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sunshine jen: On a Cold November Night, the Puppies Arrive
I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts about all that went down with the Presidential election and good stuff in general.
Back on Monday, I was trying to put together a lyrical interpretation of the presidential election using the score of West Side Story, but I started to worry about jinxes and all that jazz, so I never finished it. Still, Obama sits so nicely on Bernstein’s music:
Obama!
Say it loud and there's music playing,
Say it soft and it's almost like praying.
Obama
Also, the pre-rumble Tonight suite could be fun:
McCain is gonna have his way tonight
He’s gonna surge like a Bagdad blitz tonight
They say he’s way behind
But so what
Cause when he’s way behind
Is when he will start
Tonight!
Sorry about the imperfect rhyme.
Then, after Obama won, I thought of doing an obnoxious victory dance post. I can be a really bad winner, but I didn’t have the heart. Maybe I’m maturing. Maybe I appreciated McCain’s gracious concession. Maybe it’s the puppies. The Obama daughters should get a puppy. In fact, they should get two. Awwww. Puppies.
I think Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ slogan was a key component. I’m sure in days to come, other keys will be talked about in great depth for minutes on end on cable news. I’m gonna just take a paragraph for the yes. Positivity is the cornerstone of American myth. We can be anything we want to be. We can do it. Yes we can. After six years of hearing no, no, no, fear, fear, fear, recession, recession, recession, Americans hear yes we can. I tell ya, if I wrote the play of this, I would be accused of being too feel good. Puppies!
Lately, I’ve been feeling that I’m surrounded by a smog of good, and now with the Obama win, I don’t know what to do with all the happy. I’m part Irish, part Polish, and raised Catholic in Cleveland. I can’t deal with too much happy. What next? The Indians win the World Series?
Speaking of Ohio, I was on the phone with my friend Ang in Cleveland. She was elated. She had been volunteering for Obama, and she was so proud and ecstatic for the state. Apparently, it was super high first-time voter turnout. When Ohio was called for Obama, I whooped it up. Go Ohio Puppies!
Prop Eight (banning gay marriage) passed out here. That sucks. So there’s some balance of suckyness.
I’ve been reading Steve Martin’s memoir, Born Standing Up, about his early career as a standup comedian. When I was a kid, he was always on the TV somewhere. Remember the King Tut song? Or his wild and crazy guy? He then went on to be a movie star, playwright, novelist, witty commentator, and art collector. You know, just an average guy really. On the cover of his memoir, he’s even in a white suit---okay, so he’s wearing bunny ears too. His memoir is a nice read---his prose has a good flow to it.
Anyway, this week, as all the puppies of happiness were chasing their tails and pooping on the sidewalk, I was reading Steve Martin’s memoir. Towards the end of the book, he gives us the lyrics to one of his songs, and I thought it sorta summed up how I’m feeling (with just one Sunshine Jen change). So ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Steve Martin:
We’re having some fun
We’ve got music and laughter
And wonderful times.
Oh yeah.
It’s so hard to laugh
It seems that short of tripping a nun
Nothing is funny anymore.
But you know
I see people going to college
For fourteen years
Studying to be doctors and lawyers
And I see people going to work
At the drugstore at 7:30 every morning
To sell Flair pens
But the most amazing thing to me is
I get paid
While I’m typing
This.
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