Random Thoughts
- Thread starter GrahamLewis
- Start date
Just arrived home from a mini-vacation. It's amazing what you can fit in three days. It was just me, my sister and my mom. I come from a family of seven kids, and we've never really had any kind of sibling rivalry. But at one point, my sister asked my mom, "Which one is your favourite?"
"Whichever one I am with," my mom replied.
"Whichever one I am with," my mom replied.
Cooking breakfast and randomly thought of puny writer names akin to "Paige Turner":
Em Dash (Emily Emil Dash)
Just Reid (Justine Justin Reid)
Reed Moore
Pen Wright
(Aaaaand suddenly im envisioning them as Drag personas and am even more intrigued)
Em Dash (
Just Reid (
Reed Moore
Pen Wright
(Aaaaand suddenly im envisioning them as Drag personas and am even more intrigued)
While wandering into Target today, I noticed all the Father's Day ads and displays, and I realized it's been 29 years since I had to think about buying a Father's Day gift and card for my dad. Makes me suddenly miss him a lot.
I'm sorry. This will be my 10th without my dad and our 19th without my husband's father.
Aargh. Now you've put Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" in my brain.
"We've gained notoriety and caused much anxiety in the Audobon Society with our games
The call it impiety and lack of propriety and quite a variety of unpleasant names
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon"
Then there's In Old Mexico:
(Rover was killed by a Pontiac, and it was done with such grace and artistry that the witnesses awarded the driver both ears and the tail --- But I digress.)
Your knowledge of Tom Lehr songs is impressive. How do you feel about PDQ Bach?
(Rover was killed by a Pontiac, and it was done with such grace and artistry that the witnesses awarded the driver both ears and the tail --- But I digress.)
Your knowledge of Tom Lehr songs is impressive. How do you feel about PDQ Bach?
So ... if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me
and we'll poison a pigeon in the park?
And maybe we'll do
in a squirrel or two,
just to poison a pigeon in the park!
We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment --
except for the few we take home to experiment!
My pulse will be quickenin'
with each drop of strychnine
we feed to a pigeon
(it just takes a smidgeon!)
to poison a pigeon in the park!
:-D
I always loved his rhyming of "Manolete" with "hundred-and-eighte" (sic).
My favourite for rhyming, though, has got to be When You are Old and Gray. So ... many ... rhymes ... for the word "debility".
But my favourite untold story is how Fight Fiercely, Harvard! somehow became the marching song for the Harvard football team. (Plus, I love the faux-upper-class accent he does for that song).
And who can forget these hilariously so-bad-they're-good rhymes:
When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that suneral---
later those you love will do the same for you...
And you may have thought it tragic,
not to mention other adjec-
tives to think of all the weeping they will do.
(And yes, I have all of Tom's CDs ... and the box set ... and some rare unreleased songs, and interviews ... and the sheet music. Why do you ask?)
I have a very funny story about that particular song. And while I love it, I cannot hear it ever again after this certain event.
Back in 1998, when meeting women online was much safer than it is today, I was splitting a trailer with a friend's brother and his buddy. They were both recently ex-Navy. They were in town drinking, and I had picked up a young lady that I had chatted with a few times who lived across town. We were back at my place, and figuring my roomies wouldn't be back until closing time, the two of us were horizontal on the couch, helping each other undress, when suddenly both roommates, three sheets to the wind, burst through the door, arm in arm, singing that song.
Not knowing I had dessert (to put it one way), the two of them, after the second round, thought it would be best to have me join them and be the DD. Besides, what a great way to bond with their new roomy than a Saturday night drinking, eh? They felt so bad for ruining my evening that they each bought me a six-pack the next day.
Ah, yes. Because nothing screams "romantic" like singing about laying down poison for lovely, innocent, plague-spreading sky rats.
Seriously, I'm sorry that happened to you, Aaron.
But still ... 
Seriously, I'm sorry that happened to you, Aaron.
But still ...
I love him! When Peter Schickele died, I wished I had the opportunity to write his obituary. It would have started with "How impoverished the world would be if Peter Schickele had been born with a sense of shame."
And I always wished he could have been a guest on the PBS show "From the Top." Can you imagine what he could have done with an audience of music-savvy kids?
Did you know that he wrote an entirely different set of lyrics for the middle part that song for the revue "Tomfoolery"? It can be found in the book Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer (with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle. The pictures alone, few that they are, would be worth the price of the book.My favourite for rhyming, though, has got to be When You are Old and Gray. So ... many ... rhymes ... for the word "debility".
A friend of mine in college, when asked what his major was, said "musical chemistry"
"What's that?" he'd be asked.
"Well,... there's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium..." (He was also the inventor of the Badik Banana Tester, the story of which I intend to write someday.)
BTW, Lehrer has released all his songs back into the wild... that is, to public domain, so anybody can use them without paying royalty fees. It would have been insane for anybody else to claim to have written them, since his writing talent was unmatched by anybody else's.
My husband is originally from North Dakota and has been through Zap more than once. He went to a PDQ Bach event in a ND high school gymnasium back in the later 60s or early 70s. Peter Schickele made his entrance by swinging in on a rope and crashing onto the stage. When I took voice lessons at the local college, I got permission to sing "Now is the Season" from The Stoned Guest as part of my obligatory convocation. Did it with a completely straight face. Audience reactions began with "stunned" and varied from "outraged" to "hysterical laughter with side dish of envy."
America was named for Amerigo Vespucci. Why did they use his first name, and not his last name?
Why are we not part of North Vespucci?
Why are we not part of North Vespucci?
Right now I’m so broke that I can’t even pay attention. 
I've never seen PDQ Bach in concert. There's a lot of stuff that never made it to the records, like the one where they're performing a piece scored with a jug of wine. Each note is lower than the previous one, which means that the performer had to drink some of it. As the notes get lower and lower, the performer gets higher and higher, so to speak. A the end of the piece, the performer falls off his chair. I suppose that the instrumentalist was Peter Schickele himself.
I know a person who used to greet the onset of every spring with Anna Russell's "Spring Song."
If you don't know who Anna Russell is and you love classical music, especially vocal music, you've got a treat in store for you as you discover. Her most famous piece is her "Ring Cycle" where she boils down Richard Wagner's four operas into twenty-five minutes. You can catch it on YouTube.
I think of Tom Lehrer and Anna Russell as counterparts. Lehrer could play the piano marvelously and sing as well as he needed to, whereas Russell could sing marvelously and play the piano as well as she needed to.
"I'm not making this up, you know."
We have the original album, a gift from an older friend who was cutting down on her possessions.
Too bad you aren't nearby. We could have a heck of a musical evening.
We have the original album, a gift from an older friend who was cutting down on her possessions.
Too bad you aren't nearby. We could have a heck of a musical evening.
Because, centuries later, Italy could claim copyright, rename the continent North Vespa, and flood it with many, many motorbikes ... which would undoubtedly anger many, many people who would complain about Italians moving there and take their jobs.
Yes, these people exist anyway, but we don't need more of them.
Yes, I own a copy of Too Many Songs ... and also have a copy of many of the songs from Lehrer's website.
Sigh. Is it a bad thing that I can recite The Elements from memory (though not quite at Dr. Lehrer's speed)?
"I'm not making this up, you know."
We have the original album, a gift from an older friend who was cutting down on her possessions.
Too bad you aren't nearby. We could have a heck of a musical evening.
Ah, Anna Russell. I still remember collapsing with laughter after listening to her creating a Wagner opera and a Gilbert-and-Sullivan musical.
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