Q: Is that a fish on your back, or are you just happy to French me?
A: WAIT OMG OMG YOUR FACE IS ON FIRE!
...
April Fools'! HAHA!!! PWNED, biotech!!!!!! I don't even know what that means, but I bet it totally burns.
This is by far my favorite song about April Fools' Day. Also probably the only song about April Fools' Day, what with it being such a stupid idea to write songs about April Fools' Day.
Except in this case. In "April Fools," Wainwright offers a cautionary tale against being hoodwinked by the dumbest of nature's pranks — l'amour.
"You will believe in love," he sings, "and all that it's supposed to be / but just until the fish start to smell and you're struck down by a hammer."Sounds like nonsense? It is and it isn't: Rufus is referencing to the old (16th Century, circa) French tradition of sneakily posting dead fish on the backs of others — particularly anyone slow to pick up on the latest fashions — on the first of April. True story!
(Of course, this is France we're talking about, in an era when deodorizing was even less of a priority than it is now, so suffice to say, no one noticed the fish until mid-July.)
Poets that they are, the French seem to have meant the prank as a metaphor; marking one's friend with a Pisces in early spring was a means of portraying him to be, zodiacally speaking, quite literally stuck to the past.
Today, the fish is a symbol extremely popular among fundamentalist Christians. I offer no further commentary.
On a RELATED: note, my girlfriend just unveiled a new service, Google TiSP, that provides users with free broadband. It's a revolutionary idea... for me to poop on.
2 comments:
le poisson d'avril! paper fishes were so much fun in high school french class...
Only Rufus can write about odd things... Like cigarettes and chocolate milk...
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