Saturday, October 2, 2010

Happy to be stuck with me

So one of the many ways in which Jef is the most tolerant spouse on the planet is that he puts up with my singing.

It’s not so much that my singing itself is objectionable—I have a reasonably pleasant, if entirely average, singing voice and I manage to stay on key most of the time—it’s WHAT I sing. Which is a little bit of everything.

It seems I’m utterly infested with earworms. I have this tendency to have just about anything I see, hear or do remind me of one song or another, which puts the song in my head, where it gets stuck. And when songs gets stuck, I have to sing them.

Certain activities seem particularly prone to shake songs loose from the darker recesses of my brain. Like driving. Going past the Beck Road exit on I-696? “Soy un perdido, I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me…”

Showering. One recent morning, Jef was treated to a medley of tunes while I showered: “Better than a Dream” from the musical Bells Are Ringing, a little bit of Van Halen, a little bit of Cake, “Chinese Takeaway” by The Adicts ("Woo! woo! woo!") and, inexplicably, the Dreidel Song. (It’s not Hanukkah and I’m not Jewish.)

Drying my hair. I just finished drying my hair. While doing so, I sang the old “Enjoli” perfume jingle (“I can bring home the bacon! Fry it up in a pan! And never, never let you forget you’re a man…”), the Fountains of Wayne cover of Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” (I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Britney’s version, so I must be singing the cover), Van Halen’s “Jump” (which morphed into Roddy Frame’s cover of “Jump,” which morphed into Aztec Camera’s “Oblivious”), Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” and a few others I’ve already forgotten.

It’s a football Saturday, so I also have a random medley of every fight song I’ve ever known running in the background. I’m partial to Michigan State University’s, of course, but I know a number of others well enough to sing them.

It’s no wonder I have a headache.

6 comments:

Jacqueline Haney said...

Now I am waiting for this to show up in a strip.......

Patty, I enjoyed meeting you at Jef's reunion and am enjoying your blog-sitting as well!

Ironjen said...

I am thinking that when Jef gets back to blogging, you need to start your own!! This ear worms thing happens to me too!

A said...

"We're loyal to you, Union High ..." (Does that help?)

--She who is typically the Answer Gal when Patty calls to ask "Who sang this?"

Marc said...

Will happily sign on to the Patty fan club

Jacqueline Haney said...

I sent this link to a co-worker named Jeff Martell, fondly referred to as The One-Man Earworm Factory for his penchant for coming out with odd snippets of songs. He's actually got a nice voice--his "other job" is as a folk singer. Besides being amused, he also mentioned that the "stage name" he had tried to assume in High School was........Jeff Mallet. Apparently the name Martell means 'hammerlike'.

Jim Smith II said...

While I love your musical selections (Beck, Cake, Fountains, et. al.) my wife does this too and it makes me crazy...

BTW - Add me to this list of those that suggest you get your own blog when Jef comes back!