Emergency Questions Bonus Round: How Do You Brush Your Teeth?

This isn't one of Richard Herring's questions, but it follows on from Friday's post regarding brushing hair...

How do you brush your teeth?

Or, more specifically, what do you use to brush your teeth?

Smart Alecs will already be shouting "a toothbrush, duh!" at the screen... but what I mean is: do you use an electric toothbrush or an old-fashioned manual one?

For many years now, we've all used electric toothbrushes at Top Ten Towers. And indeed, every time I visit the dentist, she encourages me to do this.

However, have you noticed...? NOBODY on TV uses electric toothbrushes.

Couples brushing their teeth together or having a conversation while one of them is brushing their teeth is a TV director's shorthand to demonstrate domesticity. It happens all the time in TV shows. Yet nobody ever uses an electric toothbrush. Now clearly, there's an obvious reason for this - the noise of the toothbrush makes it harder to have a conversation / hear the dialogue. But this is one of the TV quirks that, once you've noticed it, you see it all the time.

Most recently it came up in an episode of the new John Hamm show Your Friends & Neighbours. Here are a bunch of rich Americans with perfect teeth, living lives of obscenely excessive wealth (which is why Hamm has started stealing from them all)... yet they still use bog standard bargain shop toothbrushes. This has become a bit of an obsession of mine lately, so please let me know if you ever see anyone on TV using an electric toothbrush. 

Mama Cass - Talkin' To Your Toothbrush

Brad Paisley - Toothbrush

Harry's Gym - Toothpaste

The Maccabees - Toothpaste Kisses

Blancmange - Don't Forget Your Teeth

All good tunes, but the main reason for this post was to give me a chance to play this...

Celebrity Jukebox #92: Cynthia Weil

Elvis Presley - I Just Can't Help Believin'

Mama Cass - Make Your Own Kind Of Music

The Drifters - On Broadway

Just three of the iconic tunes we owe to the husband and wife songwriting partnership of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. He wrote the tunes, she wrote the words. Words such as these...

'Nuff said. 

Cynthia Weil passed away on the 1st of June, making a widower of Mann after 62 years of marriage.

They don't write a lot of songs about songwriters, not the ones who don't become stars in their own right, anyway, not the ones who just toil away quietly in the background creating legends.

Then again, Cynthia Weil also wrote the lyrics to this...

...a song that proved particularly influential on one young lad growing up in New Jersey.

"[Hearing The Animals] was a revelation … the first records with full blown class consciousness … the chorus of, ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’ where working stiffs are looking for a better life can be heard in all my albums …

That’s every song I’ve ever written. That’s all of them. I’m not kidding either. That’s, ‘Born to Run’, ‘Born in the U.S.A.’"

So what have we got in tribute to Ms. Weil and all those wonderful lyrics she left us? How about this...?

Cynthia, when you pass it seems like this whole town drops

Cynthia, or maybe it's just me, baby, and these fools stuck here punchin' this clock

Well you give us a reason to stop just for a while

Stop, stand and salute your style

Saturday Snapshots #162 - The Answers

 

No, I couldn't find any pictures of Joe Biden holding a camera. Neither do I expect Joe Biden to be a truly great president. But at least he once worked with one (even if Obama didn't achieve everything he set out to do, he remained a decent figurehead throughout). 

The main thing Biden has in his favour is that he's Not Trump. In the same way I voted for Corbyn purely because was not Not Boris. Frankly, the Democrats could have put Tom Hanks & Michael Bolton on the ticket and I'd have voted for them instead of Trump. Just as Labour could field James Corden with Bono as deputy and I'd be putting my X in their box, no matter how detestable I find them both.  

I'll leave the final word today to Sam, aged 7, yet already an expert political analyst.

"I think Donald Trump is going to break all the ornaments in The White House 
so that when Joe Biden moves in, he's not got anything nice."

Here are this week's answers...

10. Half a piano... just like Andrew Gold.

A piano is made up of black and white keys.

Andrew Gold was a Lonely Boy.

The Black Keys - Lonely Boy

9. Wishing the week whisked away.

A whisk is used to make beating eggs easier.

Wishing the week away, you're thinking about Friday.

The Easybeats - Friday On My Mind

8. Early morning enclosure, thrice refused.

Early morning is dawn. An enclosure is a pen.

Dawn Penn - No, No, No

7. Expensive Eagle wants a lift this evening.

Eddie the Eagle costs lots of money.

Eddie Money - Take Me Home Tonight

Sadly, I don't think this Eddie will make it into next week's Top Ten Eddie Songs. So I thought I'd find room for him here. What a chorus!

6. Chubbier Scot makes a right turn... will you be mine?

A chubbier Scot would be Mc-Fatter.

Clyde McPhatter - A Lover's Question

5. Dark dancer mixed with problematic nun (plus alias)... what Blanche depended on. 

Courtney Cox became famous after being plucked from the audience to go Dancing In The Dark.

