The Informant is 29 years old, grew up in a military family, and studied at USC and UCLA. He’s very close to his Japanese culture.

Me: What is the phrase?

Him: “Face down, ass up, that’s the way we don’t do snatches.”

Me: And what is this based off of? Why do you use it?

Him: It’s based off of that one song where the chorus is like “Face down, ass up, that’s the way we like to fuck”. I don’t remember who it’s by. B*** started it. He knows the song. We yell it to remind our athletes how to have proper form when they do an olympic lift. The snatch. And it’s supposed to make them laugh.

Me: How did it start?

Him: B*** was being extra goofy during training and one of our athletes kept putting their butt up instead of back and they were looking down instead of ahead of them. And B*** just busted out this phrase and everyone started laughing. And it stuck. Now, whenever we see people with bad form, we yell the first half of the phrase and they’re supposed to answer with the second half.

Me: And is this phrase unique to this gym?

Him: I know that G has started bringing it to another gym in Hollywood because he thought it was so hilarious. So it’s starting to spread. We basically do it during every Oly Lifting class and we’ve actually got some T-shirts we’re getting designed with the phrase on them now.

Analysis:

This shows explicitly the ways in which folklore can just occur in the moment in any context. There doesn’t always need to be any sort of set-up that calls for folklore to start, it can just sort of appear out of thin air. In this instance, it proved relevant to pop culture, so that it could be relatable on a wide scale, and also serves to improve athletic training by reminding the athletes to obtain proper form in their weightlifting. In addition, it proves hilarious because it serves the same purpose of a “catch riddle” by leading the listener down a certain path, only to reveal that the teller has purposefully misguided them and reveals a twist in the punchline. Because of this great formula that this folklore serves, it has risen so much in popularity in one gym that it has started in another. And, they’re even making T-shirts with the phrase on it!

The Informant is 22 years old, a senior at USC studying Theatre and Narrative Studies, and she’s originally from The Bay Area.

Me: So what is a 10-Yummy?

Her: It’s this tradition we have at PV (Performance Venues) where whenever there’s a shift that has food that the clients will let the staff eat after the event, we radio everyone and say, “10-Yummy!” which basically means, “There’s free food! Come stuff your faces!”

Me: How did it start?

Her: It was like 3 summers ago my friend Morgan who is a stage manager for PV liked to play on the radios a lot saying like “10-4” and “What’s your 10-20?” and stuff like that. Codes that we never use. But she wanted to sound badass. And then some people started getting sad whenever they’d miss out on the free food after an event, so we’d use a radio to let everyone know. But we wanted to come up with a kind of legit code so that we wouldn’t sound like idiots over the radio, and Morgan came up with “10-Yummy”.

Me: Who taught it to you?

Her: Morgan did. It’s like a huge tradition now. Whenever there’s a 10-Yummy all of PV that is working at the time meets up in one big place and we all eat leftover food together and make a mess. It’s great. Even if you’re not even hungry you have to go to a 10-Yummy.

Analysis:

This is an example of company folklore that manifests out of a professional environment while still aiding in the establishment of a company culture, proving that even in a bureaucratic  setting, folklore can still be created and found. In this sense, a type of folk phrasing developed out of the attempt to include everyone in a tradition that was already growing in popularity, but had yet to be tokened, or titled. The phrase “10-Yummy” developed out of the need for a name to the already growing ritual and has now become a placard for the Performance Venues company as a whole.

The Informant is in his mid-30’s, he specializes in freelance business, and I know him through my affiliation with a gym off campus.

Him: Okay, here it is. So an old woman walks into work one day and she has a black eye. Her coworkers all know that her husband is kind of a macho-dude and a tough guy, so they think that maybe he beat her up or something. But people are too afraid to ask. Until one guy steps up and asks her about her black eye. He says, “Hey, Maude, what happened to your eye?” and then she says, “I was jumping rope, bra-less.”

Me: Where did you get this from?!

Him: One Thanksgiving my uncle was super drunk and just telling tons of dirty jokes. I must have been about 15 or so and that one always stuck with me.

Me: Where did he get it from?

Him: I’m not actually sure.

Me: Do you tell it to people now?

Him: Oh, yeah! I tell it to my nieces and nephews all of the time. They don’t get it yet, they’re really little, and my sister always gets mad at me when I tell it to them because it makes them think about things they shouldn’t be thinking about at 8 or 9 years old *laughs*. I’m THAT uncle.

Me: And so was yours!

Him: You’re right!

Analysis:

This is a type of dirty joke that is probably told among families when there’s a bit of alcohol involved. Or perhaps at networking parties to break the ice. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this joke, but the first time I heard it it was definitely a vehicle used to begin conversation in an awkward situation.

On another note, it’s a commentary on the anecdotes of aging. In America, aging it looked upon as a dreary, depressing process, the only benefit of it being the supposed gaining of wisdom. However, jokes like these allow us to laugh at the process of aging and make light of the situation. This is also another type of “catch riddle” where the punchline is not what the listener expects.

The Informant is 29 years old, grew up in a military family, and studied at USC and UCLA. He’s very close to his Japanese culture.

Him: Okay, I have a superstition type of thing. My mom taught my brother and I when we were little to make Teru Teru Bozus.

Me: What?

Him: Teru Teru Bozus?

Me: What are they?

Him: They’re like. Okay, let me just explain it. It’s a Japanese thing. They’re for good luck. You take a ball of tissues and mush them together, and then you take a larger tissue and wrap it around the ball of tissues and tie it off with a string. You know you’ve done it right if it looks like a little ghost. Then I think you can draw a face on it. Or maybe you wait until the good luck has happened. I’m not sure.

Me: So you make them for good luck?

Him: Yeah. And if the good luck comes true you have to do something. With water. I think we just flushed them down the toilet but I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to do *laughs*

Me: What happens if you don’t get good luck?

Him: You have to rip the head off!

Me: And your mom taught it to you?

Him: To me and my brother, yeah. We’d do it when we were really little. Before the first day of school and stuff like that.

Me: Would you teach it to your future children?

Him: *laughs* I don’t know. Maybe!

Analysis:

This superstitious practice was probably a way that the mother could share her Japanese culture with her children in a fun, accessible way. The Informant is only a quarter Japanese, with the rest of his ethnicity being mostly white-European ancestry. By being able to share this part of her culture with her children was probably very fulfilling for the mother and a way that her heritage and cultural practices could carry on through her children and not be forgotten. As a result, both the Informant and his twin brother still make the effort to include Japanese culture into their life in many ways. In fact, one of them now lives in Japan!