I was singing along to “Roxanne” by the Police one time when I realized what I was singing and who Roxanne was.
I felt a wee bit stupid.
Chef is Shaft???
Oh my God…I’m an idiot
I’ve always suspected, but last night, while watching them play at the 9:30, I realized that many of the songs by The Pietasters may very well be about me and a series of dysfuntional relationships I enjoyed in the mid-90’s.
One of my best friends is in the band and I worked with him when he wrote most of the lyrics to Willis (except the covers, of course). Seeing this thread led me to check them out. It’s a little embarassing, but hey, I don’t know you people from Adam.
Tommy and I are gonna have a little talk when he gets back from Chapel Hill tomorrow.
Hey, Davy didn’t know about “Last Train to Clarksville”? That’s so suite. 
I didn’t know until I read it somewhere. (No, not here! Somewhere else.)
Roxeanne, I’m so proud. I actually figured that one out on my own.
I remember having to figure out that Mother’s Little Helper by the Stones was about drug abuse. (Come on, can you blame me? I’d heard the song a few times in my youth, as a 7 or 8 year old…when my parents would play it in the car. And in my defense I figured it right after I listened to it as a “young adult.”)
The Robert Cormier book I Am the Cheese. I can’t really explain it, but I didn’t figure it out until I read a review on Amazon. I was sort of like, “Ohh. Yeah that really makes sense the way they described!”
Oh yeah. And there are probably countless examples of stuff I didn’t get (a lot of sex/other jokes) on The Simpsons as a younger kid. snpp.com explained a lot of jokes I didn’t get. The other ones I just “got” as I aged. Oh and parodies.
Oh here’s a great one. The B-Sharps episode on Simpsons. Had not a clue that it was supposed to be based on the Beatles. Plus I didn’t realize that that guy was George Harrison. (At the time, I didn’t know George was a Beatle. Kill me now…:)) When I did find out, I was blown away. Similarly, I never got that David Crosby joke…“You’re a musician?!” until I got older.
I feel so ditzy now. I know exactly how Pheobe (“Friends”) must feel all the time…
LOL…good one, Chief.
My contribution: Meatloaf - Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.
I knew it was a song about sex. I knew that. I knew the whole thing was about a kid trying to score for the first time. But, for the life of me, I never GOT the baseball part, despite the fact that I’ve been making baseball/sex analogies most of my life.
Mine is a classic oldie, “Come Softly to Me”, by the Fleetwoods. In the song, one never hears the singers sings the words “Come Softly to Me”, but instead, “Come softly, darling.” I thought it was still a sweet inncent song reflective of White rock in the 50’s, until I read the account of how the song was titled. Apparently, the song was originally titled, “Come Softly”, but was extended so as to avoid being too suggestive. Then it hit me! The song wasn’t about two lovers approaching each other for a romanic interlude; it was about two lovers in the middle of making love to each other, and the woman (represented by the female backup singers) telling the man to come quietly, as in ejaculate, and stay after the act. Man, how did that get past the censors!?!?
I’ve liked the Beatles’ music as long as I can remember (I was in diapers when they broke up). And I remember, as a teen, thinking that the lyrics to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” sounded like… well, the Sixties were maybe a little too good to some folks, know what I mean? But I didn’t notice the “LSD” connection in the title until I was in college, when someone explicitly pointed it out to me. :o
Yeah, I know, John Lennon always denied it, etc etc… point is, I felt like the only person in the known universe who had missed it, whether it was an accident or a joke.
Flod: I didn’t realize until I read it on snopes. I don’t know if I would have realized on my own if time had taken its course. I like to pretend I figured it all out myself though. 
Accident, joke or whatever, Jimi Hendrix felt the message was clear enough to create his own answer to the Beatles’ trippy reference: Stars That Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice.
STP/LSD. Don’t you see? It’s one louder.
In the early 70’s there was an animated kids tv show in the UK called (IIRC) Captain Pugwash. One of his crue was named ‘Staines’, and would inevitably be called by name at least once per episode. Since he didn’t hold any special rank, his name was always prefaced by his title, ‘Seaman’.
It wasn’t until years later that I made the connection (try saying it out loud). Whoever came up with that, and had the audacity to get it past the BBC commissioning department for a kids show; why, I’d like to shake your hand, sir.
Er… Xerxes? If you visit here you’ll see your memory is flawed.
Sorry, dude.
Rats. Thanks for pointing this out.
You know, I so much wanted this to be true; I swear I can still (mis-)remember some of the episodes. Oh well. Perhaps in a parallel universe…
I always thought the last lines of The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” were a little lame:
… until I found out (in The Beatles’ own words) that the song is about pyromania. The character in the song sets fire to the house. Did you all know that? Am I just plain slow? Or is it very well hidden?
IIRC This song has basically two parts (a male and a female) and the two parts were recorded as two different songs. Neither song was thought to be that good by the record company and then someone put the two recordings together.
Jarl - I suspect the Beatle’s concocted the pyro story to cover the drug reference - the story I’ve heard is that Norwegian wood is a European slang for marijuana, and that the song is about an actual episode where John got picked up by a groupie (while he was married). Neither of which you want to talk about on the radio.
Of course, in my young and innocent days, I thought norwegian wood was a special type of firewood from Norway - possibly it smelled really nice when you burned it, or made pretty colors in the flames (LOL)
Q. How do you get down off an elephant?
A. You don’t. You get down off a goose.
My brother told me this joke when I was about 4 years old and had never heard of goosedown. I spent YEARS wondering how those guys in the circus got off the elephants, and how they trained the gooses to work as stepladders, and didn’t it hurt the goose to do that?
Ok, stupid joke I didn’t get:
At Christmas one year, I said “Ho ho ho” in front of my brother. He said, “Where are the other two?” and then laughed hysterically while I stared at him in puzzlement.
I was thinking, “Why would he want me to say Ho 5 times?” when what he meant was that I was the first Ho and he was looking for the other two. Duh.
I felt so dumb when I finally found out about Cecil. I mean, I had to have been the last one to get it. <sheesh>
Just found this thread. Very educational. I guess I must be missing a lot of puns in names on this board because I didn’t realize the connection with either Woodstockbirdybird or Sue Dunhym (and I have seen the names before) until just now either.
This is not really a pun, but it also was a sudden realization of the obvious: It just recently hit me that the title of the gardening show “Victory Garden” was a World War II reference. I have watched it on and off for a long time but never really thought about why they called it that.
No, you’re apparently not the last one, because I don’t know what you’re talking about! :sheepish grin: Please help me out.