So towards the end when he talks about what people call the game of “Tag”…
Did anybody call it “It Tag” (small detail, I know, but I’m curious)
Also, did any of you do an elimination round to determine who was the first person who was “it”, e.g. “Eenie, meenie, mine-y, mo, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go, eenie, meenie, mine-y, mo.”
The point to this screed was that we had one of those rhymes that sounded like something from the 1870s and not something we kids in the 1970s would say:
“Occa-bocca, soda crocker. Occa-bocca boo. In comes Uncle Sam and out goes Y-O-U.”
We had the Comet one here, and “It’s about time, it’s about space, it’s about time I slapped your face”.
At the time, fifty years ago, I thought it was just creative kids at school. Only as an adult in the internet age have I seen that the same things existed elsewhere.
It seems a mystery how these things travelled. I didn’t think many at school travelled much. I can imagine some travel of tge parodies, but it’s harder to imagine them travelling everywhere.
It’s not like kids had access to the airwaves, so it had to travel socially, and I mean in person. I suppose summer camp was a vector, and maybe enough people had distant cousins that they did visit enough to exchange these things.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord,
He was driving down the alley in a pink and yellow Ford,
With one hand on the throttle and the other on a bottle
Of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Wait a minute, wait a minute. You’re telling me that this guy took the time to survey 64,000 people around the world about the Jingle Bells, Batman Smells variants, closely sifting through the data, categorizing the results, creating color pie charts, graphs, and pinpoint maps of the resulting data, but can’t even attribute the song to the correct episode of The Simpsons??!!? Yes, Robert Goulet did sing Jingle Bells, Batman Smells in the episode shown in his video, BUT it was done earlier in the VERY FIRST EPISODE OF THE SERIES. Not even five minutes into the first episode! Wow, that just, I don’t know.
Interestingly, though, the version Bart sings varies from the others in the video as “Batmobile broke its wheel.”
The end of that first episode also has a great embellished version of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” during the end credits, which includes lyrical additions that doubtlessly vary from town to town as well.
And, yes, I was a major fan of the Simpsons for many, many years and have seen nearly every episode. How did you know?
When he discusses the names of Tag and calls out people who misidentify the game he’s describing as Hide-and-Seek, I wonder if he’s aware that there are variants of Hide-and-Seek that include a chasing and tagging phase when the person who is seeking has actually located a hider.
I grew up with a Batman-free version of the bloody first variant.
Jingle bells! shotgun shells! Santa Claus is dead
GI Joe and Mighty Moe shot him in the head
Barbie doll, Barbie doll tried to save his life
but GI Joe and Mighty Mo stabbed her with a knife
I thought it was “Great green globs…” IIRC there’s a record of children’s songs with Penn Jillette singing one version or another.
I loves to go swimmin’ Wit’ bare-nekkid* wimmen
*(Or, “bow-legged”)
Other than The Simpsons version(s), there’s at least one other version we may credit to (or associate with) Matt Groening. It has become, for me, the definitive version and the one I have striven to impart to my children.
I wear my pink pajamas in the summer when its hot.
I wear my flannel night shirt in the winter when its not.
But sometimes in springtime and some times in the fall
I jump between the sheets with nothing on at all.
Glory glory hallelujah, the cool breeze is getting to ya’ with nothing on at all.
Also, did any of you do an elimination round to determine who was the first person who was “it”, e.g. “Eenie, meenie, mine-y, mo, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go, eenie, meenie, mine-y, mo.”
The point to this screed was that we had one of those rhymes that sounded like something from the 1870s and not something we kids in the 1970s would say:
“Occa-bocca, soda crocker. Occa-bocca boo. In comes Uncle Sam and out goes Y-O-U.”
Anyone?.. Anyone?
We had Eenie Meenie but not Icka-backa Soda-cracker (which I learned from a book as an adult in music teacher school). One of the elimination-round chants in my neighborhood was this odd thing:
(3/4) My mother and / your mother were
(2/4) hang-ing /out the /clothes (pause)/
(3/4) My mother punched
(2/4) your mother
(3/4) right in the
(2/4) nose (pause)./What color /was the /blood?
(Numbers represent time changes.) Great because it gives a slight advantage to kids who 1) can spell at least a few color words and 2) can quickly estimate how many letters are needed to force the final tap to land on a particular person’s foot!
In late 1950s outside Los Angeles the JB song started with: “Jingle Bells ./ Santa smells” while a decade later, the Berkeley FSM (Free Speech Movement) variant immortalized Osci, the team mascot bear:
Osci dolls, pom-pom girls
U.C. all the way
Oh what fun it is to have
Your mind reduced to clay-AY!
*[sung in a stentorian baritone to the same tune:] *
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