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Beatles Song of the Week: “Ob La Di, Ob La Da”

Here’s a song that I found enjoyable enough, just a harmless piece of bubble-gum pop music with a nicely infectious beat and the type of easy chorus you can sing under-your-breath to get yourself through the day. And the song certainly is that, but as it’s my current Beatles Song I’m Obsessing Over, let’s talk a little bit about “Ob La Di, Ob La Da”.

One thing I’m quickly learning about the Beatles is that they just don’t do a whole lot of standard openings to their songs. This one starts with a piano riff that sounds like a rag-time fanfare before settling downward into the actual key and rhythm of the song. I find that the effect almost makes it seem like what we’re hearing is the very end of one song that segues directly into this one. The song uses a lot of different influences (reggae-tinged lyrics and melody combined with a honky-tonk piano), and a lot of external sounds are employed to make the studio recording sound like a raucous live performance.

The lyrics are…well, they’re just happy. I can’t describe it any other way: “Ob La Di, Ob La Da” just drips happiness. It’s not ridiculously sappy happiness, either — it’s just the nice happiness of two people who meet and fall in love and run their barrow in the marketplace while the other sings at night in the band. I can think of few songs that are more devoid of cynicism than this one. I read somewhere that Lennon, Harrison, and Starr all hated this song because it was too light — a puff piece, really — but I think that McCartney was really onto something here, and that the song makes a small statement about finding happiness in the small moments of everyday life.

Desmond has a barrow in the marketplace
Molly is the singer in a band
Desmond say to Molly, girl I like you face
And Molly says this as she takes him by the hand

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da,
Life goes on, bra
La la how the life goes on
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La la how the life goes on

Desmond take a trolley to the jewelers store
Buys a twenty carat golden ring, (rin-ring)
Takes it back to Molly waiting at the door
And as he gives it to her she begins to sing (sin-sing)

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La la how the life goes on
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La la how the life goes on

Yeah, In a couple of years they
have built a home sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
of Desmond and Molly Jones

Happy ever after in the market place
Desmond lets the children lend a hand
Molly stays at home and does her pretty face
And in the evening she’s a singer with the band

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La la how the life goes on
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La la how the life goes on

Happy ever after in the market place
Molly lets the children lend a hand
Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face
And in the evening she’s a singer with the band

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La la how the life goes on
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da
Life goes on, bra
La la how the life goes on
And if you want some fun
take Ob-la-di-bla-da

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Something for Thursday

On my walks of late, I’ve been working my way slowly through the Complete Recordings of Howard Shore’s magnificent scores to The Lord of the Rings. I continue to be amazed at the musical edifice Shore created for these films. Here is one of the finest musical moments: “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”, specifically the music for the arrival of Rohan and their charge into battle.

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Kicking tires….

Huh. Blogger has a new way of doing things, so ignore this test post as I try stuff. Like BOLD text. And Italics.

And blockquotes.

Hmmmm. Interesting. Not sure we needed a whole bunch of changes, but then, I know engineers; they love to change things!

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“Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you tonight.”

When World War I broke out, the French military issued summonses to compulsory military service. One young man, a cellist named Roger Bricoux, did not report for duty, and was listed as a deserter. It turned out that he had a good excuse for not reporting. He had died two years earlier as one of the bandsmen on the doomed ocean liner RMS Titanic.

I expect to see a lot of books and memorabilia over the next eight months or so as we approach the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, on April 15. I just read one new book on the ship, The Band That Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the 8 Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic, by Steve Turner.

There’s nothing terribly earth-shaking here, really — it’s just a good personal narrative of a specific set of persons who perished on the ship, providing background to one of the most famous facets of the disaster, namely, the ship’s band that went on deck and played almost, if not right up to, the very end. This is not a book for the forensics of why the ship went down, nor is it a “big picture” history, which I think is all to the good. Turner provides a nicely honed portrait of the kind of men who took up their instruments one last time as death confronted them.

