Friday, July 07, 2006

Ear worms

The other night as I tried to drift off to sleep--while my cat sat on my chest stealing my breath--lyrics from an old song started playing in my head. Except I couldn't remember all of them, so it went something like this:

"Mmm, mmmm, mmmm ... and a cat named Kalamazoo." Not mmm mmm like the Crash Test Dummies song, though.

I'd already turned off the computer and I didn't really want to uproot Miss Daisy to do the Goo Diligence (I saw that on Urbandictionary.com and I'm doing my part to make it a real term) on it, so I just kept my head on the pillow and suffered. "Mmm, mmm, mmmm ... Kalamazoo." This went on for hours.

If the cat could talk
I thought maybe I was thinking of that song because the cat was on my chest. I decided not to change her name to Kalamazoo.

The next morning I realized that ear worm was planted by my friend Wayne. Damn you Wayne Sallee and the Cal-Sag bus you rode in on.

It was payback for joking about him and multifuction copiers. He titled a blog entry "Della and the Dealer," you see.

Deutsch Hoyt
It all became so clear as I checked his blog that morning. It all came back: "It was Della and the dealer and a dog named Jake and a cat named Kalamazoo" from Hoyt Axton.

My brain deposited his post title and dredged up the end of the phrase.

I loved Hoyt Axton, so I thought "Della and the Dealer" would be a great tune for the iPod after a night of living with:

"Mmm, mmmm, mmmm ... and a cat named Kalamazoo.".

They only have a version in German on iTunes.

If I'd been a comic book character when I discovered that, there would have been a word balloon over my head with ?! in it.

Why THE HELL is there a German version of "Della and the Dealer" on iTunes but not the Hoyt Axton version? Steve Jobs is going to leverage Hollywood into $9.99 movie downloads and he can't cut a deal for the entire Hoyt Axton music library?

That's gonna show up in the third quarter. I was gonna pop for two (2) greenback $s and also download that song Hoyt sang on WKRP when he was supposed to be Loni Anderson's ex-boyfriend and thought Dr. Johnny Fever was her love interest. But no.

I had to settle for looking up the lyrics so I could then sing it myself all day: "It was Della and the dealer and a dog named Jake and a cat..."

Prompting Christine to go: "Shut up DAMN YOU!."

Did I mention Christine was home, too?

It's amazing the damage a cat stealing your breath and an ear worm can do.

Maybe the ear worm was named...ah forget it.

4 comments:

Sidney said...

I can only perform the opening to "WKRP." The only show for which I can sing the opening and closing tunes is "Szysznyk" which starred Ned Beatty. No one ever asks me to sing any of these, however.

Charles Gramlich said...

You guys need to get out more.

Anonymous said...

It was extremely interesting for me to read that article. Thanks for it. I like such topics and anything that is connected to this matter. I would like to read a bit more soon.

site said...

Quite worthwhile piece of writing, thanks for the article.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...