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.