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TAG: lake george

• songspeak

  Burn baby burn, it’s a disco towel

  posted by jamie | 10.21.09 | permalink | 1 comment

  

  This is so weird, like, bein' on this burnin' towel!

  The year was 1996, and it was our then-annual Lake George camping trip. I believe this trip took place not long after a group of us had gone to see Kingpin (the Farrelly Brothers movie starring Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, and Bill Murray). Disco Inferno by the Trammps was featured in the film, and must have remained in our friend Kevin’s head for quite some time afterward, because we would be singing it quite often. Then this songspeak moment occurred: A group of us were playing games at the campsite picnic table (probably Scattergories or some other such party game) while a citronella candle burned at the end of the table to keep the bugs away. Then, the unthinkable happened. One of us tossed a towel aside, and it landed in a most inopportune place. Smack dab on top of the candle. The towel, of course, caught fire, and we immediately threw it onto the ground and stomped it out. Kevin, meanwhile, started singing “Burn, baby, burn…” What we all expected him to sing next was, “It’s a towel inferno!”, but no. Instead, he sang, “It’s a disco towel!”. This made no sense, and due to the tensions being high and our near brush with death*, we all laughed more than we should have. It’s been over 13 years since that fateful day, but Matt and I still remember that songspeak quite fondly.

  *And by “death”, I mean “charred towel”.

  Tags: 70s music, 90s movies, bill murray, camping, campsite, citronella candle, disco, disco inferno, disco towel, farrelly brothers, kevin, kingpin, lake george, randy quaid, scattergories, the trammps, towel, towel inferno, woody harrelson

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• songspeak

  The wading is the hardest part

  posted by matt | 05.19.08 | permalink | comment?

  Back in our college-ish days, a group of us would go camping each year near Lake George in the Adirondack Region in Upstate New York. Sometime during the trip, Jamie, myself, and some other friends decided we should go whitewater rafting. The rafting trip was pretty tame by whitewater standards, but it still was a challenge getting into the boat with how fast the river current was moving. Our friend Kevin started singing “the wading is the hardest part” in tune to The Waiting Is The Hardest Part by Tom Petty.

  We had a bunch of traditions during our many visits to Lake George. Whitewater rafting wasn’t actually one of them. Our visits typically included a visit to Goony Golf, splitting a bucket of KFC on the common in the center of town, making s’mores, burning Jiffy Pop, writing gross Mad Libs, getting yelled at ‘for noise’ by the park rangers, and burning the deck of cards we used at the end of the weekend. Sounds like we were twelve, doesn’t it? We weren’t.

  

  Tags: 80s music, adirondacks, camping, goony golf, kfc, lake george, the waiting, tom petty, tom petty and the heartbreakers, upstate new york

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