Call of the Universe

Kids these days.

When I was wee lad, we had Bugs Bunny, and we liked it (because he’s brilliant). But these whippersnappers now have this Animaniacs stuff, with the Yakko and the Wakko and the Dot.

Buuuuuut, Yakko did sing a great song about the size and scale of the Universe in one episode, so when my old friend Marian Call asked me for some help in updating the lyrics to reflect what we’ve learned about the cosmos since 1993 (when that episode came out), how could I not?

Here’s the song. Marian’s got a killer voice, and she does the song good. Some of the numbers may sound off to you, but in fact if you think about them you’ll figure out why we went the way we did (like the diameter of the solar system; don’t forget the Oort Cloud!). As for the number of planets, well, I have my thoughts on that.

If you like the Universe song you can download it for a buck, and Marian has a whole album of her singing classics you can buy, too. Many of them are very geeky, so I suspect most of you reading this will like them.

You’ll like her video for “Good Morning, Moon,” too: