They are loud in volume, unsophisticated in tune and often offensively bawdy in content. With titles ranging from Sex With a Bavarian to Big Tits Potato Salad, the ballermann sub-genre of schlager pop is a big hit in German-dominated nightclubs on the Balearic island of Mallorca....
Layla, by DJ Robin & Schürze, which has sat atop the German singles charts for the last three weeks, is a song about a madam at a brothel who is “more beautiful, younger, foxier” than the other sex workers at her establishment....
I'm surprised anyone cares about sexy lyrics anymore. It's almost touching. I looked up the lyrics to "Layla" (which is obviously not the old Derek and the Dominoes number). Here's the English translation. It says "more beautiful, younger, hornier," by the way. I'm glad The Guardian protected me with "foxier," even as it went out of its way to say "Big Tits Potato Salad."
This is the second time today — and it's only 6:49 a.m. — that I've been smacked in the face by "tits" when I was just trying to read a stodgy old mainstream publication. I was looking up the word "slurp" in the OED, because I wanted to see if it did in fact originate in onomatopoeia, as implied by a crossword puzzle clue I'd just seen. Well, look at the the 1971 quote under the figurative use:
Here's the book, by Brian Aldiss, "A Soldier Erect: or Further Adventures of the Hand-Reared Boy" It was a best-seller in England, we're told.
From a 5-star review at Amazon:
A great memoir of soldiering. I shared many similar experiences in my day and wouldn't trade them for anything. The overwhelming drive for sex in any form especially rang true, excepting of course when in combat. Always on the lookout for a quiet place to crank one out... The ongoing war with the locals interspersed with endless training in abysmal circumstances... Thank you Brian Aldiss for bringing it all back. I'm not quite that man any more but I'll be forever grateful that I once was.
Posts
47 comments:
This is the second time today — and it's only 6:49 a.m. — that I've been smacked in the face by "tits"
Made me smile.
"Big Tits Potato Salad"
It sounds better in German: Grosse Mopse Kartoffelsalat
Also, can I change my handle from RideSpaceMountain to BigTitsPotatoSalad? Fucking hell why didn't I think of that first...
Probably true that soldiers "in action" often fantasize about what they're not getting, but this wouldn't necessarily be sex. Novelist Kingsley Amis has a funny story. He served in Europe in about the last two years of WW II--only because he was called up for National Service. He had already spent time as an undergraduate at Oxford, so he was about 20. Possibly a virgin, as quaint as that might seem. As his service time drew to a close, it struck him more and more that he had been a soldier in France without getting any sex at all. What to tell the grandchildren? So he made a concerted effort to "hook up" on one particular evening. On his own he struck out; with the company of an American he just met, he got lucky. Good old Americans--for one thing, they always have more money to spend, maybe a certain attitude. Feeling pretty peachy, he stayed on, on his own again, for one more drink, and scored a second time with a different young woman. Wow. Next morning, a bad case of crabs. One big question: which apparently nice young woman gave him the crabs?
In response to sexist lyrics I have 1 word- Rap.
If rap is not a problem, nothing is a problem.
Much like if nuclear is not a clean energy source, there is no energy source.
Or if you don't see teacher's unions as a problem, education today must be fine.
People are going to have to figure out that there's a genetic basis to the repressive tendencies: even if you fully believe that an act is unproductive, that's completely separate from the urge to keep others from doing it.
Eric Clapton's acoustic Layla is the best ever
youtube
Mirriam-Webster dictionary says that 'baby' does not refer to an unborn child. IngSoc. Govern yourselves accordingly.
This is the second time today — and it's only 6:49 a.m. — that I've been smacked in the face by "tits"
ha ha ha
you crack me up, Althouse
you know there are men that pay for that!
In America - it's illegal to say anything bad about any democrat.
but - tits!
waking up, having coffee, checking the web, *dying
Perhaps inspired by "Fat Bottomed Girls," which I found out just now was sung by Queen. It was obviously not written by Freddie Mercury, but by his guitarist, Brian May.
Dicke Titten Kartoffelsalat
Olê Olê Olê
Dicke Titten, Kartoffelsalat!
Mit dem Arsch in der Sonne und 'ner Büchse in der Hand,
'nem Eimer auf dem Kopf liegen wir am Strand.
Doch was liegt da hinten? Wir sehen einen Waal.
Auf in den Waalkampf, scheißegal!
Der Waal hustet laut, was kommt da denn raus?
Es ist die fette Schwester von Klaus und Klaus.
Auf die Frage warum er sie gefressen hat, sagt er:
Dicke Titten, Kartoffelsalat!
Unfortunately, it loses a lot in translation.
So I found the music video and there's pretty much a 0% chance of anybody getting smacked by tits watching this video.
As far as I could tell, everybody in that video is a man, including the stripper.
At one point one of the men tries to grab the stripper's tit, and I'm like, "Hey! You can't do that to a stripper!"
And then I was like, "oh shit, that stripper's a man." Or it's a seriously ugly stripper.
It's all in German. So it's a little confusing. And I think it's supposed to be funny? Like Cary Grant dressed as a woman, or Bob Hope dressed as a woman, or Dustin Hoffman dressed as a woman. You remember when a man dressed as a woman used to be funny?
'This is the second time today — and it's only 6:49 a.m. — that I've been smacked in the face by "tits" when I was just trying to read a stodgy old mainstream publication.'
Pillowy? Pointy? Firm?
Inquiring minds...
that I've been smacked in the face by "tits"
=========
hope "tits" did not hurt face and vice versa
smacked in the face
you say that like it's a bad thing.
My standpoint epistemology can't help itself. I must smile.
Althouse smacks us wit a precisely calibrated titillation.
This reminds me of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Put 'Em On The Glass." It's on the album Chief Boot Knocka.
Wasn’t it one of the commenters here at Althouse, maybe Laslo, who use to use the dismissive phrase “ok sugar tits” ? Cracked me up every time.
I tried to find the lyrics to "Sex with a Bavarian," but all my search engine gave me was porn sites. Between the Prussians (and other dour, hardassed North Germans) and the Bavarians, did Germany really have a chance. It must have been something like our red state/blue state conflict or our earlier Civil War. Tossing Austria into the mix didn't help any.
One link led me to Frank Ski (born Frank Rodriguez, so probably not Polish), who went from writing such tunes as "Tony's Bitch Track" and "Whores In This House" (sampled by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion) to become a lauded philanthropist and humanitarian. Not exactly how the Rockefellers or Carnegie or Sloan and Kettering started out.
"Lager louts" was a British thing. British newspapers seemed to think that thinner, lighter foreign beers made the young go crazy and become violent in a way that dark, syrupy thick native beers didn't. "Schlager louts" is word play that adds the German word for "hit [record]." Real German "lager louts" might be Nazi concentration camp guards, but that would be in poor taste, a pun too far.
I haven't made my dear departed mother's recipe for German potato salad in a long time. This will inspire me to do so.
Gonna have to figure out how to cut in half, though. Her recipe will feed a Wehrmacht platoon.
My mom used that expression in the 50s too. I always assumed it was a carryover from her nurse training.
Decadence ain't what used to be. German decadence peaked during the Cabaret era. I watched the video that St. Croix linked to. The singers didn't remind me of George Grosz caricatures. Maybe if they wore monocles.....I was mystified more than anything. The music is bouncy, but I can't figure out what's the point of the joke or even if there is a joke involved.......General observation: Sexual indulgence and excess used to be the sure fire path to hell. People used to work at restraining their libidos or, anyway, took the trouble to be hypocrites, but not anymore. I'm okay with that. Gluttony not lust is the damning sin of our era. I can thus see why Big Tits Potato Salad should be banned. It's the kind of trigger that could cause people to overeat. Although there's nothing wrong with big tits, potato salad can cause a hyperglycemic rush. I'm no prude. I see nothing wrong with Big Tits Balsamic Vinergarette, but Big Tits Potato Salad is a step over the line.
