Shinola
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Shinola is a brand of wax shoe polish that was available in the early- to mid-20th century. The original trademark was filed in 1929 by 2-in-1 Shinola-Bixby Corporation, New Jersey.[1][2]
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[edit] "You don't know shit from Shinola"
Shinola was immortalized in colloquial English by the phrase You don't (or He doesn't) know shit from Shinola which first became widely popular during World War II. Aside from being an amusing bit of alliteration, the phrase implies that the subject is stupid or woefully ignorant. Shit and Shinola, while superficially similar in appearance, are entirely distinct in their function; only one is good for polishing shoes, and anyone who fails to distinguish one from the other must be ignorant or of low acuity. Similar expressions include, doesn't know his ass from his elbow or Sir Henry Wood's doesn't know his brass from his woodwind.
[edit] Further Reference in Popular Culture
The 1992 David Lynch film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me includes a memorable demonstration of the phrase, as does the 1979 Carl Reiner film The Jerk and Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow includes a lengthy discussion of the phrase. The bandname Shinola is a reference to the shoe polish, and the 2008 album Backwoods Barbie by Dolly Parton contains a track entitled "Shinola" in which she uses the phrase "you don't know love from shinola" in reference to the once popular saying. On an episode of Good Times, Florida stated, jokingly, "You don't know the difference between shellac and Shinola".
In the 1979 Steve Martin film The Jerk, Navin Johnson (Martin) is instructed in the difference between Shit and Shinola by his father (Richard Ward).
The phrase "You don't know shit from Shinola" was also used in James McBride's "The Color of Water" by the character "Chicken Man" when he is speaking to James (McBride 149).
