Monthly Archives: February 2020

The Weavers Tell It Like It Is, Was And Ever Shall Be

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Here’s a great optimistic take on things from the Weavers — for once, nobody’s hangin’ from the green willer tree. So sit back, remove your socks lest they be knocked off, close your eyes, and imagine pictures of whatever your brightest future is. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE IMAGES OF BERNIE SANDERS.

This amazing record came to me from another album in in the 2-buck bin. It was a partnership between Vanguard Records and Breck Shampoo. It seems strange today to see an ad on a record album; but I imagine they were trying to target all those 17-year old girls with long long long straight hair hanging out in all the coffeehouses. Anyway each track sizzles with power, truly some of the best folk recordings ever released.


Luckily somebody else has FIGHT ON up on the “YT” so I don’t have to record it for you. YOU GET THE BENEFIT ANYWAY, THAT’S SOCIALISM oh forget it just listen.

“Fight on, children, don’t turn back. We are almost down to the shore.”

The Shop Rite Can-Can Jingle

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SHITS AND GIGGLES DEPARTMENT

I had no idea this had become a “thing.” I’ve been out of the Shop Rite ad-buy market for so long, I thought I was the only one who remembered. The jingle and the dancing cans and the thud-ly dancers were seared into my brain at an early age. But for years and years, I would sing the song to people and they would look at me like I had two heads. Then, eager to prove I wasn’t insane, I would hunt for hours online, desperate for clips. I’d lose sleep and drive people away and follow bum leads behind all-night gas-stations. I always looked in vain. Until now! FINALLY, Shop Rite has put these up on YouTube.

Oddly, they don’t have the spot with the lyrics I memorized, which must have been the first one. Maybe nobody ever bothered to save it. Anyway I’ll recount them here so you’ll get the idea, and think it is not I who am CRAZY…. it is not I who am MAD….! Mwu-hah-hah-hah! ……….Oh yeah, the jingle:

“Now, Shop Rite does the Can-Can
Selling lots of brands of vegetables in cans-cans.
For quality that you can trust,
For tasty corn, asparagus,
For peas and greens from gourmet dreams
And beets that beat all other treats!
The only vegetables you can
Compare with all the Shop Rite brands
Are vegetables you pick yourself,
Instead of picking off our shelf.
NOW’S THE TIME TO
Ask yourself, “So, why pay more?”
NOW’S THE TIME TO
Shop Rite now at Shop Rite Store!

— The original Shop Rite Can-Can Jingle: un-dented, un-dinged, with no rusty seams. Guaranteed fresh.

My favorite part of the whole lyric is the sly and subtle identification with the New Jersey housewife customer, with the lyricist addressing her, as it were, in a Yiddish accent. Ask yourself, “So, why pay more?” Indeed. Klaenge der Heimat, sounds of home.

February’s Child

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Chris was born, not un-coincidentally, one year after my parents’ wedding. It is still Chris’s birthday month, and he hasn’t held been held under the solar-lens roasting gaze of the View for a while, so to say Happy Birthday, I looked up the Chumash astrological lore around February in “December’s Child.”

[Remember, Momoy, the moonflower-goddess, is the moon; hence the 12 months are each aspects of Grandmother Momoy. Thus, for instance, and to begin, January is Hesiq? momoy momoy, the Moon Moon.]

“Hesiq?momoy ixsa cpu?yun was the name of February, the ‘month when things begin to grow.’ The rain, finding a place where the soil was nicely pulverized, brings forth whatever is there. If a person is born in February he is the victim of uncertainty; he is never sure of anything. He is brave when he sees the other person humble, and he is very meek when he encounters sternness. And when he finds that all is going his way he watches over opening plants, hoping to take them all for himself.”

My, my…or should I say, momoy? I don’t think it sounds like my sweet brother at all. To keep this page Fair and Balanced, what does ‘December’s Child’ have to say about November’s Child?

“The month of November was called Hesiq?momoy ?an tuhui pimaam, the ‘month when rain keeps one indoors.’ A man born in this month is never satisfied.” Ouch.