Monday, September 30, 2024

Super Tony

In a comment on my last post, Bill points out the etymology of Soprano. It ultimately derives from the Latin super.

In 1988, 11 years before Tony Soprano made his television debut, the Pixies released “a song about a superhero named Tony,” written by Black Francis. This was on Surfer Rosa, the same album that had “Where Is My Mind?”


As “super bicycle Tony” rides his bike, he says, “I got a card in my spokes.” My Tony Soprano dream turned out to be connected to a particular deck of Tarot cards.

1 comment:

William Wright (WW) said...

Wow, that song is bad.

You also have mention of 'sunglasses' and being able to look at the sun with them in those lyrics.

I've been thinking about sunglasses a bit and why they've popped up in various symbols (My son's flying Elvis, the stag you saw on the wall wearing them, etc.). We have Joseph's 'spectacles' of course, but there are also the Stones.

The Anor Stone, for example, was said to have 'ancient sunlight beaming'. Given that it is a crystal or what some might call a glass, you could call it a Sun Glass... more than one, would obviously be Sun Glasses. In that thinking, I had basically come to the conclusion that the purpose of such "glasses" was not to block out light (like traditional sunglasses), but rather to see it - to let in the light and not be blind anymore.

And here we have lyrics suggesting that certain sunglasses (bad ones) would allow someone to look at or see the Sun, which in this alternative interpretation means the Sun would now be visible to them as they were to use such glasses.

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