Once, when I was teaching, I had this fabulous idea for a series of lessons. I just knew it would be a hit with the kids. I just knew I’d love teaching it. It would dazzle my peers. And quite possibly I’d get written up in the local paper — in a, y’know, good way. I could even imagine the headline: Local Teacher “Rocks” Poetry.
Yes. I cringe with you.
Especially do I cringe in memory of some of my selections. This was the mid-1970s, for gods’ sake. It’s not like there wasn’t any, y’know, actual rock music to choose from. So what did I think would happen when I played for my high-school juniors and seniors the Kingston Trio, performing “MTA”? If you don’t know the song, its lyrics, in part, go like this (and by the way, “MTA” is an acronym for Metropolitan Transit Authority):
Let me tell you the story
Of a man named Charlie
On a tragic and fateful day
He put ten cents in his pocket,
Kissed his wife and family
Went to ride on the MTACharlie handed in his dime
At the Kendall Square Station
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him,
“One more nickel.”
Charlie could not get off that train.Chorus:
Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn’d
He may ride forever
‘neath the streets of Boston
He’s the man who never returned.…
Charlie’s wife goes down
To the Scollay Square station
Every day at quarter past two
And through the open window
She hands Charlie a sandwich
As the train comes rumblin’ through.
Yes: a socially-conscious folk song, accompanied by banjos, about a long-forgotten political issue in Boston, of a nickel increase in subway/train fares… in a well-to-do suburb in New Jersey with absolutely no subway/train service of its own.
When it finished playing through, I lifted the needle from the turntable (!) and said something like, “So…” (I had no idea what to say.) “…What’d you think?”
The quick-thinking football player a couple rows back, sprawled carelessly at his desk, growled: I thought it sucked.
I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing. “What… sucked about it?”
Football Player: Why’d she hand him a sandwich? Why’n’t she just hand him some more money?
And thus ended that lesson.
I was thinking of this moment when I read, just recently, of a little experiment by the Disney folks. They call it Blam! The simple and very, deeply dumb concept — and I like thinking of this as a series of PowerPoint slides at a marketing presentation:
- Re-issue classic Disney cartoons and show them on cable TV’s Disney Channel.
- …but first, “improve” the existing product by adding Funny Comments and Silly Music to the soundtrack, and special-effect overlays to the visuals.
- […]
- Profit!
Here’s the Blam!med version of a cartoon in which Donald Duck bakes a cake, or tries to:
Inevitably, some wag — maybe that old Football Player, or a descendant — has worked up a parody of the idea. Here’s the Blam!ized version of the recent Pixar classic, Up:
I burst out laughing at this, too. (But I’m not trying to be cool.)
marta says
Now I know. Disney has blammed my day.
Sigh. If you’re trying to be cool, you have already failed.
Tessa says
Please, John. Admit that you made this whole Blam concept up. Because, if you did not, I’m going to go out and hang myself from the nearest, highest tree….
Sherri says
How humiliating for Donald.
Ashleigh Burroughs says
Third Sign of the Apocalypse: Disney deciding that Donald needed voice-overs to be funny. It’s like the whole idea of the music-video …. I don’t want someone else’s picture of the song in my head, I want MY OWN.
Your slouching football player should have thanked you for introducing him to iconic music. Perhaps, as his life went by, he heard it and remembered that lame (oh, sorry… Totally Cool) high school teacher who played it for him in the 1070’s.
Loved this post, JES. I’m riding that train ‘neath the streets of Boston right now, as the song is on permanent rewind in my brain.
a/b
Ashleigh Burroughs says
@Ashleigh Burroughs – sorry…. 1970″s. Hip music in the 1070’s??? Gregorian Chants?
John says
This really did come close to depressing me. (The information about the Blam! project did, that is.) Misery loves company, though, so thanks for all the support.
If I could’ve found one, I would have used a real photo of myself from that era, instead of the “I’m a dork!” Halloween costume.
I was wondering how you’d go about Blam!izing a famous piece of writing. It seemed obvious it would have to be a humorous piece, also rather short, and it would help if it was slapstick/farce because, after all, what the reader would really need help “getting” would be the action parts. Maybe something from Wodehouse. Or Fran Lebowitz.
Something completely hilarious on its own, in other words. To honor the spirit of Blam!
God help us all if Warner Brothers follows suit with the Looney Tunes archives. That, a/b, would be Signs of the Apocalypse #s 4 through 12 or so.
DarcKnyt says
Oh, Disney can Blam! this. (Insert crude gesture of your choice here.)
I like the title you chose. And the story of that football player was awesome. I sat there reading the lyrics (never heard the song before) and thought the exact same thing. :)
Hope you had an awesome weekend, John! I’m sorry I’ve been so scarce lately. I trust you know why.
Froog says
Horrible as the concept is, the Up is very funny.
