Krok 'n' Awe: Act Two

As promised, here's the second half of Larry O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin's script from the Harvard Krokodiloes reunion at Carnegie's Zankel Hall in early March.


(If you're late to the game, or just want a refresher, click here to read the first half of the script.)





ACT TWO

LARRY: Welcome back. Many of you are probably wondering about the history of a cappella music. We were too, so at intermission Nell and I went on the InterWeb and did some research.

NELL: It’s all true! We got it off the Wikipedia. That’s where you do research now! Seriously! Libraries aren’t used for books anymore. They’re used for JDate parties.

LARRY: (alarmed) Honey… we can’t make that joke.

NELL: Why?

LARRY: We’re not J-ish.

NELL: (shrugging) Anyway: here’s what the Wikipedians told us. We know it’s true! They check this stuff!

LARRY: (reading from notes:) “One thousand years ago, Harvard was founded by Godric Griffindor.”

NELL: (reading from notes:) “Meanwhile, over at Yale, a young black man named Cole Porter leapt from his bathtub and ran down the street shouting "Eureka!" He had discovered music.”

LARRY: “And invented the bathtub! Then the earth cooled and Princeton was formed.”

NELL: “The first Harvard a capella group, the Krokodiloes, was founded when a group of young men got together in the spirit of friendship and a love of music and got so drunk they lost their instruments.”

LARRY: “The first Princeton a capella group, the Tigertones, was licked into being by the great Norse ice cow, Audhumbla.”

NELL: Ahh. Everybody loves a good Audhumbla joke. “Meanwhile, over at Yale, a young black man named Cole Porter locked himself in the Chamber of Secrets. Never to come out again.

“Yale's first a capella group was formed, but they had no place to practice, for there was no room for them at the inn.”

LARRY: So they sang in the streets of New Haven until a passing Cockney man yelled "Oi! Get out o’ the bloody street ye whiffin' poofs!"

NELL: And that's how they got their name. (to audience:)…Oh come on. You think that’s the worst joke we can make about the Whiffenpoofs? Okay I got one: “Three Whiffenpoofs walk into a whorehouse…”

LARRY: OOOOKAY thank you. Ladies and gentlemen! Thank you so much! And now The pride of Gryffindor:

NELL AND LARRY: The incomparable Harvard Krokodiloes!