Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:24):
So recently, my co host Noel and I had an
idea that we thought was just crazy enough to work.
We had started talking about all the strange things that
happened in the English language. There's so many sayings that
don't quite translate, or if you heard them in another language,
you would say what that? Heck are these people talking about?
(00:47):
We thought this was so fascinating that we wanted to
do an episode on it, and luckily we got greenlit
by our super producer, Casey Pegram. Yeah, nothing goes out
without his express approval. Yes, yes, very true. He is.
He is a kingmaker here. So you know, you and I, oh,
and I'm been by the way. You and I wanted
(01:08):
to do an episode about idioms, and we didn't want
to go into this for a alone, so we were
joined with our good friend and host of the podcast,
Pitches rowan newbie. Hey, oh, here he is there. He's
been here the whole time. He was sitting in while
we were talking about the Statue of Liberty. Uh, and
now we're finally giving him voice. We did. We turned
(01:31):
on this aout time. It's true. But hey, here's the thing.
You might remember. When we first did this episode, we
gave it a fantastic name. Idiomatic for the people that
I mentioned was coined by a ephemeral friend of the
show who you've heard mentioned plenty of times, multiple times,
(01:51):
my dear friend and cohort, Frank the Tank Mulhern. Hey, guys,
Frank joined us today. Human he is in the flesh,
he has a voice, he has a soul, and he
has some ideas about some weird idioms. Um, so it's
all it's all coming together. You guys were all here.
We finally we pulled it off, and I have a
(02:13):
feeling that this will be a two parter. No. Now,
to be completely clear with everybody listening this time, we
do know roughly what our friends are going to be presenting, right,
but I think it's safe to say in most cases
we don't know the stories behind these phrases or these words.
So we're experiencing this with you as you listen. Yeah,
(02:36):
I mean, with four you know, dashingly good looking and
intelligent gentlemen, we did not want to run the risk
of doubling up, so we did give ourselves at least
that luxury of knowing what the others were gonna do.
But no, we only researched our own, so there's gonna
be surprises of plenty in today's episode. Yep, you've paid
for the whole seat, but you only use the edge
for any of the podcast. Well, they paid attention, that's true.
(03:00):
Always say that time is the most valuable currency these days,
and that has never been more true than it is today.
So what do you say, Gent's who would like to
who would like to kick us off? I'm just gonna
I'm just gonna count down from three and the pixel.
That's like a dad move. All right, what do you got, Frank? Alright?
(03:28):
So recently, um, I went back to my hometown to
visit my parents for their birthdays. They both have birthdays
within three days of each other. Here s super convenient
since I live out of town. So um, we were
hanging out and we did dinner and drinks and gifts
exchanges and all that stuff. And then I decided I
(03:51):
was going to go out and hang out with some
of my friends and Augusta, Georgia, where I'm from, And
on my way out, my mom said, y'all have fun,
be safe, and then my dad chimed in with trip
the light fantastic and yeah, no, I've never heard Yeah,
I've I've heard this phrase before. But massive points to
(04:15):
your dad, what gravitas? Yeah, yeah. And the thing is
he had no idea where it came from, and I
asked yeah, and we like, you know, guest wildly for
a few minutes, despite the fact that we all have
working smartphones. So I I left. It was still a
mystery to me, and then I looked it up later
(04:36):
on the next day, and there's quite a story to it.
It goes through several different iterations and alterations give it
to us us so um. The phrase itself means to
dance nimbly or lightly and move to a pattern of
musical accompaniment. The first variation of it is found in
(05:00):
John Milton's Allegro, and the line is come and trip
it as you go on the light fantastic toe, the
old fantastic toe. Yes, yes, it really is. And the
thing that kind of tripped me up was in this sense,
trip isn't the sort of normal definition that we think
(05:22):
of when it comes to your feet and moving around.
It's more about being nimble, flit light fleet footed, yes, yes,
kind of frolicking or whatever. And so you're in a
ballroom and you're you know, waltzing around the room and
and it's just kind of um about you know, enjoying
(05:42):
the night and kind of like living the bon vivant life,
and fantastic kind of means with flair basically, So it's
an escalation expressivity basically, And that was kind of like
the version that was around it was just basically John
Milton thing. So the condensed version of a line from
(06:04):
Milton appeared in Sidewalks of New York by Charles B.
Lawler and James W. Blake In, and the line is
boys and Girls Together Me and Mamo Rourke Trip Light
Fantastic on the Sidewalks of New York. The song is
um pretty dull. You would think a song by the
(06:26):
name of Sidewalks of New York might be kind of fun.
