If I Were To Digress...

(or...If I Were In a Better Mood, I Wouldn't Be So Tense)

I just made a grammar funny. If you got it, you would have sprayed milk through your nose.* If you didn't, I guess you're not one of those people who spends a lot of time thinking about your verb tenses and moods. (Yes, verbs have moods too. And feelings. Verbs have feelings.) Anyway, why should you? Care about it, I mean? Who gives a poo? Really?

Well, I do!

I care, dammit!

And apparently so do a lot of pop music songwriters. Because MOST OF THEM GET IT!!!!

Except for one. At least one. My arch nemesis of refrains. A chorus that scrapes against my tympanic membrane like sandpaper on metal. A song title that drives me batshit crazy whenever I hear it. Which, thank heavens, is seldom because this song is Dated with a capital D and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool. Which Robert Preston will tell you means Trouble.

Before I divulge the name of this, now ridiculously over-foreshadowed, grammatical mishap, let's review a few songs that have correctly used the subjunctive verb mood, which fyi is used when expressing sundry states of unreality. (Like, for example, if Mike were to write another movie review -- Hello, Unreality. So nice to see you. Join me for coffee?)

1. From "Guys and Dolls," immortalized by Blossom Dearie (among others) - If I Were a Bell: Fon Do!
2. Frank Sinatra - I Wish I Were In Love Again: Fon Do!
3. Beyoncé - If I Were a Boy: Fon Do! 
4. Joan Osborne - (What if God Was (!!)) One of Us... 

Fon Do NOT!!

In "Fiddler on the Roof," Tevye asks God, "Would it spoil some vast eternal plan? If I were a wealthy man?" (Please note correct usage of, yeah, subjunctive mood.) What plan would it have spoiled, I wonder, if Joan Osborne were to have written a song about God, the holiest of holies, the most divine of divinities, G-O-D god, and used correct grammar?

I guess it just isn't for us to know.

Anyway, who cares? In between starting this post and now, I discovered that, thanks to Google, "plus one-ing" is now a verb. So, basically, I just don't believe in God anymore.

But I do love me that Fiddler on the Roof song. Who doesn't love it, right? If I were a rich man, yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum...all day long, I'd biddy biddy bum...if I were a wealthy man! Hey!

What if this were the boringest blog posting of all time? (Hello, Reality. So nice to see you again...)

*Hyperbole. It wasn't really that funny. Not. At. All. In fact, it was pretty lame. This is consistent with this post's theme of Unreality.

Yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum...