Ah, I never saw the actual cartoon, so I missed that particular glaring error. I hope Yakko lost money on that one. Although, if it was the “Single” Jeopardy round, Alex would remind him. (“Phrasing?”)
I didn’t mean Wyoming was a country, Crazy, just that I wasn’t sure if you meant it was missing from the country or just from the song.
An update on the tune issue (as near as I can work out):
Mexican Hat Dance
6/8 time
C-B-C A-G#-A F-E-F C … A-Bb-C-D-E-F-G-A-Bb-G
Countries of the World
also 6/8 time
A C-C-C A-A-A C-C-C A-A-A C-C-C C-D-C B
So, it’s not the same tune, unless there’s another section to Mexican Hat Dance, that I don’t know and isn’t part of the MP3 recording I found of it.
And that’s another error. I don’t know about the Chesapeake, but the Bay is a department store chain in Canada and it doesn’t have any stores in Delaware.
There are several mistakes in “Yakko’s World” too:
San Juan and Algiers are cities, not nations.
Transylvania hasn’t been an independent nation for a long time.
He left out Andorra.
It IS the same tune. The second list of notes you wrote are the ones Yakko sings, and no, he doesn’t sing exactly along the basic Mexican Hat Dance tune, but it’s still sung generally to that tune. Wakko does the same thing with “Turkey in the Straw” and the capitols song. His song doesn’t match the music as much as “Do Your Ears Hang Low” does, but it’s still matches. Same with “Feniculi Fenicula” and the Senses Song. They do that all the time on Animaniacs. I don’t know enough about music to know if there’s a term for what they do, but I do know that all of the documentation I’ve read states that Yakko’s World is to the tune of “Mexican Hat Dance”.
The island of Tobago is part of the nation of Trinidad and Tobago.
If you’re going to mention England and Scotland, Wales should make the cut as well.
Since the song was (apparently) written, Czechoslovakia has been divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, while North Yemen and Southern Yemen have merged.
Sumatra is an island of Indonesia, while Borneo is divided among the nation of Brunei, the Indonesian province of Kalimantan, and the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.
Dahomey is the former name of Benin (both bolded words are mentioned in the lyrics).
Zaire (formerly Belgian Congo) is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while the Congo of the song is the Republic of the Congo, formerly the French colony of Middle Congo.
Abu Dhabi is one of the United Arab Emirates.
Although Yugoslavia existed when the song was written, that country has since fractured into five nations: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovenia.
The island of Crete is part of the nation of Greece.
Besides Andorra, plenty of additional nations are missing.
Whether Palestine is truly a country is a matter better left to the Great Debates forum.
YES! THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one who was bothered by that, although I figured “Damn Hollywood big wig, doesn’t even know the difference between clams and oysters”(Because oyster stew would be a Bay thing too.)
So it’s the same tune with different notes? I’m not trying to refute you, but you can see why that leaves me a bit unsatisfied. The word you were looking for is probably “arranged”. For example, “Heart and Soul” was specially arranged in the movie “Big” so that Tom Hanks wouldn’t have to make six foot lateral leaps while playing it on the giant keyboard. However, it still sounded like “Heart and Soul”. “CotW” has shades of “Mexican Hat Dance” in parts … “Djibouti, Botswana” keeps running through my head for some reason … but the beginning, “United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru,” sounds like a completely different tune, and a familiar one at that. It’s still bugging me.
I memorized it as well. It served me in good stead twice:[ul][]Many years ago, while playing a game of Outburst, my team’s question was “Top 10 countries in which baseball is played”. US, Canada, Japan and Cuba came out quickly, but we started to draw a blank. I immediately began singing Yakko’s World at an extremely high speed, but couldn’t finish it within the one minute we had. Shame, too, as “Australia” was in the last verse and that was the last answer on the card.[]Haunted by my failure, I vowed to practice until I could recite the entire song in under 60 seconds. I have yet to succeed – my record is 1:02 – but eight seconds of that is taken up by humming the bridge between verses, without which I can’t come up with the next line.[/ul]Someday, though. Someday.
Shall I be pedantic and point out that in NO WAY is Denver, Colorado under Boise, Idaho? Go due south as the crow flies from Boise and you’ll end up closer to Vegas than Denver! Keep going and you’ll be in San Diego!
Randy Rogel wrote “Yakko’s World” around 1990 as a study aid for his kids. (This is why the post Soviet and Yugoslav states are not specifically mentioned.) To see if they were paying attention, he deliberately omitted one nation - the Cote d’Ivoire. Turned out his kids were paying more attention than he was; they picked up on the AWOL Republic of South Africa first.
I think that one of the above two links, both of which I got rid of, gave me some spyware that screwed with my PC. I don’t do much on the internet from work except here and after I went there my CD player shut down and I was having other problems. I ended up getting something called eBates, and some sort of worm, both of which I got rid of. I can’t say for certain but I think it’s where they came from.