But it's a velvet underground song, right, yes, exactly, it's
actually every velvet underground song. Let's let's hear a little
clip of that right now. It feels to date very
(06:53):
much not not doesn't sound very exciting, It doesn't sound
like you're jumping, It doesn't sound from a purely melodic standpoint,
it doesn't sound worthy of a phrase with the gravity
of trip the light fantastic. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like
something you'd hear in the church basically that. But people
(07:16):
people still love this phrase, right, this is not the
last time, This is not the last we've heard of
tripping the light. No, no, it's not um In fact,
so trip the light fantastic in this song Sidewalks of
New York was in eight four, and one of the
first things I noticed when I actually looked into this expression.
(07:37):
As early as nineteen o eight it was viewed as
cliche or hackneyed phrase, which seemed to be a really
oddly specific year. That's when that's when they had reached like, yeah,
it was too much, not the Gilded Age anymore. We've
got to move on. People are avoiding ballroom dances because
(07:58):
they don't want to hear that phrase again. Actually, my
boss told me trip the Light fantastic. It was kind
of um gone for a little while. And then in
the early nineteen hundred, specifically around nineteen ten through nineteen
twenty nine, there was um a lot of migrant Mexican
(08:18):
workers coming over. There was the Mexican Civil War going on,
There's a lot of political unrest and economic instability, and
so there was a lot of northward movement. In fact,
like a tenth of Mexico's population left during that time,
and so they kind of brought their culture and their
language and their music and food and all the things
(08:40):
that make life fun. And eventually Fantastic started to get
subbed out with fandango, which is a Spanish dance. That's
to me, like, when I read the description of a fandango,
it was really similar to flamenco in my mind. And
it turns out that the fandango is just a specific
(09:03):
type of flamenco, you know, so there's you know, regionals
specific types of flamenco. Flamenco being you would be accompanied
by a sea classical guitar and castanette and means the
dancer actually plays the castaneta times. Yeah. The video Boy
with a Coin by Iron and Wine has a really
(09:24):
cool example of that, right I remember that one. Now,
another change happened with this expression um with Tennessee Williams
play the Glass Menagerie and in the opening monologue, as
Tom spoke to his father quote he gave up his
job with a telephone company and skipped the light Fantastic
(09:45):
out of town. Yes, yeah, By this time, like the
sense of Tripps that we were talking about earlier is
being nimble and agile kind of like treaded into archaic
territory and and it became lame. Yes, yeah, yeah totally.
And Skipped is phonetically similar and it has you know,
(10:09):
pretty much the same spirit and meaning as as the
former tripped did so and Skipped just kind of doing
double duty meaning wise because of skipping town. Okay, so
here's the thing for me, the original Trip it kind
of starts to come back around too with the sixties
(10:32):
and like the whole idea of it becoming more of
a trippy thing, not to mention like you had Queen
talking about scar a Mouse, scar Mouse, Will you do
the fan dango and all the rightning. It's very very
frightening to me apparently. Uh. And then you've got this
band Procol haramcom exactly. Yes, it's in seven and they
have the song I kind of like the any Lenox
(10:54):
version better from being honest, but it's called a Wider
Shade of Pale. Uh, this is what I was waiting
for you. Yeah. Lyrics by Keithree, Lyrics by Keith three
who say and it and it uses the more modernized version.
I guess, well, relatively speaking, we tripped the light fan dango,
oh no skip, So so it's almost like unrecognizable from
(11:16):
its form of trip the light, fantastic, the life fantastic,
to skip the light fandangle my thing here to all
of this, The question I have is what light? What
is this light? Because originally when we were talking about this,
fair when I'm thinking about the lights, but I'm thinking
about treading the boards on a stage, you know, or something.
But that is not really something that comes around, at
(11:37):
least in any of the etymology that we that you
were looking into about this exactly. But it's a very
visual thing. And there's actually the allegro that you mentioned. Uh.
It was actually set to music by George Frederick Handel,
who is a you know, famous composer from the born
in the late sixtreds died in and my mom, who
(11:57):
is a singing teacher, this is a song that a
lot of her students do and the lyric is you know,
common trip it as you go, what the light fantastic
toe or whatever like that. I always thought it was
the fantastic glow, but now I'm realizing that it's toe
fantastic toe is for some reason more appealing. So you're
leading with that fantastic toe and it's it's nice, it's
(12:18):
a nice you know. Also this, this reminds me, this
would be a fantastic phrase for parkour if you are
someone who is a parkour enthusiast and you need to
for some reason spice up your get together har hardcore parkore.
Skip the light, fantastic, trip the light fantastic. Exactly, fantastic
(12:40):
skip the light. Maybe we should um reinvent it yet again.
There we go, Yeah, tripping the skippity the light glow
fantastic toe. How about flip it? Let's flip that light? Yeah, exactly,
the whole new word, flip the light, Flip the light,
clip the light, fantastic, nip the light. We can go
(13:00):
on and send us your suggestions to Ridiculous word that
Ryan with trip to Ridiculous at ridiculous at how stuff
works dot com. We'd love to hear from you, freak.
