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by Lore Sjöberg
The Constitution
You probably know what I'm going to say here, but
I'm going to say it anyway: thanks to this cartoon,
nobody born in the US between 1968 and 1975 can
recite the preamble to the Constitution without singing --
in their own private headspace if not right out loud.
I was called upon to recite same in Junior High school,
and it was all I could do to keep from breaking out into a
Janis-Joplin-inspired a cappella number. It was
very thoughtful of the Founding Fathers to set the
preamble to such a catchy folk-funk rhythm. A
Interplanet Janet
This just doesn't resonate with me. Not only is the song
mostly forgettable, but -- and this is the important
part -- the only catchy bit doesn't contain any useful
information. It just points out that Janet is a solar
system miss from a future world, which frankly describes
a good number of women I dated in college, and makes
a dumb baseball pun. C-
Five
Is it just me, or does the big hide-and-seek bumpkin in
this number seem on the verge of some terrible Sling-Blade-esque
act of mentally disadvantaged homicide? I don't mean to be
gruesome here, but I can't help but imagine that the cops are going to find
this backwoods multiplication fan in overalls sobbing over the lifeless body of
one of his cartoony urchin companions, saying "He wouldn't
multiply by five! I tol' him to multiply by five!"
Weird. Eerie. B
Elbow Room
What fun! A cheerful paean to Manifest Destiny and overpopulation!
Now we know that relentless expansion was just driven by the
need to dance! Take up the White Man's Boogie! Fifty-Four
Forty or Frug! And once we've choked the life out of every square
inch of this planet we'll go do the Expansionist Shuffle on
the moon! Most of the Schoolhouse oeuvre has aged remarkably well,
give or take that embarrassing scene in Reality bites,
but this one seems a tad shall we say naïve. Catchy, though. B
Pronouns
Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla! I wish my name were Rufus Xavier
Sarsaparilla! Ironically enough, though, I'd insist that people not
use pronouns when referring to me. I'd make them say "Hey! How is
Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla? How are Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla's wife
and kids? Did Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla catch the game last night?"
If anyone refused, I'd get Albert Andreas Armadillo's rhino to
impale them. A-
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