The incredible Camel Toe Sisters

SOLID POTATO SALAD

The Ross Sisters '44

Some folks like their 'taters Lyonnaise,
Some prefer French fries,
But I like mine fixed with mayonnaise,
Coleslaw on the side.

Solid potato salad,
That's solid salad, Jack!
Solid potato salad, boy,
Take a plate, fill it up, bring it right back!

Solid potato salad,
And let's have no "yak-yak!".
Solid potato salad, boy,
Take a plate, fill it up, bring it right back!

The farmer said to the spud,
"Your skin looks mighty pallid,
So I'll dig you later, bud,
For some solid - potato salad!".

Solid potato salad,
That's solid salad, Jack!
Solid potato salad, boy,
Take a plate, fill it up and bring it right back!

Take a plate, fill it up and bring it right back!

Take a plate, fill it up and bring it right back!

Take a plate, fill it up and bring it right back!

Solid potato - salad,
These are really fine and you'd better latch on!
Solid potato - salad,
For there's a date, get a plate before it's all gone!

The farmer said to the spud,
"You're skin looks mighty pallid,
So I'll dig you later, bud,
For some solid - poatao salad!".

Solid potato salad,
That's solid salad, Jack!
Solid potato salad, boy,
Take a plate, fill it up,
Take a plate, fill it up and bring it right back!
Take a plate, fill it up and bring it right back!

PLEASE NOTE. This is, without a doubt, the strangest video you will ever watch, or at least the strangest 1940s/movie musical/sister act/contortionist routine. These girls appear to be half snake/half rubber, and could likely ooze under the crack of a door if they wanted to. Their scant costumes and the impossible writhing that happens underneath them lead to a distinct recurrence of camel toe. (Maybe it was part of the act?)

Most videos of this legendary routine start with the contortionist "dance" number, but the song was so strange, so incomprehensible, that I had to post the whole thing. These women were no doubt extremely talented, but it was a specialized thing suited to vaudeville, which by the 1940s had pretty much died out. Radio still ruled supreme (and didn't lend itself to contortionist acts), there was no TV yet and thus no Ted Mack or Ed Sullivan Show, and by that time they would've been too old for these incredible contortions anyway. 

If you want to just see the contortionist routine, start at 2:24. But the song is so odd, so incomprehensible, that I suggest you watch it too. There were some weird "foodie" songs in the '40s, the one about "the frim-fram sauce with shifafa on the side", and the one about "hold tight, hold tight, Mama wants some seafood" (or whatever it is), so maybe this was in the same genre. Nat King Cole recorded it, and subsequent lyrics razor-bladed out "your skin looks mighty pallid" - a sly wink Nat would appreciate, but horribly racist to anyone else (and most of the lyrics I found on the internet omitted it). 

With or without pallid potato salad, watch this. Be amazed, and a little afraid. Or a lot.

I don't want French fried potatoes
Red ripe tomatoes
I'm never satisfied
I want the frim fram sauce with the Ausen fay
With chafafa on the side

I don't want pork chops and bacon
That won't awaken
My appetite inside
I want the frim fram sauce with the Ausen fay
With chafafa on the side

Now a Fellas really got to eat
And a Fellas should eat right
Five will get you ten
I'm gonna feed myself right tonight

I don't want fish cakes and rye bread
You heard what I said
Waiter, please serve mine fried
I want the frim fram sauce with the Ausen fay
With chafafa on the side

Now a Fellas really got to eat
And a Fellas should eat right
Five will get you ten
I'm gonna feed myself right tonight

I don't want fish cakes and rye bread
You heard what I said
Waiter, please serve mine fried
I want the frim fram sauce with the Ausen fay
With chafafa on the side

Now if you don't have it, Just bring me the check for the water

(and if that's not weird enough - )

Choo choo to Broadway foo Cincinnati
Don't get icky with the one two three
Life is just so fine on the solid side of the line, rip

Hold tight, hold tight, a-hold tight, hold tight
Fododo-de-yacka saki
Want some sea food mama
Shrimps and rice they're very nice
Hold tight, hold tight, a-hold tight, hold tight
Fododo-de-yacka saki

Want some sea food mama
Shrimps and rice they're very nice
I like oysters, lobsters too,
I like my tasty butter fish, fooo
When I come home late at night
I get my favorite dish, fish 

