May 082008
As part of RTH’s occasional series of Great Moments in Televisual Music, some of the most awesomely “we just don’t care” lipsynching ever, on one of my very most favorite songs, courtesy of Soul Train circa 1975.
As part of RTH’s occasional series of Great Moments in Televisual Music, some of the most awesomely “we just don’t care” lipsynching ever, on one of my very most favorite songs, courtesy of Soul Train circa 1975.
they’re running uphill in mud.
i mean, they definitely DO care about whether or not it looks like they’re actually singing the song.
hell, they even do some acting.
it’s the producers of the show who don’t give a shit. they could have mixed in some of the sound of the song playing in the studio where the people were dancing, to give it at least a semblance of a live feel. but instead, it sounds completely canned.
btw…the use of the word “poonanny” in the poll at the right has had me on edge for days…i still haven’t voted.
That is indeed one gloriously awesome song. Thom Bell is just so amazing — one of my heroes. Though he didn’t write this one, apparently.
Hey, Sat — what’s your issue with the term “poonanny”?
That second dude sings like a lady.
Maybe that second dude *is* a lady!
i dunno, hvb, it’s a visceral thing. don’t like the sound of it in relation to what it’s supposed to describe.
i guess the fact that it has the word “poo” in it might be a problem….i got nothin’ against poo, per se, in fact, i’ve been known to have quite a scatalogically inflected sense of humor, but i don’t want it anywhere near the concept of the honeypot.
then there’s the use of the word “nanny”…again, not too sexy.
you follow me, here?
not a pretty mental image.
hope i haven’t ruined it for you…
Not to be pedantic, because it’s totally not my style, but I always assumed poonanny was a corruption of pudenda, a euphemism for genitals meaning “things to be ashamed of.”
I think “poonanny” is a girlification/cutesified version of the much rawer-sounding “poontang” — the origins of which I’d be most curious to ascertain. The Ted Nugent connection makes this topic RTH-relevant, BTW.
Ain’t the Internet amazin’?
(snip)
Interestingly, the first example of the word in writing is from 1929. That’s not surprising, as a writer would have had to be mighty brave to record that word before it had become common and lost some of its edge.
What exactly does poontang mean? It has several meanings: a woman as a sex object, sexual intercourse, and probably the ultimate meaning, female pudenda. So where did such a bizarre-sounding word come from? There are several theories. Probably the most popular is that it derives from Louisiana (and standard) French putain “whore”. This is possible as most people we know who are familiar with the word are from Louisiana or some state nearby, or they first heard the word from a citizen of that area. However, the connection to putain is based mostly on conjecture, because of the similarity of the French word to the English one. Some etymologists specializing in slang think that the word more likely derives from a Chinese language, as there are variant forms like poon tai and poon kai. One school has it coming from some Filipino language, while Eric Partridge guesses it is of American Indian origin.
Oh, we found it amusing to learn that the following statement is widely attributed to John F. Kennedy immediately after he was elected president in 1960: “I guess this means my poon days are over.”
Since I have access to the OED here are two entries:
Punany, n.
coarse slang (orig. Caribbean and in British Afro-Caribbean usage).
Plural -s, -es. Forms: 19- poonani, 19- poonany, 19- poononny, 19- punaany, 19- punani, 19- punanny, 19- punany. [Origin uncertain. Perh. POON n.3 + a suffix of uncertain origin; or perh. related to Jamaican English poonoo vulva (1943 in an app. isolated attestation: see F. G. CASSIDY & R. B. LE PAGE Dict. Jamaican Eng. s.v.).]
The female external genitals; the vulva, the vagina. Hence: a woman considered sexually.
Popularized originally in the lyrics of Jamaican dancehall reggae in the mid 1980s, and from there the lyrics of U.S. rap and hip-hop music. In the United Kingdom in the late 1990s, further popularized by ‘Ali G’, a television persona of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
1987 D. THOMPSON (title of song) Punanny. 1992 Voice 22 Dec. (Suppl.) 5/1 In reggae it’s sex this and sex that{em}there’s nothing new. The gun talk, the punany talk, the badness, the cutting people up… That’s what’s ruining reggae right now. 1993 J. SINGLETON Poetic Justice ii. 36 She tells Jessie that Lucky wants to smell her poonani and asks whether she should let him. 1998 R. MOORE et al. Romeo & Juliet (song, perf. ‘Sylk-e Fyne’) in Hip-hop & Rap (2003) 368 Before I serve you up With an overdose Of that bomb-ass punani. Make you my man. 2001 Independent (Nexis) 6 Nov. 7 He..likes to be shown respect by his homeboys and doesn’t take no crap from no Henley-on-Thames punani called Charlotte.
Poontang, n.
slang (orig. U.S., chiefly in African-American usage).
[Origin uncertain; perh. French putain prostitute (see PUTAIN n.).
The word does not appear to have originated in African-American use. If it is of French origin, its route into English is unclear: on phonological grounds it is unlikely to have been transmitted via Louisiana French Creole piten(n) whore.
