I Say it's Spinach and to Hell With It

I heard this Irving Berlin song on the radio some months back. It came from a cast-recording of a short-run revival of Face the Music, which was apparently very topical (1932), and therefore very "thirties".

Long as there's you, long as there's me
Long as the best things in life are free
I say it's spinach and the hell with it
The hell with it, that's all!

I had never heard the term "say it's spinach and to hell with it" before. Now it's stuck in my head. And, of course, now that I've heard it once, it seems to be everywhere

The line originally from a New Yorker cartoon created by E.B. White in 1925. The original cartoon featured a conversation between a toddler and his mother:

Desperate Mother: It's broccoli, dear.
Petulant Child: I say it's spinach and to hell with it.

Now, that strikes me as someone saying "you can't pull the wool over my eyes - I know what's what and I'm not going to be gulled into eating something unpleasant" if, of course, the broccoli was spinach. If it was, in fact, broccoli, then it's more of a "I don't care what you say, I've made up my mind and you can't change it" sort of thing.

Yet, most of the places I've seen this quote used (including the Berlin song) tend to use it in a different light - more "well, this is a load of twaddle, so let's ditch it and move on".

I'm not sure this post had any point, really. I just really need sleep. Instead I'm working a night shift and trying to talk myself into doing more work on the spreadsheets I seem to be chained to at present.

Tell you what, as far as these spreadsheets go, I really feel like saying "it's spinach and to hell with it!"

As an interesting (to me) aside, when I started this blog post I was quite happy to be lazy and not do an awful lot of research beyond a few quick Google searchers. Then for some reason I kept trying new things until I actually found the original cartoon online and had to re-write half of my blog to include the factual information rather than my half-informed surmises. It wasn't intentional, it just happened. I guess there's a reason why I became a librarian - I research things even when I'm trying not to...