I am impressed, Thank you, as uh. I've really had
no idea that you know, how much that had changed
over time. It's really fascinating how language is, you know,
(13:22):
constantly moving and changing and almost unrecognizable, speak, seamless segways right,
who who's next? Who will trip the light? Fantastic of idioms?
I could go, yeah, yeah, you've got some good ones,
got okay ones? Um. I don't know if it's as
cool sounding as a trip in the life. Fantastic is
that as a nice kind of compound? Idiom um mine
(13:45):
are also are both single words, the first one I
don't always see what should I do? I know what
I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do dope. Ah, yes, yes,
I'm gonna do some dope. On the show We Know,
we talked about this all fair, right. We talked about
this for a while off fair, about which words take
up the mantle of describing something good or cool? Cool, right,
(14:09):
And also how it's sort of like a trendy thing
to use a word that inherently means something negative and
then flip it around and use it to describe something good.
And dope is a really good example of that. But
it actually has way more history than I ever would
have possibly given it credit for. So here let's see
where does our journey um of dopeness begin. The first
(14:31):
one I always think of as like being a dope, Well,
that's see, and that doesn't even enter into this at all.
Really enough. Really, it's certainly a use of the word,
and you'll see why it was used that way, but
that's not really the direction that my that my research
took me. Um. Originally, dope was a a word that
was used to describe some kind of like a dipping sauce. Okay,
(14:55):
so sort of like like you know, let's just say
a honey muster, but more like a gravy type dipping sauce.
And it was a Dutch word, the origin being the
word dupe, which is kind of fun because you think,
I don't know, I'm just speculating here, you know, if
if you dupe somebody and make a dope out of them, right, So,
dupe was a thick, sticky sauce or a gravy, and
it became a part of the English lexicon. Um in
(15:19):
the American colonies. Washington Irving the famous writer what do
you write, Ben, You're You're You're a literature guy, Police
Academy for that's the one. Famed screenwriter Washington Irving of
the Police Academy movies fame. He also he also wrote
the Alleged Sleep That's the Guy Crane, so Washington Irving
(15:40):
introduced it an early example in his satire called Salmon Gundy,
which I have not read. Has anybody read Salmon Gundy?
Wrote Salmon Rush Duo, don't be fooled. Yeah, I read that,
but it was it's been many moons. Well, it was
published in eighteen oh seven, so um. And this is
where he described something called a philo dripping pan um,
(16:04):
which is like a dope kind of like a I
don't know, like kind of like a baking situation. And
he used this term in this phrase quote love of
what the learned Dutch call doupe spelled d o u
p like soup with a D. And then that is
where dope started to come into fruition as we know
it today. And it really started taking off. This idea
(16:26):
of a syrupy, uh goopy doopy there we say substance
um in the smokable form of opium that appeared in
the New York City Rag Truth, which is a great
name for a newspaper, really instill some some confidence in
the words printed there in um. And it's talking about
(16:46):
opium fiends, dopeheads, dope fiends. As early as eighteen eighty three.
And here's a couple of quotes from truth and this
comes from a fantastic article on visual thesaurus dot com
that talks about the history of dope, doping, dope stoop,
all of that stuff. Here is one from March six. Interested,
but I love this word, impecunious fiends receive therefore a
(17:09):
commission which immediately reverts to the proprietor of the opium
den in exchange for a pipe privilege. And a shell
of dope is a dressed up word meaning broke. That's right.
And then they have another one here, which is my
favorite because it's got another phrase in it that I
would like to explore as well. Alexander was hitting the
(17:32):
flute obviously and rapidly getting to the bottom of a
quote hop toy of dope, which is quote fiend pattern
for smoking a considerable quantity of opium fiends pattern. That's
that's great dope dope speak. Um, the dope is cheap
(17:52):
and the joint keeper does not catechise spend c A
T E c h I S catechi. That makes sense.
What is that sort of like being reprimanded, Yes, just
sort of like chastise catechised them as to whether or
not they are miners. So were they smoking dope joints
like opium joints? You know, you know the joint the
(18:14):
joint keeper as then like the establishment. That's right, yeah,
the joint keeper, the bar of the barman. Alright, let's say,
um so, that's fantastic. So them, we've got dope kind
of making the transition into being a verb. Um that
can have either a positive or a negative connotation. So
(18:35):
if you're doping something, you are injecting it or imbuing
it with some sort of medicinal UH substance that can
either have a positive or negative effect. And it really
started entering the lexicon of horse racing, yes, because it
came to mean insider info. Right, well, we're gonna get there, absolutely,
(18:55):
But it originally was the way we think of with
performing enhancing drugs. You know, that is still a term
that's used today by the UH. It's a body that
investigates and maintains the standards of you know, testing athletes
to make sure they're not quote unquote doping anti doping
laws what they call them that they enforce. But um so,
(19:16):
originally with it was not about athletes human athletes. It
was about horses, and it became such a you know thing,
and they would be uh, they could be injected with
anything from like whiskey injected them if you didn't check
to like a stimulant, So you could, like you might
dope someone else's horse to slip them a mickey hobble
(19:37):
the horse exactly, or you might you might you might
inject or you know, apply some sort of stimulant to
your own horse so it gives it a little edge.
