The Source Of That Thing Dad Always Sings At The Black Cats

I sang it to Dominique in the past and I sing it to Isis now:

¿Quién es esta gatita?

Clearly, I am the only one who remembers the 1987 Madonna song “Who’s That Girl?”

I have not seen the film, and to be honest, I don’t know whether I would spend a buck on it if I saw it at a garage sale. Although given that I’ve posted this, the odds have increased.

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The Source Of That Thing Daddy Sang Yesterday To The Annoyance Of His Firstborn

As my mother-in-law downsizes, she has contacted Habitat for Humanity to come and pick up some furniture and things. They’re scheduled to pick them up this morning, but it’s Snowmageddon, again, so who knows.

However, my oldest son and I moved all the items to donate to the garage yesterday, and I kept rapping, “That’s a habitat! That’s a habitat!”

So I told the young man about the season premiere of Sesame Street when he was a kid, the one where Big Bird thinks about moving from Sesame Street.

I also explained that the season premiere of Sesame Street was kind of a big deal; the boys watched it every day for several years, maybe six total from boy 1 to boy 2, and that meant a lot of repeats. So at least I was excited for new content.

In sadder Sesame Street news, Luis passed away. You might remember, gentle reader, that I posted him singing the firefly song in 2018. You know, I have recently asserted that things from one’s youth make an indelible impression in one’s memory; however, I have a lot of things from my children’s youth that I remember as well. Perhaps those days were just more interesting than now.

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The Source of the Thing That Dad Always Says

Whenever one of the boys is somewhere that I want to sit, I say to him, “Move over, bacon. Now there’s something meaner.”

If you are of a certain age, you probably remember the Sizzlean commercials.

Actually, I more remember this one, but instead of leaner, they say meatier. Which could still work as the source, but although I remember the commercial more clearly, I remembered the leaner tag line, so that’s what I was riffing on.

For more about Sizzlean, see What Happened To Sizzlean Bacon? (short answer: the article does not answer the question definitively, does no actual reporting but reading Wikipedia, but provides content for the Internet with a couple of nostalgic YouTube embeds for the oldsters) as recommended by the Ace of Spades HQ Overnight Open Thread.

Truly, the 70s and 80s were a magical time of bastardized meat products such as Sizzlean and Steak-umms. Okay, I know their real birthdates fall outside of that window, but their advertising were at their peaks during my formative years.

And even though they’re eldritch and unholy combinations of meat bound together by dark arts, I’d still order them before tofurkey or Impossible anything.

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The Source of That Thing Dad Always Says (X or XVIII, Depending Upon Your Accounting Methodology)

For a very long time, whenever my children purposefully or accidentally knocked something down or broke into component parts a Lego or block creation, I would say, “Smash, Smash, Diggin’ the Smash.”

Which was the catch phrase of a radio personality in St. Louis around the turn of the century. Well, not the catch phrase: something that radio listeners would say on the phone or whatnot, and the recordings were played on the air as promos or whatnot.

I thought of this when I saw that he has returned to the St. Louis airwaves. Again.

I looked (briefly) for something where people repeated the line, and all I found was a short documentary piece on his career until 2014:

Unfortunately, the reason he can return to radio is that his wife, who had been ill for a while, passed away.

Perhaps the next time we pass through St. Louis, we can catch a bit of his one of his programs, and the boys can learn the source of that thing.

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The Source of That Thing Daddy Always Says: “Happy Birthday To Me”

Sometimes, when something favorable appears or happens, I am prone to saying “Happy birthday to me.”

The source, like so many of the catchphrases I spout, comes from turn of the century beer commercial that I saw over and over again when watching hockey games on television with my beautiful wife.

To be honest, repeating catch phrases or brand taglines from things my children have seen is so very unsatisfying.

And although I might not be Golden Corral age yet, I am getting close to that young lady is cute age.

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They Have Never Heard The Actual Song

So I have been known to sing to my cats. A lot. And the same songs (and the same cat-chphrases) over and over.

My boys emphasized this to me recently as I came up the stairs, stepping around cats splayed across various steps, and I sang, “How many cats say ‘meow meow meow’ before you can call them a cat?” and my boys piped in with, “The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind.”

You know, I am not sure they’ve heard the actual song.

Although it is possible, I suppose, as I own the Reader’s Digest collection of that name which includes it.

In all reality, although the collection is not in heavy rotation, I probably have played it during the boys’ lifetimes, so they probably have heard it.

But in their minds, this song will always be about cats meowing and/or their crazy father.

Now that I have thought of it, I want to play the collection, which I inherited from my sainted mother, again. Given how infrequently I listen to albums these days, we’d probably get to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on side 2 of record 6 about the time of my father’s birthday.

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The Source of That Thing Daddy Always Says (IX)

In the mornings, I have a couple (or six) cups of coffee. But sometime in the mid-morning, I have decided I’ve had enough, and I switch to water. I lay up a dozen or so liters of sparkling or mineral water per week, generally Mountain Valley but Perrier if I don’t get to the southeast corner of Springfield, where Lucky’s Market looks to be the only place stocking Mountain Valley these days.

I have taken to calling the sparkling water Fizzy Bubbly with a mock Israeli accent. Because that’s how Adam Sandler says it in Don’t Mess With The Zohan.

Here, the woman who plays Sandler’s love interest offers him one.

I know, I know, it’s dubbed in German, but you can hear it named. Watch the clip now, because sometime soon the Copyright Patrols will recognize it as “protected” material even in German.

I watched the film again earlier this year because my oldest son has been on a Sandler kick, and I wasn’t sure whether this film was appropriate for young people.

Spoiler alert: Oh, but no.

But when my boys see it, sometime after they turn 21, they will recognize the source of my nickname for sparkling water.

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The Source Of That Thing Dad Always Says

So, sometimes, I’ll use a type of speech that I’ll just call an Elaborated Pronoun.

You know, that as a pronoun generally relates to something visible or is otherwise fresh in mind; I want that.

However, I have been known to elaborate that by adding an antecedent bad oscar.

It came out when I was talking about fixing something for one of my boys, and I referred to the it as that bad oscar.

The Urban Dictionary says bad Oscar is slang for a hot dog or cheap sandwich. That’s not where I got it, though.

Back when I was at the university, one of my closest friends lived with his mother, who was a woman kept by a fellow who had a son of his own (kind of like a very abbreviated Brady Bunch). My friend considered the young man, who as sixteen or seventeen at the time, to be his half-brother, so he hung around with us from time to time; he was even the designated driver on my 21st birthday, when we went to a bowling alley and I had a glass of Miller and a sloe gin and Seven before the moonlight bowling.

For some reason, this kid used that phrase to refer to things that were not sandwiches of any sort.

Twenty-seven years later, and I still say it from time to time. And that “kid” is over forty somewhere now. No word on whether he continues to use it.

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The Source Of That Thing Daddy Always Says (VIII)

Ever since my children were little, I’ve tried to instill in them good habits in crossing parking lots. Keep your head on a swivel, watch for the white lights in the red, and so on.

And whenever I saw a car in motion, I would say, “Be advised there are fast boomers inbound.”

Daddy was misquoting a line from Forrest Gump:

The actual line is “This is Strongarm. Be advised your fast movers are inbound at this time.”

Ah, well, if they haven’t learned by now, let them see now that their father is imperfect.

Also, I don’t want to make you feel old, old man, but Forrest Gump is 25 years old now.

In my defense, I probably haven’t seen it in 20 years, which explains the misquoting.

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The Source Of That Thing Daddy Always Says (VII)

When my boys boast or plan hyperbolic things, which they often do, being boys and all, I’ve often acknowledged their projected prowess or accomplishments, often set to arrive in the future, by saying they’ll be a big man on Mulberry Street.

Which, like so many things I say, comes from the Billy Joel:

You know, I didn’t like or listen to The Bridge that much, but this song stuck with me.

And probably influences the way I live more than I would like to admit.

At any rate, WSIE, ostensibly a jazz station, played this song yesterday, which made me think of it.

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The Source Of That One Thing Daddy Always Says At 4:30

This would be a case of what Daddy always says, except my boys are past calling me Daddy, and this particular utterance only occurs in the very specific circumstance when someone asks Dad (as he is now known) what time it is at 4:30.

In this case, Dad always says, “4:30. It’s not late. Naw, naw, it’s just early, early, early.”

Because of a relatively minor hit for the Spin Doctors some 26 years ago, old man.

I don’t remember that it was a hit at the time, but Wikipedia says it went to #26 on the charts.

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The Source Of That Thing Daddy’s Children Have Started To Say

So. My oldest son is twelve, and he’s starting to notice girls, although he will downplay this, but when he’s noticed them, his body language changes to an enforced nonchalance, and he sweeps back his forelock often and with flourish. He did this when putting his contact information into the phone of the Norwegian exchange student last week. He did it when the young cashier at the grocery recognized the band on his shirt.

So yesterday, when both of my boys were engaged with girls of their age at the martial arts school after their classes were over, I reported to my wife,

They both were mackin’ on girls.

Which might just catch on at their small school as the proper slang.

Why on earth would I use that natively for flirt?

Well, remember, gentle reader, I grew up in the projects in the 1970s, when many of the residents wore picks in their afros kind like Questlove does.

But they were earnest and not retro.

Did I try to wear a pick in my hair like my friends did. Yes. It went as well as you might expect, but certainly better than it would today, where my pate is as close to shaven as I can get.

So it’s a product of my youth.

Or perhaps I use it because I listen to a lot of Willie Hutch.

Which I like to say is because I spent a lot of time in my youth in the housing projects, where many of the young men walked around with the new portable tape players on their shoulders, playing music just like that. Presumably, while preparing to mack on girls.

Still, I keep using out-of-date slang with my children in hopes that they’ll pick it up and suddenly the whole school will be talking like me.

But it has not happened yet.

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The Source Of That Thing Daddy Always Said

When it was time for the children to pick up, their preschool teachers would sing:

Clean up, clean up,
everybody, everywhere.
Clean up, clean up,
Everybody do your share.

I think it might be akin to the Lutheran Common Table Prayer, because I heard another pastor sing it to encourage the visit-end toy pick up.

Here at Nogglestead, we had another little ditty for the same purpose:

What you got, you got to put it in the closet.
What you got, you got to put it in the toy box.
Put it away, put it away, put it away now.
Put it away, put it away, put it away now.

Today, we heard the source material on the radio, and the now-eleven year old smiled a bit when he remembered the aforementioned pick up song.

I’ve laid these little touches in their memories like pleasant little Easter eggs for them to remember suddenly sometimes.

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The Source of That Thing The Husband Always Says

Apparently, for years (dare I say decades?) when my beautiful wife and I discussed paying bills, I’ve occasionally referred to it as “gotta get those fees to the agencies.”

So I loaded up a bunch of music on a mobile device for our recent trip to Wisconsin, and amidst the greatest hits of Billy Joel, the song “The Entertainer” appears:

“So that’s where you get it,” she said.

After years (dare I say decades?) I’m delighted to have some few trivium that she is delighted to discover.

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The Source Of That Thing Daddy Always Says VI

We’ve got about a hundred feet before the driveway where we’re going to turn, and a bicyclist is ahead of us, going bicycle speeds. So I say, “Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill!” as I often do when encouraging some part of traffic to accelerate

Strangely enough, I don’t say that because I’m a fan of the film of that name. I think Assault of the Killer Bimbos handled the same themes more effectively.

You should know me better: I am a fan of the band named after the movie (but incompletely), Faster Pussycat.

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Cutting The Source of That Thing That Daddy Always Says

On Saturday mornings, I often remind my children, “Es Sábado Gigante!”

I must have seen a bit of it on Univision once in the early 1990s.

Well, all gigante things must come to an end:

Sábado Gigante, the quirky, iconic, 53-year-old variety show that has been a fixture for generations of U.S. Hispanics, will broadcast for the last time on Saturday night. As they prepared to say farewell, Sábado’s beloved host, Don Francisco, and his followers looked back on their time together with nostalgia and emotion.

“I started doing this when I was 22 years old, and since then, my whole adult life has transpired,” Mario Kreutzberger (Don Francisco’s real name), told El Nuevo Herald shortly before a taping for Saturday’s show. Kreutzberger, 74, married, raised three children (including a son named Francisco) and had nine grandchildren.

It’s not as though I’ll stop saying it, but there’s no chance my children will catch it while flipping through cable in college and think of me.

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The Source Of That Thing That Daddy Always Says When Going To The Hardware Store

Whenever we go to the hardware store, I tell the boys, in my best Jack Nicholson impression, “Ace is the place with the helpful hardware, man.”

Why do I inflict this upon my children?

The old Ace jingle:

combines with an old television commercial for a Milwaukee radio station that had a Jack Nicholson impersonator say, “Like, fa la la la la, man.”

So I did a mashup of two obscure things my children will probably never experience. And I do it over and over again upon those poor fellows.

One would think over the years that my Jack Nicholson impression would improve. But one would be wrong.

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The Source of that Thing Daddy Always Says Part n

I’m prone to saying to my children, “Willie, it’s go time.”

The source is not classic children’s literature, but rather classic arrested adolescent literature. Namely, another beer commercial that was popular around the turn of the century, back when I was watching hockey games on television every couple of nights:

I’m ashamed to admit that my allusions are thirty-five percent classic literature, twenty-four percent philosophy, and forty-one percent old beer commercials.

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