My cat sleeps with his eyes open!

 

I can't say for sure. But his ever-open glassine orbs give me the shivers late at night, when he seldom blinks and sometimes grunts, nodding his head sharply at me, wanting neither attention nor food. WHAT DOES HE WANT??

Trump praised QAnon during meeting about keeping the Senate

Trump praised QAnon during meeting about keeping the Senate 

BLOGGER'S NOTE. Not everyone feels safe clicking on links, no matter how scrupulously careful you are - so I copied and pasted this short piece for all to see. Some of T-Rump's most rabid Republican supporters, including the most influential in the party,  are now pleading with him to step down, or at least shut up, as he seems increasingly out of touch with reality. Even FOX NEWS has supposedly turned against him - and they uncritically run tories of alien invasions and "dark web" intrigue. Should I feel hopeful about this? I'm into feeling hopeful as much as I can, and astonished that the vaccine is actually being delivered and administered RIGHT NOW, not a year from now as I always assumed. So I hold on to that, and Biden's clear and dignified win, and the hope that 2021 CANNOT be as wretched as this past year, which T-Rump still insists was his best year ever because he WON BY A LANDSLIDE.

Trump praised QAnon during meeting about keeping the Senate 

By Manu Raju and Sam Fossum, CNN

Updated 1:55 PM ET, Thu December 3, 2020

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump brought up Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene's support for the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory during a meeting on keeping the Senate with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other aides, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN.

This person confirmed that Trump told those present that QAnon consists of people who "basically believe in good government," which led to silence in the room. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows then said he had not heard the group described as such.

 

Trump's comments were first reported by The Washington Post.

QAnon's prevailing conspiracy theories -- none based in fact -- claim that dozens of Satan-worshipping politicians and A-list celebrities work in tandem with governments around the globe to engage in child sex abuse. The group also peddles conspiracies about coronavirus and mass shootings -- none grounded in reality.

Followers also believe there is a "deep state" effort to annihilate Trump.

The group has been labeled a domestic terror threat by the FBI. In public, Trump has claimed he doesn't "know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate," while repeatedly declining opportunities to condemn the organization's extremism. 

As for Greene, Trump has called her a "future Republican star." But she has a history of prejudice and a proclivity for amplifying conspiracies. She said that George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, collaborated with Nazis. She called "Q" a "patriot" who is "worth listening to." She said that the deadly White supremacist rally held in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, was an "inside job" to "further the agenda of the elites."

Greene said on Facebook that "there is an Islamic invasion into our government offices right now" and urged adherents of Islam and Sharia law to "stay over there in the Middle East," according to Politico. She said that Black people "are held slaves to the Democratic Party," while White males are "the most mistreated group of people in the United States today."

Greene backed away from some of those comments during her campaign. In August, she told Fox News that QAnon "wasn't part of my campaign" and that once she "started finding misinformation," she "chose another path." 

But Greene has continued to spread misinformation and court controversy. In September, Greene asserted in a tweet that "children should not wear masks," rejecting the recommendation of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health professionals. She also posted on Facebook an image of herself holding a gun alongside images of Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, encouraging "strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart." Facebook removed the photo by the following day, saying it violated the social network's policies.

 

The Troll Doll Channel: Sugar Plum Trollies!

 

 

I would normally go all soft and sentimental at this time of year, but I don't know. . . this year it's hard. I don't need to explain why. Melancholy sweeps over me, but it's a damn sight better than depression, which has miraculously left me alone for quite a while now. 

This feeling is reactive, it is actual, not some phantom of my brain - so real that it seems to touch absolutely everyone. We're all in this together, we hear every day (all day), and yet, each of us is "in it" alone, on some level that is absolutely private. 

I think I have gone mad sometimes with the trolls and the dollies, but I cannot tell you how much pleasure the collection has given me, what a wonderful escape and sanctuary it is for me to enter my office and come upon Trollandia in all its glory, with its suburbs Trollville and Troll Towers, not to mention the veritable rock garden of trolls living around my keyboard. This thing has evolved, pieces have been added (and hardly anything taken away), it has expanded and grown more various, and I've taken huge comfort in it - because SOMETHING has to be good at this supposedly-festive time of year that is quickly turning into a soggy mattress of non-celebration.

So here are a few of my Sugar Plum trollies, with - probably - many many (TOO many) more to come.

 

Bullwinkle's Corner - the 1961 commercials

In times of trouble, in times of horror and dismay, what do I turn to? Old ads, of course. And these are classics from the Rocky and Bullwinkle era: Cheerios commercials that were actually better than the show itself. It's not that I don't trust you, William Tell. . . (and we even have guest appearances by Boris Badenov and Dudley Do-right!).

As long as there is a ray of hope

A Ray of Hope

The Rascals

Most people got soul if they want to try
Let love be your goal and let it fly
'Cause it's easy to hate and to draw a line
But error is human forgiveness is divine
I know a lot of people who think like me
That this world can be a place that's filled with harmony
First there's a lot of things we've got to rearrange
Put an end to hate and lies
So peace can come and truth shall reign

As long as there is a ray of hope
Lord, I don't mind going out and doin' my work
Light up the way to brotherhood
Help us to make His dream understood

Sometimes the road gets a little bit rough
Your strength is all gone, you had enough
But there's people who win without making fists
Our world won't survive lest we think like this
I can't imagine any greater need
To treat each other as we'd like to be
It's a gas just knowing what is yet to come
Not unless we get together
Got to get together one by one

As long as there is a ray of hope
Lord, I don't mind goin out and doin my work
Light up the way to brotherhood
I got to keep on searchin, keep on searchin
'Til I find out
Keep on searchin, keep on searchin
'Til I find out
Keep on searchin, keep on searchin
'Til I find out

Gonna take a little look way down inside
Gotta find out Lord, why I'm alive
We'll pray for a day when all men are free
And people can live like they're meant to be
Meanwhile it's all up to you and me
Start working together towards this dream

As long as there is a ray of hope
Lord, I don't mind goin out and doin my work
Light up the way to brotherhood
Help us to make His dream understood
As long as there is a ray of hope
I GOT TO WAIT MY TURN 'TIL I CAN VOTE
As long as there is a ray of hope

Blogger's note. This song breaks into my conscious mind sometimes, issuing from some cheery synapse left in there which hasn't been fried by a combination of grief, stress and despair. This has been a wonky, sometimes grotesque year, punctuated by the horrifyingly macabre - not a great combination for the coming festive season, which looks like it's going to be a total bust.

To me, Christmas means getting together with my family. All else is window-dressing. This year, we won't be able to do that. My husband and I are quietly making plans for spending the day with each other, and it will probably be OK - we're having a turkey dinner just for two, some movies we both love, snacks, etc. And I AM going to decorate the house, specifically because Bill wondered out loud if we should even bother.

I bother. WE will bother. We shall overcome, or at least make an effort, as the world seems to unravel all around us. Biden won. Kamala Harris KICKS ASS, and if Biden kicks off, as seems likely in the next couple of years, she'll be President and we'll hear somebody tell the truth from the White House, at long (very long) last.

Why should I even give a rip? I live in Canada, I'm distant from all that - hell, I don't even care how it pans out so long as we can Stand On Guard and keep our borders safe. If ever there were a good place to build a "Great Big Beautiful Wall", it would be all along the 49th parallel,  the longest "unguarded" border in the world. But that statistic fell apart this year, as did everything else I can think of.

But this song comes into my head anyway! As long as there is a ray of hope (Kamala Harris, the vaccine, and I'm afraid I can't think of a third one, but two is a start), we might stagger through all this and come out the other side, gasping for air that isn't filled with toxic fumes. 