And then it became so prevalent that when you knew,
you knew about which horses were being affected by what stuff.
That became referred to as the straight dope, the inside dope. Oh.
(20:00):
Also that's the World Anti Doping Agency or WADA, A
good acronym. So one last thing. It was originally used
in drug parlance, I guess, to describe an opiate which
should eventually be the most popular or insidious version. It
(20:24):
was heroin. So even when people are suffering from heroin
withdrawal or opiate withdrawlly call it getting dope sick. Right,
That is a thing, And recently, more recently it's kind
of almost exclusively used to refer to marijuana. You're dope
dope head. You know you're smoking dope, Right, that's what
your mom says. Right, it's sort of a bit of
a square thing to say these days. Right. Um, here's
(20:47):
the thing. And looking into this I found I'm just
gonna really quickly go through this. I found the origins
of four twenty. Yeah. So there's an article in High
Times magazine, Yeah twiz about the history of four twenty. Um.
So it turns out that there's so many ideas about
(21:09):
like what four was. One of them was like, oh,
there's four and twenty discreet distinct chemicals in marijuana. That
seems like a stretch. Uh. For twenty was supposedly like
some kind of police radio code for like dope smoking
in action or whatever. We got a four twenty also
not the case. So somebody reached out two High Times
(21:29):
in the nineties early nineties saying, no, no, no, none
of this is true. Me and my friends from a
high Yeah no, no, only do we know we invented it? Okay,
So and then we've got and I've got I've got proof.
So this guy reached out a guy by the name
of Brian Jarvinson, who is a freelance writer for High
Times Um, he received this email or this correspondence from
(21:52):
a guy who was running a business in San Raphael, California,
which is very near San Francisco, and so he's like, okay,
I'm interested. The guy identified himself as Steve uh, Steve Waldo. Okay,
so he said, okay, me and my friends we referred
to ourselves as the wal Does and we went to
San Rafael High School and we had a secret spot
(22:14):
that we were trying to find, like a like a
mission where it was like going to be this patch
of marijuana was growing like someone had planted and they
had to like find it like Holy Grail style. And
so they agreed that one hour after school ended at
four twenty, they would meet and go on this sojourn
to find this marijuana field socinating and they and they
would meet by a statue of Louis Pasteur at San
(22:36):
Rafael High School and um, and they apparently were known
for their affinity for smoking the dope. The Marx Brothers
in stand up comedy sounds like a bunch of dangerous
never hang out with you really would love that's dope,
A very good Ben. And it all started with Ben.
(22:57):
Your whole thing, like you know, using a negative to
to describe a positive. Now it's something that the kids
say when something is cool. It's interesting that it went
from like such a harsh drug as an opiate, to marijuana,
which of course now is more or less legal in
most places, or at least much more, much more universally
considered innocuu exactly. Yeah, I think dope is still kind
(23:20):
of like, you know, an opiate sort of word cat
specifically when you're talking about dope sickness, that's right, and
this Coca Cola of drugs. This leads us to an
important point and a question. I think that we were
asking each other off the air, when the four of
us were hanging out, how do we get in front
of this? What's the right now? Dope is encountering telling
(23:43):
a moment. Yeah, it's having a moment. It's having a renaissance,
right the same way that cool did, Wicked, sick, rad,
gnarly bitchen, tubular radical. And the question that keeps haunting me.
I mean, I don't think we figured this out when
we're talking about this earlier. What's the next one? What's
the next word that's going to inherit this mantle? You
(24:03):
know what? I mean, like, what's the what's the next dope?
I don't know. I think the one syllable word though
probably it probably is. Is it possible that that our
friend Rowan Newby has it? Sure? I'm honored that you
would think that I have a cornucopia of silly words
just floating around on the bank of myum and why
(24:25):
they brought me in here? Actually, okay, let's just let's
just throwst them out there. What about slunt? Slunt? Yeah,
it's kind of it's kind of gross. Maybe it's like hard,
Maybe it's like your mean. Maybe someways mean that's a
harsh mouth. Field, may be like flong about, like bro,
I'm so flng right now, Dude, last night I got
(24:46):
really chipottled, like that means I ate too much. Yeah,
I got this serious. I went through a phase where,
for some reason, and I never apologized casey to you
or nool on air, so I should do it. I
went through I get stuck in certain phrases and I
overused them very easily. And I went through a period
(25:07):
where I was just instead of saying yes to something
or great or I've seen this email I was replying to,
I was replying to you guys with just Zanzibar because
if like, and no one ever called me on you guys,
never said dude, what are you talking about? Just let
it roll? Really, you know, I mean, Ben's gonna be
Ben if you're bold enough and you just yeah, you
(25:31):
just gotta own it if you exactly, if you own it,
no one's gonna say anything that's the truth with any
of these words. And we've coined a few on the
show ourselves, like a straight Seahorse t shirt, which has
been making the rounds with some of the folks on
the Ridiculous History page. Yeah, we actually we should. We
should paint some of our fellow listeners rode in and
it's told us that they were propagating this phrase, which
(25:51):
we thought it was fantastic. I gotta admit, man, I
don't know about you know, but I had no idea
straight seahorse teeth would would take off. You must have
had at inkling. Then the first day you hear that
in the wild is going to be amazing. Wow, do
you think we will thank you? Will? I hope? So?
