Tiny Pineapple

ananas comosus (L.) minimus

iCrotch

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If I’d had a Christmas Wish List this year, an iPod would have been at the top of it. But, given the state of just about everyone’s personal economy right now, I certainly didn’t expect anyone to be showering me with expensive, non-essential gifts this year. So, imagine my surprise on Christmas morning when I learned that miscellaneous friends and family members had all gotten together, pooled their resources, and purchased me a 20GB iPod. It’s honestly the best Christmas gift I’ve received since the Kodak Instamatic X-15 of Christmas ’71.

In addition to the iPod, I also got a Griffin iTrip, an FM transmitter that allows you to play your iPod through your car radio. Now, ideally, if you want to play your iPod in your car, you’d want a car stereo with an AUX jack that you could plug your iPod into. Unfortunately, I don’t have one, so my only other options are some sort of cassette adapter or an FM transmitter like the iTrip.

I was drawn to the iTrip for a number of reasons, but I wasn’t expecting it to be a perfect solution. Griffin Technology is very honest about some of the limitations of the technology. As part of their iTrip FAQ, they state the following:

What is the quality of the audio when played through the iTrip? Is it better than FM?

Simply put, FM radio is not the best quality audio in the world. It lacks some high and low frequencies, it has a fairly poor signal-to-noise ratio and it is nowhere near CD quality. The iTrip simply creates a mini FM radio station on top of your iPod, therefore it will never sound any better that the best FM radio station you’ve ever heard.

However, it still sounds pretty good. With a clear frequency the iTrip will deliver your iPod’s music at a surprisingly clear and high level of quality. And unless you have an AUX input or cassette adapter – it’s the ONLY way to play your iPod in your car. As far as comparing the iTrip to ‘other’ FM transmitters, the iTrip’s sound quality will win every time.

Of course, the real catch is that bit about “With a clear frequency…” I don’t live in the most densely-populated or cosmopolitan area of the United States, so I assumed that it would be fairly easy to find a chunk of the FM band that wasn’t being used, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. While the FM dial in my area is certainly a cultural wasteland, it’s a crowded wasteland.

So, as I’ve been driving over the past few days, I’ve been experimenting with various frequencies and I finally settled on 95.9 MHz. It seemed to provide the clearest sound with the least amount of interference from surrounding stations. But as I was driving home in a snowstorm the other night, I started getting some bleed-through from a Christian evangelical station right in the middle of Blossom Dearie‘s “Give Him The Ooh-La-La.”

I reached over and picked up the iPod off the passenger seat and as soon as I touched the iPod the interference went away. When I put it back down, the garbled calls to repentance reappeared. My body seemed to be acting as an auxiliary antenna for the iTrip, but driving one-handed through a raging snowstorm at the Point of the Mountain was not an option. So, not knowing what else to do, I lay the iPod down on the driver’s seat between my legs until I had better driving conditions and could deal with the problem.

Now, I don’t mean to be indelicate or sound boastful in any way, but I have discovered that there is something magical between my legs…or, rather, in the space between my legs. With the iPod nestled there, the sound is crystal clear and all outside interference disappears. I’ve tried other locations on or about my person…under my right thigh, in my pockets, etc…but nothing works as well. The sweet spot seems to be, well, there. So, if you have been having similar difficulties with your iPod/iTrip, you might want to give my iCrotch solution a try.

I hesitate to even speculate as to why this works. Maybe it’s a “guy thing,” in which case women would need to find an alternate solution. (iCleavage?) But there is also the chance that this solution will only work for me. Perhaps there is something extraordinary about my loins, or it could be that I just have exceptionally receptive pants. Both, I think, are plausible explanations and, oddly, those same assertions have been made by others in the past, though under very different circumstances.

Pineapple Rag by Scott Joplin

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Pineapple Rag by Scott Joplin
Pineapple Rag (Clip)

Pine-apple Rag (1908): The third theme of this rag has the vocal quality that probably suggested its future use as a song; otherwise a strange choice. It is not particularly distinctive except for a joyful and very ragged second theme but is well enough constructed and substantial.

Source: Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era

“Not particularly distinctive,” my eye! The mere mention of that most noble of bromeliads in the title elevates the song above all of Mr. Joplin’s other botanically-themed rags: Maple Leaf Rag, Sugar Cane Rag, Sunflower Slow Rag, Palm Leaf Rag, Gladiolus Rag, Rose Leaf Rag, and Fig Leaf Rag.

Pineapple Princess by Annette Funicello

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Pineapple Princess by Annette Funicello
Pineapple Princess (Clip)

It could be argued that without “Pineapple Princess,” from Annette Funicello’s 1960 album Hawaiiannette, there would never have been “A Spoonful of Sugar,” a “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” or a “Jolly Holiday” with or without Mary.

The Sherman brothers, Richard and Robert, were relatively unknown songwriters when they teamed up with Annette Funicello in 1958. While their first hit with Annette was “Tall Paul,” co-written with Bob Roberts (no, not that Bob Roberts), it was their 1960 hit “Pineapple Princess,” recorded by Annette and The Afterbeats, that reached #11 on the pop charts and established them solidly in the wonderful world of Disney.

After writing songs for both The Parent Trap (1961) and Summer Magic (1963) they were approached by Walt Disney to write the songs and the score for Mary Poppins (1964) and the rest is history.

