Mark Steyn on “(I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo”:
We no longer have wires or flyers, so that’s a moment – America, 1942 – distilled for all time. But, much as I like the rhyme, neither is my favorite word in that couplet: that honor is reserved for “hoppin'”. He doesn’t catch the flyer, board the flyer, buy tickets for the flyer, reserve passage on the flyer; he hops it – and it’s just the perfect choice for the song’s debonair urgency. Just lovely.
Not incidentally:
…he was famously cranky and disliked all manner of things, especially the celebrity of other songwriters such as Mercer and Irving Berlin (“They bombed the wrong Berlin,” he remarked in 1945)…
This is how grown ups talk.
So no, I won’t stop saying “There’s never an avalanche around when you need one” , etc.
Other people’s ignorance isn’t my problem.
Also?
This is America:
