Stir-Up Sunday, and a Throwaway
Today is Stir-Up Sunday, after the first words of the collect for the First Sunday in Advent, as given in the Book of Common Prayer.
Such being the case, the Young Idea and self made a quadruple batch of plum pudding, a pious work if ever there was one. We began at high noon. and they weren't ready to steam until 3:30. Steaming takes six hours, and even with a modest quadruple batch--it was sextuple in my heyday--the steaming has to be done in two rounds. Whatever will I do when she goes off to college, an evil day which fast approacheth? Perhaps take the following Monday as a personal day thenceforth.
To get us into the spirit--not that yesternight's inch of snow hadn't already done its wee bit to put us in festive mood--we turned the Kid's retro radio to a station playing nonstop Christmas music. It's surprising how often the station repeated certain songs, while ignoring others. It's not that they omitted all reverent music; O Holy Night got its fair share of airtime, for instance. But I'll Be Home for Christmas is a bit old-fashioned for a folk that no longer can remember living through the real thing. And Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas have been played so often, they've become the subject of parody (ahem).
It was during the second or third performance of Winter Wonderland that the following lyric popped unbidden into the brain. For those of my readers who missed my college career, I ought to mention that, while the student body was populated almost entirely by Pecksniffs, two in particular stood out as self-important, pretentious pigs: one Bahar (accent on the second syllable) Gidwani (hard g; accent on the second syllable), of Columbus, O., and one Tom Magnell, of Scarsdale, N.Y., who would have lost his shirt if he'd ever betted anyone he knew the lyrics to The Nightmare Song. Unfortunately, I met both of them within a week of arriving at college, and they soured the subsequent four years for me.
But their names! For reasons too deep for words, Bahar Gidwani and Tom Magnell struck me as names to conjure with; I've used them ever since for dummy lyrics, to fill lacunae in works-in-progress.
Today's off-the-cuff lyric, to the tune of the release of Winter Wonderland:
I abominate Bahar Gidwani;
He, in turn, abominates Magnell;
By the Law of Transitive Abhorrence,
I detest the latter pig, as well.
Later on, we'll perspire, etc.
Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov
Meanwhile, I'm working on something to the tune of It's Still Rock and/or Roll to Me, which is bogged down at the moment, owing to my lack of familiarity with the original song and the tedium of the subject I've chosen. I was going on about it to my Muse the other day, when she suddenly shouted, "Oh, f'God's sake, who gives a rat's ass?" I'll bet she never spoke to Arthur Guiterman that way!
Such being the case, the Young Idea and self made a quadruple batch of plum pudding, a pious work if ever there was one. We began at high noon. and they weren't ready to steam until 3:30. Steaming takes six hours, and even with a modest quadruple batch--it was sextuple in my heyday--the steaming has to be done in two rounds. Whatever will I do when she goes off to college, an evil day which fast approacheth? Perhaps take the following Monday as a personal day thenceforth.
To get us into the spirit--not that yesternight's inch of snow hadn't already done its wee bit to put us in festive mood--we turned the Kid's retro radio to a station playing nonstop Christmas music. It's surprising how often the station repeated certain songs, while ignoring others. It's not that they omitted all reverent music; O Holy Night got its fair share of airtime, for instance. But I'll Be Home for Christmas is a bit old-fashioned for a folk that no longer can remember living through the real thing. And Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas have been played so often, they've become the subject of parody (ahem).
It was during the second or third performance of Winter Wonderland that the following lyric popped unbidden into the brain. For those of my readers who missed my college career, I ought to mention that, while the student body was populated almost entirely by Pecksniffs, two in particular stood out as self-important, pretentious pigs: one Bahar (accent on the second syllable) Gidwani (hard g; accent on the second syllable), of Columbus, O., and one Tom Magnell, of Scarsdale, N.Y., who would have lost his shirt if he'd ever betted anyone he knew the lyrics to The Nightmare Song. Unfortunately, I met both of them within a week of arriving at college, and they soured the subsequent four years for me.
But their names! For reasons too deep for words, Bahar Gidwani and Tom Magnell struck me as names to conjure with; I've used them ever since for dummy lyrics, to fill lacunae in works-in-progress.
Today's off-the-cuff lyric, to the tune of the release of Winter Wonderland:
I abominate Bahar Gidwani;
He, in turn, abominates Magnell;
By the Law of Transitive Abhorrence,
I detest the latter pig, as well.
Later on, we'll perspire, etc.
Lyric © 2007 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov
Meanwhile, I'm working on something to the tune of It's Still Rock and/or Roll to Me, which is bogged down at the moment, owing to my lack of familiarity with the original song and the tedium of the subject I've chosen. I was going on about it to my Muse the other day, when she suddenly shouted, "Oh, f'God's sake, who gives a rat's ass?" I'll bet she never spoke to Arthur Guiterman that way!
posted by npetrikov at 3:58 PM
2 Comments:
I did not miss your college career (just my own), so I recall another Gidwanian throw-away from thirty- odd years back, to the tune of Hooray for Captain Spaulding:
I hate Bahar Gidwani
And Ira Gershwin's "Swanee"
And people who are scrawny
And people who are fat
This included, by implication, a rotund Marine, also immortalized at the time:
When Gately isn't irking people with his facial foliage
He's irritiating everybody with his roly-poliage
Hearts full of youth, hearts full of truth....
God, what a memory you've got. You really must drink more.
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