Once more into the abyss dear readers. As you well know by now, Google is awesome but using Google for this is cheaty-cheaty-bo-beaty, dig? I had fun with the theme from last time (in case you didn’t get it, it was “Dream”) so we have another one for today. Can you figure it out? Let me know in the comments. Well, go on smarty — get on with it!

1. I feel fine and I feel good
I’m feeling like I never should
Whenever I get this way
I just don’t know what to say
Why can’t we be ourselves like we were yesterday (Kristen M.)

2. You may be king
you may possess the world and it’s gold
But gold won’t bring you happiness
when you’re growing old

3. You can live your life lonely
Heavy as stone
Live your life learning
And working alone
Say this is all you want
But I don’t believe that it’s true
‘Cause when you least expect it
Waiting round the corner for you

4. Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again (Kristen M.)

5. lay her down as priest does
should the lord be acountin’
will be in my honour, make it pain
painfully quick, uh huh
promises are whispered
in the age of darkness
want to be enlightened
like I want to be told the end…end, yeah

6. You’ve been learnin’
And baby, I been learnin’
All them good times
Baby, baby, I’ve been discernin’-a

7. Do you remember
There was a time ahaha
When people on the street
Were walking hand in hand in hand
They used to talk about the weather
Making plans together
Days would last forever (Kristen M.)

8. I ain’t got many friends left to talk to
No one’s around when I`m in trouble
You know I’d do anything for you
Stay the night, but keep it under cover

9. I’m in heaven
With my boyfriend, my laughing boyfriend.
There’s no beginning and there is no end.
Time isn’t present in that dimension.

10. Nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy. (Kristen M.)

As always, thanks to Apropos of Something

Here we go again. The rules are pretty much the same (google = cheating) but it’s a little different. This isn’t as random as it was before. Matter of fact, you could say it’s not random at all and I picked these songs. There’s a theme here and if you figure out one or two, I’m sure you’ll see what it is. Post your guesses in the comments. Good luck!

1. Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused (Kristen M.)

2. Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
well, I got down on my knees
and I pretend to pray (Kristen M.)

3. It’s out there
It’s out there
It’s out there
If you want me, I’ll be here

4. And now I tell you openly
You have my heart so don’t hurt me
You’re what I couldn’t find
A totally amazing mind
So understanding and so kind
You’re everything to me (Kristen M.)

5. Light switch
Man switch
Film was broken only then
All the night
Fused tomorrow
Dancing with a distant friend

6. Lookin’ at a green sky
Sun like a red eye
Bright blue horses are the fortune she lives by
She’s tired and lonely
Scared and depressed
Her visions of one day go racing the next

7. I sit by and watch the river flow
I sit by and watch the traffic go
Imagine something of your very own
Something you can have and hold

8. Oh, thunder only happens when it’s raining
Players only love you when they’re playing
Say, women…they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know (Kristen M.)

9. Brooklyn like a sea in the asphalt stalks
Push out dead air from a parking garage
Where you stand with the keys and your cool hat of silence
Where you grip her love like a driver’s liscense

10. And when the music plays
And when the words are
Touched with sorrow
When the music plays
I hear the sound
I had to follow

As always, thanks to Apropos of Something

Welcome to a new feature here on The One Hundred: Phone calls with Jon. Self-explanatory, no?

Setup: I read online that Bruce Springsteen performed a few more of his albums in their entirety at some recent shows. The one that stuck out for me was “The River” which was the album Jon had chosen previously as the one he would like to see him perform. I felt this deserved a phone call.

Me: So I guess you weren’t at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

Jon: Wh-what?

Me: Bruce had a concert. He did another one of his albums.

Jon: Was it “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle”?

Me: Nope. It was–

Jon: The River.

Me: Yep. So I guess you weren’t there?

Jon: *sigh* No…

– some discussion regarding the merits of said album takes place here which leads to a startling admission –

Me: You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a whole Springsteen album all the way through.

Jon: *silence*

Me: I know, I know. You’re all “Why am I even talking to you?” Should I listen to that one? Would that be a good place to start?

Jon: It’s on Napster…

Me: I know and I think about it sometimes but then I’m like “nah”.

Jon: Don’t you remember when we were going to drive across country listening to Bruce the whole way?

Me: …um… no?

Jon: Maybe that was a dream.

Me: You know what we should do? We should drive across country but we don’t take any music and we only survive on the music found at the truck stops along the way. Although I think by the third stop we’d probably be ready to kill each other.

Jon: When we were coming back from Rio Vista we were driving down the 5 and we stopped at this little gas station in the middle of nowhere and you know what they had in there? Cassette tapes! And not only that but they had Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Liverpool”. On cassette! When did they stop making that? And it’s sitting there at this gas station –

Me: It was probably one of the original tapes from back then!

Jon: I mean who’s going to come to this little gas station off the 5 and buy this? Liverpool? It’s not even the good one!

Me: Did you buy it?

Jon: *pfft* No. … I already own it.

Welcome to a new feature on The One Hundred: Recycling. In an effort to keep all three of you entertained (Hi Mom!) we’re recycling old posts from past blog lives that maybe you didn’t read before or it’s been so long since, it’s new all over again. Recycling! We hope you don’t hate it immensely.

Original post date: February 19, 2007

Ever have one of those thoughts that you can’t get rid of? You’re sitting there minding your own business and suddenly – BAM! – you’re thinking about something that you can’t let go of. I get that all the time. Except for me – and I don’t know if I’m the weirdo here or not – it’s usually something from a ways back. It’s often something that I have no right to be thinking of in that moment but for some reason, the thought surfaces and it won’t go away.

So there I was, putting Aaron to bed, laying on my bed in the dark when Hagen Toeman stopped by for a visit.

Hagen Toeman is a fictitious character that me and three of my classmates wrote a song about during our Freshman year of high school (that would set the way-back machine to about 1987). Our English teacher, Mrs. Douglas had given us the assignment to write new lyrics to a pre-existing song. That’s just about all I can remember. I don’t think she gave us much more direction than that. Well, that and we had to perform it in front of the class.

So the four of us, me, Jon, Brett, and Stephen gathered together to craft this song. We some how decided on the Can-Can as our song of choice, possibly because it was an easy tune to remember, a lot of the details seem foggy to me now. We had the song. I can remember sitting in our class during one of the writing sessions, our four desks turned to face each other and we decided to write this song about this guy who had the worst luck ever and all the stuff that happened to him throughout his life.

OK, well not all of his life but I guess maybe some of the more memorable ones. I can say that I’m fairly certain that I didn’t contribute too much to this. I might have had some edits when verses were presented but I doubt that I had submitted anything. It was probably mostly Jon that did the lion’s share with Brett and Stephen picking up the slack. When the song was done and it was our turn to perform, we made the brilliant decision to try and do a little can-can while singing this song. Perhaps not the best decision in the world as we weren’t terribly coordinated and I think we decided to do this about 30 seconds before we went up there. Side note: Could we have been any more gay* here? Unless we were dressed as french showgirls or Carmen Miranda, probably not. I mean c’mon, the Can-Can? Really? End Side note. So we get up there and we flub the dancing within like two lines – ‘natch – and Brett nearly walks off mid-verse (diva). But we pull it off, our classmates laugh and we get a passing grade.

So here’s why this thought won’t leave me alone. I can’t get the song out of my head. And what’s worse is I don’t know all the lyrics. Worse than that, I know some. So I want to sing along and I can’t. Here’s what I can remember (the chorus of course):

Hagen Toeman was cursed
because he was the first
son of Clarence Toeman
and it was a real bad omen.

That’s all I know for sure. The only other verse than I can remember is something about him going somewhere and meeting someone and the last two lines of that verse are:

thought of a solution
but started a revolution

and that’s it.

It wasn’t a great song. None of them were. But I can’t get that friggin’ song out of my head. So, in an effort to maybe payback the guys who did all the heavy lifting back then or to just give myself some lyrics and possibly some closure, here now are my verses for Hagen Toeman (and only 20 years late):

Then he went to Sweden
love is what he is needin’
Likes girls from colder climates
He got one that was a primate

While he was down in Cuba
On tour with his tuba
one mojito too many
now he doesn’t have a penny

Finally his end in Moscow
the KGB he kowtowed
but it did not save him
unmarked grave is what he lays in

Well, that was a bit harder than I thought it was going to be. I can’t say if those are any better or worse than what we sang that day but now that I’ve written this down, maybe that thought will go away now.

Fly away thought, fly away.

*not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just not what we were aiming for that day. I think.

EDIT: As a special treat, here’s some recycled comments that appeared along with the original post.

Jon wrote:

how could you forget:

“he went to taiwan
where he met suzie wong
he ate her chinese food
and thought he was a real cool dude”

there was also a verse about him going to libya and breaking his tibia, but i don’t know how that ended

you know, after reading these i am not sure that i am comfortable with you saying i did the lions share of the writing…

John wrote:

Good Lord. Maybe there was a reason I wasn’t remembering these verses. eeesh. And how did going to Taiwan and meeting a girl and eating food fit into the structure of the song (go someplace, do something, something bad happens)? It’s a wonder we ever made it out of the 9th grade. It really is.

Jon wrote:

i just recall that verse because that is the one i did and i remember trying to do a funky little breakdown move to go with the “real…cool…dude” part and failing horribly – i think i ended up looking like bob saget up there…

good lord…

Like the title says, it’s been a while so, in honor of the three day weekend and our nation’s birthday, we’re trotting out an old favorite. Songs are from my ipod on shuffle — You get to guess the lyric, googling is cheating and you’re better than that, aren’t you? Post your guesses in the comments. Let’s roll.

1. And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes
Ill see you on the dark side of the moon

2. The glass is cut
The bottle run dry
Our love runs cold
In the caverns of the night

3. Oh. To fight is to defend
If it’s not now then tell me when
Would be the time
That you would stand up and be a man

4. You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re doing what we can

5. And maybe you can cry all night
But that’ll never change the way that I feel
The snow is really piling up outside
I wish you wouldn’t make me leave here

6. I get the news I need on the weather report.
I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.

7. You keep your distance with a system of touch
And gentle persuasion
I’m lost in admiration could I need you this much
Oh, you’re wasting my time
You’re just wasting time

8. G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
Bobby OD’d on Drano on the night that he was wed

9. And when there’s nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son
These changes ain’t changing me
The cold-hearted boy I used to be

10. It happened one summer
It happened one time
It happened forever
For a short time

As always, thanks to Apropos of Something

So here we go again with another Music Meme — almost the same deal as last time, but just different enough to keep you reading. So let’s get to it, shall we?

Rules:
1.Open your music library.
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the ‘next’ button.
6. Don’t lie.

Opening credits: What’s The Matter With Me? – Glen Gray & The Casa Loma Orchestra

Waking up: Even Better Than The Real Thing – U2

First day of High School: Election Day – Arcadia

Falling in love: Theme from Route ‘66 – Nelson Riddle and His Orchestra

Fight song: Drop the Hate – Fatboy Slim

Breaking up: Super Charger Heaven (Adults Only Mix) – White Zombie

Prom: The Lady is A Tramp – Frank Sinatra

Life: Cigarette Dangles – Pursuit of Happiness

Mental breakdown: Tomorrow – Information Society

Driving: Don’t Leave Me On My Own – Chris Isaak

Flashback: The Journey – Fatboy Slim featuring Lateef

Getting back together: Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo – Rick Derringer

Wedding: I Gotcha – Joe Tex

Birth of child: Everyday is like Sunday – Morrissey

Final battle: Elektrobank (Live) – The Chemical Brothers

Well, the mental breakdown one doesn’t bode well but I can’t help but laugh at the wedding song. Classic. And apparently my final battle is going to be held during a rave — or at the very least have gigantic transforming Japanese robots. Either way – Wicked!

What does your list look like? Does it make any sense at all? Is it eerily accurate? Post it in the comments!