Tom Lehrer (Music) - TV Tropes Tom Lehrer You need to login to do this. Get Known if you don't have an account Share WMG "Come back tomorrow night, we're gonna doï¿½ fractions." "I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene—or, as they say in New York , sophisticated." —Tom Lehrer Thomas Andrew Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American satirist who managed to achieve remarkable popularity and impact on popular culture, despite having produced only three albums' worth of material in the 1950s and '60s before retiring to a life in academia as a mathematician. Lehrer's pieces often take the form of witty parodies of various popular song forms. Other common themes in his work are disapproval of nuclear war, Cold War politics, and folk singing .

Of course, he undercuts that last by putting forth as perfect a rendition of such songs as can be done with only a piano ("imagine that I am playing an 88-string guitar", as he said in his intro to "The Folk Song Army," on his 1965 album That Was the Year That Was) as accompaniment. He also wrote 10 songs for the children's educational series The Electric Company (1971) . Lehrer is still alive, and occasionally performing. At the 80th birthday party of a fellow mathematician and friend Irving "Kaps" Kaplansky, he dusted off a handful of mathematics songs to an appreciative crowd of students and fellow mathematicians. "Weird Al" Yankovic cites Tom Lehrer as one of his inspirations, while Dr Demento has described him as "the greatest musical satirist of the 20th Century." Lehrer's own inspirations notably include Gilbert and Sullivan , Danny Kaye and Cole Porter .

He also claimed to have invented the Jell-O shot as a way of circumventing military base regulations, though the idea goes at least as far back as the 1862 book, How to Mix Drinks or The Bon-Vivantï¿½s Companion. More of Tom Lehrer (1959) An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer (1959)note A live album with the material from More of... Revisited (1960)note A live album with the material from Songs by...; the CD version also contains two songs he wrote for The Electric Company (1971) That Was the Year That Was (1965) Mr. Lehrer's works display examples of: Acting Unnatural : In one of Tom Lehrer's compositions for The Electric Company (1971) , "L-Y", this trope comes into play in the second verse. Enhanced by the animation for the song, in which the "secret agent man" leans against the safe he is trying to open while playing with a yo-yo and smiling ear to ear. You're a secret agent man Who's after the secret plan How do you act so they don't know you're a spy?

Ah-normally ( Not-So-Innocent Whistle ) Normally (whistles again) Normal... L-Y! Alma Mater Song : "Bright College Days". "Fight Fiercely, Harvard". It is actually a parody of a Football Fight Song , but Harvard is Tom Lehrer's alma mater. Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking : The final verse of "The Irish Ballad": And when at last the police came by Her little pranks she did not deny For to do so she would have had to lie... And lyin' she knew was a sin. Inverted with the the review-quotes he included on at least one of his album covers: "More desperate than amusing" ï¿½ New York Herald Tribune "He seldom has any point to make except obvious ones" ï¿½ The Christian Science Monitor "Mr. Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste." ï¿½ New York Times "Obvious, jejune, and remarkably unsophisticated." ï¿½ London Evening Standard From the introduction to "In Old Mexico": He majored in animal husbandry until they... caught him at it one day.

From "I Got It from Agnes": She then gave it to Daniel, whose spaniel has it now. Bilingual Bonus : In the recorded version of "Lobachevsky", the reviews from Pravda and Izvestia are, respectively: "There once was a king who had a pet flea," the first line of Mussorgsky's "Song of the Flea", and "I must go where the Tsar himself goes on foot," a Russian idiom meaning "I have to go to the bathroom". Lehrer usually substituted nonsense when he performed before an audience whose members were likely to include Russian speakers. Black Comedy : Lots and lots of examples, but "I Got It from Agnes" has this doozy: "Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/ She got it from her daddy, who just gives her everything ..." It gets better : "She gave it to Daniel whose spaniel has it now/ Our dentist's even got it and we're still wondering how ." Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick : "My Home Town" begins with idyllic reminiscences of his home town and quickly slides into recalling "the guy who took a knife/and monogrammed his wife".

"Be Prepared" exhorts Boy Scouts to be prepared for all situations...such as smoking dope and pimping out their own sisters. "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" sounds romantic, up to the lyrics "My joy would be complete, dear/If only you were here/But still I keep your hand/As a precious souvenir." And: "I hold your hand in mine, dear/I press it to my lips/I take a healthy bite from your dainty fingertips". His song "The Old Dope Peddler" sings admiringly of the cornerstone of any neighborhood, the Heroin Dealer. In more recent interviews, he's admitted that in retrospect he finds that particular song "chilling". "I Wanna Go Back to Dixie" does this as well. It's mostly an almost sweet, happy song about wanting to go back home...but it's after he includes the line "Ol' times there are not forgotten/Whuppin' slaves and selling cotton" that it gets dark.

