Chained to the Rhythm (On Repeat)

I was putting together one of my video posts, and I realized that I had saved a LOT of videos covering Katy Perry's new song Chained to the Rhythm. Before when I've had a bunch of the same song, I just put them into one of my Internet Awesome posts, but I really didn't feel like doing that again. I like those posts to be really eclectic, with a wide variety of videos, so I decided to start a new series!

As you may have gathered from the title, the series is called On Repeat, and it will be a place where I can post multiple versions of the same song all in one place, without it having to fill up another kind of post. And since this in going to be a series, I had to create another logo, so here it is!

We'll start the post with the video where I first heard the original song, the lyric video. The lyric video is odd in that the on-screen action has literally nothing to do with the content of the lyrics, it's literally just a person making tiny dinners for a hamster. It's so random, but I loved it. :p



I just went to rewatch the official music video, and I realized that the lyric video actually does tie into the song by way of the fact that the mascot for the dystopian theme park is a hamster, and they are eventually running on futuristic hamster wheels. So I guess that solves the mystery of why the hamster was in the lyric video. :p



(On a completely unrelated note, I'm not the biggest fan of cotton candy, but I really want one of those giant mushroom cloud/atomic bomb fallout cotton candy clouds!) :p

For the first of our covers we'll go to Evynne Hollens. This was actually just released today, but I knew it was coming, so I delayed putting out this post until she released it. I couldn't do a post like this without a Hollens video if I knew one was coming now could I? :)



Next we have an awesome string quartet cover by Simply Three. They always have the best string covers of popular music!



Next up is Mike Tompkins. He always puts such a unique spin on everything he covers. A cappella is enough of a twist, but he always seems to go one step further.



Lastly we have a cover by Kurt Hugo Schneider, featuring Rebecca Black! She has definitely come a long ways since her "Friday" days!



And that's it! I don't expect this to be a regularly occurring type of post, but if a song comes out that a lot of people decide to cover, I might eventually have to do another post. :)

Shari & Mallory Lewis

Yesterday I put together a blog post I called "Digital Zoloft." I filled it with videos that just made me happy; all different sorts of clips and music, but everything had in common the fact that they were just feel-good videos. I was going to add the video in this post to it, but as I wrote the introduction to it, I decided that it deserved a post all of its own. It was longer than any of the other videos, and in a way, this video meant a lot more to me than all the others.

This is a video from Mallory Lewis, the daughter of one of my childhood heroes, Shari Lewis. I loved watching Lamb Chop's Play-Along every day on PBS, it was one of my favorite shows when I was little, and one I still think of from time to time. There were plenty of other shows I watched around that time, some I have very vague memories of, but Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop were two people who have just stuck with me all these years. I realize that I just referred to a sock as a person, but she practically is! The way Shari performed Lamb Chop was so good, you'd never know she wasn't alive!

Shari died in 1998, and I still remember cutting out and saving her obituary. I was 12. I'd never done something like that before, and I haven't since. Now I couldn't tell you where that newspaper clip is today, but I just wanted you to get an idea of how much she meant to me as a kid.

A few years ago I came across a YouTube channel from Shari's daughter, Mallory Lewis. I hadn't realized that she had even taken up the character, but as I learned from watching the videos, she still makes public appearances with Lamb Chop on a semi-regular basis! A couple weeks ago an interview with Mallory and Lamb Chop was uploaded to the channel and it was so good that I just had to share it.



As I wrote this post I kind of fell down a rabbit hole of old Shari Lewis videos. I hadn't realized how incredibly 90's the show was! I mean, I know it was a 90's show, but everything about the show now just shouts that it's from the 90's. And I don't mean that as a bad thing. That's when I grew up, so at this point it's just drenched with nostalgia for me.

I'm not going to share all the videos I found, but I am going to share the theme song. I had all but forgotten it, but when I watched it the memories just came flooding back, and I could pretty much sing the entire thing along with them. You can see, even in the theme song how very 90's the show was.



It's only fitting to end this post they way Shari ended every episode. With a song. But not just any song. :) Far more iconic than the theme song, the song from this show that everyone remembers, (and many can't stand) was the song that played over the end credits. The Song That Never Ends. Shari's reaction to everything here is what makes the whole thing work. She was just brilliant.

Digital Zoloft

This video post is going to be a bit different than my past ones, all these videos are ones that I have chosed because they just made me feel good. Whether I had a bad day and a video lifted me out of it, or it was just a video that made me smile and feel better about the world, these are all the videos I've watched recently that just made me happy.

I thought of the idea for this post the other day and I liked it so much that I decided it was worth making a logo for. I might even turn this into a series.

This first video just happened a couple days ago. I watched it, I loved it, I almost died. In a good way! This little girl is the physical incarnation of everything that is good and pure and innocent in this cold, dark, brutal world. Who knew a broken water heater could bring one so much joy?



This is a music video from the group World Order. I've liked them for years, but this video, a team-up with fellow J-Pop group SKE48, just totally brightened my who day when I watched it. It's just so infectiously upbeat!



This next video is just a clip of an adorable dog getting a new toy, but it's just so cute that I can't help but melt. It also doesn't hurt that the new toy is one one of my favorite characters from childhood. :p



Lindsey Stirling always brings a smile to my face, but this month it seems like she's been working overtime! She has put out two videos in a row that are just pure happiness.

The first one is a medley of songs from Beauty and the Beast, but the simple way that she chose to put it together, just filming herself and her crew as they set up while they were on tour, and then just completely goofed around, just set it apart. I especially love her costume choice for the end. Who else would choose a giant puffy teapot costume over Belle's iconic yellow ballgown? It was just too brilliant. :p



The second video made me smile just because of how brilliantly silly it is. For years Lindsey has played this weird character named Phelba on her second channel. Phelba is supposed to be the lead Stirlingite, Lindsey's biggest fan who is completely obsessed with her. She's always just been something she did for fun, like in vlogs and goofy videos, nothing serious, but in this video, her oddball alter ego makes her music video debut, and I loved every second of it.

I also loved that Lindsey chose to include four of her best friends in the video including a few other people from YouTube that I enjoy watching. I'm not that familiar with Blogilates, but I do watch Lilly Singh from time to time, and I my cousins and I usually end up binge watching iJustine and Rosanna Pansino videos every time we get together. It was just a lot of fun to see them all make cameo appearances. :)



This next video I'm sure you've seen, I shared on Facebook the day after it hit the internet, and it absolutely blew up. I know it sounds like I'm a hipster, but I am proud to say I say it when it only had a few thousand views and I said that it was going to go viral. I was so completely right. The video currently has over 23 million views, and these interrupting kids, their deadpan dad, and their frantic mother are pretty much internet sensations at this point.



Lastly we have a couple of videos from Cookie Monster and friends. They've been making a few appearances around the internet lately, and these videos were just so hilarious. Especially Cookie Monster. I loved how upset he got when people kept asking the dreaded "Veggie Monster" question.





I really enjoyed putting this post together, it even inspired a spin off post that I will publish tomorrow, so be on the lookout for that. Digital Zoloft will not replace my Internet Awesome posts, but I think I will bring it back occasionally, especially if I suddenly collect a whole bunch of videos that made me really happy like I did this month. :)

The REAL Story of Little Miss Muffet

It has literally been years since I've written a REAL story based on a fairy tale, but as I was flipping through one of my old notebooks in my fiction writing class, I came across a short one I'd written a couple years ago for a class. It's pretty short, and not nearly as ridiculously elaborate as some of the other ones I've written, but I decided to type it up here anyway.

For those of you who need a refresher, here is the original poem.

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

And now here is the REAL Story. Or my version anyway. :p

Little Miss Muffet

Sarah had won, but she was not happy about it. She had not wanted to enter the “Little Miss Muffet” competition, but her mother had insisted. Her mother was always trying to live vicariously through her. Gymnastics, ballet, now beauty pageants. And it would have to be this one. “Little Miss Muffet.” She hated muffets. They were far too crunchy. Still, she’d rather have one of those, than the mess she’d been packed for lunch.

She looked into her lunchbox with disgust. Curds and Whey again? Her mom was such an awful cook. Who actually liked eating this slop anyway? It was like watered down cottage cheese! With sugar sprinkled on it! Sick! But then again, it was all she had. She decided to get away from the pageantry for a while, but first she had to escape the paparazzi. They were relentless. They were popping up all over the place trying to take her picture. Even her dressing room wasn't safe, so she opened the window, climbed out, and took off into the forest.

Sarah walked for quite a while before coming upon a large, squishy looking thing on the ground. She’d heard them called tuffets before, but she still didn’t know what that was. Some kind of a mushroom? A wild marshmallow? Still, it was pretty big, and looked like it would be comfortable, so she sat down.

As she choked down the disgusting concoction that would have to pass for her lunch, she heard a quiet skittering noise beside her on the tuffet. Sarah looked down and screamed, flinging her lunchbox into the air, showering the forest floor with curds and whey. Beside her was the most hideous tarantula she had ever seen. She flew off the tuffet and ran down the path and out of the woods as fast as she could, launching herself through her open window, back into her dressing room.

Back in the forest, the spider chuckled to himself as he flipped through the photos on his tiny camera. “I can see the headline now!” he said to himself, looking at the photos of the lonely, then terrified little girl. “Newly Crowned Little Miss Muffet Abandoned in the Woods by Hateful Parents!” Fanciful Enquirer would pay big bucks for these pictures, he could smell the cash already.