Adverts

Almost every piece of sheet music has an ad of some sort. This is by far my favorite.

Just Arrived!! Get them NOW!

A Zepp-Load of Zippy Uke Ditties brought in by the zephyrs of demand. The Funniest and Most Unique Uke Pblications ever offered the American Ukeist. From the House that gave you "HANK'S EUKADIDLES", "WENDELL HALL'S UKE-SONG and others. Expertly Arranged Books, employing the Popular and Simple System of Diagrammatic Ukulele Chords.

This ad is my favorite for a few reasons:

1. It has an AWESOME design.

2. It keeps saying uke, which I assume is prounounced "yook". However, uke (pronounced oo-kei) in Japanese is the opposite of seme (pronounced sei-mei). Those terms apply to those who are top and bottom in a male/male relationship (it comes from the names for the dominant and submissive positions in judo). So... that sort of makes me laugh.

3. There are grammatical errors, one of which is a forgotten closing apostrophe. Another is that there is an oddly conspicuous sentence fragment. Also, there are so many random capitalizations it would confuse a German. There appears to be no rhyme or reason for it what is capitalized. No matter how I try to rationalize a pattern, nothing really makes sense.

4. The word "Eukadidles" IS. BRILLIANT.

5. All of the Z-words. Zepp-load, zippy, zephyr. You guessed it, this was published in 1924, the heyday of civilian zeppelinry, and about twelve years before the infamous Hindenburg disaster. It's a bit odd to think of a time when zeppelins were cool, instead of death-traps.