Nearer My Dog To Thee

During this trying time, perhaps the best way for all of us to keep our spirits up is to do things for others. In our case, we keep draining green plastic bottles of Clan MacGregor because the empties are our dog's favorite backyard toys.

Penny (the official dog of Hope n' Change) dances with joy when she realizes there's a fresh bottle to enjoy at playtime. She then goes absolutely insane when we drop a marble inside the bottle to give it a pleasant rattle. Seriously, it's like she becomes a kangaroo on meth and her eyes bug out so far she could be mistaken for Adam Schiff.

The official Clan MacGregor Bottle Game has simple rules: we throw the bottle across the yard, Penny gives chase, then tries to inflict maximum chew-damage on the bottle until we can wrestle it away from her locked and foaming jaws. Repeat as necessary until one or more participants are completely exhausted.

For those without dogs, we can't think of any reason the game couldn't be played by substituting a spouse or child (don't even try it with cats) and ignoring what your neighbors may think. Which reminds us: we occasionally underestimate our own strength and hurl a bottle into our neighbor's back yard. We're pretty sure we find this way more amusing than they do.

And speaking of neighbors...

As long as we're on a musical note, by popular request we're presenting another song that wasn't chosen to be in the movie "Muppets From Space."

This was to be the big happy celebration at the end, happening after (Spoiler Alert) Gonzo the Muppet is reunited with other Gonzo-ish Muppets from Outer Space, and Bruce Willis finds out he was dead the whole time. No wait, that's a different spoiler.

In any event, the song begins with some of the aliens singing about their quest to find Gonzo, after which every Muppet in the movie sings about how swell it is to be in dangerously close proximity to friends and family.

As before, the music was written, arranged, and produced by an award-winning composer whose name we're withholding for now, with the lyrics written by Stilton Jarlsberg. BONUS: Stilton also sings the part of every Muppet heard in this song, bravely putting himself in the line of fire for about a dozen copyright violation lawsuits and public derision.

And now, let's party...!

The Jarlsberg Diaries - Songs in Space

Who here wants to hear more about the coronavirus and political discord? Nobody, right?! Which is why I'm taking inspiration from the sainted Monty Pythons and going with "something completely different" today - another installment of "The Jarlsberg Diaries" in which I share some of the oddities of my life and career. And there have been plenty.

In this case, we're going back 20 years or so. At the time, I was involved in a number of showbiz type pursuits, songwriting being one of them. And so it was that my musical partner and I (okay, mostly him) were approached to submit spec songs for the movie "Muppets in Space." It would be a high-profile and presumably very profitable enterprise if they bought any or all of the songs we created.

For two of the demo songs, I sang the parts of all the different Muppets - probably a dozen characters. "It Takes Two to Tangle" was sung by Miss Piggy as she beat the stew out of some guy, and "It's a Party Just To Be With You" was the big blowout song for the finale. "Make it have the feeling and energy of the song 'Celebration'," the producers specified. And they knew what they wanted, because in the end they just licensed 'Celebration.'

All together, we wrote and recorded three songs to submit - none of which sold. Dammit. But in this period of involuntary retrospection, it seemed like a fun time to revisit one of them.

In the movie, a crazed alien-hunter working for the government is trying to catch Gonzo the muppet, believing him to be from Outer Space (spoiler alert: he is)...

Jeffrey Tambor's finest moment

The song we submitted is called "When I Get My Hands on You," and features the villainous alien-hunter rhapsodizing about everything he was going to do when Gonzo was finally in his clutches.

I wrote the lyrics and my grammy-winning partner wrote, arranged, and produced the music. And on this one, we used a real singer (several, actually) which is why it remains my favorite of the tracks to this day. And I hope you'll enjoy it, too!

FROM THE VAULT: HOG HEAVEN

The Democrats are treating the Covid-19 crisis as an answered prayer, cramming everything they've ever wanted into the necessary-to-pass emergency relief bill. Sadly, it's unlikely that some poor bastard fighting for breath in a hospital (or quite likely at home) will benefit much from taxpayer dollars going to boost solar and wind power, mandating new levels of "diversity" in boardrooms, or forcing new emissions standards on the already crippled flight industry.

And as long as they're holding America hostage, the Dems have also called for $300 million to go to the National Endowment for the Arts, another $300 million for (ahem) "migration assistance," and $35 million going to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. An institution where, ironically, they give you dirty looks for coughing during a performance.

All of which put us in mind of this cartoon from 2009. New crisis, same old Democrats...

Tick Tock Tic-Tacs

The cartoon above represents the kind of wild, out-of-the-box ideas that ordinary Americans can come up with during these trying times to help make sure that our investment in Tic-Tacs stock doesn't tank any further.

Moreover, using Tic-Tacs can improve what few social interactions we have left...

On a less comical note, we'd like to call your attention to a valuable resource from a singularly good source of information we've been paying attention to: the Peak Prosperity Home Lockdown Survival Guide.

Note that to read the whole report (which contains many useful links) you need to sign up for an account, but it's easy-peasy and doesn't cost anything. Or if you prefer to get your information in an audio/video way, here's an overall review of the survival guide from Peak Prosperity's excellent Youtube channel:

Okay, enough of that for now. We'll close today by sharing a video which we much enjoyed (granted, we have unusual tastes). What if all of the little white lies that parents tell their children in order to make them behave turned out to be true...?