Oecolampadius - 13 May 2008 05:33 PM

Yeah, for $60 I’m sucking that one right up.  How does such a book make money?

I’m guessing it’s a college textbook.

I do like Sean’s name, and I suppose a board such as this one is more likely than most to have people who know the joke from which he borrowed it. Unless, of course, it’s his real name.

I know the joke, but the immediate source is the Hofmannsthal/Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos.

kurwamac - 13 May 2008 07:54 PM

I do like Sean’s name, and I suppose a board such as this one is more likely than most to have people who know the joke from which he borrowed it. Unless, of course, it’s his real name.

Not being one of the cognoscenti, I don’t know the joke to which you refer, but wouldn’t mind hearing it.

See here.

Or a variation:

One day, a Jew was introduced to another Jew name Sean Fergusson who spoke with a Yiddish accent. “Sean Fergusson?” the first Jew asked. “Vi kumt a yid tsu Sean Fergusson?”

“It’s like this,” the second Jew said. “My name was Moshke Rabinowitz. The first time I arrived at Ellis Island, I failed the eye test, so the doctors sent me back to Europe. There my eyes were treated and cured, and I decided to try again. But what would happen, I thought, if I turned up a second time as the same Moshke Rabinowitz? They’d already know me and send me back again. And so I decided to call myself Yankl Katzenstein. Still, what if someone recognized me? And so there I was, standing in line at Ellis Island and getting more and more nervous all the time, and when it’s finally my turn I’m so flustered that I can’t remember my new name. The immigration official asks me what it is, and I can’t think of it; it’s simply escaped me. ‘Oy, kh’hob shoyn fargesn!’ I say. ‘Sean Fergusson?’ the official repeats, and writes it down on the form.”

In Yiddish, of course, kh’hob shoyn fargesn means “I’ve forgotten.”

Can’t find a connection with Sean Ferguson and the Hofmannsthal/Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos.

astal wrote:

Can’t find a connection with Sean Ferguson and the Hofmannsthal/Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos.

Sorry if I wasn’t precise--the joke doesn’t appear in Ariadne, but the phrase does: “Was hab’ ich denn geträumt? Weh! Schon vergessen!” [What did I dream? Alas! I’ve already forgotten!"]

Many years ago a friend and I corresponded regularly, and we’d pillage literary texts for phrases to use as names in the addresses. In the same speech with Sean Ferguson is the English knight Sir Stückelt Herz. And in the same pair’s previous opera, we developed a backstory (as it was then not yet known) for the Marschallin’s notary, a noble French émigré called M. le comte Oeuf Ters des Morgains.

Perhaps one had to be there.

The yournotme site shows there to be 41 people in the UK called Schon Vergussen, I mean Sean Ferguson ... I wonder if any of them are related to any of the 10 people called Rick O’Shea.