SPONGEBOB, CHENEY, JANE HAMSHER, AND THE OTHER REPUBLICAN RUNNING AGAINST NED LAMONT

Last night I worked on a series of campaign jingles I'm collaborating on with Ken Mosher and Tom Maxwell of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Rickie Lee Jones, and Andy Paley. I'll tell you more-- a lot more-- about the campaign jingles in the coming weeks. Dusty from Mad Dog Studios in Burbank donated all the studio time for the session last night (as did Jake Posner, the engineer, and every single other person who worked on the project). Paley was behind the big board, having just finished the soon-to-be released album by SpongeBob Squarepants.

Today SpongeBob called me to tell me how sorry he was that he missed the session and how much he loves Rickie Lee and how he wanted to hear the song and all that. Then he started telling me about THE BEST DAY EVER, the new album. He was particularly excited about me hearing a song that he's only singing background vocals on, "You Will Obey."

"We channeled Cheney when we wrote it," he explained. "It's Plankton's song [the Bikini Bottom arch villain] and we tried to imagine him sitting there with an autographed picture of Cheney on his desk, the same way Lex Luther had an autographed picture of Mussolini on his desk."

He was also excited because in May he had gone to the Act Blue Page and donated some dubloons or sea shells or whatever currency they use down there, to Ned Lamont, Jerry McNerney, Paul Hodes, Francine Busby and other candidates that met his criteria (he seems to be interested in the well-being of children and a clean environment, especially no oil drilling off the coast). So yesterday he saw all the news about Lamont in the NY TIMES and he got all excited that his contribution had gone to a winning cause. A lot can happen between now and August 8th-- down in Bikini Bottom or in Connecticut-- but SpongeBob has reason, we all do, to be cautiously optimistic. In fact... Jane's in Connecticut and isn't leaving til after the election. Let's see if she's read any tea leaves for us today.