#600, #664, #854, #948, #962: Mondegreens Part 2

#600: 'Circle Sky' by the Monkees
Misheard lyric (Beth): "Yes it looks like we've mated once again!"
Actual lyric: "Yes it looks like we've made it once again!"




#664: 'Say It Ain't So' by Weezer
Misheard lyric (Erin): "...wrestle with Jiminy!"
Actual lyric: "...wrestle with Jimmy!"




#854: 'Testosterone' by Bush (aka Bush X haha)
Misheard lyric (Andrew): "I am a horse! I am a horse!"
Actual lyric: "I am a whore! I am a whore!"




#948: 'Dedicated Friend' by Mike Nesmith & the First National Band
Misheard lyric (Beth and Erin): "Has anybody here seen CHEESE!?"
Actual lyric: "Has anybody here seen Jesus?"




#962: 'Zilch' by the Monkees
Misheard lyric (Andrew): "Mr. Thumbelina, Mr. Bob Thumbelina"
Actual lyric: "Mr. Dobbolina, Mr. Bob Dobbolina"

list quote # 1850

because sometimes you just need a good quote to get you through your day:

"if you don't play hide-n-seek, i'm going to stick a live lobster down my pants!" -zack kordan



ultimately, this was a lose/lose situation for zack.

#216, #217, #300, #338, #371: Mondegreens Part 1

From Wikipedia: "A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result near homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. It most commonly is applied to a line in a poem or a lyric in a song. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay 'The Death of Lady Mondegreen,' published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954."

Here are some of our all-time favorite mondegreens along with the names and affiliations of the people in our lives who misheard them:

#216: 'Undone-The Sweater Song' by Weezer
Misheard lyric (Erin): "...soon you'll see my titties"
Actual lyric: "...in your Superman skivvies"
(see Erin's intro for the video--no need to post it again)

#217: 'Lucas with the Lid Off' by Lucas
Misheard lyric (Erin): "a real sucker"
Actual lyric: "I feel so good"




#300: 'Orange Crush' by REM
Misheard lyric (Erin): "I've got my spider, got my orange Crush"
Actual lyric: "I've got my spine, I've got my orange Crush"




#338: 'Landslide' covered by Smashing Pumpkins
Misheard lyric (both of us): "I'm getting old, ACHOO!"
Actual lyric: "I'm getting older too"




#371: 'Heart-Shaped Box' by Nirvana
Misheard lyric (Beth's brother Kenny): "Hey! Ray! I got a singin-o-may"
Actual lyric: "Hey! Wait! I got a new complaint"

the list #2011 and #2012

i know this might sound hard to believe, but once upon a time the internet was a novel new thing. i remember when my family first got aol and we had to pay the bill according to how much time we spent online -- there was no such thing as unlimited use. my parents expected us to adhere to a strict schedule of 30 minutes a day by posting a sign-up sheet next to the computer. you can imagine how difficult this often was for a 14-year-old girl who had mtv chat rooms to visit and green day news sites to check. i spent countless hours chatting on instant message with some of my earliest internet friends (who i still know today) who had screen names like "thelowestgear" and "daisyberk9."

when downloading music became popular, beth and i were early into our college careers. we arrived back at my parents house one afternoon after class to an empty house and a puzzling result on the open "kazaa" download list. someone in the house had recently downloaded the song "reelin in the years" by steely dan...but WHO??? who in my family had the gall to download such an atrocity?

"it was probably my brother chris," i guessed.

"nah, i think it was mike," beth admitted.

pitted against each other, we decided to up the ante. only one of us would be right, and the other would have to suffer the consequences: during roll call in our "gender and sexuality" class the next morning, the loser of the bet would have to snort really loud.

mike arrived home first and beth asked him if he downloaded the steely dan song.

"of course," he said, sitting down in front of the computer and turning up the speakers full volume. OUCH.

cut to class the next morning. beth is giddy knowing the task i have ahead of me and how much i'm dreading it. our teacher, whopper, so nicknamed because beth claimed his shaved head made him look like "a malted milk ball, one that dropped on the floor and got dirty" (list # 1983) was taking attendance. i was trying to pick a good time, but really, when IS a good time to snort really loudly when the classroom is dead silent?

"marissa?"

*SNORT*

people looked around curiously, and i tried to look just as confused as they did so i didn't look guilty. poor marissa looked most confused of all, wondering if this was some sort of personal attack. there's no doubt that the person directly in front of me knew my secret, but i tried really hard to play it off.

sorry, marissa.

and damn you and your steely dan, mike.

#1102,#1976,#1978-1980,and #3049: Telephone

One of the most entertaining pastimes for us is to play Telephone. This is because nearly everyone in our family has a really big problem understanding anything that anyone says. I haven't heard of any scientific studies that could prove a genetic connection, but I kind of think there must be.

If you've somehow never played Telephone, here's the gist of it: several people (at least 4) sit in a circle. One person comes up with a 'message' and whispers it to the person next to them. That person whispers it to the person next to THEM, and so on. Once it comes to the last person, they have to say what they believe they heard--very different, in most cases, from the original message.

The following are some of the Telephone messages that were classic enough to make the List (along with the original message when available):

#1102: "Rob Nelson resigned!" (original message: "Roy Orbison's blind.")

#1976: "One, two, three, four...get your niece up on the cot!"

#1978: "Gratuitous sex for better grades!"

#1979: "Schooper dooper doo, it's not a species too!"

#1980: This entry does not refer to a particular message--rather, it addresses the hilarity that a well-placed snort can lend to the game. Trust me.

#3049: "(chewing noise)...Blackbeard the pirate needs a haircut!"


I don't know if you noticed, but for some reason everything always ends up coming out as an exclamation. I think there's a comedic law stating that everything is funnier with an exclamation point...if there isn't, there should be. Kind of reminds me of this...

the list #1287 and #1288

beth's family moved several times growing up, so we marked periods of our lives by the street they lived on. during the hathaway house period there wasn't much to do except walk across the street to the trashy shopping center and hope some high school boys were skateboarding in the parking lot.

one night we asked her parents if we could walk across the street to kmart. we liked to play in the close-outs sections of the stores and laugh at things like giant pairs of undies.

"only if you take your brothers with you," they told us, "we have to take your sister to her basketball game."

with nothing better to do, we rounded up joey and kenny. it was already dark when we set out, but for some reason we didn't bother to check just how late it was. kmart was closed for the nite; there was no fun to be had in the undies aisle. but there WAS a strange pile of crap in the snow in the middle of the empty parking lot. the four of us started poking around. it was a pile of frozen clothes! apparently someone had intended to drop the garbage bag in the goodwill donation box at the other end of the parking lot and never made it to their destination. soon we were yanking out items left and right like it was buried treasure.

"look, a pair of gym shorts!" i held them up to my waist. i traded them to one of beth's brothers for a gym shirt instead.

"hey, here's somebody's id card. i think this kid goes to my high school," beth said, sticking the card in her pocket and pulling a stylish blue sweater out of the frozen mound. in an ironic twist of fate, beth and i would eventually become friends with the kid on the id, whose name was john. i think we even told him how we took some of his clothes home with us that night, and for whatever reason he stayed friends with us even after an admission like that. on second thought maybe its not so strange after all, as john would eventually attend one of my birthday parties and walk around for a portion of the night with my mom's cow toaster cover on his head before pressing his naked butt against our sliding glass door. but i digress...

so me, beth, joey and kenny each carried a frozen prize home with us. halfway back to their house, someone noticed that there was a man walking behind us in the dark.

"he's following us," we whispered to each other, "he must have seen us take these clothes and now he's coming after us!"

we ran. we didn't stop until we reached the front door, and even then we didn't stop. the family dogs started barking when we stampeded through the door.

"the dogs are barking! he must be outside!"

we panicked. we ran into the kitchen and grabbed weapons, then locked ourselves in the bathroom. joey suddenly realized he didn't have a weapon handy and he scanned the bathroom counter for something suitable. and so the four of us crouched and waited for the next 45 minutes, clutching an apple peeler, a butter knife, a letter opener, and a bottle of lysol.

we debated what we should do: should one of us risk leaving the safety of the bathroom to run across the kitchen for the phone to call 911? should someone sneak out the bathroom window and run to the neighbor for help? how would we explain to their parents that we ruined the window screen? he WAS in the house, wasn't he?!

when we heard the dogs barking a second time, we grabbed our weapons and held onto each other for dear life.

"hello, anybody home?" their dad called out.

"HELP! HELP! WE'RE IN HERE!"

we refused to come out until their dad thoroughly checked the house for any intruders.

"check the closets one more time," we told him.

then we filled the utility tub with hot water and thawed out our frozen clothes.



beth's frozen sweater


wearing my frozen bulldogs gym shirt (with a special appearance, down low, by cwis wayhew)

q: what do most normal people do in the bathroom? a: BAKE A CHOCOLATE CAKE!

The thing I remember most about the early days of the List was the fact that other people had to be specifically granted permission to even know about it. It was a HUGE deal if one of us started dating a boy and the other agreed that he could know about the List.

Some of you, upon reading two or three entries, may wish that we'd kept the List to ourselves. And that's OK.

But if you can appreciate the fact that Damien and Ralph sleep butt to face, if Children of the Corn fanfiction sounds interesting to you, or if you've ever dumped chewed-up Easter candy and a packet of ramen noodle seasoning into the toilet for your mom to find...

...the List by Beth and Erin will quickly become your newest internet addiction.

I love you.

introducing, the king of cartoooooooooons!

the year was 1994.

my cousin beth and i bonded while we thrifted for checkered polyester grandpa pants and dyed our hair green with food coloring. we ransacked the library's new selection of alternative rock cassettes and begged our parents to buy us fender stratocasters, even though neither of us had ever played a guitar in our whole life. it was a glorious time to be 12 years old.



while coming of age and discovering ourselves, we also discovered that we were the same person: erinandbeth. for the next decade+, we were inseparable. we got through life with a shared sense of humor and appreciation for laughter, sometimes at the most inappropriate of times. in 1994, we started keeping a list of everything we thought was funny: quotes, stories, people, EVERYTHING. over the years the list grew and grew, until it reached legendary proportions. it probably helped that everyone close to us knew that the list existed, but no one was ever allowed to see it except the two of us. and so it has stayed that way through the years, even though the list hasn't been updated since 2007. we felt like it was finally time to share our pride and joy with everyone else -- hell, we've probably been laughing at you all along, we might as well let you in on the joke!

we hope you enjoy these stories based on THE LIST as much as we do.

xoxo,
erin