Translate into commonspeak:
"She's living in L.A. with my ex old best friend Ray."
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We must assume that Croce knows what he is doing. We must assume that the deployment of the modifiers "ex" and "old" is not redundant, that they are not merely synonyms for "former," and neither are they gratuitous, added only to fill out the line's scansion.
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Bonus: Who would win in a bar fight: Bad Leroy Brown or Big Jim Walker? Justify your answer with evidence from Croce's oeuvre (including but not limited to "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown," and "You Don't Mess Around With Jim").
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9 comments:
My $$$ would be on Leroy, as, after having messed around with Slim, the only parts of big Jim not to have been covered in blood were the soles of his feet...
1.) Commonspeak: "... damn it..."
2.) Bonus: that's a trick question. Both are Jim Croce, and so they would simply jam and get drunk.
It's actually "my best old ex-friend Ray," which makes more sense.
But I believe the translation is still "... damn it..."
No no no...it doesn't make any more sense!
Noah that is from a different Croce song. which leads me to believe your PARENTS listened to Croce and he is a "person my parents used to play". Which is irrelevant, but still.
Operator was the first song they played on the radio station I listened to in Corvallis the night they said his plane had gone down. Now I have REVEALED MY AGE!
It's prophetic - "that's not the way it feels".
and the rest of the line of course, "a guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated"
so is it "knew - well and sometimes hated"
or "knew well" AND "sometimes hated".
Do people even say to operators anymore "can you help me make this call?" Don't they just say for spanish, press 2.
I am SO NOT avoiding grading papers by posting here.
noah. never mind. you were responding to the BONUS question. SHOW OFF!!
I dunno. It makes more sense that way to me. My old friend, my best "old friend" becomes my best old ex friend.
Or he could have been drunk, dammit.
Noah,
You are correct.
Jim wasn't as tough as he seemed.
Or no match for Slim, anyway.
I wish I would have read this sooner. I think Ray is an old friend from back in the day. He was also a best friend at one point and now he is no longer a friend at all.
As for Jim Walker and Bad Leroy Brown I think I would like to see them in some sort of WWE melee with a by named Sue, the Reverend Mr. Black, and Big Bad John. I would pay money to see that.
And I don't give a damn about a Greenback dollar
Spend it fast as I can
for a whaling song and a good guitar
the only things I understand, poor boy
the only things I understand
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