PLAYBOY: While you may strive for musical crudity, lyrically you're quite
sophisticated-interior rhymes, classical allusions and your hallmark, a great
ear for the vernacular. In a sense, you're the William Safire of street
patois, rescuing such phrases as walking Spanish-inebriated saunter and even
coining some pretty good lingo of your own, such as rain dogs: stray people
who, like animals after a shower, can't find their markings and wander
aimlessly. What are some of your other favorite bits of slang, phrases you'd
like to see get more everyday use?
WAITS: For starters, I'd like to see the term wooden kimono return to the
lexicon. Means coffin. Think it originated in New Orleans, but I'm not
certain. Another one I like is wolf tickets, which means bad news, as in
someone who is bad news or generally insubordinate. In a sentence, you'd
say, "Don't fuck with me, I'm passing out wolf tickets." Think it's either
Baltimore Negro or turn-of-the-century railroadese. There's one more. Don't
know where it came from, but I like it: Saturday night it is. Now, it's what
happens to your arm when you hang it around a chair all night at the movies
or in some bar, trying to make points with a pretty girl. When your arm goes
dead from that sort of action, you've got Saturday night it is.