"Ballad of the Nun Bun" is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek folk-pop song that is ultimately sympathetic to a cinnamon roll with the face of Mother Teresa.

1 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Folk Pop, COUNTRY: Country Folk



Details:
CONTENTS:

1. NUN BUN SIGHTING
2. TIM KURTZWEIL: A SHORT BIO
3. NUN BUN LYRICS
4. INTERVIEW (A NUN-BUNCH OF QUESTIONS FOR A MISSING
CINNAMON ROLL)
5. A NUN-BUNCH OF RIDDLES (LARGELY DERIVED FROM INTERVIEW)
6. A NUN BUN CHRISTMAS (STYLED AFTER "TWAS THE NIGHT
BEFORE CHRISTMAS")

NOTE ABOUT DOWNLOADS:
This single is not intended to be sold as a CD; one copy simply has to be kept in stock. It is available as a download at various companies, Apple among them. Here is the link, which you can copy and paste in your own files:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playListId=148266563

NUN BUN SIGHTING:
April 4, 2006: Tap Bierstein, an off-duty booze jockey out for a late-night snack, claims to have seen the Mother Teresa cinnamon roll on a counter stool next to Elvis at a Stevens Point, WI diner. The King was giving the saintly pastry tips on being an immortal cultural icon. The Nun Bun, in turn, told him how much she liked âIn the Ghettoââand to drop a few pounds and stay off the pills.


TIM KURTZWEIL: A short bio

Hi. Iâm a 47-year-old guy whoâs been writing since the fourth grade. My earliest literary achievements, twenty- and thirty-page short stories like âThe Blue Ghost,â âThe Night of the Dream,â and âRun While You Can,â came complete with illustrations in the marginsâwell, okay, doodlesâand helped me to pass the time when I stayed home sick from school.
I later studied both English and German, finally earning an MA in German literature from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. After playing music in the streets of Europe for a time, I took a job lecturing in the English department at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria--âHiâ to my former students and colleaguesâ-where I spent five enjoyable years.
Iâve been writing music all my adult life and am currently back in Nashville trying to make some connections in the business, as well as working to publish a number of children's stories and a large collection of word games. When the Nun Bun, about which you can read more below, was stolen last Christmas, my sister, who heard about it on MSNBCâs âCountdown with Keith Olbermann,â emailed me and suggested I write a song about it. So I did. Here are the lyrics:


NUN BUN

VERSE 1
was it divine dough or the yeast of chance
or hocus-pocus that enhanced
a cinnamon roll to fit the mold of mother teresa
was it Godâs hand or the café staff
that touched our hearts and made us laugh (and)
feel we played a part and shared a piece of

CHORUS
nun bun sacred bakery how I miss your face
nun bun who could take thee from thy display case
nun bun saintly pastry soothe my aching soul
nun bun donât forsake me sweet little cinnamon roll

VERSE 2
was it secular theft or religious heist
done for money or the love of Christ
that Christmas day they took away my holy mona lisa
like the stone rolled from the tomb of jesus
the front door lifted off its hinges
her varnished visage vanished / tell me did you see the

CHORUS

BRIDGE
Born at Bongo Java / in a humble pan
Itâs true you never met the Pope
but you knew the muffin man

CHORUS

*****
Hereâs the same story in a prose nutshell, which also appears on the CDâs tray card:

In October of 1996 at the Bongo Java coffee shop in Nashville, TN, a cinnamon roll bearing a resemblance to Mother Teresa was baked into the world. Christened the âNun Bun,â this phenomenon garnered national media attention and saw visitors from all points of the globe for nearly a decade. Then, in the early hours of Christmas morning 2005, thieves unhinged the caféâs massive door and stole the Nun Bun from the display case where it lay on purple satin bedding. Nothing else was taken.
To these villains, still on the loose, I say, âO foul kinks in the mortal coil, unband your twisted souls and release the saintly pastry.â To the Nun Bun, whose whereabouts are unknown, I sing, âSacred bakery, how I miss your face!â

Note: Truth be told, the cinnamon bun also looked like W. C. Fields and Jimmy Durante; it had quite a nose on it.

*****
Following is a version of my interview with the Nun Bun that was published in the Nashville Scene in February.

A NUNBUNCH OF QUESTIONS FOR A MISSING CINNAMON ROLL

INT: Your recent appearances on national television have made you somewhat of a celebrity, Nun Bun. Have you gotten a lot of requests for interviews?

NB: Iâm not exactly inunbundated with themâperhaps because no one knows my whereabouts. I am, after all, currently kidnappedâor worse.

INT: Indeed. Some people might wonder how I can be conducting this interview with you.

NB: A bit of a conunbundrum, it would seem, but the Baker bakes in mysterious ways.

INT: Well said. Youâre quite articulate, and, for someone with a scrunched-up face and lips that appear to be shellacked shut, you speak very clearly.

NB: I was on the âcelebrity look-a-likeâ cinnamon roll debate team in high school, and our coach was a stickler for enunbunciation.

INT: So Mother Teresa is not the only person of distinction immortalized in pastry?

NB: No. And itâs worth noting that not all nun buns are nuns. Next to myself, the most famous nun bun in America is probably the Easter NunBunny, followed closely by the fabled lumberjack, Paul Nunbunyan. And itâs not just cinnamon rolls that do celebrity âface-savingâ work. Iâm sure Goetheâs visage is preserved on a giant pretzel somewhere in Germany.

INT: You donât feel you have pride of place among them, feel you were chosen by God?

NB: Chosen to do what? Before being stolen, I lay on a bed of plush purple felt in a display case for nine years! I make day-old bakery look positively fresh. Look, when I was pulled out of the oven, there was a local press release, but no heavenly heralds trumpeted the Anunbunciation. Iâm not here, after all, to bear the bun that saves the world. My aim is simply to point out that man does not live by bread alone. On the other hand, look where âLet them eat cake!â got Marie Antoinette. If white bread is bland, ultra-conservative fare, and cheesecake is over-the-top liberal excess, cinnamon rolls are unifying nutritional centrists. We just need to increase our numbers.

INT: Letâs talk about that. Despite the recent cloning scandal in Korea, incredible progress is being made in the field. Can you imagine there ever being a vast army of cloned Nun Buns shipped out to feed the starving multitudes? Can we hope for a nun bun miracle on the scale of fishes and loaves?

NB: Whoâs going to provide all the coffee? Seriously, though, I was the product either of divine dough or the yeast of chance. But with or without a heavenly starter, it took evolution billions of years to produce human beings. You canât just give a high-school student in the science lab some flour, sugar, eggs, and a nunbunsen burner and expect him or her to produce a chewy little homunculus like me.

INT: Wonder that you are, you nonetheless showed signs of aging right from the start. Even oven fresh, you looked like a woman in her eighties. Is there a place for someone born old in this eternally-thirty-something-centric culture?

NB: Well, itâs clear that I wasnât destined to be a Playboy nunbunny. But beauty is only cinnamon deep. Letâs not forget compassion and selflessness.

INT: Yet you sport a healthy layer of varnish. Isnât that vanity?

NB: âNunbunkum! Most women want to be allowed a little make-up once in a while.

INT: You donât see the spiritual and the physical as mutually exclusive?

NB: It would suggest more than a crumb of hypocrisy if a mouth-watering treat like a cinnamon roll were to renunbunciate worldly pleasures, wouldnât it?

INT: Does that extend to earthly humor? Do you know, for example, what Hamlet told the Mother Teresa cinnamon roll?

NB: Yes. âGet thee to a nunbunnery.â Nine years in a coffee shop nets you a lot of jokes.

INT: Of course, youâre no longer in a coffee shop. And your theft wasnât a joke. Where are you, Nun Bun? Whoâs got you, and how are you holding up?

NB: They closed the lid on my box when they abducted me, so Iâm literally in the dark about my exact location. As for my state of mind, well, I was a nunbundle of nerves in the beginning, but Iâve come to accept the situation.

INT: Some say you were too easy a target, lying in an open box in an unlocked display case.

NB: Where should I have been keptâin a reinforced-concrete nunbunker? No, I would rather be subjected to the wanton lawlessness of pranksters, greedy bums, or religious zealots than wall myself off from the rest of the world. I believe in a mix-and-mingle society.

INT: Is your heist likely to be solved? May we expect your safe return anytime soon?

NB: Thereâs not exactly an anunbundance of evidence. And will I be back? Only if my captors relentâor the Baker kneads me again.

