Subject: Re: 12/1 - SPOILERS AHOY!
From: rjohnson@vela.acs.oakland.edu (R o d Johnson)
Date: 1990-12-09, 09:37
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <9895@darkstar.ucsc.edu> c2h5oh@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Idealistic Bibliomystic) writes:
> >In article <4153@vela.acs.oakland.edu> rjohnson@vela.acs.oakland.edu (R o d Johnson) writes:

>>> >>>It was "Shuffle off to Buffalo", which is the title of an old song.
> > 
>> >>And, incidentally, from "42nd Street", a great Busby Berkeley musical
> >>from about the era that Leland is so fond of, musically.  BOB isn't

> >No, from around 20 years earlier than the period Leland's into. 42nd
> >Street was made in 1933.  Most of Lelend's songs seem to be from the
> >fifties.

Well, it depends what one means by "era", I suppose.  Eras have no
trouble lasting for twenty years or more.  But remember "Glenn Miller
Night"?  Glenn Miller died in WWII.  I think Leland's tastes are
decidedly pre-war, even if the genre survived into the fifties.  (Just
like all those horrible "Classic Rock" stations play the same records
I listened to twenty-odd years ago as if they were still current.)

To the person who thought "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" means "die"--in the
original song, it's kind of a clever indirect way of saying "get
married".  Buffalo being the place one went to to get to Niagara
Falls, homeymoon destination par excellence for New Yorkers of the
day.  (It's interesting how New York culture became general American
culture through the medium of the movies.  People from, say, Kansas,
didn't traditionally honeymoon in Niagara Falls, though everyone knew
the popular trope of Niagara Falls as honeymoon heaven.  But that's
irrelevant to Twin Peaks. . .)

"I'll go home and pack my panties,                   (approximately)
 You go home and get your scanties
 And away we'll go--
 (O-o-o-oh!)
 Shuffle off to Buffa, shuffle off to Buffalo."

-- * Rod Johnson * rjohnson@vela.acs.oakland.edu * (313) 650 2315 * "Become FUEL, you FOSSILS!" --Ambush Bug