These footnotes got a little out of hand but the point is this is cool music.

Last night I bought "Act 1- New Game" by Phillip Leon (son of writer extraordinaire* Andrew Leon). Andrew says it's good music to write to, and it is that -- it's got soundtrack written all over it -- but it's also just plain good music to do anything to.  You could listen to this music and go for a walk, or listen to this music and rail against rich people, or listen to this music and kneel for the National Anthem, or listen to this music and dream of the day when society finally stops letting rich f***s destroy the world and we can all be a little happier.



You can listen to the music and be a little happier, and for just $5** you can get the music for yourself and make Phillip Leon both a little happier, and a lot more likely to keep on making cool music like this.  Go buy your own copy here. 

*WHEN IS BROTHERS KEEPER COMING OUT ANDREW FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!

**Come on it's FIVE BUCKS. Even I spent that much and I am the cheapest living human being.***

*** that's true. I won't buy a brown belt to wear with my brown pants because what am I the queen of England here?

OK these are pretty incredible.

Phillip Leon, son of inestimable writer Andrew Leon, has written a bunch of incredible songs. They're what I would call techno-inspired instrumentals, reminding me of if Vangelis teamed up with Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  My favorite so far is Eternal Voyage, but check them all out. They're incredible.  If talent were gravity the world would be tipping towards the Leon family.

Hey how about "The Man Comes Around" covered by one guy on five tubas?

sure why not




I actually found this song last June but set it to delay post as a birthday present from past me to future me.

If you think the way I do, you will inevitably end up super-rich. You'll see why. (Question Of The Day)

How happy are clams, really?






Not very, judging by that. And, yes, I know that Marcel is not a clam, unless he is, in which case, I'm right and you're wrong, but it doesn't matter anyway because seashells can't really talk, and I would know the difference also if I'd followed through on the very first career I ever planned to have -- oceanographer -- but I didn't which is why right now I'm sitting and wearing jeans and a t-shirt and typing on my blog while I wait to drive up to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to take a deposition and then drive back home, meaning that 90% of my work day will consist of "driving and listening to podcasts," which isn't a bad life because while oceanographers get to be outside in the sun and surf, my worst occupational hazard is carpal tunnel syndrome while oceanographers' is sharks.

The other day, I tucked Mr F into his bin of blankets in his closet (long story)(actually not-- it's pretty self-explanatory) and said "There. Happy as a clam." That made me think two things:

1. Why didn't I go with snug as a bug in a rug? What's wrong with me? and
2. Why do we assume that clams are happy, or edible?

According to the site "The Phrase Finder," which ought to know, the expression "happy as a clam" comes from one of two sources: Either it's because clams look like they are smiling




I suppose, a little, but that could also be a clam being aghast



Or it could be a clam pirating the superfamous emoticon I invented, "Righteous Indignation":





You can see the similarities there, right? The point of that being, I'm going to have to sue clams for copyright infringement. *cracks knuckles, mutters 'let's do this thing'* .

Those people at that phrase site disregard the Smiling Clam idea and instead say that the expression actually comes from the phrase Happy as a clam at high tide, which is when clams are free from predators, they say, and they trace that expression back to 1844, which makes me wonder, then, why a clam? Why opt to talk about clams being happy because they're free from predators? Why wouldn't the expression be happy as fox when the hounds are asleep, which would be perfectly serviceable? Was it because we already assigned foxes slyness in the animal emotions world and all animals only get one emotion?

(E.g.: Dogs: friendly. Chickens: fearful. Pigs: lazy. Cows: inanimate. Wabbits: wascally.)

And, people who investigate phrases, maybe both versions are true: maybe people thought clams looked happy, and asked themselves why clams were so happy, and then decided that it was because of high tide, and the tide coming in made them happy. Who knows? They were very simplistic people back then, not all sophisticated like we are now.



Pioneers, as I've noted, were reputed to have hard lives, what with typhoid and small pox and Indian attacks and railroads, and... um... sod houses. Whatever. They were reputed to have hard lives but in reality they sat around reading magazines about kids being taught stuff by guys in an alley behind a hotel, and now we find out that they had nothing better to do than sit around and discuss the emotional lives of clams, which, it turns out, actually exist: Clams have emotional lives.

Provided, of course, that (a) you mean by "emotional lives" "having nerves" and (b) you are willing to take the word of a bunch of people on a chat room debating whether or not fish and clams have feelings. Everytime I feel as though maybe I'm not living such a productive life, what with the driving and podcasting and all, I remind myself that I didn't spend a bunch of time creating a web forum to debate whether clams have feelings.

(Of course, I did once ask a web forum to tell me what might go wrong with my eating a 100-day-old Twinkie, but the web forum did not respond; also not responding? Doctor and The Medics, who never answered my email asking that same question.)

