Victorian Christmas cats: to bring you cheer

TO BRING YOU CHEER. . . 

. . . THIS TIME OF YEAR!

Bentley hates The Christmas Song!

Chriiiiistmas, Chriiiiiistmas time is here. . . We revisit the horror of Alvin and the Chipmonks played at normal speed. Bentley wisely leaves the building.

Cats and Christmas trees

Bentley is in there somewhere.

The secret life of Captain Kangaroo

Things we didn't know about the Captain.

Creepy Santa compilation

What's better (or worse) than one creepy Santa? A bunch of creepy Santas! I put this together from a whole lot of gifs, from a whole lot of videos of my favorite Santa Smackdowns. I couldn't quite get them all onto one gif, so had to split them. With a hey, and a ho, and a - creep out!

Hula Cats Christmas: my best gif ever!

I'm very proud of this gif compilation from the Hula Cats Christmas video. Took forever to make, but lasts something like a full minute. Never in my dreams.

Skating on glass

I've fallen, and I can't get up!

                           
                      I've fallen, and I can't get up.

Poo and piglets!

Not a big pig fan, and I KNOW these little tykes end up as huge porkers (no matter what the dealers say about "a medium-sized dog"). But how can you resist a little alive stuffed animal strutting around on tiny trotters? Having said that, I still think its poop would smell awful.

REALLY bad singers. . . I mean really

And you thought Florence Foster Jenkins was bad? Listen to this. . . (and this, and this). I'm barely scratching the surface of awful opera recordings, singers who aspire to the heights but can barely get out of the starting gate. I'm beginning to realize Jenkins was one of the better bad singers. The saddest is a rendition - or maybe rending - of Carmen by a very drunk soprano who doesn't seem to realize how bad-off she is. Someone should have escorted her out, but instead she made YouTube history, a video which will probably live in infamy. Bad performances never go away any more.

I just wanted to be sure of you

Smoking Santa

Jingle Cats: Angels we have heard on high

Perhaps my all-time-favorite Jingle Cats song. Best part: 1:53 to 2:06.

My cat slept right through this.

Olive mold: the horror!

The awful fate of Fortunato

The little angels of Camay

Grandpa, get DOWN!

       Grandpa, get DOWN!

Little Mermaid pencil test

Justifiable homicide: Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket

Dark Disney: Pinocchio

When people visualize Pinocchio, they see the sweet young puppet with a desire to be a real boy. The Disney movie tells the tale of his adventures with his friend and advisor, Jiminy Cricket, and how they ultimately lead him to his dream of becoming a human.

The original creator of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi, was hoping for a different image. Collodi created the character for a serial story in Italian newspapers with the goal of showing kids the consequences of being bad. Collodi’s Pinocchio was cruel and mischievous. His Jiminy Cricket was only referred to as “Talking Cricket,” and when the cricket tried to give Pinocchio some good advice, the puppet-boy killed him with a mallet..

Pinocchio is constantly tortured in different ways throughout the story, all punishment for bad behavior. Collodi initially ended the tale with Pinocchio’s death by hanging, but because of an outcry from fans, Collodi was forced to continue. So he decided Pinocchio’s life would be spared in exchange for even more gruesome punishments from that point forward.

- All That Is Interesting

From Wikipedia:

The Cricket, which has lived in Geppetto's house for over a century, makes his first appearance in chapter IV, after Pinocchio's mischief has landed his creator Geppetto in prison, and insists that Pinocchio must either attend school or work, to function properly in the world. When Pinocchio refuses to listen, the Cricket states, "You are a puppet and what's worse is that you have a head of wood", whereupon Pinocchio throws a mallet at the cricket, killing him.

In chapter XIII, the Cricket appears as a ghost to Pinocchio, telling him to return home rather than keep an appointment with the Fox and the Cat (Il Gatto e la Volpe). Pinocchio refuses and in chapter XIV, he is subsequently injured. The Cricket reappears in chapter XVI, where he and his colleagues, the Crow and the Owl, tend to Pinocchio's injuries.

The Cricket makes his final appearance in chapter XXXVI, living in a house given him by the Fairy with Turquoise Hair, at which he allows Pinocchio and the ailing Geppetto to stay while Geppetto recovers his health.

