Good night, sweet wince

 Maybe you were saddened by the news of the recent death of Ozzy Osborne.  I wasn't gladdened by the news, but it was my sister playing "Paranoid" at ear-splitting levels when we were kids -- and that was mainly because Black Sabbath was what her friends were into at the time.  

Without their actually embracing devil worship of course.  

I think.

Anyway, I'm genuinely entering a period of mourning today, because I learned that Tom Lehrer has died.  He's figured in this blog more than once.

I have pretty much every song he ever recorded - even the three songs he wrote and sang for the children's programme Electric Company - and so many of them have been floating through my head with their witty and acerbic (sometimes a tad disturbing) lyrics:  "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park", "The Masochism Tango", among so many others, even though, relatively speaking, his output was quite small.

I have a soft spot for this one, which one might describe as a deep cut: 

And here's the man himself, performing in Copenhagen nearly sixty years ago:  

I would say we need his brand of satire all the more - and maybe we do - but sadly, quite a few of his songs are still pretty pertinent.

As Lehrer himself once said:  "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while." 

He was joking.

I think.

A bit of Tom Lehrer can improve anything

So the great day is here and I'm happy to report that I got my Purdy's plus a whole bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream (which isn't large enough, but never mind) to guzzle while I watch Sherlock tonight. The Resident Fan Boy gave me a card with a dog resembling the Accent Snob on it. I have firmly pointed out that if he's suggesting I'm the Accent Snob's mother, what is he suggesting I am, really? And to think carefully before answering...

Younger daughter brought me a rose from church and gave me a button to wear. Elder daughter took me to a sushi lunch and presented me with possibly the greatest Mother's Day card ever. (Not to denigrate the magnificent hand-made cards I've received over the years.)

But I think, to give the proper classic tone to today's celebration, I should share the Tom Lehrer ditty that I found myself singing in the shower this morning.
 You're welcome.
From the Bible to the popular song,
There's one theme that we find right along.
Of all ideals they hail as good,
The most sublime is motherhood.

There was a man though, who it seems,
Once carried this ideal to extremes.
He loved his mother and she loved him,
And yet his story is rather grim.

There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex.
You may have heard about his odd complex.
His name appears in Freud's Index
'cause he loved his mother.

His rivals used to say quite a bit,
That as a monarch he was most unfit.
But still in all they had to admit
That he loved his mother.

Yes he loved his mother like no other.
His daughter was his sister and his son was his brother.
One thing on which you can depend is,
He sure knew who a boy's best friend is!

When he found what he had done,
He tore his eyes out one by one.
A tragic end to a loyal son
Who loved his mother.

So be sweet and kind to mother,
Now and then have a chat.
Buy her candy or some flowers or a brand new hat.
But maybe you had better let it go at that!

Or you may find yourself with a quite complex complex,
And you may end up like Oedipus.
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus,
Than end up like old Oedipus Rex. 

Bearding the lion in his Lehrer

Once again, while looking for something else, I stumbled across a whole bunch of rare videos of Tom Lehrer performing for a live audience in the sixties. While I probably own everything that Tom Lehrer recorded, eagerly attended Tom Foolery, and got the Resident Fan Boy a Tom Lehrer sheet music collection for his birthday some years ago, I have never actually seen Tom Lehrer perform. He's a mathematician and disappears for decades at a time. While it's difficult to choose (and there don't seem to videos of my very favourites), here are two near the top of my list. The first one nearly got us thrown out of my late father-in-law's living room when the Resident Fan Boy and I insisted on warbling it at the family piano after Sunday lunch. (Sunday lunches at my in-laws had that effect on me, Tom Lehrer or no.):

And while we're on the subject of Sunday:
He's rather cute, isn't he?

Pondering Porn

I've spent this weekend thinking about porn. Not enjoyable at all. Porn makes me groggy. It's tedious and repetitive.

Why, you might ask, have I been ruminating on the subject? Three things, really:

1) I've been beset by online offers (nay, pleas) to view naked people, mostly through Twitter, but the latest was a comment on my Flckr account which took me directly through to some rather arresting images. Boy, are they barking up the wrong tree...

2) There was a recent newspaper article about a Statistics Canada survey which cheerfully claims that today's teen-aged girls are having sex later. It turns out that that they are, in fact, having (probably giving, she says, jadedly) oral sex, but delaying actual coitus. Furthermore, it seems that teen-aged girls still long for relationship and connection, while teen-aged boys long for....erotic satisfaction. Apparently the lads' expectations come from hours of viewing porn online. As an aside, I'm assuming this is also why today's young women are expected to be shaved up like porn stars with "landing strips" and "Brazilians", something of which I was blissfully unaware until I started reading blogs. I had to google the terms to find out what was being discussed. (Yikes.) When did this trend turn up, sometime while I was out of the loop having babies?

3) I'm reading John Mortimer's biography (which, for an authorized biography, is remarkably warts and all) and much of his court work in the seventies and eighties involved obscenity trials. He took the quite popular position that freedom of expression is sacrosanct.

Well, okay. Noble sentiment. But sometimes I wonder if unrestricted access to porn really improves us as a society. I mean, it seems to me that Playboy, that august promoter of women's rights (coff, coff), had the side effect of making boobs the be-all and end-all of female attractiveness. Even so, the Playmates of a few decades ago, although unusually pretty and busty, were at least largely un-manufactured. From what I can see today, and admittedly, my experience is limited, centrefolds and porn stars are flat-tummied, pencil-waisted ladies with enormous breasts courtesy of implants. Also shaved to within a inch of their lives. If this is what young men feel entitled to, no wonder so many girls seem to have given up and hit the Haagen-Daaz.

As porn is so grim, grinding and humourless, I think we need some witty relief. I leave you with the immortal Tom Lehrer whose songs have become a bit scary because, as the decades roll on, they cease to be exaggerations: