Category: Music

happy songs

It’s happy music fun time!¹ While most of my favorite music tends to run to the angsty, I do enjoy me a catchy beat and a perky melody now and then. Inspired by Mary Lynn‘s list of songs that make her happy, I’ve put together a happy list of my own. Here are some songs that make make me sing along, tap along, or just plain dance around like an idiot.

  • Safety Dance, Men Without Hats [YouTube]
    We can dance if we want to. We can leave your friends behind.
  • Multi-Family Garage Sale [Bargain Bin Mix], Land of the Loops [YouTube]
    I do so hope no one ever gets video footage of me dancing around the house to this song.
  • And She Was, The Talking Heads [YouTube]
    The world was moving, she was floatin’ above it
  • Goody Two Shoes, Adam Ant [YouTube]
    Don’t drink, don’t smoke. What do you do?
  • Lust for Life, Iggy Pop [YouTube]
    I can’t even make out most of the words in this song. But it’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.
  • Tainted Love, by Soft Cell [YouTube]
    Don’t touch me please, I cannot stand the way you sneeze²
  • Should I stay or Should I Go, The Clash [YouTube]
    Darlin’, you gotta let me know
  • How can I live without you, Cracker [YouTube]
    How can I live without you, if it means I gotta get a job?
  • The Tide is High, by Blondie [YouTube]
    I’m not the kind of girl who gives up just like that.
  • Island in the Sun, Weezer [YouTube]
    ...I can’t control my brain.
  • I Wanna Be Sedated, The Ramones [YouTube]
    I can’t control my fingers, I can’t control my toes
  • Blister in the Sun [YouTube]
    When I’m a-walking’, I strut my stuff. (And this one has even led to spontaneous family dance parties in the bathroom.)
  • Sweet Potato, Cracker [YouTube]
    Be my sweet potato, I’ll be your honey lamb.
  • I’ll Tell Me Ma, Sinead O’Connor [YouTube]
    She is handsome, she is pretty. She is the belle of Belfast City.
  • Three Little Birds, by Bob Marley [YouTube]
    Every little thing’s gonna be all right.

There we go. A bunch of songs that make me happy.³ (Yes, I realize that there isn’t a song on here that’s under 10-years-old. And that the 80s are over-represented. What’s your point?)

—

¹ With the good news that my mother’s surgery went very well, I’m ready to do a happy dance.

² Not the actual lyrics, but the ones I sing.

³ This list goes to 15. Tomorrow I’m going to make one that goes to 11. How about you?

…and now I’m even older.

For your enjoyment: They Might be Giants singing “Older.” And puppets. (via bittertwee.)

Warning: This song will get stuck in your head.¹

I realized that this would have been something good to post on my birthday, but seeing as I am now even older than I was then, it works just as well. (Though if I waited till tomorrow, I’d be even older.)

¹ Also, you will be older by the end of the song than you were at the beginning of the song.

fiddleheads

Having taken up violin lessons again this spring, it seems only fitting that I should give fiddlehead ferns a try. Here are some photos from dinner this weekend (and from Phoebe’s and my fiddles).


Raw fiddleheads.


Boiled fiddleheads. (Apparently one needs to boil them for 15 minutes, or steam them for 10 minutes, prior to eating. I’m not sure whether this is for health and safety, or for palatability. I just went along with it.)


Sauteed fiddleheads, post-boiling. (Verdict: they were pretty good. I’m not sure I was bonkers for them, but they were indeed tasty.)


These fiddleheads were not eaten for dinner.


I hadn’t really spent much time admiring the shape of my violin before.


The shape of the scroll is quite expressive. And indeed very much like the expressiveness of emerging fern fronds. (See Sue’s very expressive fronds, which she neither ate nor played, to the best of my knowledge.)

case reopened

A few months ago, I felt a strange and sudden urge to pull out my violin and show it to Phoebe and Theo.The case had been closed for many weeks. And when I say “many,” I mean a number greater than 52. I vaguely recall having had the violin case open at some point in early 2009. Or maybe I’m remembering a lunchbox. Something was open then.

But that evening a few months ago, I indeed opened up my violin case. I pulled out the violin, and the strings were totally loose. It may shock you to know that I barely know how to tune my violin. My teacher always did it, at the beginning of each lesson. I managed to tune it once, when it got so badly out of tune that I couldn’t practice, and I did a decent job. But this time the strings were so loose they might as well have been just lying on top of the violin. I decided to give it a whirl, anyhow. John pulled out his iPhone with a tuner app, and I started to turn the pegs and the little fine-tuny-screwy-things (that is the technical term), and I was feeling quite pleased with myself…until the E string snapped.

So much for that demo.

But I got to thinking, and the next day or so, I called my violin teacher. For the first time since Theo was born. I asked her about strings, and while I was at it, about starting lessons. For me, and for Phoebe, too. My teacher said she’d work on finding space in her schedule. Eventually, she found a time when she could put our two half hour lessons back-to-back.

Tonight, Phoebe and I started violin lessons together.

