Hooked on a Khachaturian

The other day at work, I was asked to fill in at the front reception desk.  While the front desk doesn't have the stunning 13th floor view of Lake Michigan that my regular desk has, it does have the computer network, so my indexing of top-secret documents can continue unabated.  The front desk is the first place visitors see when they arrive at our company, so there's a lot of "Show Biz" involved.  I sign visitors in, direct calls on the switchboard, schedule meetings, and coordinate countless pizza and sub deliveries to the employees.  

There was one corner of the reception area that I found particularly annoying, though.  There is a television feed, usually set to CNN or Fox News.  Since other parts of the screen run local welcome messages and weather conditions, it is necessary that the television feed be ON all the time.  The news was what you'd expect - rehashing over and over the celebrity gossip, terrorist activities, terrifying weather reports (hey, there's always going to be a tornado somewhere). But what gets to you first is the repetitious ads.  Smug old farts with golf clubs selling reverse mortgages, gold investments, class action suits, insurance, and on and on...

Then I discovered a music channel.  We don't have any of the Sirius or Warner channels, but there are two channels run by public television channels, one is jazz and one is classical.  The classical channel plays a wonderful variety of music spanning five centuries, and I was able to hear many familiar favorites as well as some new discoveries. 

One song grabbed my attention so completely that I had to find out all about it.  An Adagio movement from a score by Aram Khachaturian, written in the 1950s for a production (movie or ballet?) of Spartacus.  This familiar passage (about 50 seconds into the example below) was the basis from the song "Hooked on a Feeling" that had been on the soundtrack of my life in at least three different versions in the 1960s and 1970s.  The most infamous version was the Blue Swede version that was popular in the early 1970s, featuring a chorus of about six people chanting "Hooka Chokka Hooka Chokka".  

I decided to research the connection - and, amazingly, nobody else had discovered the unmistakable link between these two pieces. 

Am I the only one on the Internet who ever noticed this similarity?

Khachaturian Adagio from Spartacus:


And here's the Blue Swede version from the 1970s.  Imagine, this song is 40 years old!  A new generation is discovering the song, now, as it was used in a film "Guardians of the Galaxy" which I have not yet seen.  If you've never heard the version, crank up your woofers and tweeters, and let 'er rip!

And if you're interested in further research, use this link for the complete history of Hooga Chokka:
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2014/08/22/the_origins_of_the_ooga_chaka.html

More Random Notes - Livin' the Dream!

Yes it's been awhile, and I missed all of my loyal readers, all three of you. Clearing up some random items that have been piling up in the Draft box.

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Yvonne and Kay near the end of the day, work's all done, just waitin those last few minutes for the nine-to-five thing to be over.  Yvonne flipping through photos on the internet for a Halloween costume ideas.  She comes up with a photo of an ugly green-face witch leering at the camera, brandishing her broom.  Something looks familiar.  To herself "Who is  that?" Then she calls across the room: "Kay, can you drive a stick?" . . .

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It's an almost-late-for-work morning.  On the way to work, I'm just locking up my front door, and see the bus already arriving at the corner.  I frantically head out, waving and running, hoping that the bus sees me.  Luckily, it was Al at the wheel.  Al, as you recall, is the driver that stopped and attempted to pick me up mid-block on my day off.  Al waited as I ran cross-corner through the traffic of the five-corner intersection. 

I stomp up the stairs of the bus panting.  Physical fitness is not one of the things I'm known for. Panting out my apologies:  "Sorry.  Had to get that extra twenty seconds of sleep."

Al replies:  "Well, good thing you didn't decide to stay in bed for an extra twenty-five seconds!  Take it easy, Old Guy - don't get a heart attack.  Cuz there's NO WAY I'm giving you mouth-to-mouth."

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So, this "work"  I'm talking about - it's my job!  A full-time job.  I'm not a temp, any more.  The place I'm working at hired me full-time. Try before you buy.  When they said "full-time" they meant, that I could go home once in awhile to sleep for a few hours, but otherwise, there was a major project in-house, and we had to keep at it until it was done for the day.  (The project is secret, but it involves huge vats of incoming mail each and every day, and this includes Sundays).  The project is now complete.  When it was all over, we were all happy to have a heap o'gold in our bank accounts from all the overtime, and we did get the project out by Christmas.  Getting up at 4:30 am, and getting home aroung 8:00 pm became the norm.  The sunrise over Lake Michigan is beautiful - all those folks home in bed don't get to see such beauty.

So, now, I'm catching up on everything else, clearing up backlogs everywhere, and re-discovering things that haven't been looked at since September, when it all started. Spent a lot of time this weekend on the business end of a snow shovel.  And today the ground hog ran back into his dark little hole, so there will be lots more wintry snowed-in days to catch up on things. How does that work, anyway? 

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I am now informed that I work less than four blocks from a facility that makes Life-Changing Bacon Topped Maple Donuts...  Each day brings its own little bit of wisdom.  http://holeymoleydoughnuts.com/