AFTERWORD. This was going to speak for itself, but I have something to add. If *I* had to listen to some strangulated tenor sing "When You Wish Upon A Star" in that syrupy tone, I would commit bug-icide myself, with no qualms. I'd be doing the world a favor. Pinocchio (the Disney cartoon movie) DOES have a few things going for it. That whale, for instance, Gorgo or whatever-the-hell - I should look it up, I guess, but do you think I want to, on a rainy Friday afternoon? Those whale sequences are pretty impressive, and scared the hell out of me as a kid. "I have no strings to hold me down" (followed by Pinocchio falling noisily down the stairs) is OK, as is that nice cat.

I don't want to sit here completely dissing it. Kids do enjoy it, after all, and maybe it'll drive them back to the original novel (not!). But I did find it fascinating that, while the original Collodi story (which I read as a kid) does have a cricket in it, a cricket which won't go away even after it's dead, no one names him Jiminy. That sounds like something Disney would have exclaimed in his boyhood down on the farm while shovelling manure. "Jesus Christ!" might have been better, or "What's This On My Shoe?"

KEITH!

Click "fullscreen" at the bottom right to see/hear geriatric sex symbol Keith Morrison in all his silver-haired glory.

"For the love of God, Montresor!"

After wrestling for several days to post not one but TWO grotesquely dumbed-down versions of Poe's masterpiece The Cask of Amontillado, I guess his ghost must have come down and scotched the whole thing, just wouldn't let me do it. At one point text was literally disappearing, whole pages at a time! The formats were just too weird and wouldn't translate to my outdated Blogger. If I were Poe's ghost, which some days I wonder if I am (not the literary stuff but the craziness), I might be tempted to do the same.

Suffice it to say, in more than one instance, the unparalleled brilliance of the story has been boiled down to less than half its original length, reconfigured in idiot language that sucked out every bit of poetry as insatiably as Fortunato sucked down flagons of Medoc.  Difficult words like "mortar" were changed to "cement", and things were actually added that weren't supposed to be there, like a detailed description of Fortunato's costume (including his color scheme). We also found out that Fortunato married a beautiful woman who gave him sons (?!), which made Montresor mighty jealous. And being jealous is why he did that mean thing. 

I kept giving up and starting again, then thought, why not spare my readers (all two of them, heh-heh!) when I can just as easily state, in conclusion, that horrendously dumbed-down versions of classics do exist, and are used to teach either children, or those learning to speak English. 

Children's story, it is not. Burying your pal alive in a rotting boneyard? I think not. But for adults, I guess the philosophy is that the "adapted" or "abridged" versions make these stories accessible to people who might not otherwise be able to read them. 

But ARE they reading Poe? My sense is that they are not. It's a sort of outline for the story, not the story itself. You go, Poe - you go boy, pull the plug on this thing! Thwart my computer, because nobody should even get a chance to read about Fortunato's striped pajamas.

Meantime. . . I'm not through with it yet, this latest sojourn into Poe's spooky magic. I have found a few worthwhile dramatized versions, which in this genre do require some adaptation. But the really good ones at least carry the spirit. They are respectful to that shade which keeps hovering around my desk and making a cold spot in the corner. Fortunato's cough should sound like "ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh" (and have you ever seen such an accurate onomato-poe-ic verbal representation of an ugly, suffocated, phlegmy subterranean cough?

So I'm posting some video-ettes which, if clicked on, will take you to a much better YouTube version. I don't feel so bad now, but how about you, Eddie?

POST-BLOG BLAH: I did find a couple of excerpts, which you can compare if you have the stomach for it. It will at least give you an idea. Stay back, Eddy (the true spelling! Sorry, Ed - ed). If you can't tell which is which, GET OFFA MY BLOG.

THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled— but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.  It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.  He had a weak point—this Fortunato—although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack—but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially: I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could.

Fortunato had hurt me a thousand times and I had suffered quietly. But then I learned that he had laughed at my proud name, Montresor, the name of an old and honored family. I promised myself that I would make him pay for this — that I would have revenge. You must not suppose, however, that I spoke of this to anyone. I would make him pay, yes; but I would act only with the greatest care. I must not suffer as a result of taking my revenge. A wrong is not made right in that manner. And also the wrong would not be made right unless Fortunato knew that he was paying and knew who was forcing him to pay. I gave Fortunato no cause to doubt me. I continued to smile in his face, and he did not understand that I was now smiling at the thought of what I planned for him, at the thought of my revenge. Fortunato was a strong man, a man to be feared. But he had one great weakness: he liked to drink good wine, and indeed he drank much of it. So he knew a lot about fine wines, and proudly believed that he was a trained judge of them. I, too, knew old wines well, and I bought the best I could find. And wine, I thought, wine would give me my revenge!