Day: June 9, 2024

Cellpic Sunday — Tarantulas, Lizards, and Weeds

Fandango10 Comments

John Steiner, the blogger behind Journeys With Johnbo, has this prompt he calls Cellpic Sunday in which he asks us to post a photo that was taken with a cellphone, tablet, or another mobile device. He invites us to participate in this cellphone photo prompt by creating our own CellPic Sunday post and linking it back to his.

It’s a little too early for tarantula mating season, which starts around mid-to-late August, so those large, hairy arachnids are remaining underground deep inside their spidey holes, of which we have about a dozen like the one below in the mulchy area of our backyard.

But while our tarantulas stay cool beneath the surface, with the daytime temperatures getting into the 90s, our cold-blooded lizards who scurry around our backyard have come out from under the rocks to bask in the sun on top of the rocks. One of the larger ones, about six inches long, proudly posed for me the other day.

I wanted to also follow up on something I shared with you on my May 26th edition of Cellpic Sunday. I mentioned that our town has a mandate that requires all weeded areas to be cut down or cleared by May 31st as a prevention for the spread of wildfires, and I shared this photo with you taken on May 26th.

I hate to be a tattletale, but I notified the local fire prevention authority that my back neighbor hadn’t met the May 31st deadline to clear the weeds. On June 3rd, the authority emailed me, advising me that my neighbor had been sent a notice that he had until June 11th to cut down the weeds or be fined.

Well, turns out that being a tattletale sometimes yields positive results. This weekend, a crew of workers showed up in the weed-infested yard behind my own and cleared it. Here is what it looks like today!

As usual, all photos have been resized (shrunk) to make them load more quickly and take up less space in my WordPress media folder.

Song Lyric Sunday — Preserved In Time

Fandango10 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, Jim Adams has asked us to find a song that has been preserved in the National Recording Registry. The song I’m going with was entered into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2020 as one of 25 recordings selected that year that are at least 10 years old and deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

“Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)” was a novelty song recorded by Allan Sherman and released in 1963. The melody is taken from the ballet Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli, while the lyrics were written by Sherman and Lou Busch.

Allan Sherman was a writer on The Steve Allen Show and created the game show I’ve Got a Secret. He went on to record comedy albums. Allan based the lyrics for this song on letters of complaint which he received from his son Robert who was attending Camp Champlain, a summer camp in Westport, New York.

The song reached number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 list for three weeks beginning on August 24, 1963. It also won the 1964 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Performance.

Sherman, who died at 48 in November 1973, was the inspiration for a new generation of developing song parody writers such as “Weird Al” Yankovic, who paid homage to Sherman on the cover of his first LP.

Here are the lyrics to “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!”

Hello Muddah, hello Faddah
Here I am at Camp Grenada
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining

I went hiking with Joe Spivey
He developed poison ivy
You remember Leonard Skinner
He got Ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner

All the counsellors hate the waiters
And the lake has alligators
And the head coach wants no sissies
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses

Now I don't want this should scare ya'
But my bunkmate has Malaria
You remember Jeffery Hardy
They're about to organize a searching party

Take me home, oh Muddah, Faddah
Take me home, I hate Grenada
Don't leave me out in the forest where
I might get eaten by a bear

Take me home, I promise I will
Not make noise, or mess the house with
Other boys, oh please don't make me stay
I've been here one whole day

Dearest Fadduh, Darling Muddah
How's my precious little bruddah
Let me come home if you miss me
I would even let Aunt Bertha hug and kiss me

Wait a minute, it's stopped hailing
Guys are swimming, guys are sailing
Playing baseball, gee that's bettah
Muddah, Faddah kindly disregard this letter

FOWC with Fandango — Roomy

Fandango12 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “roomy.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.