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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Mr. Monotoli and the Monotoli Building

Like a Lollabrigida Over Ethel Waters

A while back, I became happily fixated on Allen and Grier, a duo who produced well-written comedic music in the 60s. Folksy, but altogether good and reminiscent of a more genuine version of those “SNL” skits in which Ana Gasteyer and Will Ferrell played the high school music teachers who covered pop songs.

In his free time, Spencer, the one who introduced me to Allen and Grier in the first place, took the initiative to transcribe the lyrics to “Celebrities Cake Walk,” a name-dropper of a ditty that references a lot of famous people who died before I was born. (For the two other people looking this song up online, it's also known as "Celebrity Cake Walk," "Celebrities Cake Walk" and "Celebrities Cakewalk.") The song lists a lot of celebrities, but does so so quickly that I can never keep up. Presented for your amusement are these lyrics, complete with a list explaining who these people are. (Don't worry — no one young enough to understand the internet should be expected to know them all.) I heartily encourage you to hop on iTunes and buy the track first.

Root-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo-dee-oot
A-root-doot-doot-doot-day-o
Root-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo-dee-oot
A-root-doot-doot-doot-day-o

Actually, we're starstruck. But we're embarrassed to admit it. And so we've written a subliminal star song.

Root-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo-dee-oot
A-root-doot-doot-doot-day-o
Root-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo-dee-oot
A-root-doot-doot-doot-day-o

While sitting in our Blumgarten
One Fredric March-y day
We heard a Rosalind-Russell
In the Mae-Busch far away
We crossed the Lollabrigida
Over the Ethel Waters
Which was flowing through the Ziegfield
And saw the birds at play-o.

Bristol Cream, a little dab'll do ya;
Bristol Cream, you'll look so debonair.

A flock of Jerry Robbins
Were eating Tewksburys
And flirting with a Betty White
In the José Limón trees
On the Shelley Bennett surf
And off the Dinah Shore
A little Wiley Finley wren
Was Eydie Gorme cheese-o

Clippity-clippity-clippity-clop
Racing at Hugh Downs is the top
Feed your dog Bob Newhart too
The Christian Dior is open to you.

With a frightful torrent of Claude Rains,
Gale Storm came from Mae West;
A Merv Griffin with Warren Beatty eyes
Flew to Conway Twitty's nest.
The wind blew through the Natalie Wood;
It snapped the John Birch trees,
It wrecked the Yma Sumac,
And scattered Chuck Berrys.
It whipped along the Tommy Sands
And out across Sean Bay.
It stirred the Beatrice Lillie ponds
On this Dennis, Doris Day.

Have a glass of Balanchine
And a cup of Capucine
Have some sexy Capucine
It's Marlon's favorite Brand...o.

Root-doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-deet-oot
A-root-doot-doot-doot-day-o
Root-doot-doo-doo-doo-doo-dee-oot
A-root-doot-doot-doot-day-o
A-root-doot-doot-Rosie Clooney
A-root-doot-Mickey Rooney
A-Rin-Tin-Tin-in-Keenan Wynn
And now we're Irene Dunne-o
And now we're Irene Dunne-o.

As you can see, there's quite a bit of name-dropping here.

  • Blumgarten = James Blumgarten, the writer of "Mister Rock and Roll" and "True Story." It could also be some famous "Bloomgarten," "Blumgarden" or "Bloomgarden," but I can't yet tell. Not quite a good note to start on, but let's continue.
  • Fredric March = banker-turned-actor who won the Academy Award for Best Actor in both "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1932) and "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946). Looks like Darren from "Bewitched."
  • Rosalind Russell = actress nominated four times for Best Actress — "Auntie Mame" in 1959, "Mourning Becomes Electra" in 1948, "Sister Kenny" in 1947 and "My Sister Eileen" 1943. Russel never won. Dead now.
  • Mae Busch = Australian actress known as "The Versatile Vamp" in her silent film days. Mae Busch gained renown for playing the shrewish wife of Oliver Hardy — of Laural and Hardy fame — and her skill at throwing crockery. Just reading through her filmography is probably more fun than actually sitting through her movies would be. I am particularly delighted at how many of her roles were for characters named "Flo." Some examples:
    • "Mable and Fatty's Married Life"
    • "Ambrose's Sour Grapes" (as "second twin")
    • "Beating Hearts and Carpets"
    • "A Human Hound's Triump"
    • "For Better — But Worse"
    • "Fatty and the Broadway Star" (as "actress")
    • "Wife and Auto Trouble" (as "a speedy stenographer")
    • "A Bathhouse Blunder" (as "swimming instructor")
    • "The Folly of Fanchette" (as "Mrs. Rayburg")
    • "The Love Charm" (as "Hattie Nast")
    • "Foolish Wives" (as "Princess Vera Petchnikoff")
    • "Brothers Under the Skin" (as "Flo Bulger")
    • "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" (as "Flo Dupont")
    • "Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model" (as "Polly Joy")
    • "Flaming Love" (as "Sal Flood")
    • "Love 'Em and Weep" (as "old flame")
    • "San Francisco Nights" (as "Flo")
    • "Chickens Come Home" (as "Ollie's blackmailer")
    • "The Man Called Back" (as "Rosie")
    • "Doctor X" (as "Cathouse Madam")
    • "Them Thar Hills" (as "Mrs. Hall")
    • "Tit for Tat" (as "grocer's wife")
    • "The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand" (as "Mrs. Paul Gironda")
    • "Prison Farm" (as "Trixie")
    • "Women Without Names" (as "Rose")
    • "The Bride Wore Boots" (as "woman")
  • Lollobrigida = Gina Lollobrigida, an Italian actress once considered the world's most beautiful woman. Now she does things like unsuccessfully contest the European Parliamentary elections.
  • Ethel Waters = a legendary gospel singer. Born to a twelve-year-old rape victim in Philadelphia, Ethel Waters rose through adversity to fame as a vocalist and to be the aunt of Crystal Waters, the the woman behind the 90s dance hit "Gypsy Woman (She's Homeless)." Don't act like you don't remember.
  • Ziegfield = Florenz Ziegfeld, filmmaker and producer of dance reviews. Yes, "Florenz." And yes, he's a guy. He was responsible for spectaculars as diverse as "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ" and "Whoopee!", both of which debuted in the 1930s.
  • Jerry Robbins = a singer, I think. There's a page for him at Allmusic.com, but it's devoid of any information. Damn that history revisionism.
  • Tewksbury = either John Tewkesbury, who shares his name with a famous Catholic martyr and therefore is next to impossible to find online, or Paul "Tax" Tewskbury, a Washington D.C. blues musician who seems to still be alive and therefore not the character being mention in the song.
  • Betty White = not the Betty White who played Rose Nylund on "The Golden Girls," but the younger, slimmer and sexier version of her who rose to fame as a panelist on "The Match Game."
  • José Limón = pioneer of modern dance, whose most famous dance is the unfortunately-titled "The Moor's Pavane."
  • Shelley Bennett = Since the only Shelley Benett I can find recently played a recurring character on "As The World Turns," I'm going to guess that "Shelley" might be a nickname for Constance Bennett, a member of the purportedly famous Bennett sisters who collectively gained fame in early talkies and musicals. I take particular delight in that her first role is as "Unborn soul" in a 1916 film called "The Valley of Decision."
  • Dinah Shore = famed singer, actress and host of "The Dinah Shore Show," a variety hour.
  • Wiley Finley = possibly an artist, though I don't think "Miss Yvette" and "Self-Portrait" represent the kind of art that gets one famous.
  • Eydie Gormé = singer of Steve and Eydie fame. Born Edith Gormezano. Wikipedia notes, slightly snottily, that neither Eydie Gormé nor her husband has made a Top 40 song since 1963.
  • Hugh Downs = longtime co-host of "20/20" with Barbara Walters. In 1985, Downs was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as holding the record for the greatest number of hours on network commercial television, 15,188 hours. (Today, the record is held by Regis Philbin.)
  • Bob Newhart = the most wonderfully understated comedian alive today.
  • Christian Dior = the well-known fashion designer and perhaps the one name in this song that still has as much pull now as it did then
  • Claude Rains = World War I hero who turned to acting and played Sgt. Renault in "Casablanca." Interesting in that Claude Rains is named both in this song and in that other song that name-drops a bunch of no longer famous celebrities, "Science Fiction Double Feature," the opening theme to the "Rocky Horror Picture Show."
  • Gale Storm = singer best known for the hit single "This Bucket (Has Got a Hole in It)." Later she sang a song called "Lucky Lips." Also, she was born Josephine Owaissa Cottle.
  • Mae West = actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol famous for her double entendres, according to Wikipedia. Mae West's filmography, at least according to IMDb, leads me to believe she was less of a sensation than her Wikipedia page would indicate. Also, she's not to be confused with Mae Busch, even if that name better lends itself to double entendres.
  • Merv Griffin = former talk show host who invented "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune." Hence the Merv Griffin Productions logo that displays at the end of those shows.
  • Warren Beatty = actor who I thought was married to Shirley MacLaine until I found out they were siblings. I know him as the man who turned down the role of Bill in "Kill Bill," the schmuck.
  • Conway Twitty = a once-legendary recording star who's all but vanished from popular culture. Wikipedia alleges that the character of Conrad Birdie in "Bye Bye Birdie" is an amalgam of Twitty and Elvis Presley.
  • Natalie Wood = "West Side Story" and drowning, in a nut shell.
  • John Birch = depending on how you think Allen and Grier's interests lie, either John Birch the accomplished recital organist or John Birch the missionary who was executed by Chinese communists in 1942 and in whose name the ultraconservative John Birch society form several years later.
  • Yma Sumac = Peruvian vocalist whose voice may have covered a range of five octaves, depending on who you talk to. Also, Sumac may hold the record for the highest recorded note produced by a human, an honor she captured from the similarly named Erna Sack.
  • Chuck Berry = legendary guitarist and entertainer resposible for such songs as "You Never Can Tell," "Johnny B. Goode," "Roll Over Beethoven" and "School Days," the last of which is better known as the "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll!" song that Bart Simpson covered on that The Simpsons Sing the Blues album.
  • Tommy Sands = a footnote, really. He sang, he acted and he married Nancy Sinatra.
  • Sean Bay = I haven't a clue, honestly. He's evaded IMDb, Allmusic.com and the Wikipedia.
  • Beatrice Lillie = stage actress known for revues and light comedies.
  • Dennis, Doris Day = a conflatrion of Dennis Day, the Irish tenor of his day, and Doris Day, whom I met once at a duck pond in Carmel.
  • Balanchine = George Balanchine, the Russian-born choreographer best known for bridging the aesthetic gap between ballet and modern dance.
  • Capucine = neither the monkey, the monk nor the coffee drink, Capucine was a French model and actress born with the regretable name of Germaine Lefebvre. She starred in several of the "Pink Panther" films, as well as "What's New, Pussycat?" and the filmic adaptation of the "Satyricon." She also nearly married Dirk Bogarde, despite the fact that both of them were apparently gay. She was quite the dish, and she'd have to be to pull off the name "Capucine."
  • Marlon's... Brand... o = the biggest verbal stretch of all for one of the best known in the list. Huh.
  • Rosie Clooney = Rosemary Clooney, well-known, recently dead singer and aunt to George Clooney, mother to Miguel Ferrer, mother-in-law to Debby Boone and in-law to Pat Boone.
  • Mickey Rooney = child star-turned-dwarfish ghoul. You may know him best as the celebrity who pep talks Milhouse in the episode of "The Simpsons" with the Radioactive Man movie. No? Don't remember him? Give Google a break and keep reading.
  • Rin-Tin-Tin = canine star who allegedly died in the arms of Jean Harlow, though since he was actually several different German shepherds, this seems unlikely. Predated Lassie and Benji.
  • Keenan Wynn = a character actor well-known for having a moustache. Seriously. Ask Wikipedia about Keenan Wynn and you'll see.
  • Irene Dunne-o = Irene Dunne, a comedienne who — again, if we're to believe the Wikipedia — had a "surprisingly erotic screen presence." She receieved five different Academy Award nominations, all for movies I've never heard of: "Cimmaron," "Theodora Goes Wild," "The Awful Truth," "Love Affair" and "I Remember Mama."
And that's that. Now it's online, for the world to see — or at least the dozen or so people who have actually heard this song. In retrospect, a better name for it would have been "Formerly Famous People Who Are Now Either Dead or Dying."

Baby Geishas and a Coin Purse Clam

In an effort to prove that the inspiration for the short-lived TV show "The Oblongs" was funnier than the show itself might indicate, I recently led an associate to the personal website of the show's creator, Angus Oblong. The site, as I correctly remembered, is nicely laid out and fairly funny. Two highlights: the result of clicking a link marked "something you haven't seen before" and the complete story of Helga and the Debbies, in which a fat, ugly girl gets her revenge on those more fortunate.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Squeak and Squawk and Speak and Talk With Us

I’m in an animal quandary. If the nature of the quandary interests you more than how I arrived at it, then skip the part inside the big parentheses. Just so you know, this entire post, at its heart, concerns animals.

A week or so ago, Spencer and I were talking and he asked me if I knew which animal was the one that sweats milk. I laughed. To my knowledge, no animal sweats milk, nor should any animal be forced to do so. It seems like a completely impractical means of cooling any hot mammal body, much less feeding one’s offspring. Debate lasted only a few moments before we ended up at the computer, Googling the phrase “sweats milk.”

If you want the short version of this story, know that the answer is the platypus, nature’s hodgepodge freak show down under. The mommy platypus sweats milk into indentations in her skin and the baby platypi lap it up.

(

As is often the case, searching for the answer proved more beneficial than actually finding it. Among the sites I saw by looking up milk sweat was an interesting one that documents the notes from the meetings of the Humanist Association of Orange County. During a discussion on the merits of intelligent design as opposed to evolution, the platypus’ tendency to sweat milk was brought up as evidence that not all animals work efficiently. If you scroll down to the section “Design in Nature? Hardly!” — or if you just CNTL+F like a normal person — you’ll note that Frank Farsad uses the platypus and her milk-sweat as an example of a poorly designed animal. Unless anyone yells at me, I’m going to post the entire list here, because I thought it was interesting. (All credit, of course, goes to Mr. Farsad.)
  • Anteaters develop teeth during fetal development and then lose them before birth.
  • Terrestrial salamanders develop gills and fins only during fetal development.
  • Flightless birds possess hollow bones.
  • Cave-dueling animals possess sightless eyes.
  • Male booby birds court females with nesting material, then mate with them, throw the nesting material away and lay their eggs on the bare grounds.
  • Humans have tails during fetal development.
  • Whales possess pelvis and thigh bones.
  • Some insects have useless wings sealed beneath wing covers.
  • Pythons and boa constrictors have pelvis and tiny limbs.
  • Pandas have a sixth digit from a wrist bone.
  • Female platypi lacks nipples. The mother sweats milk.
  • Nipples in human males have no function.
  • Female spotted hyenas have a penis through which sperm swims up.
  • The first offspring of a female hyena is still born.
  • In conifers, male pollen cones are on the lower branches, while the female cones are located on the higher branches.
The other website that caught my eye — aside from the surprising lot that discuss sweat pants and milk in such a way that they popped up in the search as well — would be the Oswego County School District page for Nathan O., a studious lad who writes brief — and, frankly, biased — reports on animals. Nathan O. tackles difficult issues like platypus milk-sweat and why “monkey’s have such a long tail.” (The answer, by the way, is “a magic banana.”)

The site also shows an original Nathan O. work of art titled “My Side of the Mountain.” To look on it is to glimpse God himself.



For your edification, the text reads "I live in a cave. The stones will protect me from the high winds and rain and the fire keeps me warm."

)

But this research into the strange practices of animals has prompted me to search for a new animal obsessions. As many of my loyal readers know, this lofty spot was once occupied by the noble and strangely beautiful anteater.



Shortly thereafter, I became enamored of the cassowary and its colors, which though they mimic the baboon’s ass, still exude an undeniable natural flair.



When that personal craze died down, I looked to the narwhal — though not too closely, since they’re likely to put my eye out.



Now I’m at a bit of an impasse. I have a few candidates for strange and wonderful animals to become the new focus of my white-hot intellectual intensity, yet I can’t decide on who should get the nomination.

My first thought was pangolins. They’re relatives of anteaters and sometimes called “scaly anteaters.” They look like the result of a drunk armadillo mating with an artichoke, and that comparison would normally be reason enough to win the title outright, but I feel they’re just too similar to the anteaters. And anteaters and I need some space for the moment.



Next up: the axlotl, a Mexican salamander that most closely approximates what I think a real-life Pokémon would look like. I like that its face is basically a generic smiley face. I don’t like that its constant cheeriness could belie inner demons the likes of which I can’t imagine. Also, someone please give this creature another vowel.



Then there’s a little who whose name works in his favor, not against it. Sugar gliders are small, squirrel-like marsupials that make good domesticated pets, as long as your definition of a good pet is an animal that thrives in groups, flies about your ceiling using billowy skin flaps and emits a high-pitched shrieking noise when it’s happy.



And finally, the fainting goat, which I detailed two weeks ago in another post.



So there you have it. I know I should be thinking about my impending long-term trip to the crazy continent, but at the moment this seems like the most pressing matter at hand. Questions need answers, and clearly one of these four animals must be intrinsically better than the other three.

Your thoughts? Your votes?

Saturday, February 18, 2006

What the Whale Did

In the wake of the Goleta post office shooting a few weeks ago, most other news stories Santa Barbara news stories had to struggle to get national attention. One noteworthy event did occur, however, just off the coast on February 2 — a gray whale kerslapped a boat with a finny malice I haven’t heard of since Monstro went after Gepetto and Pinocchio. It’s true. The story ran in the Associated Press and made it into papers all through California, though, more often and not in abbreviated form or some “news of the weird”-type column, as even whale attacks don’t compare to history’s worst office place shooting spree perpetrated by a woman.

The San Jose Mercury still has the story up. You can see it here. From what the article says, I envision the whole incident like some kind of marine bitchslap that ended with the whale merrily swimming away without a second thought. I think my favorite part of the write-up involves the victims describing the whale as indisputably and deliberately vicious.
“You can look into most animals’ eyes and see nothing,” said Gormley, who estimated the whale was 30 feet long. “But not this one.”
and
“It wasn't like the whale didn't know we were there,” she said.
I wish they had conjectured that the whale was just having a bad day or maybe that he was one of those dumbly destructive lugs like Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Whatever the reason, the people involved come off like dipshits. Yeah, the whale wrecked your boat, but you don't hear about people sticking their hand in a bee hive and then saying "Wow, those bees really had it out for me for no reason. What psychos." The whale was most likely just doing what whales do — being massive and powerful and kings of the sea and all that. If you don't like it, move to Colorado.

In any case, news of whale carnage made the local news in Hollister shortly before my parents came down to Santa Barbara two weekend ago. Now, I’ve been here a while and there’s really nothing too exciting left for them to discover here, so they were especially amped on going to see exactly what becomes of a boat that motors on the wrong side of an angry whale. So we agreed that we should go to the marina and see if the boat was still docked there.

I understand this isn’t the typical family outing, but my family isn’t all that typical. Honestly, I initially just was happy to have an activity that everybody agreed would be interesting. So just think about how stoked I was when the nice sea marshal explained that the boat remains were, in fact, available to be gawked at and that my father, my mother and I could be those very gawkers if we could get passed a gate that keeps nobodies out from the part of the harbor where the nicer boats reside.

The short version of the story is that we made our way past the gate like we owned the place and found the wrecked boat in short order. I took pictures, of course. And here, for your viewing pleasure is the result of the collision between a hapless sea vessel and a careless whale.



Hi Mom. Hi Dad. Hi wrecked boat, which upon closer inspection isn't all that wrecked. The canopy is definitely smashed, but considering that this tiny tugger met a whale, I'd say it looks pretty damn good.



Then again, there is some evidence to suggest that the experience wasn't a total cake walk for the passengers. As you can see, they haven't touched the boat since the incident, not even to clean up the blood, which I imagine came from the people when all the wrecking and shattering and snapping happened.



The inside suffered considerable damage as well. This seat snapped like a carrot stick. Or at least that's how I'll picture it in my head. This is all a little scarier when you think about how these seats are likely where the passengers were seated when the whale said hello.



Again, you can tell the scene hadn't been altered at all, since the glass was still in shards and falling everywhere. I'd think broken glass in the water would violate some kind of marina ordinance, but maybe the officials felt the boat owners had been through enough.



This one disturbs me most. It's hard to believe that something so thin-looking as a whale tail could do this. Their tails are large, I'll admit, but not necessarily the most imposing part of the whale. I've been on boats enough to know that that fiberglass is study stuff, but this tear proves that it could stand to be sturdier. Just a little scary, but scary nonetheless.



Pretty magical ice crystals! That, or the sharp remains of someone wealthy local's pleasure craft. Either way, I like this picture immensely. It or some Photoshopped version of it may soon show up as a new blog template background.

So that's the story of the whale. I'm glad I finally got around to typing this up before it became too old to be relevant anymore. But when is anything not relevant enough to be mentioned on this blog?

Along those lines, please also note this picture of a golden retriever that was leashed to a fence outside Brophy Brothers'. He had to sit a watch a family of four enjoy deep friend sea critters and consequently was surrounded in a puddle of his own drool.



You've seen it. Now you can't un-see it.

I Was Talking to Peachy Peach About Kissy Kiss

The next time you see my little pink mouth, expect to notice something special on it: a big fat smile! Things are looking up for your old friend Drew!

As of this morning, I am officially slated to be boarding a plane bound for Auckland, New Zealand on March 4. Somehow, I never thought this trip would ever be more than a vague wish wrapped in longing and hope and tied in a bow of anticipation with a card signed to me from desire. But, with my dad’s help, all this imaginary present has actually materialized into a plane ticket — or at least a PDF file depicting a plane ticket, which I can’t actually hold in my hand but I’m sure will still get me on the flight. (In the meantime, I’m caressing my laptop screen.)

The trip won’t be as long as I had initially envisioned, but I’m okay with that. It’s long enough that I can appreciate the there and then be happy about returning to the here. Trusted associates Kristen and Dina will be accompanying through New Zealand’s north and south island for about two-and-a-half weeks before fly over to Vienna, Australia. It’s funny, I always thought Vienna was in Europe or something, but the confirmation email I just read said we’re flying from Christchurch to Vienna, so I guess Australia has a Vienna too. Also, it’s extra weird that the flight would be on Lufthansa, because I don’t even know what that word means, but I’m sure my dad figured everything out okay.

Anyway, I think I’m just not going think too much about this whole trip, now that the hard part is over. I’ll just sit back at let the departure date creep up on me and assume everything will be perfect. Because it will! When I’m this happy, I just know that nothing could go wrong!

Auckland, New Zealand and Vienna, Australia better watch out for me!