Ebb Tide
First the tide rushes in,
Then the tide rushes out,
Then the tide rushes in,
Then the tide rushes out again.
Like this tide
Is that tide,
And the prior
Like the next,
For all tides
Act like tides,
Since that is how they've earned the name of tide.

Tears, tears,
They're good for the eye.
The more you tear, the more you cry.
The more you cry, the better you look.
So chop some onions when you cook.

It's humped and scarred and disgustingly hirsute
Hey la, hey la, my boyfriend's back.

In production: MGM returns to musicals with Ben Stiller's remake of Lost Weekend, starring an unshaven Jim Carrey, a shaven Gwyneth Paltrow, and the Dalai Lama as Joe the Barkeep. Andrew Lloyd Webber's score packs such potential VH-1 hits as "The Brandy Man," "Tomorrow (I Guess I'll Clean Up My Act Tomorrow)," and "Sink":

Sink,
Sink till sunk.
Life is simple
If you live it drunk.
Don't worry if you're not good enough
To manage a goddamn thing.
Just sink,
Sink till sunk.

Bang and bong and boulder bun
Are all my brain and body need.
Bang and bong and boulder bun
Are very good indeed.

Gosh, I like the Internet: Someone sent me email this morning asking for the complete lyrics to "Sunshine, Lollipops, & Rainbows" for their science project.

This Magic Orange (to the tune of "This Magic Moment")

This magic orange
Is easily punched down
Then stretches up and
Was drawn by M. K. Brown.

Lyrics server: Frequent-Hotsy-Totsy-flier Beth Rust was actually responsible for correcting my notion of "Rawhide"'s lyrics to the above. For many years my memory waffled between:

Don't try to understand 'em
Just rope 'em, tie and brand 'em,
Soon they'll be sitting by your side.

Don't try to understand 'em
Just rope 'em, tie and brand 'em,
Soon one of them will be your bride.

These United States:

The Passable Kingdom

Mares eat oats
and does eat mares
and little lambs eat those does.
A kid'll eat little lambs,
wouldn't you?

Beyond any doubt, Stephin Merritt is this year's star pupil of the Lorenz Hart School of Miserable Short Ugly Love Song Lyricists, but when I encounter the following "lyric by Lorenz Hart; no music survives," this miserable old ugly chronicler can't help but recall my generation's pretender, Croonin' Costello:

Hands

I do men's nails for seventy-five cents
And I guess I earn my pay.
Kindly realize that a heel or two
Get a manicure plus a feel or two.
God, how I hate their hands!

Brokers, clerks and singers,
Arthur, John and Bill,
Each time you touch their fingers
They think you get a thrill.

God, how I hate their hands!
Hands can tear one asunder.
I go through torture nobody understands.
Stop it! My life is a nightmare!
Hands! Hands! Hands! Hands! Hands!

Hands can hold you and hurt you,
Hands can grip;
Hands can laugh at your virtue,
Hands can slip;
Hands can tear your heart out,
Hands can make you dream.
What a fool you seem.
You could scream.

Hands can beg for mercy,
I'm afraid of you.
I am black and blue.
This won't do.

My God, they're driving me crazy
With their goddamn hands.

Lyrics server

Eating overripe figs and listening to "Ring of Fire":
Now don't tell me
I've nothin' to do.

Lyrics server

"... to illustrate an editor's difficulty in reconstructing even the simplest text from the madrigal part-books, Fellowes transcribed that song's first two lines,

What ails my darling thus sitting all alone so weary?
  Say why is my dear now not merry?

from the following:

UC Berkeley Art History Department Fight Song

In this paper I will argue.
      Won't you argue now with me?
Everybody likes to argue;
      No one likes to disagree.

In this paper I have proven
      What somebody else has shown
Was maintained and demonstrated
      Citing yet another drone.

