Delightful Song about Our Current Situation

August 14, 2020 //

The Phoenix Chamber Choir of Vancouver recorded this wonderful parody of a song written by Billy Joel about the rigors and tedium of quarantine.

Enjoy!

Categories Art, Humor

26 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Bob Shepherd says:

August 14, 2020 at 12:33 pm

Your Guide to Surviving Lockdown, by Bob Shepherd, Lifestyle Coach and Bread Whisperer

Lockdown at home is hard for anyone. That’s why I’ve prepared these tips to make it gas.

–Paint a face on a basketball and have dinner with it.
–Join a deranged online community like QAnon. It’s full of people who have been living alone in the basement for years.
–Teach yourself a new skill like computer hacking.
–Just remember that though you can’t get out and mingle anymore, there are still plenty of people out there who never particularly cared to have you around anyway.
–During this pandemic, many people are discovering the joys of baking. If you can find flour (good luck!) try making cookies in the shapes of the Beatles or, if you are really ambitious, Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles.
–OK. Yes. Sex is an issue. Now that you are stuck inside, your only option is having it with the partner stuck inside with you. Cosplay is a great answer to this. For example, one of you can dress up as Stormy Daniels and the other as Donald Trump. Then, you can try to find Donald Trump’s _____.
–When families are confined indoors together, disagreements sometimes arise over responsibilities for online chores, so establish a schedule for these. For example, if you have two children, Karen and Tad, you can have Karen take on all parental responsibilities on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and Tad take on all these responsibilities on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. That way, you can stay in bed until this is all over.
–If you have one computer and three kids all trying to do Zoom classes, write their teachers and ask them to hold their classes at 1:00 to 5:00 AM. That way, the computer will be available for your work during the day. Teachers are totally flexible. You can ask anything of them.
–If working remotely gets to be a drag on your psychic space, free up some time by simply cutting and pasting old email responses instead of writing new ones from scratch. Example:
```
    Query: Will you have the report ready for the Zoom meeting Monday at 9:00 AM?
    Answer: That would be product skew ZX-193A.
```
Hope this helps! You’re welcome!

Reply
- Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:
  
  August 15, 2020 at 9:07 am
  
  That’s funny, Bob.
  
  Reply
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    August 15, 2020 at 9:46 am
    
    Thanks, Mamie. Much appreciated!
Bob Shepherd says:

August 14, 2020 at 12:37 pm

So much fun! Thank you!

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Linda says:

August 14, 2020 at 1:33 pm

thanks- the video is great.

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m4potw says:

August 14, 2020 at 1:37 pm

To Bob Shepherd:

Thank you for your very wise advice. Yes, my wonderful Dr. Ravitch’s recommendation of this song written by Billy Joel about the rigors and tedium of quarantine is very lovely.

You are the best teacher for many learners, especially for many young parents who are under 40 years old.

I would like to add a reminder of time. There is only 24 hours per day regardless of being talented or just ordinary. We are only human being to live with one brain, one heart, one stomach. In short. we just handle within our own capacity and our own ability.

Whoever tries to grab anythings more than they can hold in their head, and heart, they will
have stroke or heart attack due to being anger, greed and lust.

Hahaha, being there and done that, that is me with two strokes. i just accept whatever is and be quiet with contentment with both wide eyes opened.

Respectfully yours,

May King. or back2basic

Reply
- dianeravitch says:
  
  August 14, 2020 at 1:57 pm
  
  May,
  
  You have such a loving heart that I know your pain does not come from greed or anger. I have missed your wise voice here. Please stay well.
  
  Diane
  
  Reply
  - m4potw says:
    
    August 15, 2020 at 2:29 am
    
    Dearest Dr. Ravitch:
    
    Thank you very much for your consolation and your kind commend to me. Truly and honestly, I was very much salvage and greed plus anger when I had everything so easily in life at very young age.
    
    Fortunately, twice shipwrecks and twice strokes have given me the greatest opportunity to think over generally the real meaning of a simple Vietnamese sentence or definition of a true hero –
    
    “Tay khong ma quay nen ho moi hay”
    
    = empty hand creates a clue, that is a true hero.
    
