Welcome, neighbors. Since the police can’t seem to get off their duff-a-rooneys to do something about this burglar-ino, I think it’s time to start our own neighborhood watch … a-rooney! — Flanders, “Homer The Vigilante”
Today’s post may well prove controversial enough to delegitimize all that we’ve worked for, but here goes nothing, courtesy of dear, loyal SHS reader, I’mSomeOneElse!, who provides this relevant excerpt from On The Road:
… one night we suddenly went mad together again; we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who’s always saying ‘Right-orooni’ and ‘How ’bout a little bourbon-arooni.’ … Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, ‘Great-orooni … fine-ovauti … hello-orooni … bourbon-orooni … all-orooni … how are the boys in the front row making out with their girls-orooni … orooni … vauti … oroonirooni …’ He keeps this up for fifteen minutes …
Slim Gaillard! A relatively obscure jazz musician, and quite the sousaphone player. Actually, it appears he played just about any instrument you could throw at him:
Look at those fucking hands! He could play while palming a volleyball.
But, more relevant to today’s discussion are Gaillard’s vocal eccentricities. In addition to his musical prowess, the man was proficient in many-a-language, including one of his own construction: Vout. And it regularly factored into his stage show …
Now, I’m not guaranteeing that Flanders’ vocal acrobatics derive from the Vout dialect (note the suspicious absence of the “diddly” suffix), but there are serious similarities here that merit consideration. And I, for one, will not allow this issue to rest until I go to work in a few minutes.
