The Poodle Lecture - Frank Zappa

FZ:

In the beginning God made 'the light.' Shortly thereafter God made three big

mistakes. The first mistake was called MAN, the second mistake was called

WO-MAN, and the third mistake was the invention of THE POODLE. Now the reason

the poodle was such a big mistake is because God originally wanted to build a

Schnauzer, but he fucked up. Now a long time ago, the poodle used to be a very

attractive dog. The poodle had hair evenly distributed all over its small

piquant canine type BODY. That's the way it used to be, the poodle used to be a

regular looking dog. You know it's true, I guess you do too. (Oh, I have to

kiss you? Oh okay.)

Anyway listen, check this out. The poodle used to look good, you know the

regular dogs that used to hang out in the neighbourhood looked at the poodle,

didn't think anything of it. You know, they didn't use to make fun of it in the

olden days. But the WO-MAN, as you know, has always been much smarter than the

MAN.

Guy In The Audience:

You're the best!

FZ:

That stuff is very bad for you, throw it away, okay. Now you're interrupting my

story, now listen . . . What is that? Is that the Tower of Power or what? Oh no

no, it's one of those dope fiend devices, take it away. Now listen:

The WO-MAN has always been much smarter than the MAN, you know this is true.

And so it was since the beginning of time. The MAN would do anything to get

some pussy. And that's why the WO-MAN always had control over him.

In the beginning the WO-MAN looked the MAN directly into the eye and said: "I

tell you what, why don't you go get a job because I could use a few nice things

around the house. Mainly what I need is a clipper, a scissors, and a pair of

zircon encrusted tweezers." (Thank you very much.)

And of course the MAN did his duty as they say in the trade. He went out and he

got a goddamn job. Went out and pushed that broom around for about a

dollar-2.98 an hour, brought his money back to the garden of Eden and gave that

money to the WO-MAN.

The WO-MAN ran out the back door of the garden of Eden, went directly to the

hardware store, got the clippers, the scissors and the zircon encrusted

tweezers and came back and, while the MAN was very tired from having his job,

while he was sleeping, the WO-MAN got a hold of the POODLE. Because the WO-MAN

had noticed earlier that the length and proportion of the poodle oral

appendage, the tongue of the dog in other words, ladies and gentlemen, was very

much to her liking, except that this dog had too goddamn much hair on it. It

didn't have the disco look that's so popular nowadays.

And so the WO-MAN sat out to modify the aforementioned dog. Let me get a little

uh, visual aid . . .

Now she took the dog and she cleaned it up a little bit. You see, she took a

little bit of the back-part here, around the neck, the thorax, the tootsies.

Got all of the unwanted extranious material off this area which we shall call

Burbank. Then she set the little sucker up like this, really nice, got his

mouth set up like that. And squatted right ON HIM. Looking down into the dog's

eyes. She looked down into the dog's eyes, do you know what she said to the

dog? She said: