Friday, July 24, 2009

Random Access Memory, with The Bed Show

(Get your minds out of the gutter. The Bed Show is the talk show Jr. Jr. performs in his room each night before bed.)

I've had some interesting instances of Random Access Memory lately. That's when something pops up in your mind from long ago, usually something insignificant and utterly forgotten.

Mr. T and Sr. Jr. were talking about something, I don't even know what. But it led to a conversation that where Mr. T said, "You can ....., you can......, you can....." with several alternatives. All of a sudden, I looked up and said,

"You can stick it to a duck!"

Both of them looked at me like I was nuts. Waaaaay back in the '80s I lived on Long Island and listened to a radio station that was then called WLIR. It was the alternative radio station, the one that played the Clash, REM, and the Pretenders when all the other stations were playing the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. At the same time, there was a commercial running on tv, and I can't remember what it was for, but it featured things you could do with a dollar bill, including the line, "you can stick it to a duck!" The djs on WLIR took a sound clip of that sentence, and would randomly insert it in their programming, sometimes even into the songs. I had completely forgotten about it until Mr. T started saying "you can..."

And more with WLIR: one of the songs they played back then that I liked was a song called "Doot Doot" by a very obscure German band called Freur. I never did find the album, which is now long out of print. In those days, before digital downloads and file sharing, if you couldn't get your hands on an album or tape, you went the low tech way and taped the song off the radio. The sound quality sucked, but at least you could listen to it when you wanted to. I had one tape that had a bunch of great songs on it, "Doot Doot" included. That tape was stolen out of my car when I moved to DC after college, and I was never able to find another copy of that song.

Fast forward to summer, 2009, when I'm sitting, knitting and watching Torchwood. On comes a commercial for the new Palm Pre and what song are they playing in the background? "Doot Doot." It brought me right back to those teenage days, listening to the radio on the boombox.

The Bed Show

Jr. Jr. is a very energetic, imaginative, verbal child. He talks constantly. If he's not talking, he's singing or just making noise of some sort, so it didn't come as much of a surprise to me when we discovered that he does a little talk show in his room each night before bed. Yes, stuffed animals are involved. He's been doing this for quite a while, but now that Sr. Jr. is away at camp, he invited Mr. T and me to be a part of his studio audience.

We were treated to a sports report by his snail finger puppet, with updates from the Tour de France, and interview with his Sealie about life on his bed and his feelings about his fellow seals being used in Sea World type shows (he feels it's animal abuse, even if they are paid in fish). There were commercial breaks and even credits at the end.

Last night was Comedy Night, with some jokes and Extreme Sports, too.

It's all very cute, but it's becoming a charming bedtime-avoidance technique :) Since it's summertime, it's ok, but we'll have to tell him to scale it back when the regular schedule resumes.

Tomorrow we pick Sr. Jr. up from his week away. A whole week with no contact has been very hard for me! I can't wait to see him and hear all about his week. I'm sure there will be a lot of really muddy laundry to do, too.

Knitting? What's that you say? Where's the knitting on the knitting blog? Well, there's very little of that. I should have the second Skandal sock done soon, so pictures next week. Other than that, the needles have been quiet, unfortunately.

4 comments:

Sharon said...

I love the bedtime show story. My kids are just over the cusp of that sort of stuff, and I miss it. Although on one of our road trips two weeks ago, John took a photo of Sam and I in our pj's in bed goofing off, but when I posted it on my FB page, she had a major fit. I had entitled it "bed party" and all my college friends for sure knew what the reference was, even if the pic was quite innocent!

Tip for future camp sojourns--pack all the old socks, buy new ones to keep at home, and then just throw the old ones away when they come back. They usually come back so disgusting and black, no amount of clorox helps.

Back from bicycling in Quebec where we followed (on TV) the tour en francais, as they say. Highlight of the trip was a stop in an incredible yarn store in Saratoga Springs, NY. The Quebec City one was ho hum, disappointingly.

Loren T said...

Welcome back, Sharon! It sounds like your trip was great.

Sr. Jr. came home wearing one pair of socks, with another that pair that we threw away. All the rest of the socks and most of his clothes were still balled up or folded neatly. I think he wore the same clothes all week long. Yuck. The first thing he did when he got home was take a long, hot shower. He wouldn't let me check him for ticks like I did last year; Mr. T had to do it. Growing up...

Kathleen said...

i remember Larry the duck but not that commercial. Hmm...Loved that Doot Doot song too! I told you my brother answered the phones there, right? I loved LIR! Malibu Sue is on WBAB/102.3 and it's just not the same.

Peter said...

"you can stick it to a duck" came from the Roy Rogers restaurant radio ads in 1985-1986 for their "whact can you do with a dollar" promotion.

In case you wanted to know.