I hope It's in a really weird situation. To what
other situations do we find ourselves in? In the wild.
(26:12):
Then it's true. We don't have regular days now, we
really don't. But we do have another idiom to throw
out at you, don't. I think it's yours, my friend Rowen.
That is correct, I do have one, since that is
the game we're playing here. How funny would it be
if I just was like, oh wait, I was supposed
to do homework. No, I just was sitting here drinking
(26:35):
coconut water. What do I have here? Cucumber was a
cucumber montane sparkling water made right here in the heart
of Atlanta, Georgia. Is it Is it true that if
we say the company name of the product two more
times they'll send us a case of it? We we
already have cases. But oh you take some with you?
Take some with you, you guys, to take away from
(26:56):
the fun of getting free things. But okay, do you
want us to like making a scavenger hunt or like
make it more fun? Okay, Well, we'll give you a
series of clues into the episode. Um, do I seem
a little off to the right. I'm a little I
drank a lot last night. Well you know, I'm not
a hangover doctor or whatever. But you seem fine. What
(27:18):
do you think, guys? Does he seem all right? You
look great? Yeah, looks you're absolutely glowing. Okay, Well, good
that that shower helped. Uh. Well. The reason I ask
is because you know, we've all knocked back a few
and our local watering hole and woke up feeling rather ripe,
which is called the local, which is called we might
as well say, yeah, it's it's it really, it's on
the nose. Yeah, you can be pretty gnarly if you
(27:39):
drink too much, which brings up my first idiom here
the time honored colloquialism hair of the dog, which is
a yess, which is a short for, of course, hair
of the dog that beat you. So wait wa, because
this one, I I have no idea what the etymology is,
but I've heard it used again in the wild, and
it's usually when someone starts drinking kind of early in
(28:02):
the day, you know, not distressingly early, not like airport,
but yeah, like brunch earlier. Sure, and I mean it's
it's You can also infer from the way where it's
used in normal conversation that it's to quell the aching
headache from the night before you you wake up with
a headache because you're hungover, and so you're like, oh,
(28:22):
I have the dog, the bitch you. I'm just gonna
keep drinking. That will solve everything if I just keep drinking, right,
question Mark Lloyd, Yeah, exact, of course. I always think
of the shining too. Yeah, and it's referring to the
it's a it's a cure like finger quotes cure. There's
no scientific proof that it works whatsoever, but the story
goes you, if you indulge too much, the next day,
(28:43):
you ingest more of the same alcohol and it quells
this pain in your head. But at the origin of
the expressions dates back to medieval times actually, when it
was thought that after being bit by a rabid dog,
one could relieve the pain by simply rubbing some hairs
from the same dog into your wound. Okay, first of all,
that's disgusting. That seems very not I'm not a doctor.
(29:06):
I don't recommend it. I mean it is something that
we've talked about in other episodes of the show. Uh,
this this sort of like, I don't know, you hear
about it in medieval practitioners of remedies. You know, I'm
not even gonna call them doctor that wasn't quite even
a thing. Yeah, but it seems like leeching or blood letting,
only this is like almost like the idea of fighting
fire with fire, right, yes, sympathetic magic. This theory was
(29:28):
first developed by a guy named Sir James Fraser in
his masterpiece The Golden Boat. And in this the argument
is that like can cure like this correlation between things,
whether they're related through their physicality or whether they're related
through their space and time in the event, right, like
(29:50):
a voodoo dollar or something. Sure, Yeah, or like like
how you could become a werewolf by drinking water from
a wolf print on the wood, which is also, by
the way, not true. If you if you were about
to give it a go, I don't think it will work,
but right in if it does once you transform back,
but you're absolutely right. Well, it's kind of the idea
(30:12):
that the poison can help create the antidote. Yeah, you
guys always enlightened me on my own idioms that I
bring to the table. I love the What did you call?
