I love Leonard Cohen. I delight in parodies, and I can’t help smiling when someone manages to bring humor, affection, and talent to bear on a bad situation.
If you watch tv or keep an eye on social media, you may already have seen this, but I couldn’t keep from posting the video for those who might otherwise miss it. Thanks to Jean at The Misadventures of Widowhood for including it in her blog today.
Comments always are welcome.
Lagniappe 
Swartz Creek is just down the road from me about a half hour. I posted this on my FB page yesterday — I just loved it. Their voices are terrific, the words clever and isn’t it nice to have school admins with a sense of humour?
I knew you would have seen it when I looked at the map and saw where Swartz Creek is located. I laughed especially at the line about helping out parents; I suspect a few parents laughed, too.
It appears to me as if these two guys might have missed their callings! At least I hope they’re involved in some sort of community choir!
They’re pretty good, aren’t they? I was impressed by their voices, but even more impressed by their creativity.
This was wonderful. Thank you, Linda!
There’s nothing like a couple of independent singer-songwriters!
Cohenly answering the cold in Michigan is the heat from Texas.
That’s absolutely wonderful. I’m still not going to enter a jalepeno eating contest, but my appreciation for the pepper’s grown substantially since my midwestern days, when ketchup was considered a spice.
Oh brother….back in the day I would just listen to the sound of snow tires on the road to determine if we had school. Those guys have great voices. :)
The guys were good. I suspect both may have done some singing in other settings. As for snow days, we always listened for the sound of snowplows. If there weren’t any, there wasn’t any school. After a really good blizzard, we might be homebound for two or three days. Good times.
We only have hurricane and flood days here. During Ike, my kids were home for two weeks as we had no electricity.
Two weeks probably felt like an eternity in the heat and humidity we had after that storm. Ours came back on much sooner than that, but we have far fewer trees and most of our utilities are underground.
Haha! :) very clever, and those guys can really sing! :)
I’m working from home today, first time ever!
I’ll bet there are a lot of kids in that school system who really like their principal and superintendent. That performance beats a standard announcement by miles. I suppose now kids get texts, or whatever. When we were looking forward to snow days, we had to hang around the radio or tv to find out if we could go back to bed.
Fabulous! Thanks!
Wasn’t that fun? The sunglasses must be part of a meme I don’t know. They made me think about the Blues Brothers: a strange cross with Leonard Cohen, perhaps, but it worked.
Ah now I am happy. With my hearing I watched the video but could only perceive hints of one of my favourite tunes but couldn’t get the words. THEN guess what I saw on YouTube the CC button for the first time clicked it and low and behold, I could listen and read the words. Made me smile the whole time….thanks for bringing it on over to your page and sharing it!! Cohen fan here too! In fact last night I watched the first episode of Black Earth Rising on Netflix and found its opening soundtrack a rather compelling Cohen piece I’d never heard/seen LOL, before.
I found it. The song’s “You Want It Darker,” and it’s one of the most haunting things I’ve heard. I’m glad you found the CC button. I was going to use the CBS tv version of the video, but it had been edited a bit, and the closed captioning was really intrusive, so I didn’t.
I was lucky enough to have a principal much like the one in the video. Of course, he was principal for forty years, so a lot of kids knew “Pop,” as he was called.
Loved it :)
Wasn’t it fun? All school administrators should be willing to have a little fun from time to time.
That was great!
As the old saying goes, if life hands you snow and cold — you might as well have fun with it, even if you have to stay indoors to do it for a few days.
Not only is it funny, it was well executed. They both have very nice voices.
Dare I say it was just nice to come across something so — nice? Nice voices, nice guys, and a nice way of making an announcement. I was happy to come across it.
Most amusing and such talent!
I have my issues with certain aspects of the internet, but there’s no denying that our ability to peek into hidden corners of our world and see delights like this is a good thing. They’ve brought smiles far beyond the borders of their school district.
Oh very well done! Mike & I loved it!
I’m glad to have given both of you a smile, Dana. I confess I’ve listened to it a few more times, just because it’s such an appealing bit of fun. If we have another flood, I might contact those men and ask them to do a flood song for us.
We need more fun – especially the adults who will allow themselves to do that!
Isn’t that the truth? Dare we say that fun is fun-damental to a satisfying life?
Clever. :)
I love bureaucrats and administrators who show a human face — and I’d be willing to bet their kids do, too.
I also watched the TV series ‘Black Earth Rising’, an international thriller written, directed and produced by Hugo Blick about the conflict in Rwanda. The soundtrack to this show’s opening sequence was one of the last pieces of music ever recorded by Leonard Cohen, ‘You want it Darker’. The track was released in 2016 and won a Grammy Award in 2018 for Best Rock Performance: (https://www.tvadvertmusic.com/?p=1036).
I’d not heard the song (nor heard of the series) until this week. I found the song terrifically moving, and the context for its recording equally so. My ability to listen to Cohen sing is somewhat limited, but there are some of his songs which only he interpret swell, and his songwriting skills are unquestioned.
No way should anyone disparage folks like these. All we ever see around here is a listing below the regular programming as they go through the alphabet. Have fun and it really doesn’t matter who does what…as long as the kids get a snow day.
There are a lot of good people in the world, and I’m pretty sure these are two good guys.
I do like some of these modern ways of doing things. When we were in school and awaiting The Word on school closures, all we had was the radio. All of the little towns would call their announcement in to WHO in Des Moines, and they would put the news out over the air. There are a lot of people today who have no idea what it was like to live in a world without the internet, cell phones, push notifications, and so on.
I even can remember them using telephone trees for a while. The superintendent and principals would consult, then call the teachers. Each teacher would call a list of parents, who had their own list of people to call. Good grief.
People adapt to the times. I remember the telephone trees…and two party lines for that matter. For a while I “collected” radio stations, especially the old clear channel ones, and WHO was one that I had to get up early in the morning to catch their signal.
Isn’t that funny? We might have been listening to WHO at the same time.
:-)
Sadly it’s not opening for me. I shall try again tomorrow.xxx
Here’s a version from CBS News that might open for you. I hope so — it’s utterly delightful.
If that doesn’t work, here’s a link from a UK site.