By Charles Miller
Recently, someone made the mistake of asking me what I enjoy most about the internet. A mistake because I responded with a real shaggy dog story.
It was in 1957. I was getting ready to start the first grade, and the family Miller all went to the Paramount Theater on one of our nights out. The feature that night was “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” and in the audience were undoubtedly quite a few World War II veterans. When the whistling of the movie’s theme song started, there were chuckles, laughing, and a few started singing out the words before being shushed into not-so-embarrassed silence. After the movie was over, I asked my mother what the commotion had been about, but she just shushed me, saying that was a subject for grown-ups.
That episode might have been forgotten forever except that the scene repeated itself less than a decade later when, with great fanfare, that award-winning movie was broadcast on television for the first time. It was a big deal for such a long movie to be presented without commercial interruption, and so I had to wait until the end to ask mother again about the earlier incident at the movie theater. Again, she refused to explain about nazis, monarchism, microorchidism, and anorchia.
It was late. “Time to go to bed,” she said.
That movie theme song might have made it past the Hollywood censors, but it was not getting past my mother. And so it came to pass that for more than half a century, that incident at the movie theater remained a mystery to me.
In due course, the internet came into existence, and there can be found the answers to many mysteries. Even today, 65 years later, the bawdy quatrain alternate lyrics for the “Colonel Bogey March” might still be a little too lewd or risqué for publication here, but you can go look them up for yourself. And so, my answer to the question of what I like most about the internet? It’s that having access to the internet makes it possible for any of us to search for and often find answers to life’s greatest mysteries without having to ask mother.
One of those great mysteries for me used to be song lyrics, and I am sure I am not alone in not being able to understand all the words being sung. Today when I hear a song, I often do an internet search on the name of the song plus the word “lyrics,” and that almost always finds the words to the song. An online search will frequently direct you to one of the popular websites dedicated exclusively to song lyrics. Among these are lyrics.com, LetSingIt.com, LyricsMode.com, etc.
Many of us remember the Beatles’ number one hit “Penny Lane” in 1967. You’ll never be able to hear it the same way once you know what Paul McCartney was really singing about. Indeed, we might never have heard it in the first place if the censors had understood all the drug and sexual innuendoes. The same goes for “Brown Sugar” by the Rolling Stones, “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard, and many more. The Beatles’ song “Blackbird” has nothing to do with ornithology.
Now, if I could only get this one catchy tune out of my head, “♪ Hitler has only got one ♬….”
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981, and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 415 101 8528 or email FAQ8@SMAguru.com.
