I'm going to do it. I'm just going to be lame and do it. It is a meme. Blame Ginny.
You know, lately my life hasn't been too eventful. Or perhaps I'm out of practicing observation skills. I don't talk to crazy mumbling people on the bus nearly as much, I don't drink or go out as often. I've been a black hole for books lately, just swallowing them whole. Hell, I don't even watch TV anymore. After LOST ended I just felt...lost. What is the point of watching a show that isn't LOST? Answer: there isn't a point.
It snowed on Wednesday and I was bowling at Fireside, and I haven't been there since 1998 when it was a brokedown-bowling-alley-turned-shitty-music-venue with years of sweat and grime gunking the floor and the buckled lanes served as an unsavory den of drugs and flyers. I don't know how people still bowled there in the nineties. Man, I used to do stuff. Now I'm tired all the time. It's so clean there now, and the walls are all like, you know. Clean. The bathrooms were clean, the place isn't even a shadow of the shows of the past, it's a poor reboot of the 70's Fireside that nobody remembers.
Anyway, topic at hand, and jumping in late in the game because punctuality is a problem for me and I've been using all of my artistic inspiration for writing things that aren't this blog:
30 Videos in 30 Days: or, how I am a big fat meme sell out
Day 1: Your favorite song.
There's no arguing here. "Rainbow Connection" is the single greatest song ever written ever ever, so as far as I'm concerned that makes Paul Williams the greatest songwriter. I've known it since I was a wee tot, and there was this stretch of pipe jutting dangerously out of the rear corner of my parents' backyard that was just Rassles Microphone Height, and I would sit on the rock behind it and give concerts to rabbits, singing this song and waxing nostalgic about life and silly observations, like Garrison Keillor or Mr. Rogers.
There's a video of me at the ripe age of three serenading family and friends on the fourth of July singing a bright, enthusiastic, sometimes mumbled mash-up of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "Rainbow Connection." I think my favorite part is when I sing, with gusto,
soooooomeday where there are lemon drops
and so up on the chimney tops
that's where....
youuuuuuu'll...
FIIIIIIND
meeeeeee
(deep breath)
SooooomeWHERE! Ooooover the RAINBOW!
skies are blue
and the dreams that are dreams like the rainbows too
Raaaaaaainbows are fissions
and rainbows are fusions
and rainbows have nothing to hiiiiiiide!
so we been toe and we shoes and bereave it
but I know you're wrong! wait and seeeeeeeeeee
Someday will find it
the rainbow connection
and then my aunt starts to sing along on the video and I reprimand her fiercely, with, "No, no don't SAY that! You wait til I am finished."
and then everyone laughs and I beam like a brat, curtsy awkwardly, and continue singing my song with the Vegas theatrics and Broadway sentimentality. I stroll around dreamily and wrap my arm around a table leg like Dorothy and the tree, I lean a nonchalant elbow against a khaki knee, I climb onto a picnic bench and dangle my legs like Kermit, slowly bopping and twisting my head just like he does in the swamp and then I look wistfully at the camera and furrow my eyebrows and belt, "we know that his pobble be maaaaaaagiiiiiiic!" while my dad laughs as he films and mumbles, "My daughter, ladies and gentlemen. The damn hammiest of hams."
It's one of my earliest memories and the greatest moments of my life.
...
14 comments:
*wiping a tear away*
Aw, little Rassles, dreaming big about rainbows is too cute an image.
Pobble be the best story yet.
Right now I want to see that video more than anything else in the world
That is the most amazing childhood memory story I've ever heard. Hands down. Wow.
Also, my parents didn't own a video camera, so I have no idea what I was like as a kid. I wish I did...
No one is better than the meme! No one! Mwa ha ha ha!
Srsly, though, I am a freaking puddle of tears. That is, indeed, pretty much a perfect song.
This song is easily my tandem favorite from childhood along with the Grease soundtrack. I sing this to my girls at bedtime pretty often and every fucking time I do, I end up crying in the middle of it. I can get through Edelweiss and My Favorite Things from Sound of Music no tears,no problem but a song sung by a frog gets me a weeping. I worried for Kermit and his coveted frog legs when I was little, now the song is about the end of childhood. Wah.
Oh, and I would pay at least fitty bucks to see that video.
It's official, i love you, see one time a few years back a bunch of us were drunk and coked up and the 3am topic was your favorite song of all time and me being like Capt. Indie Rawk Alterna Boy, everyone was expecting you know Three Days or Atmosphere or any song by the Smiths and i thought for about two seconds and said The Rainbow Connection and the most amazing thing happened, a bunch of coked-up drunks stood silent, mouths agape until one finally uttered, that's fucking brilliant, some of them actually got misty eyed thinking about it, i for one didn't why it wasn't everyone's in the room, then again i'm used to my brilliance.
Ever hear Jim James of My Morning Jacket do his version? a close second to Kermit's.
i also challenge any adult of a certain age to listen to that song and not get misty eyed, can't do it, why? because i believe it unveils a universal truth that as kids we all know and that's slowly beaten out of us as adults and when we hear it all grown up we recognize that fact and it reminds us of all the endless possibilities that we give up on as adults, fuckin-a, i need to listen to this every night before i go to bed so i can be reminded, thanks Rassles for helping remind me.
Ok, so reading other people's comments it has become clear to me that I lived a very deprived childhood, because I didn't hear this song for the first time until I was like 18.
Although I do love it now. Sarah MacLachlan does a very good version of it, too.
yep. misty eyes and a knot in my stomach. love the tale of Rassles Ham...
i did this song at an open mic night once. buncha drunks sang along. i kinda cried when i did it, but i don't think anyone noticed.
And btw, pobble sounds dirty, like Kermit's peen.
formerly fun, you are going to be the best Dirty Old Woman in all of history.
Is it possible for me to just comment on every post with
"holy shit, dude"?
Cuz I'm nowhere near as good of a writer, and when I read you it makes me feel completely embarrassed that it's even what I want to do, but I keep writing anyway, and I keep reading you anyway.
Cuz...holy shit, dude.
Little Rass. You were destined to be great and are.
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