What I mean is this

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[CONTEXT]

Pertaining to this post, I feel I got about a semester's worth of postmodern communication theory out of the epigraph at the beginning of John Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar (1968). It's a quote from The Gutenberg Galaxy, by Marshall McCluhan:

There is nothing wilful or arbitrary about the Innis mode of expression. Were it to be translated into perspective prose, it would not only require huge space, but the insight into the modes of interplay among forms of organisation would also be lost. Innis sacrificed point of view and prestige to his sense of the urgent need for insight. A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. As Innis got more insight he abandoned any mere point of view in his presentation of knowledge. When he interrelates the development of the steam press with 'the consolidation of the vernaculars' and the rise of nationalism and revolution he is not reporting anybody's point of view, least of all his own. He is setting up a mosaic configuration or galaxy for insight . . . Innis makes no effort to 'spell out' the interrelations between the components in his galaxy. He offers no consumer packages in his later work, but only do-it-yourself kits...

"Innis" is Harold Innis, McLuhan's mentor. McLuhan's book (1962) is constructed in a so-called mosaic style that aims at synthesis of diverse ideas and events instead of composing the facade of a point of view. Brunner's book applies the mosaic approach to a (sub)genre of storytelling that I'd call social science fiction. The structure was radical back then, and is unusual even today. But it surprised me how accessible the book was after only a minor mental adjustment.

It may be easy for regular people to "get" the Innis Mode today because, really, it's a "killer app" for web technology. It just requires curation of material, as opposed to throwing everything into a box and shaking it up. But curation doesn't mean creating a point of view, which McLuhan says (above) "can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding." POV really is a dangerous luxury, and an irritating one too. Because everybody has one, but few of them are unique. Artificial POV is what I've disliked about my own writing, and it's what I despise about all the liberal blogs that I should, in theory, love and emulate.

So I'm copping the Innis Mode from McLuhan and stealing the format of "rubrics" from Brunner because these tools seem so useful to help a person get to the point in writing. Plus, it makes it easier to chill about this writing jazz.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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This is very cute. Be sure to watch the post "performance" "interview" with Dick Clark.



It may be my modern sensibilities, but I think that Dick Clark is being a bit of a dick with the boys, at least unintentionally. It appears there's a partial language barrier to which Mr. Clark may not be sensitive. However, he does seem to try to provide some context after the fact by explaining that big-time entertainers (such as himself) don't know their own itineraries most of the time.

I notice that the group spells the word "premiere" the way I remember learning it. For a coupla decades I had assumed that I'd just learned an incorrect spelling of the word in my remedial elementary school education.

I post this song with respect to Senor Rodolpho Murga, who taught me how to make pozole last weekend. Tonight I tried my own batch solo. Tomorrow will tell how it came out.

Farmer John, The Premieres (1 August 1964, live lipsynced* performance on American Bandstand, ABC-TV), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.
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*The fellas should have at least put someone on stage holding a tenor sax to produce a better illusion.

Wake up, Useless!

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It's time for another cartoon!



In this episode, Waldo and his entourage are pursued by the hapless stock Jay Ward mafioso One-Way Waldrip, who speaks in the Bogart-like voice often heard in other Ward features such as Super Chicken and Tom Slick.

The Wikipedia writeup on this series is flawed and ambiguous, but offers some clues about why my memory of this Hoppity Hooper is so fragmentary. First, the production history is odd. "Ring-A-Ding Spring" was produced by Ward studios in 1960, but when the series was sold to ABC, production went to Gamma Studios. The scripts and voices were all Ward, but the visuals were animated by the same outfit that did Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog, and Commander McBragg. Hoppity didn't have any native second features, but was filled both by recycled shorts from Rocky and His Friends, The Bullwinkle Show, and some of the Gamma features noted above. The Rocky show, Bullwinkle, and George of the Jungle, by contrast, all had a suite of dedicated shorts (with some cross-pollination from Rocky to Bullwinkle). As a show, Hoppity had a weak identity, even at the level of kid experience. A Marxist media critic might say that this represents an inflection point where the American art of the "cartoon show" overtly succumbed to commodification. Ironically, that view could partially explain why Hoppity Hooper is not today commercially available as a boxed set: it wouldn't "package" well as a series. A related problem is that it might be difficult to acquire the rights to recreate a Hoppity package featuring shorts from other Gamma productions.

