'American Pie' gone global

Plus: the un-American way as Zooey Zephyr is punished for speaking

One evening more than 40 years ago, I was lying in bed reading when my brother came in, sat on the edge of the bed and just started talking to me.

“A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile,” he said. “And I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance, and maybe they'd be happy for a while.

“But February made me shiver with every paper I'd deliver. Bad news on the doorstep — I couldn't take one more step. I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride, but something touched me deep inside the day the music died.”

And I didn’t know what the heck was going on. He wasn’t singing, by the way. He was talking to me as if he were telling me the baseball scores.

Fortunately, I got to hear Don McLean’s classic “American Pie” soon after, so I could understand. Like so many others, I fell in love with this magical, mystical song, but I can’t imagine anyone else having a gateway to it like I had.

However, if somehow you hadn’t heard “American Pie” before last night, you would have had an introduction to remember. In maybe the best international relations moment of all time, South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol took the microphone from Joe Biden and performed a lovely rendition of the same words that my brother did.

It wasn’t entirely out of the blue ….

The pianist seemed unfazed. Three Broadway stars — Lea Salonga, Jessica Vosk and Norm Lewis — had performed the same song minutes earlier. And when Yoon finished his rendition, Biden presented him a guitar signed by the song’s author, Don McLean.

… but still, pretty cool.