Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 37: Morocco 45s

This mixtapewaslost:
a mix of a short stack of 45s I picked up in Fez.

Department of Five Word Poems: xvii.

93.

Aluminum oranges came from nowhere.
-F. Keith Wahle

xvii.

My wives conspiring against me.

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From the Lewis Carroll Blog: "Alice's Theme": Music & Lyrics by Danny Elfman

Over at the blog Mrs Eley-Nelson & I keep up for the Lewis Carroll Society of North America (all of which is about to move to be integrated with the Society's new website, so watch for the White Rabbit), here's my delightful post today gently ribbing Mr Danny Elfman's lyrics:

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Danny Elfman's soundtrack to Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland will be released on CD (an ancient kind of optical disc used to store digital audio) next Tuesday, March 2nd, and there's some short clips at the Amazon store if you desire a teaser. I couldn't help noticing the opening song - with children's voices singing "Oh, Alice, dear where have you been?" - and I found the complete lyrics at a blog called cinemusic.net. I'll include them with that website's charming introduction:

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, starring Johnny Depp as Elijah Wood The Mad Hatter begins pissing off prickly Lewis Carroll purists on March 5, 2010 in theaters everywhere in eye-popping 3D. Lending musical support is Burton’s constant composer Danny Elfman, AKA film music’s most awesome red head.

Threaded throughout the score is an original song penned by Elfman, called “Alice’s Theme”, and it opens up the Disney Records score album due in stores on March 2 (obligatory Amazon link). Here’s a sneak peek at the song’s lyrics (thanks to the supremely talented LD for these)…

“Alice’s Theme”

Music and Lyrics by Danny Elfman

Oh, Alice, dear where have you been?

So near, so far or in between?

What have you heard what have you seen?

Alice, Alice, please, Alice!

Oh, tell us are you big or small

To try this one or try them all

It’s such a long, long way to fall

Alice, Alice, oh, Alice

How can you know this way not that?

You choose the door you choose the path

Perhaps you should be coming back

Another day, another day

And nothing is quite what is seems

You’re dreaming are you dreaming, oh, Alice?

(Oh, how will you find your way? Oh, how will you find your way?)

(There’s not time for tears today. There’s no time for tears today.)

So many doors – how did you choose

So much to gain so much to lose

So many things got in your way

No time today, no time today

Be careful not to lose your head

Just think of what the doormouse [sic] said…Alice!

Did someone pull you by the hand?

How many miles to Wonderland?

Please tell us so we’ll understand

Alice…Alice…Oh, Alice

(Oh how will you find you way? … Oh, how will you find you way?)

Sing along!

I've never met a prickly Lewis Carroll purist, let alone a pissed-off one, but I would presume they're easily decapitated with a vorpal sword. Or defenestrated with a defibrillator.

Anyway, if you are not familiar with Mr. Elfman, he is the film composer and long-time collaborator with Mr. Burton, the man wrote the iconic music for Batman, The Simpsons theme, and those wonderful songs for The Nightmare Before Christmas. He has done less-than-stellar work for some of Mr. Burton's more recent mediocrities. Elfman is often mocked in the classical world for basically having a team of composers do his work for him, although I sometimes feel this criticism is harsh. (After all, Renaissance painters employed whole crews of apprentices, Dale Chihuly has a studio to manifest his glass-art masterpieces, and George Gershwin didn't do the orchestrations for Rhapsody in Blue (free round of drinks if you can name the composer who did!) Art is not always the product of an agonized solo genius, sometimes she can be more of an architectural designer, et cetera, especially in the film music world. Thus ends this parenthetical rant.)

As dear to my adolescent heart as Elfman's music for The Nightmare Before Christmas is, there's many cringeworthy lyrics (e.g., "I wish my cohorts weren't so dumb / I'm not the dumb one / You're no fun / Shut up! / Make me!") I would pay a large sum of money to hire William Shatner to read the lyrics to "Alice's Theme" as a beat poem accompanied by bongos and upright bass (as he did for Sarah Palin's verbiage). In conclusion, Mr. Elfman should hire a real librettist.

