Today's Musical Selection: "The Grooviest Girl in the World" by the Fun & Games
Hello there, all! It's Friday at last, which means it's time to prattle on in aimless and disjointed fashion. Woohoo!
Today I'd like to begin with last night's Jeopardy! episode, which was fascinating. It was a case study in the ongoing saga of Alex and Ken. Allow me to share some notes, which I jotted down as I watched:
- Alex announced that some people had questions about Ken Jeopardy's performance, and they wanted to test him for steroids. The audience laughed a little, but Alex was clearly looking for a bigger laugh, so he staggered around in search of a punchline before finally giving up. It was pathetic.
- Ken correctly answered a question about the movie "Scarface." Alex then proceeded to do a really bad Pacino impression: "Say hello to my little friend!" Ken replied, "After the show, okay?"
- Ken swept the "Stupid Answers" category, and the audience applauded. Alex scolded them: "Do not applaud someone for running the 'Stupid Answers' category. It says more about you than it does about him."
- During the interview portion, Alex described one of the contestants as a "nice lookin' girl." It was an uncomfortable moment for all concerned. Now, it's certainly not unheard of for hosts to flirt with female contestants. Chuck Woolery calls female contestants "honey" and "darlin'." Richard Dawson even used to kiss the women on "Family Feud." But both of them seem like natural flirts. It seems like part of their natural personality. But when Alex does it, it's like seeing your elderly bachelor uncle hitting on your girlfriend: awkward and disturbing.
- Ken blew a question on purpose! He said the former captial of Delaware was Wilmington, giggling all the way. He's clearly getting bored with winning all the time. If either of his competitors appeared competent, I think he might have bowed out tonight.
- KJ clearly does not listen to classic rock. He didn't even guess on any of the questions in the "Sentimental Rock" category.
- Same category: Alex read the REO in "REO Speedwagon" as if it were a word, rather than spelling it out. He corrected himself, saying, "I'm tired here, folks. I used to drive a REO." This struck me as unlikely, since I remembered the REO nameplate as collapsing in the Depression. But while they stopped making cars in '36, they kept making trucks under the REO name until the '70s. So it's possible that young Alex used to pilot a REO truck. Useless trivia for the day.
- Before Final Jeopardy, Alex once again dared Ken to aim for the one-day money record (he's tied it twice). So, of course, Ken tied it again, leading Alex to utter the clench-jawed declaration, "You're doing this just to bug me!" As tempting as that would be, I'm sure that's not it. I have two theories on why Ken refuses to beat the record:
1. Ken is a humble soul at heart, and he doesn't want to make more of a spectacle of himself than he has to. He doesn't want to put every record out of reach; he's just winning easily because he can. But if he were really that humble, I'd think he'd have won by now. Which leads me to...
2. He's trying to leave himself with one challenge. He's already smashed every other record in sight. He hasn't had a serious challenge in weeks. He needs to leave one mountain intact. This theory will, I believe, be proven if he finally allows himself to beat the record at some point, and then loses the next day. Wait and see.
So what did we learn? We learned that Ken is doing an admirable job of remaining himself in this increasingly surreal situation. By contrast, Alex is becoming increasingly deranged. Ken's ongoing success has disoriented Mr. Trebek. Having been relegated to second banana, Alex is resorting to increasingly desperate tactics to get attention. I mean, bad impressions of Tony Montana? Come on, Alex.
Later that evening, I saw the latest MTV get-out-the-vote commercial. And I must say, I have dire concerns about their effort. The whole "Vote for Something" slogan is a decent way to encourage voting without pushing a partisan agenda. But before displaying the "Vote for Something" slogan, you see a variety of things that you could presumably vote for. In this commercial, we see a shot of a clear-cut forest, followed by a variety of environment-related things we could vote for. And one of them says, "Vote for Forest Fires." Vote for forest fires?! What the hell? Now, granted, I don't know of anyone who's running on a pro-forest-fire platform, at least not this election cycle. But still... MTV? What the hell is this?
Finally, I want to acquaint everyone a bit with the above-referenced musical selection. "The Grooviest Girl in the World" was a minor hit in the late '60s by a garage-rock band from Houston named the Fun and Games. It's a fun good-time sing-along song, but I particularly enjoy it for its bizarrely stilted lyrics and tortured rhymes:
Sha la-la la la la la-la la la la la la-la-la-la-la, hey!
Sha la-la la la la la-la la la la la la-la-la-la-la
There she was standing over by the telephone
Oh what a beautiful girl
Standing in the phone booth
Giving me a sweet look
Makes me want to give her a whirl
Hey, little Judy in disguise
Lucy in the sky
Come fly with me in my balloon...
Cause you're the grooviest girl in the world
You're a feminine portait of grace
You're the grooviest girl in the world
And I'm a guy with impeccable taste
Ahhhh, ahhhhhhh, yeah!
Walking such a long way
Talking to her all day
Sipping on a strawberry fizz
Playing with her long hair
Saying how much I care
Telling her how groovy she is
Hey, little Judy in disguise
Lucy in the sky
Come fly with me in my balloon...
'Cause you're the grooviest girl in the world
You're a feminine portrait of grace
You're the grooviest girl in the world
And I'm a guy with impeccable taste
Ahhhh, ahhhhhhh, yeah!
Can you imagine describing a woman as a "feminine portrait of grace" and then calling her "the grooviest girl in the world"? I love that. The juxtaposition tickles me.
And with that, it's downhill to the weekend. See you Monday!
Posted by Fred at July 23, 2004 03:29 PMFun and Games' "You're The Grooviest Girl in the World" is featured on not one, but two bubblegum music collections on two labels. Even without that, we'd have to disagree with your description of them as a "garage" band. They had too clean, and too bouncy a sound for that tag. IMHO, they captured the upbeat, hook-laden style of Boyce and Hart. In fact, when I first heard it, I thought perhaps it was Tommy and Bobby under another name. The "impeccable taste-aah" line makes my wife and me smile every time we hear it. What chutzpah! You're certainly right about it being catchy. Play it in the morning, and you won't get it out of your head all day, unless you follow it up with "Sugar, Sugar" or "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" or something like that. Ron Dante (lead singer of the Archies, the Cuff-Links and any number of well-known jingles) says that the music industry types who belittle bubble gum music are generally folks angry that they can't write anything as commercially successful. Although POCO didn't enjoy the success theys sought, they appeal to us for much the same reason: they bring a smile to our faces, get our toes to tapping, and usually have us singing along. As for Fun and Games, I do wonder what they went on to after their one flirtation with fame. I know what our guys did after our two unsuccessful singles. The bass/keyboard player/vocalist is a law professor and Liberal. The drummer, last we heard, was selling business machines. The rythm guitarist/vocalist became an Air Force officer and was killed in an air mishap. I became a deejay, then radio-TV News Director, Congressional Legislative Director, award-winning speechwriter in the first Reagan Administration, writer/editor at the Voice of America, and retired Federal employee, also qualifying for retirement from the Army after more than 23 years in the USAR. So, I never fulfilled my dream of a hit record, but my wife of 39 years and I think we and our two children have been blessed with far more than that is worth.
Rick