Lyrics server

She's as sweet as Oulipo honey,
Shears as swerve as outback honky.
He gnaw, Hopey-Lou saw tweezers, eesh!
That girl is luscious, if sugary.

Lyrics server

When the eel treats your thigh
Like a big piece of pie
That's a moray.

Addenda

Brown coleen Juliet Clark relieves us of the responsibility of Illustrating one Famous Ballad ourselves by finding a rare photo of "The Rocky Road to Dublin," which, it turns out, was a scenic railway in Coney Island. And I didn't even know that the Clancy Brothers had been to Coney Island! For that matter, I didn't even know that Coney Island was scenic!

I loike (typo, but I'll leave it) much about our previous Famous Ballad, but probably most the way it uses "Since it falls" in one line and "I should rise" in the next and then, since it already used "fall," completes the parallelism with the unexpected unrhymed flatness of "not." Piquant! The syntax may be stilted, but where would humanity be without stilts?

Dr. Justine Larbalestier reminisces fondly:

Have you seen the movie West Side Story recently? I was obsessed with it and the music as a kid and made the mistake of rewatching it recently. When I think of it in memory it's shot on location in NYC - the camera moves around; it's full of dynamic dance sequences that use the natural environment - i.e. the street of NYC. It's a vibrant, alive, great and sexy anti-racism musical. Nope. It stinks. There's the one opening scene with the overhead shot of Manhattan and then the opening dance sequence and then it's all sound stages and a camera that's so static you wonder if it's got icicles all over it. (Well it would have it were here in NYC at the moment - is there a point to having such cold winters? I don't get it.) Worse still there's no ambient noise. The film is visually and aurally dead and since it didn't use scratch'n'sniff technology and no-one's going to lick the screen that means it's completely dead. Then there's the presence and, er, acting - with the exception of Rita Moreno, George Chakiris and Russ Tamblyn - it's unspeakably bad. Especially the two cardboard leads who can't sing or dance or act. Brilliant casting there people!

When life gives you scraps, make collage

I gained new insight into the miracle of heterosexuality yesterday when I first read "A fixing on rotation" (via Bovine Inversus) while first hearing The Vernon Girls' "You Know What I Mean" (via alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.1960s). Insofar as I can, given my limited web space, I'd like to share the experience with you....

"You Know What I Mean" by THE VERNONS GIRLS (Sha la la la la la. Sha la, la la la.) (Sha la la la la la. Sha la, la la la.) Messt1 this boy he started to tuh-wist me. All night long we were doing the twist. Then about half past ten he kissed me. Boy, did I know that I'd been kissed. Ooooh! -- uauchghh! (phlegm-hawking sound)2 Well, you know what I mean. Well, you can't get over a thing like that. Boys are natural twisters. You know wot I mean.	I became his fi-nance fixer, Paid for everything while he Twisted like a cement-tuh mixer With every ohther girl but me. Ooooh! - uauchghh! (phlegm-hawking sound) Well, you know what I mean. Well, you can't get overrh a thing-uh like that. Boys are natural twisters. You know wot I mean.	Spends my dough but more to resist him3 He was awful cute you see. When my loost's run out, that twister's Dawn4 away and run out on me. Ooooh - wackgh! (disgusted sound) Well, you know what I mean. Well, you can't get over a thing-uh like that. Boys are natural tuh-wisters. You know wot I mean.	When you're tempted, don't-uh you linger. Just remember he can twist Some gehls round his little finger And you might be next on his list. Wagh-khchh. (ladylike phlegm-hawking sound) Well, you know what I mean. (Dumb dummy, dummy dummy dumb dumb) Well, you can't get over a thing like that. (Dumb dummy, dummy dummy dumb dumb) Boys are natural twisters. You know wot I mean. So I said to him, Mary, like, I said, lissen 'ere y'flirt, I said what d'you think you're doin'? But 'e went awn! Twistin'! In fact he twisted the legs off me, I couldn't....

1. A peculiarity of this Liverpudlian variant is its transformation of a terminal "t" to "ss." Thus, "met" to "mess," "loot" to "loos." 2. The only pre-1977 use of spitting as a hook in pop music? 3. Obviously wrong, but it took me so long to realize that what sounded like "five months" was actually "finance" that I despair of solving this problem. 4. Dialect, mannerism, or mistake? Topic for further research.

Bless our Mondegreenery home

You know what I always thought was really great about "Runaway"? When Del Shannon says he's

Wishing you were here by me
In endless misery.

And now I don't.

Inspiring verse of the day, from 1% Goat's "Now We Are Pirates":

Cold Feet, Bedroom Eyes

1. This conspiracy of mind and foot against the groin seems to've been much on Campion's mind or groin at the time he assembled his Fourth Booke of Ayres, as, only two songs earlier, he'd complayn'd:

   Then downe my pray'rs made way       To those most comely parts That make her flye or stay,       As they affect deserts:             But her angry feete, thus mov'd             Fled with all the parts I lov'd.

   Yet fled they not so fast       As her enraged minde: Still did I after haste,       Still was I left behinde,             Till I found 'twas to no end             With a Spirit to contend.

2. Many a bawdy song has been burlesqued from a Plutarchian lyric, as many a sentimental or childish-foolish number has been bowdlerized from a bawdy song.

   Twentieth-century American pop musicians often commuted between gospel and secular genres (which themselves mandated varying degrees of directness), and sometimes carried specific songs with them. But pretty much all the earlier transformations I'm familiar with were cross-author, and often conceived of as parodies, with the Earl of Rochester's memorably horrific (and Bataille-trumping) Scroope-over one of the most vicious.

   Exceptionally, Campion was here burlesquing one of his own. From the first Booke of Ayres, published in 1601:

   Mistris, since you so much desire To know the place of Cupids fire, In your faire shrine that flame doth rest, Yet never harourd in your brest; It bides not in your lips so sweete, Nor where the rose and lillies meete, But a little higher, but a little higher: There, there, O there lies Cupids fire.

   Even in those starrie pearcing eyes, There Cupids sacred fire lyes; Those eyes I strive not to enjoy, For they have power to destroy; Nor woe I for a smile, or kisse, So meanely triumph's not my blisse; But a little higher, but a little higher, I climbe to crowne my chast desire.

   (The fine editor of my Campion, Walter R. Davis, oddly refers to the later version as "slightly revised.")

Ba-lue Mun-deii Ba-lues-Are

Ba-lue Mun-deii Ba-lues-Are

So round, so firm, so fully packed That's my gal So complete from front to back That's my gal Toasted by the sun And I'm a son of a gun If she don't make my five-o'-clock shadow Come around at one You can bet your boots I'd walk a mile Through the snow Just to see that toothpaste smile They mention on the radio If you don't think she's a lot of fun Just ask the man who owns one So round, so firm, so fully packed That's my gal So round, so firm, so fully packed She's for me She's just like a money back Guarantee Like the barfly goes for drink Like the bobbysocks go for Frank And just like Jesse James would go For money in the bank Now she's so sweet and perfect-size She's a whiz But she wears a 45 (Gun, that is) She's got the looks that's so impressing She's got the pause that's so refreshing So round, so firm, so fully packed That's my gal She always hits the spot Like a twelve-ounce bottle of pop And when she smiles I go so wild I pert near blow my top Now she's got lots of looks to spare She's for me And that certain ring she wears Is a lifetime guarantee She's done told me I'm top hand Won't be long till she wears my brand So round, so firm, so fully packed That's my gal