There's an incident in a Heinrich Boll novel, in a bomb-shelter, where at least some of the people get it on while the explosions get closer.
With Germans, you never know.
Tits is too feminine a term- chest appendages is more properly gender neutral.
Under Armor makes a sports bra that should help.
"You remember when a man dressed as a woman used to be funny?"
According to the American Film Institute, Some Like It Hot and Tootsie were the two best comedies of the 20th Century.
A Johnny Rotten take - for pretty much the same reason. Only then it was about a world popping the collar on its polo shirt.
This prudish nannying of the politically correct brigade must stop. We are heading for an anti-fun society.
I deplore political correctness. But in this case I'm with the anti-fun society. Hard times are coming, and these idiots are not preparing.
Rory said...
"You remember when a man dressed as a woman used to be funny?"
Yeah, when I was in college we used to go to San Francisco a lot and usually did an evening at Finochios.
The audience was usually half gay and half college kids. Those were the days when SFO was a fun place. Now, it is a hellhole.
Useless trivia: "Dicke Titten Kartoffelsalat" is sung to the tune of The Entertainer by Scott Joplin.
That’s gross. Every good north German knows that Bavarians are the missing link between humans and Austrians. Nobody should have sex with them.
I heard this joke from one of my grandfather’s friends. Bearing in mind that he was a north German Jew who fled Germany because of the Holocaust. And he still thought it was funny.
Someone left the Althouse blog open on the computer in the Day Room.
This is the second time today . . . that I've been smacked in the face by "tits"
Wasn't that what Anthony Weiner promised Sydney Leathers?
A moob that identifies as a boob.
Big Tits Polka…
Tits too big for me
Too, too big for me
I don’t want ‘em
You can have ‘em
Tits too big for me
And as in the Kinks' "Lola", the music video for this number features the subject "Layla" as a man. Lol-a.
There are many great songs (e.g., “It’s Too Late”, “Key to the Highway”) on that classic album… but if I never hear “Layla” again, it won’t be soon enough.
Prescribed, proscribed, cancelled... take a knee, beg, good boy, girl, whatever.
Germany headed for the "anti-fun society"?
Impossible. Everyone knows how much fun Germans are.
German drag queen story hour must be a blast for the kinder.
On Monday, the city of Würzburg let it be known that it would not play the song at the annual Kiliani fair, which is organised by the municipal authorities.
Depravity, decadence and childish pop tunes-- what a combination. /s
The 8th was the feast of Saint Chilianus, Irish-born Cillian as was, who was bishop of Wurzburg in the late 7th century. The cathedral is dedicated in his name, and his relics are carried in procession through the streets of Wurzburg-- Herbipolis-- on that day. Presumably the drinking and carousing-- the article's 'Kiliani fair'-- continued through Monday morning; but perhaps the Herbipolitani keep the feast with the great solemnity of an octave, extending it through today.
I have been a reader of your blog for at least a decade now, and I have to admit that when it comes to removing the joy, fun or even allure of sex, you can raise your head high, without admitting to any superior.
European Heaven vs. European Hell;
In European Heaven the cops are British, the cooks are French, The mechanics are German, the bankers are Swiss and the lovers are Italian.
In European Hell the cooks are British, The mechanics are French, The cops are German, The lovers are Swiss, and the bankers are Italian.
Kai Akker said...
Germany headed for the "anti-fun society"?
Impossible. Everyone knows how much fun Germans are.
Thinnest book in the world? The Big Book of German Humor.
Modern society:
In our society we have some people who cannot accept themselves for who they are. Our society however, is insisting we accept them for who they are not.
We are preached at, insisting we ignore science and pretend men can become pregnant and the term woman does not exist. Example: Planned Parenthood has scrubbed the term "Woman" from their website.
Evidently sanity is no longer a goal.
Post a Comment