slide show

I've been slaving over a hot keyboard today. I actually put in something on the order of six hours organizing and selecting photos, putting them on my flickr page, finding that half of them were already there, blasting away duplicates, deciding on an order, captioning, and mostly, waiting for flickr to wake up. That was the fun part.

Anyway, the magnum opus is finished. I have made a new photoset of the pictures I took in 2006 and 2007 of the derelict amusement venue, Holyoke's Mountain Park, and the nearby derelict (and somewhat newer) water park. Mountain Park closed in 1987 after 80 years, and the wooden coaster was torn down in 1990.

In the course of looking up older photos to put names on some of my pictures, I learned that Jay Ducharme (whose pictures and sound files I linked to) finished a book on the park's history. He was one of the last carousel operators. The book, fittingly, is being sold at the carousel, which is now in Heritage Park, by the Children's Museum. It came out about four months after we moved out of town.

I also found out that bulldozers have finished obliterating the place, and a new owner hopes to make a concert venue of it.



Having found the access road, we have driven up and parked just off the bridge over I-91. The animated clown sign that invited drivers to visit Holyoke's Mountain Park for years is long gone, but the sign for the water park farther up Mt. Tom (which closed more recently) is still visible and peeling away. Let's go on in!



One of the overpasses that allowed pedestrians to cross paths with the little Zephyr train that ran around the park and also marks the location of the mini golf course, whose carpeted greens are among the more recognizable features of the park.



For a real treat, check out Jay's page. He was a carousel operator before the park closed, and he saved the recorded sound tracks from the Pirate's Den and Zoltan, the robot fortune teller.

www.karenandjay.com/mtpark/mpsounds/mpsounds.html

Sadly, Thurl Ravenscroft doesn't seem to be among the pirate voices. Anyway, this seems to be the roof of the Dolly Pitch, where you pitched dolls at baseballs to win wooden bottles. Or something.

www.karenandjay.com/mtpark/mphotos/2006pan.jpg



A three-dimensional view of a hill of poles. This is freeview 3D, because cross-eyed 3D gives me a headache and won't hold still. I took some other 3D pairs as well and might do something with them some day. More information about freeviewing can be found on the internet.

Seriously, go have a look if you can. I hiked in the hot sun to get these because I thought it was interesting, and I put a couple dozen of them up two and three years ago, respectively, and they've been looked at between zero and three times, ever. Be the first on your side of the Mississippi!.

Ahhhhh, Yes!

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Before it vanishes, as it has other times, do yourself a favor and spend some entertaining time immersed in the scholarly pages of The Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion by Eric Costello.

I can't mention it without bragging that I -- yes, I! -- once had the privilege of serializing this groundbreaking reference in the pages of a monthly cartoon APA (private magazine that went out to the contributors). Once I learned that Costello was doing this, and having seen it, I got his permission to run a few pages of it each issue, with the intention of turning the text files over to him afterward, so that he wouldn't have to type the thing over another time, and could get it published somewhere reputable. My term of office expired before it was completely finished, but by then (or soon after) he took the show to the net where it could be appreciated by a wider audience.

So. You might ask what this wonderful thing is? (I pause while you ask.) It's a guide to all the puzzling references, in-jokes, catch-phrases and ad jingles that enlivened the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, and which now confuse and confound audiences, even as their kids are shouting "TURN OUT THAT LIGHT!" or asking "Was this trip really necessary?" Radio jokes, ration coupons, opaque slang, Texas trivia, aspects of Hollywood stars, and other detritus of the collective unconscious are aired and explicated herein.

A note of caution: It comes and goes. It seems that no sooner has Mr. Costello found a home for this indispensable repository of knowledge than something happens leading to a 404 NOT FOUND message. A Google search will show you all manner of no-longer-viable WBCC locations. We recommend saving the whole thing to your hard drive, and maybe converting it to some format in which you can carry it with you wherever you go. It's that good. Samples:

SOPHIE TURKEY

The Last of the Red-hot Gobblers. A caricature in The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (Tashlin, 1937) of Sophie Tucker.

“SO ROUND, SO FIRM, SO FULLY PACKED -- SO SMOOTH AND EASY ON THE DRAW”

One of the many advertising slogans for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Daffy-Duck-as-Danny-Kaye mentions the slogan in Book Revue (Clampett, 1946). The Christopher Columbus character in Hare We Go (McKimson, 1951) yells the phrase in exasperation at King Ferdinand while attempting to prove the Earth is round. Henery Hawk also used the expression when confronted with a fine specimen of alleged chicken tail.

