"Well, it's not quite a mop and it's not quite a puppet… but man (laughs). So to answer your question, I don't know." – Homer Simpson, "A Fish Called Selma"
I’m a singer.
Jenn is a singer.
Raelyn is an off-key singer.
And now we are slowing teaching Owen to make up songs about everyday objects and situations by asking to “sing a song about [x]” where [x] could be goldfish or peanut butter or swimming and the song structure consists of our little boy warbling that one word or phrase ad infinitum.
After hearing Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Puttin’ On The Ritz on last week’s So You Think You Can Dance (a Summer guilty pleasure and a better-produced dancing reality competition than Dancing With The Stars), I tweeted about the song this morning.
Here’s a live snippet of Rufus’ interpretation of the tune in case you can’t get to the blip.fm version:
For those of us who grew up in the eighties, we probably all remember the synth-influenced version by Taco. Or maybe you recall Gene Wilder & Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. Fewer still would have caught Fred Astaire’s performance in Blue Skies.
No matter where you’ve seen it or heard it (or tried to sing yourself, all misheard lyrics and bad syncopation [it can’t just be me]), you’ll never forget it.
In my most recent listening, the phrases “rubbing elbows” and “hobnobbing” popped into my head and couldn’t be dislodged.
Which is all a very long intro to the following blog post.
To “rub elbows with” seems to carry the kind of well-to-do, upper-crust society, urbane connotation I was envisioning:
There’s nothing like rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, or At the reception diplomats were rubbing shoulders with heads of state. Both of these terms allude to being in close contact with someone. [Mid-1800s]
Another source thinks the idiom is a little less haughty/aristocratic:
Fig. to associate with someone; to work closely with someone. (No physical contact is involved.)
So we’ve got some conflicting reports there, but it seems like the use I’m thinking of did in fact originate from the kind of close quarters party-style mingling one might do at a fancy soiree. It’s possible that there are now less hoity-toity uses for the phrase, but I think most folks (like me) hear a certain air and arrogance to the phrase.
I could be wrong; let me know.
Which brings us to hobnob (and/or hobknob, which I assumes was the correct spelling).
The always enlightening Urban Dictionary cuts right to the chase:
Etymology: from the obsolete phrase drink hobnob to drink alternately to one another
Date: 1813
1 archaic : to drink sociably
2: to associate familiarly
And:
–verb (used without object)
1. to associate on very friendly terms (usually fol. by with): She often hobnobs with royalty.
2. Archaic. to drink together.
–noun
3. a friendly, informal chat.
Origin:
1595–1605; from the phrase hab or nab lit., have or have not, OE habban to have + nabban not to have (ne not + habban to have)
Hobnobbing, it seems use to have something to do with drinking/toasting and may “have” to do with “haves” and “have nots”.
Although it sounds more posh, hobnobbing might have started out as the less “loaded” phrase, but now carries more of the connotation that both words certainly share.
In the end, I think the song – whatever form or remake or cover – it takes is far better than my wordy middling.
I still think those folks on Park Avenue who were Puttin’ on the Ritz were likely both hobnobbing and rubbing elbows, but I’ll let you be the judge.
Less a statement on my own (and my family’s) atheism/agnosticism then a preference towards that good, old-fashioned religion, in musical form.
I’m someone who grew up in a church-going Methodist home that was less concerned with strict adherence to dogma than it was with regular attendance, singing in the choir and potluck dinners. My childhood memories are of extended family and community and less fire & brimstone or wonderment & salvation.
Again, never heard a Sacred Harp song sung traditionally.
Never been to a tent revival.
No speaking in tongues or strychnine drinking or handling snakes.
Which leads me to the music of Sacred Harp re-imagined in contemporary ways. A blending of the traditional, a capella arrangements with a modern, popular sensibility and instrumentation. The resulting albums – one traditional the other re-imagined, documentary and supporting information can be found at Awake My Soul. Here’s a trailer for the film, which features some of the original Sacred Harp singing.
Jenn and I swore that parts of it weren’t even in English (see: “Tongues, Speaking In” above) but it’s actually quite haunting and sad when you read them:
David the king was grieved and moved
He went to his chamber, and wept;
And as he went he wept, and said,
‘Oh my son! Would to God I had died
For thee, Oh Absalom, my son.
Even if you don’t find religion, you’ll like the tune and the sentiment. As a parent, I can completely relate.
Our money is elastic. Our money is elastic. Gotta get milk for the baby and our money is elastic. Decapitative laughter is keeping us alive. Cavalcades of losers, losing their minds. Hoping for disaster. Settin’ off alarms. Amid all of the deranged. Amid all the charmed. Do you remember that time when we thought we were gonna die? Well, baby nothing much has changed. And yet they haven’t been the same since at all. Our money is elastic. Our money is elastic. Gotta get milk for the baby. Gotta get milk for the baby.
It’s more than a little depressing and sobering, but it’s catchy and informative, nonetheless. When’s the last time you kept humming a chorus built around the Economic concept that “Our money is elastic”?