On the Recording of “How Do You Do”

https://youtu.be/KAGAf85613A

The scene:  A 70s era recording studio in the 70s.  In Amsterdam.  Their manager watches in as they start to perform their first take.

MOUTH AND MACNEAL:  “🎤🎧📇🎵💲How do you do, Uh Huh/ I thought why not, na na na na  Just me and you and then we can na na na na...

MANAGER:  (waves to the producer to stop). (To M&M: ). What the hell is this, this na na na business??

MOUTH OR MACNEAL:  Well, that’s as far as we got. 

 MACNEAL OR MOUTH:  It’s hard to come up with good English. 

MANAGER:  Do you have a Dutch version?  

MOUTH OR MACNEAL:  It HAS to be in English.  We won’t make the US charts otherwise.

MANAGER, (sarcastically). Well Ok John Lennon.  But the only chart you’re gonna make with those lyrics is “Sub-par Bands Who Aren’t  American.”

MOUTH AND MACNEAL(murmuring to each other in Dutch, trying to sing a little bit and making half hearted effort to fill chorus with real words.)

MANAGER: Well, I guess you’re gonna have to do it your way.  We don’t have time to write a new song.

MOUTH AND MACNEAL:  (Records song and releases it.  Song makes it to the American charts.  Young Boomerlets like me march around together in Girl Scout Canps singing chorus.)

The Individual-crushing Machine of Identity Politcs.

Allow my to introduce myself.  My name is Kelly. It is true that in the year of my birth, there were many births of people named Kelly.  But I didn't really have anything in common with those Kellys because I was this Kelly, the only one I know of  who was born at 11:50 a.m. on August 7, 1962, at St. Mary's hospital in Livonia, Michigan.

Things I think about when I wonder why Jesus is waiting so long to come back (which is a lot these days)

How the Americans Really Should Have Ended

(Safe house.  Claudia is meeting with Elizabeth and Phillip)

Attender les Americains

It's Saturday.  More pointedly, it's Saturday, the 11^th of March.  If you are reading this post, you no doubt are seeking the first Keblog on the fifth season of The Americans, the show that makes you wonder if your kid's best friend's mom could be a Putin plant.

But I'm sorry, minions.  There is no blog here about the first Americans of the season, which was on on March 7.  First of all, I DVRd it on the 7^th because I work midnights and I sleep through its time slot.  No worries, my mom & I planned on watching it together the next day anyway. 

Then,  the next morning I got an Emergency Weather Alert in my email.  The news?  It's gonna be windy.

Windy?  I thought.  They're warning us about wind?

Don't worry, they're not leaders anyway. They're your employees.

Now that the Apocalypse has come and gone and the guy who is by all accounts the scariest contender for the US presidency...

Lingua French-a

You've finally arrived, you precocious little polyglot from middle America, you.  Armed with a suitcase you've packed, unpacked and repacked for the last 6 months, a brand spanking new passport (because our neighbors don't care), a Eurail Pass,  the required English/Your Second Language Here dictionary and/or app; and sporting a t-shirt with a maple leaf that screams "I'M AN AMERICAN TRYING TO NOT LOOK LIKE ONE", you have landed somewhere overseas (probably in Europe) where the primary language is not shared by Shakespeare and the commercial flight industry, ready to show off your 1-12 or so years of classroom grammar and of course study of relevant literature, encompassing fond memories of "Sur le pont d'Avignon", "Ist das nicht ein Schnitzelbank?", "Cielito Lindo" or the "Gena Krokodil Song" (I think that about exhausts the foreign languages taught in American schools).

An Open Letter to Those Who Refer to Me as Norman Kelly, Mr. Kelly ,Mr,Norman or Ms. Kelly:

Stop it, OK?

Generally when you show your inattentive selves it is when you're working through a list of people whose names are either written first-name first, or last-name first. There is really no reason for you to suspect that my name is different, particularly when there are other Kelly's on your list---always the case in each of my elementary and high school classes.

