On and On...

Nothing like a little Tom Jones to keep your day going. She’s a lady. Whoa, whoa, whoa, she’s a lady…three cheers for the open-shirted Welsh wailer, as he’s sometimes called. I’m going to finish my editing tonight, because TL made some snarky comment about my productivity, or recent lack thereof, today. So the best way to silence that is to finish what I’ve got to do.

However, as I’m editing, I’ve also got TCM on in the background (Tom Jones was earlier today), and they are on a roll tonight. First it was Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and now it’s The Wizard of Oz. Two very different, but equally fantastic, movies. I think it may have been years since I last sat down and watched The Wizard of Oz all the way through, but it totally brings back childhood memories. One of the three major networks (I can’t remember which one – I want to say CBS…?) used to show it every year, before the advent of DVDs and VCRs that allowed you to watch whatever movies you wanted, whenever you wanted. I remember being about five or six years old, watching it with my parents and my brother. It was a big treat for me to stay up that late, and I remember feeling so scared during the part where Dorothy is trapped alone in the castle of the Wicked Witch. I also have some vague memory of getting angry with my mom when she told me that everything was going to be okay – something about how she just didn’t understand how scared Dorothy really was. Of course, my mom, being a very compassionate woman, understood completely, but I was unable to see that through the intense grief and distress of a six-year-old who had difficulty with suspension of disbelief.

Given that approximately 24 years have elapsed, I think I’ll be able to make it through that part on my own this time – fortunately. The line “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” has never resonated quite so much with me, however.

The Munchkins (credited as “The Singer Midgets”, which just sounds so wrong) do freak me out a little, though. How many helium balloons do you think they had to go through to get them all to sound like that? And I don’t know who choreographed The Lollipop Guild, but I’d like an explanation as to what the heck that’s about.

As a wee child, I had my own version of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”. I would, in the midst of what my parents referred to as my “Troubadour Phase”, unselfconsciously belt out “FOLLERY JELLERY CROW! FOLLERY JELLERY CROW! FOLLERY, FOLLERY, FOLLERY, FOLLERY, FOLLERY, FOLLERY JELLERY CROW!” with great enthusiasm whenever the mood struck me. My repertoire was actually quite a bit more extensive, including such original songs as “My Fox” and “The Delta Song”, but that’s the only one of my song stylings that’s really relevant at the moment.

I know – this is a whole artistic side of me that you never knew existed, right? I get that a lot.