On a brief hike this morning before work, I found myself humming "Greensleeves" to myself:
Greensleeves was all my joy
Greensleeves was my delight
Greensleeves was my heart of gold
And who but my lady Greensleeves?
Then when I had lunch, the restaurant was playing Neil Young's "Heart of Gold":
In the afternoon, I taught an English class. The textbook used statements about superstitions to model first-conditional grammar, and one of the examples provided had to do with new shoes.
This got my attention because my January 28 post "Assorted syncs: Finnegans Wake, Kubla Khan, and dayholes" had quoted some rap lyrics about new shoes, and William Wright had picked this up and run with it in yesterday's "Needing new shoes to roller skate in Xanadu." So I was in sync-noticing mode.
After going through the examples with the students, I asked them to describe local superstitions using the same grammar. This led to this little conversation:
"Many people believe that if a dog or cat has white paws, it will bring its owner bad luck."
"So the Black man in the picture is lucky. His dog is white, but its paws are brown."
"I think its paws are really white. They're dirty because it was digging."
"So the horseshoe really brought him good luck, because now his dog doesn't have white paws."
After the class, I put on some background music while I did some paperwork, letting the YouTube Music algorithm do its thing. The very first song it served up was "Dirty Paws" by Of Monsters and Men. I looked at the screen and saw that the accompanying video was a montage from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a 2013 Ben Stiller movie based (very loosely, one assumes!) on the Thurber story.
For me, Ben Stiller's most iconic role will always be that of Tugg Speedman playing Four Leaf Tayback in Tropic Thunder, so there's a link back to the four-leaf clover in the textbook.
William Wright's "Needing new shoes to roller skate in Xanadu" post includes several references to "walking on air." Here's the poster for the Stiller movie:
And yes, that's the sync fairies' favorite building in the bottom right corner.
Here's another poster:
Where have I seen that imagery before? Oh, right. Here's a still from the Panic! at the Disco video "High Hopes," from my December 7 post "Mr. Mxyztplk revisited":
Mr. Mxyztplk is often called Mxy for short, not too far from Mitty.
I must say, this sync-synergy with William Wright is going on much longer than I had expected.
2 comments:
Just a couple random thoughts specifically relating to the Walter Mitty video (I was thinking about a short post on this over on my blog and then seeing where it goes, but I think there are a few other things I am going to cover if I get around to it later tonight, so just leaving these in your comments section for you to noodle on if you want).
1. Walter Mitty would have the initials W.M., or WM... which is how you like to write your name.
2. Walter has come up before in my own posts, with Walter White from Breaking Bad. In that post, I made a point to have this character represent Saruman, or someone like him, but I don't think that has to be the case here (I don't think it is the case). Walter can mean simply "Commander of the army", in one reading, and we leave it at that.
3. "Mitty" apparently means "Beloved of Amun", as an Egyptian name, which was surprising to me. Of course, Amun can be spelled "Ammon", and in doing so, we probably have a reference to the Ammonites of the Book of Mormon, who were in a very real way the "Beloved of Ammon".
4. Bringing those 2 names together (and using my variation for Amun/Ammon), we have "Commander of the Army [of the] Ammonites".
5. Helaman was the leader or the commander of the Ammonites (the stripling warriors), so bringing together Points 2 - 4 above, I think we have Walter Mitty as another name or reference to Helaman.
6. Beyond the name, the briefcase in the video you posted stood out to me. We have seen a briefcase before in the Woodkid videos over on my blog. In "Iron", the character holding the book of keys (who I think represents Saruman) is also holding a briefcase. In "Run Boy Run", the Boy now has something that looks very much like that original briefcase, but is now wearing it as a backpack as he runs. In the Walter Mitty video, Walter Mitty/ Ben Stiller starts out with a briefcase, but then must transfer its contents to the backpack that he is later seen wearing around.
I did notice that it could be The Secret Life of Wm but didn't take it any further than that. Interesting links.
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