What it's all about
Did you know, that the American Hokey Pokey is not the same as the British Hokey Pokey? Furthermore, the Australian Hokey Pokey is not congruous to the British Hokey Pokey. So, if A does not equal B, C does not equal B and Zagreb is somewhere in the general vicinity of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, despite the fact that my supervisor still refuses to believe that Croatia is anything other than a figment of my imagination and most obviously, Russia, instead of it's own independent nation...then the Hokey Pokey clearly is what it's all about...unless you're my supervisor, and then you rot in hell, or you're from Croatia, because then you're forced to return to the USSR a la work camps and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. (Holy fuck, did I just spell that right?) Accept it. Embrace it. Put your left foot in it...oh yeah, and then shake it all about.
No, wait. How did something as irretrievably f-ed up as the Hokey Pokey a) become a cultural phenomenon? b) isolate itself to simply Australia, Great Britain and America? (if we have to put up with it so should everyone) c) not just die already!?!?! Dude, it wasn't even cool at the roller skating rink when you were seven, clad in leg warmers, oversized tees and splatter-painted sunglasses (indoors, mind you) indoors, skating backwards to Kris-Kross (sp?)with your crush whose name was Wesley Whitey, no joke, taking breaks to do the alligator. Even then, in the hay day of all that was gaudy, it sucked. Let's not give Mr. Hokey more credit than he deserves. And let's not make me sing it in the classroom. Please.
No, wait. How did something as irretrievably f-ed up as the Hokey Pokey a) become a cultural phenomenon? b) isolate itself to simply Australia, Great Britain and America? (if we have to put up with it so should everyone) c) not just die already!?!?! Dude, it wasn't even cool at the roller skating rink when you were seven, clad in leg warmers, oversized tees and splatter-painted sunglasses (indoors, mind you) indoors, skating backwards to Kris-Kross (sp?)with your crush whose name was Wesley Whitey, no joke, taking breaks to do the alligator. Even then, in the hay day of all that was gaudy, it sucked. Let's not give Mr. Hokey more credit than he deserves. And let's not make me sing it in the classroom. Please.
posted by Chishiki Lauren at 3:20 AM
4 Comments:
You, Google, and the OED are a dangerous combination. So here's the sort of thing I waste my weekday mornings doing these days: A number of sites around the web give a similar explanation for the origin of the Hokey-Pokey (or the Hokey-Cokey, as they call it here; which my friend Vicky informs me, sounds less 'rude'). They claim the whole dance is a seventeenth-century Puritan parody of the Latin mass, the movements associated with the ritual of transubstantiation and the phrase "hokey-cokey" with "hoc est corpus".
An interesting explanation, but I do have my doubts, first of all because the phrase "hokey-pokey" isn't recorded, according to the OED, until 1847 as a variation of "hocus pocus" (and "hokey-cokey" appears even later in 1943). "Hocus pocus" itself may be a corruption of "hoc est corpus", but that notion is based solely on the speculation of the religious writer Tillotson in his The Protestant religion vindicated from the charge of singularity and novelty of 1680.
So the "hokey-pokey" (or "hokey-cokey") may (or may not) be a seventeenth-century Puritan satire of the Catholic mass, but I'd like to find a more-reliable source to be sure. It's certainly a lot more elaborate than what my Catholic ex assured me was the altar servers' warm-up chant: "two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!" (which itself appears to have been pinched from Tom Lehrer's "Vatican Rag"). Information overload, I know ... Anyhow, I'll leave you with a relevant but irreverent Family Guy quote, "Is this really the blood of Christ? Wow, that guy must have been wasted twenty-four seven ..."
...weird. Well, now you all know what a tres cool gal I was back in the Dunbar day...but at least I was the president. No? No redemption for that one? Anyway, very random that you found me, Ashley. But thanks for saying hello. Of course I remember you and YIG and KYA, KUNA, that stupid little Thai hut, limeade, confetti eggs. Holy crap...that feels so long ago. I, reciprocally, hope that all is well for you, where ever you may be, whatever you may be doing. I'd love to hear from you more.
I'm not sure why it didn't register before, but Jimmy Buffett has a song entitled "What If The Hokey Pokey Is All It Really Is About?"
Sweet.
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