Froog says
Years ago, I was playing around with a concept for a sci-fi story just like the one in that song about the MTA. I’d come across a few places on my travels (London too, these days) where there are complex graduated fees calculated when you exit. I was struck by the thought that this could get embarrassing if you hadn’t bought enough pre-pay travel credit before you got on and were short of cash, so…. well, I envisioned a scenario where there’d been a massive, unexpected crash in the value of a nation’s currency, and the train fares quadrupled overnight – leaving tens of thousands of people trapped in the system. Almost immediately, an entire black economy sprang up to service their needs (smuggling in sandwiches and changes of underwear, etc.) while the government negotiated with the transit authority to work out some kind of ‘fare amnesty’ deal.
Pretty far-fetched. But I’m glad the Kingston Trio had the same idea!
I knew a little bit of their stuff in childhood, but I’m pretty sure I’d never heard that song. Pretty sure.
ReCaptcha today taunts me with the mysterious
votive shetrugg
John says
Darc: Oh yes, I know why. I was just about to ask what you were doing poking your head above water!
Froog: Love that s/f story idea. I’ve always been intrigued by the serendipity of disaster — not of the (un)lucky events which lead to it, but the collateral damage resulting from it. Do you know the film Sliding Doors, with Gwyneth Paltrow? It’s sort of a study of the alternative ways things might turn out, depending on what, exactly, happens at exactly which moment; calamities like the one you’re talking about are practically a network of side-effects stitched into one.
When people talk about how badly 9/11 unnerved them, they’re usually talking about imagining the passengers in the planes, or about the ones jumping from the building. I’ve always wondered about the person on the ground, a mile or so distant, who chose just just the wrong moment to wonder what was going on with the first tower, was watching as the second tower got hit… and then was struck by a car just because he’d stopped, stunned, in the middle of the street.
I’ve got one of those recCaptchas, too: sestal reasonswhich.
cynth says
I imagine some of us who believe cartoons form the basis for our childhood memories would be seriously disturbed by the BLAM! Disney–thing. Really? ‘Cause it isn’t funny enough on it’s own?
Also, I’m just weird enough to know about the MTA and was singing along with the lyrics when I saw it! I love that song! Yes, I know it screams DORK, but well, there you have it. Which is why I didn’t teach. I do remember a college professor however, incorporating Eleanor Rigby into our composition class and it was definitely inspiring. As I’m sure your class would have been if you had picked say, Pink Floyd?
And I love the movie Sliding Doors because you frequently never know what would have/could have happened in just a split second sooner or later. There is a commercial for something or other with that idea in mind–something about a young lady wanting to be a ballerina and she drops her shoes and in the one scenario some famous people pick up the shoes and she auditions for them and gets the Swan Lake lead role (head swan??) and in the other scenario she gets to see someone dance the part.
Nance says
I have always envied people who burst out laughing. I was always a wry-smiler. Sometimes, a brow-furrowing head-shaker. Happens rarely, but I’ve been known to snorg. The football player drew the snorg. The Blamming business? Strickly b-fh-s.
Every time something as creative and valueless as these videos comes up, I think what a good thing it will be when America is able to put people back to work.
Froog says
Ah, Sliding Doors – I didn’t think that had made much of an impression in the States. I liked it: one of the first films where Gwyneth proved she could act (and de-glammed just a bit with the brunette look).
Years before that film – back in high school – I’d written a story on exactly this kind of premise. A car waiting at a traffic light in 1940s London hovers on the brink of stalling its engine. The driver catches the stall just in time, the lights change, the driver impatiently speeds away, turns a corner…. and knocks down a German agent who’d just landed in the country to assassinate Churchill. Pre-prologue. Then the prologue proper is… the car stalls, the agent survives and succeeds in the mission. And the story is thirty years down the line, what life in England is like under the Third Reich.
I think I may possibly have shared with you before my ‘football player moment’ from my short but eventful teaching career. I was showing Dr Strangelove to the senior film club, and after about 5 or 10 minutes, this lad asked me incredulously,“Sir, is it supposed to be in black & white?”
I left the TV room for a while to attend to something else, and when I came back, about two-thirds of the audience had left. One of the most depressing experiences of my life.
I used song lyrics quite a bit in my teaching. I hope the kids didn’t think it was too dorky. Most of the time it seemed to work quite well. Tom Waits has some fantastic first person narratives in his songs, particularly on the Blue Valentines album: things like Romeo is bleeding, Red Shoes by the drugstore, $29 and alligator purse, Kentucky Avenue, and of course Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis – marvellous. Michelle Shocked has a great song about a childhood game gone wrong called V.F.D., which I found useful for eliciting stories about ‘guilty secrets’. And I love her Ballad of Patch-Eye and Meg, which is a reminiscence of childhood, a beautifully indirect love song, and a celebration of the art of story-telling.
When I was studying WWI poetry with my class of 15-year-olds, I played them the Pogues’ version of Eric Bogle’s And the band played ‘Waltzing Matilda’… for comparison, and also a few rock songs about more recent wars. Curiously enough, they didn’t connect much with Joe Jackson’s Tango Atlantico or Pink Floyd’s Southampton Dock on the Falklands War (which had been in their lifetime, but hadn’t left much impression on them at the age of just 8 or 9), but liked Billy Joel’s Goodnight, Saigon (because they were so much more familiar with Vietnam from movies).