What kind of magic? Was that? Sympathetic? Yeah, it's sort
of like a sympathetic vibration, right, So it's if you
something vibrates at the right frequency, it makes something else
vibrate at that same frequency. So sympathetic magic would be
(30:33):
like if you are interacting with something related to the
malady that you're suffering from or maybe even dare we say,
the cause, that it will somehow cure it. But what
you're getting at wrong, which I totally agree with, is
that this is completely magical thinking. It's this idea that
I should to be less drunk or to feel less bad,
I should just drink more and sure it'll make you
(30:55):
feel a little better because you're drunk again. It's also
it's also babies, right, and also how do you get
the subsequent hairs from the same dog that bit you? Yeah,
I feel like relationship, that's all right, It will requires
some sort of mystical quest because that here, okay, here
we go. I propose something, this idea of seeking out
(31:19):
some sort of creature that has wronged you, and then
you have to kill it to get the hair. That's
sort of the ideas you gotta you gotta slay the
beast and then you get the hair, rub it on
your wounds. But let's apply this to you know how
the idiom came around to bar times. I guess, like,
who doesn't like a good mimosa or Bloody Mary in
the morning. Let's be honest. You know, I was just
(31:42):
a little nip and bloody marrying guy. Yeah, I just
recently started liking Bloody Mary's. But I was shocked. Goes
to the airport at like six am this morning. I'm
looking at the people are pouring vodka and the airport
bar as six. That had to be some hair with
alcoholism is a real thing. Well, they're also they're also possibly,
in their defense, they're coming from a very different time zone.
(32:02):
Could be we do have the world's busiest airport. Okay,
well never mind, no, no, no, no, you never know.
But I've decided to assume that's fair. I was a
little shocked though, and you know, even weirder, I was like,
maybe I should I should have a little nippets sick
in the morning. That seems fun. You know, If I
see someone drinking that much at an airport, um, I go.
(32:23):
They fly all of the time. They are getting on
airplanes like four times a week or something. Because the
thing about airports is that's sort of like a liminal
space where it's like a space between spaces. So the
normal rules of decorum and life skills do not apply
when you're at the airport. Absolutely true, like garbage. You
know what happens in the airport pants, sweatpants and vodka shots,
(32:45):
crocs trip that life fantastic. We have some airport war
stories that would be great for a future episode. What
do you think that's diving into our personal lives a little?
I'm fine with you, okay, but I have a question
for you. Okay, this is illuminating to me and I
cannot help, but wonder what kind of terrible nights someone
(33:06):
had where they went on this quest as well said
they were bitten by a rabid dog. They hunted it down,
they took its hair, and then in the morning they
started drinking booze. And someone's like, hey, dude, are you okay? Like,
how bad? Did not have to be? Right exactly? I
(33:26):
mean alcohol will always, uh act as you know, a
numbing agent. I feel like, uh, I mean, for God's sakes.
Then they used to put whiskey and milk and give
it to their kids. You know I still do that,
just random children. Okay. You know. I actually found a
really good physiological description of it on a website called
(33:47):
vine pair dot com, which is a great name for
a website. It is a great name. I actually have
the same same source. What did you find I found?
You know? I was, yeah, I was talking about these
physiological aspects of like how you know alcohol affects you,
um Like bloody Mary works because the alcohol inside the
drink begins acting on the chemical receptors inside the brain
to increase the feelings of pleasure. It's actually why so
(34:09):
many people like booze in the first place, and also
probably why you drank so much the night before, and
the chemical reaction begins to overpower the hangover symptoms, thus
allowing us to feel at least momentarily from the bad
decisions of the previous night. So and what is life
but a series of momentary relief and quick fixes? You know?
Have any of y'all ever had hair of the dog
(34:30):
actually cure your hangover? Because that's always been like a
delay strategy for me, Like when I've worked in a restaurant,
I was like, let me just get through the lunch
rush and I can de stim spinach for the next
three hours and then go home. I've yeah, I've I'm
not a practitioner of Hair of the dog, even when
I'm living a crazy airport life. It just seems strange
(34:50):
to introduce that kind of variable after, you know, especially
if you've had a night where you were drinking and
you wake up the next day like maybe you can,
maybe you can power through, as you said, Frank, delay
into three PM or something. At some point your body
passed some atabolize this alcohol, like unless you just steadily
drink from that point to the rest of your life,
(35:12):
which shorter. Yeah, exactly. No, it really does seem like
prolonging the inevitable. I am incapable of day drinking successfully too.
I know that Frank that you have. You're not. That's
not our thing. It's just like, because I get I
get sleepy, I get cranky. It's not fun. It just
is gonna kill my day. I don't care what kind
of night I've had the night before. I'm just going
to power through. And we have some very helpful chips
(35:36):
for this. All of a sudden, this has become alcoholism.
One O one. Just drink a lot of water. Drink
a lot. That has always cured my headache. If I
just drink a lot of water. I do you want
to drink booze? I want to drink water and you know,
a little bit of a little bit of a leave
a little bit of ibuprofen and something, eat something. Yeah, drink,
(35:57):
be married, No, don't be married. I feel sad, be
ashamed of yourself, your garbage person, and you don't deserve
to be happy. You should never drink again, and you
should you should make wildly melodramatic proclamations to everyone you
know on social media. People you don't. Yeah. So I
(36:21):
found this phrase from this old English writer named John
Heywood on phrases dot org that supposedly the first origin
of Hair of the Dog. I thought it was really interesting.
