My spellcheck's questioning of the word "mystifyingly" — in the previous post — has me looking up the lyrics to the old Critters song, "Mr. Dieingly Sad."

"And when the leaves begin to fall/Answering old winter's call/I feel my tears, they fall like rain/Weeping forth the sad refrain/Blue, dark, and dim it may seem/You mark a grin, a moonbeam/Brightens your smile, pray tell me/How all the while you can be/So mystifyingly glad/I'm Mr. Dieingly Sad...."

Yes, of course, it's terrible poetry. And the video, should you accept the challenge to watch it, demonstrates how wiltingly douchey The Critters were, but there's something refreshingly delightful about plunging into this disturbingly proto-Emo pop song:



Spelling brought me to this darkeningly dismal corner of 60s music, so I've got to register my dismayingly pedagogically prissy objection to "Dieingly" instead of "Dyingly."

As long as we're talking about The Critters, here's the song you know if you only know one Critters song, "Younger Girl." I love this video, with the trippy op-art scenery into which the keyboard player camouflages. And I really think there's a moment — 1:36 —when the singer shows some shame at the pedophiliac lyrics:



The lyrics are by John Sebastian, and The Lovin' Spoonful also recorded this song: "A younger girl keeps a-rollin' 'cross my mind/And should I hang around, acting like her brother/In a few more years, they'd call us right for each other/And why, if I wait I'll just die, yeah."

All of this music is from 1966, my favorite year in music. I was 15. (In real life here at Meadhouse, Meade, who was 12 in 1966, is ad libbing "A younger boy keeps rolling across Ann Althouse's mind/He's only 12 years old and he hasn't even quit Boy Scouts yet...." That's so inappropriate and so not the slightest bit sexy.)