recorded the verbal altercation in their log, which is made available via The Oregonian. By the time officers responded to the woman’s call, the man had taken his whistling further down the road. When they caught up with him, the man said he was the one who was upset—he didn’t like being told to shut up. (Again, we have to wonder if he would’ve acquiesced if she’d only told him to “move to the exit.”) The man wasn’t arrested or otherwise cited, and he remained defiant or just devoted to the Minneapolis band in the face of the law: Forest Grove police captain Mike Herb told Time he “whistled his way back home.”
Dan Wilson, erstwhile Semisonic frontman, has responded to the actions of the man, for whom his song will remain a fascinating new thing.