Okay, this one is a bit loopy, even for me, but I swear it’s not the result of my over-imbibing this evening, despite my last six posts that chronicled an endless cautionary tale about my fondness for libations. I will admit to possibly over-consuming a startling amount of mixed-berry cheesecake, so it’s entirely possible that I’m in the midst of a glucose reaction. We may never know. In any case, the challenge with this ditty is to see how many song references you can identify. (My apologies to the more youthful readers, as the references are definitely dated.) Enjoy.
I went to a garden party…
Well, it wasn’t really a garden party, per se, but it was a party and we walked through a nicely-landscaped front lawn in order to reach the door wherein the party was being held. There were plants and birds and rocks and things, but it felt good to be out of the rain once we got to that door. (Yes, it’s been a rainy night in Georgia, I mean Dallas, and no one really wants to arrive at a party in the midst of such. Yes, people of my age appreciate the opportunity to appear dewy and fresh, but not to the point of looking like a toothless, bearded hag in a cross-fire hurricane.)
Once inside the domicile, I was no longer all by myself, but was instead surrounded by people who wanted to teach the world to sing. (Truth be told, my partner was with me the entire time, but he’s always there, many seasons in the sun, and I’ve never been to me.) There were a few folks in the kitchen attempting to prep barbecue for the impending repast (they stabbed it with their steely knives, but they just couldn’t kill the beast), but most of the crowd was going their own way and trying to get back to where they once belonged.
“Welcome,” said one of our hosts, surprisingly teary-eyed at our arrival. “So glad you could come, despite this wretched weather, girls.”
Me: “Well, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain, but I never expected someone to play misty for me.” I brandished one of the things we had brought with us. “To sir, with love.”
Host: “Oh, an American pie. How thoughtful of you.” (I thought it unnecessary to mention that we had snatched up said pie at Costco a mere hour before our arrival. Signed, sealed, delivered, it’s yours.)
Other Host wanders in, slightly flushed. “Everybody’s talking at me, I can’t hear a word they’re saying. Something’s happening here.”
First Host: “Well, maybe if you weren’t sucking down the White Rabbit Beaujolais like a Rhinestone Cowboy you might remember the morning after.”
Other Host: “I don’t know how to love him.”
First Host: “You and me and a dog named Boo. Players only love you when they’re playing.”
Me, despite the fact that I was born to run, tried to stop this calliope from crashing to the ground: “So anyway, who else tied a ribbon around this old oak tree of a party?”
First Host: “Well, Beth is here.”
From another room, Beth: “I hear you calling, but I can’t come home to the kitchen right now.”
Other Host: “And Beulah is here.”
First Host: “Her name is Julie. Are you sailing away to Key Largo again?”
Other Host: “Oh, right. Sorry, I’ve been smoking in the boy’s room.”
First Host: “I knew it! It’s always all about you and the head games. You can leave me now, and you won’t take away the biggest part of me.”
Other Host: “If I can’t have you, I don’t want nobody, baby.”
Me: “Seriously, guys, let’s talk about something else, like all the lonely people who showed up at your YMCA and just want to rock the Casbah.”
My Partner: “Tiny Dancer, that is perhaps the most wretched line you have ever contemplated including in one of your inane blog posts. Stop, in the name of love, before you break my heart.”
Not Julie, wandering in from that other room where people are presumably having more adult conversations: “I don’t mean to make the earth move under your feet, but we’re not sure what that dip is on the coffee table. We don’t know if it’s green or it’s blue, although there’s something in the way it moves me. Still, it’s a tragedy and the feeling’s gone.”
Other Host: “Well, you’re just one hot child in the city.”
Not Julie: “That’s a completely inappropriate response, although I do feel like I’m looking wild and looking pretty. Still, can you fat-bottomed girls start lookin’ for some hot stuff, maybe tonight? We’re hungry and we won’t stop believing that real food is more than just a misty, water-colored memory in our minds.”
Me: “I don’t even know where to take this story now. I’ve worked myself into a hole.”
Partner: “And that’s why your blog is known as the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Me: “You mean Ella Fitzgerald, right?”
Partner: “Oh, honey. No.”
There are 50 song references in this mess, unless I accidentally created additional tributes. How many did you get?
Categories: Humor
Bonnywood Manor 
I didn’t count, but probably about 40. You managed to cover my last couple of high school years quite well! (And of course, that doesn’t date me at all.)
