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...or so say those lovable, rapidly aging Gen-X'ers at Married To The Sea. Go visit them. The kids can still knock one out of the park a few times a month.

Merry Christmas to my ectoplasm!

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Jak sie masz, Babies! This year I got you two a nice robot to share! And it's not one of those phony Transformer shits, neither---this one's actually real! You can tell just by listening! Plus, he's "as strong as a moving van"! What could be stronger than that?



It is not widely known that "The Mechanical Man" is the first known recorded example of techno-rap. Also, careful listeners will note a sly postmodern reference to a 1964 Peter and Gordon hit near the end. (Not really.)

The Mechanical Man, Bent Bolt And The Nuts (1966, MGM Records K-13635-A), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Big Otis!

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Santa Crutch has decided it's time to jak sie masz Big Otis so he stops picking through everyone else's Christmas stocking. Sing along!



I think you should work this into the rotation when make your traditional Christmas caroling rounds tonight. I'd suggest premiering it at the Persia VFW post, after guzzling perhaps about half a dozen bottles of Slits beer.

Do be sure to have a Blessed Season on this, the Eve of The Most Beautiful Holiday ever conceived by the mind of Homo sapiens. And if you must drink and drive during this holiday season, drink Slits!

Mr. Businessman, Ray Stevens (1968, from "Even Stevens," Monument 18102), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Speculations on the origins of Marginalia

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Jak sie masz, sir. Let us travel back through the mists of history to examine what I am certain to be a credible account of the Marginalia origin myth.



"They came in tins." Hotcha! I think this explains why that chain mail was all rusted up inside. I am happy that you were able to win the heart of "the missus" (if not then, then eventually) and that your decades of toil enabled you to retire to "the allotment" to produce a bumper crop of "bangers and mash" or whatever it is that grows on your foggy isle. Best wishes to you both.

In my imagination, Swinging London was probably a still a glorious place even at the sunset of Peter and Gordon's recording career. I did in fact enjoy those lads a lot, including---inexplicably---this particular selection. This tune hit in Chicago during the winter of 1967 and helped to keep me company as I walked a predawn paper route with a Montgomery Ward transistor radio about the size of a cinder block in my canvas bag. (It belonged to my sister and played 45 rpm records, too!) It also reminds me of sniffing model airplane glue for some reason. I am certain that you were up to even more glamorous things in those days, in pursuit of your Fair Maid.

The Knight In Rusty Armour, Peter and Gordon (1966, 45 rpm single Capitol 5808), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

...now, you didn't really think I as going to leave you with that thing, did you?



Only three Georgie Fame singles charted in Chicago in the mid-1960s, and this is both the most obscure and my favorite. I've looked for it on YouTube in the past with no success, but now there are several versions posted. I remember being fascinated by the jazzy arrangements of "Yeh Yeh" and (especially) "Get Away." I thought his voice and delivery were about the coolest thing I'd ever heard. Even today, this sound strikes me as unique, and I couldn't really make a very good guess about who influenced his style. I hope this selection isn't overplayed on the oldies programmes in Merrie Olde England, and that it is as much of a flash for you as it was for me to rediscover it.

Get Away, Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames (1966 or 1967, live performance at the Town Hall, Offenbach, West Germany [other performance notes not available]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Oil Can Harry, assume the position

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You are jak sie masz-ed!



Even though I know you are a sock puppet you still deserve a doke during this, the blessed holiday season. I guess these guys may share some of your sock puppet DNA. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any Jim Henson Kraml Milk commercials posted to YouTube, so I guess you'll just have to be content with this. Or not.

Wilkins coffee commercial, produced by Jim Henson (1950s, provenance unknown), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Little Oscar!

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Jak sie masz!



It sounds not unlike "boinging music," some might say. Wikipedia tells me that this insane little bundle of gnat notes began life pretty much as a small throwaway interlude at the end of "Act III, Tableau 1" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean). The video was recommended earlier this season by Nick Scratch in a comments thread.

Flight Of The Bumblebee, performed on button accordion by Alexander Dmitriev (composed c. 1900 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Oh, wait. Doesn't Little Oscar like her present? Well then put this one in your pipe and smoke it!



