I started thinking about Christmas and my thoughts turned to great Christmas songs that nobody else seems to like, yet are among my favorites. How can one go wrong with Dr. Demento, Stan Freberg, Weird Al, Spike Jones…?
With that in mind, here’s a Five for Friday – Five Festive Funnies (and it’s only Tuesday):
All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth – Spike Jones & His City Slickers
The Singing Dogs’ Jingle Bells – Dr. Demento
I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas – Gayla Peevey
This video was sent to me by Tanya (who still hasn’t bothered to begin blogging). I really like it, think it’s wonderfully creative, and it features a great song by Oren Lavie:
If you like kids, then you really must watch as this little girl plays Carry on My Wayward Son on the organ. She is amazing. I am fascinated that although this seems to be a recital of some sort, there is just a smattering of applause at the end. If I were her parent, I would have rushed the stage.
It starts slow, but watch it all the way through. It is amazing:
How great is it that Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friendsactually rick-rolled the entire country during the Thanksgiving Day Parade? If you don’t know about the phenomenon, go hereor here, or just watch the video below – give it 30 seconds or so to kick (or rick) in:
I ran across this from The Straight Dopeand thought it a funny article. Hopefully you will appreciate it:
A Straight DopeClassic from Cecil’s Storehouse of Human Knowledge
In the song “Hotel California,” what does “colitas” mean?
August 15, 1997
Dear Cecil:
Just what does “colitis” mean? In the song “Hotel California” by the Eagles the first lines are, “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair, warm smell of colitis rising up through the air.” I remember I tried looking it up at a university library years ago and couldn’t find the answer. I know songwriters sometimes make up words, but I didn’t see a Dr. Seuss credit on the album.
– Wendy Martin, via the Internet
Cecil replies:
Uh, Wendy. It’s colitas, not colitis. Colitis (pronounced koe-LIE-tis) is an inflammation of the large intestine. You’re probably thinking of that famous Beatles lyric, “the girl with colitis goes by.”
As for “Hotel California,” you realize a lot of people aren’t troubled so much by colitas as by the meaning of the whole damn song. Figuring that we should start with the general and move to the particular, I provide the following commonly heard theories:
(1)The Hotel California is a real hotel located in (pick one) Baja California on the coastal highway between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz or else near Santa Barbara. In other words, the song is a hard look at the modern hospitality industry, which is plagued by guests who “check out any time [they] like” but then “never leave.”
(2)The Hotel California is a mental hospital. I see one guy on the Web has identified it as “Camarillo State Hospital in Ventura County between LA and Santa Barbara.”
(3) It’s about satanism. Isn’t everything?
(4) Hotel California is a metaphor for cocaine addiction. See “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.” This comes from the published comments of Glenn Frey, one of the coauthors.
(5) It’s about the pitfalls of living in southern California in the 1970s, my interpretation since first listen. Makes perfect sense [and] who you going to believe, some ignorant rock star or me?
(6)My fave, posted to the Usenet by Thomas Dzubin of Vancouver, British Columbia: “There was this fireworks factory just three blocks from the Hotel California . . . and it blew up! Big tragedy. One of the workers was named Wurn Snell and he was from the town of Colitas in Greece. One of the workers who escaped the explosion talked to another guy . . . I think it was probably Don Henley . . . and Don asked what the guy saw. The worker said, “Wurn Snell of Colitas . . . rising up through the air.”
He’s also got this bit about “on a dark dessert highway, Cool Whip in my hair.” Well, I thought it was funny.
OK, back to colitas. Personally I had the idea colitas was a type of desert flower. Apparently not. Type “colitas” into a Web search engine and you get about 50 song-lyric hits plus, curiously, a bunch of citations from Mexican and Spanish restaurant menus. Hmm, one thinks, were the Eagles rhapsodizing about the smell of some good carryout? We asked some native Spanish speakers and learned that colitas is the diminutive feminine plural of the Spanish cola, tail. Little tail. Looking for a little . . . we suddenly recalled a (male) friend’s guess that colitas referred to a certain feature of the female anatomy. We paused. Naah. Back to those menus. “Colitas de langosta enchiladas” was baby lobster tails simmered in hot sauce with Spanish rice. One thinks: you know, I could write a love song around a phrase like that.
