The Machinery of Night

Obscure Adventures in Pop Culture

Today, Lileks is beating himself up over having done insufficient research on...well, something or other. I can't figure it out. Something about a guy named Babbit and "The Three Little Fishies" and seafood, MAMA:

The other day I was listening to the big band channel on the DirecTV, and there it was:

Hold tight, hold tight, hold tight, hold tight
Foo-ra-de-ack-a-sa-ki
Want some sea food mama
Shrimpers and rice they're very nice

It's "Hold Tight," made famous by the Andrews Sisters.

You might ask: who gives a flyin' farg? Eh?

Um, yeah. Turns out that someone sent him email identifying the phrase "seafood, mama" in "The Three Little Fishies" as being from "Hold Tight", and he never read the email, and now he's so ashamed.

So I'm not even going to try to send him email to ask whether he thinks Foo-ra-de-ack-a-sa-ki has any relevance to the Jetsons' Foodarakacycle. (Googling turned up no links between them.) He can think of it himself one day, and here I'll be ahead of him. Nyeah.

Really cool matchbook today, too.

(What does Foo-ra-de-ack-a-sa-ki mean, anyway? How about "seafood, mama"? Why would Kyser's band single out that particular phrase for inclusion in their version of "The Three Little Fishies"? Is it a drug reference? A sexual practice? Do I really want to know?)