Reading My Mind

Today was the last day of classes before the Christmas break. I had a couple of cases of mind reading in school today. It was odd, feeling like someone was inside my head.

In the first case, it was Statistics class. The conversation strayed from scatter plots and onto cable TV and finally the Boomerang network. I made some old-person comment that that was all I watched. A student spoke up and said that all he watched on Boomerang was Tom & Jerry. I didn't know which ones he was referring to, so I said, "You have to watch the old ones, the MGM cartoons where they didn't talk, but Tom did sing."

Well, at that remark another student started laughing. At first, I thought he found it amusing that Tom sang or that they were silent or something like that. But, no, the student opened his mouth and started singing:

Is you is or is you aint my baby?

What the--? Yup. That was the EXACT song I was thinking of. By Louis Jordan, if I'm not mistaken. (And I don't think I am, because it's on the cast album of Five Guys Named Moe, which I saw on Broadway sometime last century. But I digress...)

The second case happened while I was on duty standing in front of the cafeteria, making sure no one stole it, given the absence of the majority of the student population by that point in the afternoon. One of the security guys was talking about music when Tom Petty's name came up. I mentioned that Petty was one of those guys that I didn't know how much I liked. When he appeared at the Super Bowl and sang a bunch of songs that I knew but I didn't know that he was singing them!

Anyway, I said, "Do you know where I saw Tom Petty for the first time?"

I asked if either of them remembered U-68. Channel 68 was in New York City was a UHF station that showed old kiddie fair until it became a low-rent version of MTV in the mid-80s. Well, I just had to mention U-68 and the other security guard said,

"Yes! Alice in Wonderland!"

For whatever reason, when U-68 first launched (and keep in mind, most of New York City could not get cable yet and wanted, but didn't have, their MTV), for whatever reason, Tom Petty's video "Don't Come Around Here No More" was in heavy rotation. The video was a parody of Alice in Wonderland even though the song has absolutely nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland. (If it does, feel free to point that out.)

Anyway, just a couple of weird moments. Strange when people get inside your mind.

Okay, back to the cartoon's tomorrow.

Discuss amongst yourselves.