SPARKS, NED
(1883-1957)

Cigar-smoking character actor with a dour face who was well-known and often imitated. His movie appearances include 42nd Street, Golddiggers of 1933 in which he played the producer, the live-action Alice in Wonderland as the Caterpillar, and Wake Up and Live.

Caricatures of Sparks appear in:

• Hollywood Steps Out (Avery, 1941) greeting the table of stonefaces
• Malibu Beach Party (Freleng, 1940) being buried in sand by Baby Snooks/Fanny Brice
• Slap-Happy Pappy (Clampett, 1940) indicating his joy (?) at the news that Eddie Cackler (caricature of Eddie Cantor) is going to be the father of a boy
• Fresh Fish (Avery, 1939) as an old crab

It is quite possible that the Rip Van Winkle character in Have You Got Any Castles? (Tashlin, 1938) is a Sparks caricature as well, given the character’s voice.

These are three successive entries, taken from the page I had it open to when I started this. I can't promise that the internal links work, but it gives you the names and the meanings -- there's enough there to satisfy your curiosity and make you want to watch all the cartoons again.
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re: re-re-re-re-reading

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Every day, I read just a few more pages of Jules Feiffer's America. This is the 25th anniversary collection of his comic strips. Inimitable, though often imitated, they are amazingly concentrated and powerful stuff.

Feiffer was already an experienced professional who had worked for Will Eisner by the time he hit the ground running during the Eisenhower administration. His drawings shimmered from one style to another briefly before settling into a style so direct and unvarnished it sometimes seems like no style at all. Though famous for his talking heads, his action drawings are full of life, especially his dancers (male and female), caught at moments of poise and release, like key drawings by a great animator.

Typically existing for about eight panels, his characters breathe nervous life. He sets up small slices of them speaking to us, panel leading to panel, until they have unwittingly revealed their hearts. Sometimes they are us, and the recognition is not always comfortable. Sometimes they are the evil others, only they look and sound a bit more like us than we would like.

They are history lessons for moderns who think the 50s were a sitcom, the 60s were a love-in, and our current problems are something entirely new and novel. His Eisenhower-era strips are insightful, and I'd read many of them so often before that I can't recall them being a revelation. His Kennedy strips are a jolt of cold water to Camelot fantasists. His JFK was vital, sharp, alive, and also shallow and poll-driven. Feiffer stuck it to him mercilessly, depicting him as a choreographed dancer "doin' the Frontier drag." LBJ was a shining knight until he revealed too much of himself; then he was a particularly disappointing political hack. Nixon -- well, we all know Nixon. So did he. Jerry Ford? "Shut up and ski, Jerry." Carter was Jimmy the Cloud.

I haven't been quoting (except for Jerry) because if I start, I won't stop. It's all too good.

I can't recommend this 25th-anniversary collection too highly. It's been more than 25 years since it came out, and I wish he'd do a follow-up. I don't know if reading all his strips in order without the filter of the creator choosing what to include would match the impact of this set, but I'd be willing to find out. Fantagraphics has started the ball rolling, and the volume they've done calls to me from the store shelves. Would that I were wealthier.
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family day

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Six years ago, on the other side of the planet, they handed us a baby. I am still awed that such a thing could happen, no matter how many forms we filled out, biographies we wrote, pictures we took, fingerprints we allowed, interviews we underwent, and months we waited. They gave us Sarah. Thanks, China. Thanks, everybody.



Thanks, Cathy, for your diligent and committed work on getting it all done right. Thanks, Sarah, for being a great kid. Thanks, Frances, for being such a kid-tolerant cat.

My heart, as they say, is full.
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a billion and one blistering barnacles

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Georges "Herge" Remi passed away with one last Tintin book loosely sketched out. It has been finished by others. Canadian fan Yves Rodier made the art, and it has been scripted, colored, and translated into English.

The first time I found this online, it was still in French, and only the first few pages had been colored. This is a pleasant pastiche, complete with covers and end pages. I've often said that the trouble with some fan fiction is that they can get the characters properly dressed and standing around, but don't know how to plot for them. Luckily, in this case, the plotting has been done for them by the sole and singular creator of the entire milieu (no relation to Snowy). I still haven't purchased the published volume of the very loose version of this left by Herge, so I can't be sure whose idea it was to have various secondary characters pass through. I'm not complaining, though.

