Any Song, Any Time

We’ve got the holiday spirit going on around our house.

My love is roaming around the house humming Feliz Navidad.

Only on the chorus, he’s singing, “I really wish you had hairy fish nuts…”

You can’t make that up.

Feliz Navidad, everybody!

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To-may-to, To-mah-to

Mr. R. makes me laugh.  I love that about him.

He came home from work today in a bit of a snit.  I met him in the driveway as he was backing in and watched as he clipped the gate with his passenger side mirror.  Climbing out of the truck he exclaimed to me, “Did you see those girls?”

I looked up and down the street and shook my head.

“They were just walking down the sidewalk,” he said, accusingly.

“Get out!  Someone had the unmitigated gall to walk down the sidewalk?” I teased, still not seeing anyone.

“There I was, backing in to the driveway, and they just sauntered along behind the truck like there was no one else in the world.  I was stuck halfway in the street and another car came along.  How stupid can people be?!” he ranted.

“Bad day, babe?” I asked, smiling.

“No, I didn’t have a bad day.  I’m just tired of stupid people!”  Mr. R. returned.

I snickered a little.  “Sorry you’re feeling grumpy today, love.”

“I’m not grumpy!” he countered.  “I’m just pointing shit out.”

No more snickering.  I erupted into gales of laughter.

Fair enough, Mr. R.  Fair enough.

Say What?!

In the interest of expanding our vocabularies, I present to you the Word of the Day: Mondegreen.

A mondegreen is defined as a misinterpretation of a phrase due to homophony.  In regular English, that means misunderstanding spoken (or sung) words because they sound like something else.

Which brings me to my topic, misunderstood song lyrics. Very popular songs become hilarious when well-intentioned people simply get the words wrong.  We’ve all heard the Jimmy Hendrix classic line, “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”

I have always loved Elton John’s Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting, but let’s be honest, back in the day he didn’t always effectively enunciate his words.  For the line, I may sink a little drink and shout out “She’s with me!”, I always thought it was Have a little drink and shout out, “Lemonade!”  The first time he heard me sing that, Mr. R. laughed so hard he nearly lost proper bladder and bowel function.

We spent a whole evening laughing together about all the songs we’ve gotten wrong, or heard other people get wrong.  For example, in the sixties, Johnny Rivers had a song, Secret Agent Man.  Mr. R. admitted that he thought the title was Secret Asian Man.  He was also a huge fan of that Aerosmith song, Doodle Lucky Lady.  

Mr. R. works with a lot of twenty-somethings in the news business.  Yeah, they hire them while they still know everything.  Anyhoo, there was the darlin’ who insisted that in the 1985 song, Paul Young sang Every time you go away, you take a piece of meat with you.  There was an argument with a coworker about a popular song by Gladys Knight & the Pips.  She was certain that it was called Big Black Train to Georgia.  Google came to the rescue on that one.

Now Mr. R. often sings the wrong lyrics on purpose for laughs.  “Any song, any time, anywhere,” he says.  I’ll share some examples from his holiday repertoire.  Dedicated to one of his co-workers is the immortal Have Yourself a Larry Little Christmas.  And you’ll undoubtedly recognize the timeless Christmas classic, I stuck my finger in her rump-pu-pum-pum.

I’ll leave you with the link to a hilarious A-Z list of misheard lyrics.  I triple-dog-dare you not to laugh.

Let’s pee in the corner, Let’s pee in the spotlight, Losing my religion.  Bah-hah-ha!

But Not This One

Several years ago, Mr. R. and I took a cruise to the Western Caribbean.  We had an absolute blast!

Key West was our first stop, but it was not ideal.  We were in port from 7:30 am until noon and, simply put, Key West does not do mornings.  It’s more of a sunset kind of place.  Who wants to do a Pub Crawl excursion at sunrise?  We opted just to walk around town and do a little shopping.  At the time, Mr. R. was all about collecting shot glasses (he’s since gotten over it) so we stopped in a little souvenir place to browse.  He ended up purchasing a cool memento of our visit for about $5.

The next stop was Mexico.  We docked at this little pier in the middle of nowhere.  You had to take a cab to Playa del Carmen.  But the place had lots of vendors for those less adventurous souls who didn’t want to bother finding a way into town.  We checked out the blankets, baskets, marble chess sets, and other items for sale.  Then we came across a guy with shot glasses.  Mr. R. carefully perused his wares until he found exactly the one he wanted.

“How much?” he asked the vendor.

“Twelve dollars,” came the reply.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mr. R. objected.  “I bought a shot glass in Key West yesterday for $5.”

“Si,” countered the shrewd businessman.  “But not this one.”

Mr. R.ism: Funny. He Doesn’t Look Dudeist.

 

“Guess what?” Mr. R. exclaimed after we got home from work yesterday.

“I have no idea,”  I replied.

“You’re looking at an ordained minister,” he said, flashing a huge, satisfied grin.

“Ordained minister?” I questioned. 

And that’s when he produced this certificate.  My husband, Mr. R., joins over 220,000 ordained ministers of Church of the Latter-Day Dude.  He is, in fact, an ordained Dudeist Priest.  Meaning that he can legally officiate at weddings and funerals in most jurisdictions. 

This description comes directly from the official website of Dudeism, dudeism.com:

Come join the slowest-growing religion in the world – Dudeism. An ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness, practices as little as possible, and above all, uh…lost my train of thought there. Anyway, if you’d like to find peace on earth and goodwill, man, we’ll help you get started. Right after a little nap.

 

The Dude, of course, refers to the Jeff Bridges character in the Coen Brothers genius classic film, The Big Lebowski.  If you’ve never seen it, drop what you’re doing and watch it right now.  No, seriously, go watch the movie. 

And, if you’re in the market for someone to marry you or bury you, I just might know someone.  Plus, he can really pull a room together, man.  The Dude abides.  

Mr. R.ism Saturday Afternoon

“Chicks dig me ‘cuz I rarely wear underwear and I really know how to navigate through traffic. “–Mr. R.

True Story Saturday Morning

Say Yes to the Dress is on at our house right now.  In all fairness, a sweet friend will be on the show soon.  That being said, Mr. R. is such a sport!  Reason #72 that I love him so much!

Mr. R. ism Tuesday–Random Non Sequitur

My love offers this erudite observation on television pop culture:

“The Voice is Facebook.  American Idol is MySpace.”–Mr. R.

 

Mr. R.ism Monday

“When I want something done well, I’ll ask you to do it. When I want something done half-assed, I’ll do it myself. “– Mr. R.

Mr. R.ism Saturday

“Some people buy huge boats to tell the world they have a small penis. Others dress like superheroes at Comic Con. “– Mr. R.