crooked house

Jennah Barry's Slow Dance

I remember when Jennah was tiny, running around the church during sermons. I have my suspicions she may have inspired a character in William Gilkerson's excellent Pirate's Passage, set in Mahone Bay.

Somebody That I Used to Know: A Song We Now All Know All Too Well

So this Goyte "Somebody That I Used to Know" song and the Walk Off the Earth cover video are everywhere and those of us with kids are particularly familiar with both of them. (We happen to know a two-year-old who immediately dons a suffering expression and begins singing ALL THE WORDS every time it comes on, which is often. Hi Eden!) The parents of the kids featured below videotaped some of the many, many, many times the song was requested by them during car rides.

 

Walk Off the Earth: Someone That I Used to Know

Fun video, pretty song by a Burlington-based band that appears to perform mostly covers on youtube. It went viral last week.

Lullabies for Little Ones: First in a Song Cycle

I get my best ideas, or perhaps my worst ones, whilst lying beside Sylvie, waiting for her to fall asleep. Tonight I lay there in the dark, hardly daring to breath and listening to the lone peeper that seems to have taken up residence in the neighbourhood trees. I fear his mating song may be in vain. His lonely call soon became the backdrop for a jaunty little tune that kept running through my mind. Using my time wisely, as I always try to do -- multitask fellow mothers! -- I made up some words for it.

Where did you come from, little one?
Out of my vagina -- oh what fun!
I know it sounds ridiculous but yes, it's true,
They tore me apart and...
Out came you!

I just sang it for David and his main quibble is that I had a c-section. I informed him I write for humanity, not just for me. But if I were to sing this to either of my children, which he has forbidden me to do on pain of divorce, I could simply replace the word "vagina" with "belly" and it would still work.

It Wouldn't Be Make-Believe if You Believed

I started a bit of moon-surfing after discovering there's a supermoon on Saturday. We were outside after supper enjoying the spring-like weather when Sylvie and I noticed the moon seemed brighter and larger than normal. When we came in we googled for the date of the full moon and learned that it is going to be a bit closer to the earth this month than it usually is. Some astrologers believe this means there will be natural disasters -- like the earthquake in Japan. Apparently the big tsunami in 2004 happened just three weeks before a supermoon. But scientists say there is no truth to the notion. These events were just strange coincidences, I suppose.

Somehow I got onto paper moons -- I think it would be fun to set up a paper moon photo booth at a street fair or some other event this summer -- and found a number of fun old postcards, including the one up top. I've just emailed Todd, a friend who is a graphic designer, to see if he could insert Sylvie's little head onto that girl's body. I love her polka-dotted dress and striped tights and the very faint colourization in yellows and pinks.

And then I ended up on youtube, listening to various versions of the song -- what zippy, catchy, perfect little lyrics. "Paper Moon" is a great title for something, a poem, short story, novel or, obviously, movie (which I have not yet seen). "Canvas Sky" and "Cardboard Sea" would also make great titles. 

My money's on Ella for the best version but it's a really hard song not to sing well.

Some say the song belongs to Nat King Cole. James Taylor has a very mellow version. Lena Zavaroni looks just right singing it and doesn't sound half-bad. Although Fiona Apple and her sister Maude Maggart's version starts slowly, the second half is almost perfect and their voices sound like they belong in a 1930s musical.  Abbie Gardner's slightly more warbly version is set to a slideshow of the postcards.

I checked amazon for a book of vintage paper moon postcards and there doesn't appear to be one, which seems odd. Someone should remedy that.

Small Children Singing Sad Songs for Grown-Ups: Little Girl Singing Caitlin Rose's "Own Side"

This is just lovely. Check out five-year-old Rowan's tremendous feeling on the chorus. I just might have to start a new category devoted to small children singing sad songs for grown-ups.

Guy Dancing in His Basement

Luke and Sylvie are loving everything about this. If I could perform a dance routine like that, I believe my life might just be complete. (I have been fantasizing about putting my children in dance classes. Never mind that old saying, "Those who can't, teach." It should be, "Those who can't, have children. And then pay somebody else to teach them.")

TED: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

"Everyone should watch this." Apparently, those are the most common words used in blog posts about this video featuring Ken Robinson, which has been around since 2006. I'm one of the few who somehow missed it and am posting it here in case you are, too. I've just downloaded the first chapters of Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative and The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.

Don't Laugh At Me

From what I’ve gleaned, some mornings at Luke's school, instead of “Oh Canada,” they sing “Don’t Laugh At Me” as a kind of anthem against bullying. He loves this song and sings it loudly and sweetly and over and over again. The chorus goes like this:

Don't laugh at me
Don't call me names
Don't get your pleasure from my pain
In God's eyes we're all the same
Someday we'll all have perfect wings
Don't laugh at me

Only Luke sings that first bit like this:

Don't laugh at me
Don't call me names
Don't get your pleasure from my face...

And so on.

The first time I noticed his mondegreen, I laughed, which was, shall we say... unfortunate. But I do. I do get my pleasure from his face.  Especially when it’s got that adorable earnest expression on it.

Luke calls the song "Perfect Wings" and I managed to find this version on youtube once he started singing snippets of the lyrics at home:

I'm not sure about the wisdom of evoking death in a song on this topic through the mention of those wings. ("Being bullied? Don't worry! They can't hurt you in heaven!") I'm also sort of flabbergasted that Mark Wills changed the verse about the "beggar" on the corner to the "cripple" on the corner. Way to make that word choice even more politically incorrect. Although "homeless person" has a lot of syllables -- it would've been tough to squeeze them all in there. But whatever.  It makes my little boy happy. And I get my pleasure -- my shameless, shameless pleasure -- from that, too.

Bring Me a Little Water, Sylvie

We had never heard this gorgeous, haunting song when we chose Sylvie's name. It's a bonus. The only thing I share my name with is the Sunshine Family mother doll.(More on that later.)