I wonder if the other completion of this, the one signed as being by "Ramo Nash" (a character in this tale), has been fully finished now. There were interesting differences between them, owing to the vagueness of the outline both started from.

Anyway, please enjoy this. It's a valedictory curtain call -- and a sort of gift to a Tintin fan who thought they already had everything.
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flickr hates you
part 2

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Let's see if I can finish this tonight...




































Well, that's the lot, so far. It takes a significant part of an hour to do each of these. Let's hope I can find some time to do more of these soon -- and maybe some of the panels that were also saved in the same scrapbook of "Our Boarding House," which were pretty good. Just not as good, to my mind, as these.
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flickr hates youpart I

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Flickr takes action often to keep people from viewing my photos there. God knows why. You'd think they would want their service to work. So, here is a portfolio of "Out Our Way" panels from my flickr page. I may not get all 20+ in today. It's late at night. Here goes.

















Let's just call this Part I. Bed beckons. Let's just say Part II will come some time after I've had a chance to digest all the feedback. I'm only human.
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Jukebox for January 11, 2009

Ben Light was another musical master who worked within the field of "Party Records." He has a handful of sides over at archive.org (click on his name), which include two genuine delights -- the other is "The Full-Her Brush Man," which I intend to present on a future occasion. The others please me less. "Give It To Me, Daddy," is a fairly standard number for the genre, and its ending is a little creepy by today's standards. Ditto "It May Not Be Love, But It's Wonderful," which is actually reprehensible to my 21st-century ears. "When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go" is one I seem to have forgotten. I might give it another listen and see if I like it now.

Ben's vocalist has a breezy delivery, and Ben's own piano playing is superb, with scales and arpeggios that tinkle like running water at times. His small backup ensemble includes a guitar and either a clarinet or a saxophone and not much else. Searching on the title didn't get me much of anything. Archive says it's as given below, though it would seem more logical that it would be the same as the first line of the song proper. This suggests to me that the song was written to be sung by a woman, and he's covering it in the third person. If you think that's complex, wait till we get to the brush man!

Anyway, before the introduction overshadows the piece itself (a sound file is linked from the title), here we go:

I'm Gonna Get Me a Robot Man
by Ben Light and His Surf Club Boys

(intro)
People laugh at Science
The reason I can't see
For science has done many things
For girlies like Marie

First it gave us radio
That reached around the world
Now it's found another way
To help the working girl

She has had her troubles
With sweethearts by the score
But hip hooray for science
She won't have them any more!

(choruses)
She's gonna get her a robot man
He'll do things nobody else can
She'll turn him on about a quartet to nine
And keep in action all of the time

Switch him off at a quarter to ten
Rest a while then start him again
She'll have lovin' that's simply grand
When she gets her that robot man
(He'll keep givin'!) When she gets her that robot man.

She must have one with a guarantee
One that loves nobody else but she
She'll have gadgets that are unique
Turn him on on Monday and he'll run for a week

A robot man cannot cheat, you see
She'll control his electricity
He'll never feel tired and never get low
Flip a switch and he's ready to go, no foolin'
Flip a switch and he's ready to go.

(interlude -- Ben plays that tinkling piano)

A robot man cannot rust or spoil
All he needs is a little oil
And talk about your sex appeal
He'll be a Casanova made of steel

A metal papa that can go to town
He's got a battery that won't run down
If you want lovin' that's simply grand
Get a scientific robot man and he'll keep pitchin'
Get a scientific robot man!

Update: I believe the vocalist's name is Bob Tank. Ben Light went on to an instrumental career, some of which can be found in the recently uploaded hoard of around 25,000 78s (sides or disks?), recorded with some care and reasonable file size.
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Jukebox for December 22, 2008

EVERYBODY WANTS MY FANNY
by Benny Bell

Everyone is out to get my Fanny
Everybody wants to see my Fanny
Everybody likes to hold my Fanny
But she loves no one but me

Everybody wants to seize my Fanny
Everybody likes to squeeze my Fanny
They do everything to please my Fanny
Still she loves no one but me

Oh, don't touch my Fanny
Please don't ever try
My little Fanny
Is reserved for just one guy

That's why I never let another love light blind me
Everywhere I go you'll always find me
With my little Fanny right behind me
'Cause she's so in love with me

