On Getting The Scoop (Seventeen Years Later)

I love learning things. I love having things explained to me. Sometimes when its your wife doing the explaining, it's hard to get the ego out of the way to let the light of day in. But today I managed it. And thank goodness, because what she told me about is really neat and I just couldn't stop myself from coming right here to tell the world about it. (Well, OK, first of all, when I say "the world" I mean both the people who have ever been here and who may hopefully come back sometime again to learn what I learned. And hopefully they actually do have to learn it, which would make me less embarrassed of course because then I'm not the only dim-wit who used to enjoy this song.)

Anyway, to the revelation ...

That one-time popular song (Jimmy Olsen's Blues) by that one-time popular group (The Spin Doctors) is not actually a song about Superman. Instead it's actually a song about the other guy in the story who carried a torch for Lois Lane (Jimmy Olsen).




And the idea is that Jimmy Olsen has a pocketful of kryptonite that he can use to get Superman out of the way, allowing his love for Lois to bloom. Because apparently he's also infatuated (or worse) with her.

That makes a lot more sense than what I thought the song was about. I just thought it was another song about Superman and how he was in love with Lois Lane. I'm quite sure I should've figured out that the lyrics didn't make any sense given what I understood the song to be about. Plus of course the title to the song is a pretty big clue as to what it's all about. I guess I did always wonder why it kept talking about a pocketful of kryptonite, because I had some vague recollection that exposure to kryptonite is problematic for Superman.

Anyway, it's so easy to understand things once a sophisticated explanation is provided. I guess never knew there was a Jimmy Olsen. I thought those other characters in the movies were so unimportant they didn't even get names. (That is an exaggeration of the truth, provided by my ego to inadequately defend me from this humiliation.)




Good times.