And take that Doug-Stevenson-looking SOB playing guitar with you! At least he may look that way if you squint hard enough. Booze can help. (Well, of course, booze can help anything... except for maybe the heartbreak of cirrhosis.) He sure gets a lot of tones out of that axe around his neck---horns, percussion... in fact, everything except guitar.

Don't you wish you were the senorita with the pearl necklace back there? She's like The Anti-GoGo Girl, lurking in that low-rent MC Escher-type expedient stage landscape, waiting to strike like an asp! A low-energy asp.

Let's Lock The Door, Jay and the Americans (c. 1965, performance information and video provenance unknown), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

What Child Is This? or whatever

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Gurlitzer, consider yourself jak sie masz-ed! Let's call this one a Christmas carol for the minister's daughter. I suppose it's at least as much a Christmas song as "The Anacreontic Song" is a national anthem.



I don't know much about music theory, but I'd bet that Jimmy Smith and other monsters of the Hammond organ probably play 10-part harmony from time to time, at least for punctuation or other purposes intended to excite the startle reaction in the listener. What do you think, Gurlitzer---have you ever read a part that calls for all ten digits to hit a different tone in the chromatic scale at the same time?

During the 1950s and 1960s, there was this practice in the jazz recording industry of putting a really "white," lame song on an otherwise straight-ahead album. A classic example is John Coltrane's 1961 rendition of "My Favorite Things" from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway production "The Sound of Music." Although there's nothing necessarily wrong with any such given performance (although Sinatra's rendition of "Forget Domani" is certainly wretched), the choice of material always seems dicey to me. I'm guessing it was a way for the label to get the Little Lady of the house listening to bop (or whatever), just like they put "Stairway" on Led Zeppelin IV or "Layla" on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs so the hippie chicks would listen to their "old man's" vinyl.

Any-hoo, "Greensleeves" seems to me like a weird choice for Jimmy Smith, maybe even weirder than a show tune would have. But he plays all the shit out of this traditional melody, along with trio-mate Kenny Burrell's guitar. I especially like the little two-chord vamp that begins the cut and recurs throughout. More generally, I'm a big fan of this Hammond/guitar/drum power trio format, and there's a lot of it on tape. (Buy it on CD or vinyl so "The Cloud" can't take it away from your computer without a warrant or habeas corpus, which seems to be on the horizon.)

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, lady!

Greensleeves, Jimmy Smith (1965, from "Organ Grinder Swing," Verve CD reissue 314 543 831-2 [2000]) via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

Merry Christmas to PaintChick

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Jak sie masz! See if you can guess why this is your Christmas present from Santa Crutch, my knitwit friend.



Jay Ward's spoor is all over this spot, of course. If you watched cartoons in the 1960s then you probably recognize the voices, even if you can't put a name to them. Sharp-eared viewers will catch a military reference to the scrooch gun, which was the principal weapon used by Moonmen Gidney and Cloyd in the very first Rocky And His Friends adventure, "Jet Fuel Formula" (a 40-part epic poem, kind of).

Quisp cereal television commercial (1966, Jay Ward Studios, producer), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical commentary and educational purposes.

For The FiftyNiner

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I'm sure you know many versions of this one, but I'm afraid I'm just not qualified to surprise you for Christmas, Dick Dale-wise.



To make matters worse, surprise-wise, this is certainly the most overexposed track from Mr. Dale's catalog thanks to Pulp Fiction. However, I'm thinking that maybe, if you're a little like me, you may at least appreciate the presence of the lady in the foreground sporting the classic mid-sixties wide track chassis. Also, dig that opening shot---very promising... before the director settled for a wimped-down blackout segue into a pretty static filming of the Del-Tones performance.

But what the heck does Dick Dale need with these Del-Tones, anyway? First, listen for them---are they even playing? I can hear one of the two rhythm guitar players, barely, and a bit of drumkit in places about halfway through. The tenor and bass may be there just to add sex appeal. No, probably not---take a look at these jokers when the film starts jump-cutting between mugshots, around 2:10. Holy kazoosis! And they can't even sway convincingly. No wonder there's only one gal in the audience! And she's probably there with Dale (at least for the evening).

It must have been the FiftyNiner who told me that Dale has some strong Arab roots. Listening to his technique on this cut and so many others, it seems like that should have been obvious, but I never made the connection. It occurs to me that Dale's use of a mode for the lead line, instead of a diatonic scale, gives him something in common with Miles Davis (assuming that my earbones understand it correctly, and they may not). Davis purportedly "reinvented jazz" using that composing technique a few years earlier for Kind of Blue.

So anyway, young feller, Merry Christmas... because you've been jak sie masz-ed!

Misirlou, Dick Dale and the Del-Tones (1963 performance from the Bengal International film, A Swingin' Affair), embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

For the commenter with many names

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Jak sie masz! Dude, you are known by more names than The Prince of Darkness. And even if You are He, I'm confident that you will still enjoy what Santa Crutch is about to stuff up your sock.



I think this selection is the absolute cream of Spike Jones. For one thing, I think the arrangement is just simply better than the original by David Rose; the Rose version begins too abruptly, and the first section is too staccato for my taste. The harp intro on this one is an essential touch that I remember from my childhood as we tossed the original Jones 78s around the living room until breaking all but one---this one.

Even though the cowbell in the first bars of the main theme will startle you, the phrasing is more subtle and expressive than in the Rose production. And listen how Jones passes the melody around every coupla beats to a different---but perfectly logical---instrument.

The second section is played surprisingly straight, with melody on whatever kind of bells those are, alternating phrases with brass, and filled with string flourishes. And the third section relies only on comic vocalizations, not Weird-Al type lyrics as Jones so often does in his parodies. It created a riot in the living room every time we played it when the old folks were gone---it's probably why we only have one of those 78s left. This one was on the turntable while we were slinging the others around, driven loony by the laugh chorus.

So, Lucifer, Happy Festivus (or whatever you secular humanists celebrate these days). Or Happy Monday Night, if nothing else. And look on the flip side of the copy of "Drip Drip Drip (Sloppy Lagoon)" you recently acquired; that's actually the B side on my version of Holiday For Strings."

Holiday For Strings, Maestro Spike Jones and His City Slickers (not dated, RCA Victor 20-1733-A, from the 78 rpm album "Musical Depreciation"), embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Christmas doom and redemption

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This Christmas season brings memories of the paterfamilias, to whom we shall refer on this blog as Selig, who used to torment his children into compliant behavior during the Christmas season with a dread three-word phrase that spelled Christmas doom: "jak sie masz". It is pronounced yock-sih-mosh, with minor accent on the first syllable and major accent on the last. In our household, the term was both an interjection---a command---and a transitive verb. The latter usage would be something along the lines of "Get back into bed right now or I'm gonna jak sie masz you!"

A jak sie masz-ing would commence when Selig set down his bottle of Drewery's on the kitchen counter, snatch the receiver from the chrome cradle of the flesh-colored* wall phone, and twirl out a sequence of numbers on the rotary dial. He was calling The North Pole, of course, and I remember listening with dread as that dial chik-chik-chik-chikked it's way back to rest, awaiting the next pluck of Selig's index finger to advance the fateful call.

The intent of this exercise was to modify the behavior of an irritating child before Santa picked up the line. When successful, the old man would hang up the phone without having to rat out the kid. But if any of us called Selig's bluff long enough for Santa to pick up, then Christmas perdition was imminent. You see, jak sie masz is "Eskimo" for something like "Don't leave [Big Otis or Little Oscar or Gooch or Piggly Wiggly or The Gobber] any presents this year!"

I remember this technique being highly effective for behavior modification purposes between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Almost always, the offending child would back down long before Selig's call to the Jolly Old Elf was completed. Nevertheless, there were  instances when some of us actually did get jak sie masz-ed (certainly BO did). However, I further remember that Selig would later phone Santa to annul said jak sie masz. I do not know why the old man would relent after he cast the die, given that he was monster enough to unleash this weapon in the first place. But Santa complied with his directives.