As with any such narrative, there are things to learn that I never knew before. The musicians were all contracted by a single firm that pretty much handled all of the musical needs of Britain’s great cruise ships of the period, and the fellows in charge of this firm — brothers Charles William and Frederick Nixon Black — really don’t come off as having been nice fellows at all. Apparently musicians were charged for their tailoring needs on their on-board uniforms, and after the sinking, one of the musicians was still in arrears on his tailoring account, so the Blacks actually sent a bill to the poor fellow’s father.

Turner doesn’t just stop with the musicians and their deaths; he spends time at the end of the book describing what became of the families of the musicians as well (some of whom fared very poorly indeed), and he speculates on the possibility that an old violin may actually be the instrument Wallace Hartley — violinist and band leader — was playing on the voyage and the night in question. And yes, the question of what the actual final tune played that night — “Nearer My God To Thee” or “Autumn” — is dealt with.

This is an interesting read. Recommended.

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Answers, the fourth!

Continuing with answers to queries posed as part of Ask Me Anything! August 2011. I have a regular reader who occasionally corresponds by e-mail, and here are the questions this reader has posed:

I’m on vacation right now, so: what’s your dream vacation? What’s the best (real) vacation you’ve been on? How much vacation do you get in a year and how do you like to spit it up (or do you like to do it all at one time)?

My dream vacation would involve all-expenses paid to…someplace. Anyplace. Could be Disneyworld. Could be Portland/Seattle. Could be London. A cruise to Alaska. I don’t have a great deal of traveling wanderlust, but I wouldn’t mind being able to do any of those someday.

“Real” vacations I’ve been on? My honeymoon is probably the best, I figure — we spent a couple of days on Cape Cod, a couple in downtown Boston, and then we drove home via New Hampshire, Vermont, and the upper part of New York. By the end we were getting tired and money was getting low, so we came a fairly direct route. We should have done some Adirondack exploring, though.

For our first anniversary we went to DisneyWorld, which was great, except for The Wife having an accident that involved ripping out a big chunk of the nail on her big toe. I spent the rest of that vacation pushing her around in a wheelchair. (Which was actually kind of nice, in that it got us past queues for the rides, but in another way, that kind of sucked, because Disney puts a lot of thought into its ride-queue areas.)

And then, there was our trip to the Jersey coast just last month. (Huh…did I never really blog about that? Weird…photos here, with commentary within.) That was a fantastic time.

Mostly, though, when we take trips, they’re day trips or overnighters someplace. I don’t get a lot of paid time off, unfortunately, so when I want to take a few days off, I have to plan ahead and budget for it. The last couple of years we’ve gone to Pittsburgh in the spring — this coming spring, we may go back to Toronto for the first time in over five years, which is just a stupid amount of time to let lapse between Toronto visits — and each fall lately, The Wife and I have traveled together to the Apple Festival in Ithaca. Those little trips mean the most to me, really — opportunities to go someplace and spend time with The Wife, finding nifty places to shop, and so on.

Also, I started showing my son (who is 16 now) the BBC Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. I think they’re very well done, but I haven’t seen many other productions. What have you seen, if any and what do your recommend? (Or do you not like Sherlock Holmes stories much?) I saw a trailer for a new Sherlock Holmes movie that looked more action-adventure than I remember the stories being — would you be interested in seeing it?

Ohhh, such a finely-crafted question…and I have to offer a really lame answer! I’m terribly lax in my exposure to Mr. Holmes. I’ve only read a few of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, and I’ve read a few of the many “extended universe” (for lack of a better term) works that have appeared over the century-plus since Holmes first appeared. As for movies, I know very, very little. I’ve seen a couple of the ones Basil Rathbone made, and they are terrific. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (with Jeremy Brett playing the good detective) is good, and I greatly enjoyed Young Sherlock Holmes, even if it is more an adventure flick than a Holmes detective story. I haven’t seen Robert Downey Jr.’s recent film (whose sequel is coming out at some point in the near future), and it definitely looks like more of an action take on Holmes than anything else. I’ve heard that the first one is fun, and I’ve also heard that it’s a waste of time. I’ll probably find out, sometime. But yes, I do need to read more Holmes in the first place!

By the way, if you really want to get into some interesting stuff, track down a copy of Shadows Over Baker Street, an anthology of Holmes/Cthulhu mash-up stories. Fun stuff!

How many books do you acquire in one year, do you think? (I fear library book sales and the like; a good cause and cheap books are a recipe for a house stuffed to the rafters with books.)

I’m really scared to speculate on this. Via the quarterly library book sales, I probably pick up fifty books a year alone. Via other venues, probably around twenty or thirty a year. It’s bad. Next time we move, it better be local because The Wife is going to kill me if we have to rent two trucks.

More to come!

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Dispatches from the Fair

Midway at Dusk

A few weeks ago, The Family Unit and I made our annual trek to the Erie County Fair, where the usual good time was had by all. (Except for that one guy, who didn’t seem to be having a good time at all. Oh well!) Here’s some pictorial documentation of our day!

(Below the fold, of course.)

Let’s talk fair food first, get it out of the way. Our first order of business at the Fair is always lunch, which means one thing: finding the corn dog place. The corn dog place we usually like has been moved from its usual spot, so we tried another.

Corn dog #1. Meh.

This one was OK, but it didn’t really hit the Corn Dog Sweet Spot, as it were, so we found another place, where the corn dogs are made with Sahlen’s dogs, and they are hand-dipped and fried to order. This is corn dog freshness!

Corndog

(By the way, God knows that I will make fun of Republicans for just about any reason, but I will not make fun of their corn dog consumption methods. So go ahead, Governor Perry and Congresslunatic Bachmann, deep-throat those corn dogs to your hearts’ contents!)

At dinner, The Daughter insists on pizza.

Die pizza slice DIE DIE DIE!!!

I think she does that so she can eat her pizza, and then nag The Wife and I for bites from our Chiavetta’s chicken dinners.

Chiavetta's

I wish the Chiavetta’s people would serve the butter at least a little softened; I think they keep it frozen up until the moment they plunk it on your plate. But oh well.

I didn’t do a whole lot of Fud Photography, since a lot of what we ate was the same as what we eat every year: roasted nuts, kettle corn, a big selection of jerky, fried dough, ice cream, milk shakes, et cetera. There was something new that we tried, an arepa, which was basically a grilled-cheese sandwich made on cornbread. The cornbread was really moist and had nice, big corn kernels in it. The thing looked fantastic:

Arepas: grilled cheese on cornbread.

Flavor-wise, though, I was a bit disappointed — it was awfully bland as served. They used mozzarella cheese, which was really mild; a spicier cheese, or some kind of spicy meat or vegetable, would have helped a lot. I had to put a liberal amount of hot sauce on the thing to really make it taste good. I love the idea, but it needs reworking before next year if I’m to have one again. (Oh, and those things hold heat like few foods I’ve ever known. The thing was too hot to bite without searing pain for almost five minutes!)

By way of walking around seeing stuff, we love the Creative Arts exhibits, as usual — and they are in a different spot now, which is actually quite nice. There were wonderful quilts…

Quilt I

…and needlepoint nudes…

Needlepoint Nude

…and creative diaramas.

Desert Diarama

And there were animals, as always! Llamas…

Llamas

…and chickens…

That's some chicken!

…and horses on parade.

Horses I

There was a guy rolling around on a wacky wheel, calling himself the Wacky Wheeler.

Wacky Wheeler

Wacky Wheel, again

We stopped in the Antique Mall, a smaller version of one of our favorite local retail establishments, the Orchard Park Antique Mall. Ever since the Fair, I have been kicking myself for not buying this:

I should have bought this. Kicking myself ever since.

No, I don’t like the Alien movies, but that little guy is just so many kinds of awesome! I’ll keep an eye out for him at the main Mall now that the Fair has ended.