Anyway, YouTube lets us see episodes of this almost-lost series. And thanks to the good offices of a fellow traveler, cartoonly speaking, I momentarily have access to other episodes not currently uploaded to the web. The obscurity of Hoppity Hooper really enhances their "flash value" to me.

"Ring-A-Ding Spring, Part 3," Hoppity Hooper (1962, Jay Ward Productions), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Wake up, Useless!

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It's time for another cartoon!



In which we discover the secret of Ring-A-Ding Spring. Sorry about the "spoiler" in the YouTube preview thumbnail above.

Hoppity's hometown, Foggy Bogg, Wisconsin, shares a bucolic Great Lakes vibe with Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, but sounds much more inviting to me (preferring temperate swamps to gangrenous toes). Waldo and Fillmore are itinerant swindlers, but adopt the town as their hideout/headquarters.

From what I read, this set of episodes was the Ward/Scott pilot for the series. The fist two episodes were produced in 1960, with Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed voicing Fillmore before being contracted to portray the Kramdenesque caveman for ABC. Bill "Bullwinkle" Scott took over Fillmore duties in parts 3 and 4, but I don't detect any jarring change in the bear's tone or manner with that change.

Surprisingly to me, Hoppity is not voiced by June "Rocky" Foray, but by a woman named Chris Allen. I can find little about her with my limited search engine skills (partially due to her very common name), but most of her credits seem to be with the Hanna-Barbera studio. I think she's pretty good.

Hans Conreid, a Hollywood character actor whose career was extended by Ward for the benefit of all of us, creates a perfect maniac in Professor Wigglesworth. Another thing I like about the character is the percussion accompaniment to his brainstorms, starting in this episode at about 1:20 in the background and rising to a crescendo (with reprise!) over the next 25 seconds or so. This sound effect appears in most Ward/Scott creations, but only very briefly. I wonder if it was created by Spike Jones or an associate. It really should be a standard ringtone for the iPhone. (And I'm gonna make it one or my name isn't Lattimore!)

This episode is music-heavy, which I've noticed in a handful of shorts from this era of the studio's output. It may have been experimentation; to my ears it sounds somewhat awkward. I assume they went sparser in the sound bed for economic reasons, though, as opposed to purely aesthetic ones. Also take note of the general style of art, especially the backgrounds, which is very similar to the landscapes featured in the Metal Munching Moon Mice story on Rocky and His Friends around that time.

"Ring-A-Ding Spring, Part 2," Hoppity Hooper (1962, Jay Ward Productions), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Fascists always get the best stuff

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For us progressive amateur aesthetes, it's always been somewhat unsettling that so much top-drawer design has emerged from 20th century European fascist regimes. Does anybody have any insight into why that might be? My first guess would have something to do with repressed homoerotic urges.

Meanwhile, Behold the 1938 Hispano-Suiza Dubonnet Xenia:

I wonder what Franco's army tanks looked like. We do know that his son, a military pilot, thought that the bombs he dropped on unarmed Ethiopians looked like flower blossoms when they exploded.

The only company I'm aware of that consistently produces world-class industrial design today is Apple, which thrust itself into the public mind with it's "iconic" (and in my opinion overrated) 1984 Superbowl commercial. Old-timers will remember that the archetypal living symbol of Freedom and Justice For All---noted war hero, business executive, and human-rights crusader Ronald Reagan---was presiding over the American Experiment at that very moment in history.

It may be hard to believe that, at one time, high design in computer technology could be achieved with putty-colored plastic, a 9 in. monochrome TV picture tube, and a handful of simple picto-glyphs and 16-bit screen fonts. You had to be there; your mainstream business-grade alternative was an IBM (or clone) PC box about the size of Francisco Franco's tombstone displaying its data on a bile-green 8-bit VGA monitor, or amber if you were really uptown. No mouse necessary, or available! (And, yes, Amiga fascists, I do know about your pet machine. Highly respectable, but no design awards from this amateur aesthete.)

Mac 128 image above ganked from this blog, but it certainly doesn't belong to him!

Wake up, Useless!

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It's time for a cartoon!



I think everyone can agree that Hoppity Hooper had about the hippest opening title theme ever. Wikipedia says it's called "Fight Fiercely, Young Teddy!" (!!!?), composed by Dennis Farnon.

Also, keep your eye on Uncle Waldo through this series (which I will continue). He's somewhat more picaresque than most Jay Ward / Bill Scott characters, including Boris Badenov. At least Boris had ideological reasons---not to mention a high motivation in avoiding his own liquidation at the hands of Fearless Leader or Mister Big---to keel Moose and Squirrel. If I remember correctly (haven't actually re-watched this one before embedding), at some point during this story Uncle Waldo casually plots to waste Hoppity purely for material gain. A kiddie-show sociopath who speaks to our times!

"Ring-A-Ding Spring, Part 1," Hoppity Hooper (1962, Jay Ward Productions), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial commentary, critical discussion, and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Not necessarily apropos to the nth degree, but, nevertheless, I am embedding this video in honor of the memory of Vaclav Havel, whose nonfiction writings I have just discovered and about whom I will have more to say later. For now let it suffice to say that the essay I am examining these days like an MRI scanner appears in a cheap edition printed on thirsty pulp paper that begs for marginalia to be inscribed by my genuine Fisher bullet Space Pen.



Now, as to the featured tune, and this particular performance of it, the following:

I've always loved it. My brain originally perceived it as being off-kilter in a way I couldn't explain. First, there's that George rhythm guitar riff that filled the radio like an anthem, but more closely resembled the random tones and percussive, lurching rhythms of a pinball machine to my delicate ears. Then, there's that part---repeatedly---that sounds like a ritardando-slash-meltdown, which is in all cases slapped aside by an abrupt return to the Harrison riff with Ringo bashing his tubs. And finally, there are the words: a song that has nothing to do with girls or whatever that other mysterious stuff was that they were singing about when I was in 7th grade (such as "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yellow Submarine"). This was just a song about a guy who wanted to write paperback books like the ones I used to like to smell at the drugstore news stand next to the comic book racks. (Like Dr No From Russia With Love, of which I could never get past the third page because it was too sexy---just kept reading the first three pages over and over.) So even then, in the back of my unsophisticated brain (infused with anti-knock leaded gas, as it was) I still found myself thinking, "huh?!?" It worked on me sort of like a zen koan.

About 25 years ago the concert from which this clip was extracted was issued by some obscure Italian label which, if memory serves, could get away with selling this bootleg recording at that time due to European copyright laws pertaining to live performances. I enjoyed the rawness of it, and for the first time I heard that the little "meltdown" segments were actually an ear-ptical illusion: when played live, Ringo kept the rhythm audible in the background to keep the lads together. In the studio recording, though, it just seems as if the band holds together via ESP.

Unlike some people, I'm not fazed by all the technical flaws of this recording. It is a document from early days, when the stars set up their own equipment on tour and they probably had no way of hearing themselves in their puny stage monitors over the screeching crowd and arena reverberations. But it does present Paul (fighting with his wobbly mic much of the time) phrasing the melody less "up-and-down" than on the single. It's too bad we don't have some high-quality relaxed, live performances from this era of their careers.

Paperback Writer, The Beatles (live, 2 July 1966, Budokan Hall, Tokyo, provenance of recording unknown), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Here's Diana Krall's peckerwood husband.



Just kidding! (Peckerwood-wise.) Elvis Costello has been a favorite of mine for over 30 years, and this cut stands out to me among his long list of masterpieces.

The zippy pop arrangement, as exuberant as bubble gum, provides the happy "vector" for delivering an apocalyptic prophecy for Empire. I assume that Costello's lyrics were understood much more directly by his British audience, being children of an imperial twilight, than by Americans. But his imagery is so vivid that the thrust of the words were readily discerned even by a complacent twenty-something college slacker in 1979 who had little detailed knowledge of colonialism.

This song has not become any less relevant with the decline of the great Western colonial powers, because those empires have been supplanted by extractive transnational corporate enterprises that rival the power of  any in world history. And ultimately, I think the new ones are every bit as doomed as the ill-fated empires of Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. This is still a prophetic, snappy little pop ditty that should haunt the brain stem of any plutocrat within hearing distance.

Oliver's Army, Elvis Costello and the Attractions (1979, from "Armed Forces," Columbia JC35709), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Bonus fun stuff: while scavenging my vinyl LP collection for the catalog information I rediscovered the bonus 33 rpm demo EP packaged with the original US release of Armed Forces. It contains "Watching The Detectives," "Accidents Will Happen," and "Allison." Also stashed away in the sleeve: my ticket stub for the 10 March 1979 Elvis & Attractions performance at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Bruce Pavitt's girlfriend smuggled my camera into that show under her greatcoat after a security goon tried to confiscate it from me. Don't try that today unless you're prepared to get beaten in the skull with a five-cell Maglite or else give some fat turd a blowjob.

Don't mind them---they're morons

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Our correspondent in the Grampian Hills sends a riddle:

I saw [a] preview for the 3 stooges movie—I think it opens around mid April. They (whoever they are) seem to have the impersonations down OK but, why?

That is a bit of a noodle-scratcher, true. Beer-D has provided the most salient market-based analysis I've heard. (Yes, Stooge fans have been discussing this pending corporate profiteering atrocity for awhile.)

As Beer-D sees it, it's difficult to fathom what audience the movie producers are targeting. For kids who aren't familiar with the Stooges, none of the references or tributes to the original cast members will register. People of any age who did not like the original Stooges will have no interest in subjecting themselves to a impersonation of them. And, of course, it is hard to believe that any fans of the original Stooges will respond to the release with anything except contempt.

Some few charitable people might at least appreciate any craftsmanship and dedication that the actors may have applied to recreating the original characters and situations. But I don't think that will provide a sufficient basis for either a blockbuster box office or a career boost for the director. However, I may be wrong, and Beer-D may have missed something: maybe the target audiences are the Chinese and the French.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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This is a Chicago furniture store jingle as released on a promotional 7 in. vinyl single in 1970.



My general memory from the late 1950s into the 1970s is that music for broadcast commercials and radio jingles was based either on styles that were mainstream when the ad agency guys were in school---half a generation out of date to a teenager or young adult---or else an agency's smarmy exploitation version of youth-oriented music. The good people at Ember Furniture seem to have farmed out their work to a very smooth soul operator named Sidney Barnes. I have a version of this on CD---an anthology on the Numero Group reissue label. Numero's releases cover a wide spectrum, from interesting, fully listenable minor-league recordings by regional soul (and other styles of) groups to sides that sound like they came from a 1960s and '70s parallel pop music universe. And I guess that's actually the case: there is only so much room on national charts at any one time, and it tends to be allotted according to mystical protocols involving transfers of materiel and sexual favors.

Meanwhile, here in the 21st century, I'd certainly poke into a furniture store that commissioned a commercial jingle like "The Ember Song." As if (as annoying teenage girls used to say).

The Ember Song, Sidney Barnes (1970, available on "Eccentric Soul: The Nickel & Penny Labels" [2011], Numero Group N039), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.  

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.

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.

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.

