When Daniel Radcliffe isn’t busy being the wizarding world’s greatest hope or going crazy about horses, he’s apparently memorizing the periodic table. (Or rather, memorizing “The Elements,” Tom Lehrer’s satirization of the Major General’s Song from Pirates of Penzance.) Check it out…
Lyrics to the song are here for whenever you feel the need to work on your flow.
Depressing that no one in the audience knew who Tom Lehrer is!
Indeed. I sang this for a co-worker who was a physics major and he was amused, but he did not know Gilbert & Sullivan or Tom Lehrer. His amusement was solely based on hearing a list of the elements delivered in song form. Sad.
I put in enough effort to remember half of the song. Perhaps I need to pick up the rest. The list certainly hasn’t grown much, for as we know, “These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, and there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered.”
I always thought the Vatican Rag was his cleverest _ lyrics are especially funny if you’re Catholic and get the references. From memory:
“First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect and
genuflect, genuflect, genuflect …
Get in line in that processional
step into that small recessional
there the guy whose got religion’ll
tell you if your sin’s original
if it is try playing it safer
drink the wine and chew the wafer
two, four, six, eight
time to transubstantiate….
I’d rather forgot about the Vatican Rag. The two that made the most impression on me back in the day were Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and The Masochism Tango. Maybe it’s a black humour thing.
That was the most awesome thing I have seen in forever. Tom Lehrer is Dan Radcliffe’s hero? Win. So much win.