December 2013 - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

The Lydster, Part 117: The Tattooed Lady

The Daughter now LOVES the Muppet version of Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

I was having an e-mail chat with Jaquandor; either he was correcting one of my typos or I was fixing one of his. That’s what we bloggers do.

He asked: “Hey, have you ever played the song ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ for your daughter? The Muppets did a great version. But then, the Muppets are always great.” I had, but she seemed unaffected by it. It WAS possibly a couple of years ago.

Jaquandor: “And for future reference, here’s Kermit and Lydia! So I played it for The Daughter and The Wife, and also the Marx Brothers original from the movie At The Circus.

Those of you who have been around a while may remember the rules I had for naming The Daughter. So I was initially annoyed that the very first comment from one friend after announcing her name was a reference to this song. I have long gotten past that.

The Daughter now LOVES the Muppet version! She’s probably seen it thrice a week for the last couple months. While my wife and I like it too, we prefer the original, with those extra verses. (I especially like the table dancing.)

Here’s a Rudy Vallee recording from 1939.

I believe in Christmas

As John Lennon wrote, “the Word is love.”

The day after Thanksgiving, I found myself at the flagship Macy’s store in Manhattan with The Wife, The Daughter, my eldest niece, her husband, and a couple of their friends. I also saw a guy I knew from Albany walk by.

The Macy’s windows are great because they’re so imaginative. On one set of windows was the retelling of Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, that famous New York Sun editorial from 1897, complete with a backstory about the girl and her family. It’s certainly why I know there’s a Saint Nick, who’s black and white and Hispanic and Asian and all sorts of colors.

I believe in the love of Jesus, too, who almost certainly wasn’t born in December, but rather under the sign of Aries or Pisces, not that it much matters. Got into a debate recently about how Christianity has led to lots of wars, and such – I’ve had that conversation a LOT, as you might imagine – but, for me, that comes from people misconstruing the Word. And, as John Lennon wrote, “the Word is love.”

You can call it magic, or hoodoo, or myth, and I’m all right with that. Faith is kind of like that. Like the love that the Pope showed to immigrants recently.

Merry Christmas.

In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that…
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
~ Albert Camus

Last-minute gift ideas

so this lady walks up at a traffic light, and. . .

Levitacious

levitacious (adj)– being filled with joy, levity

I think this is how it happened, though neither of us can remember for sure.

I walked by a colleague’s desk, in a reasonably good mood. Maybe I made a light joke.

C: My, you seem levitacious today.

R: Wow, that’s a great word you’ve coined!

More banter commending the word.

C (in e-mail): Which spelling doth thou prefereth? Levitacious or levitatious?

R (in e-mail): Think I like the C, avoiding 2 Ts. How about you?

C (in e-mail): I agree!

R (in e-mail): levitacious (adj)– being filled with joy, levity

C (in e-mail): Excellent!

So, are you feeling levitacious today? Tell me some of the word coinage you’ve done.

X is for Xylophone

I loved my xylophone, and think it’d be a nifty Christmas gift for SOMEONE ELSE’S little child.

Wikipedia says: “The xylophone (from the Greek words ξύλον—xylon, ‘wood’ + φωνή—phonē, ‘sound, voice’, meaning ‘wooden sound’) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets.”

When I was a kid, I had a xylophone, very much like this one pictured, with an octave and a half. It was good for Mary Had a Little Lamb, or for Chopsticks, if you had two mallets.

But I was always disappointed that certain seemingly simple songs often had ONE note (or more) that wasn’t in the standard scale. I figured “Do-Re-Mi” from “The Sound of Music” [LISTEN] certainly would be able to be played on a keyboard [PLAY!], using only the white keys of a piano, which is all most kids’ xylophones had. After all, the very basis of the song is that DO-RE-MI, etc, were the building blocks of singing. Alas, at LA (A in the key of C), it goes A down to D-E-F#-G-A-B. Then at TI, it goes B down to E-F#-G#-A-B-C.

Likewise, Dominique by The Singing Nun [LISTEN], a big hit in my childhood, just before the return of the chorus, went (in C) E-D-E-F#-G. In other words, again, one needed an equivalent of a black note on a keyboard, missing on this simple instrument.

Still, I loved my xylophone. I think this would be a nifty Christmas gift for SOMEONE ELSE’S little child.

ABC Wednesday – Round 13

Advent/Christmas stories and songs

A Charlie Brown Christmas almost never aired

MUSIC:

Jaquandor has been offering Your Daily Dose of Christmas.

About.com’s Top 100 Christmas songs

The Bells of Christmas by Julie Andrews from a Firestone tire LP I still own.

Nat King Cole -The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)

Snow from White Christmas (Bing Crosby, et al).

The Dream Isaiah Saw, plus the backstory of the song, the lyrics and another rendition.

Tamale Christmas by Joe King Carrasco

SamuraiFrog’s contributions include Good King Wenceslas and the original Santa, Baby, as well as my favorite, A Christmas Carol by Tom Lehrer. But you should READ what he has to say about It Feels Like Christmas.

Eddie, the Renaissance Geek’s usual offering.

A Moose in a Maple Tree – The All Canadian 12 Days of Christmas

Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer in Latin, set to plainsong.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen if it were played in a spaghetti western

The Beatles’ Christmas Record 1963

Vince Guaraldi Trio – A Charlie Brown Christmas (Full Album)

A very Coverville Christmas 2013; I especially enjoyed the Led Zeppelin.

dj BC writes, “I just dropped Santastic 8, the 8th annual Holiday mashup album in the series … This year we offer 14 new Christmas mashups and one old one which was reissued because it is great and it matches the album cover so well.

A goldmine of mostly very obscure, very bad seasonal music! Examples: a surfing Little Drummer Boy; a Jimi Hendrix version of Auld Lang Syne; and the truly awful Debbie’s Last Christmas.

VISUAL: