Brainwashed again by Schoolhouse Rock

Just because BuckBokai has a blog and wants to share the pain … see, not too long ago, yours truly turned the little bucks (ages 5 and 3½) onto “Schoolhouse Rock.”

For those of you not ancient enough to remember, these were catchy three-minute educational short animated films cleverly disguised as music videos (or were they music videos cleverly disguised as educational short animated films?) that ran between your regularly-scheduled cartoons on Saturday and Sunday mornings. See, back in the late 70s/early 80s, we didn’t have cable TV and … ah, you’d never believe it. Just go with it.

Unfortunately, while the Schoolhouse Rock shorts are brainwashingly efficacious in teaching – there’s not an American fortysomething around who can’t give you a concise eight-word definition of “noun” or explain simply the functions of a conjunction – they’re also maddeningly addictive, just like an evil a good TV commercial instructional tool should be.

It’s insidious … Hey, you try waking up in the middle of the night doing your “five times” multiplication tables in song.

So herewith BuckBokai presents a sample from the Schoolhouse Rock catalogue entitled “Verb: That’s What’s Happening.” “Verb” hardly makes the top five of truly great Schoolhouse Rock tunes, which is in fact as follows:

1. Three is a Magic Number
2. A Noun is a Person, Place or Thing
3. Interjections!
4. Interplanet Janet
5. The Four-legged Zoo

But against a musical backdrop of 70s soul stylings, “Verb” does feature one superfly movie superhero who somehow has to save the day by smacking a home run in full regalia and cape. Oh, Verb, you’re so demanding!

Enjoy, heh heh. And don’t say BuckBokai didn’t warn you…

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