I can’t say it was all a joyful, magical experience. Phoebe was tired. She’d had a full day at daycare with no nap, then we’d rushed off to a 45-minute karate class, before rushing home for a rushed dinner, and rushing back out the door. Plus I think she found the process of starting the violin to be pretty anticlimactic. We got her set up with a violin of the right size (quarter-sized). Then it was about learning to hold the violin with her chin, and how to properly hold the bow. That was about it. By the time we got to my part of the lesson, which ended up being only the last 15 minutes of our hour, she was pretty much done for. She collapsed on the floor next to me, periodically rallying herself enough to tug on my arm while I attempted to play. In spite of this, I enjoyed myself. I remembered more than I was expecting. (Not that we tried any of the more advanced things I’d worked on when last I’d had lessons, over 2 years ago. We worked on stuff that was probably from my first or second year of lessons.)

Next week, we go back.

I feel like this post needs some sort of snappy ending, but I’m too tired to think of an ending, and I need to make Phoebe’s lunch and get to bed. So I’ll post a completely unrelated photo to distract you.


Hey, look. Tires. ‘Cause I’m tired. Ha, ha, ha.

falling down


It’s autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere. Fall. Here in New England, the leaves are changing colors. And falling.

But leaves aren’t the only things falling.¹ Gravity appears to have been at work in many areas, as evidenced by the fallen items below.

  • Humpty Dumpty: He had a great fall. (Actually, it didn’t turn out so great for him, what with the breaking up. Maybe his summer was better.)
  • Jack (of Jack and Jill): Fell down. Broke his crown.
  • The sky: It’s falling. (At least according to Chicken Little.)
  • The cradle: It will fall. Out of a tree. With a baby in it. (I’m not sure why a song about a baby falling out of a tree is supposed to help bring on sleep…)

  • London Bridge: It’s falling down. (Falling down, falling down.)
  • Falling Down (1993): A Michael Douglas movie
  • “Falling:” a song by Julee Cruise that was well known as the theme song for the TV series Twin Peaks.
  • The Fall: a “post-punk” band
  • take the fall: to take the blame for something
  • fall guy: someone who takes the fall, a scapegoat
  • The Fall Guy: An 80s TV series about a stunt man starring Lee Majors (better known for his 70s role as the “bionic man.”)
  • to fall short: to not meet expectations
  • fall asleep: to enter a sleeping state
  • fallout: consequences, especially those that aren’t immediate
  • fall in: to get into line
  • fall in love:an expression meaning, um, to fall in love. Crap. How do I even paraphrase that? I guess “become enamored of, usually in a romantic way.”
  • fall for someone: an expression meaning “be won over by someone,” or sometimes “start to like someone”
  • fall for something: to be tricked
  • fall into the pudding: this isn’t actually an expression²
  • “Fall on Me” A song by R.E.M.
  • When I Pretend to Fall: an album by the Long Winters, and a line from the song “Stupid.” She laughs when I pretend to fall…
  • Ring around the rosie³:

    Ring around the rosie
    Pocket full of posie
    Ashes, Ashes
    We all fall down

And there it is. We all fall down.⁴

—–

¹ Clearly I’ve been falling down on the job with my ThThTh posts, seeing as the last one I posted was in December.

² There are loads more real idioms involving falling

³Apparently there are many different versions of this, some of which don’t even involve falling down. Theo has been reciting a version of this lately. Mostly what I hear is “Asses, asses, we fall down.” I don’t recall seeing that one on the Wiki page.

⁴ Often on our asses.

Cradle falling image from The Only True Mother Goose Melodies, by Munroe & Francis, 1833, found on the Gutenberg Project.

setting the machinery in motion

So, yeah. About that “deadline” we set for March 1st…didn’t quite make it.

Holly and I are still working out the kinks in the machinery of readying our 2009 Just Posts finalists for voting. The process is fairly laborious and complex. We’re sorting posts into categories, and fine-tuning our rankings based on reviewer scores and comments, plus our own scores and comments. We are then passing this data through a bayesian algorithm to map the data onto a multidimensional target, which we are modelling out of styrofoam, aluminum foil and chewing gum. Our elaborate system of gears, levers, pulleys and springs will then lob sporks and chopsticks at the target. We will analyze the configuration of utensils to determine the optimal set of posts. Unfortunately, we’ve run into a bit of a roadblock due to some disagreement over how best to use the trained gerbils.¹

So, it will be…a few more days.

While you wait, please study the following instructional video:


(It’s OKGO and their new video for This Too Shall Pass.)

¹ I’ll also be pretty busy with a few other things. My mother is arriving tonight for a week-long visit, for one thing.²

² I’m hoping that she can help carve some of the styrofoam and chew some of the gum. Or at least help us tally the sporks. (I’m afraid she won’t be much help as a gerbil handler.)

Let it mold.

Oh the veggies in there are frightful,
And takeout’s so delightful
And since the leftover soup’s too old
Let it mold, let it mold, let it mold.

Since the fridge door last was closing
The food’s been decomposing.
That old tuna salad’s growing bold
Let it mold, let it mold, let it mold.

When we finally face the blight
How I’ll try very hard not to gag
But if we hold our noses night
We can load up a hazmat bag.

The eggs have all gone rotten
And the tofu’s best forgotten
But as long takeout’s still sold
Let it mold, let it mold, let it mold.

This was a Monday Mission, which called for re-written holiday songs. For potentially less toxic songs, pay a visit to Painted Maypole.

don we now our gay apparel

Neil of Citizen of the Month has posted the 2009 Annual Blogger Christmahanukwanzaakah Online Holiday Concert. And I’ve participated again. Because apparently I like the sound of my own voice.

(This year, I opted to go with a more cheerful carol than last year’s song about dead babies.)

Go have a look. There are pictures, even.