Fuck You Marlo Thomas! Fuck you and your shrilly feminist screed[sup]*[/sup] of “Free to Be You and Me”. (For those of you under 30-something, “Free to Be You and Me” was an hour-long cartoon/record album where Marlo Thomas got a fairly impressive array of talent to do a “Gender roles are meaningless, dammit!” theme. But (at least filtered through 30 years of memory) it was about as subtle as a sledge hammer in the face. And it was annoying. It was filled with songs that latch onto your brain and never go away.
Fuck you, Brain. Fuck you and your ability to a) dig up shit that was 30 years buried and B) play it incessantly on my mental radio. Once you (my brain) latch onto something, you hang onto it like a starving journalist on a Kennedy scandal
I woke up yesterday with the theme to “Free to Be You and Me” running through my brain. It was sung by some crappy neo-folk group like The Doodletown Pipers, The New Seekers, Up With People or The New Christy Minstrels. (I just checked…it was the remarkably useless New Seekers…at least the old Seekers did “Georgy Girl”)
Anyway, I wake up with the braying refrain in my brain:
*
There’s a land that I see
Where the children are free
And I see it ain’t far
to this land from where we are
Take my hand, come along
lend your voice to my song
Sing my song, take my hand
and we’ll beeeeeeEEEEEEE[sup]EEEEEEE[sup]EEEEEE[/sup][/sup]
in a land
where the rivers run free
in a land
with a green coun-try
in a land
with a shining sea
in a land
where the children are free
and you and me
are free to be
you and meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
*
It won’t go out of my brain. I tried and tried. I tried singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” Didn’t work, they mixed with not entirely sucessful results:
*
in a land
where the rivers run free
in a land
with a green coun-try
in a land
where I can see
a little silhouette-o of a man
Scaramouche! Scaramouche!
Can you do the Fandago?
Thunderbolts and Lightning
Very very frightining to
you and me are free to be
you and meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
*
That didn’t work at all, and somewhere, somewhere, Freddy Mercury weeps.
So I bang my head against a wall some more to try to get that “and you and me are free to be you and meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” refrain out of my head. And it worked. But not the way I would have chosen.
Another song from “Free to be” popped up instead. Marlo Thomas warbled this little tune about how gender-based career choices are irrelevant in a post-industrial society. Again, true, but un-fucking-subtle. And the lyrics? Well, they’re just plain retarded. And annoying.
*Bill
Told Jill
That he really liked to cook
Jill
Told Bill
That she could bait a real fishhook
So they made eewy-gooey
chocolate cake
sticky-licky
and they gobbled it and giggled
and they sat by the water
and they fished in the river
while the dead squirmy-wormies
twitched and wiggled. (this may not be quite right)
Singing
Glad to have a friend like you
Fair and fun and skipping free
Glad to have a friend like you
And glad you just like me.
*
And that’s even worse, because it’s so easy to screw with that I can’t finish the song. I just write more verses. Each one more horribly wrong than the last. The “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” verse was the most evil that my brain has come up with so far. I shall surely go to Hell for it:
*Carol
Told Ted
That it was lots of fun to swap!
Bob
Told Alice
He liked spankings with riding crops!
So they got into Kama-Sutra
bed
Orgy-worgy
and they screwed and they licked and fucked and giggled
and they fucked on the floors
in the den, in the kitchen, in the car
while the squirmy-spermies wriggled
Singing
Glad to have a fuck like you
Wet and warm, sexually free
Glad you are my fuck buddy too
and glad that you’ll fuck me.
*
I am so going to Hell. My brain came up with that on it’s own. I disavow any responsiblity. All of it. (Maybe my brain will go to Hell and not the rest of me?)
There were a couple of Science Fiction stories about songs that latched onto your brain and drove you mad (Kuttner’s wonderful “Nothing But Gingerbread Left” and Leiber’s “Rum-titti-titti-tum-TA-te” to name two). I now know what the victims in those stories felt like.
Brain: it’s been 30 years since I heard this crap. I didn’t like it then (Carole King’s “Really Rosie” was done during the same era, but was far better done) and I don’t like it now. Why dig this shit up? What triggered it? What are you trying to tell me? You’re playing it on radio FNRS night and day. How 'bout some Ella Fitzgerald doing Cole Porter for a change. Ok? Please?
Fenris, going slowly-woahly mad
[sup]*[/sup]I’m not complaining about feminism, equal rights for women, or anything like that. The key here is shrillness. And bad, bad rhymes (sticky-licky?).