First Think, THEN Ink.

I'm throwing this challenge off in ways because I'm not following the proper days. This really is supposed to be the "Day 25" Challenge, just to be accurate to the original. Don't sue!

That brings us to the topic of the day on my version of the challenge. Songs that make you laugh are most probably what they used to call Novelty Songs, a song that was most likely a parody of an existing song or a song with wacky lyrics or a strange story.

When I was a kid, there was a show that specialized in just these songs only. It aired late on Sunday Nights and originated from a radio station in Los Angeles. It was called "The Dr. Demento Show" and the host, a Character Unto Himself, would play the music of Spike Jones and Allan Sherman and Ray Stevens... among an enormous grouping of songs that I had never heard played anywhere else. I developed my love for the music of Tom Lehrer from this program.

I was of the geek variety who would attempt to write my own little parodies of the music of the day, inspired by what I was hearing, but I was still too young to do anything with them, I had no actual musical ability, though I did practice piano and had played some clarinet for a bit earlier. And I was nowhere near L.A. so I couldn't drive to Dr. Dememto's studio and play him tapes of my songs, the way a certain Weird Al Yankovic did. The rest, as they say, was music history.

So maybe I wasn't meant to make song parodies, but I certainly knew the ones I liked. And I still like this form of music. Weird Al is the most prolific, still going strong decades after his first charted single: "My Bologna" a parody of The Knack's 1979 hit, "My Sharona", brought him to national attention.

While there's plenty of material to select from in Mr. Yankovic's Catalog alone, I'm going a slightly different way.

Another great source for comedy parodies is NBC's long running comedy/variety program "Saturday Night Live." They've presented a lot of stuff through the years, and although they've never released a comedy album, many of the players on the show have. One of those is Andy Samberg who was a castmember from 2005 through 2012. During his tenure with the program, Samberg did a series of short films titled "SNL Digital Shorts". The films, some of which became wildly popular, were listed as the work of The Lonely Island and almost every one of their songs was a duet, where they were paired with a superstar music performer, like "Shy Ronnie," with Rihanna, "I Just Had Sex" with Akon and what is likely the most memorable of all of the songs from that series, Justin Timberlake, performing "Dick In A Box."

The album Incredibad featured more of that material and I had to select this song becuase it still gets a chuckle out of me... probably because of the intended smack at LL Cool J and his song "Around The Way Girl" included here.

My choice for Day 24 is The Lonely Island - "Punch You In The Jeans"

This is a little bit different and probably a little bit easier than the Day 20 challenge, if only because sadness isn't quite as specific as happiness. Or maybe it is, but maybe it doesn't require the specificity of happiness when it comes to song selection.

There are a lot of songs I might play when I'm sad. Some are songs that might cheer me up a little. Some would help me wallow in the emotion. It really depends on other factors, as is the case with this sort of thing. So, again, I'm just going to have to go for it and offer up something.

So, one of the things I'm noticing as I'm reaching what should be a more mature age is that I'm seeing things in a very different way than I used to as a younger person. The things that I thought were important then, even from when I started blogging online, have changed, in some ways drastically, from how I perceived them at that time. That's a positive, obviously, because that shows that maybe I've done some learning along with my living. But there is still some sadness about the loss of what it used to be. Orwell said "Ignorance Is Bliss" as one of the maxims from his totalitarian regime in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And, it actually is true! It's easy to be happier if you don't know what's going on. But it's also a way of giving control over to someone else, and that's only appropriate for a children to do to their parents, teachers or care givers.

And that thought is what has led me to the song. It's something that I relate to in a lot of ways, even though it is a female singer performing. It examines that loss of childhood, which is directly connected to the loss of innocence, that expectation of how life is "supposed to be" and what happens when it's not. And this connects to the elements of sadness but ultimately triumph. And we all could use that encouragement, at least some of the time. And may I say, this jam hits all the right notes, figuratively and literally.

My selection for Day 21 is Anita Baker - "Fairy Tales"

Apparently, I've already succeeded in providing the challenge of Day 14, back on Day 8 with my karaoke offering! Thanks halfshellvenus for the honors!

My musicial tastes have always been pretty eclectic. I have hard rock, classic country, unexpected pop of various sorts and classical tunes all in The Collection™ and I suspect that might surprise some people. I considered posting several songs from these categories just to prove that fact, but I do believe in retaining the rules where it matters.