The problematic nun was Maria, alias Julie Andrews.

Blanche DuBois always depended on the kindness of strangers, in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Courtney Marie Andrews - The Kindness of Strangers

4. Eastwood & Elphick prefer milk in their coffee, nothing else.

Clint Eastwood + Michael 'Boon' Elphick like it white with no sugar.

The Clint Boon Experience - White With No Sugar

3. Improvement for Butch's shortened mum. 

Butch Cassidy's shortened mum with be Mama Cass.

Mama Cass - It's Getting Better

2. Not all ladies like it risqué. 

Some girls like it racey. Some girls don't. (C, apparently, didn't... at least not where these guys were concerned!)

Racey - Some Girls

1. Nurse snogs my sugar babe.

Nurse snogs was this week's only anagram!

More next week. As long as Trump doesn't have hissy fit. (I really hope Secret Service have hidden the football.)

46 Years Ago Today...

...this was Number One in the hit parade. It's a wonderfully melodramatic performance of a hugely emotive song, written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans of Badfinger and originally released on their 1970 album, No Dice. Their version's pretty low-key compared to Harry Nilsson's "shatter the wine glasses" remake... only Mariah Carey managed to ever take the song one step further into undiluted histrionics... though most rational people understand deep down in their heart of hearts that her version is utter pants, and an insult to Nilsson's memory. She also managed to turn the track into a perennial X-Factor stalwart... for which there can be no forgiveness.

Harry Nilsson was a hugely talented singer-songwriter in his own right, so it's somewhat disappointing that the song he's most remembered for isn't one of his own. He certainly wrote and recorded far better songs... but none quite so popular and all-encompassing. That's not to say I don't like Without You, and I certainly believe his to be the definitive performance.

Despite winning the Ivor Novello award for Without You, the song led only to tragedy for its writers. After Badfinger's business manager ran off with all their money in 1975, lead singer Pete Ham hung himself. He was almost 28, and about to become a father. Eight years later, still mourning his former bandmate, Without You's co-writer Tom Evans also hung himself over a dispute over the royalties.

Harry Nilsson struggled to match the single's success, despite critical glories for subsequent releases. (I've got every Nilsson album - and there's some great material in there.) He went on to work on an album with his old friend John Lennon, but ruptured a vocal chord during the recording.

Nilsson also owned a flat in Mayfair, London, where two tragic rock 'n' roll deaths occurred. Mama Cass died in her sleep while staying there in 1974 (she did not choke on a ham sandwich: that's a cruel urban legend). Four years later, The Who's Keith Moon took an overdose there. Nilsson wasn't present for either death, but he sold the flat soon after (to Pete Townshend, of all people!), believing it cursed.

Conspiracy theorists might well argue the same about this song...

(Nilsson quit the music industry in 1980 following John Lennon's death. He died of a heart attack in 1994... while recording his "comeback" album.)



Without You was Number One on the day I was born.

Today, I'm working a 12 hour shift, starting with my worst class of the week.

"I've come to wish you an unhappy birthday," as some infamous northern miserablist once sang...

My Top Ten 'Getting Better' Songs

Because every day, in every way, we're all trying to get better...

10. The Turtles - Can I Get To Know You Better?

Or "the Toitles" as they're introduced here.

9. Booth & The Bad Angel - Life Gets Better

That's Tim Booth and Angelo Badalamenti, from their odd, creepy 1996 collaboration album.

8. Fun. - It Gets Better

Not as good as many of the other tracks on their debut album (eg. Some Nights, We Are Young etc.), but still better than most other bands troubling the singles chart this year.

7. The Beatles - Getting Better

Too obvious to ignore. But the Wedding Present cover is far more to my liking these days. And the Ultrasound cover's a belter too.

6. Prefab Sprout - When You Get To Know Me Better
 
If ever you wonder why I write this blog, it's because it makes me dig through my record collection and rediscover lost gems such as this one...

I can tell you'd like to love me,
But you haven't known me long
And you don't yet know the ways I'll find
To hurt and do you wrong
I'm a man with one small weakness,
Any woman in a dress
When you get to know me better
You'll learn to love me less

5. Mull Historical Society - You Can Get Better

Good to see Colin MacIntyre back in action with the first MHS album in eight years.

Check out lead single The Lights and recent follow-up Must You Get Low to hear more.

4. D:Ream - Things Can Only Get Better

You may be surprised to find this get such a high place on my chart. But as disposable 90s pop goes, this is way better than 95% of its rivals. Plus: Professor Brian Cox on keyboards! What else do you need?

3. Shed Seven - Getting Better

Much better than Oasis.

2. Mama Cass - It's Getting Better

Timeless. As is the Kevin Rowland version. Sadly, I can't find that online.

1. Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip - Get Better

Should you have access to a teenager, I suggest locking them in a room with this song until they're at least 21.



Those were mine... can you get better?