"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" starts off like a lovely ode to springtime and young love, but when he suddenly starts the chorus, the song takes a major left turn into this trope, along with some Lyrical Dissonance because of the song still being sung the same way, despite the lyrics. He actually tries to justify this: We've gained notoriety And quite a variety of unpleasant names. But it's not against any religion To want to dispose of a pigeon! Most of Tom Lehrer's songs, and their humor, stem from this trope. Bunny-Ears Lawyer : Aside from being a quirky satirist, he's a Harvard-educated mathematician and a very accomplished pianist. Cheap Heat : Since That Was the Year That Was was recorded in San Francisco, he sings "the breakfast garbage that you throw into the bay, they drink at lunch in San Jose" in "Pollution" and gets an enthusiastic reaction from the crowd. The songbook Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer suggests that anyone singing the song should similarly localize that line. Competition Coupon Madness : Parodied in "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier".

Once all the Germans were warlike, and mean, but that couldn't happen again, We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then! Pretty much the entirety of "Dr. Wernher Von Braun" is this, including such gems as "'once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down, that's not my department' says Wernher Von Braun." Filk Song : Virtually everything he wrote has been adopted as "Found Filk," notwithstanding—or perhaps in spite of—Lehrer's feelings about folk music. There have even been full Tom Lehrer Sing-Alongs. The Film of the Book : Parodied at least twice. "Lobachevsky" describes a film version of a mathematics textbook. "Oedipus Rex", meanwhile, was a modest proposal for a title tune "which the people could hum" for the film of the eponymous play . Filth : The subject matter of "Smut". "I Got It from Agnes." What "it" is is never specified, but we can guess.

I love my friends, and they love me We're just as close as we can be And just because we really care Whatever we get, we share. Sadly, Lehrer did not originally get this past the radar, as his recording of it was not released until 1997 as a bonus track on Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer, a compilation rerelease of two albums from the 1950s. The first released recording of it was from the Tom Foolery soundtrack in 1980. However, Lehrer himself was responsible for the song's being unreleased at the time because he felt it was too racy, although he would perform it in nightclubs going back to the 1950s. "The Elements" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin ; all of the chemical elements known at the time, set to "a possibly recognizable tune": " The Major-General's Song " from The Pirates of Penzance . "Lobachevsky" also includes a verse that's largely a list of towns in the Soviet Union.

"I have a friend in Minsk, who has a friend in Pinsk, whose friend in Omsk has friend in Tomsk with a friend in Akmolinsk!" That's not the complete list, by the way. And the return journey somehow manages to squeeze in two more cities that weren't mentioned the first time. A Love to Dismember : "I Hold Your Hand in Mine", " The Masochism Tango ". Lyrical Dissonance : Particularly his nuclear war songs. Also, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" is a bright, happy, song about guess what. Special mention has to go to "We Will All Go Together When We Go," a cheery, toe-tapping number about the complete extinction of the human race. And how that's a good thing because it means there'll be nobody left alive to feel sad about it afterward. We will all go directly to our respective Valhallas Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dolla's ... "So Long Mom" is also a song about nuclear war set to a cheerful tune.

The narrator is a pilot in World War III adressing his mother: While we're attacking frontally, Taken to Patter Song extremes in The Musical production Tomfoolery. Namely, the original song only has the following: debility, utility, mobility, possibility, probability, virility, fertility, desirability, liability, sterility, hostility, futility, agility, facility, senility, and ability. Tomfoolery adds: compatibility, fragility, advisability, durability, inflexibility, volatility, inconceivability, humility, nobility, puerility, indispensability, versatility, irresponsibility, juvenility, adorability, and imbecility. Painful Rhyme : Sometimes spectacularly so, and entirely deliberate . For instance, these lines from "We Will All Go Together When We Go": When you attend a funeral It is sad to think that sooner or l... ...ater those you love will do the same for you And you may have found it tragic Not to mention other adjec... ...tives to think of all the weeping they will do Also, during "The Masochism Tango": Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany.

That's why I'm in such exquisite ah-gony. Also the section from "A Christmas Carol" from the Convenience Store Gift Shopping part mentioned above. There are some truly rough ones in "(I'm Spending) Hannukah in Santa Monica": Those Eastern winters, I can't endure 'em So every year I pack my gear and come out here till Purim Rosh Hashanah, I spend in Ari-zah-na And Yom Kippur, way down in Mississippur... Parental Bonus : While most of his songs are still funny, there are lines he says that are rather topical to the 1960s. An example would be when he mentions that Massachusetts is the only state with three senators, it's because Robert Kennedy (from Massachusetts) happened to be a New York senator at the time. The lead-in to "In Old Mexico" includes the line "... Where he majored in animal husbandry, until they ... caught him at it one day..." which kids probably won't get, but to adults is racy even by today's standards. Poe's Law : Lehrer responded to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger by commenting that "satire is obsolete".

(Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, that's not why he quit performing. He had already quit because he was tired of touring and redoing the same songs over and over.) Polluted Wasteland : The whole topic of "Pollution", which is a reversal of how Americans going overseas would be warned not to drink the water there, and how foreigners coming to America should prepare for it. Example: If you visit American city, You will find it very pretty. Just two things of which you must beware: Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air! Pollution, pollution! He really liked that, and used to quote it often . The liner notes for his albums would say, "If you did not enjoy this album, you will most definitely not enjoy (names of his other albums)." There's also the fact that he teaches at and went to Harvard and wrote "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" essentially saying how wussy he thinks Harvard is. Harvard itself plays the song at their games. Scary Musician, Harmless Music : Inverted. Lehrer looks like the math professor he is, and his tunes are all happy, upbeat piano pieces, but egad, the lyrics!

Serial Escalation : Each verse of "I Got it from Agnes" endeavours to be more controversial than the last, gradually implying Depraved Bisexual tendencies, a gay threesome , Parental Incest , a man who bred with his dog and finally that their dentist raped one of them while they were under anaesthetic. If you've only heard one song of Lehrer's, it's probably "Silent E" from The Electric Company (1971) . Beware: Ear Worm . Or "L-Y" from the same show. Or maybe your Chemistry teacher introduced you to "The Elements". "The Elements" has even been used in science documentaries. And now The Big Bang Theory . And on the NCIS episode "Ex-File." And frequently, Daniel Radcliffe will dust off the song from memory when he's a guest on daytime, evening, and late-night talk-shows, so does that mean Lehrer also has Diagon Alley cred to his name? Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness : Professor Lehrer would frequently utilize very elongated words and sophisticated language. Shout-Out : In some cases.

For example, "Smut" has Shout Outs to two classic works of erotic literature, Fanny Hill and Lady Chatterley's Lover . Lehrer also joked that he'd always wanted to write a mathematics textbook because he had a title he knew would sell a million copies: Tropic of Calculus . Various recorded versions of "Lobachevsky" credit Brigitte Bardot , Ingrid Bergman , Doris Day , and Marilyn Monroe as playing the hypotenuse in the film version of The Eternal Triangle. Southern-Fried Private : "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier" Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion : "The Folk Song Army" and "My Home Town" being the two best examples. Take us to your Lieder (sorry about that) Take That : A lot of his songs are attacks on someone or something, but as already noted folk-singers have been a repeated target, and his "ode" to Wernher von Braun also stands out. Take That, Audience! : At the end of "Oedipus Rex", his response to the audience applauding is "The outpatients are out in force tonight, I see".

Teen Genius : He earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Harvard. At 19. Yeah. Those Wacky Nazis : As mentioned above, he references Wernher von Braun's Nazi past: Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown... "Heh, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun! Three Chords and the Truth : He has a dig at this trope in the spoken intro to "Folk Song Army": "I have a song here which I realize should be accompanied on a folk instrument, in which category the piano does not, alas, qualify. So imagine, if you will, that I am playing an 88-string guitar." Then he does it again in the song itself, where he also pokes fun at the lyrical version: The tune don't have to be clever, And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line. It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English, And it don't even gotta rhyme—excuse me—rhyne. Eat More Polar Bear, by L.

Neil Smith Number 411, April 1, 2007 "It's the business of mass media to distract Americans from everything that's actually important." Eat More Polar Bear lneil@netzero.com Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise Unless you're Helen Keller falling in a forest, you know all about "Cute Knut", a baby polar bear in the Berlin Zoo, and the center of the most absurd controversy to show up on my laptop for a season or three. As animals will sometimes, Knut's mommy inexplicably abandoned him and his twin brotherwho died shortly afterwardrefusing to feed them. Taking up the challenge, the Berlin zookeepers bottle-fed the little guy, kept him happy and in good health, until the present, when he's become the zoo's unofficial mascot and the darling of the German media. Something very much like this happened at the Denver Zoo a few years ago, with a pair of baby polar bears named Klondike and Snow, except that both of these critters were quite sickly and nearly died. Their kindly caretakers got them through it, however, and they were eventually moved to another zoo that could handle grownup polar bears better.

I suppose I should stop right here and explain that I am not an "animal lover" in the sense people usually intend when they use that term. Nor am I at all like the guy whom Tom Lehrer once described as having "majored in animal husbandryuntil they caught him at it". I freely confess that when Klondike and Snow were constantly in the news, I got thoroughly sick of seeing and hearing about them day after day. Of course it's the business of mass media to distract Americans from everything that's actually importantsometimes vitalin life, and pull their focus to the trivial. If people made that much of a fuss about sick or injured children (say, in Iraq)or our sick and injured Bill of Rightsit would become a vastly better world, albeit one that offered many fewer juicy opportunities to the mass media. But as usual, I digress. I am an avid carnivore and a once-and-future hunter.

I haven't had a chance yet to sample bear or possum, but I have eaten just about everything else that lopes, crawls, swims, or flies over the planet's surface, including alligator and rattlesnake (both of which taste like chicken), whale meat and seal flippers (the former tastes like beef, the latter like beef marinated in cod liver oil), and ants and bees (which taste like ants and bees). I've also written very energetically on occasion against the counterfeit philosophy of "animal rights", because it makes no claim that can be debated (and demolished) with regard to what rights are and where they came from, and it's almost always used, sooner or later, as an excuse to deny or diminish human rights. Often, those who argue in favor of "animal rights"or perform violent criminal acts in the name of that causearen't doing the animals any favors, either. In the pretzel-twisted minds of certain individuals, it was morally wrong to save baby polar bear Knut from starvation and death.

He should have been given a lethal injection, proclaimed a flock of self-anointed animal rights activists, rather than being brought up "suffering the humiliation of being treated as a [gasp!] domestic pet. . . it is inappropriate for a predator, known for its fierceness and ability to fend for itself in the wild, to be snuggled." You have no idea how hard it was to write that last paragraph or to use the word "minds" in connection with the wimpersnits it concerns  one Ruediger Schmiedel, head of something he calls the "Foundation for Bears" and somebody referred to as "spokesman Frank Albrecht"  encompassing, as it does, one of the craziest bonnet-bees ever set free in these Crazy Years that Robert Heinlein warned us were coming. You can almost hear the contempt with which that final word was uttered. It's a dead giveaway with regard to what's really going on, here. The plain, unavoidable fact is that "meaning", "purpose", and "rights" are purely human phenomena. They are what make us human and, as unfashionable as it may be to say so, superior to the beasts.

They are what place us at the top of an evolutionary pyramid that thinkers like Stephen Jay Gould attempt to pretend doesn't exist. But to even a relatively advanced organism like a bear, there is no "meaning" or "purpose", and "rights" are whatever you tear out of a prey-animal's throat. Rest assured, however, that none of this flapdoodle has anything to do with the putative rights of animals, or with anything except whatever it is that's festering within the glassy hearts and shriveled souls of specimens Like Reudi and Frank. My long experience is that stunted, half-baked creatures like this are incapable of making or maintaining lasting human relationships. Instead, they seethe inwardly with a deep, corrosive self-loathing they eventually extend to their families, their countries, and in the most aggravated cases, to their species. Democracy is not the best way of ascertaining scientific or moral truth, but I must not be the only one who feels the way I do about these so-called "animal rights activists".

The online newspaper in which I first read about this situation already had 86 commentaries on it, fully two thirds of which suggested that maybe it was Reudi and Frank who should get a lethal injection, not Knut. Not a terribly libertarian suggestion, but one I would have some visceral difficulty opposing. Precisely how far, do you suppose, does Frank and Reudi's concern over Knut's "suffering" and "humiliation" extend? If the little guy has to die, to save him from the unspeakable embarrassment of being somebody's pet, would they endorse distributing his meager little carcass to the starving masses? How about selling his remains to a fancy restaurant so that the proceeds from the gourmet meal he would becomethink of it as "bear veal"might benefit the deserving poor? That's what I thought. It seems to me, as it apparently does to everybody else, that the preservation of an animal's rights (if one chooses to believe in such nonsense) logically begins with a goal of preserving the animal's life  barring an Urso-Randian argument regarding the bear's survival qua bear.

Insisting that its rights are best preserved by killing it sounds suspiciously to me like "We had to destroy the village to save it". Me, I think the world is a nicer place with a furry little ball like Knut around to grace it. I know he's happier alivewith nasty old humans to love and take care of himthan he would be dead. How do I know? Because my big cat Ambrose, known for his fierceness and ability to fend for himself in the wild, will abandon a bowl of food and cross the room to be snuggled, or patted on the head and spoken to. It's always the same story with these people, profession of the absurd, insistence on the impossible, and a sadistic twist at the end to grab the attention of the media, drum up publicity, and generate donations from sick whackos whose psyches are as pathological as their own. There is a cure, though, if not for them as individuals, then at least for the civilization into which they have intruded themselves like a virus: hold them to their word.

