GENIUS! Incredibly Talented Dancer in AMAZING Tap Number!

I have no words! The kid is amazing, and defies gravity. The joie de vivre, the grace, the class. . . This number is actually a tribute to the Nicholas Brothers, and Lauren gets all the moves right. You can hear Grandma raving in the background. 

Unlucky Leo (Worst toy ever??)

Vintage Lucky Leo The Lion Nodder 4" Dabs Vintage Japan Old Troll Doll Extremely Rare Bobblehead Retro Bobble Head Bottom of Form

Vintage from the 1970s

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Lucky Leo!!!

A vintage Nodder by Dabs, Made in Japan!!

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Price: CA$70.06

THE END

❤Do You See a Ghost? Eerie Black-and-white Images from Vintage Photos❤

Black and white, late at night. This is from a seemingly endless collection of strange, beautiful, disturbing, freaky, inexplicable images I've compiled over the years. Some are taken from my own life, such as the grainy photo of my childhood home on Victoria Ave., and my first birthday, with baby Margaret staring uncomprehendingly at a giant birthday cake with one candle, an obvious photo op for the family which was actually lost on me. But isn't that what childhood is all about?

Triplets Casco, Cranberry & Chickadee arrive!

The kids are alright! Three perfect little baby goats popped out and immediately began to bleat and hop around as if they're on springs. Speaking of spring. . . April is the cruellest month, eh? But these kids help restore my faith in nature, if not in human beings (who aren't worthy of it, most of the time).

I'm not getting notified about comments anymore, as the box I tick mysteriously gets "unticked" for reasons I can't figure out. So far I SEEM to be getting comments on the older ones, but who knows what is next. I've had Blogger screw up before, as it's a very old program that has barely been updated. That's what I like about it .Blogs are out of style anyway, but so am I, and I just don't feel like trying to "keep up". It sucks anyway, so here are the goats.

Marmot makes home in North Vancouver

My illustrious daughter Shannon Paterson covers an amazing story torn from the pages of Wild Kingdom! It's a marmot, folks, which seems impossible in busy, urban North Vancouver. BUT, we frequently walk around a man-made lake in the city of Coquitlam (it used to be a stone quarry), and a family of beavers KEEPS ON building lodges and felling trees at the edge of the lake. They've been relocated several times, but keep on coming back. The ruins of the lodge are still there, though most people don't know what the caved-in bundle of twigs and logs is. MANY of the trees have wire netting wrapped around the trunks to prevent the toothy creatures from literally felling giant trees. So, well, yes, a marmot. . .

Top Cat: the Mystery SOLVED!

 

(And now, for a summer rerun in the middle of April. I'm STILL getting comments on this post from 2017, which delights me no end!)

In my rediscovery of the magnificent Choo Choo, who was perhaps my favorite cartoon character of all time,  I've been thinking about some of the mysteries of the Top Cat theme song lyrics. This is, as far as I am aware, the correct version.

Top Cat, the most effectual
Top Cat, who's intellectual
Close friends get to call him T. C.
Providing it's with dignity

Top Cat
The indisputable leader of the gang
He's the boss, he's a VIP
He's a championship
He's the most tip top
Top Cat

Yes he's the chief, he's the king
But above everything
He's the most tip top
Top Cat

TOP CAT!

By God! I never knew the line was "he's a VIP" until just now, after listening to it seventy-seven times. But now that I hear it, that's all it could be. Most lyric sites say "he's a pip", but it's definitely NOT "pip". For a long time, it sounded to me more like "bip". Finally I find a site that says VIP, and I think: no way, nevermore! But yes, it works, if you pronounce it like one word, "vip" (and I'm not sure which way you spell it, upper- or lower-case). This means "very important person", though "VIC" would be more accurate. 

Not only that: one of the "misheard" lyrics below just clued me in on something. I think the second and third lines are usually heard as "whose intellectual/close friends get to call him T. C", but that doesn't make any sense. NONE of his friends are intellectual, not even my darling pink-coated, fluffy-tailed, Brooklyn-accented Choo Choo. But TC is smart as a whip. 

So it makes more sense to say:

Top Cat, the most effectual -
Top Cat, who's intellectual -
(A slight pause, which you can actually hear in the song, then the next thought):
Close friends get to call him T. C.
Providing it's with dignity.

It even makes better grammatical sense, at least to me. I added the dashes just for dash.

