Isn't it self explanatory?
I’m still under the weather today, and was willing to be grumpy about it, but this little dispatch from McSweeneys made me feel a little less cranky.
Fuzzy Wuzzy had been a bear.
But he was bald.
So, if this was the case,
He couldn’t have been very fuzzy, right?
That plus the fact that my cold and our new ability to stream Netflix movies on our TV magically coincided this week.
This being the last night of November and NaBloPoMo and all, I should be writing something extra special, but I just don’t have it in me tonight. It’s been a long, busy day, and I have the beginnings of the head cold that Hyla had over the Thanksgiving weekend. I’m more than ready for bed.
So, I’ll be back tomorrow. And, in the meantime, I’ll say goodbye to this month, and goodnight to you, with one more song. One of my absolute favorites.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ycaoV0WXfk]
While we’re on the topic of music…
Last night we went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which featured a few Burl Ives tunes, including “The Grey Goose.” I didn’t grow up with Burl Ives (nor Fantastic Mr. Fox, for that matter), but Michael did (Burl Ives, that is), and he’s introduced Hyla and me to his old favorites. “The Grey Goose” has become one of mine.
There are several things I love about this song. One is the way it plays with time. The narrator begins by telling us about something that his father did last Sunday:
Last Sunday morning, Lord, Lord, Lord
Oh, my daddy went a hunting, Lord, Lord, Lord
He went hunting for the grey goose, Lord, Lord, Lord
(Note: See the full lyrics for Burl Ives’ version at the bottom of this post.)
It’s quite possible, since this song was originally recorded by Lead Belly, born in Louisiana, that the reference to “daddy” could be that of a grown man about his father, but since I learned this as a children’s song, I think of the narrator at the beginning of the song as a little boy.
In either case, Daddy raised his shotgun, “pulled back the hammer, and the gun went too-boo-loo.” You just have to love that. Too-boo-loo.
Now here comes the first time-shift:
Well, it’s up to his shoulder, Lord, Lord, Lord
We’ve swung from past- to present tense, just for a moment, to watch his daddy move the gun up to his shoulder.
Here comes the next time-shift. He shot the bird, and it started to fall. We’re still in the present tense as the bird begins to fall, but then:
And down come the grey goose, Lord, Lord, Lord
He was six weeks a-falling, Lord, Lord, Lord
So, we have a story that started “Last Sunday morning,” but somehow we’ve managed to skip ahead six weeks while waiting for the goose to fall from the sky.
This is cool. It’s clearly a magical goose, and he messes with time.
Now, here comes the next part I love about this song. He’s telling us a story about something that happened to his daddy, and suddenly you, the listener, are part of the story.
And they had a feather-picking, Lord, Lord, Lord
Ho, your wife and my wife, Lord, Lord, Lord
“Your wife.” You’re a man, and your wife was there, picking the feathers off this magical goose. And maybe you were there, too, for all we know. And the narrator has a wife, too. So if we had any notion before that he was a boy, well, he’s either magically aged, or he was a grown man all the time. Since the song is free-wheeling in time, I prefer to believe the former.
Then we get another leap forward:
He was nine months a-cooking, Lord, Lord, Lord
We’re now quite a long time away from last Sunday morning.
The next part of song tells about the various ways they try to cut up the goose when they discover that “the fork couldn’t stick him” and “the knife couldn’t cut him”. They go through a lot of trouble, which is understandable, since they’ve been waiting around for many months to eat this bird.
After they take him to the saw mill, and then try to feed him to the hogs (who turn up their snouts at him), the goose flies away.
Ho, the last time I seen him, Lord, Lord, Lord
He was flying over the ocean, Lord, Lord, Lord
With a long string of goslings, Lord, Lord, Lord
They was all going queen-quack, Lord, Lord, Lord
This is lovely. He patiently waited for these hapless humans to pluck, cook, and carve him, and then, when he’s decided he’s had enough, he goes and fathers a “string of goslings” and takes them off over the ocean. A featherless father, leading his string of “queen-quack[ing]” progeny far away from this bunch of brutes.
Magic.
Listen to Burl Ives for yourself.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwOXNqyXp3E]
Apparently, my personal NaBloPoMo theme is: “Revealing my Embarrassing Musical Taste.” So, here goes…
I don’t remember how this topic came up tonight at dinner, but Laurel mentioned José Luis Rodríguez, a Venezuelan singer I hadn’t thought about in years.
In the early 80s, I was an exchange student in Venezuela for about a month. I lived with a Venezuelan family in the city of Barquisimeto, the capital city of the state of Lara.
While there, my Venezuelan “sister” (Graciela) and most of her girlfriends were swooning over Jose Luis. Her room had two giant posters of him; he had that sort of Latin George Hamilton look: deep tan, thick and wavy hair, and wide, vampire-like shirt collars.
In Venezuela in the 80s, families held big parties usually at least once a week. Everyone was invited, from the yougest kids to the great grandparents. Nearly everyone danced the “salsa,” and, though they played a lot of American music (Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” was played at every party I attended that month), you can bet Jose Luis was a musical staple.
I didn’t have a lot of room in my suitcase for souvenirs from my trip, but I did bring home two special things: a quatro (the national instrument of Venezuela) and a Jose Luis album.
When we looked up his music tonight, after not listening to him for at least a decade (probably more), I was happily surprised to find him on iTunes. We listened to just the first few seconds of one song and we laughed. How could we possibly have listened to that music?! As sappy and poppy as it is, we still remember every note, and most of the words, even though we’re still not sure what he’s singing about.
Here, for your listening pleasure is the title track of that album, Atrévete.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6wAU3sWS0o]
Okay, now I’ve humiliated myself in front of you. What are your musical guilty pleasures?
The other day, I was feeling down about something I did or didn’t do for Hyla and called myself “a bad mother”. Michael said, “Like this gentleman?”
I just couldn’t stay down about myself after that. Shaft and I have so much in common.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAa5rP64YbQ]
Update: My sister just pointed me to this New Yorker cartoon, from the recent New Yorker food issue (November 23, 2009):
Today, we’ll be spending Thanksgiving at our friend’s home, so even though I baked a pie and some pecan squares to take with us, our house doesn’t smell like Thanksgiving.
Instead, as an appetizer, I’ve been watching this wonderful video essay by Matt Zoller Seitz: a compilation of food and cooking scenes from movies.
In Big Night, Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott’s 1996 drama about two chef brothers cooking a one-of-a-kind dinner at their struggling Italian restaurant, there’s a moment where the siblings unveil their prize dish, timpano, a mix of meat, cheese, pasta, tomato sauce, and hardboiled eggs served inside a drum-shaped crust. The unveiling begins with an overhead shot of the brothers carefully lifting the chafing dish to reveal the timpano; at the sight of that buttery crust, the audience I saw it with collectively exhaled in pleasure and envy—a noise that was half sigh, half moan. We all wanted to be in that movie, in that restaurant, sitting at the brothers’ table as honored guests, knife and fork at the ready. Dear Lord, that food looked good.
To you and yours, we wish you a table laden with your favorite foods and surrounded by your favorite people, and all the time in the world to enjoy it all.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Last Sunday, I took my camera with me and stopped by the farm down the road to look at the piglets again.
While I was there, I took a few more pictures so you could see what we see every day as we drive into town.
I’ve been staring at this screen for many minutes now, trying to think of something interesting I want to tell you. But tonight I have nothing interesting in me to say.
I will tell you, though, that I had a nice day. I started by cleaning the piles of paper off my desk, sorting and filing them, and paying the bills.
And then I met a friend in the park and we watched our dogs romp in the spring-like sunshine of this odd November day.
And then we went into town, got a quick lunch, did a grocery run, and parted ways.
And then I picked up my smiling girl at school. And listened to her talk about her day.
And then we went home, and pet the dog and the cats, and played with plastic models of animals and knights and kings and queens.
And then I cooked dinner.
And then we welcomed Michael home from work.
And then we ate. And talked. Sat at the same old wooden table we’ve had for our entire marriage, and noted that it wobbles and needs to be tightened.
And then we cleared the table together.
And then we watched a movie and snuggled together during the scary parts.
And now I’m here with you, thinking over this day, where nothing in particular happened, nothing of note, nothing that needed to be written down.
This morning, Hyla woke up as a dugong, but by the time I picked her up from school, she was a kangaroo, complete with pouch.
Which got us to wondering, on the way to her violin lesson (picture that!): what sounds do kangaroos make? (Why we didn’t wonder about dugong sounds, I can’t explain.)
Luckily, in this day and age, you don’t have to wonder long about anything if you’re within striking distance of a computer on the Internet. When we got home from violin, I typed “kangaroo sounds” into the search engine and was promptly led to this page, where you can hear the darling little “clucks” that kangaroos make.
Internet, we love you.
Emboldened by this success, I typed in “giraffe sounds”. This time, all I found were a bunch of descriptions of giraffe sounds (everything from bleating and mewing to bellowing and coughing to snorting and hissing and “making strange flutelike sounds”) . Come on. Has no one yet bothered to record and post giraffe sounds to the Internet?
Internet, we may not love you as much as we thought we did.
Feeling wary but hopeful, I decided to give the Internet one more chance and searched for “dugong sounds”.
Internet, I think I love you again.