Bad horse gifs

 

The Snow Hen of Jostedal

The Snow Hen of Jostedal

A story of lust and unspeakable sin

Part 1: GENESIS

Once there was a little legend walking about, that we will name Jostedalsrypa.

Why such a long handle, you may ask? when it would be a lot easier to name him (her!) Junie or Jolie or some such other two-syllable name?

Because Jostedalsrypa is a myth.

Jostedal, as we will now call her (given that the other name is just too long to remember) is sometimes called the Snow Hen of Jostedal. I first encountered her yesterday, though her myth (reality?) goes back to the 1300s, when the Black Plague was harvesting Europe with a scythe as lethal as the Reaper’s.

When all was said and done, when all the ploughing up to make graves and the burning down to make sanitary lodgings had passed, when the few people left on the earth were breathing little sighs of relief here and there, Nordrik walked the sylvan glades and frosted peaks of Scandinavia. He looked up with tears of gratitude at Scandy’s burning skies and thanked the Norse gods that he had been –

But enough of this, it's getting in the way of the story.

Back to Jostedalsrypa. While this Nordrik (or Norhan, or Norvasken, depending on which scholar you quote) was beating the bushes for edible mushrooms, he heard a stirring sound.

Not like you’d stir your coffee, but more of a feather-on-leaf stir, very frail, a shaking of the bushes so minute that it might just be the stirrings of a bug.

With his ailegaard (walking pole), he gently parted the bushes. Nothing.

Then he kicked the quivering bush with his foot.

This provoked a whooshwhooshwhooshwhooshwhooshwhooshwhooshwhooshwhoosh
sound, akin to the whirring of doves spiralling upwards, of partridges flushed from the bush.

But the wings of this creature (if creature it was!) did not carry it far, as just a few feet off the ground it fell with a dismal thud.

He looked at the strange thing.

It was shaped like a hen. It looked like a hen. It flapped like a hen. It was partially camouflaged by snow, dirty snow that was half-melting and had formed around the hen as a sort of protective covering, an ice nest.

“I will call her Jostedal, after Lake Jostedal and the City of Jostedal and Jostedal Canyon," said Norrdka, lifting the terrified bird from the snow and marvelling at how heavy she seemed in his arms.

Her head jerked this way and that. A snow hen! Imagine that. So those silly legends must've been true after all. She seemed to have the intelligence of a – well, of a hen. Her feet paddled the air. Still Norrdka trudged, wondering how she would taste stewed up with a side dish of mushrooms.

The Black Plague had left its survivors with a keen appetite.

Nothing that moved was ever wasted, but because the Snow Hen was displaying nesting behaviour, the family held back on eating her. Everyone clucked with joy when Jostedal produced her first egg. “But do not eat it yet!” cried Gromkin, the snow-crowned patriarch of the family and the one who had suspiciously survived the Plague by hoarding quail eggs in his pockets.

“Why, old man? Why not eat the egg as a side dish with the chicken and mushrooms?” cried Norrdka.

“I have a recipe for Chicken Eggskongg,” Mama chimed in.

“Hatch this egg. Nurture it. It will be extraordinary.”

Even those who did not agree with Gromkin decided they had better listen to him (he would whack them on the side of the head if they didn't), and keep the Snow Hen around as a renewable resource for food. Meantime, they had this egg, which seemed somehow magical in their sight.

They could not sit on the egg, so after a meagre dinner of wood fungi they coaxed the chicken to sit down and incubate it. It took a lot of shoelaces to tie her down.

But something very strange happened in the night.

PART 2: PARTHENOGENESIS


Norrdka wasn’t the first to discover what had happened to her. It was the old man, Gromkin. He saw the two of them over in the corner. The old man had a stick in his hand and was poking at her.

Squatting in the corner with not a stitch of clothing on her comely body was a beautiful young maiden!

Could this be the Snow Hen of ancient tales and stories? How was that possible? Were they all seeing the same apparition?