Well, now it so happens I am happy to announce that apropos of nothing I have been inspired to revive Selig's innovative holiday personnel-management tactic here at Fifty50. Long story short, I have jak sie masz-ed the whole bunch of you! But don't worry---it works differently here at my place in the 21st century. Being a progressive citizen, I have prebuilt amnesty into my call to The North Pole: I know you've all been rotten this year, but you can't help it because you're not normal. For that reason I've instructed Santa Crutch to deliver each of you a nice, bloggy Christmas present sometime this month. So look out.
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* A more accurate description would probably be "caucasoid-colored."

Childhood traumas revisited

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Christmas has two esses in it...

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...and they're both dollar signs.



Sad but true. I felt obligated to offer this light musical entertainment on Christmas Eve in order to soothe the nerves of Oil Can and Mrs. Harry. Last night's presentation evidently triggered a bout of post-traumatic stress in the little guy---something about somebody putting Coco on the rug or some such.

The milquetoast, Bob "Peace On Earth" Cratchit, is portrayed in this Stan Freberg production by cartoon voiceover actor Daws Butler---a brilliantly talented man who was, in my opinion, cursed by having to portray an endless procession of lame cartoon characters, mostly for the hack Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. Until digging up the previous link, though, I did not know that Butler voiced the part of Aesop's son on Rocky and His Friends.

Freberg's sentiments here as as bitter as any he ever expressed on record---but bitterly hilarious, of course. Various "Mad Men" of the day felt touchy about Green Chri$tma$, however, and worked hard to suppress promotion of the record and airplay of same for a few decades. To this day it's rarely heard out here in radioland. To this day, reality is an affront to the senses and sensibilities of some delicate souls.

Green Chri$tma$, Stan Freberg (1958, Capitol Records F 4097), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: if you pop outta bed one more time I'm gonna jak się masz you!

Ghosts of Christmas past

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Here is a Christmas entertainment that incessantly appeared on the family TV screen in the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. I do not remember what Little Oscar thought of this. But our late sister, little Piggly Wiggly, was a huge fan of this throughout her life, and she was very proud to have located it on VHS in one of her last years and pass it on to several of us. She was a nut about all things Christmas, but I know that part of her nostalgia for this short was related to the name of the second "dwarf"---Coco---which she related to a 1950s incident in a Chicago-area restaurant involving myself, a broken bout of constipation, and my trudging into the dining area with little pants around ankles protesting about someone putting "cocoa" in my... well, never mind. Myself, I must confess that I only enjoyed this feature because it heralded the coming of Christmas (presents), and because the refrain of the elves' names was fun to sing in tiny ridiculous low voices, and because Peggy was so damned amused by the whole thing. For her whole time on earth, which ended in 2005, she addressed me as "Coco."

Anyway, if you were sentient in 1956 or later and watching Channel 9 in "Chicagoland" around Christmas, I'm sure you can sing along at least with the refrain. Now brace yourselves.



Here's the thing: with all respect for our dear sister, I'm afraid that this "story so queer" is, to me, is a hellish thing to watch as an adult. Just look and listen.

The misty opening scene is simple and gorgeous in its own right but, honestly, it begins looking like a set from The Wolfman and quickly morphs into The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari---very expressionistic, but far out of whack, atmospherewise, with the season to be jolly. The face of Santa, reading a book entitled "Girls and Boys" with his eyes plastered shut, smiles in a fashion presaging that of the grave-robbing Mr. Sardonicus from the eponymous Castle horror film of 1961. The three elves succumb to that contagion by the end of the feature, and the penurious quality of the stop-motion animation completes the overall atmosphere of oppressiveness.

Then there's the soundtrack. The lead vocals for the verse alternate between a creepy-sounding reverberated androgynous chipmunk-style voice, a "dwarf" I guess, and an a capella barber shop quartet---both accompanied by a mellow choir of banshees. The female chorus that leads on the refrain sounds like an infernal calliope piping out church lady harmonies.

