I love Tom Lehrer's music. Absolutely love it. My dad found it when he was in college and introduced me to it when I was in middle school. My first exposure was the song Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, which my dad chose to teach me (we drove a lot, so we sang in the car all the time) because I don't like birds. I spent a good portion of my senior year singing "Bright College Days" at people.
Yes, that was me in the park as a 10 year old running and screaming at the pigeons to make them fly away. You can't just run at them, they don't go far enough. I perfected a sort of squawky crow noise that worked wonders. I still do it as an adult, even from a wheelchair.
So here's a WIP shot of the Tom Lehrer embroidery I'm working on. The border below the text will be a line of dead pigeons. Then I'll be doing rows of poison bottles and a skull on either side. Overkill? Perhaps, but that's the point of the song!
My favorite line in the song is actually "We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment, except for the few we take home to experiment," but it doesn't make a good stand-alone embroidery piece. The line I chose is recognizable to fans but not the most predictable choice. Plus people who don't know the song might also find it funny.
The only downside is that while working on it I literally can not get the song out of my head. Even while listening to other music my head is still singing about poisoning pigeons.
My favorite line is "Maybe we'll do in a squirrel or two!".
ReplyDeleteOoh I love that one too. Well, who are we kidding, the whole song is genius. My life would be so much poorer without Mr. Lehrer's music.
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