Just like Ng's Percussion

(Wiki Wiki!)

Throughout the history of YAB, the slacker news desk has oft relied on the good folks at Wikipedia for fact-checking, research, and all-around encyclopedically-sound information. Is this a sound practice? We don’t know. After all, Wikipedia is a miltilingual Web-based free content encyclopedia, written collaboratively by volunteers. (By the way, we got that official-sounding definition by looking up the word “Wikipedia” on…Wikipedia. Genius.)

So far it has not led us awry in the reporting of the funny and the bringing of the news. (Strike that. Reverse it.) Hell, someone out there chose to add Oscar Sunday to the list of tributes on Wiki’s Lazy Sunday page. Now anyone can add information but there is clearly an editor lurking in the wings that translates random people’s cyberbabble into succinct and informative encyclopedia entries.

I would be terrible at that job.

But I got a joke e-mail today that caught my curiosity and I therefore hit the Wiki for some background. It read as follows:

“Larry LaPrise, the man that wrote "The Hokey Pokey" died peacefully at the age of 93 today. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in. And then the trouble started.”

Two things jump out at me when I read something like this. One: puns were God’s invention to teach comedians humility. Two: there’s no way this is a new joke. If a joke based on current events hits your inbox, be cautious. The factual information behind the funny cannot be accepted as fully true. Poor Larry is no exception. While this may have got a nice cube-ville chuckle, the dude has been dead since 1996.

When investigating such a crime against comedy, Snopes.com is always a decent place to start. E-mails scams to urban legends, this site catalogs and separates the funny and frightening from the fake. But in the case of this joke, the well ran dry and to confirm my suspicion, I went to Wikipedia.

(By the way, I’m not the guy who replies to all in order to shoot down a good-natured attempt to spread office humor – I just like to know these things for personal edification.)

According to Wikipedia, my hypothesis was correct – he’s still dead. And there hasn’t been a resurrection followed by a subsequent death in the last few days in order for the joke to be relevant again.

But I did learn something else interesting about the crazy fad song that apparently is what it’s all about.

Not only did Larry LaPrise is credited with penning this lyrical classic, so are his writing partners Charles Macak and Tafit Baker. They were granted the copyright in 1950.

Yes, it took three whole people to write the Hokey Pokey. Wow.