Blog Archives
I welcome you to June by singing “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over!”
One of my favorite songs for one of my favorite months: “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” from the Broadway musical Carousel– music by Richard Rogers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. Have a great June!
Singing and Singing Happy Birthday in ASL
This is a creative interpretation of The Birthday Song sung in English while signed in ASL (American Sign Language). It is more a compilation of different ways people sign Happy Birthday in ASL than it is an answer to “how do you sign Happy Birthday in ASL?” It is difficult to sing these words and produce these signs at the same time, because the signs do not match the words verbatim— it’s like trying to rub your belly and pat your head at the same time.
I chose these sign couplets with similar handshapes to create sign rhymes; for example, the line CAN’T-WAIT ARRIVE-BIRTHDAY BABY YOU uses the B handshape for all four signs, the line CONDUCT-SONG-BIRTHDAY, TUG-EAR-BIRTHDAY uses the “Closed X” handshape for both signs, the line THRILLED BIRTHDAY uses the “Open 8″ handshape for both signs, and the line HAPPY BIRTH DAY TO YOU uses the 1 handshape twice and the B handshape thrice. I saved the “regular” signs for last, as the last two lines are the two most popular ways to sign Happy Birthday.
I thank the deaf people from other regions from whom I learned the signs CONDUCT-SONG-BIRTHDAY and EAR-TUG-BIRTHDAY, and I thank YouTuber hippiesordo for the line “YOU BORN TODAY, WOO-HOO.” This song is dedicated to my ASL interpreter friend Paul on whose birthday I made this video.
Hey! It’s the Daniel Greene Show in HD!
Here’s me being, well, me! I had just got an HD mini camcorder so I could record videos in HD and fill up those widescreen video frames on YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr, and here I was singing a song off the top of my head, just playing around and trying it out.
I had intended to do a more rehearsed video that told people I was moving to HD. I had never intended this silly, off-the-cuff home movie for the public, but then I thought, “There’s no substitute for spontaneity!” and decided to go for it and post this one.
Enjoy the silliness– now in HD and CC!
Singing Answering Machine Greetings
When I was twenty years old, I made up a couple of outgoing greetings for my answering machine based on an old TV show theme song and a showtune from Bye Bye Birdie. The TV show theme song was from I Love Lucy and the song from Bye Bye Birdie was “Talk to Me” which is originally sung from a telephone booth. Anyway, I created these outgoing greetings and I left them on my answering machine for a little while, and then I felt sort of silly about them and afraid of what people might think, so I took them off. But now here we are in the Age of YouTube, and it’s—gosh—almost twenty-five years later, and I figured, “Why not? Just for fun, share them with the world.” So, here are my silly outgoing greeting songs that I created in 1988. Hope you enjoy! Read the rest of this entry
Me singing “Music Music Music!”
This song, which I remember from a record my mom gave me when I was a little kid, is called Music! Music! Music! It was written in 1949 by Stephen Brewer and Bernie Baum, and it was popularized in the same year by singer Teresa Brewer.
