Kyoto is the cultural capital of Japan, probably stemming from the fact that it was the original capital. That is where you will find exquisite gardens, food, flower arranging, etc. It is also where real Geishas can still be found.
My take is that Cecil was complimenting Minneapolis. You could certainly consider the home of the Prarie Home Companion as being the essence of the mid-west.
Or he could be referring to Japan traditionally being a pretty xenophobic culture, and Kyoto (IIRC) being closed to foreigners for much of its history. In which case, Cecil would be surprised by the diversity of the current Twin Cities.
[dream sequence] I walk into El Lutefisk. The bar is packed with 6’6" hockey players who strangely have mustaches, and all wear sombreros and sarapes. I sit at the bar and order a margarita. I can’t quite tell what the strange taste is, so I lean close to a blond maiden on the next stool(who, by the way, is wearing a jersey which says “Neal Broten” across her shoulders) and ask what is in my drink. She give me a cold shoulder(easily done in MN.).[/dream sequence].
I would love to do this for a few more paragraphs, but my kids are calling and life is interferring. No “Minnesota goodbye” for me.
In Junior High, the lyrics to “La Cucaracha” were:
“La cucaracha, la cucaracha,
Ya no puedo caminar,
Tengo dinero, o que falta,
Marijuana yo fumando.”
Or,
Cockroach, cockroach, I’m (too high) to walk, with money,
or without, I’m always smoking."
I realize this SOUNDS like a junior high schooler made it up. It may well have been. But then again, it seems a not unreasonable origin for the term “roach…”
Us Twin Citians don’t need to be clued in on the meaning of La Cucaracha. One theory behind the name is that it keeps the tourists away and gives a place for us locals to hide. But now that our cover has been blown, I’ll tell you that the original location in St. Paul rules.
Excellent discussion so far.
IIRC, la Cucaracha was a nickname given to a famous soldadera among the ranks of Villa’s army. She got famous mainly because of two reasons: her loving nature (she didn’t frown on tending to even the ugliest soldiers) and a remarkable rate of consumption of marijuana, spawned by the death of her husband.
So it may be that the song is about her, after all. But on the other hand, this stuff is what urban legends are made of.
Two other comments. Marijuana is English for “marihuana” or “mariguana”. And the English word is more precise than the Spanish one, since the name evolved from the love the addicts had for the stuff, which sometimes was stronger then their love for women (Mari = Mary, Juana = Jane), especially for those who hadn’t a soldadera.
And soldaderas weren’t prostitutes nor “groupies”, they were for the most part wives or common law wives of the soldiers. Sure, some of them turned into prostitution AFTER their hubbies passed away and couldn’t get a replacement or return home. La Cucaracha was one of these. But some of them turned into full time soldiers, fighting right along their male conterparts, oftentimes exceeding them in courage.
Soldadera, schmolderdera.
This discussion has degenerated into weird dreams generally associated with smoking opium, but now seems to be possible from crowding into a room with too many pot smokers and no windows. Is it time turn on the lights and run this roach thread under a cabinet?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by UncleBill *
I had a sheltered childhood, apparently.
*You* were sheltered? The lunch truck that serviced the field hands near my house had a musical horn that played "La Cucaracha" ...I didn't get the joke for at least ten years.Thanks for jogging my memory planknet(?). My life may have been sheltered too little. I recall the horn-like rendering of the tune by a steam calliope at a carnival I sneaked into at about age 8. Even got to see a bit of a hootchy-kootchy show before I was caught and tossed off the lot by an ugly roustabout.
Don’t know if it means anything, but I was told in Spanish class that “La Cucaracha” was a train that Pancho Villa’s army used.
As mentioned in the GQ thread linked to above, that verse is:
Una cosa me da risa,
Pancho Villa sin camisa
Ya se van los Carrancistas
porque vienen los Villistas
(Something that makes me laugh:
Pancho Villa without a shirt
Carranza’s soldiers have already run away
Because Villa’s soldiers are coming.)
One of my favorite verses is:
Cuando uno quiere a una
y esta una no lo quiere
es lo mismo que si un calvo
en la calle encuentre un peine
(When a man loves a woman
and she doesn’t love him,
it’s like a bald man
finding a comb in the street.)
Marihuana, Gasolina… There is also a version with “Limonada.” There are hundreds of verses to this song, and I think every mariachi band makes up a few of their own.
In eighth-grade chorus, we were forced to sing the following pseudo-Mexican monstrosity from a book published in about 1960 (then about 15 years old):-
“Down in sunny old Mehee-co,
All the kids in Spanish speak-o,
And they play at hide and seek-o
With a bug mooey comeek-o.”
(This last, of course, is a perversion of “muy c—mico”.)
Let’s not stop here. In a similar book there was an “international” version of “Jingle Bells”. It went, in part:-
"Here we go agayne,
In a global vein;
To make it all quite clear and plain,
We take you now to Spain.
“Hing-glay la bay-a! Hing-glay la bay-a!
Hing-glay ho-lay thee way!
Evree-bodee she like heem,
She like ay wan horse weeth hopen sleigh!”
(“Hing-glay la bay-a” was, of course, a horrible caricature of how “jingle” and “bell” might be pronounced in Spanish.)
The only good thing about these travesties is that we never had to do them in concert. 