The beautiful naked maiden whom they soon dubbed Shnowen had grown a sort of covering of white feathers over its body. And to think they had nearly eaten her the night before!

“ARE YOU HERE TO GRANT US THREE WISHES?” shouted the old man to the perplexed-looking chicken-lady.

She turned her head this way and that and made low, barely-perceptible clucking noises.

“ARE YOU HERE TO LAY THE GOLDEN EGG?” he shouted.

“Do be quiet, Father,” Mother cautioned him. “She is perplexed. Besides, she has already laid an egg which may be of inestimable value to us.”

And lo, it was.

As Shnownen walked around the bare cottage pecking the floor and flapping her arms. a crack began to form in the egg. The whole family, all seventeen of them, gathered around it in anxiety and hope.

The crack was very slow to form, and Grandfather Gromkin wanted to whack at it with his splinggboln, but the rest of them held him back.

And just as they were all about to give up and serve up this egg with a side dish of roasted fowl, lo!

Out popped, not a genie or a monster or an apparition or a dybbuk or a djinn. It was a child.

It was as child so tiny and radiant that no one could believe it. “That’s a chick,” declared Seventeenth Brother.

“It’s never a chick. It’s a homunculus.”

“An automaton, I’ve seen one of those, it was an old monk that could walk around.”

“Silence!” cried the magical child, who seemed to be made of purest gold.

“State your business,” bellowed the old man, who was very direct.

“I have come here not by accident, but by design. I am here to refine human nature. I see cruelty everywhere, I see grabbing at food that belongs to others, I even see people eating each other’s flesh.”

“NO! It never happened”

“How can you even think such a thing!”

“You must be evil. How can you abuse us like this?”

But the family felt a deep and secret shame. The Black Plague had certainly brought out the worst in everybody.

“Here is the test,” the magic child replied. “For forty-seven days, you shall have no food. The doors of your humble cabin will all be locked. This is a test of your character and of your ability to be selfless, and will redeem you for the black sins you committed during the Time of Pestilence.”

“Forty-seven days? Whoever heard of THAT? Why not forty days and forty nights?”

“Shhhh, Grandpa Gromkin, maybe he’s joking.”

“No. It’s not like that,” broke in one of the many anonymous brothers. “It means forty days, like Noah's rain in the Scriptures, PLUS the seven days it took for God to create the Universe.”

“Ohhhhhhhh.” They all relaxed a little.

The first few days were rather exciting, as the tiny golden child talked non-stop about many amazing things while Shnowen, now called Shwenon, picked and plucked and made hen noises. A few times Eldest Brother pursued her around the cabin, and no one could tell if it was for food, or some other purpose too dark to mention.

After a while, that bird began to look better and better.

Grandfather nagged the magic child day and night. “Are you sure you really meant FORTY-SEVEN days?” he asked him. “Maybe you only meant seven.” There was a faint clinking sound in the background as the family tightened their belts.

On the thirteenth day, they decided to kill the chicken.

Why not kill the chicken? They would not survive unless they did. But the axe and the knife and the other implements of cold-blooded murder were all outside, so they would have to corner and strangle her. This was a nearly-impossible task with a human-sized bird.

So they began to tame her. Here, chicken, chicken, chicken! Nice chicken. Because she was starving to death, she would do just about anything they asked of her, including the unspeakable act I mentioned before.

But I shall draw a veil over such evil.

One day, however, in spite of the brain fog of famine, one of them had an idea.

“Wait!” Sixteenth Brother cried. “If we can last out this wretched forty-seven days, imagine what this bird will be worth for us.”

“We can put her on display.”

“Make her do tricks!”

"All sorts of tricks."

”And she’s beautiful, and naked. So you know how people will respond.”

“But forty-seven days. . . “

“Listen,” said Grandfather. “I’m close to a deal.”

For along with greed and pride and lust, and anger and envy, and all those other things we’re not supposed to do, Grandfather excelled at crooked wheeling and dealing. Soon he had bargained the child down to twenty-four days. With his mother held hostage, about to be roasted on a spit, he was in no position to argue.