    In another word, thanks to your dedication and determination, your writing has been gathering millions of conscientious veteran educators who agree to clue one to another to support and to maintain the public education for all learners in your platform or your NPE organization.
    
    Yes, Dr. Ravitch, you are a true heroine not only in North America, but also in the world.
    
    I admire and respect and love you forever.
    
    May King in Toronto, Canada
  - dianeravitch says:
    
    August 15, 2020 at 10:44 am
    
    Thank you, May.
    You are far too kind and generous.
    You have had a difficult life and you have earned a blessed old age.
    I will bear my minor hardships more graciously when I think of you.
    Those readers who have been here a long time know that you fled Vietnam on a small boat and survived many hardships before getting to safety in Canada.
    I’m so grateful you are a reader here.
    
    Diane
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  August 14, 2020 at 3:34 pm
  
  Thanks, May! And much love to you and yours!
  
  Reply
- Linda says:
  
  August 15, 2020 at 8:30 am
  
  May-
  You write with true grace. Thank you for sharing, at this blog, the insights from your soul.
  
  Reply
Lloyd Lofthouse says:

August 14, 2020 at 2:51 pm

That was a great isolated LOL audience-alone experience. If you have not watched this wonderful music video yet, keep your eyes on the guy getting the haircut. He does not appear in every scene and his image moves around.

I won’t reveal what his wife or girlfriend did to his hair by the end. You have to watch to find out.

Also, do not miss the toilet paper moment. :o)

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- Threatened Out West says:
  
  August 15, 2020 at 10:16 pm
  
  My favorite part was the rhythm being kept by opening and closing the top of the Lysol wipes container!
  
  Reply
Rachel McAlpine says:

August 14, 2020 at 3:48 pm

I will pass on this link to my choir. It is so special, thank you Diane.

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- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  August 15, 2020 at 9:47 am
  
  Agreed! It’s just wonderful!
  
  Reply
ira shor says:

August 14, 2020 at 6:31 pm

Just marvelous, thanks Bob and thanks Diane!

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carolmalaysia says:

August 14, 2020 at 7:41 pm

BEAUTIFUL AND FUN! [How did one woman get a can of Lysol?]

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Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:

August 15, 2020 at 8:58 am

Yes, that was funny. But let’s face it. We’re not really in quarantine. We can go out for walks in nature. We can still go to stores. We can go and sit by a lake. We can visit friends and socially distance. Many people have worked on things they haven’t done in years. I see my neighbors doing landscaping in their yard. So, I am missing my vacation to Concord, MA this year but it’s ok. I’ve become a member at Mount Vernon and have been enjoying their online programs and the programs that museums are presenting online. I’ve been meditating a lot and I’ve taken up tai chi again. I’ve probably read over 100 books since March when we left school! I’ve looked around my house and appreciate the things I’ve never thought of before. I’ve cleaned and cooked and watched Good Witch on the Hallmark Channel (I know it’s tacky!). My hair is gray because I haven’t been to the hairdresser in 5 months, but it’s ok. I’m often reminded of Blaise Pascal who said, “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” I know I’ve got a good situation and others don’t have it so well. This is the hand I’ve been dealt, you might say. This is my situation. This is the one I have to deal with and there have been difficulties and challenges. Everyone has his/her own situation. Sometimes I think about people who were in prisons or concentration camps and how they were able to go inside and find meaning there. Their physical freedom was limited but the were free in another way. I think about those people and how can I say that my situation is so bad?

Reply
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  August 15, 2020 at 9:54 am
  
  Meditation, tai chi, and books. Wonderful! I have been doing a lot of baking. Just made, a few days ago, some Ethiopian sour bread, which uses a highly fermented sourdough and is boiled like a Christmas pudding. Delicious and with simple, inexpensive ingredients. BTW, I’m a third of the way through Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellman–a brilliant novel, funny and illuminating and extraordinarily innovative. Highly recommended. Ms. Ellman’s father was the great Joyce and Yeats and Blake scholar Richard Ellman, and one can definitely see the Joycian influence.
  
  Reply
  - Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:
    
    August 15, 2020 at 10:29 am
    
    Sounds like and interesting book. I will have to check it out. I love Blake. Making bread sounds hard to me but I love the idea of doing it. I’ve been reading a lot of Jung and Jung related stuff. It’s an interest I’ve had since my 20s. I’m very excited to be starting a course in Jungian Studies through the Jung Institute of LA. If I had my life to do over, I’d be a Jungian Analyst (as horrified as Jung would be at “Jungian analysts!”). I’d go to Zurich to the Jung Institute and to Pacifica Graduate Institute. I feel like Jung is the crux of so many interest I have – literature, consciousness studies, art, mythology, fairy tales, Alchemy, Hermeticism, philosophy, Eastern philosophy and on and on! Who could ever be bored in life? I feel like there’s not enough time to do it all!!!
- dianeravitch says:
  
  August 15, 2020 at 10:36 am
  
  Thanks, Mamie. I learned to cut my hair. It’s the new choppy look.
  
  Reply
  - Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:
    
    August 15, 2020 at 11:00 am
    
    That’s funny, Diane! I prefer gray hair and no haircut to the absolute disaster I would do cutting my own hair! That tells you how bad I’d be at it!!! But…I’ve built up enough courage and will soon be going to the hairdresser! Crazy stuff!!! 🙂 🙂
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  August 15, 2020 at 11:33 am
  
  Wow! That’s wonderful, Mamie! Best to you in your studies! I’ve wanted a copy of The Red Book but wasn’t able to justify the expense. It’s now in paperback at a more reasonable cost, thank goodness. I studied, years ago, at Indiana University, home to Stith Thompson, creator of the Aarne-Thompson Folktale Motif index. Great stuff. Here, a couple of my favorites from Blake (but there are so many to choose from):
  
  The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spake to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.
  
  Isaiah answer’d. I saw no God. nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover’d the infinite in every thing.
  
  —The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
  
  When the sun rises, do you not see a round disk somewhat like a gold guinea?
  
  Oh, no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying
  
  Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty!
  
  —Vision of the Last Judgment
  
  Reply
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    August 15, 2020 at 11:50 am
    
    White people, when studying indigenous religions, brought to them the idiocy of the bifurcation of the universe into the spiritual and the physical that they inherited from the Platonic tradition taken over by the Church in the days of its formation in the second century AD. And consequently, these people totally didn’t get what they were seeing and hearing. They didn’t get what indigenous peoples and new lovers know–that the spiritual realm is simply this one seen in a state of vision. Blake understood this. He writes, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
    
    Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
    
    and again, same source:
    
    When I came home: on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now perceived by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.
    
    How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
    Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?
    
    And again:
    
    A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
Mamie Krupczak Allegretti says:

August 15, 2020 at 1:24 pm

Thanks for those Blake quotes, Bob. Yes, The Red Book is a massive tome. Jung’s artwork in that book is really something. Speaking of “our current situation” as Diane says…I just bought my schools supplies for the year: scrubs, masks, a face shield, gloves, hand sanitizer. I try to pick up cleaning fluids when I can find them which is rarely. Oh…2 hampers for the garage. We’ll be leaving our clothes and shoes in the garage after school. Add to that a folding chair and cooler for my husband to use when he goes out to his car to eat lunch. I have a door to a small courtyard I can open all day but he has only small windows to open. He wants to go outside as much as possible. Of course, he’s just following Gov. Cuomo’s advice that, “Indoors is what you want to avoid.” My husband will be moving classrooms during the day, so he’s still thinking about what kind of bag to use to carry books, computer, cleaning supplies, etc….Perhaps a shopping cart! So, that’s “our current situation!”

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- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  August 16, 2020 at 9:37 am
  
  Safety and health to you and him this fall! One hopes that we are, in fact, only three or four months away from a vaccine!!!
  
  Reply