For example, I can't promise ever to take animal rights activists seriously, but I might put a toe in the road if I ever heard that they were willing to take the place of rabbits and other laboratory animals in medical and cosmetic testing. But I won't. An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer @ Bright Tom Lehrer Days Poisoning Pigeons In The Park I'd like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget perhaps for a while your drab, wretched lives. Here's a song all about spring-time in general, and in particular, about one of the many delightful pastimes the coming of spring affords us all. Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here. Life is skittles and life is beer. I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring. I do, don't you? 'Course you do. But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me, And makes ev'ry Sunday a treat for me. All the world seems in tune On a spring afternoon, When we're poisoning pigeons in the park. Ev'ry Sunday you'll see As we poison the pigeons in the park.

When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide, But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide. The sun's shining bright, When we're poisoning pigeons in the park. Lalaalaalalaladoodiedieedoodoodoo But it's not against any religion To want to dispose of a pigeon. So if Sunday you're free, Why don't you come with me, And we'll poison the pigeons in the park. And maybe we'll do In a squirrel or two, While we're poisoning pigeons in the park. We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment. Except for the few we take home to experiment. My pulse will be quickenin' With each drop of strychnine We feed to a pigeon. It just takes a smidgin! To poison a pigeon in the park. Bright College Days <applause> Thank you. For my first encore I'd like to turn to a type of song that people like myself find ourselves subjected to with increasing frequency as time goes on, and that is the college alma mater. You'll find yourself at a reunion of grads, and old undergrads, and eh...

somebody will start croaking out one of these things and everyone will gradually join in - each in his own key, of course - until the place is just soggy with nostalgia. Well, a typical such song might be called Bright College Days, and might go like this. Bright college days, oh, carefree days that fly, To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high. Let's drink a toast as each of us recalls Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls. Turn on the spigot, Pour the beer and swig it, And gaudeamus igit-ur. Here's to parties we tossed, To the games that we lost, We shall claim that we won them some day. To the girls young and sweet, To the spacious back seat Of our roommate's beat up Chevrolet. To the beer and benzedrine, To the way that the dean Tried so hard to be pals with us all. To excuses we fibbed, To the papers we cribbed From the genius who lived down the hall. To the tables down at Morey's (wherever that may be) Let us drink a toast to all we love the best.

We will sleep through all the lectures, And cheat on the exams, And we'll pass, and be forgotten with the rest. Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife. Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. <laughter> A Christmas Carol One very familiar type of song is the Christmas carol. Although it is perhaps a bit out of season at this time. However, I'm informed by my "disk jockey" friends - of whom I have none, that in order to get a song popular by Christmas time, you have to start plugging it well in advance. So here goes. It has always seemed to me after all. That Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in. I refer of course, to money. And yet none of the Christmas carols that you hear on the radio or in the street, even attempt to capture the true spirit of Christmas as we celebrate it in the United States. That is to say the commercial spirit. So I should like to offer the following Christmas carol for next year, as being perhaps a bit more appropriate.

Christmas time is here, by golly, Disapproval would be folly, Deck the halls with hunks of holly, Fill the cup and don't say "when." Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens, Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens, Even though the prospect sickens, Brother, here we go again. On Christmas Day you can't get sore, Your fellow man you must adore, There's time to rob him all the more The other three hundred and sixty-four. Relations, sparing no expense'll Send some useless old utensil, Or a matching pen and pencil. "Just the thing I need! How nice!" It doesn't matter how sincere it Is, nor how heartfelt the spirit, Sentiment will not endear it, What's important is the price. Hark the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things. God rest ye merry, merchants, May you make the Yuletide pay. Angels we have heard on high Tell us to go out and buy! So let the raucous sleigh bells jingle, Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle, Driving his reindeer across the sky. Don't stand underneath when they fly by. Actually I did rather well myself, this last Christmas.

