Thanks: I appreciate all the kind comments on last week’s post. It’s easy to get wrapped up in life’s challenges and forget that people enjoy the blog. Thanks for reminding me of that and for the words of encouragement.

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Last week they had Picture Day at Freakette’s school. It’s one of the old rituals where you’re sorted by your physical size. Freakette has usually been the shortest kid in her class. Mrs. Freak and I thought she had had a growth spurt over the summer and as it turns out we were right. While Freakette is still certainly in the bottom half of her class height-wise, there are six kids shorter than her. Like all of life’s passages, this one cries out for a Cover Freak tribute.

Et Cetera & Allan Clarke “Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress” (The Hollies)
Freakette will probably never be a long cool woman. I hope that she’ll be cool and she’ll probably own a black dress at some point in her life. But she’ll probably be of middling height at best once she stops growing.

I just love the throbbing disco beat that they bring to bear on this old classic rock warhorse. If you look on iTunes you’ll find alternative versions by these people sung in German, if you want to get your Eurotrash disco thang on.

Cactus “Long Tall Sally” (Little Richard)
For some reason I’ve always remembered learning about genetics in high school. The thing that really stuck with me for some reason was that while experimenting with peas, Gregor Mendel discovered that the short gene was dominant. Which is why Freakette will never be Long Tall Freakette. I’m about six feet tall and so are several of the women on my side of the family. Mrs. Freak, despite her many charms, is not tall. And so our child is doomed. But for the time being she’s not the shortest, and I’ll take that.

This is just a fantastic version of this song. There’s really no trace of Little Richard there at all.

Jon Hardy & The Public “Short People” (Randy Newman)
It’s great that Randy Newman had commercial success with this song, although I kinda wish that he would have had a hit with just about any of the other wonderful songs he wrote. This is really just a novelty song with a sense of irony that escaped a whole lot of people when it came out. The world would have been a much different place if “Let’s Burn Down The Cornfield” had been a radio hit.

Love the horns on this one.

IQ “Big Girls Don’t Cry” (The Four Seasons)
Freakette’s a big girl now, and getting bigger by the day. Maybe next year she’ll tower over all the other kids. But probably not.

They Might Be Giants “Jessica” (The Allman Brothers)
My family tends to be tall, but we’re not giants. So Freakette won’t be a giant either. I can say that with certainty.

This is a hilarious deconstruction of the Allmans classic. The trumpet makes me howl with laughter.