Now, can you believe I found whole web pages devoted to "mondegreens" (misheard lyrics) for the Top Cat theme? The "providing it's with dignity" line was especially problematic for people, reminding me of the Flintstones: "let's ride with the family down the street/through the courtesy of flphghghvfllgheep." It's worse than the "you know it's up to you, I think it's only fair" in the Beatles' She Loves You (quick - what's the next line?)

So a lot of the best mondegreens come from that line, often leading to shocking references to "whipping". This is a children's show, for God's sake (though you'd never know it by the crookedness and delinquency of T. C.'s gang of reprobates).

Original lyrics:

Close friends get to call him T. C. 

Providing it's with dignity

Misheard lyrics:

Close friends get to Quality Street
Nobody ain't gets whipping for tea

Close friends get to call him T.C.
Come right in, it's whipping for tea.

Close friends get to call him T.C.
Come on in he's whipping the 't'.

Close friends get to call him T.C.
Providing there's whipped cream for tea.

Close friends get to quality, see?
Provided it's with the kitty.
l
Close friends get to call him T.C.
Pro-fighting is whipped in the tea. 

So. When this show first came on, I was seven years old. It surprised me to find that out, because I think I "got" quite a bit of the humor in it. I noticed that most of the background music had been recycled from The Flintstones. I absolutely loved Choo Choo. He was, and is, adorable. For some reason I remember T. C. brushing his teeth before going to bed in the garbage can, and missing one side. That really bothered me, because I had been nagged and nagged about the proper way to brush my teeth.

As for the "with dignity" line, mine was the worst of all:

Close friends get to call him T. C. 
Most cats are just dripping to see
Top Cat (etc.) 

What that means, I don't even want to speculate on.

For my money, this is the best cover version of the Top Cat theme, which is ubiquitous on YouTube. I'm thinking of doing a version myself. This guy's ukelele chords are incredibly sophisticated. He looks a little bit like the kid from Deliverance, but that just adds to the mystique.



10 comments:

InviteeOctober 4, 2020 at 5:03 AM

I’m not convinced. Despite having tracked down and heard many supposedly original airings where it does seem to be “with dignity”, I still suspect it’s ACTUALLY “with invitee”. INVITEE is a little used word for INVITATION. The line therefore means that close friends can “call on T.C.” (visit T.C.” so long as they have an invitation. Even the man who wrote the lyrics, when later asked, said he didn’t know and no originally written lyrics survive! Nothing will shake my belief.ReplyDelete
Replies

Bunnycat.October 8, 2020 at 8:37 AM

Invitee is not a synonym of invitation. An invitee is a person who receives an invitation. The person who issues the invitation is the invited.Delete



Margaret GunningOctober 12, 2020 at 4:12 PM

Hey guys, thanks for the comments. I love it when someone reads my stuff a couple of years later. The Top Cat issue remains contentious. I was actually working on an updated version of this post when your comments came in! There is a Hanna-Barbera Wiki site with a LOT of cartoon lyrics on it, and here is what they said:

Top Cat!
The most effectual Top Cat!
Who's intellectual close friends get to call him T.C.
Providing it's with dignity.
Top Cat!
The indisputable leader of the gang.
He's the boss, he's a pip, he's the championship.
He's the most tip top,
Top Cat.
Yes he's a chief, he's a king,
But above everything,
He's the most tip top,
Top Cat.
Top Cat!

I still have a little trouble with the "the"/"a" bit, but it's not as important as the "whipping the tea" line, which I think has led to some creative alternatives that I like better than the original. And I'm sticking with my "providing it's with dignity." There is still a little bit of debate about whether it's TOP CAT who is intellectual, or if his CLOSE FRIENDS are intellectual. It has been argued his close friends are dumb as posts, which is true - but might this be a little irony sprinkled in?Delete


Reply


KolbeAugust 31, 2022 at 7:57 AM

"He's a Pip" does make sense. I've never heard anyone referred to as a V.I.P. without articulating each letter. Not that they couldn't have taken license and said "vip", figuring people might get it, but it's more sensible to assume the word "pip", which was known and used and easily understood especially by the adults watching at that time, though the word is all but obsolete now. It meant an "highly admirable, attractive person". It was such a common label it became something of a trend to use it in a negative way, rolling the eyes when referring to someone as "a pip". You'll see that in old movies from time to time.
As regards the comment that the guy on video covering the song looks a little "Deliverence" to you, what an insult. Have you gone back to look at the Deliverance kid since the 70's? No resemblance, save that he's a human being plucking strings.ReplyDelete
Replies