Then, to the Midway for rides and whatnot, as the moon rose.

Moon over the Midway

The Lights

0813112132

There’s a ride that apparently has a “spaceship” theme, hence the presence of Darth Vader on its side!

And now, for no real reason, here's Darth Vader.

And this amused me greatly. One of my favorite rides to watch is “Enterprise”, which is a Star Trek themed ride that can’t call itself a Star Trek ride — it just always has Star Trek artwork. Here’s the ride in years gone by:

Gotta love carney rides!

Note Kirk’s enormous chin! And either they’ve omitted McCoy and put Scotty up there, or they’ve put McCoy in the wrong color shirt.

Well, now that Trek has been rebooted, it’s time to reboot the “Enterprise” ride, too! Here’s how it looks now:

Mixing Mythologies on the Midway

You’ve got Chris Pine as Kirk, and I suppose that’s Zachary Quinto as spock, way over on the left. Spock is right next to…wait a minute! That’s Padme as she looked at the end of the Battle of Geonosis in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones! And…the Alien from Alien, hanging there! And what’s with the pair of cat’s eyes hovering over the Earth? Now there’s some gonzo stuff, right there. God, I love that ride. If only I wasn’t sure that the act of riding it would make me hurl.

Our day at The Fair wasn’t totally inclusive of everything we wanted to do. When we were walking the animal barns, the sheep and the cattle were closed, because their respective judging shows were going on right then, so we missed out, unfortunately. I continue to hope each year for a cold front to come through and make the day we go to the Fair cool enough to wear overalls — if ever an event screams out for overalls, it’s the Fair — but no, it was its usual “pleasantly hot”. And The Daughter had gone in, hoping to purchase a hermit crab from a dealer who had been there in years past. No dice this time, unfortunately. No hermit crab…that day. But that’s a post for another time.

See you next year, County Fair!

(My complete Fair photo set is here.)

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Sentential Links #258

Linkage….

:: Strangely, despite the potential for lowered self-esteem, rude customers, and insane managers, I take pleasure in the job. I like eating delicious food and I enjoy assisting other people in this pursuit. Unlike offices, which force me to sit down and keep to myself, service is an ongoing chapter from Harriet the Spy. I have season tickets to first dates, breakups, and wedding engagements and I have become great friends with TV writers, professional body builders, and heirs to steakhouse fortunes.

:: If the New Braunfels city council is meeting, rest assured they’re going to pass some damn fool stupid ordinance regarding the Comal River in the face of massive popular opposition. It’d be funny if it weren’t so predictable. (I don’t live anywhere near New Braunfels — or even Texas, come to that — but this is a model post for those blogging about local policy issues wherever they might be. This is how it’s done, folks. If a post is so clear that I can understand the issues despite never having set foot in the town in question, then it’s going to be clear-as-the-clearest-crystal to those actually affected by those issues.)

:: I held my breath. We all just kept gasping and clutching each other. We sat on the sea wall and watched. I swear to God – that ocean was alive. And it was the most beautiful thing in nature I have ever witnessed.

:: Anybody can pull off a sexy witch or pirate maid, but it takes real panache to make a convincing Princess Leia.

:: OBVIOUSLY there’s no child’s suffering that delights me so much as a Keane Kid’s suffering, and so I’m overjoyed to see Billy’s comically overwrought expression of crushing despair as his mother drapes that suit jacket over his shoulders. It’s as if he’s won the Masters, only instead of a green jacket he’s getting a blue jacket, and instead of winning the Masters he’s going to be executed wearing a blue jacket.

:: I’m pretty sure it’s not a good sign when your team’s best player is your punter. (Heh. Reminds me of a time in college when my roommate, a Vikings fan, had to be away on Sunday on some function, so I taped a godawful game for him. When he got home to watch the tape, I told him, “Well, one of the Vikes’ players had a career day. Bad news is, it was the punter.”)

All for this week. More next week!

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The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer

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