Department of Five Word Poems: xvi.

89.

My elbow is on fire.
-F. Keith Wahle

xvi.

Our rainbows manufactured in Albuquerque.

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Three Years Ago: Music Review: Dr Ralph Stanley in Berkeley on his Eightieth Birthday

Continuing with our celebration of this blog's old age, the series Three Years Ago (started on the blog's three year anniversary, more than a year ago), which re-posts from the history exactly-to-the-minute three years later, will continue on thru this year, digging up from the pivotal year 2007. Now a classic music review:

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Last night, the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley hosted Dr Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys at St. John's Presbyterian Church. The opening act was Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, from round here, & they were great. Then, when the headliner & the eight men he plays with made their way to the stage, Laurie ran up & announced that it was 9pm here, so therefore midnight “Clinch Mountain Time”, Ralph Stanley's 80^th birthday. In lieu of Mayor Bates, the mayor's senior aide read a proclamation, hilariously & formally worded, that because of his eminent career in the arts, & because he has played in Berkeley so many times for the past five decades, February 25^th would therefore henceforth be Ralph Stanley Day in Berkeley. (I wish I could quote the proclamation here, but other bloggers have also had no luck finding it.) There was a cake, too.

The evening after that was fairly short, it seemed like he only sang three or four of the dozen songs. He let each member of the band do something from one of their solo projects, & introduced each one with an old-fashion Grand Ole Opry MC style, dumb jokes & all. His son & grandson tour with him. His grandson loves Jesus, & also bling, & sang a mediocre gospel tune in three-four about how Jesus is “more brighter” than the stars. Dr. Ralph sang “O Death” from O Brother Where Art Thou, for which he once won a Grammy. It sounded pretty much the same. The music was great, mostly, but there was a bizarre self-congratulatory tone to the whole evening, with Nathan Stanley reading out a long list of awards & honors his grandfather had won, & James Shelton spending fifteen minutes explaining in great detail everything you could buy in the back (including two of the instruments on stage). My favorite musician was Jack Cooke, the “bass fiddle” player, who's been with Stanley for thirty-seven years, & sings upper harmony. He sang a beautiful song with Laurie Lewis about how the cookie crumbles. I smiled at him as he walked up the aisle, & he put his hand on my shoulder as he passed.

You can hear them play "Angel Band", also from the O Brother soundtrack, on the Prairie Home Companion website, here.

...he thinks it "could go in a lot of omelettes"

Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 36

Department of Five Word Poems: xv.

83.

Sometimes, we all go naked.
-F. Keith Wahle

xv.

My wives agree on nothing.

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Apologies

I've been blogging less because my computer is so goddamn'd slow! It's a sad, slow world for me these days.

There's so much to write about these days also! Ice Dancing, teabagging, ski-jumping, aerial dog hunting, ice dancing...

Cosmo Wernicky, for instance, writes to me:

from: Cosmo Wernicky ____@gmail.com to :S. Sandrigon _____@itwaslost.org date :Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 9:27 PM subject: plane ol' sycamore mailed-by :gmail.com signed-by: gmail.com

Were we talking about this? because I just sent this email to Doug and he claims that his father was not involved:

I just came across some information that may ease your mind a bit. If you recall, we had in the recent past been discussing those knobby trees that abound in our environs. I identified them as London Planetrees, while your father claimed they are sycamores. WELL, as it turns out, London Planetrees are a cross between a sycamore and an Oriental Planetree. Hot.
If you care

Department of Five Word Poems: xiv.

82.

We all go naked sometimes.
-F. Keith Wahle

xiv.

Big sillies destroyed my reputation.

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Department of Five Word Poems: xiii.

81.

No one goes home empty-handed.
-F. Keith Wahle

xiii.

The Mastadonians destroyed my reputation.

