On a brief hike this morning before work, I found myself humming "Greensleeves" to myself:
Greensleeves was all my joy
Greensleeves was my delight
Greensleeves was my heart of gold
And who but my lady Greensleeves?
Then when I had lunch, the restaurant was playing Neil Young's "Heart of Gold":
In the afternoon, I taught an English class. The textbook used statements about superstitions to model first-conditional grammar, and one of the examples provided had to do with new shoes.
This got my attention because my January 28 post "Assorted syncs: Finnegans Wake, Kubla Khan, and dayholes" had quoted some rap lyrics about new shoes, and William Wright had picked this up and run with it in yesterday's "Needing new shoes to roller skate in Xanadu." So I was in sync-noticing mode.
After going through the examples with the students, I asked them to describe local superstitions using the same grammar. This led to this little conversation:
"Many people believe that if a dog or cat has white paws, it will bring its owner bad luck."
"So the Black man in the picture is lucky. His dog is white, but its paws are brown."
"I think its paws are really white. They're dirty because it was digging."
"So the horseshoe really brought him good luck, because now his dog doesn't have white paws."
After the class, I put on some background music while I did some paperwork, letting the YouTube Music algorithm do its thing. The very first song it served up was "Dirty Paws" by Of Monsters and Men. I looked at the screen and saw that the accompanying video was a montage from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a 2013 Ben Stiller movie based (very loosely, one assumes!) on the Thurber story.
For me, Ben Stiller's most iconic role will always be that of Tugg Speedman playing Four Leaf Tayback in Tropic Thunder, so there's a link back to the four-leaf clover in the textbook.
William Wright's "Needing new shoes to roller skate in Xanadu" post includes several references to "walking on air." Here's the poster for the Stiller movie:
And yes, that's the sync fairies' favorite building in the bottom right corner.
Here's another poster:
Where have I seen that imagery before? Oh, right. Here's a still from the Panic! at the Disco video "High Hopes," from my December 7 post "Mr. Mxyztplk revisited":
Mr. Mxyztplk is often called Mxy for short, not too far from Mitty.
I must say, this sync-synergy with William Wright is going on much longer than I had expected.
