Memorable Miscommunication!

          I shared my daughter's latest YouTube music video (she's a singer known on YouTube, as well as an actress on TV and in films) with my 86-year-old father via email, and when I called him to hear what he thought of it, his questions about the song and her collaborator hilariously exemplify the generation gap in the music world. First, watch, and then I'll tell you his response….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioN8ClDI1KE&list=UUcyjBPgV4o-xkrozdwRLZYQ

          "So, Dad, what did you think of Lainey's newest music video?" I asked.

          "I don't know…. I didn't like that guy in the video. I don't why she needed him standing there. He was distracting, and he wasn't even singing along with her--I watched his lips!  He didn't even know the words! And he wasn't even playing the background music with her, so what was his purpose?"

           Trying not to laugh, I replied, "Dad, he was beat-boxing, not singing."

           Before I could explain what beat-boxing is, he asked, "What do you mean he wasn't singing? I saw him moving his lips, but he didn't get the words right."

          "No, Dad, he was making the beat sounds in the background with his mouth. All those drum sounds you heard were coming from him. That's what made the song so cool."

           "What do you mean?"

           "Are you listening? There wasn't any instrumental music in the video, only percussion sounds that he was making with his mouth while Lainey was singing a cappella."

          "Well, I don't know that song, I only know that I didn't like this one because of that guy making weird expressions and keeping me from hearing the music."

          Sighing, I conclude, "Okay, Dad, maybe you'll like her next one better."

          Thinking about that conversation now reminds me of a "text fail"--the kind I'd save on my phone just to laugh over it later. That's why I wrote this post, to save this "phone fail."

BLT

In my computer documents file, I found my old submission for a Writers Digest "Your Assignment" contest, instructing writers to rewrite, in 75 words or less, a scene from a well-known piece of literature so that the antagonist defeats the protagonist and the story ends "unhappily ever after." I chose, of course (as a children's book author myself), a children's book to "blacken." I hope you find my alteration of Charlotte's Web as amusing as I did in rediscovering the short piece today (even though it never won a prize).

B.L.T.
by Susan L. Lipson, Poway, CA

Templeton, fed up with the attention lavished on that stupid pig Wilbur, scrambled up the barn post toward Charlotte's web, planning revenge via vandalism. The spider's newest woven word for Wilbur, "BRILLIANT," shone in her web--yet another phony testimonial to keep the superstitious farmer from slaughtering Wilbur. Templeton snickered as he pulled out the letters "ril," then ripped out "ian," leaving 3 letters that would seal his porcine pal's fate.