Everyone who ever spied my Fanny
Tried to hang around beside my Fanny
Maybe I should go and hide my Fanny
Or she'll find somebody new

I've seen lots of fannies in my time
And frequently their cheeks were close to mine
But never have I held one so divine
Like the Fanny that belongs to me

We will be married
Some day next June
And when we go away
To spend our honeymoon

I know that everyone is goin'a miss my Fanny
No one ever could resist my Fanny
But they wouldn't dare to kiss my Fanny
'Cause she's so in love with me

(ps: This is a song from, I guess, the 1940s, using American slang, not British slang. Using British slang, it's more filthy and less amusing, because some of the references make no real sense -- "right behind me" "their cheeks were close to mine," in particular.)

[Lyrics courtesy of The Mad Music Archive]
(If you enjoyed this, you might also like Shaving Cream, The Automobile Song, Why Buy a Cow When Milk is Cheap, or some of his other tunes over at archive.org.)

Joshing with Cal Stewart

About 1975 I was visiting family in Brookings, SD, and my aunt dropped me off at a little museum on the campus. The docents didn't know, when I asked them, if the cylinder player worked, but didn't mind if I tried it, so I put on a Sousa march for a half a minute, then switched over to "Uncle Josh at the Bug House."

James Thurber describes how he and his brother played a record -- I think it was "Cohen at the Telephone" -- nearly to death, and the same seems to have gone for this work of humorous art. Without steady, gentle finger pressure on the needle, it would have stayed in any given spot and repeated the same revolution over and over.

The performance itself was a recitation of one basic joke, over and over. The narrator lodged at a sort of hotel run by a man named Bug. He saw the lightning, Bug did, hee hee. He took a tumble, Bug did, hee hee. The piece had its own canned laughter, you might say, as "Uncle Josh" made sure to laugh at each of his jokes, or more accurately, at each instance of his joke. It was so popular, he re-recorded it a few years later. Here's Uncle Josh, blessedly silent, reacting to events in a Haunted House:



For the curious, the record is available at archive.org, along with a raft of other "Uncle Josh" sides and many other recordings. "Uncle Josh" movies can be found at the Library of Congress's "American Memory" site. Elsewhere online, I've found a reprint of at least one "Uncle Josh" book, and the fictional "Punkin Center" where the tales take place has been enshrined in more than one locale with that name, including one in Colorado, not terribly far from Lamar and Karval. I see that Cal Stewart's creation is also available on YouTube (aka: Your One-Stop Shop for All Things Josh). Which is to say, he was popular. Here he is at the moving picture show:



I'm too lazy to look up whether Stewart took his character's name from the verb "to josh," or whether the word came from Stewart's character. Neither one would surprise me much. (ps: A commenter at LJ says the verb precedes the name by many years.)

Cross-posted to LJ. Based on a Usenet post.

Toon River Anthology
part 4

POPEYE THE SAILOR
I played me part, see?
I ate me spinach and saved me girl
And helped the kiddies and told 'em
To listen to their parents, and I fought
For me country when it needed me.
Bluto was me enemy and me pal,
And I loved him, and he loved me.
Now, I never laid a hand on him, except
To give him a paste on the jaw, but he knew
And I knew he knew, and that was enough.
But it was something you couldn't say in them days,
So I kept quiet and kept on paying calls to Olive's house
But I only felt alive when I was scrapping with Bluto.
I was what I was.


DOLLY KEANE
Would anyone have paid attention
If I'd said "encyclopedia" or "electricity"?
If I wasn't adorably wrong about something,
I was invisible, ignored, unnecessary,
A clown even when I wasn't being funny.
So I went along with it. What choice did I have?
Through seven decades, trapped in that house, in that world,
In that body, in that face. I did my best to radiate
Ignorant, unreasoning cheerfulness
My passing was a mistake, a bid for attention that went wrong.
You should have found me in that "frigidater."
Couldn't you follow the dotted line?


FRED BASSET
This is my grave.
(I am dead!)

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the Bad Humor man

First you'll hear somebody snarling,
Then a clash of cacophanous bells.
Frozen dill pickes and vinegarsicles
Are what the Bad Humor Man sells.

He yells, "All you brats quit that shouting!"
And he smacks any kiddie who sings.
Cold curdled custard and horseradish mustard
Are what the Bad Humor man brings.