In early use freq. written as two words.]
1. Sexual intercourse, sex; copulation.
1927 J. O’HARA Sel. Lett. (1978) 25 Just between us I haven’t had any poon-tang since I was in Germany. 1929 T. WOLFE Look homeward, Angel 343 A fellow’s got to have a little Poon Tang. 1966 C. HIMES Heat’s On xv. 122 That ain’t our racket. We just sells poontang here. 1976 Honolulu Star-Bull. 21 Dec. E-10/6 (advt.) The other girls majored in home ec…but Debby majored in Poon-tang. 1992 O. GOLDSMITH First Wives Club II. i. 148 Morty himself knew there was a lot more to life than good poontang.
2. A woman or women generally, regarded as a means of sexual gratification; (also) the female genitals.
1945 W. G. JOHNSON in W. Little Up Sun! (1992) 136 McGoon started looking for some ‘poon tang’. 1947 C. WILLINGHAM End as Man II. vii. 78 Poley looked out the window and saw a pretty Negro girl on the sidewalk… ‘Eye that poon tang there,’ he said. 1959 R. CONDON Manchurian Candidate ii. 21 Every now and then I think about you coming all the way to Korea from New Jersey to get your first piece of poontang. 1972 Listener 22 June 845/2 Massa gonna smack yo black ass, nigger. You can’t go chasing white poontang all night long. 1990 Picture (Sydney) 7 Aug. 12/2 Tenderly they restored the senses of the fallen with a refreshing whiff of fresh poontang. 2000 Village Voice (Nexis) 14 Nov. 10 A talk show starring A.J. Benza,..who isn’t acutely frustrated by anything except unavailable poontang.
As edifying as the linguistic diversion is, I just think it’s awesome that they’ve got one of the guys blithely lipsynching the lines that were clearly sung by a woman, specifically one Barbara Ingram.
If they’re gonna go so totally we-don’t-care on the lip-synching, why not have fun with it and have the bass singer “sing” the woman’s parts? That would’ve ruled.
I don’t care about the etymology of the word.
i’m like the girl in that episode of Seinfeld who “calls an audible” and claims she has a boyfriend after hearing george espouse the merits of the word “manure” (“…it’s really not so bad: there’s a “ma”, and then there’s a “nure”).
regardless of its linguistic iterations, it’s got the words “poo” and “nanny” in it. very unattractive. there are many better, more attractive words for…it.
i prefer “gash”.
I kid, I kid….good lord, people, I KID!!!
re. the lip synching, I maintain that they DO care about it. they seem to go to alot of trouble. and that INCLUDES the decison to have the buck-toothed guy sing the lady’s parts.
AND — nobody’s had the guts to tell us whether it’s possible to play the guitar like a poonanny. It absolutely *is* possible to play it like a giant dick.
This could be the nerdiest discussion I’ve seen on RTH yet (and no, I haven’t forgotten the Great Punctuation Debate of ’06 on the old list). Why doesn’t everyone just get it over with and list their Top Ten Desert Island Discs?
Heh heh. Sat said “ladyparts.”
cdm, i fail to see how a discussion of our favorite words for girly parts is nerdy, OR like a discussion where we name our favorite desert…island….
nevermind…
you’re cool, fonzie. we’re just nerds.
how ozz-um is it that we’re simultaneously having a discussion about “ladyparts” and a guy who’s singing the lady’s parts?
pretty ozzm, i reckon.
I’m really glad I held off on posting that “Discuss the merits of ‘pretend your face is a Maserati’ in Wango Tango” that I drafted yesterday.
Actually, it was the thread about the derivation of the word that got to me. I’m all for talking about vag or Desert Island discs. Or that time that I tried to jump my motercycle over a tank full of sharks in Arnold’s parking lot, for that matter.
Django. Seriously.
On a related note, I came across this announcement today:
“Abel Prize for 2008 goes to author & editor Jacques Tits:
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the Abel Prize for 2008 to Springer editor and author Jacques Tits of the Collège de France, Paris.”
Congratulations, Professor Tits!
G48 — please explain how Django played his guitar like a poonanny. Seriously. Fast? With two fingers? Gypsy shit? Wha?
“Abel Prize for 2008 goes to author & editor Jacques Tits”
But I think he pronounces it “Teets”. Much classier sounding.
The woman singing in the video has the biggest mustache I’ve ever seen on a chick.
I wonder if he likes the only Norwegian beer I can ever remember trying – Aass?
“Abel Prize for 2008 goes to author & editor Jacques Tits:
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the Abel Prize for 2008 to Springer editor and author Jacques Tits of the Collège de France, Paris.”
Congratulations, Professor Tits!
I would just like it be officially noted that I had absolutely nothing to do with this “poonanny” discussion.
Mockcarr, I’ve never tried that one. but I did once try another Norwegian beer, and I was told that it tastes like Aass.
Man, I really want to see the stats on this discussion. I think the search bots are going to have a field day with this