Thing a Week 12: Furry Old Lobster
By request, this one comes from the book tour I’ve been doing with John Hodgman. In the book, there’s this very funny history of the lobster in America, in which John explains that what we think of as lobsters today really were not the first animal to be called “lobster.” In fact, the old kind of lobster was a sort of sea otter that was wiped out when the new lobster made its way north to Maine. Then I sing a sad song about the death of the furry old lobster, and also I wear a hat made from its fur. Hilarious.
PRESENT DAY JOCO SAYS: Cheating! Pretty sure I didn’t write this one on this particular week, just recorded it. But it looks like I was just back from another leg of the Hodgman book tour, so the song was on my mind in heavy rotation in my universe. (Side note: on this particular leg of the tour we were joined by David Rees, who is now the official pencil sharpener on this crazy cruise I’m doing in January, and who has taken over said cruise’s blog because I never updated it (much like this one, ha!).)
I still like this song, though it’s content is bizarre enough that it keeps me from thinking of it as a song that you can, you know, play in front of people. Out of context it’s like, what? Did he say “furry lobster?” But there’s a lot of emotion in there, the melody works very nicely to ratchet up a feeling about a creature that never existed. Once I played this song as part of a Hodgman reading at some McSweeney’s event where Jon Brion was also playing, and afterwards he complimented me saying that the song sounded very authentic. That’s when I wet my pants.
Hey look at that, I posted this one on time!
You can find more info on this song, a store where you can listen to everything, and also other stuff at jonathancoulton.com