Maybe it's not such a surprise that I like a lot of different music. I was exposed to a lot growing up. If you're old enough to know about "The Ed Sullivan Show," featured in the Broadway musical turned film, "Bye Bye Birdie," or if you catch the edited and repackaged version that runs on the Decades channel, multiple times each weekday, you know and understand that you might hear the music of the Dave Clark Five, the New York Philharmonic, Johnny Cash, Leontyne Price, and Roger Williams, possibly all during the same episode! Perhaps that's where I got the philosophy that good music doesn't have a genre?

So I won't pontificate a lot when it comes to today's selection. I'll just present it.

My Pick for Day 14 is: Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Gimme Three Steps"

I'm tweaking this entry ever so slightly because, again, this is going to be more fun for me, and my Fun Quotient has to stay high if I'm going to keep this up! - Original request: A Song That Makes You Dance.

I briefly took dance lessons as a kid as an activity to get moving. But I was always all about the interpretive. In my room, I could dance around to my music and would sometimes get to an almost meditative state during particular songs. Then, I started making mixtapes and that kind of changed everything. Being able to just pop a cassette with the songs I wanted when I wanted them to play... that was amazing. And then, I even had a cassette player that you could program to fast forward and reverse to mix the order of songs, and even played the tape backwards to let you select from both sides of the tape without needing to eject it! SUPER AMAZING TECHNOLOGY!!!

Of course there were lots of record albums, many of which i still own. I don't have my own DJ rig currently (most NYC clubs had their own set up and I could rent a setup for private parties) but I do have one turntable. Problem is I don't have a connector to line in it to start digitizing the vinyl tracks to mp3. I think I've found a lot of the songs from my LPs through Amazon or iTunes, or back in the day when we were trading music on the sly.

And it's from my time as a DJ that I drew this song.

When I was working at "Polly-Esthers," a 70s and 80s themed club, I created "The Polly-Esther Ten," a Casey Casem style countdown of the ten most requested songs that week, which I played each Friday and Saturday at Midnight. Invariably, there were some songs that were never off the countdown for many weeks.

The two that battled it out most frequently for the most requested song, I'm pleased to say, were two Feminist Anthems:

Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive"

and

ABBA's "Dancing Queen"

Both of these songs tell the story of women standing on their own, making their own choices based on what THEY want and are unapologetic in their stance of what is wrong, what it right and what is acceptable to those females.

It doesn't hurt that they both are easy to dance to in addition to their messages, disco classics that have stood and will continue to stand the test of time. But the elements of what these songs say carry them to that highest of pinnacles.

BTW: Currently "I Will Survive" is being used as a QUIT SMOKING campaign, apparently worldwide!

But I wanted to go with something a little less obvious and something that never failed to surprise me. Very much like Skate Anthems, which I talked a bit about on Day 3, there is a song that almost always made everyone crowd the dance floor.

I would say this song was a bit obscure, in that I don't know that everyone would recognize the name of the artist or maybe even the song, without hearing the tune. But the fact is, when you hear that opening brass flourish and that burnning bassline kicks in immediately, you absolutely know it.

My choice for Day 9 - Cheryl Lynn - "Got To Be Real"

This is a most challenging meme, if only because there are a lot of possible answers for these questions! Very similarly to Day 1's prompt, today's choice is one that has a ton of possible answers. In fact, I have a playlist of songs that I love so much, I never skip them, and there are roughly five thousand songs in that grouping. Of course, some are for different moods so there are some that wouldn't fit my mental state at any given moment but they are all beloved, for whatever reason, to me.

Here's the story of this choice. In Central Park, on days when we aren't having a blizzard or days when it's not below freezing, days that seem like distant memories, there is an area designated for roller skating. If you want to find it, and you're visiting New York on a weekend day some time between Easter Sunday and the last weekend before Halloween, it's Southeast of Strawberry Fields, South by Southwest of the Bethesda Fountain, West of the Bandshell and North by Northeast of the Sheep Meadow.

The organization that runs it is known as the Central Park Dance Skaters Association or CPDSA. And yes, it's all about "dance skating." It's literally dancing on skates. It's been going on in an organized way since the days of boomboxes, when a couple of guys would set up their massive "portable" sound systems on industrial garbage cans at either end of the makeshift rink and call out the station: WBLS! Z100! WKTU! so the person near the other radio would know where to tune for the next great song.

There were a lot of what we called "Skate Anthems," basically songs that made everyone get on their wheels and start moving. And those songs still get played every weekend the skate sessions go on, just because they are crowdpleasers.

To me, foremost among that collection is the song I have selected for today, specifically because of the history, the sound, the message of the lyric, the beat, the elements of the musicianship and of course, because of the association with a part of my life that helps define who I am.

It's gotta be the remix version because that's the very, very best version. If this doesn't make you want to skate, I don't think anything will.

My choice for Day 3 - is Jamiroquai - "Space Cowboy" (David Morales Classic Club Remix)

There's nothing like a meme to get the year off to a fun start. And since The Grammy Awards are returning to NYC this month, this seems like a perfect choice.

I should say, I'm going to alter the original meme here and there just to make it something I want to do and something I think would be more interesting to talk about.

Honestly, this first task is a massive challenge! How do you select one song as a "favorite?"

The short answer is you can't. So. let's be real. This selection isn't my favorite song. It's just my favorite song at this moment, today as I'm being forced to select one.

As the year is new, everything seems possible and we are looking forward to some new and fresh positives, I have to go with something on the upbeat side of things.

I don't know if you know it, but I'm something of a geek when comes to pop culture, and that's true for Broadway. I'm a big fan of Stephen Sondheim of course, and not that much of a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I like the older style pieces like Jerry Herman and Jule Styne, and the Richard Rodgers pairings with both Lorenz Hart and Ocscar Hammerstein... but I'm forgoing all of that. In fact, I'm selecting a Broadway song that isn't from a cast album. Sacrilege!

Stephen Schwartz has a great legacy composing for brilliant shows from the Great White Way, including Godspell, Pippin and Wicked. He's also done the requisite Disney musicals, including "Pocahontas" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," two of my least favorite in the Mouse Canon, but that's okay.

But one of his often forgotten works is a musical titled "The Baker's Wife." a show that will evoke elements of both Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" and Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.

There is a reason I selected the song I did from another source than a cast album. The fact is, in context, the song can be seen in not quite the same positive way as it is presented, singuarly. But I love the song, the message, the story it tells, and the freedom it evokes.

Liz Callaway is a long time Broadway and Cabaret performer, and this recording was made nearly eighteen years ago. The orchestrations, the vocals, the emotions... it all comes together brilliantly.

My selection for Day 1, "Meadowlark" by Liz Callaway

When I was seventeen and applying for college, I had some restrictions. The fact was, I didn’t have an unlimited supply of funding to draw from, so, that meant certain schools were off the table before I even began. I would not be applying to the Ivy League schools, just as an example. That was partially my own doing. If I had exemplary grades as a high schooler, rather than the good and solid grades I did get, perhaps I could have gotten a scholarship to have helped me through.

On the other hand, I was in a class of thirty-eight people.

Then there was the geography. My mother and grandmother wanted me to stay within a reasonable driving distance of New York, presumably so they could come visit me during the term and I guess so I’d have an easier time coming home. Bus fare or gas money, if I hitched a ride from a classmate, was pricey. It also meant my dream of going to California as an undergrad was not going to happen.

I personally ruled out any NYC area school. Having been permanently grounded for the entirety of my teenage years, I was not about to continue that trend into college. And since college dorms at New York schools were off limits if you were a New York resident, it would have meant living at home to attend, and that simply would not do.

And finally, there was my personal interest of study. I was clearly headed towards English Lit as a major; a school that was good for the arts was where I needed to be.

I applied to eight schools and got into seven of them, with the most distant one of the bunch Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. It was so far away, we didn’t even look at the campus, this, despite the fact that we had cousins who lived in a small town not far from the area, and some of whom now live in Pittsburgh, proper.

I would have liked CMU for a few reasons. It had a reputation for success in the arts, including a pretty illustrious list of alumni, many of whom went on to great careers in show business or in literature. From Kurt Vonnegut to Stephen Schwartz, from Steven Bochco to Bud Yorkin, from Carol Channing to Henry Mancini. And Pittsburgh was (and still is) a city I admire a great deal. I might even say I dote on it. I think if I had my way, I probably would have gone to Carnegie Mellon, just because of those elements. After all, who wouldn't want fifteen minutes of fame?

Boston University was the next most distant. The advantage here was a direct route. Amtrak would make it an easy in and out, probably the simplest option for travel of any of my choices. There was just something foreboding about Beantown and the school itself, to my mind, even without the Yankees/Red Sox element as a part of the problem (I also got into Tufts University, but I was never serious about that concept. My adviser simply suggested that as a safety school).