*****
I must confess, I got a bit crazy with the whole nun bun thing. Here, for your amusement, and derived to a large extent from the interview, is a

NUNBUNCH OF RIDDLES


Q: What does a Mother Teresa cinnamon roll call a particularly difficult problem?
A: A conunbundrum

Q: What do you call it when angels herald the coming of a Mother Teresa cinnamon roll?
A: The Anunbunciation

Q: What do you need to create a Mother Teresa cinnamon roll in a science lab?
A: A nunbunsen burner

Q: What do you call a Mother Teresa cinnamon roll in Hugh Hefnerâs company?
A: A Playboy nunbunny

Q: Who is a Mother Teresa cinnamon rollâs fathorite mythic American lumberjack?
A: Paul Nunbunyan

Q: What is a Mother Teresa cinnamon rollâs favorite high-risk sport?
A: Nunbunji jumping

Q: How does a Mother Teresa cinnamon roll disavow a bad habit?
A: She renunbunciates it.

Q: What does a Mother Teresa cinnamon roll call âclaptrapâ?
A: Nunbunkum

Q: Who wrote the 17th-century religious work, âPastryâs Progress,â whose protagonist is a Mother Teresa cinnamon roll?
A: John Nunbunyan

Q: What did Hamlet tell the Mother Teresa cinnamon roll in love with him?
A: âGet thee to a nunbunnery!â

Q: What is a severely agitated Mother Teresa cinnamon roll?
A: A nunbundle of nerves

Q: Where does a Mother Teresa cinnamon roll hide during an Apocalypse?
A: In a nunbunker

*****
And, last but not least, here's a poem about an imagined take on how the theft went down.

A NUN BUN CHRISTMAS

Twas Christmas morn in Bongo Java café;
Not a coffee was stirringânot a single au lait.
Washed were the tables, mopped were the floors,
Off were the lights and locked were the doors.

Nun Bun was nestled all snug in her box
With visions of feet wearing shoes and socks;
Nine long years of collecting dust
Had naturally filled her with wanderlust.

For years sheâd observed the coming and going
Of coffee shop patrons without ever knowing
The pleasures of ambling and rambling through spaceâ
She lay on display in a plush purple case!

This cinnamon roll with her eye on the door,
Wishing to see just a little bit moreâ
How could she know that evil was lurking
To grant her that wish when no one was working.

I was not in a tree, I was not on the roof;
For nothing I say have I got any proof.
Since privy Iâm not to the facts of the case,
Iâve made up my own to put in their place.

We might as well start with a hell-bent troll
With a heart made of ice and a cold-blooded goal:
To slip inside with eight helpers hasty
And snatch that sacrilegious pastry.

Claw Rover weâll call him, whose heart was a tumor
Of misguided morals and malignant humor.
More vapid than beagles his charges they came
To steal the Nun Bun when called to by name.

Now, Dastard! Now, Dullard! Now, Coward and Zilch!
On, Plunder! On, Purloin! On, Wheedle and Filch!
To the top of the porch! Now sneakily, grinches,
Libertyâs door must be freed from its hinges!â

And huffing and puffing, each pious pupil,
By dim light of conscience devoid of all scruple,
Guided by naught but a reverend awe
For God Almightyâbroke American law.

No cash was stolen, no bagels eaten;
Itâs true no one was bound and beaten,
No artwork taken off the wall,
No cup or glass allowed to fall.

Hate speech wasnât chanted, fires werenât set;
Not a bug was plantedâor itâs not been found yet.
In fact, itâs been said that like shoemakersâ elves
They anal-compulsively neatened the shelves.

(But what should one think of the damage they did
To all of our rights when they lowered the lid
On the taut and tried visage of Mother Teresa
And carried her off like the Mona Lisa?)

âNow minions, make note,â mused Rover, mentoring,
âMorality may sometimes mean breaking and entering.
Still, nothing and no one is above the lawâ
Except God in heavenâand the rule of Claw.â

The pack of thieves cried âAmen!â andâclunk!
Dumped little Nun Bun down in their trunk.
Good Claw bellowed, âWeâve set the world right!
Merry Christmas to allânot Happy Holidays!â
and to all a good night.â


MORAL

Whether you yearn, like little Nun Bun
To travel before all your days are done
Or to save us from sin like Clawâwell, pray
Be careful YOU donât get carried away.

*****

I hope you were able to find something to enjoy in all this. âThe Ballad of the Nun Bunâ is, of course, a novelty song, and so doesnât really represent my major direction in music; it was just a fun project. While I write everything from Woody Guthrie-esque stuff to rap, by way of country, bluegrass, pop, folk, and rock, I tend toward a more percussive version of Tracy Chapman.
Take care of yourselves, and thanks for reading/listening.
Tim Kurtzweil

Copyright 2006