I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living

[sovay]

Tom Lehrer had entered my household's dialect before I was born. That's not my department. I am never forget the day. Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Only be sure always to call it please research. More, more, I'm still not satisfied. Lucky Pierre! Who's next? Songs not on rotation in my parents' record collection could be encountered lyrically and traumatically in Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle (1981). One could in fact call him one of my idols since childbirth. With just a handful of music, he touched the hearts of millions, and in the spirit of his own liner notes, I hope he died mad about it.

Comments

[sovay]

He was part of my family's idiolect as well. My mother went to Harvard (technically Radcliff, because woman) in the late '50s and raised me listening to and playing his songs.

That's wonderful.

My favorite to play was "The Masochism Tango," because tango, but to listen to it was ... no, I can't, too many to list out.

I ended up listening to pretty much his entire catalogue for his memory.

I have not done a good job of introducing Eaglet to him. Far too many songs, they have no context for.

There's still time. It's not like "George Murphy" made that much sense to me as a child, whereas now the line about Broadway Melody of Nineteen Eighty-Four makes me want to cry.

Has anyone heard whether his claim to have invented the jello shot has stood up to scrutiny?

Last I read, it looked like he may well have invented it independently, but can't be proven to have invented the modern format originally, which makes sense to me for the reasons given in the article, i.e. people will put booze in anything.

[larryhammer]

I'm wondering whether to (re)start with "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" or "The Elements."