Jake asked me on Wednesday to send out the Friday Morning Toe Tapper this week. I was delighted… and honored…. And I peed a little on the rug (it happens when the doorbell rings, too). But, once I started thinking about what song to select…. I realized there were SO many to choose from.

I thought about picking someone we know… Nothing gets you moving on a Friday morning like a good Knuckle Sandwich with onions, pickles, and some Maxlider. But that’s been done and I wanted something original. So, I thought about sending out a video of Krypter warning us about the Zombie Apocalypse, but the only version I could find without excessive profanity would’ve had our resident musicians and sound technicians grumbling about the audio quality and using words like ambience, acoustic, and depth.

And then it hit me. I recently read Who Moved My Cheese? and it really resonated with me. If you haven’t read the book, you absolutely must. It is short. REALLY short. Like I-read-it-in-30-minutes short. And yet the length (or lack thereof) in no way lessens the message. In fact, the simplicity of the story is part of its charm. If you have read it, you know it is a story about handling change.

I realized I was not the character in the book that I wanted to be. Fortunately, I realized this just as I finished reading a book teaching me how to solve that exact problem. So, I tied my running shoes around my neck and decided to embrace “new cheese.” And that (finally) brings me to today’s toe tapper. This video shows scenes from a movie that features this song. I selected it for two reasons:

1. Because it is a great movie. It certainly has content that is not approved for all audiences, but it’s a fun romp nonetheless.

2. Because it was one of the only YouTube videos of this song that didn’t put the artist’s name in huge letters in the title.

Go ahead and start the video now (if you haven’t already):

As you listen to the singer, let me tell you that this guy ran through the maze while envisioning new cheese. In fact, he could see new cheese so clearly in his mind that, when he found it, it was WAY better than his old cheese. What am I talking about? This singer is Kenny Rogers.

Yes… that Kenny Rogers.

This is 1967 Kenny Rogers (the song, not the picture), 12 years before he sang The Gambler, a song that was such a hit that they let him play the lead role in the movie that was made from it.

And, had he not embraced new cheese (in this case, country music), we would’ve missed out on more than 10 platinum albums, including such hits as:

Lady

Coward of the County

Islands in the Stream

Now, I’m no country music fan, but even I know all the words to The Gambler. (Well, at least to the first verse… I can fake the 2nd. Cut me some slack. I was 7 when that movie came out. It was cool.)

But, as the book also tells us, you should not embrace all change just for the sake of change. Not all change is good. I think we can all agree on that one!

Happy Friday!!!

The Swami