Hold tight, hold tight, a-hold tight, hold tight
Fododo-de-yacka saki
Want some seafood mama
Shrimps and rice they're very niiiiiiiiiiiiice
Bad da do daa, da de do da do daa, ba da da da do daaaa
Fododododo Yacka sacki

want some seafood Mama
Shrimps and rice they're always very nice
Fododo dya, Fododo dya Fododo-de-yacka saki
want some seafood Mama
Oh won't you give it to me
cause I'm as happy as can be

When the seafood comes to me

La-da-da La-da-da La-da-da
I like oysters, lobsters too
Ba-da-da-dat-dat-da-dada-data
When I get home late at night
I get my favorite dish, fish

Hold tight, hold tight, a-hold tight, hold tight
Fododo-de-yacka saki
Want some sea food mama
Shrimps and rice are very nice
Ho, ho, hold tight won't cha hold tight, Hold tight
Fododododo Yacka sacki

want some seafood Mama

Shrimpers a-hand ri-hice a-hare very nice
I like oysters, lobsters too,
I like my tasty butter fish, Joe
When I come home late at night
drip drip dripin' on the window pane
Wash it

Hold tight do-dat-do-day
Hold tight she wants some seafood Mama
Shrimpers and rice they're very nice
I like oysters, lobsters too,
I like my tasty butter fish, fooo

When I come home late at night
I get my favorite dish, fish
Hold tight, hold tight
Hold tight, hold tight
Want some seafood Oh Mama
Shrimpers and rice Oh Hold tight

Fifteen-second Classics: GIRL GANG!

Sex and cigarettes

How is it that when certain movies come on TV, you drop what you're doing and watch them even if you don't like them very much? Or, at least, when said movies are seriously flawed.

This happens with Now, Voyager - EVERY time. Though I know it's nothing more than a semi-intelligent soaper with pretensions of a Heroic Journey (circa 1942), there's just something about Miz Charlotte and her travail (tra-Vale?) that sucks me in every time.

Speaking of suck. From the beginning of this thing, even before Charlotte Vale the sad little rich girl metamorphoses into Charlotte Vale the sad little rich WOMAN (having been screwed  in the tropics by Gerry, the biggest asshole to come down the turnpike since Jimmy Cagney shoved the grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face), there is smoking. Lots and lots of smoking. Charlotte the repressed spinster smokes in her room, and it's a wonder she doesn't set the whole place on fire by being so secretive with her butts.

Suck, suck, suck. Just picture all those cancer cells forming deep down in the lungs. Yet in that era, sex and seduction were all intertwined with cigarettes. In this movie, smoking is more ritualized than in any other I can think of. Gerry (a carnivorous bastard happily juggling two women, neither of which can actually have him) has a charming habit of shoving two cigarettes in his face, lighting them both in a great livid explosion, then handing one of them to Charlotte like she's being granted her last wish before being executed.

Ah, those smoldering looks. He can afford to smolder because he has no goddamn responsibilities whatsoever. This is one of several things that bother the hell out me about this movie - that, and the way he is portrayed as some sort of saint when he's really just busy cattin' around from woman to woman  and blowing lots of smoke. The other thing that sets my teeth on edge is that daughter of his, Tina, a whiny, clingy sort of lamprey whom Charlotte fastens on to as a DEVICE (no less) to force Gerry to stay in her life and not chase the next piece of tail that comes down the turnpike.

Ahhhh! Gerry in that tent or wherever-the-fuck they are! Out somewhere. Anyway, they're all bundled up talking (smoking, too, I think) and there's this big fire in the fireplace, and then the fire burns down real low and the camera pans back to them and it looks like she's wearing his pajamas. This means they must have had sex. Charlotte keeps referring to it over and over again in the most coy manner possible, i. e. telling her fiance (whom she rejects, maybe because he's too nice or doesn't smoke enough) that she "must sound depraved", which she does. But when you think about it, screwing around with a married man IS a form of moral turpitude and can't really be defended, even if Charlotte takes on the noble, selfless role of Tina's quasi-mother to save Gerry's family/keep him on the string. 

But ya gotta wonder. . . are these guys smokin', or tokin'?

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Levant and his "honeysuckle"

This is a bad version of a good clip. The clip I used to have (of the same song) mysteriously shrank, filling about 1/4 of the screen, which is too bad because THIS one leaves out a few seconds before and after the song which are completely charming. But this is a good example of Oscar's strange seductiveness, which does seem to apply to men as well as women. I mean. . . calling a man "Honeysuckle" is just a little too much, isn't it? Any nickname that has "suck" in it is suspicious to me.