C: Convoy

 

Convoy

A song by C.W. McCall (real name William Dale Fries, Jr.) about the CB radio craze of the 1970s, "Convoy" reached #1 on Billboard in 1975. The song contained an imagined conversation between truckers via CB radio, with CB slang. Users had handles (call signs or nicknames), which they used to address other truckers while conversing. "Breaker" was how users informed each other of wanting to start a transmission on a  channel. Channel 19 was the mostly commonly used channel, hence the term "Breaker 1-9, this is ..."

The references made in the song (see link above for explanations) may seem foreign to people of today who have grown up on cell phones and text speak. I was only a little girl when the song came out and I have very few, if any, memories of anyone using CB radios. This meme has shown up on the web:

I guess, in a way, that was true. Check out this video to see a CB radio.

The song and the CB/trucking craze inspired a 1978 movie of the same name. Earlier movies, like Duel and Smokey and the Bandit were also inspired by the craze. Trucking and CB radios were then at their peak.

The song must have been a favorite of the producers of The Simpsons, as one episode had Homer singing the song and another had a parody called "Christmas Convoy."

B: Barbie Girl

 

Barbie Girl

This runs piggyback to my Barbie theme last year. Someone who was doing a "silly songs" theme then (similar to my theme this year) mentioned having posted this song. I was not aware of the song until then. It was released in 1997, many years before the movie, and recorded by the Danish-Norwegian dance-pop group Aqua. One of the group's members wrote the song after seeing an exhibit on kitsch culture in Denmark that featured Barbie dolls. I did not know a lot of the "new" songs that came out in the 1990s. Perhaps the success of the Barbie movie has made (or will make) this song more popular now.

From link above:

Mattel sued Aqua for basically slandering the name of Barbie Doll. There was a big brouhaha about it, taken to several courts, but the case was ultimately dismissed. Later Mattel did use the song in promotions, only with a few modified lyrics.

Above is the official video by Aqua. The singer Tori V also recorded the song, and her video is below:

I also found this video of a kids' dance set to "Barbie Girl": 

A: All Together Now

Let Blogging A to Z 2025 begin! My theme this year is Novelty Songs. For Day One, I present:

All Together Now

Written primarily by Paul McCartney (but credited to Lennon and McCartney), "All Together Now" was recorded during the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour period, but not released until it was included on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.  

From Wikipedia:

McCartney described the song as a children's sing-along with the title phrase inspired by the music hall tradition of asking the audience to join in. He also described a "subcurrent" in the song, a dual-meaning where "we are all together now". According to music critic Tom Maginnis of AllMusic, McCartney created the song "to match the same light-hearted spirit" of "Yellow Submarine."

"All Together Now" appears in an animated sequence in the film Yellow Submarine, and is also introduced by the Beatles themselves in a final live-action scene of the film. During the latter scene, translations of "All Together Now" into various languages appear written on-screen.

 While searching Youtube, I came across this children's version of the song:

 

Thursday 13: Letter Fun

Colleen at The Thursday 13 holds a weekly blogging prompt where bloggers make a list of 13 things on Thursdays. The topic is for you to choose. The blog host doesn't have any official graphics to display on the Thursday 13 posts, so I decided to whip one up myself. 🙂   

Here is some alphabet humor in anticipation of the A to Z Blogging challenge which is just days away. Hope you'll join me then!

Looking Into Next Month

 

Just a little over a week until the alphabet madness begins. The official sign-ups begin this week. As soon as I revealed my theme two weeks ago, I then began drafting my posts. They are now scheduled for each of their designated letter days. Yes, I have a whole month of posts scheduled. I've only been using schedule-posting since last year's A to Z, but I didn't begin it then until the fifth day, though all my posts had been drafted a month earlier. 

I'm not sure who many more posts I'll be doing this month. I have a Thursday 13 scheduled for this week that ties in with the A to Z. Whether I'm going to do Thursday 13 in April remains to be seen. If I do, it will be done either the day of, or scheduled a day or so beforehand. If not, I'll be back in May. I'm trying to limit my non-A to Z posts to Sundays, since we are off then. I hope to get in a Book Blog Discussion post on one of the Sundays, and will be posting my Reading Bingo card for April on the first Sunday. Any other Sunday posts, if any, will be determined. This is how I did it last April. 

And I'm not certain how many more posts I'll get in for the rest of March. I'm a little worn-out from preparing my A to Z posts that I'm not sure what else to post. I had to get in a Book Blog Discussion post for this month. I try to do at least one a month. As I said, I have already scheduled a post for Thursday 13 this week. 

It's going to be a fun month of letter madness.

Book Discussion: How Quickly Do You Read New Purchases?

 

As I said earlier, I made my first purchase at the new bookstore in my hometown. I have yet to read the book and am uncertain when I will. Though I really hope to get it this year. So many times when I have bought a book (new or used), I most often put it aside to be read later--never knowing when that "later" will be.  Some have been sitting in my house for who-knows-how-long and I still wonder when I'll ever get to some of them, or why I haven't read them yet. 

But  there was one book I got earlier this year at Barnes & Noble that I recently read. I got the book in January and read it at the end of February. And earlier this month when I found this book at Goodwill, I read it right away. I was looking for a book set in the 1920s and was unaware at first that this is set then. Also, I had been wanting to find this book for a while.

How long do you often take to read a newly purchased book, whether it's new or used?

Toilet Paper Memories: Thursday 13

Colleen at The Thursday 13 holds a weekly blogging prompt where bloggers make a list of 13 things on Thursdays. The topic is for you to choose. The blog host doesn't have any official graphics to display on the Thursday 13 posts, so I decided to whip one up myself. 🙂  

After getting a new pack of toilet paper the other day (my cousin got it from Costco), I got to thinking about the toilet paper shortage that happened at the start of the pandemic. I still wonder why people though it was necessary to hoard TP.  And several reminders came up on my Facebook memories this week.