Monday, May 26, 2025

"Monkees in Texas"

This morning, I watched "Monkees in Texas" and noticed a variation of a joke that's also in "Monkees a la Mode."  Both seem to be adapted from the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races (1937).  Early in the episode, the Monkees grab guns to join the shootout at Aunt Kate's ranch, and each announces to the camera what type of gun he has:
Micky:  "Winchester 73"
 
Davy:  "Colt 45"
 
Mike:  "Smith and Wesson 38"
But then Peter breaks this pattern with "Vintage '66," holding up a bottle of what is presumably champagne.

As I wrote about with "Monkees a la Mode," the same sort of joke is in A Day at the Race, where three doctors step forward to introduce themselves and give their credentials:
Johnson, Bellevue Hospital, 1918

Franco, Johns Hopkins, '22

Wilmerding, Mayo Brothers, '24
But then Groucho, as Dr. Hackenbush, gives the model and year of his car:  "Dodge Brothers, late '29."

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

"Nine Times Blue"

When I listened to the super deluxe edition of Headquarters about a year ago, I felt that there was something significant in the structure of one of the verses in "Nine Times Blue" (which I know only via the demo version):
I know that never in the world
Could I have found me such a girl
Who's there pick me up before I fall
And if in the end we should go
Both our separate ways, I know
The lessons I've learned here is worth it all
I couldn't quite figure it out at the time, but recently, I ran across my note again and finally realized what it is.  Syntactically, it's odd that "we" and "both" in the clause "we should go both our separate ways" aren't together (normally, it would be "we both should go..." or even "we should both go..."), but the distance between the words matches the meaning of the lyrics.  Since the line break falls between them, there's an even greater sense of this separation.

Monday, May 5, 2025

"Hitting the High Seas"

I watched "Hitting the High Seas" this morning and (probably not for the first time) noticed a Biblical allusion.  When the captain orders Micky, Davy, and Peter to cut off their long hair, Micky replies, "No, we can't cut it; we'd lose our strength."  The trivia on the DVD notes that this is a reference to Samson, but I thought I'd be a bit more precise and give a citation.  In Judges 16:17, Samson tells Delilah, "If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man."