GGDictionary

Goo Goo Dolls related words, people, and places defined. Associated songs in parentheses.

Amigone (“Amigone”) - Funeral home chain with 14 locations in Western New York. Founded by Daniel D. Amigone in 1926.

Balloon (“Black Balloon”) - Container heroin is frequently sold in on the street.

Banshee (“I'm Awake Now”) - In Celtic folklore, a female spirit believed to wail outside a house as a warning that a death will soon occur within the family. According to tradition, the banshee can only cry for five major Irish families: the O'Neills, O'Briens, O'Connors, O'Gradys and Kavanaghs.

Bluetick hound (“Don't Beat My Ass (With a Baseball Bat)”) - Dog breed used for hunting that originated in the Louisiana bayous and Ozark Mountains in the early 1900's.

Carpal tunnel syndrome (“So Long”) - A painful or numb condition of the wrist and hand that occurs when tissues that form a tunnel-like passage in the wrist swell and pinch a nerve within the passage. Causes of this condition include typing, knitting, and other types of repetitive motion.

Charade (“Hate This Place”) - A pretense or fiction that can be seen through readily.

Delaware Park (“No Way Out”) - 350 acre Buffalo park designed in the late 1800’s by Frederick Law Olmsted, who was also responsible for New York’s Central Park. Originally known as simply “The Park,” it features the 42 acre Hoyt Lake, a 120 acre meadow, and significant wooded areas. It's where the No Way Out video was filmed and also the site of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where the Goos performed a surprise concert for the MTV series Jammed.

DeMent, Iris - Singer-songwriter who inspired the name of the Goos' biggest hit. As the story goes, John was looking through L.A. Weekly and ran across an ad for one of Iris' shows. He thought she had a "really pretty name," and decided it was perfect for a song he had just written for the movie City of Angels. Iris went on to top five different charts and was the number one song of 1998.

Iris DeMent was born in Paragould, Arkansas on January 5, 1961. The youngest of 14 children, she came from a family of musicians. Her siblings all played the piano and sang and her older sisters performed in a singing trio known as The DeMent Sisters. Iris wrote her first song when she was 25 years old, after a taking creative-writing course at Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas. After two years of open mic nights and talent shows, Iris released her debut album in 1992.

Double-breasted jacket ("Em Elbmuh") - Style of jacket with a double thickness of material across the chest and a double row of buttons.

Extra Pale (“Extra Pale”) - A phrase that appears on bottles of Rolling Rock beer. As Robby put it, “The term 'Extra Pale' seemed to relate a lot at that time to my life."

Fall from grace (“Listen”) – A loss of status, respect, or prestige. Originally from Adam and Eve’s fall from grace.

Goober - In this case, a Goo Goo Dolls fan. The word comes from a quick-paced language called Gullah that was developed by African slaves. Gullah is a combination of English and colonial speech and the languages from several West African societies. Gullah is still spoken by the descendents of slaves on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia and on the mainland nearby. Goober (which actually means peanut), juke (as in jukebox), and voodoo are all Gullah words that have been adopted into American English. Goobers are also a brand of chocolate covered peanuts.

Goo-goo - An advocate or worker for political reform.

Green (“Listen”) – Naïve, deficient in sophistication.

Kanji - The portion of the Japanese writing system whose characters are based on Chinese ideographs. It is one of three alphabets used in written Japanese. The others, hiragana and katakana, consist of fairly simple characters used to represent syllables. Kanji, on the other hand, represent ideas or words and have different readings and meanings depending on how they're combined with other kanji. John has six different kanji tattooed on his right arm including "love" and "dream." Roughly 25 baseball caps with the kanji for "dizzy" were also specially made for the band, one of which was given away as a prize on the Daily Goo.

Lascivious - What John described as his favorite word in an article from Real Edge Magazine called "The Baker's Dozen." It means "characterized by or expressing lust or lewdness," though John mainly just likes the way it sounds.

