When I was 5 years old my father brought home a Commodore 64 for my sister and me. Over time we accumulated hundreds of pirated games, one of them being the 1985 Datasoft classic Zorro. Of course, the Commodore was dead by about 1988 and Zorro, like all my other games, faded into memory...or did it? See, for some reason the Zorro theme still haunts me. Twenty years after last playing the game I can still hum the music. So, in some way, today's hump is my chance to excise the Zorro demon for good.

Zorro is the masculine form of the Spanish zorra "fox". It first made its appearance in English in 1838, but it wasn't until 1919 that Johnston McCulley created the Robin Hood-like character who went on to disrobe Catherine Zeta Jones to her skivvies in the 1998 movie The Mask of Zorro. Interestingly, Cathy Z appeared in 2001's America's Sweethearts with Hank Azaria, azaria being the original Basque root of zarra.

A question to the audience: Does anyone know if Hank Azaria voices the character of Zorro in "The Poke of Zorro" from The Simpsons episode "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)" (season 11, episode 5)? I haven't seen the show in awhile so I forget, but if there's any karmic balance of etymology in the universe then I know the answer is yes.

I can still hum that damn song.

zorro [Online Etymology Dictionary]
Zorro [Wikipedia]
Zorro [Lemon 64]
E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt) [The Simpsons Archive]

Labels: Basque, Spanish, The Daily Hump

Yes, Mr. Azaria did voice Zorro in that episode, according to the IMDB.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0701092/