The force-field around the cabin began to waver.

The family wondered if they could hold out much longer, as the chicken was getting skinnier and skinnier and sat listlessly in the corner pulling her feathers out. She looked bad and would not enchant or even scare anyone.

“Goddamn you, Snow Hen,” cried Norrdka, cursing the day he had ever found her. “You started this. You’ll finish it.” He rushed at her with every intention of strangling her. But she was too feeble to resist, and collapsed with a drawn-out cry.

“NOW have we passed the test?” asked Fourth Brother hopefully. They had, after all, not KILLED the chicken. They had resisted killing the chicken, who had obviously died of natural causes.

“You failed it a long time ago,” the child answered. “What is more, there is no spell. You could have left the cabin any time you wanted to. So you committed yet another sin."

"What could that be?"

"Stupidity."

”Mountebank!” cried Grandfather.

“Look at your Snow Hen, once so beautiful and so full of promise. She has died of hunger and despair. Not only that, there is no meat on her bones to sustain you.”

“I could make a good stock,” Mother suggested.

“I could stuff her, you know, put her on display.. . . “

“Silence! You people do not deserve to be in the presence of magic, because your souls are dark and selfish and full of corruption. You abuse the thing you claim to love the most and keep her captive in terror.”

“No one will know.”

“YOU will know. The knowledge will suck the strength from your soul and blight all your days, and continue for seventeen generations."

“But this is why they made Jesus.! If we repent, he will take all our sins away."

“Not this one.” Disgusted, the child burst into a ball of flame that grew and grew and grew until it consumed the entire cabin.

There was but one person spared. As white smoke surged up from the chimney, a bird with dazzling white feathers emerged and grew larger and larger until she seemed to fill the whole sky. The Snow Hen of Jostedal had freed herself from the prison of human darkness, never to return.

POSTLUDE. The provenance of this piece is strange. Years and years ago, I saw a NOVA program on PBS about a girl named Genie, a "wild child" who had been tied up in a dark room for an incredible thirteen years by her sadistic brute of a father.

The girl couldn't speak, could barely walk, and was the size of a seven-year-old. While the public may have seen a horribly damaged child, the scientific community saw a blank slate - that is, blank except for a lot of dollar signs.

The documentary recounts the stampede of interest from scientist, linguists, neurologists, sociologists, and many other ologists who scrambled for research grants to "study" Genie. This was in 1972, and NOT ONE person believed that it would be preferable for Genie's welfare to be placed in loving foster care until she gained enough stability to work with the scientists.

It did not even occur to them.

I can't recount all of this heartbreaking story because it's too complex, except to say that the girl was eventually abandoned by the scientists who had so greedily fallen on her when she was released from her thirteen-year prison. When she was finally de-institutionalized, she was taken home by two of the research scientists like some sort of shelter dog, then abandoned a few years later when the grant money ran out.

At the end of this wretched story, Genie is "put away" in a nursing home, and that's the end of it. Since she's younger than me, she is probably still there, in another sort of prison. I did find a reference from some time in the '90s, when an observer insisted she was "happy and content" in the home she had never chosen. Certainly she has no power to object.

I recently watched the NOVA program again - I'll try to find a link to it, it's riveting - and then acquired a book called Genie: A Scientific Tragedy by Russ Rymer. I was sure this book would be spellbinding, but 50 pages in I began to wonder whose side he was on.

He spent pages and pages on the work of Noam Chomsky, a pop icon and pseudo-linguist who believes there is only one language in all of human experience. As far as I can see, this demented idea has nothing at all to do with Genie and her difficult, halting acquisition of language, but it helps the author distance himself from all that mess and align himself with someone trendy.

