The Oppenheimer Report 7/11/16

The other night on my Lyrical Workers radio show, I played a song I’d first heard on the Dr. Demento show over 25 years ago. By a British group called The Piggies it is entitled  My Baby’s Got Rabies … “Not gonorrhea, syphilis or scabies / My Baby’s got rabies, she’s absolutely mad about me.” I love comedic songwriting, and I’ve even thrown my own hat into the ring from time to time. Tunes like How Come It Hurts When I Pee and, my all-time favorite, Swamp Queen, come to mind. I am seriously outranked when it comes to funny songwriting, and here are some of my favorites, in no particular order: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah by Allan Sherman, The Lumberjack Song by Monty Python, Talk To My Lawyer by Chuck Brodsky, Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow by Frank Zappa, and Dance Ten Looks Three from the musical A Chorus Line,  to name but a few. I have a pretty good collection of novelty songs I can pull out when I need to wake my audience out of their approaching slumber.

The much-needed rain showed up late Friday, and it poured cats and dogs. Somewhere in the late afternoon we could hear a thunderstorm slowly rolling in, and it began to blow hard while I was down at the dock. When the lightning started I ran for cover, and within a few minutes there were branches flying through the air. We lost power for 24 hours and the storm washed out part of our driveway. Radar has been unpredictable with these storms, many of them pop-up thunderstorms which seem to appear from nowhere. Of late, it’s been feast or famine with the rain. One minute I’m pouring buckets of water on my new trees to keep them from dying in drought-like conditions, and the next, I’m figuring out who to call to fill and re-grade our washed out driveway.

Saturday morning, I volunteered (in a small way) to participate in the Huntsville Bathtub Derby. I’d never been to a bathtub race before. Towing my landscape trailer behind my car, I “paraded” the Hunters Bay Radio tub down the main street in Huntsville in a rather silly parade of tub floats. These tub races have been held on and off since around 1995, and they are a big draw. Various sponsors advertise a floating tub, and the pilots, navigating their outboard-powered tubs, compete in various elimination heats, battling for first prize. "Compete" might be the wrong word. Struggle precariously to stay afloat while ramming into each other might be a better way of putting it. An encouraging number sink. I think that’s why the event is so popular. Anyhow, we did the bare minimum to dress my trailer up like a float, tying a few helium-filled balloons to the trailer, and slapping on a few magnetic Hunters Bay Radio signs to the sides of my car. We then we transported the Hunters Bay Radio entry to its appointed race site, parading down Huntsville’s Main Street in the teeming rain. Despite the deluge, which lasted through almost the entire parade, over one thousand came out to watch the races. As I suggested, I think the draw was the potential for disaster. 

I recently read a book entitled Gumptionade, and written by my high school classmate Bob O’Connor. I am skeptical of self-help books, but thought I’d give my classmate a little support. I enjoyed the book, which was both humorous and instructive. Gumption, I learned, is about doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and Bob uses examples of his own personal struggles to illustrate his points. A lot of it is common sense, but he gives the reader a road map for getting “unstuck”. He discusses the distinction between success and excellence, and suggests that success is often the product of timing, serendipity, and luck, while the pursuit of excellence is a more difficult but rewarding goal.One of my favorite lines in the book is "Be less wrong." I laughed a bit to myself, because a few weeks ago, I bought a new gas grill, unassembled. The box had been sitting on my porch for three weeks, but the task of getting rid of the old grill and assembling the new one just seemed daunting to me. Yesterday, I mustered some gumption and began the process. With the help of my neighbors I’ve moved the old grill, and will soon take it to the dump in the trailer, which is conveniently still attached to my car. It feels good to get this out of the way. Do I get a gold star?

 

Final note: my best friend’s black lab Sadie passed on last weekend, and she will be sorely missed. Sadie was a legend to all who knew her. To Bob and Laura, if you’re reading this, you were the best mom and dad a dog could hope to have.  

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED