TheRealTamara

Singalong

Catchy music and novelty songs go hand in hand. The tune that starts off the comedy-detective series Monk is a case in point. Randy Newman (singer songwriter) is a funny man.

The Lawrence Welk rerun this evening featured The Music Man. This musical has its odd song when Prof Harold Hill cons the town with a capital P.

The show used lots of comedy songs in its choreography and programming. Arthur Duncan tapped loudly to “Milkman, Milkman keep those bottles quiet.” Larry Hooper was talented in The Auctioneer, a song I love because I can’t keep up with its lyrics.

The most unusual number was about Mme Lazonga and her dance lessons. Bobby and Cissy danced to it along with Mary Lou Metzger, Jack Imel, Ken Delo, and Anacani in this episode.

It turns out that this ditty was from a movie of the same name, Six Lessons from Madame Lazonga (1941). Jimmy Dorsey recorded it.

Such originality is always welcome, but I think Bobby outdid himself on the choreography for this one.

Write it down

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

Making sure I get time to write is the A-one best thing I can do for myself.

Magic Time

What’s your favorite time of day?

It’s the morning as the sun comes up.

Later in the day, it’s the sunset in what my mom referred to as the magic hour.

Twilight is followed by nightfall or, on some occasions, moon rise.

All quite spectacular.

GdMrning

Breakfast is or should be a quiet and peaceful meal. To his credit, he didn’t utter a chirp.

Excitement

Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.

Being emotional is a wonderful and terrifying state.

Excitement can be catching like a bad cold, or it might be self-contained like the tap water in your carry bottle.

If it spills over into your other moods or gives you the giggles, that’s nice.

Just sitting around

What motivates you?

It turned into dinner-and-a-show at our local Starbucks today. All that buzz: very stimulating. I was motivated.

Nothing but the best

What are your top ten favorite movies?

Moonstruck

Bull Durham

A League of Their Own

Forget Paris

When Harry Met Sally

Pausing midway on the midway to think about what is truly the best in the wide history of films.

Do we count the Chaplin works like City Lights, The Great Dictator, or Modern Times. Do we look at old odd and weird classics like Metropolis? Or the horror picture from 1922, the silent Nosferatu? Do we stick to talkie times? I generally do.

Singing in the Rain [If we are still speaking of talkies]

An American In Paris

Midnight in Paris

Top Hat

Royal Wedding

“The best laid plans”

How do you plan your goals?

Thanks to Shakespeare’s aphorism, I am inclined to think of planning as futile.

Um

What is a word you feel that too many people use?

Hesitant speakers use grunty sounds as placeholders. It’s inelegant.

Worse is a habit my fellow Boomers got into of inserting “like” in mid-thought.

Our sentences flowed as smoothly as muddied molasses. “It’s (like) you know man,” we’d say incoherently.

Made the guy pausing with an “um” seem genius.

Hominids

The skull’s lower jaw has particularly confounded scientists because it combines features of Homo sapiens and another ancient human relative — the mysterious Denisovans. And like Denisovans, HLD 6 did not seem to have a true chin.
The find has sparked questions about a pivotal point in the evolutionary history of early human relatives, or hominins, that began in the late Middle Pleistocene.
CNN Science Wonder Theory newsletter

The human timeline has gotten so very much more complicated. As archaeologists uncover new finds, we are introduced to remote ancestors we never knew.

In my elementary school days, I had reason to believe that the evolution was simpler. I wasn’t paying much attention, of course, but history seemed within my grasp.

As I went on in my education, there seemed to be fewer links in the human chain than are being discovered.

There was always a mysterious “missing link” that I assumed scientists understood.

It’s not a complaint, but boy, is it puzzling. Who were great²⁰⁰⁰ grandma and grandpa? Wiil we ever really know them?