Are you going to read it? I'm going to read it?
Will you do a voice? I play the Let me
and my fellow have a hair of the dog that
(36:42):
bit us last night? And bitten? Were we both on
the brain night? It literally says that we saw each
other drunk in the good Ale glass bit on the brain.
So what you're saying is I think we were talking off, Mike.
The just both to the brain, both the brain. That's great.
(37:05):
So you were telling me a little bit off Mike
that This article talks about how some of these phrases
don't really come into popular use until like the literal
version of it sort of falls out. So this is
sort of what you're seeing there as this gentleman using
that to describe the actual experience of being hungover, and
(37:25):
he's kind of using it as a metaphor when it
was sort of a folkloric tradition in the first place,
right exactly. It's interesting, yeah, super fascinating and um and
we still use it to this day something. So so
we've got dope, hair of the Dog and tripping the light. Fantastic.
I'm glad that we've set this up as a two
(37:46):
part in the beginning. Uh. This this is one of
those shows that I wish wouldn't end, but we will
have to end today's episode eventually. I have I have
one contribution. I feel like the evil uh, the evil
character and a fairy tale going. I have a present
for the child. There's one more gift. This phrase is
(38:07):
something that we've heard before, and I primed you guys
just a little bit off air for this. The word
is gad zooks, and so it was that's why I
was like sliding that in hot topic. Mall gad zoo
spensers uh for a lot of us in our age
group in this part of the world. When we hear
the phrase gad zooks, we associated with the store that
(38:30):
used to be quite popular in the era of malls,
and it was called gad Zooks. Were in a post
mall America. Yes, it's getting there. I guess that's because
the mall used to be like a central like fixture
of like hanging out, hang out, the center of town.
It was the center of town. Gad Zooks was also
like where you would buy those giant pants that were
(38:52):
called Jinkos for our younger listeners and maybe don't remember
this absurd time or that orb with the lightning the
glass that would touch or the needle thing you put
your hand and it shows it your hand in the metal,
which those things have to be filthy by now, Yeah,
the ones on display and like the science store. So
(39:16):
so it turns out that goad Zooks actually has a
storied history. You know, things like goad zooks or zounds,
which is also related on the Yep, they sound like
something you would hear on the old Adam West. Yeah,
Scooby Doo, the old Adam West Batman. But they have
(39:36):
religious origins. Dictionary references date gad zooks as far back
as the late sixteen hundreds as a shortening of another exclamation,
which was by God's hooks. Whoa God's hook be a
reference to the nails on the cross of Jesus Christ.
(39:57):
You know what first popped into my head when you
said God's hooks? I pictured God as being like pinhead
from hell raisers, shooting out hooks into the flesh I was.
I was thinking that to like a god with Uh.
You know that has an unseeable form except for the
hooks where the hands should be. You know this this
is superate? Yea super pirate. Uh? This weird because I
(40:20):
mentioned zounds earlier. Zounds also appears to date back to
around the fifteen hundreds as a euphemism for the phrase
by God's wounds. So I should be pronounced zoons should
probably right, and I guess it depends on the sounds.
So so this phrase gad zooks is not alone in
(40:42):
its evolution, even phrases there's somewhat innocuous, like jeepers. Creepers
was originally euphemism to get around saying Jesus Christ, but
still still have the same thing. I think the guy
who yeah. I think the guy who made the film
Jeepers Creepers doesn't know that, but also apparently that as
a creep Yeah, I'm a big fan of JEsum crow.
(41:04):
That's that's I'm a big fan of cheese and crackers
as good people saying that, right, I said that earlier, Yes, yeah, right,
or just as strangers on the train. So it's an exclamation.
We don't hear it too often now. I think Prince
Philip said it in these are modern days, but it
(41:25):
would be unusual for us to be hanging out and
maybe have a surprise party for Casey and for him
to see the cake and whatever, you know, mariatcha band
or whatever we had to spice it up. It would
be really strange for him to go gad zouks, wouldn't
it Well? I mean, you know, these hip young millennials
these days, they bring back this stuff all the time,
(41:46):
saying it ironically. You know, yeah, I say, Zoe's a
lot that's true. Yeah, that's true. I started saying, oishan,
I have no idea why. It's just stuck in my head.
I think I just made it up so like, I
don't know, I was just so prize. That's what it
came out, and it's like, I'll keep that one. But
the use of God for God occurs in other phrases
(42:06):
to et Gad gad and these are called phraseological combinations.
There are other ones that didn't make the cut. Gad
Zooks is did that Coca Cola reference earlier? Gad Zooks
is one of the most successful of these turns of phrase.
I would like, Yeah, I'd like to end this part
(42:30):
of the show by telling introducing you guys to some
gad Zooks esque things that didn't make it. They're all ridiculous.
