The Story of “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow/St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Breakfast”

Interviewer:

Is it likely that you'll be doing any more comedy routine stuff as . . .

FZ:

Well, we have one thing that you might qualify as a comedy routine that's built into the show right now. It's a new piece that hasn't been released yet.

It's a combination of two songs. One of them is called "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow." It's about an Eskimo and his seal and an evil fur trapper. And that— And then the evil fur trapper has something terrible happen to him and then he has to get repaired, and in order to get repaired he seeks out— well, he has to trudge across the tundra so that he can get to St. Alfonzo's parish at the juncture of the Columbia River delta. And he has to seek out the representative of St. Alfonzo, who is the patron saint of the smelt fishermen of Portuguese extraction.

And uh, he has to find St. Alfonzo's only authorized representative here on Earth, Father Vivian O'Blivion, man of the cloth. DUNT-DUN-DUN.

And then uh, the two songs are "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow" and "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast."

I watch television every once in a while and uh, some things that I've seen on television have enthused me to the point of writing songs about them. "St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast" has some— is derived from a television commercial in the United States.

I'll tell you about it.

There's a margarine in the United States called Imperial Margarine, and they have this commercial that is in such a bad taste it makes you wanna die every time it comes on.

There's a young black gentleman sitting in a bed, and he's just woken up, and he's got his covers up like this. And then his young girlfriend comes trudging into the room; she's carrying a tray. She walks in, and he goes, "Oh, boy! Pancakes and butter!" And she says, "Good morning, your highness! No, it's not butter!" And as soon as she says "Your highness" this crown appears on his head. It goes, "ding!" Like that. And he takes a big mouthful of these pancakes and starts shoveling it in and goes "Mmm . . . this really tastes better than butter," you know. God, it's horrible! It's just—

We used to see that two or three times a night watching science-fiction movies and that would come on and I would just roll all over the couch, you know. Just loathsome.

So it turned into a song.