Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/283511
MARCH 26 - APRIL 1, 2014 UCW 7 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Most great thoughts occur while in the shower. Mediocre thoughts occur when taking a bath. You have to be vertical for the neurons to line up to allow your brain to make connections. Sitting in a bath tub is the equivalent of sitting in a petri dish of floating things most people would rather not think about. I base this theory on pure surmise. Consider an example of this proposition based on a personal event. I was in the shower when suddenly all the lyrics to an ancient childhood ad appeared in my head. I refer to the Soaky jingle. Soaky is a superior example of the wizardry of 1950s ad men. The Mad Men figured out how to get kids to want to take a bath. This is not an easy task as kids' natural inclination is to remain dirty. Soaky was a bubble bath liquid that came in toy containers. The Soaky jingle has remained in my head for over 50 years taking up space that could have otherwise been filled with Shakespeare or Stravinsky. It would have been better culturally to have something classy stuck in my brain. Unfortunately I live with commercial jingles. We are what we think. But I digress. Consider the beauty of the Soaky jingle — "Soaky soaks you clean/In oceans full of fun/Scrubbly bubbly flibbity flubbity/Clean before you're done/Soaky soaks you clean/And every girl and boy/Gets a toy when it's empty/When its empty it's a toy." For a kid in the 50s this song was catnip. It worked. We all wanted Soaky toys. A grown man wrote that jingle and got paid a lot of money by Colgate Palmolive to create those deathless lyrics. There was a wide variety of Soaky toys — Mighty Mouse, Felix the Cat, Huckleberry Hound, Mr. Magoo, Casper the Friendly Ghost (although like many kids, I often wondered why Casper the Friendly Boy had to die), and many more too numerous or obscure to name. You can still buy the bottles on Ebay if so inclined. One of the more bizarre Soaky ads starred Dick Tracy and Musky the Law Abiding Muskrat. Tracy is driving his car chasing Musky who is running with an arm load of eggs. Tracy wrecks his car in the chase. He catches Musky and accuses him of stealing eggs. It turns out the eggs are about to hatch into two new Soaky toys, a Dick Tracy and a Musky. The ad ends with Dick sitting in his bathtub full of Soaky bubbles singing the Soaky song to Musky who is watching on Tracy's two way wrist TV. They had me at flibbity flubbity. I had not sung the Soaky song for many years until it suddenly appeared. Where had it been all those decades? Turns out songs live in the right fronto-temporal hemisphere of your brain. There is a music based treatment called melodic intonation therapy which is effective for folks who have had traumatic brain damage like a stroke. Apparently your brain stores up songs in its right hemisphere. The ad jingles end up there only to appear fully blown like a Phoenix rising from Arizona. (Sincere apologies to Frank Costanza for stealing his phrase). You speak using the left side of your brain. If the left side is damaged, your right brain can be taught to speak using its musical ability. Pretty cool stuff. I began to ponder other 50s TV jingles locked into my consciousness. Who can forget the Sugar Pops jingle starring Sugar Pops Pete? Pete is a prairie dog who uses his gun called the Sugar Popper to shoot things full of sugar. Pete sang a great song about his favorite cereal, "Well the taste is sweeter and the shape is new/They're shot with sugar through and through/ Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops/Sugar Pops are tops/." Unfortunately due to political correctness, Kellogg's dropped Sugar from the name of this fine cereal. It is now just called Corn Pops. That name doesn't have the musicality of Sugar Corn Pops but may have as much sugar. A Sugar Pop by any other name would taste as sweet. Thanks to our right fronto-temporal hemisphere, people of a certain age can still remember Sugar Pops original name. I will leave you with the Brylcream jingle — "Brylcream a little dab'll do ya/ Brylcream you look so debonair/Brylcream the gals will all pursue ya/They love to run their fingers through your hair." Apparently gals back in the 50's enjoyed having greasy fingers from hair pomade. Why this fetish existed remains a mystery. Singing in the Shower by PITT DICKEY PITT DICKEY, Attorney, Contribut- ing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. Commercial jingles can leave long- lasting impressions. FIRST GAME MARCH 29 GAME TIME: 7:30 PM TAILGATING STARTS: 4:00 PM Tickets are now available! WWW.CAPEFEARHEROESFOOTBALL.COM (910) 249-9835 Crown Coliseum Box Office or Ticketmaster Outlets www.atthecrown.com / www.ticketmaster.com 3006 Bragg Blvd. 910.323.1791 www.thetrophyhouseinc.com Baseball Season Is In Full Bloom T e a m u n if or m s n o w avail ab l e! Don't forget end-of-season trophies for Basketball! Hours: 9 a.m. - 6 p.m. M-F