I don't mean to be a wiseguy, but I honestly don't understand how this animation became a Chicago Christmas "classic," as it is called in most writeups I can find on the web. I find it disquieting as an adult, and potentially even qualifying as raw material for toddler holiday nightmares. But it is what it is, and my pixie of a little sister adored it for decades.

(And incidentally, it's way past your bedtime, goddamit!)

Hardrock, Coco, and Joe: The Three Little Dwarfs, Stuart Hamblen (1961, Centaur Productions), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: while researching for this post I found an interesting thing or two about the composer, Mr. Hamblen, which serves to connect some dots between HC&J and a future Fish Fry in preparation... if I can remember.

OK, OK! Heh heh!

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I coulda sworn I told the little feller not to pop out of bed, but there he is jumping up and down on the furniture for an "encore." OK, Luigi: here is your... encore.



Holy Kazoozis---it's Grace Jones! (Grace Jones?!?) I don't recall seeing this lovely beast ever looking quite as comely as she does here, tantalizing Pee-wee Herman's inner homunculus after he almost cluelessly returned her to sender. It will not escape fans of The Dance that Ms. Jones begins her musical interlude with a coupla preliminary burlesque moves, but then loses herself in song without unhinging her outer candy shell or staying long enough for it to melt in one's mouth or hand.

I assume Reba's letter carrier union protected her from reprisals for the misdelivery. Had Mailman Mike still been on the Playhouse route, no doubt he would have tried unwrapping and poking around in the giant box before delivering it. And then Ms. Jones would have found it necessary to rupture every organ the poor guy had, leaving only one of them untouched.

Action-packed, Pee-wee!

The Little Drummer Boy, Grace Jones (1988, from the primetime TV special, "Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special," CBS), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

It's Bedtime!

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Since I'll be spending my holidays, as always, in the eye a typhoon fueled by booze, pills, and burlesque dancers, I will get an early jump on my Christmas posting. Which is to say, I have a video confection here for The 59er and, incidentally, the rest of you. As The King used to say on Peewee's Playhouse, "Let the cartoon... begin!"



Thanks to The 59er for suggesting that I dedicate a few posts to commemorating Christmas. I'm happy to be challenged to find my own take on a topic of interest to others in the small cadre of people who spend their valuable time checking this blog a few times a week. The text that follows is animation-related, not Christmas-related, so you can stop reading here if you're not interested in the former.

This cartoon is another in the small series of Color Classics by Fleischer Studios through Paramount, released in December 1936. This is a really good print, and includes the original title cards. My eye isn't educated enough to know whether the almost gaudy coloring is faithful to the original Technicolor print or a restoration job; even if the former, it's A-OK with me---much better than the version I used to watch with my sons on VHS tape.

The opening scene is a vivid specimen of the Fleischer "Tabletop" background animation technique. What they did was draw, paint, and build miniature theatrical sets on large turntables. The sets were rotated in front of a fixed camera to simulate situations like walking down a city street, but unlike straight 2D backgrounds a realistic parallax shift would be evident between the closer and more distant planes of depth. In this example the animators also use a zoom effect to simulate how it would look if we walked in the front door of the orphanage.

The manic Grampy is, in the Fleischer universe, a pal of the latter-day Betty Boop. Once he gets his noodle cranked up, he can sustain enough high-level frenetic energy to rival Popeye himself. And although I think the Flesichers intended Grampy to be kind and lovable, which he is, there is a certain unmistakable lack of full control in his lunacy. His compulsive laughter reminds me more than a little of Greedy Humpty Dumpty, who became unhinged at the thought of riches in the cosmos that did not yet belong to him. Yes, I'm afraid Grampy is a nut.

But just look how inventive Grampy is with found materials: he epitomizes American Ingenuity at its best. And since there doesn't seem to be any food, or any adults, around the orphanage, the tots probably won't have to bother dismantling the toys made of china and flatware. They'll die happy, which I guess is the eternal human goal when you think about it.

Christmas Come But Once A Year, A Max Fleischer Color Classic (1936, Dave Fleischer, Director; Paramount), via YouTube, public domain.

Editor's note: now get to bed, goddammit, and I don't want to hear another peep outta ya!