The nicest present I received was a gift certificate "good at any hospital for a lobotomy". Rather thoughtful. The Elements Now, if I may digress momentarily from the main stream of this evenings symposium, I'd like to sing a song which is completely pointless but which is something I picked up during my career as a scientist. This may prove useful to somebody some day perhaps, in a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances. It's simply the names of the chemical elements set to a possibly recognizable tune. There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium, And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium, And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium, Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium, And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium, And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium, <gasp> And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium, And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium, And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium, And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium. Isn't that interesting? <laughter> I knew you would. I hope you're all taking notes, because there's going to be a short quiz next period. There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium, And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium, And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium, Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium. And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium, Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, <gasp> And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

There's sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium, And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium, And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium, And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium. These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard, And there may be many others, but they haven't been discavard. Now, may I have the next slide please? Got carried away there. Oedipus Rex It seems that most of the songs that you hear these days on the radio played by the disc-jockeys, apart from Rock-n-Roll and other childrens' records, tend to be motion-picture title-songs. Apparently producers feel that we will not attend their movies unless we have the titles well drilled into our heads in advance. Of course, we don't go anyway, but at least this way they make back on the song some of what they've lost on the picture.

With the rise of the motion-picture title-song, we've had such hits in the past few years as The Ten Commandments Mambo, Brothers Karamazov Cha-Cha, Incredible Shrinking Man, I Love You. I'm sure you're all familiar with these, but a few years ago a motion picture version appeared of Sophocles' immortal tragedy Oedipus Rex. This picture played only in the so-called art theaters, and it was not a financial success. And I maintain that the reason it was not a financial success... <laughter> (You're away ahead of me.) ...was, that it did not have a title tune, which the people could hum and which would make them actually eager to attend this particular play. So, I have attempted to supply this need and here then is the prospective title song from Oedipus Rex. 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, oh, 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. The out-patients are out in force tonight, I see. In Old Mexico Now, I'm sure you're all aware that this week is national gall-bladder week.

So as sort of an educational feature at this point I thought I would acquaint you with some of the results of my recent researches into the career of the late doctor Samuel Gall, inventor of the gall-bladder. Which certainly ranks as one of the more important technological advances since the invention of the joy-buzzer and the dribble-glass. Doctor Gall's faith in his invention was so dramatically vindicated last year, as you no doubt recall, when, for the first time in history, in a nation-wide poll the gall-bladder was voted among the top ten organs. His educational career began interestingly enough in agricultural school, where he majored in animal husbandry, until they caught him at it one day. Whereupon he switched to the field of medicine in which field he also won renown as the inventor of gargling. Which prior to that time had been practiced only furtively by a remote tribe in the Andes who passed the secret down from father to son as part of their oral tradition. He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich. He was therefore able to retire at an early age. To the land we all dream about, sunny Mexico of course.

The last part of which is completely irrelevant, as with the whole thing I guess, except, it's a rather sneaky way of getting into this next type of popular song which is one of those things about that magic, and romantic land south of the border. When it's fiesta time in Guadalajara, Then I long to be back once again In Old Mexico. Where we lived for today, Never giving a thought to tomara. To the strumming of guitars, In a hundred grubby bars I would whisper "Te amo." The mariachis would serenade, And they would not shut up till they were paid. We ate, we drank, and we were merry, And we got typhoid and dysentery. But best of all, we went to the Plaza de Toros. Now whenever I start feeling morose, I revive by recalling that scene. And names like Belmonte, Dominguin, and Manolete, If I live to a hundred and eighty, I shall never forget what they mean.

(For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man facing singlehandedly a half a ton of angry pot roast!) Out came the matador, Who must have been potted or Slightly insane, but who looked rather bored. Then the picadors of course, Each one on his horse, I shouted "Ole!" ev'ry time one was gored. I cheered at the bandilleros' display, As they stuck the bull in their own clever way, For I hadn't had so much fun since the day My brother's dog Rover (Rover was killed by a Pontiac. And it was done with such grace and artistry that the witnesses awarded the driver both ears and the tail - but I digress.) The moment had come, We knew there'd be blood on the sand pretty soon. The crowd held its breath, Hoping that death Would brighten an otherwise dull afternoon. At last, the matador did what we wanted him to. He raised his sword and his aim was true. In that moment of truth I suddenly knew That someone had stolen my wallet.

Now it's fiesta time in Akron, Ohio, But it's back to old Guadalajara I'm longing to go. Far away from the strikes of the A.F. of L. and C.I.O. How I wish I could get back To the land of the wetback, And forget the Alamo, Clementine I should like to consider the folk song, and expand briefly on a theory I have held for some time, to the effect that the reason most folk songs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people. If professional songwriters had written them instead, things might have turned out considerably differently. For example, consider the old favorite, with which, I'm sure, you're all familiar, "Clementine", you know: In a cavern, in a canyon, dadada dadadada... A song with no recognizable merit whatsoever, and imagine what might have happened if, for example, Cole Porter had tried writing this song. The first verse might have come out like this: In a cavern, in a canyon, Excava-ha-ha-hating for a mine, Far away from the boom-boom-boom of the city She was so pretty, what a pity, Clementine.

