Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Chips, chips, and Franz Ferdinand

When I posted "Chips, clips, and the eclipse" -- in which I mention dreaming of a large metallic "chip" -- someone using the handle "The man who mistook himself for an Oliver Sacks book" left the comment "Chips, chips, I dream of you!" with a link to a video of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing to a song that's mostly in Italian but has a recurring English line about dreaming of -- uh, "chips," I guess.


I'm sure this song is familiar to persons more cultured than myself, and that there is some perfectly rational explanation for the sudden appearance of chips in the lyrics.

This new theme of songs that improbably romanticize potato-based snack foods  made me think of the Franz Ferdinand song "Jacqueline," with the line, "Oh, but for chips and for freedom, I could die."


Back in 2004, I was at a party where some girl I met gave me unsolicited burned copies of two CDs: the eponymous Franz Ferdinand (incorrectly sharpied as Darts of Pleasure, which is the name of one of the tracks) and XO by the then recently deceased Elliott Smith. I gave them both a few listens but failed to become a fan of either act. It's probably been well over a decade since I've listened to anything by Franz Ferdinand.

I give this background by way of emphasizing the improbability of what happened next: I was listening to the "chips, chips" number and thinking -- just thinking -- about Franz Ferdinand, and then when the song finished, the very next video YouTube queued up for me was "Take Me Out" by, you guessed it, Franz Ferdinand:


I'm sure that very recently -- in the past day or two -- I was reading something about Franz Ferdinand himself, the ill-fated archduke, but I haven't been able to track down what it was. All I remember is that it was a fairly lengthy piece, that the title archduke was used, and that the same author referred to him once as Franz Ferdinand and once as Francis Ferdinand, which I thought was an odd inconsistency. I've only been reading two books recently -- Remote Viewing by Courtney Brown and The Peyote Dance by Antonin Artaud -- and it isn't in either of them, so it must have been something I read online. I've searched various blogs in vain. I even searched 4plebs, even though I'm pretty sure what I read was too long to have been a 4chan post. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find this:


I assume my readers' online reading habits will tend to overlap with my own. If anyone thinks they know what I may have read recently about Archduke Franz/Francis, do leave a comment.

2 comments:

Ra1119bee said...

William,

I just saw the news about the Earthquake in Tawain.
I hope you and your family are Ok.

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Thanks for your concern, Debbie. We live relatively far from the epicenter and were not seriously affected.

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