We are the Misfits/ Ours Songs Are Better!

First things first, all the newcomers to the blog (hi, friends of Lisa and trash the dress fans!) don't know that my secret superpower is a freakadelic, detailed memory for the good, the bad and the mundane. (Like this one time? Cindy was all, "What the hell was my friend talking about with a dinosaur TV show and "Not the Mama!" and I was like, "Oh, yeah. It was a Jim Henson creation on ABC that used to air on Fridays after the 'Wonder Years' for few seasons in the early 90s, don't you remember?" And everyone else was all, "Huh?")

TANGENT ALERT (we have a lot of them here, folks) I heard this fascinating thing on NPR the other day about how every time a person recalls a memory, it gets etched in their brain all over again in a brand new way and sometimes retrospection and different circumstances change the memory each time. Which explains why sometimes I am wrong. Go, Studio 360.)

Nevertheless, I can remember exactly how I met Andrea (mother of Lucy, sister of Lauri) my first night at S.U. in 1997. We were staying in temporary dorm assignments for band camp (pause for American Pie joke) and we started singing the theme song from Jem, the 80s cartoon about a Blonde Girl Next Door who turned into a rock star with help from a maternal remote computer by touching her magic earrings. We were sitting in the common room surrounded by trumpet players belting out the theme song. We? Are AWESOME. It was truly, truly, truly outrageous. (And yes, I DO remember what I was wearing, my beloved gray hoodie from the Bass Outlet and rose-print pajama shorts from Victoria's Secret, thankyouverymuch.)

AHEM. So I've been having kind of a bad week. Actually, it was crap on toast, pretty much (now with panic attacks! hooray!). I've been cheering myself up with YouTube videos of cartoon theme songs from the 80s. But even better than that, I've discovered the JOY and HILARITY that is cartoon theme songs from the 80s IN SPANISH!

I present to you, the Jem theme song:

AND the same IN SPANISH (Jem es fabulosa,/ Super, super fabulosa)

My favorite part, by far, is the Spanish Misfits. "Somos 'Los Misfits,' Somos mejores!" (You have to read that in a robotic sort of bad ass punk rocker cartoon voice, okay?)

As it turns out, there's a whole WORLD of 80s cartoons on YouTube in other languages. I definitely have to award "Best Translation" to the Gummi Bears. The Spanish version is great because it rhymes, the syllables match,and the words make sense.

Sing along!

"Gummis Son,/
Aventuras sin comparison/
Osos los Gummis son!"



My second favorite is Dutch, because "Ik huppel en spartel, vermetel en dartel" is just fun to say. (Go on, say it out loud quietly to yourself at work. You'll like it, I promise.)



There are many more versions, and I'm sort of amazed that the lyrics and melody universally fit. Then again, it's Disney, so maybe the song was composed with multilingual purposes in mind? You can hear it in Czech, Polish (L!bby family in the hizzouse), Japanese, Swedish, Russian, Norwegian and German, too. And as I scroll to the bottom of the list, I see that I could have summed this whole entry up like this:



Greaattt. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really must get back to staring off into space and massaging my sternum while my heart pounds inside my ribcage at random intervals for reasons entirely beyond my control.