Oh Clementine, can't you tell from the howls of me This love of mine calls to you from the bowels of me. Are you discerning the returning Of this churning, burning, yearning for you-oo-oo... ah-ah... Well, supposing at this point that Mozart (or one of that crowd) had tried writing a verse, the next one might have come out as a baritone aria from an Italian opera, somewhat along these lines: Era legera e come un fairy E suo shoes numero nine, Herring bo-ho-ho-hoxes senza to-ho-ho-hopses, Sandalae per Clementina si, per Clementina si, Per Clementina sandalae, per Clementina sandalae, per Clementine. Clehementina, Clehementina, Clehe-he-mentina... Herring boxes senza topses sandalae per Clementina, Herring boxes senza topses sandalae per Clementina, Che sciagura Clementina, che sciagura Clementina, cara Clementina, cara Clementina-na-na-na-na-na-na-na!

Supposing at this rather dramatic juncture in the narrative, one of our modern "cool school" of composers had tried writing a verse, the next one might have come out like this: Drove those ducklings to the water Yeah brach! doddley doo doo uh ah! Ev'ry morning like 9am Ooh pah! de do de do do do, biddley da! Got hung up on a splinter, got a-hung up on a splinter Cloo ge mop! Huh huh! Do de do de do do do Fell into the foamy brine, dig that crazy Clementine, man! To end on a happy note, one can always count on Gilbert and Sullivan for a rousing finale, full of words and music and signifying nothing. That I missed her depressed her young sister named Esther, This mister to pester she tried. Now her pestering sister's a festering blister, You're best to resist her, say I. The mister resisted, the sister persisted, I kissed her, all loyalty slipped. When she said I could have her, her sister's cadaver Must surely have turned in its crypt. Yes, yes, yes, yes!

But I love she and she loves me. Enraptured are the both of we. Yes I love she and she loves I And will through all eternity! See what I mean? It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier I have only comparatively recently emerged from the United States army so that I am now of course in the radio-active reserve and, the usual jokes about the army aside, one of the many fine things one has to admit is the way that the army has carried the American democratic ideal to its logical conclusion in the sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also on the grounds of ability. Be that as it may, some of you may recall the publicity a few years ago about the army's search for an official army song to be the counterpart of the navy's Anchors Away and the airforce's Up In The Air Junior Birdman songs. I was in basic training at the time and I recall our platoon sergeant, who was an unfrocked marine. Actually, the change of service had come as quite a blow to him because it meant that he had to memorize a new serial number which took up most of his time.

At any rate I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time. Well, I submitted the following song which is called It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier which, I think, demonstrates the proper spirit you'll agree. However, the fact that it did not win the contest, I can ascribe only to blatant favoratism on the part of the judges. The heart of every man in our platoon must swell with pride, For the nation's youth, the cream of which is marching at his side. For the fascinating rules and regulations that we share, And the quaint and curious costumes that we're called upon to wear. Now Al joined up to do his part defending you and me. He wants to fight and bleed and kill and die for liberty. With the hell of war he's come to grips, Policing up the filter tips, It makes a fella proud to be a soldier! When Pete was only in the seventh grade, he stabbed a cop. He's real R.A.

material and he was glad to swap His switchblade and his old zip gun For a bayonet and a new M-1. It makes a fella proud to be a soldier! After Johnny got through basic training, he Was a soldier through and through when he was done. It's effects were so well rooted, That the next day he saluted A Good Humor man, an usher, and a nun. Now Fred's an intellectual, brings a book to every meal. He likes the deep philosophers, like Norman Vincent Peale. He thinks the army's just the thing, Because he finds it broadening. It makes a fella proud to be a soldier! Now Ed flunked out of second grade, and never finished school. He doesn't know a shelter half from an entrenching tool. But he's going to be a big success. He heads his class at OCS. It makes a fella proud to be a soldier! Our old mess sergeant's taste buds had been shot off in the war. But his savory collations add to our esprit de corps. To think of all the marvelous ways They're using plastics nowadays. It makes a fella proud to be a soldier! Our lieutenant is the up-and-coming type.

Played with soldiers as a boy you just can bet. It is written in the stars He will get his captain's bars, But he hasn't got enough box tops yet. Our captain has a handicap to cope with, sad to tell. He's from Georgia, and he doesn't speak the language very well. He used to be, so rumor has, the Dean of Men at Alcatraz. It makes a fella proud to be, When as a kid I vowed to be, One ought to be allowed to be A soldier. (At ease!) She's My Girl And now to the love song. I'm sure you're familiar with love songs on the order of He's Just My Bill, my man, my Joe, my Max, and so on where the girl who sings them tells you that, although the man she loves is anti-social, alcoholic, physically repulsive, or just plain unsanitary, nevertheless she is his because he is hers, or something like that. But as far as I know there has never been a popular song from the analogous male point of view, that is to say, of a man who finds himself in love with, or in this case married to, a girl who has nothing whatsoever to recommend her.

