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So I sat down at the beginning of the week to make my brother a mix CD set for his birthday; I thought beloved songs from our youths would be just the ticket, but after I got started, I hit a snag. It occurred to me, see, that the songs we were craziest about when we were kids or teenagers are not always the songs we remember most fondly. I mean, there are songs I adored at fourteen that I'm kind of embarrassed by now, and songs I didn't have any particular feelings for then that I hear on the radio that practically make me cry with happiness. Good associations, bad associations, changes in taste all change things, and I have some idea of what would work for my brother, but not enough of one to create a playlist to fill three CDs. So I had to scrabble around for another idea.
And eventually I did come up with another idea, and it can be summed up in three words which will probably cause stars to form in the eyes of my American friends of a certain age, and bewilderment in the eyes of everyone else*:
School
House
Rock.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and I'm writing this straight out of my ass. But I feel I'm on reasonably solid ground here. I have bonded with people in Insta-Friendship because we could both sing the entirety of "Interplanet Janet" ten years after the last airing of School House Rock. I still remember every word to the Preamble to the Constitution only because it's been set to music, and I bet saying this is even now causing the tune to make its way insidiously through the heads of some of my friends. It's responsible for my never ever forgetting the year the 19th Amendment was ratified, and the reason why I knew who Lucretia Mott was at the tender age of eight. Or how I remember what it was exactly that Elias Howe invented ("Elias, how?"). Also the fact that I can count to thirty in threes, forwards and backwards, with unshakeable confidence, but after that I have to stop and think about it.
Anyway, I started downloading days ago, but my connection has been generally shitty since then and so this morning, when it became clear that the download was likely not going to be complete by dinnertime tomorrow which is when it has to be done, I checked online and made my way to Best Buy to get the complete DVD, and while I was at it and because it was on sale I got two, and that explains why I am sitting here right now writing this and watching a cartoon explaining electricity in layman's terms with, literally, tears in my eyes.
:::
Also, while I was at the drugstore buying my brother's birthday card, I saw a bottle of bubbles, and thought to myself, oh! Leory does love to bounce around chasing bees in the yard; I bet he'd love this! So I bought them, and proudly brought them home, and tried them out on him. And just in case you were planning to ply Leory with bubbles to curry his favor, let me just say that as of this writing he does not love them even a little bit. I blew out a wandful of them and he stared suspiciously. By the third wand blowout he had decided that clearly the bubbles were evil entities out to kill us all, and ran whimpering into the living room and tried to bury himself in my armchair, which for better or for worse does not allow for concealment-style burrowing.
So now I'm sort of stuck with a bottle of bubbles. But luckily for me, I kind of like them.
* For those of you who don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about, School House Rock was a series of pop-type songs about science, math, grammar, and American History, set to cartoons and played during commercial breaks on Saturday morning children's television programming throughout the seventies and early eighties, conveniently covering the whole of my childhood. In the mid-nineties, a group of quasi-alternative American bands ended up covering some of the most popular songs, and I'd upload a sampling, but as I said: the pissy connection. Maybe someday.
And eventually I did come up with another idea, and it can be summed up in three words which will probably cause stars to form in the eyes of my American friends of a certain age, and bewilderment in the eyes of everyone else*:
School
House
Rock.
Or maybe I'm wrong, and I'm writing this straight out of my ass. But I feel I'm on reasonably solid ground here. I have bonded with people in Insta-Friendship because we could both sing the entirety of "Interplanet Janet" ten years after the last airing of School House Rock. I still remember every word to the Preamble to the Constitution only because it's been set to music, and I bet saying this is even now causing the tune to make its way insidiously through the heads of some of my friends. It's responsible for my never ever forgetting the year the 19th Amendment was ratified, and the reason why I knew who Lucretia Mott was at the tender age of eight. Or how I remember what it was exactly that Elias Howe invented ("Elias, how?"). Also the fact that I can count to thirty in threes, forwards and backwards, with unshakeable confidence, but after that I have to stop and think about it.
Anyway, I started downloading days ago, but my connection has been generally shitty since then and so this morning, when it became clear that the download was likely not going to be complete by dinnertime tomorrow which is when it has to be done, I checked online and made my way to Best Buy to get the complete DVD, and while I was at it and because it was on sale I got two, and that explains why I am sitting here right now writing this and watching a cartoon explaining electricity in layman's terms with, literally, tears in my eyes.
:::
Also, while I was at the drugstore buying my brother's birthday card, I saw a bottle of bubbles, and thought to myself, oh! Leory does love to bounce around chasing bees in the yard; I bet he'd love this! So I bought them, and proudly brought them home, and tried them out on him. And just in case you were planning to ply Leory with bubbles to curry his favor, let me just say that as of this writing he does not love them even a little bit. I blew out a wandful of them and he stared suspiciously. By the third wand blowout he had decided that clearly the bubbles were evil entities out to kill us all, and ran whimpering into the living room and tried to bury himself in my armchair, which for better or for worse does not allow for concealment-style burrowing.
So now I'm sort of stuck with a bottle of bubbles. But luckily for me, I kind of like them.
* For those of you who don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about, School House Rock was a series of pop-type songs about science, math, grammar, and American History, set to cartoons and played during commercial breaks on Saturday morning children's television programming throughout the seventies and early eighties, conveniently covering the whole of my childhood. In the mid-nineties, a group of quasi-alternative American bands ended up covering some of the most popular songs, and I'd upload a sampling, but as I said: the pissy connection. Maybe someday.