Lazy eye (“Lazy Eye”) - Reduced vision in an eye that has not received adequate use since early childhood. The condition, called amblyopia, often results from a misalignment of a child's eyes, such as crossed eyes, or a difference in image quality between the two eyes. One eye becomes stronger, suppressing the image quality of the other eye.

Like a house on fire (“Big Machine”) - In an extremely speedy manner. A common Irish expression is "get on like a house on fire," which means to get along well with someone.

Marred (“Amigone”) - Injured or damaged so as to make imperfect or less attractive; spoiled; impaired; disfigured.

McKinley, William - Twenty-fifth president of the United States assassinated in Buffalo by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. McKinley was shot at point-blank range at the Pan American Exposition on September 6, 1901, and died six days later. John attended McKinley High School (named after the president and right around the corner from where McKinley was shot) and the Goos contributed No Way Out (which later appeared on Jed) to the 1988 compilation We Killed McKinley: Music from Buffalo, N.Y.

Monochrome (“Dizzy”) - Of or done in one color or shades of one color.

Neverland (“Full Forever”) - An unreal or unrealistic place or situation, after Peter Pan's home in J. M. Barrie's novel.

Palookaville - Slang term for a hick town of gentle losers. "Palooka" is a word for a stupid or clumsy person. From a 1998 Guitar World Acoustic interview with John: "I was brought up in a part of east Buffalo that I refer to now as 'Palookaville.' It was a very ethnic, Polish working-class neighborhood, with a bar and a church on every corner. Every family had five or six kids, and an alcoholic in every house. And everyone would go get drunk on Saturday night and go to church on Sunday morning."

Pilot Field - The baseball stadium in Buffalo where the There You Are video was filmed. The ballpark opened on April 14, 1988, and has since been renamed Dunn Tire Park. It is home to Buffalo's minor league baseball team, the Bisons. The video was originally going to be filmed at Buffalo's Elmwood Lounge, but all of the equipment wouldn’t fit inside. After a bit of panicking, the Goos' former manager, Artie Kwitchoff, called the people at Pilot Field and had the shoot moved.

Rapid eye movement (REM) (“Scream”) - The periodic, rapid, jerky movement of the eyeballs under closed lids during stages of sleep associated with dreaming.

Reap (“Misfortune”) - To gain or obtain as the reward of action, conduct, work, etc.

The red (“Out of the Red”) - In debt or losing money, from the practice of entering negative amounts in account books with red ink.

Reeling (“Big Machine”) - Giving way or falling back; swaying, wavering, or staggering as from being struck.

Ruse (“Truth Is a Whisper”) - A stratagem, trick, or artifice.

Salinas (“Road to Salinas”) - A city in West Central California with a population of about 109,000. It was named after the nearby Salinas River, which in turn was named after the salt marshes at its mouth, since the word salina means a salt marsh, pond, or lake. Salinas is known for being the hometown of John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, and the city to which James Dean was traveling to compete in a car race when he died in a highway accident on September 30, 1955 at the age of 24.

Shorthand (“Lucky Star”) - Any system of speed writing using quickly made symbols to represent letters, words, and phrases. Most modern shorthand systems use a symbol for each sound, rather than for individual words.

Social disease (“Don't Beat My Ass (With a Baseball Bat)”) - Any sexually transmitted disease, such as syphilis or gonorrhea.

Sow (“Misfortune”) - To spread or scatter; broadcast, disseminate, or propagate.

Spoon (“Black Balloon”) - Paraphernalia used to cook heroin to prepare it for injection.

Straight (“Livin’ In a Hut”) - Normal or conventional, as in one’s lifestyle; square.

Strife (“Already There”) - The act or state of fighting or quarreling, especially bitterly; struggle; conflict.

Sucker punch (“You Never Know”) - A quick punch delivered without warning; an unexpected blow.

Thumbing (“Domino”) - Slang for hitchhiking.