Salt Peanuts

In 1960, in what may have been the equivalent to the high-pitched version of the Monkees to the Chipmunks’ Beatles, jingle composer Don Elliot and some goofball named “Sascha” Burland decided to make a band called The Nutty Squirrels.

You see, they sing in high-pitched voices. Just like the Chipmunks! But they’re squirrels! And they don’t sing regular songs! No, they’re scat squirrels!

They never met with the same success rate as their other vermin friends because, well, squirrels don’t have the cute cheeks that chipmunks have and, squirrels are silent and deadly killers. But that’s a long story.

So, pretty much everyone involved in this little group is dead, for better or worse, but their music lives on. And, as fate would have it, my stupid need to own all sorts of strange music because, “You just never know when you might need it”, has caused us to possess some Nutty Squirrels.

That was all well and good. Until Gertrude discovered it. The first time she heard it she laughed. Not giggled, but laughed. Laughed in the same way you would laugh if you saw the President throw in the first pitch at a baseball game, he misses, beans Ashcroft who falls down on the entire Justice Department and then Ashcroft comes up to the Prez and says, “Wiseguy, eh?” and pokes him in the eye (just a random thought). This kid wet herself laughing. Which, of course, is okay because she still wears diapers.

It was cute. So we played it again. Mom took the song in the car and they listened to it there too. Well . . . She’s addicted. Now whenever Mom gets in the car, she has to listen to scat-singing squirrels for a very, very long time.

As you can imagine, it’s starting to weigh upon her and she’s longing to hear “Jump, Swish, Shimmy” from the JoJo’s Circus soundtrack.

No, we had to have a musically adventurous kid. Yargh.

I guess I should be happy, though. She could be holding an old mechanic’s work lamp as a microphone and lipsynching to this song.

Of course, right now I’m dancing around my office to the Bar-Kay’s “Soul Finger”. Maybe I’m not the best judge of odd behavior . . .

Lay Your Groove On Me