Music for Mongo

The soundtrack of the Johnstadt crib continually evolves. Here's one Q brought home the other day like a rain-soaked, scrawny puppy, and presented to us mid-supper, performed with a syllabe-dragging, syncopated cadence that suddenly made my little eight-year-old sound like a gangsta:

"Snap, ya fingahz in Z-for-ma-tion,
"Smack, ya butt-cheeks, and sing ta-tha-na-tion!"

And of course, it's pretty much been stuck in all our heads since. Lately the hook from "Penny on a Train Track" (hear it for free here) has also been echoing around our marble halls, as Q has learned to play it on the piano. We have GOT to get around to buying a piano while the iron is hot, by the way. That boy was born to boogie-woogie. To quote my brother Jim's theme music, "It in 'im, and it got to get out." (Long Distance Boogie, ZZ Top.) But much of the disposable income of recent days has been spent on this baby:



We call him "Mongo". He is the largest sofa in captivity. Mongo is not to be trifled with; he is not an ordinary sofa. One makes assumptions about Mongo that one shouldn't. For instance, you might want to slide a bare foot underneath the dust ruffle around his midpoint so you can adjust his pillows, assuming, of course, as a normal human would, that any and all stout wooden couch legs will only be at the corners. You'd be wrong. He's got a fifth and a sixth leg in the center to support his mighty bulk. So your bare toes would crumple against said post, and you would let a single tear roll down your bearded cheek. And Mongo? He would laugh. Silently, but you'd feel it in your soul.

It's tough to fully appreciate Mongo's mass, so I asked T to climb aboard to provide some sense of scale:



Hey, I told you. Mongo means business. I'm not sure what Mongo's theme music should be. Maybe "Night on Bald Mountain".

More pics of T, just because I can, and because it so happens that since the last time I unloaded the camera, Q has managed to avoid capture:



Here, T practices writing. She's very good at O, H, and T. She calls them "numbers" rather than letters. She likes the game where you trace a "number" on her back, and she has to tell you which one it is. Of course, your options are limited, but she pretty much always gets them right. I feel like we're programming her nervous system in ways whose effects we won't know for years, until one day she starts reciting prime numbers and doesn't stop for a week, or hears a record of Chinese folk music and is suddenly fluent. Or grabs a weed-whacker and goes on a rampage. Who knows, it'll be a fun moment to wait for.

Here's T post-shower:



And here's T mocking her father with a handful of diced squash:



Mocking me, because she knows that I do not like squash soup. Which is what T was helping Janneke to make.

Not sure what T' theme music should be. I'm leaning toward "Femme Fatale" by the Velvet Underground, but mostly just because I've been singing that to her as a lullaby lately. Or perhaps "Penny on a Train Track", as that always gets her dancing.

I'll keep you posted.



By the way, I had nothing to do with that last picture. Mongo interposed himself in the blog there, by the sheer power of his will.

Gotta go - for some reason I'm overcome by a burning need to go and kneel before Mongo. I kind of just want to do his bidding. I suddenly feel like that would make me happy.

All hail Mongo!