However, that’s an amazing feat of musical incorporation! 😀
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Nothing dates us anymore. We have enough rings on our respective tree-trunks that basic math no longer applies, said with respect and not any degree of denigration. I do find it amazing how precisely I can recall the entire lyrics to songs from forty-odd years ago, but I can’t recall more than a few words from anything that has been on the radio in the last twenty. And so it goes…
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thanks for covering my life, i found almost as many as my many years old
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We aren’t old. We’re just seasoned, and any decent person realizes that every good dish is all about the seasoning… 😉
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Let me at pen and paper cos this is my kinda challenge! I’ll report back as the dedication needed is not conducive to pretending I’m paying attention to any customers that may wander in. Please keep eating cheesecake cos this was marvellous. May your pancreas rest in peace. 😉
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I’m all atwitter as I wait your final tabulations, wondering how well things may translate across the pond.
As for cheesecake, I will never stop eating it, defying my doctor until they shove my pancreas-deficient ass into a tomb… 😉
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hahaha . I loved that trip down memory lane! You seriously tripped the light fantastic!
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Yes, I fully admit to tripping several times, and then going back for more. Feel free to use that head-scratching admission in a manner that you deem worthy… 😉
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Ha! My daughter and I are known for being able turn almost any bit of conversation into a song reference, accompanied by a few bars. Show tunes are a specialty. Husband rolls his eyes, but it is part of my charm, right? He married me AFTER I sang the old Dr. Pepper jingle about being misunderstood.
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Ah, a kindred soul with the musicality. There are many things I’ve done which I shouldn’t have, but I will never feel the least bit of guilt when it comes to spontaneous combustion with show tunes…. 😉
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That was a lot of fun–I counted 48! You’ve certainly got a brain like a jukebox:-)
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I actually like that phrase, “brain like a jukebox”. I may have to update my business cards… 😉
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It’s from a really weird song but it’s always stuck with me!
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Fun Fun Fun (hee hee)
I wrote them down as I came across them…got 44 for sure
Got 8 ? wasn’t sure about
Total 52
And a story tying them all together now!
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Thanks, Barbara. I need to sit down and update this post with all the actual songs I referenced, because I have a feeling that I accidentally referenced more songs than I thought…
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Fun for this oldie! Scarlet begonias to you.
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Deadhead, are you? Intriguing. We really should chat more… 😉
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Not really but I had housemates during college who were major Deadheads so I have significant exposure
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Close to, I immodestly think. Sounds like your partner might be reading your list, shaking his head. Hope he’s not singing ‘Paul Simon’s ’50 ways,’ though!
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I would imagine that Partner has been humming such since roughly two minutes after we met. Such is life at Bonnywood Manor…
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So, Brian . . . it appears you’ve been hanging out with a hookah smoking caterpillar again. Well done!
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Thanks, Donna. I have, indeed, hung with the caterpillar. But there was no hookah, not that I recall. (Not judging, merely stating.) Perhaps there’s a trust issue with our relationship? I’ll have to go ask Alice…
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I recognized all of them except the one about the “fat-bottomed girls looking for some hot stuff,” I recognized the hot stuff song from The Full Monty, but I don’t remember anything about fat-bottomed girls. I may have just not understood the words. Sort of like, “toothless, bearded hag,” which I always thought was “a two-fist bearded hag.” Didn’t make sense to me, but a lot of the songs back then didn’t make sense to me. Did you know that the song “Suzanne” by James Taylor was about drugs? Hell, I thought it was about a girl named Suzanne.
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First, the “fat-bottomed girls” is a reference to a Queen song, with “looking for some hot stuff” changing to the Donna Summer song. It was a two-fer reference, which is a bit of a cheat, I admit.
Second, I had to look up the lyrics for the Rolling Stones’ song, because I thought they were saying “toothless, bitter hag”, which is how I feel right now with all my dental issues. (I have another appointment on Thursday, so the saga of my wretched teeth continues.)
Third, I actually did know that about the James Taylor song, but I didn’t find out until years later, which is basically when I learn many things, years after I should have learned them… 😉
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I did pretty good on the songs. LOL on the James Taylor one. I only found out a few years ago. I listened to so many songs for years and a lot of them have to do with…stuff. I just didn’t know.
I was such a naive idiot. When I was a pup of 18, I asked a pregnant woman “how she got that way.” She blushed and started talking about certain body parts getting a certain “way.” I was stupefied. I said, “oooh…yuk. What if he was to try to do it then?’ She cracked up and said, “why you crazy thing…that’s the only time he can.” Yep…now you can holler.