The compromise vote was Bucknell University, situated in the sleepy town of Lewisburg, PA. Bucknell had a lot of positives going for it, from my family’s view. First, it was close enough: about a two-and-a-half hour drive from New York, a straight shoot on Route 80 once you crossed the George Washington Bridge, then a quick zip south on Route 15 when you reached Central Pennsylvania. More importantly to me, it was far enough away to be off the RADAR. There would not be constant check-ins at this distance, allowing me my first ever taste of freedom.

Next it was (and still is) a really good arts school. Not only did they have a great English department and a wonderful library, they also had a remarkable theater, worthy of any I had seen on any campus. And it was a simply gorgeous campus – looking like the Central Casting version of what a University should be, and was eventually featured in a commercial for Hyundai.

It also wasn’t too large. The undergraduate population for the school ran about four-thousand total and I think it’s still below six-thousand, now. That was a better transition, coming from my tiny sized high school.

But the best element for me was the financial aid they were willing to provide. That, more than anything, turned the tide. Well, that and the fact that every faculty member that encountered me during second semester of my high school Senior year asked, “You’re going to Bucknell, right?” Bucknell clearly wanted me and wanted me badly enough to demonstrate that in the most obvious way possible: Cold Hard Cash. So, it was off to the Susquehanna River for my college experience!

I think it was pretty clear that my “recruitment” to this university was, in great part, due to Affirmative Action. Many colleges and universities did have and some still do have, problems getting minority students to accept their invitations. We can certainly discuss the reasons why that happened and why it continues to happen, but Affirmative Action was one initiative, designed to help resolve that issue.

Many people don’t understand that Affirmative Action actually serves two purposes. The first and more obvious purpose is that it allows minority students the opportunity to attend the seats of learning that their white counterparts have attended regularly and to receive a degree from those places of higher education, permitting them a better start in life and a better chance to achieve their goals. That’s really nice and something that will provide positive gains for our society in the long run.

Some people, admittedly, mostly white people, who understand that there is only a finite space in a college’s enrollment, take issue with Affirmative Action. They feel as if it permits “underqualified” or “unqualified” students to attend a school, while their children, who likely would have been accepted, might be blocked.

This issue was even taken to the Supreme Court, where in 2016, a case was brought by a white student who wished to attend the University of Texas, claiming she was “discriminated against because of her race.” The conservative SCOTUS split, but upheld the concept of Affirmative Action. Still, it was clear, the dissenting voices on the court were not content with the ruling, which also meant that a lot of Americans didn’t like or understand the issue, either.

That leads directly to the other element that Affirmative Action provides. It is the one most people, especially those like the woman in that Supreme Court lawsuit, neither realize nor understand. To me, it may be the more important purpose. The fact is, the United States is not the so-called “melting pot” often referenced when being described. We are, for the most part, separate groups. Part of that is due to Jim Crow Laws that were only repealed in 1964. Those laws forbade minorities to live, work, even shop or dine in the same places with white folks.

The problem with such separation is that it permits people to imagine what those “other people” are about, which is how we get stereotypes and prejudice. Affirmative Action was a method of clearing that well, of taking those thoughts and bringing them into the light. You can’t assume people are different when you are in classroom and in the cafeteria with them. You can see we really are all the same, and why would you be afraid of someone, based on hearsay? Who knew that it would, in some cases, create even more animosity?

But what I didn’t completely know or understand as I was making my final decision of what school I would attend was that Bucknell University had a real reason for wanting more minority students. Bucknell’s student body were (and very much still are) from the most insulated suburbs of the upper crust throughout the region: Connecticut towns like Darien, Cos Cob and Greenwich, the Philadelphia Main Line with those sprawling mansions, areas of Maryland and Virginia that housed golf courses and/or former plantations, and even the portions of New Jersey that people considered attractive!

The people from all of those places, were, likewise, incredibly insulated. That meant they had, to say the least, no empirical knowledge of what minority students were about, or even in some cases, no concept that minority students existed.

The issues I faced as a minority student at Bucknell made my reflection on my time there ambivalent, at best. But if you are an African American, that is often a standard. Independence Day, Thanksgiving, it’s tough to characterize the feeling you get from days like these, because of the meaning, but ambivalence does seem to sum it up. It’s like if you really loved a relative, say a grandmother or aunt, and they died on your birthday. Then, every year, you would celebrate your special day, but in the back of your head you know that you lost someone that meant a lot to you on that same day. Now, imagine waking up and having to consider that thought on a daily basis.

So, while I finally had my first opportunity to become the social person I always hoped to be, I was suddenly in an atmosphere where nobody really wanted to be social with me, simply because of who I was. It took a while for me to understand what was happening, but when I belatedly did, I had to grin at the circumstances, and just keep moving.

