Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for November 05, 2023

“So it’s mechanical!”

~Bugs Bunny at the end of “Hair-Raising Hare”

One ton tomato! He ate a one ton tomato!

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I know that song from working in a bar with Cuban customers in the 1970’s, constantly played on the jukebox.

Jose Marti, Cuban poet and essayist, patriot and martyr, who became a symbol of Cuba’s struggle for independence from Spain.

I’ve got Pete Seeger singing it to me.

Have a great day my friends.

A folk group came to my grammar school and sung that when I was a tyke in NJ.

We each have our place in the family. His listening is a part of the family

one -ton tomato/for she’s a one-ton tomato OK, OK, blame my parent for that

So? You can’t at least enjoy the music?

LOVE that song! Would love to sing along!

What’s the point if 90% of your readers can’t understand the big joke????

The “Monkees” did it better.

I love this song.

The verses are poem stanzas by Jose Marti, Cuba’s national poet and national hero.

It was Pete Seeger who realized he could sing Marti’s quatrains to the tune of the folk song “Guantanamera.”

I think of “Guantanamera” as Cuba’s unofficial national anthem. Cuba has an official anthem, but in Cuba, I heard “Guantanamera” at least a hundred times as often as the official song (“El Himno de Bayamo” or “La Bayamesa,” in case you were wondering).

It’s hard to do a bad version of “Guantanamera,” but this is one of my favorites because, as in today’s comic, different people keep joining in. (If you watch the video with captions turned on, you can see English subtitles.)

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I live in the south tip of Texas, among the palms, and whenever I return from a trip farther north, I reflexively start singing, “Yo soy un hombre sincero, De donde crecen las palmas …”

(I am a simple man, From where the palm trees grow …”

Among the great Misheard Lyrics® of all time:

“One-Ton-Banana…………… Don’t need a One-Ton Banana………..”

What a wonderful memory! I believe that my dad had this song on a Sandpipers album. I dug through my old vinyl records but I guess that wasn’t one of the ones I took with me when I moved out many, many years ago. Too bad. Fortunately YouTube has everything.

It’s a song about someone from Guantánamo.

The lyrics are based the “Versos Sencillos” of the Cuban poet and national hero José Martí.

I’m surprised Baldo even knows the word “lyrical”.