A Little Christmas Treat

There was a time, several years ago, when my life was all vodka dinners and spite. Yep, those were good days back in the music business. To take our minds off the spite, me and some friends got together and did stupid shit. Some in this situation get into fights. Some guys play rugby. Some golf; some collect stamps or fly to Singapore to perform acts of unspeakable beastliness.

We, we screwed around with media.

There's a tape out there in the world somewhere, that features -- yes -- me and Jenna Jameson. But not in the way you think. No; think the opposite. It's real funny.

And there's also the following, recorded shortly before Christmas, the year 2000, by the Jersey City Taberknuckle Choir. That's me on lead vocals and drunken bass.


Posted by Johno Johno on   |   § 18

§ 18 Comments

1

J: Well, that makes more sense - you're talking about a "Western New Yock" accent.

G: There's a made-up moniker for Pennsylvanians who talk as you describe. It's "yinzer".

2

Patton/GL - In Pittsburgh, it's not 'you-uns' it's 'yinz', therefore, 'yinzer'. Classic phrase is 'Going downtown for pierogies and Fanta.' They say 'downtown' in a peculiar way. I can only say it, but it's very distinctive.

Of course, I say this as a Philly girl who mashes my words together. 'Je-et?' 'Nah. Jyoo?' That's a whole conversation translated as 'Did you eat?' 'No. Did you?' We have a tendency in Philly to say 'youse' like in NYC. 'Youse guys wanna go to Pat's for a cheesesteak?'

3

People always write in 'yinz' but there is a definite 'u' sound in there. Halfway between 'ih' and 'you' is how I've heard it. A native yinz-sprecher may be at the festung-warming party. We can make fun of him and analyse his dialect.

Central and northern ohio has little of the stuff that Johno's talking about. If we're in the same room, you can tell how my accent sounds infinitely more educated and urbane than his back country mumblings.

4

Are you guys kidding?

"recaahcle" = "recycle"
"Aaahl" = "I'll"
"keylled" = "killed"
"Dayad" = "Dad"

The NE Ohio accent - the Eastern great lakes accent, is marked by waad open vaawels. Listen to the song again - every vaawel is waad open. Not a twang; not a drawl. Waad open vaaaaawels. That's the eeackcent I'm talking about.

5

Maps - do you have an email address that will accept 5MB file transfers? Alternately, you can download it from a link which I will provide to you offlist.

I'd be deeply amused if our afternoon project were get radio play. Deeply amused, like after we finished the Jenna Jameson project and realized the hot dog bit had actually worked.

6

Years ago, when "Slingblade" was a fairly fresh cultural reference, some Boston DJ mixed Carl's "mmm-hmmm"'s with audio from porn flicks, to great comic effect.

Or maybe that was Howard Stern? Well, anyway it was funny.

8

I think I didn't get the Jenna Jameson thing before. *Now* I get it. It must be a gender thing. Silly boys.

Patton- Fugly. Gotcha.

Johno- I'll email you offlist.

9

Okay, I'll admit that I like the "All we are sayyyying...is where are my pants" bit

11

TEAT!

HAW!

And dontcha just love that, witty urbane culturatto that I am, I sing in the THICKEST OHIO ACCENT IN THE UNIVERSE??

12

OK - I'll bite. What's an Ohio accent, other than perhaps the lack of one?

Because, if I'm right about the definition, then I still have one, more or less.

13

Except for a few giveaways - like "pop" for soft drink and dropped in infinitives (something needs done), I don't think Ohio has an accent, much. Even people who aren't from Ohio don't think Ohio has an accent. Maybe it's because newscasters all sound like they're from Ohio.

Ohioese is the default standard American Engrish.

14

Well, sort of, depending on where you are. My uncle, in Toledo, swore we all sounded like hillbillies when my family moved to the Dayton area.

Apropos that, I'm not sure I even want to live in a world where folks in Toledo think they can look down their noses at anyone, but since he's dead now, I guess it's OK. (He was a favorite uncle of mine, otherwise, so of course I'm kidding)

15

B,
Might even call it a northeast accent, that covers areas in several states. A sort of upstate NY, western MA, CT, OH, and certain PA-bits, maybe.

Well, except for the Pennsylvanians who use "you-uns" for the second person plural.

16

It's not just that it doesn't work in Firefox, but that it's 14 kinds of fucked up, and looks positively like ass. I'll see what I can do.

17

I don't understand Patton's comment. I'm running Firefox, a very old version and it works just fine for me. (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10 to be specific in that n3rdgrrl way.)

Great song! Hilarious!

I'd stick to your day job, but I'd like an MP3 to ship to a DJ friend for his Friday NSFW radio show.

18

Since I posted the original comment, I've fixed the original problem by using a different media player.

Trust me, it was fugly before, in Firefox. Didn't work very well, neither.

[ You're too late, comments are closed ]