Candide (2:42)

(Please ignore this cheesy video. Just listen to the song and read.)

Whack!

Imagine if you woke up this morning and your entire world was cartoon. Everything was real and in its place, but in an animated state. What style is your world going to be? Would everything look like the Bugs Bunny cartoons? The early black and white Mickey Mouse railroad? Or modern Japanese Hentai? Does it really matter? “This is awesome!”

“Law, law, law, loddie.” bmp bmp

“Law, law, law, loddie.” bmp bmp

Imagine this song playing ubiquitously. You dance everywhere you go.

“Yeah, yeah, ye--, ye--, ye--, yeah.”

There is no time for coffee or breakfast on a morning like this. You want to get as much out of your drawn world as possible before it transforms its way back to a concrete state. So what is the first thing you do? Go marching through the city of course.

Everything from delivery trucks to bicycles and pigeons to poodles is in a warped tour. Fito’s rolling tempo and The Mole’s jumping bass keep time. You begin to take giant cartoonish strides with both hands in your pockets like Cab Calloway as Koko the Clown from the Betty Boop shorts.

“Hey! Shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum.”

(Roll with me here)

“Hey! Shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum.”

A bearded man on the corner begins to blow into a harmonica twice the size of him. When he inhales, his torso inflates like a hot air balloon. He sweeps over the different reed openings on the personified harp. Both the fire hydrant and street lamp take on human personality and bounce in their grounded positions. Black quarter and eighth notes begin to float upwards from harmonica to the sky.

You stop for a minute to take it in. You pull your left hand from your pocket and snap your fingers along with the hustler. The music is fast, but you are shuffling at your own rhythm, lucid and fluid.

A barber steps out of his shop and begins to play bass notes on an exaggerated comb. He plucks them one by one creating that jazz scale synonymous with the day’s soundtrack. He stops, and points to the little shoe shine boy working on the businessman’s banker-leather. The shiner equipment turns into a mock drum kit so he can solo. The little boy plays skins on his brushes, polish tins, and tip-money jar that have since come to life.

Back and forth the barber and shoe shine go. It is a friendly dual to see who can out play the other. The embodied comb and polish join the competition in fun. Pretty soon the dual turns to collaboration.

Leaning out the window of a third storey brown stone is someone you recognize, regardless of your new illustrative environment. With Parisian hat and exaggerated sunglasses, the pianist stretches his arms onto the overhanging laundry line turning the drying garments into keys. “Is that Dr. John?” Hell yeah it is.

Now entirely out the window, the cartoon Dr. John bounces and tightropes his way across the laundered clothes like an agile monkey, kicking at each one to make a new sound. Barber, shiner, and the doctor send musical notes into the atmosphere while the buildings squat and rise to the beat of their sound.

“Law, law, law, loddie.”

“Time to move on,” you tell yourself. You round the corner and come across two deliverymen loading bread onto a truck.

“Yeah, yeah, ye--, ye--, ye--, yeah,” sings the one.

“Yeah, yeah, ye--, ye--, ye--, yeah,” answers the other.

The baker steps out of the bakery with a basket of croissants and turnovers and pastries.

“Hey! Shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum,” he announces as he scatters breads around the neighborhood. Each one finds the clutch of a dancing neighbor.

“Hey! Shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum.”

With the toss of the last croissant, you enter the bakery and everything becomes real. The music plays its crescendo finalé. You get your coffee and sit down to a silent bakery.

A black schoolgirl walks by the window and sings softly under her breath, “Hey, shoobie doobie and a boop-bop-boodle am baum.”