Enough of these distractions. By and by a denizen of soc.culture.spain wrote: “Colitas is little tails, but here the author is referring to ‘colas,’ the tip of a marijuana branch, where it is more potent and with more sap (said to be the best part of the leaves).” We knew with an instant shock of certainty that this was the correct interpretation. The Eagles, with the prescience given only to true artists, were touting the virtues of high-quality industrial hemp! And to think some people thought this song was about drugs.
OUR SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED
This E-mail just in from Eagles management honcho Irving Azoff: “In response to your [recent] memo, in 1976, during the writing of the song ‘Hotel California’ by Messrs. Henley and Frey, the word `colitas’ was translated for them by their Mexican-American road manager as ‘little buds.’ You have obviously already done the necessary extrapolation. Thank you for your inquiry.”
I knew it.
A CLARIFICATION
Dear Cecil:
Please tell me you were joking when you mentioned the Beatles lyric “the girl with colitis goes by.” You were joking, right? You know it’s “kaleidoscope eyes.” —nancrow
Gogol Bordellois a multi-ethnic band that has been around for a decade – I just discovered them. This is pretty much how my life works… I catch on about 10 years late (you may have already heard of them and perhaps I’m the last one on the planet to catch on).
I like odd things and I like odd music. I find bands who utilize bagpipes (like Seven Nations) or a fiddle and accordian (like Gogol Bordello) fascinating.
See if you agree:
The music of Gogol Bordellois self-described as Gypsy Punkand Start Wearing Purpleis a good example of their music (although they have several newer songs). When I first heard the song, I was curious about the meaning. It’s hard to get a straight story from lead singer Eugene Hütz, but the song seems to be about growing old together. One person on SongMeanings mentioned an (unattributed) interview in which Hütz stated, “When I first moved to New York in ’98 I had this, kind of obsessive, crazy psychic gypsy lady who was living right next to us, in our building. And you know how it is some people have this fixation with a certain colour, and purple is one of those colours, and that is the whole archetype of these ladies, she was wearing everything: shoes, stockings, handkerchief, skirt, coat, everything, purple shades she was crazy. And one of my girlfriends, she was getting crazy, getting out of hand I was saying ‘you might as well start wearing purple now, because that’s exactly what’s gonna happen to you’.”
Start wearing purple, wearing purple
Start wearing purple for me now
All your sanity and wits, they will all vanish
I promise, it’s just a matter of time
So yeah, start wearing purple, wearing purple
Start wearing purple for me now
All your sanity and wits, they will all vanish
I promise, it’s just a matter of time
I met you were a twenty and I was twenty
But thought that some years from now
A purple little little lady will be perfect
For dirty old and useless clown
So yeah, start wearing purple, wearing purple
Start wearing purple for me now
All your sanity and wits, they will all vanish
I promise, it’s just a matter of time
I know it all from Diogenis to Foucault
From Lozgechkin to Paspartu
I ja kljanus obostzav dva paltza
Schto muzika poshla ot Zvukov Mu!
So yeah, start wearing purple, wearing purple
Start wearing purple for me now
Start wearing purple for me now!
All your sanity and wits, they will all vanish
I promise, it’s just a matter of time
So Fio-Fio-Fioletta! Etta! Va-va-va-vaja dama ti moja!
Eh podayte name karetu, votetu, i mi poedem k ebenjam!
So yeah, start wearing purple, wearing purple
Start wearing purple for me now
All your sanity and wits, they will all vanish
I promise, it’s just a matter of time
Here’s the next entry in Literal Music Videos. Although I liked the A-Ha video better, I thought this one was also clever. Watch for the kid wearing the Red Sox jersey, he seems to be a real fan. I also thought the mullet section was funny.
"Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans." - John Lennon
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"Experience is something you get... right after you need it." - Steven Wright
Don'stuff 