Give a Discontinuance To Me (R. Page and J. Graydon)

It’s the fourth Monday in October which means it’s time for Themesong Friday, and at any rate this made me think of this:

It’s a mere six years since The Jeffersons, and “piece of the pie” has been transformed to “piece of the cake” as the new catchphrase to connote “sassy” (the late 20th century version of “uppity”). No fish is safe from the sucking, opening credits stizz.

This show has an interesting connection to the number nine hundred million.

Nine hundred million is:

• The number of police roles played by Dolph Sweet (“The Chief”) in his career
• The number of times Nell Carter says “Gimme a Break” at the end of the song (twelve million in the Shep Pettibone remix)
• The show’s average Nielsen ranking
• The total number of characters named “Joey” played by Joey Lawrence in his lifetime (Gimme a Break marked his four-hundredth)
• The score I hit on the Surprise-o-meter when I was reminded that Jonathan Silverman was on this show toward the end (he married Julie!).
  (Hm. Jonathan Silverman also played a character named “Jonathan”. Wait, and Matthew Lawrence’s character was named “Matthew” and Nell Carter played a character named “Nell”… WHAT THE SNOT?!)

This show is also the show that taught me what an IUD is (Katie has to go to the hospital to get one removed or something) and once featured Joey Lawrence in blackface in order to teach us all a lesson about something that escapes me now.
Oh yes, “Don’t hire Joey Lawrence.”

Now here is a joke that the writers missed by not being as clever or pretty as me in the Joey Lawrence in Blackface episode:

JOEY: But everyone else in the house was talking about their minstrel cycle, so I thought…
[UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS OF LAUGHTER]

See, writers? You could have scored big with that one, but instead you moved the show to New York. Boo, writers.

I punish you with Dutch.

-- Samanth~

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Give a discontinuance to me.
Certain, I it deserves.
It is time I to the upper part made it.
Give a discontinuance to me.
Ahead I look,
Recovers me, appetite each end.

I want a happy end,
I have been tired of claiming,
Will not let them the bests of me get.

Whoawhoa of Whoa,
Give a discontinuance to me!
The game is overlevering!
My arrival gives a discontinuance
, and plan me!

Me, gives a discontinuance
For the importance of the sky!
What happened to my piece of the cake?

Give a discontinuance to me!
Me gives a discontinuance!
Oh, give a discontinuance, me!
Me gives a discontinuance!
Hey, give a discontinuance to me!

[repeat nine hundred million times]

The Ballad of Jed Clampett (Paul Henning)

(from the Spanish)

TV Theme Song Friday manages to fall on a Friday this week. Merrill Markoe once asked Sherwood Schwartz why the theme songs he wrote for Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch were so explicit in explaining each show’s premise and he said something like “Because confused people can’t laugh.” That little bit of show biz acumen was possessed by Schwartz’ predecessor: Paul Henning (right), theme song writer for and series creator of “The Beverly Hillbillies” (and producer of its more Dadaist inverse, “Green Acres”; also “Petticoat Junction”, though neither of those songs were performed by Flatt and Scruggs, like this one).

A critic whose name I can’t find apparently summed up the show as “one joke, nine years”; I say, there’s no shame in that.

Thank you, Paul Henning; if you were alive, I'd tell you about what happened with the “Texas Tea” line and we would laugh with confusion (in Spanish: “¡Ja ja ja!”) and then we'd talk about how well this show would go over if set in modern day Mexico: 40% of the population is looking for this kind of escapism.
If only they could afford TVs.
(Please get your people working on this, whoever ended up winning.)

--Samantha

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It comes and it listens to my history on a named man Jed.
To mountaineer: poor. Hardly kept to his feed from the family.
Then, a day, it threw in a little food,
And raises of the Earth comes a gross petroleum that bubbled:
Black gold of the oil, that is to say, tea of roofing tiles

The first thing, you, you know a millionaire: Jed as an older person.
Kinfolk said, “Jed, movement far from there.”
They said, “California is the place that you ought to be,”
So they loaded upon the car and they were transferred to Beverly:
Swimming pools of hills, that is to say, cinema stars.

Beverly! The hillbillies!

[Closing credits verse:]

Now is the hour to say good bye to Jed. And all their kinships
Wanted to thank for people, to him, amiably to fall inside.
You are everything. Behind, invited the week next to this place.
Helping that piles up of its hospitality:
Hillbilly, that is to say, has fixed an enchantment, acquittal of your shoes,
You that now becomes everything? You, you hear?

Theme of the Street of Sesame (Joe Raposo)

Language: Spanish

TV Theme Song Friday happens on a Sunday this time around. Maybe we should be calling it Every Eighth Day TV Theme Song.

Are there any Spanish-speakers in the audience who could explain why "Joe Raposo" gets turned into "Joe Fox," but "fox" by itself gives "Zorro?" Are there multiple words for foxes in Spanish, or is Babelfish confused?

-Jessi

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sunny day
that sweeps clouds far,
to where the sweet air is in my way:
can you say how I'm to obtain,
how to obtain the street of sesame?

A-OK. All the neighbors come from a friendly game, and
we satisfy it there, where it is.

Can you say how I'm to obtain,
how to obtain the street of sesame?

It is a magical stroll on the carpet;
like you happy people, in that each door will open –
wide like a beautiful happy people.

Sunny day
that sweeps clouds far,
to where the sweet air is in my way:
can you say how I'm to obtain,
how to obtain the street of sesame?
How to be to the able street of sesame
How to obtain...

Isle of Gilligan (Sherwood Schwartz)

You might have thought with lines like “The first one kills and skipper too much” this was the theme from Lost, but nope. TV Theme Song Friday, which should be moved to Thursday for the alliteration if we plan to stick with it, and which is being published Saturday this week because I can't get my act together at all, introduces the Theme from Gilligan’s Island by Sherwood Schwartz, as performed by The Eligibles.
N.B. The Wellingtons sang the version that didn’t namecheck the Professor and Mary Ann, whom everyone I know were hoping would fall in love with each other. This never happened, a lesson for all of us, I think.

-S

It feels right, only for the back. And you will hear one tale,
Tale of the one of a trip fateful
That it starts on board of this port of this very small ship.
Sailing kills! It was a powerful man, to skipper brave and certain.
Five passengers had adjusted the sail that day for an excursion of three hours,
An excursion of three hours.

To start, started rough time,
A very small ship was launched,
If not for the courage of the group
That fearless minnow would be lost,
Minnow, either.
Lost.

The adjusted land of the ship in the coast of this uncharted isle of the desert
With Gilligan
Skipper too much,
Millionaire and its wife,
The Star of Film
The professor and Mary Ann,
Here in Isle of Gilligan.

Thus, this is tale of castaways, they is here for a long, long time,
Them will have that to make more better of the things, it uphill is a scaling.
The first one kills and skipper too much,
Will make it much more better,
To make the other comfortable one,
In the nest of the console.

No telephone, neither light neither engine cars,
Not an only luxury,
As Robinson Crusoe, so primitive!
How much it can be?

It, thus, joins us here each week, my friends,
You are certain to start a smile,
Of seven castaways run aground,
Here in Isle of Gilligan.

Television Theme Song Friday Presents “Forming Our Dreams, You Come Applicable!” (Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox)

While we were considering setting up some kind of PayPal donation fund to get something better than dialup for the Guilfords, we were thinking of All the Things that Have Been Struck by Lighting in the History of Earth, and then it hits us: You know who was struck by lightning? The Big Ragu!

Yes! Carmine Rugusa, in Laverne and Shirley’s seventh season memorably (um, to me) was struck by lightning and yet still went on to be cast in a Broadway production of Hair sometime later toward the end of the series. So take heart, Jessi!

We hereby inaugurate Television Theme Show Friday with the theme song from Laverne and Shirley, “Forming Our Dreams, You Come Applicable”.

[Please note that designating today “Television Theme Show Friday” doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll do this again.]

[We just had a crush on Carmine when we were young and wanted to talk about him.]

[We are using the Royal We to deflect some of our hidden shame.]

[Yes, we know the word “one” is missing in the first line; that's how it came out]

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight
Habitual bungler, born loser,
Hare pepper connected.

We will do it!
Give us each possible probability, we take it.
Give us each possible guideline, we break it.
We will let our dreams come applicable.
They do our way.

Nothing becomes us now,
Straight in front and on the rail back now turns.
We will let our dreams come applicable and will do it our way.

There is nothing, which we do not try,
Never belongs to the impossible word.
This mark is not stopping we there. We will do it!

On your marking, you receive sentence, and go you now,
A dream receiving, and we know straight now,
We, our dream come, will let applicable

And we do it our way! Our way!
If you let all come our dreams applicable,
And you do it our way! Our way!
Let all our dreams come applicable,
For me and you



[P.S. I still love you, Carmine]