They won Oscars for both “Best Musical Score” and “Best Song” (for “Chim Chim Cher-ee”), won the grammy for “Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Show,” and helped make Julie Andrews a movie star.

I hope that, at the very least, Ms. Andrews sent The Afterbeats a fruit basket as a token of her apprecation.

Pineapple Princess, by Annette Funicello (Single)

Pineapple Princess

“Pineapple Princess,” he calls me,
“Pineapple Princess,” all day
As he plays his ukulele
On the hill above the bay.
“Pineapple Princess, I love you,
You’re the sweetest girl I’ve seen.
Some day we’re gonna marry
And you’ll be my Pineapple Queen.”

I saw a boy on Oahu isle
Floatin’ down the bay on a crocodile.
He waved at me and he swam ashore
And I knew he’d be mine forevermore.

“Pineapple Princess,” he calls me,
“Pineapple Princess,” all day
As he plays his ukulele
On the hill above the bay.
“Pineapple Princess, I love you,
You’re the sweetest girl I’ve seen.
Some day we’re gonna marry
And you’ll be my Pineapple Queen.”

He sings his song from banana trees
He even sings to me on his water skis.
We went skin-divin’ and beneath the blue
He sang and played his ukulele, too.

“Pineapple Princess, I love you,
You’re the sweetest girl I’ve seen.
Some day we’re gonna marry
And you’ll be my Pineapple Queen.”

We’ll settle down in a bamboo hut
And he will be my own little coconut.
Then we’ll be beachcombin’ royalty
On wicky-wicky wacky Waikiki.

“Pineapple Princess,” he calls me,
“Pineapple Princess,” all day
As he plays his ukulele
On the hill above the bay.
“Pineapple Princess, I love you,
You’re the sweetest girl I’ve seen.
Some day we’re gonna marry
And you’ll be my Pineapple Queen.”

A “Very Good Divorce”

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Lately, there have been a number of people who have told me that they feel that my ex-wife and I have fashioned a “very good divorce” for ourselves.

While I appreciate that they recognize that we are working very hard to create a healthy and cooperative environment in which we can raise our daughters, I must say that telling someone they have a “very good divorce” is akin to walking up to a double-amputee and saying, “Hey, those are some good-looking fake legs you’ve got there!”

What they don’t seem to understand is that a finely-crafted set of prosthetics doesn’t do much to make up for the fact that you will never walk again, you’re still experiencing excruciating phantom pain in your missing extremities, and without any proper training and using only blunt tools, you had to carve your own prosthetic legs out of the wood of the very tree that crushed your legs in the first place.

Pineapple Head by Crowded House

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Pineapple Head by Crowded House
Pineapple Head (Clip)

“Pineapple Head,” written by Neil Finn, was included on Crowded House’s 1993 album Together Alone. The image on the left is from the cover of the CD single of “Pineapple Head” that was available in the U.K. and Australia.

Neil Finn talked about the origins of the song in an interview with David Hepworth in the June 1994 issue of Mojo Magazine.

DH: “How do you start a song?”

NF: “I basically rely on getting my first few lines by just singing something and writing it down and not thinking about it at all. So initially I get just a natural image like sky, sea, sun, earth and then something very domestic like washing. The juxtaposition of those things is endlessly interesting.”

DH: “Can you remember the process afterwards?”

NF: “‘Pineapple Head’ is an obvious example. It started with my son Liam who had a fever. He was delirious and I was standing by with a cloth to cool him down and he just started talking about all these things. ‘Pineapple Head! Pineapple Head!’ Then he said ‘detective is flat’ and ‘getaway car’. So instead of staying there and doing what a father should do I ran downstairs and committed it to a song. Until my wife Sharon came in and looked at me in horror and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ At the time you’ve got to go. There’s enough times when the idea pops into your head and you’re not on the ball enough to write it down. Liam’s 11 and I’ve exploited him mercilessly over the years. He wrote the line ‘here comes Mrs. Hairy Legs’ in ‘Chocolate Cake.’”

DH: “So does ‘Pineapple Head’ mean anything?”

NF: “‘Pineapple Head’ has the least meaning in the literal sense of any of the songs on the record, but in a strange way for me it all makes perfect sense. Line by line anyway. And the chorus is put over from the point of view of a fever, a virus, inhabiting somebody. ‘I’ll play you like a shark and I’ll clutch at your heart and come flying like a spark to inflame you.’ The rest of it’s just a stream of consciousness delirium put down on paper.”

Here are the complete lyrics:

Pineapple Head

Detective is flat
No longer is always flat out
Got the number of the getaway car
Didn’t get very far
As lucid as hell
These images moving so fast
Like a fever
So close to the bone
I don’t feel too well

And if you choose
To take that path

I will play you like a shark
And I’ll clutch at your heart
I’ll come flying like a spark
To enflame you

Sleeping alone
For pleasure, the pineapple head
It spins and it spins
Like a number I hold
Don’t remember if she was my friend
It was a long time ago

And if you choose
To take that path

I will play you like a shark
And I’ll clutch at your heart
I’ll come flying like a spark
To enflame you

Sleeping alone
For pleasure, the pineapple head
It spins and it spins
Like a number I hold
Don’t remember if she was my friend
It was a long time ago

And if you choose
To take that path
Would you come to make me pay?