Are you prepared? All right? God's bobs also an exclamation,
gads Bob's uh, God's lid. There's Gad's bud l kins.
(42:56):
Can we bring that back? God's bubblican dare you? And
then God's nouns nouns, nouns you know U? And s
that lazy? I mean, I think the clear audience favorite
here is God's bud lickins. It's bud bud lickens buds.
(43:17):
That would be a good name for aid dukes of
hazard type characters. So this is strange. Gadsouts, Gad's buds lickins,
we found out about tripping the light, fantastic the hair
of the dog that bid us, and it was overall
pretty dope with your thanks many sounds, Noel Role desires
(43:39):
just a little bit I did not. I deserved it.
No I opened them wide and affection admiration from my
dear co host Bin Boling. Thank you Noel Brown. And likewise,
one thing that we found there was great interest to
us on our first episode of Idiomatic for the People
was that, in the course of the show we had
totally about planning it used several, like multiple different turns
(44:05):
of phrase or figures of speech idioms that we did
not even notice until we went back and listened to it.
So I wonder if we did that today as well,
No doubt about it, No doubt about it. That's one.
There's a really cool video by Kishi Bashi who crams
(44:26):
like a hundred and twenty or so idioms into a
single music video. That's really cool. Well, we got four.
We're doing our best, we're living our best, but we're working.
But who is not even him sometimes? But he is
from Mathews, Georgia, which is also where ari A m
Is from, which is one of Frank's favorite bands, which
(44:47):
is where idiomatic for the people came from. So thanks R. A. M.
And thanks Frank mulhern for helping dub this segment. All right,
thank you, and thanks for coming on the show. Dude.
Thanks for having me rowan nubie. Thanks to you as well, dude,
my pleasure. You you you, you dashing man with your
He's got a shirt on that you guys wouldn't believe.
(45:07):
It's got boots on it. It's very colorful. I wanted
to take a picture, but I said, I don't want
to look weird. Oh no, it's fine. I won't takes
pictures everything these days. Al right. Well, that that which
man is wearing Google glasses right now. We keep telling
them they're out of fashion. They're no longer done. You
don't even function, He keeps saying, okay, Google, people take
(45:29):
a picture of shirts Google. All right, Well, you guys
busted me. They are apparently not as inconspicuous as I thought.
But yes, thank you so much for coming on the show.
If you would like to hear more from our good
friend Frank than Taint Mollahern, fear not, because you're essentially
(45:52):
a shadow member of our our podcasting we run ideas
past Frank and Frank will sometimes give us ideas and
we just try not to Discipplin. I'm I'm a little
worried that having his actual voice on the show is
going to open up some sort of rift and time space.
But I'm willing to take the chance. God, let's hope
not if you want to. If you want to hear
more from our good friend Rowan Nubie, check out his
(46:14):
podcast Pitches. What is Pitches? Pitches as a podcast about ideas.
There's a comedy podcast, and uh boy, oh boy, I
would love it if any of these fellow listeners would
like to write in any ideas. I mean, really, it
can be an app a turn of phrase, how about that?
It could be uh, you know, an invention or who knows?
(46:35):
And what goes on? You were on a great episode
of That's correct. Yeah, I think it's coming out soon.
It's today today, so well this would be a little
removed from that in time, so it already exists in
the world, that's right. I pitched a really silly idea
for a suntan lotion that gets you drunk. Ah, the
old hair of the tan, hair of the tan that
(46:57):
that tans you right, Oh, it was very good. Thanks
for having me. I think we've got our future episode
coming up where Ben is going to That is correctly,
that's in the that's in the cards. Tune. If you
want to find us on the instagrams, you know what
to do at pictures Podcast Baby shameless plug. Oh, we're
(47:18):
far past the point of shame for plugs speaking up likes.
You can find us and your fellow listeners on our
Facebook page. Ridiculous Historians were also all over Twitter and Instagram.
We've even started sharing our own personal adventures. Is that
right now? That's right? I am at Embryonic Insider and
I am at Ben Bolan. We hope that you enjoyed
(47:40):
this episode. We hope you tune in for the next one.
As idiomatic For the people soldiers on Frank, I cannot
emphasize it enough. We're huge fans of that name. Thank you.
Um we're thank you profusely because we're I think legally
we're we don't have to pay you, it's what we do.
(48:00):
We're also profuse thankers just in general. Thank you, Thank
you Ben, and thank you super producer Casey Pagram. Thank
you Alex Williams. We composed our theme. Thank you Gabe,
our research associate who had absolutely nothing to do with
this episode today, but we still thank him just the same.
He's a real mench uh, And thanks to you bambo
One for being such a dashing and debonair co host.
(48:21):
And that jacket and those Google glasses are really popping today.
You know what, I've committed to the bit. That's what
you gotta do. We'll see you next time. Books