But there's something else here, and I have to admit when I first read it I groaned. "I've been diddled," I thought. He listed various "feral" children that had been found roaming the woods over the centuries, and the farther I got into the list the more sure I was that he was having us on, making the whole thing up as a way of disrespecting his readers and jerking the leash.

“Among the cases of wild children discovered over the last seven centuries, more than fifty have been documented. The list includes the Hesse wolf-child; the Irish sheep-child; Kasper Hauser; the first Lithuanian bear-child; Peter of Hanover; the second Lithuanian bear-child; the third; the Karpfen bear-girl; Tomko of Zips; the Salzburg sow-girl; Clemens, the Overdyke pig-child; Dina Sanichar of Sekandra; the Indian panther-child; the Justedal snow-hen; the Mauretanian gazelle-child; the Teheran ape-child; Lucas, the South African baboon-child; and Edith of Ohio.”

I think it was Edith of Ohio that did it. This HAD to be a mean form of satire designed to jerk the reader around. But like the diligent little Googlist that I am, I did a search for each and every one of these names, and lo, they WERE mentioned somewhere, even if briefly, as part of a list of "wild" children. Most of them are considered myths, an extension of the ancient story of Romulus and Remus who were suckled by wolves.

I'm not sure quite how that led to the story of the Snow Hen, except that the name really grabbed me: it seemed like something out of Hans Christian Andersen.

The arc of the story is pretty crazy, because there IS no arc: I literally took it word by word with no forethought at all, no sense of what might come next. At various moments you have to stop and try to shape the story a bit, and then of course edit it later for inconsistencies. But I did very little of this.

It occurred to me while making my lunch today that perhaps the Snow Hen is Mary, Mother of God, and the golden child is her son Jesus Christ, holding those wicked people in the cabin accountable for their sins. He doesn't let them get away with anything, not even throwing the Bible back in his face. 

 I hope Jesus would approve.

Stupid lyrics competition: Little Black Egg vs. Little Green Bag

The Little Black Egg

The Nightcrawlers

I don't care what they say
I'm gonna keep it anyway
I won't let them stretch their necks
To see my little black egg with the little white specks

I found it in a tree
Just the other day
And now, it's mine, all mine
They won't take it away

Here comes Mary, here comes Lee
I'll bet what they want to see
I won't let them stretch their necks
To see my little black egg with the little white specks

I found it in a tree
Just the other day
And now, it's mine, all mine
They won't take it away

Oh goldurn, what can I do?
Your little black egg's gonna tell on you
I won't let them stretch their necks
To see my little black egg with the little white specks

My little black egg
My little black egg
My little black egg
My little black egg 

"The Little Black Egg" is a song first performed by Daytona Beach, Florida garage band The Nightcrawlers in 1965. It was a minor hit in both the US and Canada, reaching number 85 on the US Billboard charts in 1967, while doing slightly better in Canada, where it hit number 74. The song has been since covered by multiple artists including Inner City Unit, The Lemonheads, Neighb'rhood Childr'n, Tarnation, The Primitives and The Cars. It was The Nightcrawlers' only hit.

The song was written in 1965 for an Easter concert, in which the band opened for The Beach Boys. The song was originally recorded in 1965 by sound engineer Lee Hazen and released on Hazen's record label Lee Records; the 1965 release became a regional hit in The Nightcrawlers' home state of Florida and in the Midwest. The song was re-released on Kapp Records in 1966, finally charting nationally in both the US and Canada early the following year. Allmusic reviewer Matthew Greenwald describes the song as a "slightly bizarre nursery rhyme", with lyrics about a rotten bird's egg. Other explanations[by whom?] claim the song referenced miscegenation in segregated Florida.