Margaret GunningAugust 31, 2022 at 10:18 AM

I liked the kid from Deliverance! Though he mimed the banjo playing,he added something unforgettable to the film. In reality, he wasn't a mentally challenged person, rather a local kid who wanted to do it and passed the audition, and throughout his life (I actually researched this) he was still treated like a celebrity. I would say the guy who rapes Ned Beatty was thoroughly detestable.
At any rate, I appreciate your comments. "Pip" just reminds me of something upper-class Brits say: "Cheerio, pip-pip" (though no Englishman EVER said that). An orange or lemon seed could also be called a "pip". But it does sound better than "vip". It always surprises me when something I posted five years ago gets some response. For one brief shining moment, there was a Top Cat YouTube channel, which of course disappeared due to copyright issues. Watching them again, I was impressed with how stylish the visuals were - a bit like Disney in 101 Dalmations (though totally different subject - stylized but not pretentious). BRING BACK T. C. (and Choo-Choo, of course). At very least, start showing them on YouTube again.Delete



AnonymousNovember 22, 2022 at 10:20 AM

Now that I know what 'pip' means, it DOES make a lot more sense. I can't promise to stop using 'vip' though.Delete


Reply


KolbeAugust 31, 2022 at 7:59 AM

PS. Not being overly critical with my comment. Enjoyed stumbling across this today. I loved T.C. and the gang back in the day.

Allagash the goat baby arrives!

So begins another spring.

Two cats are on the Titanic minutes before the sinking (Cat memes)

One of my current favorite cat memes! I love the primitive animation, the way the same few memes are repeated and repeated - but in this case, the story line is much more original than all the "road trips", "failing your exams" and "going to the dentist" ones. Some of these creators actually have an imagination!

Luna crunching

Luna the Crunchy Cat has over 400,000 subscribers and often gets millions of views just for her crunching! But she deserves every bit of it. That adorable crunching sound and the way her fierce little nose wrinkles up (and her beautiful sultry eyes) can literally turn a bad day around.

Queen of Cheese? Theophilus the Great

 

I just tried to watch another YouTube video that GOT IT ALL WRONG. It celebrated the awful poetry of one William Topaz McGonagall, calling him the Worst Poet in History. But McG is not even close! I was going to post a comment on it and thought: ah shit, why bother? I'll do my own post on it. (They always get it wrong, don't they?) But McGonagall is certainly not alone in writing bad poetry. Even the so-called greats had their off moments.

I found a horrible Robert Frost poem in which a man pounds on his door of a snowy evening and asks if he can cut down all the lovely snow-sparkling pines on his property to sell as Christmas trees. And here Frost hums and haws over it, turns it over in his mind, thinking: well, here are the advantages in it; and hmmm, here are the disadvantages in it; and: AIIIIIEEEEEK! Cut down all your friggin' trees?? What are you thinking? I guess back then it must have seemed that there were trees enough, that they were endless, and just a crop to be managed like any other. But I was so upset at this point that I didn't even read to the end.

Discouraged, I threw away Christmas and widened my scope to include any old poetry that was sublimely bad, but it's hard to find truly awful stuff. I found articles quoting three or four weak lines in, say, Tennyson. Auden once used a bad adjective, and somebody found a pun in Shakespeare, comparing an orange to Seville (or was it servile?). Well, who gives a shit about that? I wanted bad, and I wasn't getting it.

Until.

Until I found. . . This. 

A Tragedy

Theophilus Marzials

Death!
Plop.

The barges down in the river flop.

Flop, plop.

Above, beneath.

From the slimy branches the grey drips drop,
As they scraggle black on the thin grey sky,
Where the black cloud rack-hackles drizzle and fly
To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop
On the black scrag piles, where the loose cords plop,
As the raw wind whines in the thin tree-top.

Plop, plop.

And scudding by

The boatmen call out hoy! and hey!
All is running water and sky,

And my head shrieks -- "Stop,"

And my heart shrieks -- "Die."

*          *          *          *          *
My thought is running out of my head;
My love is running out of my heart,
My soul runs after, and leaves me as dead,
For my life runs after to catch them -- and fled
They all are every one! -- and I stand, and start,
At the water that oozes up, plop and plop,
On the barges that flop
                              And dizzy me dead.
I might reel and drop.
                                                Plop.
                                                Dead.

