NOTE: Answer Me This! Episode 353 was recorded BEFORE Justin Bieber announced he was cancelling the rest of his tour. We didn’t mean to add to your grief with mild Bieb-teasing. Because today, we tackle the meaning of ‘Despacito‘, along with other phenomena like:
fake holiday resort booze
Competitive Dad
Tube emergencies worthy of sounding the alarm
wedding bloodshed vs your journalistic instincts
your body = manuscript
understudies
beating your kids at board games
apples for teacher
and
your mum’s glory hole.
Plus: Olly’s rock’n’roll dreams came true at the Meat Loaf jukebox musical he has been waiting for all his life; Helen favours drama over romance in wedding photos; and Martin the Sound Man goes on about ducks’ vaginas as if that’s a normal thing to do.
In today’s Bonus Bit of Crap on the App – available for iPadPhones, Android and Windows devices – the seven-year-old Olly Mann attempts to invent the new Monopoly, only to be thwarted by his unintentionally saucy choice of name.
Want to hear more from us? There’s the retro AMT episode we throw into your feed mid-month, which right now is the landmark AMT100; to get it, subscribe to AMT on your podcatcher of choice. All of our back catalogue is available from answermethisstore.com, along with our special albums including the AMT Holiday – the real soundtrack to your summer, shut up ‘Despacito’.
Want to SEE us, or at least two of the three of us? Come to the London Podcast Festival next month: tickets are on sale now for Helen’s live Allusionist and Martin’s Song By Song, featuring Helen and John Hodgman. And Helen will appear with her brother Andy on the live Bugle, so give yourself a very Zaltzman weekend of entertainment.
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We’ll be back with AMT354 on 7 September 2017, and with a Retro AMT episode on 24 August.
Helen & Olly
••• AMT353 Child-Friendly Rating: 17%. In the first few minutes, there are contemplations of innuendo-laden song lyrics, glory holes and duck vaginas. And the discussion of letting your kids win at boardgames may tip off your children to the possibility that you’re playing them. •••
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Tags: actors, alarms, alcohol, all inclusive, Amy MacDonald, awkward, bars, Bat Out Of Hell, bloodshed, boardgames, booze, Camila Batmanghelidjh, Carcassonne, Chess, Daddy Yankee, Despacito, dogs, drinks, ducks, emergencies, games, glassblowing, glory holes, holidays, hotels, injuries, innuendo, James Corden, Jane Asher, Justin Bieber, Kids Company, London underground, Luis Fonsi, lyrics, maritime, Martine McCutcheon, Meat Loaf, metaphors, mines, mining, moral dilemmas, music, musicals, nautical, performance, photographers, photography, plays, pop songs, Puerto Rico, reggaeton, resorts, Settlers of Catan, sex, sexy, ships, slang, songs, songs of the summer, swindles, theater, theatre, trains, transport, tube, understudies, vacation, vaginas, verbatim theatre, weddings, West End
Answer Me This! Podcast 
August 11, 2017 at 1:43 pm |
I was quite surprised that you havent been exposed to the burgeoning world of modern boardgames. Far from being nerdy (or at least less so than many other popular cultural alternatives; videogames for example), there are boardgame cafes springing up in cities across the globe and their tables are being booked out for the whole weekend. They offer an enormous range of experiences that can be shared with friends in various social settings. Their resurgence has been ongoing since Catan was released 22 years ago and it’s continuing apace. I understand that cultural space is crowded but, still I’m surprised.
Oh, and for your questioner I would suggest subtly handicapping yourself. Play games that children have an inherent advantage, memory games, fast-reaction games etc. I taught my two year old Spot It / Dobble and handicapped it by drawing additional cards and requiring that I spotted more than one match before speaking out. This levelled the playing fields, she has loved playing it and now gives me some challenge in an even game.
August 4, 2017 at 5:57 pm |
The translation you’ve used for Despacito is pretty schockingly bad. The lyrics are hardly a masterpiece, but they were completely mangled! For example, the part about the labyrinth:
>Despacito
>Quiero desnudarte a besos despacito
>Firmo en las paredes de tu laberinto
>Y hacer de tu cuerpo todo un manuscrito
would go something like
Slowly
bla blah
I write on the walls of your labyrinth
and make your entire body into a manuscript
i.e. he’s touching her, everywhere. Imagine someone teasingly sensually stroking a finger on their lover.
—-
Then comes the part about the mouth. It goes:
>Quiero ver bailar tu pelo
Quiero ser tu ritmo
Que le enseñes a mi boca
Tus lugares favoritos (Favorito, favorito baby)
I want you to blah blah
I want you to blah blah
that you show my mouth
your favourite places
i.e. he’s going to kiss her in the places that she enjoys.
—-
Then comes the “trespass” thing. A proper translation of “sobrepasar” is more something like “exceed”. The literal translation would infact he surpass (sobre = over, pasar = pass). In other words, in the original version there is no hint of anything that is not consensual.
—
Otherwise, enjoyable episode.