Corporation disciplines consumer with the foxtail brush of advertising For a hundred years or so, Americans have explored the ambiguous frontiers of self-definition, forcing the world at gunpoint to join our exciting journey. Of course I'm not talking about sea-froth like "gender play," or "virtual avatars," or "community." No, I mean the ambiguity so central they put it in the name: incorporation, the profit imperative made better-than-flesh and sent to earth to redeem humanity (value 5¢ ME CT VT MA NY). Which, with recent "trade" agreements, has become the global equivalent of the medieval European Church: a spiritual authority that trumps all local secular rule. We simple consumers have come to terms with the inescapable as we always have, with our own small attempts at incorporation. We swear allegiance to our patron brands, pin their badges to our clothes, draw our commonplaces from their testaments, collect their relics, and blaspheme at leisure. I witnessed one notch-click on the pendulum-blade of progress in the 1980s, when, after years of viewing paid celebrity endorsements, American youth volunteered life-service in the sandwich boards free of charge. (For some reason, blanketing the family Volvo NASCAR-style never took off the same way.) I'm a transitional type, myself: although I still unstitch the leatherette patches from Levis, I was perfectly willing to advertise nostalgically "aesthetic" corporate products. A generation earlier, Merle Travis took the path of Solomon, Hafiz, Meera Bai, and Teresa of Avila, merging sexual desire and spiritual quest in the limited stability of lyric. It's human nature to bolster one unattainable yearning with another, although that rarely resolves the confusion at their hearts. Here, the singer praises his darling using the sacred vocabulary of sales, which seems to imply that he's selling her. And yet he also insists on her as his exclusive property. The collector who claims copyright: a Raymond Rohauer of love.

Dangerously tiny dancer

Bhikku, l'ascoltatore migliore, looks in his own ear and writes:

Re the "come on and diet" line, the whole thing is arsy-versy anyway because previously hasn't he advised her to "Grab the ketchup"?

My favourite bit is the most heart-felt bit of singing and the emotional climax of the music, when he tells her where to find the light switch.

Technicians of the Sacred

Ba-lue Mun-deii Ba-lues-Are

"She's A Soldier Boy" A New Generation, 1969 She tells lies with her eyes She's not a lady all the time Though she's breaking inside She will only cry at night She's a soldier She's a soldier boy She deceives me and leaves me And then she's back in love with me To my weakness she's blind She always sees the best in me She's a soldier She's a soldier boy Evenings I meet her Make longing sweeter Like a soldier she'll fight Till she's got what she's looking for If it's wrong, if it's right I'll stand by her forever more 'Cause she's a soldier Yes, she's a soldier boy

Another month, another idiotic gender essentialist story:

Scientists say they have discovered what happens in the brain when someone falls in love.

Most of the women showed more activity in the body of the caudate, the septum and the posterior parietal cortex, which are areas linked to reward, emotion and attention. Most of the men in this study showed more activity in visual processing areas, including one associated with sexual arousal.

But scans found women's brains showed emotional responses, while men's showed activity linked to sexual arousal.

Where to start? How about with the original researchers' assumption that "falling in love" is a simple biological universal, free of cultural specifics? Because otherwise they certainly wouldn't be coming up with these fascinating hypotheses about evolution.

Or, sticking to the story's own terms, how about the possibility that most women in New Jersey reach orgasm more slowly than most men in New Jersey, and that New Jersey women have therefore "evolved" to associate sexual arousal with systems of reward and attention? Or that most men in New Jersey have more opportunity to jerk off to porn, and that New Jersey men have therefore "evolved" to associate sexual arousal with visual processing?

And how about those "most"s and "more"s? Given that we're talking about "17 young men and women," in just how many individuals was that played-up distinction incarnated?

If I was a cheerier sort, I might take it as a good sign that essentialists have been more and more forced to rely on the most variable and plastic organ of the human body (no, breast implants don't count) for support. But I'm depressive, so instead I take it as another sign that the government is preparing prenatal genetic tests which, along with universal "Seinfeld" syndication, will replicate the social norms of present-day middle class America forever.

I think my doctor called that "depressive." Sometimes I get those medical words all mixed up.

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