He carries a silver cop whistle
And he sneers that all children are crooks.
Birds fly away, and the puppies won't play
When they catch his bad-humored looks.

The special today's cubes of topsoil
Bedecked with a relish of dills
Stuck to the foil you'll find cold castor oil
And a garnish of saccharine pills.

He never gives anyone change back
And he takes nothing smaller than dimes.
Take it from me, you're wisest to flee
When you hear the Bad Humor Man's chimes.

(by me, circa 1983: originally printed in the New Pals Club Magazine)

Toon River Anthology
part 3

ANNIE WARBUCKS
"Daddy" made me feel loved and welcome.
He even got rid of that wife of his
Who acted like I was some sort of trophy;
A proof of her virtue. She was soon gone.
In her place, the lethal Asp and towering Punjab,
And Sandy. Always loyal, wonderful Sandy.
I would see "Daddy" mostly when he came in,
Guns blazing, fists flying, to save me
From the enemies of our country,
As well as from callous orphanages and cruel caretakers,
Just in time to sever them from success
And to protect this nation, and me, and Sandy,
And his own financial interests as well.
As days accreted into years, I wondered
Why my loving "Daddy" always ended up placing me
Back into those dark places where I had no protector
Save the good-hearted weak ones who folded like leaves
And sometimes a sympathetic gangster or mystic,
And I began to notice how my salvation and their demise
Solved at once some pressing business problem of "Daddy"'s
Until, at last, I resolved to contrive a test for him;
A setting of peril for me without any hope of profit for him.
And lo! here I am, beneath this stone forever
As Sandy, faithful Sandy, watches over me
Crying helplessly at the cold white eye of the moon.


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(Note: I edited out Jamaal J. Jamaal's epitaph that was here, which hinged on a point that might just be too out of date, almost ten years after it was written. It hinged on the fact that characters in "Herb and Jamaal" would use six or more extra words to avoid specificity, e.g. "That popular rap artist," instead of just picking a name. I liked how I wrote it, but it seems a bit obscure to me in 2018.)
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Toon River Anthology
part 2

PHILLIP WINSLOW
Dottie and I saw him in the window,
A small puppy, looking helplessly at us
Canting his head as if to hear something
We had just said. We brought him home
To the delight of the children. In my mind,
I had some reservations about his paws,
Which looked too large for such a small dog.
"He'll grow into them," Dottie said,
As if that was a good thing. And grow he did
Until he was bigger than any of us,
And willful, and selfish, and bone stupid,
Although he was clever at driving a car,
Making phone calls and operating a computer.
He was less like a dog than he was a demon,
Sucking the life out of our family,
My marriage, and our finances
Until the day I called him out to the car
And took him far away, into the mountains
And tried to lose him on a lonely road.
I got the beefsteak out of the trunk
And called to him to have a treat
But when I looked up, he was in front
And had undone the parking brake somehow
And he rolled right over me before he went
Clattering down the road, until the car stopped
Gently, the front bumper just touching a pine tree.
My last moments seemed to stretch out for me,
Seeing the quizzical expression again on that face,
With that long-ago puppy's face showing behind it
And I saw the irony as well, and had to admit
That in a way, it really was dog-gone funny.

ALAN THE ARTIST
Talent only takes you so far.
Praised in school, successful at first,
I saw my path to fame, to glory,
To all the good things in life.
But ideas were few, and I went
To the pool of creativity, which I found
In a glass pipe Jones gave me
Along with my first taste of the stuff
And I painted, painted, until I thirsted,
Went back to the pool, then painted some more.
But before long, the thirst was more important
And the next trip to the pool, and the next,
And my curtains grew tattered, and I began
To leave my shirt unbuttoned at the top,
And I even forgot to brush my teeth some times.
And then I sought out Ray, who was looking for me,
And things went bad from there, and I perished.
Students of art, always try to find yourselves
A cheaper form of creativity than mine,
And lay in abundant supplies
Before you prime your canvas.

[note: Alan was an ephemeral subplot in Apartment 3G.]
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Toon River Anthology
part 1

(originally from The Comics Curmudgeon)

PRIVATE BEETLE BAILEY
I trembled between them. There was no escape.
Then I saw the recruiter's door. I stepped inside.
Things blurred for a while, and I came to myself
With my porkpie hat gone and an army cap in its place.
And I found that in giving up freedom and self,
I had gained blamelessness and slack,
And what was at first temporary became instead
The permanent surrender of choice in exchange
For the permanent evasion of responsibility.
And as I stayed at Camp Swampy, year after year,
I was astonished one day to realize with a start
That nothing ever changed there. Nobody left
And nobody new came in, and nothing happened
Until the day I realized I had been dead thirty years
And that all of us were already in our private hell.