The web forum answer about The Secret Lives Of Clams that I liked best was this demonstration of scientific rigor:

Clams do respond to stimuli, but that doesn't nessecarily mean that they can "feel" anything. You can build simple robots with good wiring that makes them respond to stimuli in a similar way to clams (having said that, i don't know if anyone's done a wiring diagram of a clam before, they might be more complex than i think - im no expert). I would expect that you'd need something a lot more complex than that, more like a brain, in order to have anything close to sentience (however, clams taste disgusting and are hardly an important part of a diet, so i like to use the excuse of being a vegetarian to just steer away from the things regardless!).

That is the single-most-helpful thing a scientist has done for me all day: declared that clams are disgusting. Now I have science backing me up, so everyone who believes that velociraptors actually existed also has to believe that clams are disgusting. Believe one, believe 'em all. That's my motto.

As always, though, with science, we have to go back to music to answer all the hard questions. So here's "Clams Have Feelings, Too" by NOFX:





A little thrashy for me. I like this better:




That's "Do The Clam" by Elvis Presley. That seems to me to not give a conclusive answer to the question, so I went for a tiebreaker by trying to find the classic song "Surf Clam" by The Mel-Tones. Only I couldn't find it, so I settled for "Kung Fu Saturdays" by that group:




From which I conclude that clams can do kung fu, and that we all probably should be afraid of them because, I also learned, clams can move:





And so it's probably not very much longer until we are all besieged by Happy Ninja Clams, which is the name of the cartoon series I am now going to pitch to the Disney Network and I will be a bajillionaire, which is a real number of dollars to have, and I'm going to have them. See you suckers later!

UPDATE: I realized why that sounds like a bajillion dollar idea: It's because there are already Ninja Turtles. But the pre-existing ninjas are not happy, and they are not bivalves. So, in a way, it's like my idea doesn't infringe on that idea at all. And if it makes you happy, I will change it to Happy Kung-Fu Clams, which equally rips off the ninja turtles and Hong Kong Fooey, and if I know anything about the law, the rule is that if you rip off everybody equally, you've ripped off nobody. *crosses fingers, hopes nobody sues him for anything written in this post.*

(You can buy that Righteous Indignation t-shirt here.)

Don't stop... writing the plurals of words however you want to write them. Reach for those stars! (Awesome Covers of Already Awesome Songs.)

When I got up this morning and had to get the Babies! ready for a rare Saturday visit from their therapists -- we call them their "friends" and encourage them to be excited -- I opted to try to get Mr F pumped up for what's essentially a day of being pestered by singing about his day-to-come, to the tune of Don't Stop Believing. The lyrics were:

Just a little guy
Has to get up early, why?
Friends are coming here to play
So let's get up.

Sweet, right? It's like I channeled Steve Perry. But that got me in the mood to hear "Don't Stop Believing", which I think might actually be the best song ever... I haven't made up my mind yet... only I didn't want to hear the original, I wanted to hear covers of the original. And, as you'd expect, there were covers a-plenty.

I began with what I knew would be out there: A ukulele version of the song. There's tons of those; America is filled with ukulele players, judging by Youtube. This was the best of them:



Then I went for classic Petra Haden, who, prior to today, had the absolute best cover of Don't Stop Believing I've ever heard:



And I'm not including Glee's cover in this list because I'm sort of Glee-d out. Petra Haden's cover is incredible, though, and I thought it'd never be topped except that it was bested -- [SPOILER ALERT!] twice. First by this, which starts out rough but stick with it:



And then, by this next video, which I'll introduce by saying that I wanted to see if it was possible that someone had covered this song on the harp, and it's not only possible, but phenomenal:



I played that about four or five times, with the results being that I was pumped up to clean up the house, put Batman shorts and a pirate shirt on Mr F, get Mr Bunches into his Spider-Man shirt, mop the floor, and even vacuum. This song is awesome, in whatever version it takes.

Yes, whatever version:




In conclusion, I'd like to note this: When I first started writing this post, I had the song as Don't Stop Believin', but I thought "that must be wrong," even though it's the way I always wrote the title to the song and I've always believed that was the title. I changed it because there's lots of things I always do and have always believed even though I know they're wrong, like how I write the plural of nacho -- I write it nachoes even though I know that's wrong because it looks right. So I just write nachoes that way and ignore the fact that it's wrong, because who cares? It's not like I use it in formal writing:

Dear Supreme Court and/or Pope: Would you like to come over for the Oscars? We're serving nachoes, if that's a plus. Signed, me.

I don't do that. I'd probably just call them.

But when I started posting this, I thought "It's probably not called Don't Stop Believin' " so I'd better not post it that way, and I wrote believing instead, only to then actually go google it and find out I was wrong about being wrong, or that I'd actually been right when I thought I was wrong, or however you want to say it, but I'm too lazy to go back and change it.

The moral of the story is: Now I'm kind of hungry for nachoes.