Eat Me: An Essay by David Gornoski about the State, Cannabilism...and Jesus

I have often wondered how I could write well enough to make people understand the connection I sense between my Christian faith and my anti-state leanings.  I am still wondering how I can do it, but David Gornoski does it here much better than I could (from Foundation for an Economic Education).

List: People (and other things) I've wanted to marry

I've given up now.  Now, if someone proposed to me,  I'm convinced he'd be plotting to swindle me out of my retirement funds and then go back to his real wife and kids (okay, adult kids).

But it was fun while it lasted!

Here, in chronological order, are all the people, places and things I've had crushes on.

Predictions for Season Five

Elizabeth and Phillip are going to have a baby.  Oops, they already did.

Paige is going to become an agent for the CIA....OR kill Pastor Tim.

There's going to be a huge nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.  

Stan the Man proposes adopting Henry.  He then grooms him as an FBI agent.

Elizabeth and Phillip go home, but Paige stays and starts her own Benneton franchise.  Henry stays with Stan.  Neither Stan nor Henry ever figures out what Elizabeth and Phillip do.

Upon arriving in Moscow, they find Martha running the McDonald's store in Red Square.

The Americans Season 4 Episode 7: Есть EST?

This week's show seems to be a kind of housecleaning before the big blowup.  John Boy gets fired for a host of things that Stan the Man did;  Martha goes to Russia, Stan the Man is palling around with Phillip again, Elizabeth and Paige have a couple nasty spats about why it's Paige's responsibility to monitor Pastor Tim and his wife before they turn the whole Jennings family in, and Elizabeth goes to EST!

TheAmericans Season 4 #6: Martha Martha Martha!

So in this one, Martha is running for school president, and Elizabeth gets jealous when Phillip/Clark helps her with her campaign...oh, sorry, where were we?

More German Lessons!!!!

From McSweeney's Internet Tendency:

Titles of Bach Chorales as Translated by the Author's Niece After One Semester of German

It's copywrought, of course, so I can't copy it here;  you may have to look at it in a new window  so you know what I'm talking about below.

In the meantime McSweeney's is pretty entertaining, if you avoid the "straw man" assumptions behind some of the more political pieces.

Americans #4 season 4: Chlor-and-trash-it-all

Presented as a public service to any Americans fans who may be browsing (spoiler alert if you haven't watched last week's show yet):

The Americans #3 Season 4....the experimental prototype spy family of tomorrow.

OK, OK, I know Episode 4 has already aired, and I am way late in posting this, but hey, I have a day job OK?  Alright, well, in my case, a night job.  And I don't want to dash off a piece of dribble each week, I want to think about it a little bit.  Not that anyone's reading this anyway.

This is an EX-Party!!!

Soon, we'll be able to say...Chris Muir called it.


http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/because-i-dont-need-to-draw-a-picture/

The Americans: Run Away! Run Away!

This could apply to Pastor Tim, who gives this episode its name, who is now in Elizabeth's crosshairs; or to Phillip and Elizabeth themselves, because of the knowledge Tim now has about them and its threat to their cover.

Open Letter to the People I Work With Who Want Me To Do Social Work

Dear ER Colleagues,

This is your friendly mental health worker, the one who meets with suicidal, homicidal and/or psychotic patients to screen them for admission to our psychiatric unit, or who calls 50 other hospitals in the state with psychiatric units, hoping they have a bed when we don't.

I really enjoy working with you, and I really enjoy my job, since it is completely focused on mental health and it is not really social work.  I would just like to remind you some of the things we in our department do, and the social work department doesn't, and vice versa.

Aaaaaand here we go again....

...with America's favorite KGB agents and their pals, that is. 

The Americans—Mission # 4, Episode 1

FX 22:00  3/16/2016

That includes ambivalent teen daughter Paige (or as her grandmother calls her, Pie-AGE) and oblivious tween son Henry (who names their kid Henry? That should have been a tip off to the FBI.) ( But then again, the FBI agent living closest to the Jennings' is Stan the Man, who is barely aware of anything besides his own navel.)