Saturday Night Fish Fry (after hours)

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My favorite version of the two 1970 vinyl releases by Joe Cocker:



Strangely, whenever I hear Cocker's performance of The Letter on my local FM feed of a generic corporate oldies "station," they do not play the one that actually charted on Top 40 AM radio. Instead they play the album cut, taped live on Cocker's 1970 Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which wasn't part of our collective high-school rock and roll experience. Speaking for myself, one of the relatively few who coughed up the ruinous price of, what? $4.75 ? for the double LP, it was a little depressing to hear the live performance. The horn solos were poorly crafted and sounded distant, and the whole shape of the mix felt wrong in comparison with the single, probably because of the difficulties mic'ing practically 3 dozen musicians out in the field. The performance here, though, was a studio rehearsal recording that was rushed out by A&M records to promote the tour while it was still in progress. The horns have real presence in the studio mix, especially the straightforward, rocking trumpet and tenor solos.

So why does the "mothership" corporate oldies network, which seems to occupy 97.9 on the FM dial no matter what city you drive through, play the album version instead of the hit single? My guess is that it has something to do with bundles of "intellectual property" that they license from the corporate copyright holders and force-feed to listeners until they sicken of it. And so, in the bargain, they colonize our pop music memories just like the East India Company colonized south Asia 400 years ago. Countless original performances and mixes become unknown to younger generations of listeners. Yet there's a backhanded benefit to this trend: lots of goodies that have been stashed in the closets of collectors eventually emerge on places like YouTube, unruined by corporate stress rotation.

The Letter, Joe Cocker with Leon Russell and The Shelter People (1970, 45 rpm single A&M 1174), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Fun fact: Cocker is 40 years older, to the day, than Beer-D. Please make a note of it.

And now, Mr. Crutch

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But first a word from our alternate universe sponsor:



Fuelers and funny cars... SUNDAY!!! I tried to find a nice 1965-era Santa Fe Speedway jingle for you because they were really catchy. No dice on YouTube, though, so here's the next-best of the genre. Often imitated, as the Earl Scheib commercials used to say about their cheap paint jobs, but never duplicated.

The Little Theater Screen

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OK, this is for Saturday morning. But pipe down when you watch it---Dad's still sleeping!



I think this is one of Fleischer Studios' best and most diabolical cartoons ever. I can't think of another with so much nonstop visual invention. The only breaks in the action are there to inject suspense or move the anti-plot in a new direction. And the surreal thread that these scenes are strung upon writhes like something that the coroner might have tweezed out of Edgar Allen Poe's brain through a nostril. Except for the appearance of our special canine guest star and the awesome, fetishistic Radio City Music Hall finale.

Yes, they really did show these cartoons on TV in the 1950s, when there was a scarcity of made-for-TV animation. As I've mentioned before, though, Fleischer cartoons were not produced for Depression-era tots... at least not until Hollywood set up the Hayes censorship office and they put a dumpy housefrock on Betty Boop.

As a point of semi-interest, this short was released to theaters 80 years ago last Sunday (24 July).

Bimbo's Initiation, Dave Fleischer, Director (1931, A Fleischer Studios Talkartoon; Grim Natwick, Animator), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

"The Little Theater Screen" was invented by Frazier Thomas.

A Word From Our Alternate Universe Sponsor

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From the land of pines
Lofty balsams



I actually picked up a 6 of Hamm's at the package store this afternoon because they only had a "five pack" of Schlitz (which Leo Durocher used to call "Slits Beer"). I had no idea they still "brewed" this stuff any more. Will report back as to it's purportedly "crisp, clean cut to the taste." Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And now, Mr. Crutch

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But first, a word from our alternate universe sponsor:



I say "alternate" because Camel studs were only my second choice of smoke back when I was immortal. At heart (and lung) I was a Philip Morris Commanders man. Pall Malls were inferior to both, but acceptable when Commanders weren't available. Luckies, however, were the only cigarette that burned your mouth even before you lit the goddam thing.