PETER PARKER
I never asked to be bitten. I only wanted
To listen to a scholarly talk about science
But there it was, I had great power now
And learned quickly what that entailed.
A lesser soul, gaining what I'd gained
Might have succumbed to vanity or greed,
But I had the lesson of Uncle Ben before me
And set out to make the world a better place
Whether the world wanted it or not.
For my pains, I was scorned, excoriated,
Lied about in the paper, and had my image
Which I provided for a modest fee, paraded
Before the credulous public as a menace.
Is it any wonder that I finally surrendered,
Took the easy way out, married my girlfriend
And stayed at home most days, watching TV?


THE UNKNOWN PLUGGER
Here I lie, in a humble pine box
None of your fancy caskets for me
If I'd died a few years later, it might have been
A cardboard carton for my eternal rest.
I didn't ever ask for much from the world;
Just a small-screen TV and a padded chair
The one to sleep in, the other to sleep
In front of on the nights when I didn't have to go
And work the next day. I kept my personal data
On the icebox in the kitchen. My watch
Only told time, and didn't bother me with
Phone calls, headlines, music, or games.
When I was hungry, I ate a burger with fries,
Drank the cheapest coffee, married a big chicken,
And played board games with my bored kids.
Until the day I felt my heart burst in my chest
And couldn't puzzle out the medicine cap in time.
Now I nap under a piece of granite,
Carved with my parents' names, with a line
Left for my family to fill in with mine
When they can afford it.

edited to subtract the lemons [and again]
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Cheer up! Smile!

There were so many cheery, upbeat songs in the Depression. And there were some downbeat ones as well. This is the best one I know that's zippy, sarcastic and bitter. Ask me to play and sing this for you next time we meet. I've always wanted to see Shirley Temple sing, dance, and dimple her way through this one:

VERSE
Say, business is punk
And Wall Street is sunk.
We're all of us broke
And ready to croak.
We've nothing to dunk
Can't even get drunk
And all the while they tell us
To smile...

CHORUS
Cheer up, peaceful citizens
Though you have no shirts;
Happy times are here again --
Cheer up! Smile! Nerts!
All aboard, Prosperity;
Giggle 'til it hurts!
No more breadline charity --
Cheer up! Smile! Nerts!

Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheeeeer up!
Cheer up! Cheer
Up! Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheer
Better times are near!
Sunny smilers we must be,
The optimist asserts --
Let's hang the fathead to a tree!
Cheer up! Smile! NERTS!

VERSE
The world's in the red.
We're better off dead.
Depression, they say
'S in session to stay
Our judges are queer.
Our banks disappear --
And all the while they tell us to smile.

CHORUS

Eddie Cantor with Phil Spitalny and his Music
http://www.archive.org/details/EddieCantor

tiny aspirations


(Picture snagged from WFMU's "Beware of the Blog")

That's where it started. They sold the little record players at Linder's, where I'd go look at toys and novelties (fake barf! whoopie cushions!). I lusted for that little player, and dreamed of having one. I must have been in second grade at the time, and I wished I could have a record player that I could take everywhere and have little tiny records to hear on it.

Never mind that the records they sold for that player probably sounded about like the plastic disk inside the Susy Moppet doll a friend found for me (that's another story). Never mind that they were recorded by utter nonentities who probably made Susy Moppet sound like Barbra Streisand. I never heard one of them played, and was probably happier that way.

Years passed. In junior high, I got my own tape recorder. A year after lusting for the 1.5" reel machine a friend had, I had saved up and got a 3" reel recorder at Penney's and proceeded to tape everything. I kept using it up to the time I was buying my first Firesign Theater albums, and then I finally gave in and got a cassette recorder, which I lugged around in a briefcase with as many tapes as I could cram in there.

One day, years later, I thought about how much my Walkman-type player resembled the wondrous record player of my far-off dreams. When I replaced that with a CD-based mp3 player, the thought came again. Now I think about it as I pat the shirt pocket with the 120GB iPod.