And the shrill wind whines in the thin tree-top
                           Flop, plop.
*          *          *          *          *
A curse on him.
                            Ugh! yet I knew -- I knew --
If a woman is false can a friend be true?
It was only a lie from beginning to end --

My Devil -- My "Friend"

I had trusted the whole of my living to!

Ugh; and I knew!

Ugh!

So what do I care,

And my head is empty as air --

I can do,

I can dare,

(Plop, plop

The barges flop

Drip drop.)

I can dare! I can dare!

And let myself all run away with my head
And stop.

Drop.

Dead.

Plop, flop.

                                              Plop.

---

                                        [-- from The Gallery of Pigeons (1874) ]

As if this bounty weren't enough, I found these little notes attached to an article about him, claiming that Marzials, not McGonagall, was the worst poet in the English language:

"Theo Marzials, the last of the Victorian aesthetes, who lived on in rural retirement, addicted to beetroot and chlorodyne (morphia, chloroform and prussic acid), for two decades after the world thought him dead. In the 1870s, as a young man with long hair, flowing moustaches and a silk bow tie over his lapels, he worked at the British Museum. According to Max Beerbohm, the great Panizzi himself, founder of the round Reading Room, was one day surprised to hear a shrill voice crying from the gallery: "Am I or am I not the darling of the Reading Room?"

. . .  Marzials almost outlived danger. "On the last occasion when I happened to catch sight of him, looking into a case of stuffed birds at South Kensington Museum, he had eaten five large chocolate creams in the space of two minutes," wrote Ford in 1911. "He had a career tragic in the extreme and, as I believe, is now dead." But he wasn't. He was living in a farmhouse room in Colyton, Devon. The bed, occupied day and night, had a saucer of sliced beetroot beside it, the smell of which mingled with the fumes of chlorodyne, the smoke of an oil lamp and the steam of a stockpot perpetually simmering on the
stove."

This is disjointed as hell because I've edited 300 or so words out of it, so who knows who "Ford" is, but then again, who cares? The important thing is that I have found a truly horrendous, a harrowingly bad poet, and this opens the door to all sorts of posts about him. Or not. Depends if I can find anything else. Oh, here's one -

The Ghost of Love

by: Theophilus Marzials (1850-1920)

The wan witch at the creepy midnight hour,
When the wild moon was flying to its full,
Went huddling round a damned convent's tower,
From out the crumbling slabs or tombs to pull
Some lecherous leaf or shrieking mandrake-flower.
Beneath she heard the dead men's voices dull;
Around she felt the cold souls creep and cower;
In hand she held a grinning damned's skull!

Then through the ruin'd cloisters, strangely white,
T'wards the struck moon, all swathed in colod grave-bands,
She saw dead Love wringing his hollow hands,
And gliding grimmer than a dank tomb-light.

And with a shriek she rush'd across his path--
And now the hell-worm all her body hath!

The problem with this one is, as Zero Mostel says to Gene Wilder in The Producers: "Nah, it's too good." In fact it's neither good nor bad, and is as purple as most Victorian stuff was. But it strikes me as bargain basement Gerard Manley Hopkins, and even a pale photocopy of Hopkins has a certain power behind it.

I don't know what "colod grave-bands" are, but maybe they played gigs at the cemetary. Were they people of "colo"? We'll never know. (Could be a typo, also.) So even at being the worst, Marzials wasn't the best. Or the other way around.

MARZIALS DISH. This was all I could find about his sex life, and it came from Wikipedia so it MUST be true:

"The relationship between Marzials and fellow author Edmund Gosse is debated, with some claims that their relationship was more than platonic."

But wait, there's more. . . a truly cheesy poem!

We have seen the Queen of cheese,

Laying quietly at your ease,

Gently fanned by evening breeze --

Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go

To the great Provincial Show,

To be admired by many a beau

In the city of Toronto.

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees --

Or as the leaves upon the trees --

It did require to make thee please,

And stand unrivalled Queen of Cheese.

May you not receive a scar as

We have heard that Mr. Harris

Intends to send you off as far as

The great World's show at Paris.

Of the youth -- beware of these --

For some of them might rudely squeeze

And bite your cheek; then songs or glees

We could not sing o' Queen of Cheese.

We'rt thou suspended from baloon,

You'd cast a shade, even at noon;

Folks would think it was the moon

About to fall and crush them soon.

James McIntyre

I don't know what to say.