Comments on: It's Jay!

It's Jay!

cortex — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:01:01 -0800

A less-than-one-minute theme song I wrote five years ago for a fictional sitcom about a guy I worked with at the time. A music challenge twofer that I have had in the can for half a decade.

It was only waiting for this moment to arrive. Outta my head, flapjax. See also the alternate 80's sitcom parody track, Without Jay. Also short. Also fictional show. A two-by-twofer. I wrote this up after having had a series of jokey conversations with the Jay in question about how he should quit his job as a call center supervisor and put his English degree to real use, by writing a meta-sitcom starring himself as a trope. I enjoyed the hell out of these conversations—the guy was whipsmart and funny and one of my favorite people in the office. I liked the running idea so much that I sat down and recorded these two songs one afternoon after work, burnt a CD, and then spent the next morning at work doing some illicit pen-and-watercolor painting of a cover for the CD, based on his company portrait. Which I thought was, you know, hilarious. I had a lot of time on my hands at that job—specifically on my hands, since I had a phone headset and spent much of the day listening (in thirty or forty second increments) to a phone autodialing and ringing and not getting picked up by a human—and I was pretty ruthlessly dedicated to doing creative projects with my idle fingers. The wall was covered with tiny portraits I'd drawn; I carved a couple sets of of alphabet stamps at 1/4" and 3/4" scale from filched pencil erasers and Pink Pearls, respectively; I wrote a lousy novel one November. So doing something like knocking off a clumsy ad hoc portrait of someone was just a morning diversion for me. Which is all well and good, but the flip side of the coin was Jay suddenly receiving, out of the blue, a hand-painted portrait of himself from some weird and excitable guy he works with for a CD with songs about (in a sense) Jay. Eventually he acknowledged that this did, in fact, kinda creep him out. Sorry, Jay!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:54:48 -0800

It was only waiting for this moment to arrive.

Haha! Fly you crazy blackbird! And speaking of the Fab Four, weren't these two fictional TV shows just ripoffs of Harrison's Within Jay and Without Jay?

Love your la-la-las.

By: cortex

cortex — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:58:45 -0800

I like to imagine that the la-la-las are being sung by chipper Swedish lumberjacks who are swinging their arms, elbows acrook, in time with the beat.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:49:12 -0800

This track is totally Jhey. luh, luh-le-luh-luh-luh.... And it made me smile. Dammit.

By: buriednexttoyou

buriednexttoyou — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:16:55 -0800

See, these are the things I do at work too. Why does no one ever appreciate their theme song?

By: sleepy pete

sleepy pete — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:37:27 -0800

My playlist name finally makes sense to everyone else. I do love this, though. Nice one.

By: chococat

chococat — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:13:07 -0800

Funny.
Sounds like you recorded the vocals through a drive-thru microphone. Or a pair of thick pantyhose.

By: chococat

chococat — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:15:02 -0800

Oh, it also puts me in the mind of "Call Mr. Plow, that's my name, that name again is Mr. Plow."
In a fancy, happy way.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:40:21 -0800

It's a scientific fact that sitcom humans don't possess urethrae unless the live in a show about a bar.

By: ORthey

ORthey — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:01:04 -0800

You could make bank creating ditties and jingles. Serious. Maybe you already have.

By: holloway

holloway — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:40:25 -0800

Ha, that's fantastic cortex.

By: AppleSeed

AppleSeed — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:52:16 -0800

All the t.v. themes hit the bullseye. Jay's cubicle is just down from that guy in that room, isn't it?