I also wished I could fly. Still waiting.

ps: A bit of searching today shows that one of these changed hands this month, with 11 records, for just over US$91. There was a photo of some of the records -- I could see guitars, a saxophone, a blonde singer, but couldn't make out names or any details. Almost every online reference to the "Mighty Tiny Record Player" led to a link to this item (unless every one of these happens to come with 11 records, of course). But I did find this, in the Google cache of a collector page (lala a gogo) that was otherwise '404 Not Found.'



Hot stuff.

morbid makeover

In one of my last photo expeditions to local graveyards around West Springfield, I took pictures of photos of loved ones that were incorporated into the stones themselves. These make me a little sad, and it was even more poignant to see how one photo in particular had deteriorated over the years.





Here's a young male, dates unknown because all the writing is in Hebrew (or perhaps Yiddish; I don't know how I could tell) except for a surname at the bottom. Many times I have looked at my pictures of this photo and thought it might be possible to use the paint bucket tool to fill in the missing areas with a dark shade and see the original photo. It wasn't so simple.

I ended up using the clone tool to pick up areas of shade and apply the tints here and there. Some of what I did was completely arbitrary, so it may be that this is not a real image of the deceased.



Nonetheless, I felt like I had a better idea of how this person had looked. Due to some of my own efforts, it's possible I have distorted the apparent gender of the loved one here, but a photo taken farther back shows what seems to be a young boy. It's kind of rough -- a more finished job might have taken twice as long, and it's getting late.

Anyway, that's what I did after work today.

Originally posted to LJ on 20080728.

ps: Thanks to Susan de Guardiola, in comments, for providing the translation of the tombstone. We now know who this young woman was. May she rest in peace. The impression of maleness was the result of deterioration of the picture and nothing else.

here's a fine how-do-you-do

I've raved before about the 1970 Bell Telephone Hour recording of "The Mikado" in which Groucho Marx plays Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner of Titipu. Thanks to one of my pals here, I even have a copy of it.

For those who don't, I'll just say again that the first time I heard this, I thought it must have been re-written for Mr. Marx, when, in fact, it was not changed one bit. The show was carved down to an hour -- minus time for breaks and such -- by the expedient of trimming away much of what didn't directly concern Mr. Marx. I believe I approve, since it's always possible to find a complete performance, but how often can one get the chance to hear such an inspired bit of casting?

It is now possible for others to get the recording, in 320kbps mp3 files, from ReDiscovery, a music vendor who specializes in rescuing obscure classical performances and selling them at budget prices. This is in their "Paperback Classics" series, and is offered free of charge. Dang!

The company also reissues some of the "Basic Library of the World's Great Classics," which used to sell in grocery stores for a dollar, one album a week. We had a bunch of these in my house growing up, and I used to read the booklets that came bound into the box, and even listen to some of the anonymous performances. I saw the first nine releases of the collection at an estate sale last week, and had to restrain myself from buying them all again (having painfully forced myself to part with all but a tiny sample of them years ago in an effort to reduce the bulk of my records). ReDiscovery has done detective work and found out who the artists were who recorded most of them, and if you buy their records, you too will know. They're nice performances.

The link is above. Look down at the bottom of the page, and there's Groucho's doing the Mikado (with some help from Helen Traubel, Stanley Holloway, and some other people, including two guys named Gilbert and Sullivan). You'll be taken to a download page where you'll need to click on the two parts (side one and side two, I'll wager) to go to yet another page that will finally give you this wonderful recording. The link in this paragraph will tell you more about the cast and so forth. If any of you ever find a video recording of this TV special, please, please, let me know. (Same goes for Peter Schickele's performance of the PDQ Bach Concerto for Piano vs Orchestra on "Evening at Pops" around 1974-5.)

If you've never heard this classic tale of love and decapitation, this is a splendid introduction. And if you like it, do what they always advised at the end of every Classics Illustration adaptation and go out and get the whole thing. The parts they cut out are as good as what they left in. Go.

two great tastes

We all love middle English, and we all love legacy comic strips, whose creators have moved on to that great bullpen in the sky. "Angry Kem," rightly divining these sentiments in society, has leaped to combine them into one, easy-to-digest web site, Japes for Owre Tymes.

JfOT is now in its second great day. Don't get run over: leap on the bandwagon now!

Angry Kem is a commentator at The Comics Curmudgeon, as am I ("Muffaroo"). Don't say I never give you any good links.