//

This story was written for LJ Idol, using the prompt Invitation
*This also is the continuation of a series of essays I wrote in autobiographical form tagged "Story of My Life." The most recent previous essay in this series was written in January, 2009.

Consider this a kind of "State of the Love" Address for 2016, via a forty seven year old program.

If you are able to get the Decades Network, and you probably are if you have a CBS affiliate in your area, you might have tuned in to see some vintage programming that they broadcast (and I do mean broadcast, as the station is available, most everywhere, without a cable wire or satellite connection). They hold the lion's share of all of the programs that CBS/Paramount own, and with a lean for putting historic events (and vintage teevee shows) in perspective, they cycle through a lot of material, often linking what they show to the particular date, during the week. That also means, they don't have a set schedule of what gets shown when, so every day it's a surprise of vintage newsclips, forgotten films and talk shows and sitcoms and drama series all tossed together to celebrate an anniversary of an event or birthday of a notable person.

Weekends are a bit different because they do what's called "The Decades Binge," showing dozens of episodes of one series, all in a row and mostly in chronological order of original telecast date. Not to be overtly obvious, they chose to run a marathon of episodes from the series "Love, American Style" this Valentines' weekend.



An anthology series that originally ran on the ABC television network from the fall of 1969 through the winter of 1974, it also went into syndicated reruns on many local channels for many years after that.

The actor appearances on the show are quite notable, as some pretty big names did episodes throughout the run of the program, and many of the familiar names of actors from other long time popular sitcoms made multiple guest shots here, like Bill Bixby, Judy Carne, Larry Storch and Stefanie Powers, among a roll call of stars of that era. But perhaps the most notable and consistent element of the series was an unusual Brass Bed that found its way into the majority of episodes and "blackout" sketches throughout the run.



I decided to watch a few episodes of this show, as I remember being quite taken with it as a kid. The first thing I noted was the scoring of the show. Yes, the iconic theme song (originally performed by The Cowsills, but in the syndicated version only the "Charles Fox Singers") was there, but the incidental music used throughout the episodes really sounded like they wanted to be Burt Bacharach compositions. As an unabashed Bacharach fan, I'm sure part of my attraction to this program was based on this element, that I probably didn't even notice when I viewed it as a kid.

But more importantly, I realized a couple of very disturbing things. The first being that for a show from the era of "Women's Liberation," it was still highly sexist, almost to a disgusting level. Yes, it was a comedy, but for a series that actually could have made a statement about love in a way that gave a positive message, along with some laughs, an opportunity was clearly missed. ABC did a skosh better in that area with their similar anthology series, "The Love Boat," several years after this.

But on a personal note, I realize now that a lot of what I thought about love, how to get it, what it was about, how to behave around someone I was interested in and what it all really meant was, to some degree, shaped by this series. It might have been okay if I actually had a social life to counteract the false messages I was getting from a program like this one, or even if I had some other "relationship" program to watch that might have put it in a better perspective.

There were some clearly "stalking" type behaviors, played for comic effect, some "joke divorce" elements throughout and other really weird material, even for the late 60s and early 70s, when it first aired. I look at this program now and realize just how odd it is to me today, compared to how the me of my grade and junior high school years viewed it.

There is a whole "garbage in - garbage out" quality to some of this stuff that really makes me feel like I never should have heard of this show, let alone watched it after school while doing homework, as this was a terrible socialization method for learning about love, and it wasn't even that good as a sitcom.

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing, I could have done much worse than telling me to never watch "Love, American Style," and really, that probably goes for this weekend, too.

That's the state of the love, this year.

As a fundraiser for both Advocacy and Artistic organizations, I've had some really interesting moments along the way. I've had the chance to have conversations with people I know you know, or at least have heard of, and that's typically enlightening, engaging and even sometimes fun.

( For a while I was working for... )

My one and only year of attending Public School was at P.S. 32 in Yonkers, New York. I was the only non-white student, from the First to the Sixth grade, at that institution during that term and one of only two minority people that entered those doors, the other being Special Needs teacher Miss Holland.

Yonkers, as a location, was a place filled with anger and hatred. It was too far north to be a part of New York City and the advantages that might have come with that. And it was south of the more affluent suburbs like Bronxville, Hartsdale or Scarsdale. Yonkers was decidedly working class, and, as such, very protective of its own people. If you were not in that group, you were not welcome, a fact which I have to believe my mother, sending me to this school, was completely unaware.

( I was always up for an adventure... )