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A lot. I found a lot. But, I lost count so I’m not sure how many, although I suspect I did miss a few of them. Because, you know, I was probably busy being a mother during a lot of that time. And mothers have things to do besides remember songs. She says.
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Well, now, I can’t really compete with motherhood, not having raised a child nor being legally allowed to do so during the time when these songs were on the radio. (Nothing against you, of course, as I’m sure your procreative abilities are/were stellar and songs should have been written in your honor, even if you didn’t have time to listen to them.) But with your closing two words, “she says”, my thought pattern instantly goes to Simple Mind’s “All the Things She Said”, which may not have been your intention, but I am once again adrift in the lyrical superiority of songs written before the song-writing was reduced to the repetitive minimalism we have today…
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Well, my procreative abilities were passable but my product was superlative, 😇
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*nom nom nom* (furtively wiping incriminating berry stains off my chin)…Ummm, what was the question? Oh. Song references. Right. Right….um FIFTY. Because I’m OLDER than you are and just everybody wants to rule the world. Oh don’t flash those bette davis eyes at me! C’mon Eileen, I just wanna dance with somebody, while or when doves cry.” I do believe I got them ALL even if it were a different generation and you did try to take on me, Billie Jean. (I give up. and obviously, YOU WIN) 😉 hee hee hee. That was FUN!! Haven’t felt like that since like a virgin was new/fresh. You know, call me. We might have something here.
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Oh, please. We are essentially the same age, because once you pass the 50 hump (and I don’t intend for that to be a sexual reference, but run with it if you must), we all get lumped together in the “past their expiration date” cesspool that The Youngsters regard with undisguised contempt. That aside, you win the Comment of the Day Award. (Just don’t tell anybody else, kay? Some of these folks around here can pull out a shiv for less than that.)
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I reckon I too was at about 40-45; we must be similar vintage
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Oh, we are of similar vintage, for sure. That’s the main driver behind this blog, sharing stories that hint of a certain time and shared consciousness. If other folks like it, that’s swell, but it’s really for us…
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Was too caught up in the difficulty of stringing all those titles together to count. Can’t imagine trying to do that, unless it’s show tunes. Loved the fat-bottomed girl thing because Queen always fascinates and on so any levels.
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Have you been able to see “Bohemian Rhapsody”? It’s definitely manipulate and time-condensing, but it expertly evokes a certain time and place…
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Not yet, but will. I preferred listening to watching him. Was glad Malik got the Oscar. T’was hard. I’m a Viggo fan. His eyes speak volumes, to use an overused term. Have you seen History of Violence?
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We do have “History” in our DVD collection, but we haven’t quite gotten around to it…
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I didn’t count but I’m pretty sure they’re all on my playlist. Of course there are around 3000+ songs on my playlist so it’s hard to avoid. 🙂
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Sounds like we have very much in common, musically. I still have my “old-school” Ipod, from back in the glory days when those things had a HUGE amount of storage. I can kick that thing off in “random shuffle” mode and not hear the same song for three years… 😉
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That’s great. I have an old one too. The new ones have less memory? I didn’t know that, better take good care of mine then. I have a bunch of old i-pods, going all the way back to the “let there be light”, or there about.
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Blasts from the past…..those were music days😎
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Indeed, they were… 😉
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Lordy, this was fun! I didn’t even bother counting, I was just humming along and enjoying myself. But let me just say this: the way you opened with Ricky Nelson and ended with Gordon Lightfoot speaks of the genuine goodness of your soul. May you stay, may you stay, forever young.
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Well, my young and good heart had a swell time cobbling this together. I really had gone to a dinner party earlier in the evening, and there was actually a friend named Beth there, ergo making the “Kiss” reference all that more personally titillating. (For reference, Beth is the one whose family owns the vacation compound we visited in New Mexico last September, the one where I’m going to set the “Murder Cabin” serial if I ever get around to it.) Oh, and the featured mixed-berry cheesecake is from Costco, if you have one of those near you. It’s a little pricey ($17 at our location), but it’s gorgeously delicious and is the size of a manhole cover, feeding plenty. It was savaged at the party yet we still had plenty to bring home, finishing off the last slice a few hours ago…
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This would make an awesome mixed tape.
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Oh, that’s a great idea, actually. I’ll see what I can do…
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