 

The George Baker Selection – Little Green Bag

Yeah
Lookin' back on the track for a little green bag
Got to find just a kind or losin' my mind
Outside in the night, outside in the day

Lookin' back on the track gonna do it my way
Outside in the night, outside in the day
Lookin' back on the track gonna do it my way
Lookin' back

Lookin' for some happiness
But there is so a loneliness to find
Turn to the left turn to the right
Lookin' upstairs lookin' behind

Lookin' for some happiness
But there is so a loneliness to find
Turn to the left turn to the right
Lookin' upstairs lookin' behind

Lookin' back on the track for a little green bag
Got to find just a kind or losin' my mind
Outside in the night, outside in the day
Lookin' back on the track gonna do it my way

Lookin' back on the track for a little little green bag
Got to find just a kind or losin' my mind
Lookin' for some happiness
But there is so a loneliness to find

Turn to the left turn to the right
Lookin' upstairs lookin' behind
Lookin' for some happiness
But there is so a loneliness to find

Turn to the left turn to the right
Lookin' upstairs lookin' behind 

Names are the theme that haunt this song. It was supposed to be called "Little Greenback," like in money, but the seven-inch single debut was misprinted by publisher label Negram. Wouldn't you know it, it became their top hit, and so became known by the wrong name. Worse yet, they had to change the name of the album to reflect that. If you listen to the words, "greenback" is actually the word sung.

George Baker, meanwhile, was actually born Johannes Bouwens. He's from the Netherlands, you see, and so "Little Green Bag" first made the top-40 on the Dutch charts, then Belgium, and finally internationally.

Have you ever heard such a unique construction? It starts out with jazzy bass and tambourine, with a bouncy bass line and drum. Then the vocals slide in with an almost whisper, and then suddenly the song opens up and it's a Spanish romance ballad.

Yes, Quentin Tarantino fans, this song was of course your very first introduction to the QT universe. It's the opening credits to Tarantino's debut Reservoir Dogs, with the suits and shades ambling down the street. This pushed it back to international success yet again in 1992, causing it to pop up in weird places like Japanese whiskey commercials.

(All of this is from Wikipedia. Sorry, I'm feeling lazy today! The clear winner is The Little Black Egg, which is basically about nothing. This came out when I was in Grade 5, and a girl I knew - Carmen, the popular girl everyone wanted to know - called it My Little Black Apron with the Little White Specks. We all called it that, all year long.)

Chilling talking doll

One of the most chilling dolls of the 1960s, the infamous Baby Secret. Notice how her lips move.

AT LONG LAST: The Theme to The Dumplings, starring James Coco!

AT LAST! A discerning reader has posted the theme song to The Dumplings, the short-lived sitcom of the '70s starring James Coco. Up to now I only had the audio. Thanks, Brian! 

Compare and contrast: theme to Calucci's Department, which owes a lot to Barney Miller and lasted about as long as The Dumplings. 

Warning: this will scare the shit out of you

1948: Television's Year

 

1948: Television's Year

 

There was something special about 1948. That was the year people started buying TVs, though they were still called "television sets" and built into elaborate cabinets with swinging doors (sometimes incorporating a radio and a small refrigerator). The feeling was that the big, naked glass eye was going to see right into the living room unless it was covered up. At very least, all that exposed glass was somehow disturbing. In the ads for Dumont television sets, which were state-of-the-art, an attractive woman always walked into the frame and CLOSED the cabinet doors, instead of opening them dramatically to display the set. Something odd about that message: see how you can hide the whole thing!

                                                  Like so.

People didn't watch TV then: they "looked at television", a sort of parallel to "listened to the radio". The programming was primitive, the picture quality dark and smudgy. We must take into account, however, that there was no videotape then, and all we have left from those spookily magical times are kinescopes, filmed directly off the cameraman's monitor which was probably small, dark and unstable (a good description of the shows and their stars).

Variety shows ruled. This was a hangover from vaudeville that carried on into the late '60s with shows like Ed Sullivan and Hollywood Palace. But these programs were not much more than radio with pictures. In some cases, as with Jack Benny and Milton Berle, they were performed on a stage with curtains, and even with an announcer holding a microphone. 

Not that I remember any of that. No, I really don't.