I have attempted to fill this need. The song is called She's My Girl. Sharks gotta swim, and bats gotta fly, I gotta love one woman till I die. To Ed or Dick or Bob She may be just a slob, But to me, well, In winter the bedroom is one large ice cube, And she squeezes the toothpaste from the middle of the tube. Her hairs in the sink Have driven me to drink, But she's my girl, she's my girl, she's my girl, And I love her. The girl that I lament for, The girl my money's spent for, The girl my back is bent for, The girl I owe the rent for, The girl I gave up Lent for Is the girl that heaven meant for me.

So though for breakfast she makes coffee that tastes like shampoo, I come home for dinner and get peanut butter stew, Or if I'm in luck, It's broiled hockey puck, But, oh well, what the hell, She's my girl, The Masochism Tango Another familiar type of lovesong is the passionate or firy variety, usually in tango tempo, in which the singer exhorts his partner to haunt him and taunt him and, if at all possible, to consume him with a kiss of fire. This particular illustration of this genre is called The Masochism Tango. I ache for the touch of your lips, Dear, But much more for the touch of your whips, Dear. You can raise welts As we dance to the Masochism Tango. Let our love be a flame, not an ember, Say it's me that you want to dismember. Blacken my eye, Set fire to my tie, As we dance to the Masochism Tango. At your command Before you here I stand, My heart is in my hand. Ecch! It's here that I must be. My heart entreats, Just hear those savage beats, And go put on your cleats And come and trample me.

Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany, That's why I'm in such exquisite agony. My soul is on fire, It's aflame with desire, Which is why I perspire When we tango. In your left castanet, Love, I can feel the pain yet, Love, Ev'ry time I hear drums. And I envy the rose That you held in your teeth, Love, With the thorns underneath, Love, Sticking into your gums. Your eyes cast a spell that bewitches. The last time I needed twenty stitches To sew up the gash That you made with your lash, As we danced to the Masochism Tango. Bash in my brain, And make me scream with pain, Then kick me once again, And say we'll never part. I know too well So, Darling, if you smell Something burning, it's my heart. Excuse me! Take your cigarette from its holder, And burn your initials in my shoulder. Fracture my spine, And swear that you're mine, As we dance to the Masochism Tango.

We Will All Go Together When We Go I am reminded at this point of a fellow I used to know who's name was Henry, only to give you an idea of what an individualist he was he spelt it HEN3RY. The 3 was silent, you see. Henry was financially independent having inherited his father's tar-and-feather business and was therefore able to devote his full time to such intellectual pursuits as writing. I particularly remember a heart-warming novel of his about a young necropheliac who finally achieved his boy-hood ambition by becoming coroner. <moderate laughter> The rest of you can look it up when you get home. In addition to writing he indulged in a good deal of philosophizing. Like so many contemporary philosophers he especially enjoyed giving helpful advice to people who were happier than he was. One particular bit of advice which I recall, which is the reason I bring up this whole, dreary story is something he said once before they took him away to the Massachussetts state home for the bewilderd.

He said: "Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it." It's always seems to me that this is precisely the sort of dynamic, positive thinking that we so desperately need in these trying times of crisis and universal broo-ha-ha, and so with this in mind I have here a modern positive dynamic uplifting song in the tradition of the great old revival hymns. This one might more accurately be termed a survival hymn. When you attend a funeral, It is sad to think that sooner or Later those you love will do the same for you. And you may have thought it tragic, Not to mention other adjec- Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do. But don't you worry. No more ashes, no more sackcloth. And an armband made of black cloth Will some day never more adorn a sleeve. For if the bomb that drops on you Gets your friends and neighbors too, There'll be nobody left behind to grieve. And we will all go together when we go. What a comforting fact that is to know. Universal bereavement, Yes, we all will go together when we go. We will all go together when we go.

All suffuse with an incandescent glow. No one will have the endurance To collect on his insurance, Lloyd's of London will be loaded when they go. Oh we will all fry together when we fry. We'll be french fried potatoes by and by. There will be no more misery When the world is our rotisserie, Yes, we will all fry together when we fry. Down by the old maelstrom, There'll be a storm before the calm. And we will all bake together when we bake. There'll be nobody present at the wake. With complete participation

Question: Which entertainer said, "He was into animal husbandry--until they caught him at it?
Answer: Tom Lehrer