Casual

...Older generations of literary men and women have had yards of poetry by memory...

...My Very Good Friend the Milkman" contains two lines that may be as wretched as any ever written—"Then there's a very friendly fellow, who brings me all the latest real estate news, / And every day he sends me blueprints of cottages with country views"—and yet Fats Waller, even while mocking them, is able to make them charming...

...The Way You Look Tonight"—"Keep that breathless charm," etc.—is two lines shorter than a sonnet...

...and "Miss Emily Brown"—that lovable, huggable girl who's coming to town—is precisely sonnet-length...

...Send in the Clowns," Stephen Sondheim's one entirely memorable song, took a bit more work, but was worth it...

...I wish he were still capital venturesome, for I have an item that needs a backer—^not yet invented, true, but one I long for: a karaoke machine that you can take into the shower...

...A waterproof karaoke machine, I feel, would encourage me to expand my repertoire greatly...

...I'd like to be able to report that I've just about mastered the Gershwin song-book...

...I do so partly as a stay against the inevitable loss of those little grey cells that Her-cule Poirot so often refers to, and partly for the sheer pleasure of singing them to myself, on long walks but more often in the shower...

...Louis," "Comment Allez Vous," "Stars Fell on Alabama," "The Way You Look Tonight," and "Sweet and Slow...

...But they have other uses...

...Oh, Bobby Darin, thou shouldst be alive not at this but at that hour...

...But these songs need fairly frequent rehearsal, lest whole chunks of them slip from my mind, which they inevitably do...

...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...

...Pity...

...The Sharper Image, Hammacher Schlemmer, Brookstone, and other consumer old-boy-costly-goofy- — toy catalogs sell radios you can take into the shower, but thus far no waterproof karaoke machines...

...Tom Lehrer's "Hanukkah in Santa Monica"—"Roshashonna I spend in Arizuna, / And Yom Kippa way down in Mississippa"—is only one line longer...

...I'm stepping out, my dear, to breathe an atmosphere that simply reeks with class" is especially useful to have in mind when stepping out into an atmosphere—an academic conference, say—that doesn't...

...Over lunch one day he entertained me by recounting the nutty projects that people brought to him for financing: a geriatric dog food, an electric fountain pen, cell-phone implants...

...But aside from Porter's "You're the Top," which I do have by memory— "You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire, / You're an O'Neill drama, you're Whistler's mama, / You're camembert"—my taste has run to simpler, more off-beat tunes...

...But of late I have taken to memorizing entire songs...

...And it came as a surprise to learn how short some songs are...

...or committed all of Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hart to memory...

...I later memorized his "Regency Rakes"—"Complacency never forsakes / roistering Regency rakes"—which shows the clear line, at least in this strain, between Coward and W.S...

...Among them have been "Ain't Misbehavin'," "I'm Late, I'm Late," "Fine Spring Morning," "You've Come A Long Way from St...

...Gilbert...

...All three could take the dopiest of lyrics and make them amusing by ironically undercutting them even while singing them...

...To own such a machine would be heaven...

...I began with mnemonically more difficult songs...

...I can so easily see myself, shampoo in hair, soap on bristly cheeks—I am among the small but happy minority who have learned the art of shaving in the shower—^microphone in hand, belting out "I've Got A Right to Sing the Blues" or "I Guess I'll Get the Papers and Go Home" or "Mack the Knife...

...I often use one or another of these songs in the morning as a mental calis-thenic—"cloak and suiters by the oodles, say it to their cute French ^ poodles"—a way to ease my little grey cells into the day...

...Or, as in the old joke about Nikita Khrushchev making love to Marilyn Monroe, heaven for me, hell for my neighbors...

...I envy people who can keep the vocabularies of four or five languages in their heads...

...I do better with shorter songs...

...Donald Tovey, the great English music critic, once claimed that he had enough music by heart to play at his piano for seven, possibly eight weeks...

...Above all I've come to prefer the songs sung by my idols in this realm, Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, and Fats Waller...

...I now have enough song lyrics memorized to last, maybe, twenty minutes...

...One of the first was Noel Coward's "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," which I love for its intricacy...

...Sometimes the sheer throw-away cleverness sends me: "I'm a supper-club fanatic, / thunderstorm electrostatic, / from three points I'm automatic, / I'm your guy...

...I have had only bits of popular songs boppin' around in mine...