“Aruba, Jamaica, Ooh, I wanna take ya…”

It’s one of the sloppiest rhymes in pop music and The Beach Boys’ last #1 hit. You might remember “Kokomo” from the Tom Cruise flair bartending movie, “Cocktail,” but did you know the music video was shot in Orlando at Walt Disney World?

It’s 1988 and Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort was built, but not yet open. The white sand beach would be a perfect place to fake a Beach Boys concert and with no one staying there, production could make all the noise they wanted. A friend who was on-set tells me it was rainy all day, so the sunny concert scene turned into a nighttime bonfire party.

Some of the guys and gals dancing along with Mike Love and the Boys were recruited at Downtown Disney (now Disney Springs) and yes, big Disney fan John Stamos is playing various percussion in the back.

Non-Orlando trivia – Credited writers on “Kokomo” include Mike Love, Scott McKenzie (“San Francisco – Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair”), John Phillips (The Mamas & The Papas), and Terry Melcher (the song’s producer who also did The Byrds’ first two albums).

I live in Orlando, so occasionally, I’m going to write something a little specific. Today is one of those days.

Everyone knows Walt Disney World, but way on the other side of Central Florida, about an hour’s drive north of WDW, was a place with a whole different kind of magic – Flea World. America’s “largest flea market under one roof,” Flea World was only open on weekends – a great place to wander, look at all the weird stuff for sale, and look at all the weird people buying it.

Sunday was my day. I’d drive to Sanford, get a giant draft beer around 10am, and start walking. Live birds and fresh pickles, car stereos and haircuts, bootleg “Scarface” t-shirts and trail mix by the pound. It was all laid out in rows and rows and rows and rows of open-air stalls. My big thing was to go through all the used CDs. I’d usually leave with two or three – plus some weird Chinese knock-off action figure and a pack of Tiger Blood incense.

There might be a trained dog act or a juggler and you could definitely get a decent burger or corn dog.

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OK, most of 1992’s “Lethal Weapon 3” was made in and around Los Angeles, but the building that goes boom at the beginning is the old City Hall in Downtown Orlando. Here’s Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, and their stunt doubles running out of “International Control Systems Inc.” You can even see a WFTV 9 live truck on the left side of the screen, but the mast is down, so it couldn’t have been going “live.”

Today, that area isn’t far from what most people call the giant asparagus statue, although it’s officially the Tower of Light.

And here’s the moment, captured forever on the backglass of the Lethal Weapon 3 pinball machine.

I have to confess. For years, I assumed “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” was sung by an adult pretending to be a little kid. I wasn’t listening to the radio in 1953, so when I first heard Gayla Peevey’s strong voice and comic timing years later, I assumed she was a studio singer banging out a novelty hit between commercials for Ipana toothpaste and Chesterfield cigarettes.

Turns out, Gayla Peevey was a real ten-year-old radio singer from Oklahoma City. “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” was her first single for Capitol Records, a song found for her by Mitch Miller. This clip is from “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

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Children of the ’80s know well that in 1983, Daryl Hall and John Oates remade the classic Bobby Helms Christmas hit “Jingle Bell Rock” … but did you catch on that you’ve been hearing two versions of the song for decades? Even two versions of the music video? Like the Mandela Effect in reverse, every once in a while, you hear an alternative universe version of “Jingle Bell Rock.”

Here’s the one you probably hear most with Daryl on lead vocals, the A-side of the 45.

Then, there’s the flipside of the 45 with John at the mic. Every once in a while, I’ll hear this one slip into the mix on a radio station. Way back when, MTV would play both versions.

They saved money on the videos by having both Hall and Oates keep their mouths shut until about ninety seconds in. That way, they could use all the same footage. Right after Santa appears is when the two videos split off. Jump both versions to 1:30 to see where they go off on their own paths.

For my Orlando friends, that’s Charlie DeChant, aka Mr Casual, holding the toy saxophone. He’s been in the band since 1976, playing both sax and keyboards. Charlie lives in Orlando and if there wasn’t a global pandemic, you could book him and his band, The Kings, for your holiday party.