Beatles

Top five interpretations of “Koo Koo Ka Joob” or whatever, on Twitter just now

This morning brings us another endless stream of people Twittering the chorus of “I Am the Walrus”. It is continually amazing to me how many people all over the world, in several languages, feel the need to tweet some permutation of the phrase “I am the Walrus”. Another thing that amuses me is how people are spelling whatever it is that the Beatles laid down as the final phrase in the chorus. My interpretation has always sort of been “Koo Koo Ka Joob”, but here are a list of five current versions of this lyric on the Twitter just now.

  1. Goo Goo G’Joob!
  2. Koo Koo Koochu
  3. Coo Coo Ca Choo
  4. Kukukuchu
  5. Good good good job!

Of those, today there seems to be worldwide consensus on “Goo Goo G’Joob” which I haven’t seen much recently but is very common this morning.  A week ago, around John’s birthday, it was different.

I’m not sure why this has captured my interest this morning, and sorry it’s not ‘really’ walrus related but there you are!

Turns out the Walrus was Paul, after all.

So last night my son and I were at his school carnival, which is a crazy, far-too-crowded affair at which every kid in the school and their parents and scored of other people all jam themselves into the elementary school gym and play carnival games in order to win candy and donated stuffed animals. My son was frantically searching for any donated Pokemon plush, but at this one game we found a true score as he won a walrus! This is an “official” picture, the one we won doesn’t have the “Ty” tag, but he does have a small label reading “Paul”. I chuckled at the joke, saying to my 9 year old son, “Turns out Paul was the walrus after all”. Of course he had no idea what I was talking about.

I don’t know anything about Beanie Babies – my sum total of knowledge would be just an awareness of the crazy antics surrounding them when they were popular. I’ve never had any, or course, and they were “over” long before my son was on the scene. I thought that the Beatles reference on the label was just a sly in-joke, until I looked up Paul the Walrus on Amazon. That’s when I found out that it was not so much a sly reference to the Beatles, as a full-on exploitation of the whole Walrus/Beatles thing. I guess every Beanie Baby has a poem, and Paul’s is:

Traveling the ocean in a submarine
Singing and playing a tambourine
One day hoping to lead a band
First he needs to find dry land!

The description goes on to describe another Beanie Baby called “Ringo the Raccoon” and this is where I decide to stop investigating before I find out what they’ve done to John.

http://www.amazon.com/Ty-Beanies-Babies-Paul-Walrus/dp/B00000JTER

I Mean, it’s an OK song….

I often have a Twitter search window open for the term Walrus, to keep an eye on topics or items for future posts. It is amazing to me how many times a day, an HOUR, that someone tweets some permutation of “I am the Walrus/koo koo ka joo”. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the Beatles – but the staying power of that phrase among the non-walrus-blogging public is amazing to me!