This looks like satire, but it isn't. It's an example of the kind of programming you'd see during the day - filling time, mostly. Note, at the end of this, there's a little blurb for Kovacs on the Corner - one of Ernie's earliest TV incarnations. He had to fill four or five hours of air time a day, and did radio "on the side". 

 

 

This is a strange one, an example of the way TV had NO IDEA how to handle visuals. The opening credits are just a primitive, probably hand-cranked crawl with blocky white letters on grey. Carlton Emmy and his Mad Wags sound particularly frightening. And those 50 Olsen and Johnson Punchinellos sounds like about 48 Punchinellos too many.

So what exactly is that little symbol, anyway? A banana wrapped in some sort of tape? Auto-Lite must have been the sponsor of this thing, which MIGHT have been one of those shows that pre-famous actors acted in. In spite of all the rich programming in drama, it was considered a poor cousin and only a place for a screen actor to "start". That feeling still hangs in the air, maybe because of Netflix.

Until I find a stranger one, this is the strangest: Okay Mother, starring. . . Dennis James? A transvestite, perhaps, sort of like Mrs. Doubtfire. And three sponsors for what might have been a 15-minute show (a common format then)?

I never know where all these come from (though I make them from YouTube videos). There's something called the Prelinger Archives that must have gazillions of them, and an Internet Archive that has never made a damn bit of sense to me. Maybe people kept them in their basements? Some people buy old VHS tapes at flea markets and at auction in hopes there's something good on them. Do I miss the good old days of VHS, or, in our case, Beta? No. I love my DVR and would never go back. But Smudgeville has its charms. 

This logo is a prime example of "don't worry, folks, TV is really just your old familiar radio in a new form". The huge microphone receiving, then blasting out sound waves, the telephone pole emitting - whatever it is emitting, lightning bolts? - almost seems like a reassurance that this is something we already know. Sort of. Just keep it covered up when you're not looking at it.

I have a thing for logos, so I'll include this particularly dull one. The three-note chime was held over from the radio, though it took quite a while for NBC to come up with a good visual to go with it.

The NBC peacock in all its glory, before they dumbed it down into its current dull form.

 

Please Stand By.

Here are some more, from just a couple years later, perhaps 1950 - '52. Most of these are based on a YouTube series by MattTheSaiyan called Classic Commercials for Defunct Products. There are, so far, 119 videos, so you may be seeing these for some time.

Though these look like animated cellphone prototypes, I think they're supposed to be dancing cameras. Though they could also be remote controls. Early TV animation was primitive, not to mention strange in its concepts.

If you look carefully at this Dumont TV commercial, a rare instance of the cabinet opening rather than closing, you'll notice the "zoom" wobbles in a way that looks suspiciously like the cameraman is walking towards the TV. The bleary distorted picture is state-of-the-art and meant to inspire ooohs and ahhhs.

A particularly delightful ad for a hair-care product, Toni Home Permanent. The ads in this era showed women with lacquered, military-helmet-like hair which was touted as "soft and natural". The do-it-yourself perms, always described as quick and easy, were a mass of "pin-curls" all over the head which would be impossible to do on your own. The real irony here is that in the "before" pictures, the women have hairstyles much closer to what we see today,

Yes, yes, I know I devoted at least one entire post to Pream commercials. But this reaction is hands-down my favourite.

I love the element of surrealism here! It's for a dishwashing liquid called Kind (very defunct now).

Blogger's note. I re-posted all these gifs from several years ago, because it took so long to make them (and I'll never have that recipe again, OH NOOOOO), and recently got a new comment from someone on the original post. I love it when that happens!  My gif program is far more sophisticated now, and I can make compilations, crop away the black borders, etc., so I cleaned them up a bit - but left some of them as is, to keep that sense of crude magic.

BTW, the YouTube channel from which I derived almost all of the vintage ads is now "disappeared" - it vanished without a trace a couple of years ago. Copyright issues? Let's hope they don't come for me next.