“Just six more minutes left / We’ve done all we could do / And whatever happens next / I’m glad I’m here with you …”
Being a dad is wild. As a youth, I recall weekend mornings chewing down giant bowls of sweetened cereal, and watching cartoons for the vast majority of my TV time. Then, after a decade or so when cartoons suddenly dropped from my viewing diet in favor of sports and news, cartoons suddenly become part of our viewing rotation thanks to my now-11-year-old son. Spongebob Squarepants has been around for most of that, and he and the other characters were direct descendants of cartoons like Ren and Stimpy and Rocco’s Modern Life, cartoons that tapped into pre-teen hilarity and adolescent (and adult) sensibilities.
When my son started to put Spongebob in his rotation, I welcomed the notion with open arms! (Not so much with the misses, but that’s another story altogether.)
To their credit, the Spongebob franchise has had a few off-shoot projects, including some musicals, video games, and merchandise. But perhaps the most ambitious project among the suite has been Spongebob Squarepants: The Broadway Musical. The production opened to critical acclaim including nominations across the board. The soundtrack has a collection of superstars from The Flaming Lips to John Legend, and even tapped into issues I didn’t originally consider within the original series. (Yes, this is an endorsement.)
But there’s one exceptional piece I keep coming back to. When “The Best Day Ever” (the song and episode) first came out, Nickelodeon invested much of its commercial time (yes, hoopla!) to directing eyeballs towards their feature star. It feels like thousands, if not millions, of kids recognize the song just from the initial “Mr. Sun came up …” My son’s first-grade class sang this as part of his moving-up ceremony. The original “Best Day Ever” feels like the aural dopamine aligned to the effervescent main character and all he projects.
The musical’s reprise of this song is special for its optimism in spite of and because of the circumstances the musical’s plot has dealt the main characters. (preview here)
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