Years ago, Weird Al Yankovic did a video to one of his songs. I don’t remember the name, but it was a 50’s type honky-tonk Elvis croon in 6 time. It had lines like “I’d rather lick all the toilets in Grand Central Station clean with my tongue than to spend one more minute with you.” Each line got grosser and grosser of course.
Anyway, at one point during the video, during the toilet line, his face appears in the middle of the screen, surrounded by toilets. 6 of them. And they swirled around his head, just like the cheesy camera technique used for 70’s variety shows where they had scenes of fields of flowers swirling around somebody like Steve Lawrence singing a real schmaltzy romantic song. I don’t remember if the toilets were flushing as they swirled around his head. That would have been a mind-blowing Coriolis effect for sure.
Anyway, I get flashbacks to this scene whenever I hear any pop or semi-pop song that has the “sentimental bridge.” You know, the music gets softer, like the singer is being introspective…the equivalent of having the venue go dark as 6 spotlights shine down and then converge on them. But with swirling toilets. I guess that’s how jaded and cynical I’ve gotten all the years.
OK, this is really more of a pointless post that should go in MPSIMS, but the swirling toilets will occupy my mind’s eye until the day I die. Is there an actual NAME for this camera technique?
and damn Weird Al Yankovic to hell for the swirling toilets.
I think I was about 25 years old when I realized what “I’m stranded all alone at the gas station of love and I have to use the self-service pumps” meant…
I used to perform that song at open-mike sessions at local bars. The most important, and also the most difficult part of performing the song live is keeping a straight face while you sing it. You’re supposed to be miserable, after all! When the whole audience is busting a gut, it’s very hard to keep a straight face.
Anyway, I had sung the song dozens of times at one bar, and had always gotten very good response. So I performed it at another bar - a country & western place. The following week, the bartender pulled me aside and asked me to not perform “that obscene song” again, because some customers had been offended. And honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about, so I just said “okay”. It happened that I didn’t perform the song that night, but it wasn’t intentional. Despite having performed the song numerous times, that line had always slipped under my radar. Just a bit too subtle for me at the time, I guess.
Sometime later, I was performing the song in an informal setting, for a group of people - mostly my parents’ age … from my church :eek: These people were listening so attentively to every word I sang, and as the line in question came out of my mouth I suddenly realized what I was singing. It was all I could do to maintain my composure and finish the song, desperately hoping that it had gone over everybody else’s heads. I was probably 23 or 24 at the time.
