MLT Club Member David Herrick
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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Cool! In the same vein, yesterday I was walking outside a strip mall and I passed a unit with a big sign that said “Wagner Financial Services”. Immediately I imagined a line below saying “A Division of the No More Worries Company”.
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Yes, the warmest of birthday wishes to MLT! I know we all collectively would like to send them something of comparable value to the gifts they’ve showered us with, but that sort of item just can’t be purchased, packaged, and mailed.
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I think we’re all of a similar mind with regard to this list. The only show I can think to add would be The Twilight Zone.
It didn’t occur to me when I first posed the question, but as much as we love these shows, most of them aren’t very “groovy”, are they? With very few exceptions (Laugh-In, The Smothers Brothers) they don’t really try to view the world through the lens of the emerging counterculture.
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Does anyone (besides Mona and Lisa, of course) recognize the source (person and context) of any of the quotes on this track? Tim mentioned John Lennon, and I think I also hear JFK. “Good heavens, what’s that?” sounds like Don Adams, although that seems unlikely.
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My inner perfectionist has been face-palming for the past week over my use of “completing” in two different places in the song, when there were many other serviceable verbs available. So in the interest of facial healing, I’d like to replace the first instance of that word with “concluding”. There, all better now.
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Sounds delicious, Jacki! I’ll take a big heaping plateful.
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Thanks for your perspective, Jacki. I actually hadn’t contemplated this song in a long time, and the more I think about it, the harder it is for me to relate to why it seemed so innocent 25 years ago.
An analogy might help. Consider how you view “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” now, versus how you would view it if the weapon of choice for all those school attacks had been a hammer applied to the skull. I seriously doubt MLT would have covered the song then!
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I suppose it would be a good idea to supply the lyrics, so that you can draw your own conclusions. It seemed absurdly silly at the time, but in the context of today’s world it does make me cringe a little. I trust that everything that happens in MLT Club stays in MLT Club: I don’t want to go on another apology tour!
“If I Only Had A Gun” (to the tune of “If I Only Had A Brain”)
With a misbehavin’ student, it may be very prudent
To point out what he’s done.
Yet I feel when I finish that the problem would diminish
If I only had a gun.
While my pistol I was swingin’, I’d tell them I was bringin’
An end to all their fun.
And their eyes would grow bigger as my finger touched the trigger
If I only had a gun.
How fine they’d toe the line! They’d sit still in their seat.
They would never show up late or try to cheat,
Because they’d know I’m packin’ heat.
With a simple squeezin’ motion, I’d earn the deep devotion
Of each and every one.
Ecstasy! Jubilation! They would get an education
If I only had a gun.
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I actually have some personal experience with this issue. I’m a teacher, and I’ve written a number of humorous song parodies about the frustrations of my job. In the 1990’s I would occasionally have a little fun and sing one of them for my class, and the one that got the most laughs was a parody of the Wizard of Oz song “If I Only Had A Brain”, called “If I Only Had A Gun”. It was about a teacher who was at his wits’ end over a class that wouldn’t behave, imagining how attentive they would suddenly become if he brought a pistol to class.
It might seem tone-deaf now, but this was years before the Columbine incident, when school shootings, while not unknown, were not a topic that people had a visceral reaction to, and the idea of a teacher with a gun just seemed hilariously ludicrous. It probably helped that I had a reputation of being an incredibly gentle person who wouldn’t harm a fly. (And it’s literally true: I always try to shoo a fly out the door rather than swat it.)
Anyway, about ten years ago I attended a state-wide community college teachers’ workshop, and in one activity we shared ideas about special “tricks” we had developed to improve the student experience. I mentioned my parodies, and everyone was intrigued. I didn’t have an opportunity to sing one, but later I e-mailed the lyrics of the gun song to all the participants. Big mistake!
One of the teachers informed me by e-mail that she was horrified. I defended myself, invoking examples such as Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and of course “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”. She responded by alerting her college president, who alerted MY college president, who required that I issue an apology to everyone at the conference. I was heartened, though, when several attendees e-mailed me back to say that they enjoyed the song and were furious that I had been made to apologize for it.
So yes, I’m very sensitive now to the ever-changing nature of social taboos. I haven’t “erased” the song, but I’m always careful to preface it with a contextual explanation whenever I choose to share it.
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Thanks, Roger! I didn’t mean to imply that I was giving up, but rather that I had found a way to circumvent my “disability”. As long as I’m just trying to entertain myself, I’m fine with looking foolish. But if any experienced players can convince me that I’m on the road to ruin, I’ll certainly listen.
The first (and so far almost only) song I’ve learned to play is also by PPM, via John Denver: “Leaving On A Jet Plane”, which basically just alternates between C and F, with an occasional G.
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Lisa has inspired me to purchase a ukulele: my first ever stringed instrument. It’s a cheap one ($50 American), but it suits my talent level. After two weeks I’ve concluded that I’ll never develop the necessary finger dexterity to play chords, so I lay the instrument flat on my lap and depress the strings like piano keys, palm down.
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Here’s another song that might fit into that category, although it was clearly without malicious intent. Wikipedia summarizes it better than I can:
“‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)’ is a song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King for girl group the Crystals under the guidance of Phil Spector in 1962. Goffin and King wrote the song after discovering that their babysitter and singer Little Eva was being regularly beaten by her boyfriend. When they inquired why she tolerated such treatment, Eva replied, with complete sincerity, that her boyfriend’s actions were motivated by his love for her.
“Upon its initial release, ‘He Hit Me’ received some airplay, but then there was a widespread protest of the song, with many concluding that the song was an endorsement of spousal abuse. Soon, the song was played only rarely on the radio, as now.
“Carole King said… that she was sorry she had ever had anything to do with the song. She was a survivor of repeated domestic abuse (but not from Goffin, who had been her husband from 1959 to 1969).”
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Jung, even more heinously, I just realized that I forgot about Star Trek! I do not deserve to live long and prosper.
Twelve channels? We only had four, and they were all UHF. I would have been so envious. But you’re right: the talent is diluted among so many outlets now that it’s really hard to find a high-quality show.
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Yes, the pens I used were also hexagonal, and the “gears” meshed as if the pen were designed with that very purpose in mind. I even used to race the pen against my tape recorder to see if I could rewind a tape faster than the machine, but my arm always tired out too quickly.
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Wow, Tomas, you really took me back with your explanation of how you reversed a cassette tape. I did it in a more painstaking fashion which I discovered by accident when a few inches of a tape I was listening to somehow twisted over so that I heard a few seconds of backwards music from the other side. So I reversed the entire tape by rewinding it all the way to the beginning, manually twisting the lead over, and carefully propagating the twist all the way to the other end.
It was a delicate process: I stuck a ball point pen through the right hole in the cassette and rotated it counterclockwise to advance the tape, and carefully monitored the twist on the bottom side to make sure it didn’t untwist. Sometimes this required me to get my fingers involved, which locally degraded the sound quality. The whole process took longer than the normal run time of the tape, but it was worth it to have an album that no one else had.
