I sat down to write to you this morning, and said to myself, “Welp…back in the old routine. Yeah, man.” That phrase is actually taken from the lyrics of the song “Back in the Old Routine,” recorded in the early 1950s by Bing Crosby — one of the great singers of my parents’ generation. I loved his “olden days” voice. He was also quite the scat singer, did you know that? I loved the sound of his younger years (isn’t that true of all of us?) as opposed to the lazy-lipped buh buh boom stuff he did as he aged. That’s part of the reason I “retired” from performing; I didn’t want to be all Frank Sinatra can’t find the door.
Anyway.
I wanted to quote some lyrics of the song to you, but couldn’t remember them all. “Back in the Old Routine” has special significance for anyone who was in my high school choir back in the 70s. This song was used as a finale, and all the guys in the choir would form two lines in front and do a soft-shoe to this tune, while the girls sang the countermelody from the risers. Fun at the time…kind of silly now. But you know, they still do it. I don’t even know what year the tradition started, but it was long in place by the time I got to high school in 1974.
Here’s an audio of Bing and Donald O’Connor (of Singin’ in the Rain fame) singing the song in 1953:
[youtube x7-c5a7eG70]
Kind of a cute, easy shuffle, and boy howdy they still do it every year at my alma mater’s spring concert, kick-line ending and all. Ah, le souvenir…
Ok, what was I going to talk about this morning? I’ve no clue, sadly. Oh…my cake decorating class was fun last night. I think I’m going to like it. Not sure I’ll be any good at it, but I’m keeping a journal of it here. Feel free to check it out. After the class, I’m going to leave it sit for posterity. When I was first researching taking this course, I found precious little “personal experience” information about it. So, I thought I’d keep track of my adventure and leave it up so folks could read, comment or ask questions.
And now it’s time to stop procrastinating and get to work. Weekend is, as my students are wont to say, cray cray.
What all are you up to for the weekend?
Ah — wordpress. Friend and worst enemy. Good choice.
This weekend was previously “interesting”, turned quickly to “overwhelming” in only a few minutes. Alas… the weekend is already over before it began. It has been a week or more since my last extremely long e-mail to you. Soon and very soon, you shall see what I’m talking about.
Your new wordpress blog reminds me of all of the 500+ word, unfinished blogs I have on there. This whole “working 6 days a week” thing is cramping my already-dwindling writing. And… speaking about work… gotta fly now.
P.S. Two nights ago, we had a discussion about whether or not Heffe is allowed to call me “bird”… “birdy”… “little bird”… etc. Old fashioned, which is fine with me. I said sure, as long as it’s not followed by swooping arms and “CAW! CAW! CAW!!!”…
“Birdy!” That’s what Don calls Betty! LOVE IT.
My dad called me “Lindabird” all my life. (That’s why you see my sister Mavis calling me “Bird” on here all the time.) I love it — I say tell Mr. H. to gofrit! Give him a smooch for me whilst you’re at it.
My new WordPress.com blog is actually the father of finkweb.org! It’s what I used when I first started this little adventure back in ’08. There were limitations that I wanted to get rid of, so a month into it, I bought the domain and installed WP from there. I’ve just held on to my old WP account, thinking I might need it at some point, and here it is.
Have a good day at work, and get those fingers to typin’, amiga.
I think it has more to do with Jerry Garcia than anything — ha — because of “Bird Song”. The lyrics aren’t, ya know, “fitting” by any means (and we already have a few songs that are already “our” songs), but he loves playing it on guitar and sounds great when he does. I’d hate to be mean, but lyrics that I don’t follow/don’t exactly understand don’t seem fitting, but… maybe I’m wrong about the whole concept. It’s fitting because it just is…
“All I know is something like a bird within her sang,
All I know she sang a little while and then flew on,
Tell me all that you know, Ill show you snow and rain.
If you hear that same sweet song again, will you know why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet is passin by,
Laugh in the sunshine, sing, cry in the dark, fly through the night.
Dont cry now, dont you cry, dont you cry anymore.
Sleep in the stars, dont you cry, dry your eyes on the wind.”
My bookmarks are getting overloaded with Fink stuff HAAA
What a way to go!
Hope you and HH had a fantastic birthday celebration!
Yes it was nice, I made an apple crumble and a strawberry crumble, and lasagna for dinner. What Birthday Boy requests he gets especially since I get to enjoy it, too!