Argumonster

An illustration of the plight of the divinity student, fittingly labeled by a friend and classmate, "The Argumonster."

Signifying

In that pretentious, readable, periodically enjoyable, dripping-with-talent-that-makes-you-cry-because-they-were-actually-slightly-younger-than-you-when-they-wrote-it, cringingly-obvious-it-was-written-in-1989-because-of-way-it-talks-about-race book by David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello, Signifying Rappers (and yes, David Foster Wallace wrote the book about rap by David Foster Wallace that the world never asked for) there is a passage in which they refer to a song by Schoolly D called "Signifying Rapper."

The narrative of the song is plainly based on an older folktale about the "signifying monkey" who is threatened by a lion, and who solves this problem by tricking the lion into a fight with an elephant. Costello offers the following suggestion by way of a hypothetical transmission history: "Schoolly D may have encountered in his dad's record collection [...] vocalist Oscar Brown Jr.'s early-'60s scat classic 'Signifying Monkey.'"

Which is pretty darn eagle-eyed, especially since this was before the days of the internet. But since we are in the business on this blog of out-Shandying even such digressive excavations as this, we must observe that Costello's chain of transmission is missing a key link: Rudy Ray Moore's 1971 spoken word piece "Signifying Monkey," written in the form of what our co-authors call the "straight rhyme" that would later come to be standard in rap.

A side-by-side comparison of Schoolly D's lyrics and Moore's reveals that the latter must have been D's main source for the tale. Placing these next to one another like the Synoptic Gospels yields the following: "jungle town" has become "ghetto town," both the monkey and the rapper "got wise and start using his wit," etc. Even the act of fellatio upon subterranean bug life that Costello and Wallace found particularly amusing in Schoolly's lyrics has its origin in Moore. In Moore's version, it is an earthworm and a flea. In Schoolly's, it is a "little maggot."

Purely for your edification. The missing link in the transmission history has been found. If you find this sort of comparison helpful, Schoolly D is to Moore as Luke is to Matthew. And Oscar Brown Jr., I guess, is Mark.

Wayne Enterprises

There is a real life thing called this. It is the name of the company that controls all authorized uses of the brand, image, and creative products of one John Wayne, i.e. The Duke. Sure, the full name is "John Wayne Enterprises," but they generally seem to shorthand themselves as the above. Hence Ray Madoff's book, Immortality and the Law, cites a legal case involving "Wayne Enterprises," and it has nothing at all to do with Batman.

How could this be the actual name of something? Does this mean that someone could create a newspaper called The Daily Planet and not have to pay anyone royalties?

Apple Strudel

A friend and I both remember apple strudel being a big deal as children in the '90s. It introduced a generation to the otherwise alien concept of this Viennese pastry. And somewhere along the way, it vanished from our lives.

Can anyone explain? Do others remember the Great Apple Strudel Craze? Where did it go? What was the brand that we were all so enjoying?

Overweight games of strategy

On Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me the other day -- that one and only NPR news quiz -- one of the panelists was searching his brain for an answer to one of the questions. Out came "Fats Waller," then "Chubby Checker." The correct answer, it turned out, was Fats Domino.

And I got to thinking -- oh... those are all different people?

And then I got to thinking -- why did I also think these were the same person? Why had I associated the three?

Fats Waller and Fats Domino is easily enough explained.

Waller came first. Domino is named after him in part. Hence the shared nickname.

But why in my head did I always associate Chubby Checker with Fats Domino, despite the lack of any shared letters?

Wait a minute -- because Chubby is a synonym for Fat.

Wait! And a Checker is a game piece, much like a Domino!

Before you get too excited, as I did, it turns out this was part of the original joke. Chubby Checker's name was a deliberate riff on Fats Domino.

But now, at least, we know.

Script mystery solved (probably)

So, a friend proposed a theory as to who our mysterious Q source might be. Suppose they were both getting the line from -- *gasp* -- Tolkien!

Which would make a depressingly large amount of sense, when you think about it, and thus take one more spark of mystery out of the universe. Doing a quick search within the books' text we discover a passage that was obviously the basis for the line in the LOTR movies. Meanwhile, the timing of The Ruling Class would put it well within the high-water mark of the books' popularity. The screenwriters could have read LOTR and simply internalized the distinctive and pleasing cadence of this line. And then Jackson, Boyens, & Walsh riffed on it for the movie.

Here is the original line from the books -- largely the same as what made it into the movie, apart from that clunky ending, which the screenwriters sagely replaced with something more alliterative.

It appears in the chapter "The King of the Golden Hall":

"I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man till the lightning falls."

Case (regretfully) closed.

A LOTR script mystery

Okay, so everybody knows that Gandalf says: "I did not pass through fire and shadow to bandy crude words with a witless worm," or something like that. When he's talking to Grima Wormtongue.

Well, in that weird Peter O'Toole movie, The Ruling Class (1972), the 'Electric Messiah' says this:

"I've not travelled 20 million miles through galactic space to bandy words with a poxy moon loony who thinks he's me!"

Okay,

A couple possibilities suggest themselves. Philippa Boyens or Fran Walsh or Peter Jackson or whoever may have seen The Ruling Class at some point (seems likely, given their off-color taste), and internalized the unforgettable structure and cadence of this line. Perhaps unconsciously. Much as George Harrison internalized "He's So Fine" without realizing it.

Or: they were both drawing on the same unknown earlier source, much like the Gospel writers and Q.

If anybody knows the answer, please write to me in the comments section.