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Fragment: Sacred Plaçage

This was going to be one of my six-stanza "Sacred" poems, but as the fragment hasn't yet grown into that (& may never), I'll post it now as an incomplete.

Sacred Plaçage

Because the smarmy law--, around the omnipresence,

Around & thru the thick shrubbery--,

I'll take your arm with careful hesitance,

And commit you to the blubbery nunnery.

Because the smarmy law, because my life

In the future, because of my withering face,

I abjure you, my Creole wife,

On the threshold of deep space.

Department of Five Word Poems: xii.

120.

Her breasts are like shadows.
-F. Keith Wahle

xii.

A maximum of Debussy cows.

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The King of All Curling Jokes

Awhile ago, this blog ran a segment on Curling Jokes - & it may not surprise you when you learn that one of the top googled phrases leading seekers to this blog in the past year has been "curling jokes." Now it's Winter Olympics time, & there doesn't appear to be anyway to watch it online for free. But I was impressed at last week's The Simpsons for its plethora of curling jokes & also that amazing segment with a dancing cut-out of Homer's upside-down face:

"In modern Athens, the vehicles of mass transportation are called metaphorai. To go to work or come home, one takes a 'metaphor'- a bus or a train. Stories could also take this noble name: every day, they traverse and organize places; they select and link them together; they make sentences and itineraries out of them. They are spatial trajectories" (Michel de Certeau, trans. Steven Randall, 1984).

Valentine's Day is for...getting you pregnant!

Happy Naughty Valentines Twenty-Ten

I just celebrated VJ-day by deep-frying squiddies & octopuses & brussel sprouts & mushrooms in beer-batter & drinking lemosas on the roof. Here's two of my favorite Naughty Valentines from last year:

Front:

Inside:

Rear:

Front:

Inside:

Rear:

Department of Five Word Poems: xi.

113.

Marching bands murdered my parents.
-F. Keith Wahle

xi.

The President's wife getting filthier.

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Department of Five Word Poems: x.

179.

Hurt people when you can.
-F. Keith Wahle

x.

Big sillies are getting filthier.

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The Superbowl on Chadwick's New Cardboard TV

I traveled from Berkeley to the Sunset District in San Francisco & rushed thru Golden Gate Park to make it to our friend Chadwick's party on time for Superbowl kick-off. Altho he had promised a real television in his invitation, it had not arrived yet, so we spent the first hour making one out of cardboard - with football player puppets, half-time show entertainers, cheerleaders, a Goodyear blimp, & an update-able score-board. It was a work of art.

And while we're on the subject of manly tackling, this was my favorite Republican response to the proposed repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" - the Republican Representative from San Diego Country, Duncan Hunter on NPR:

HUNTER: No, because I think it's bad for the cohesiveness and the unity in the military especially those that are in close combat, close quarters in country right now, it's not the time to do it. I think the military is not civilian and I think the folks that have been in the military in very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there and I think that bond is broken. If you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites to gays and lesbians.

HOST: Transgenders and hermaphrodites?

HUNTER: Yea, that's going to be part of this thing. It's not just gays an lesbians, it's this whole thing.

I'm glad his homophobia is non-discriminatory.

Also, if you're incorporating this Google Buzz into your gmail account, add me to your feed - - - Even if we're not gmail contacts, you can add it from the google profile here: http://www.google.com/profiles/ssandrigon

Department of Five Word Poems: ix.

178.

Potatoes will rule the world.
-F. Keith Wahle

ix.

The Mastadonians are getting filthier.

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Song: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" - Friends Around the Campfire sing Kurt Weill

With Miss Minnie Molly Mary and the two Germans in my house, we recorded "Mack the Knife" last night (with the original Bertolt Brecht text).

More from the Friends Around the Campfire Stuck Home Syndrome.

Download this mp3 free here:

Department of Five Word Poems: viii.

177.

The penis in the vagina.
-F. Keith Wahle

viii.

Father drank himself to death.

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The My Way Karaoke Curse

The New York Times was very sanguine today about the aura of death surrounding the singing of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" in Karaoke bars in the Philippines:

“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” [Rodolfo Gregorio] said. “You can get killed.”

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?

After raising the specter of a possible "My Way" curse, they then spend paragraphs searching for more rational explanations for the deaths related to that song - - - - quoting "My Way" experts (“ ‘I did it my way’ — it’s so arrogant,” Mr. Albarracin said. “The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody. It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.”) - - - delving thru historical and cultural background, everything short of charts & graphs to feed our rational brains' craving for natural causes. But, if I may play Mulder to the New York Times' Scully, sometimes the supernatural explanation is the best explanation - & it is the stated belief of this weblog that there is something uncannily evil about My Way Karaoke.

on things Irish

Thanks to my editor for the lovely video below a couple, of the 'Parting Glass'...and for the mention of O'Donoghue's Opera, a gem about which I will blog more soon, since I seem to have been commissioned. In the meantime, I have been working on embroidered portraits, and the one pictured here (in reality about a foot and a half wide and 2 feet high) is of one of my greatest friends- Brian Christopher O'Leary Finbar Sullivan, who is in fact the man who introduced myself to O'Donoghue's Opera.

Department of Five Word Poems: vii.

187.

Clothes made out of cake.
-F. Keith Wahle

vii.

The winter of our discothèque.

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Robin Williamson sings Parting Glass

Miss Proinseas introduced us to a rediscovered 1960's short unfinished Irish film called O'Donoghue's Opera, starring Ronnie Drew & other well-bearded members of the Dubliners, which tells its tale accented by a heavy dosage of Irish songs. Because the movie is a bit difficult to understand for twenty-tweenage American ears, it was helpful to have Grainne interpret it when we watched. I would love it if she would do a minute-by-minute commentary for the blog when we post the videos. Or perhaps several us of can collaborate on an exegesis or exhumation of sorts. Anyway, that's all to come. In the meantime, the song "Parting Glass" is of course in the 'Opera' - one of Grainne's favorites - & I just found this beautiful video of the great Scottish bard Robin Williamson singing it.

Demon Arnophilia: Carly for California's Kinky Sheep Spot

Failed HP CEO, now turned cancer-survivin' California Republican senatorial candidate, Carly Fiorina has released the best paschal-themed political commercial of the 2010 primaries. (The sexy demon sheep appears in the last sixty seconds.) As a side note, I'll mention that I saw Mr Campbell speak a year ago, and I believe he is a deeply intelligent, sane politician (and a social liberal, as all successful Californian Republicans need to be, thank heavens.) He is almost certainly not a demon sheep, but let's let history be the judge.



PS. I recommend this mp3 podcast with second-by-second breakdown interpretation of the ad.

Sacred Massacre - Illuminated Poetry Book on Scribd

And here's another short illuminated nonsense poetry book: the poem "Sacred Massacre" (originally posted here) with panoramic photos taken by Miss Minnie Molly Mary. More books on scribd. I'm excited to see how these scribd books will look on tablet reading-devices like the iPad, &c. I was worried my landscape-shaped poetry books wouldn't look good on the Kindle, but damn! I'm betting they're going to rock the iPad.

Sacred Massacre - S. Sandrigon

Introducing: Department of Princess Drawings

Last night, while playing at mahjong & drinking Turkish Raki, some of the contributers to this website spearheaded an initiative to create a new Department of Princess Drawings. So, without further ado, introducing: the new Department of Princess Drawings. The first issuing is by Minnie Molly Mary.

Department of Five Word Poems: vi.

186.

Shoes made out of money.
-F. Keith Wahle

vi.

Timmy Tommy doesn't like that.

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Department of Five Word Poems: v.

142.

Big sillies attacked the villages.
-F. Keith Wahle

v.

Big sillies ate deadly snackies.

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