uTopianTurtleTop

IVESIAN DANCE PARTY

At the ends of my baby boy's crib hang two stuffed-animal-music-boxes. Fuzzy creatures with ties at the top designed specifically for hanging from the end of a crib. With handles at the tail for the boy to pull, and when he pulls, the music boxes activate. The holstein cow's tune is "Old MacDonald." The yellow elephant's tune is a jaunty number I don't remember having heard elsewhere. After putting on my son's night-time diaper, I put him in the crib before putting on his night-time shirt and pajamas. Lately he's taken to pulling both of the music boxes and getting a polyrhythmic polyphonic polytonal thing happening, and dancing a wild dance, hands in the air and tongue wagging, sometimes a fierce expression on his face. He laughs when I imitate him. Which I do every night. I love dancing.


WORLD OF SOUND

Pounding stakes in the front yard to put up a fence to pen in the baby, the hammer echoing from the industrial laundry facility across the street.


RADIO JOY

An e-mail from late last week from my good friend Jay Sherman-Godfrey (the person named Mac referenced in the note is his 3-and-a-half year old son):


Trying to seek out one joyous, ecstatic radio song per day, flipping channels as Mac and I drive to school. Today's track:

My Best Friend's Girlfriend -- Cars

I usually prefer the Ben Orr lead vox songs to the Ocasek lead vox songs in general, but this one crackles. Great lead Gene-Vincent-Galluping-Clif-Gallup style guitar, cool keys (almost constantly shifting tone and timbre), and that explosive, Roy Baker Thomas signature, Queens-style extra double exploding backing vocal
chanting the title.

Put together like a brick house. Class-A pop radio. (On the Classic Rock station, BTW)