1st of may….!
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D’oh! Shoulda recognized that!
Would’ve helped, I’m sure, if I’d gotten the quote right — for one, it’s said by two different characters. But “Mayday? Why, that’s the Russian New Year!” probably would’ve been closer to gettable (and still plausibly something that Mitch could’ve said to his five-year-old son).
(Although I would’ve spelt it “May Day” if I’d been talking about anything else.)
Jon: I don’t recall that ever coming to fruition. I dabbled very briefly with recording a Childsafe First of May Song, starring Adam Curry and substitute-music-director Bry, but I was both too lazy and too pitchy to make any progress on it. Actually, I probably should’ve mentioned it earlier, so that someone with moxie could’ve taken the ball and run with it in time for this year’s First of May.
We need a childsafe Mayday song.
We need a song that’s safe to play.
Something less crude so they won’t think us rude
when we mention that tan Shar-Pei.I had to scrape the frost off my windshield this morning before driving to work. A bit too cool for outdoor activities, I’m afraid, especially while underdressed.
I was able to get the computer programmer sitting next to me on the plane Monday to promise to go see the You Tube videos of some of Jonathans songs after I recited the lyrics to Code Monkey and Re: Your Brains to him.
I might not reach as many new fans as Spiff does but I am trying!We need a childsafe Mayday song.
We need a song that’s safe to play.
Something less crude so they won’t think us rude
when we mention that tan Shar-Pei.Strangely enough, you hit on three out of four lines almost word for word. (I can’t remember what the last line was, but if you can figure out a way around stretching “tan” over two syllables, your version’s entirely superior. Perhaps “when we’re singing our favorite lay,” for an obvious pun?) But that was part of the by-play between Adam and Bry, rather than the actual song (which would’ve actually been a childsafe First of May, drawn mostly from other people’s lyrics).
but if you can figure out a way around stretching “tan” over two syllables, your version’s entirely superior
Alright then, how about:
when we mention that man’s tan Shar-Pei
or:
when we sing about that tan Shar-Pei
Not bad, Angelastic, but it might suffer slightly from what Borba’d recognize as “for-a-small-fee-itis,” that is, coercing a lyric to fit into a line where the stresses don’t match up. Singing-wise, I’m a careful enunciator, because I can’t hold my pitches and so I want to make sure the lyrics, at least, aren’t mangled, but even so, trying your lines under my breath, I find myself slipping into “that man stance Shar-Pei”. My lazy American accent doesn’t like the short “a” of “tan” on an unstressed syllable — it inevitably gets schwa’d: “when we sing about thatten Shar-Pei.”
(The reference, of course, is to “America”, from West Side Story. Sondheim’s lyric “Everything’s free in America / For a small fee in America!” is immoderately clever, but the latter line is usually incomprehensible, since it doesn’t fit the music’s rhythm — “FOR-a-small FEE-in-Am ER-IC-A”, where the line really demands SMALL and FEE both to be stressed. Unrelatedly, I like the island Manhattan; smoke on your pipe and put that tan.)
[The pun I refer to above, by the way, is on “lay” as in “of the last minstrel,” or Old French lai if you prefer.]
Some dude just posted a censored version on YouTube, using a CC-licensed sound sample to bleep out the bad words.
(Yes, added to wiki.)
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