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| Smell like a monster (Sesame Street) |
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Grover gives us a Sesame Street's parody of the famous commercial by Old Spice deodorant. See the original commercial here before you watch the parody:
Hello everybody, look at yourself... now back to me. Now back at yourself. Now back to me.
Sadly, you are not a monster, but if you listen to Grover you will know all about the word ON just as this monster does.
Look down. Back up. Yeah. Where am I? Oh, I am on a boat!
What is in your hand? Back at me. I have it. It is a clam with two tickets to the thing you love. On my nose?
Anything is possible when you smell like a monster and know the word ON:
I am on a horse
- moo!
Cow.
BACK TO ME= Since this is referring to the former construction “look at yourself”, it should be “[look] back AT me”, but here, the preposition TO is not referring to “look”, it’s simply referring to direction, since you have to move your head to look at yourself and then back to Grover. But of course, it would also be correct to say “back at me” in this situation; in fact, he says that later on (see below). The particle BACK here expresses the idea that the action goes back to the origin (first you where looking at Grover, now you look at yourself, and then you look BACK at Grover, which is where the looking started)
AT YOURSELF= Notice the pronunciation /ətʃɔ:*self/ instead of the more careful pronunciation /ət jɔ:*self/. This is the most common English assimilation (when two sounds mix together into one new sound), and the rule is: T+Y= CH (or more exactly /t/ + /j/ = /tʃ/). You can find this assimilation very often when people are talking (except if they are pedantic) and you can also find it several times in this short video.
KNOW ALL ABOUT= (emphatic) If you know all about something, you have all the information you need about that.
JUST AS A MONSTER DOES= Exactly the same as a monster knows about the word “on”. The auxiliary DOES here is a proverb (= knows). In the same way as a pronoun may substitute for a noun, a proverb may substitute for a verb (and it’s complements):
- I have a blue shirt and a red one (one = shirt)
- You love samba but I don’t (don’t = don’t love it)
- Did you open the door? – No, I didn’t (didn’t = didn’t open the door)
- Who wants pizza? – I do! (do = want pizza)
BACK AT ME= Now he uses the preposition AT because he’s not talking about direction but about looking. He said “what is in your hand?”, so you should look AT your hands, and then “look back AT Grover”. So we know he’s thinking about looking because he uses the preposition AT. But still, as he did before, he could have said "back to me", thinking of the direction for your head to move, instead of thinking about where your eyes have to look.
CLAM= A sea animal (see picture)
Official → Cool
