Background Music

My mother and father made sure they documented our childhood in video. They did a decent job of keeping up with birthdays and holidays. A few years ago, Mom and Dad decided to send these videos in to a professional company to have them put on VHS (okay, maybe it was more than a FEW years ago). The company also added music to the background of the video.

This sounds like a marvelous idea: send in your video bits, have a company stitch them together and plop some Enya in the background. When we got the videos back, we enjoyed them alright. But for all the wrong reasons.

When I say that the video company added background music, I should clarify: They did not consider the scene on the video to which the music was synched. Consequently, when we watch footage of my baby brother bouncing in his baby seat, there is a crescendoing jingle playing in the background which makes the viewer think that the infant is about to do something fantastic. If you consider drool fantastic, then you're not disapointed. It's hilarious to watch. It's a little bit like watching foreign films with English subtitles. A little.

If you think on it, I'm sure everyone has had this kind of out-of-sync experience before. That's why elevator music is so bland... to appeal to the masses. If you just got laid off and you're in the elevator on your way out the door, they want to make sure that YOU enjoy the music as much as the intern next to you who just got your job. Whatever tunes they're piping through need to get a thumbs up from both Johnny J. Rocker and Susan B. Perfect. In reality, of course, elevator music is only appreciated by the elderly.

A step up from elevator music is grocery store music. Have you ever heard Madonna's "Like A Virgin" played on a flute while shopping for produce? (Shiver.) I have.

I bring this up because someone has set my background music to "groovy" when it should be put on "easy listening" or "it's time to panic, stupid, you haven't bought a house yet". There's a lot of waiting going on in the Dykstra household. If I were on a game show, the prize behind Curtain #2 would be: more waiting.

So, if the music is wrong, I'm going to have to change the scene. I'm going out of town for a few days to see my sibs and there will definitely be some grooving going on there. Set tuner for "Dixie Chicks". Happy times, here I come.