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

Christian Ventriloquists

Since those strange and tawdry days of Charlie McCarthy and (shudder) Jerry Mahoney, ventriloquism seems to have gone underground. It still shows up  on novelty shows like America's Got Talent (or Britain, or Ukraine, or Mongolia or wherever), an update of the old vaudeville show glorified in the '60s by Ed Sullivan.

Though the ultimate ventriloquist was Senor Wencez with his "hand puppet" (literally, a puppet made out of his hand, which is a device that still delights toddlers), I found a particularly juicy sub-genre of the art in Christian ventriloquism. Perhaps dogma sounds better coming out of the mechanical mouth of a wood-carven mutant.

Most of these poses are from record albums that enjoyed huge popularity (I nearly said "pup-ularity") in the 1950s and '60s. No doubt these were small labels, for how else would "Do You Know Jesus?" starring Uncle Les and Aunt Nancy Wheeler (Featuring Randy) find an audience?  Quite a few of these acts proclaim family relationships, mostly uncles and aunts who somehow produced a ball-jointed wooden robot with their contribution of DNA. And I have never been able to figure out how it is that a ventriloquist's dummy would work on a record album. It wouldn't matter if you moved your lips, for sure.

I can't help but notice that all these dummies look suspiciously alike. Creepy, I mean. That mausoleum look on the puppeteer's face is mighty strange, as if she's taking a day off from Madame Tussaud's. Both dummy and "manipulator" (the technically-correct term) seem to have the same hairdresser. (By the way, like harness-makers in the early 20th century, did the dummy-maker go into decline when audiences became more sophisticated? Or did they all flee to Bible camp?)

Then we have squicky little Marcy, who has so many albums that I had to pare it down to a couple. I can imagine she had a squeaky irritating voice as she prattled on about Jesus and salvation. The manipulator has perfect helmet-like Mary Tyler Moore hair, placing this somewhere in the early 1960s. I wonder if these records were discounted at Bible camp. I know they still show up in garage sales and thrift shops, eagerly snarfed up by collectors, else why would we be enjoying this display right now?

Marcy sings some more. Yikes. We see her standing up here, which is odd for a dummy, but I'm not sure the puppeteer has so much skill as to make her mouth move without any physical contact. That WOULD be squicky, if not downright supernatural.

Obviously a bargain basement record, with an incomprehensible cover. Why is it that all these things exude so much guilt? I guess because that's what religion is all about. There are many red arrows that say "AND" on them, and many grainy b + w photos of dummies, plus choirs. And, as it says in the upper left corner, it is all FUN.

Maybe the ick factor never even occurred to anyone back then, but the thought of Uncle "D" with a girl on one knee and a boy on the other, a huge Bible in front of them and stained glass in the background is alarming today. The "D" seems to indicate a suspicious anonymity, like something from an AA meeting where people are afraid to give their last name.

Oh, rapture! Grace and Wilbur Thrush have a whole family of gaudy dum-dums, not to mention furries such as you'd see in one of those bizarre conventions (and you can't tell ME that funny business doesn't go on in those). What's that on the left, a chess game? I'll have to blow this one up and try to get the details.

Woah.

This is a very odd kind of biker ventriloquist act, with Butch and Suzi (both girls, I assume) sitting on Maralee Dawn's lap. This is an obvious pseudonym to hide her Angel Mama past. They all sit precariously atop a cardboard-cutout Harley, with the caption Featuring The Country Ridin' Preacher, which I won't even try to explain.

It's Sunday School pageant time, with a man dressed in his wife's bathrobe and a kitchen towel. His little disciple is no doubt meant to represent a shepherd boy of some sort. The title is hard to read, but it goes (as they say) something like this: Dan Butler and Louie tell the Bible Classics, Volume III.

No shit, VOLUME III! Volumes I and II must've been hot sellers at Bible camp, or maybe they gave them away free. I must try to track some of these down on YouTube. I need some religion about now to salvage this bizarre day before it sinks in a quagmire of wretched depravity.

I've saved the best until last: the inimitable Erick on the Rainbow label, which (believe me) does not mean the same thing now as it did then. Or maybe it did, who knows. Erick's routine is called Pastor Pickin', which sounds so sinister I don't want to go into it. 

My personal favorite. The seeming eroticism of this, the way their foreheads touch, the way they lean into each other, suggests a love that dares not speak its name, because it's not just interspecies, it's - well, what DO you call having a thing for a ventriloquist's dummy? I'm not sure there is even a word for it. It took me quite a while to realize that Erick and his manipulator Beverly Massagee are PRAYING together, that's all. I mean it. And it's on the Rainbow Label, too.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
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Barnes & Noble

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Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Marimba Queens

I don't know how it is that I keep finding this stuff. . . usually late at night. . . when I probably should be asleep. . . I mean, it's been a good day and all, but I'd like to collapse for about 100 years now, and here's this fat guy, I mean this REALLY fat guy from the 1930s playing a xylophone. . .

Like he's the Pavarotti of the xylophone or something, but you ain't seen nothin' till you've seen this. . .

There's this weird chick band of all xylophones, or marimbas I think they're supposed to be, and this guy, I mean! He thrashes on his bass like he's trying to kill it or something!

This isn't family viewing. Too much violence. But I do like that bubbly thing at the end. This is a silent music video, so to get the sounds just pick up a popsicle stick and hit it on something wooden.