Template:Olympus

“Olympus”?

A correspondent writes:

Sorry but you ALL HAVE IT WRONG!!! THE LYRIC IS “RISES LIKE A LEOPRESS”... THIS HAS BEEN BUGGING THE F OUT OF ME FOR YEARS. I think Weezer screwed up the whole world in this lyric... read his lips in the video

Now while I respect the the vigour with which this argument is put, I cannot agree with it. As for lipreading, no chance: the video cuts away to Steve Lukather who, rather like a tone-deaf footballer singing the national anthem, has forgotten to sing along at the key moment.

And we must allow Mr. Paich some facility with logic and common sense, even if not much, and while Olympus clearly does not rise above the Serengeti, or another part of the African continent, being a mountain, it does at least rise above things like plains.

As for “leopresses”, who can say? What even is a “leopress”? It has escaped the compliers of the OED and, for what it is worth, Websters. I take it to be some kind of creative contraction of “leopardess” on Mr. Paich’s part. This cannot be right, for two reasons:

Firstly, female leopards, however described, do not really rise above things like plains. They may be fast, but in two dimensions. Leopards are wholly earthbound. The sorts of things that do rise above plains are mountains, rainclouds (mainly in Spain), and hot air balloons (as per the above, I am told, it is only from a hot air balloon, that has already risen high above the Serengeti, that one can even see Kilimanjaro.)

Secondly, the “leop’r’ess” contraction strikes me as implausible, particularly as elsewhere Mr. Paich gives the strong impression that he is not in the habit of making literary contractions for the sake of space. After all, he has already jammed twenty one syllables into a line apparently requiring only fourteen. Why start now?

Thirdly, if you did want to squeeze “word for a big, fast, African cat” into two syllables, instead of butchering “leopardess”, wouldn’t you just use “leopard”? Are lady cats more given to “rising” than gentlemen cats? The JC has limited experience of this sort of thing, but we doubt it.

My correspondent continues undeterred:

A female leopard is known as a leopress IN Africa, where they live mostly. A leopress would surely, most definitely rise above the serengeti, because they sleep in trees.

Now this is a nice try, but we think “surely, most definitely” materially over-eggs it. And, while he is no wizard in African linguistics — but nor is Mr. Paich — the JC can find scant evidence that “leopress” is “a special African term for a female leopard”. It seems fanciful: most people in that part of the world speak Swahili, and in that language leopardess, we gather, is “chui”. In a way it’s a pity Mr Paich didn’t use it: it would scan a lot better. But still, the point remains: a sleepy she-leopard, slinking up a tree for a nap, may be “elevated”, but is this really the sort of magnificent “rise” one might compare with a distant twenty-thousand-foot mountain?

In the meantime, our further investigations reveal there is a homophone for leopress: “lepress”: could this be what Mr. Paich was singing? Again, and alas, we feel not: a “lepress” is a female leper.