Lonesome, Even With All That Red Hair

As I mentioned in a post yesterday, I took a quick trip to Ventura on Saturday with the intention of seeing something different. Ventura’s Main Street has more than its fair share of stores selling old things, and a lot of them are worth looking at, if only for reasons contrary to how the shopkeepers would have planned. Below is a visual catalogue of notable things I didn’t buy, for obvious reasons.

First up, a little number I like to call “horrifying doll.”

I don’t know if it’s the arms frozen in a modified version of the standard zombie pose, the expression of trace-induced murderousness, or the fact that the whole thing looks a great deal like Lucille Ball gone horribly wrong. The diablo-red statue in the matador hat — Devil Imp Ricky, if you will — isn’t helping.

Antique stores are great for exposing me to bits of bygone pop culture that I have never before had any reason to know. Apparently inhabitants of the Sid and Marty Krofft universe — of which I should admit I know fairly little — Kaptain Kool and the Kongs allowed me to say with complete honesty “I have no fucking idea who this band is.” And I don’t get to say that a lot, much less about anything famous enough to merit having its image placed on a jigsaw puzzle.

Something must also be said for the tendency to replace the letter “C” with the letter “K.” For added coolness? Instant edginess? Automatic anti-authoritarian cred? “We don’t need your cold, dead rules, man. We spell how we want… though we clearly do follow the rules of letters making the sounds they’re supposed to. “Qaptain Qool and the Qongs” would have been better, if only that “Paptain Pool and the Pongs” would have been a marketing nightmare.

Two jokes here, the first being the inherent awesomeness in a pricetag reading “old tool” and the second being the fact that the antique store owners also apparently didn’t know what the hell this thing was or what it did. Seriously, if anyone reading this can identify this implement, I can give you the phone number of this store.

Creepy Kitty has a lever in back that, when twiddled, causes his tongue to loll back and forth. That’s it. Thus, this object is a toy only in a sense that it can’t really be anything else save something with which to scare children. And no one wants to buy something called a “scarechild,” so “toy” it is. I’d like to say that Creepy Kitty evidences some progression from olden times as far as what children consider worth their time, but I feel like even old-timey children would have been perplexed by this thing, perhaps only finding solace in using it for a game of How Far Will This Fly If I Throw It?

And then we have the Kappa Doll. And by that I don’t mean to mock the lovely ladies of Kappa Kappa Gamma — who do have brains, regardless of whether they use them — but the mythical Kappa, who does in fact suffer from a giant hole in his head. I’m not a doll guy — thank God — so I have to wonder what advantage a doll might find in lacking a skull cap. Anyone?

I ultimately opted not to buy this painting of Dana Scully, re-imaged by an artist who apparently learned to paint by looking at art in Mexican restaurants.

Based on the title of this album, I am reminded of the beloved children’s game How Far Will This Fly If I Throw It?

I think I actually saw the movie that this is the soundtrack to. But I don’t remember any hearing any organ music in it, at least not in the literal sense.

I have no idea what the name of this Maxine Sellers album is referring, but I really hope it’s the title track. And I really hope the song appears on the track listing in its untruncated form, “Life Is Short, But It’s Wide (Talkin’ ’Bout Choads).”

Previous catalogues of things I did not buy at the thrift store:

• “Shrine of the Sea Monkey”
• ”The Countryside Is Overgrown”

Futon Mattress of a Mouth

Hey, sweet pea. If you didn’t watch last night’s Steve Martin-hosted Saturday Night Live, you didn’t miss a whole lot. The absolute best moment came from newcomer Abby Elliott, who managed to do a lot with a less than minute-long bit on Weekend Update.

I just can’t wrap my brain around the fact that the offspring of Chris Elliott could look so much like the actual Jolie.

One Holophoner Short of an Opus

The following post concerns a certain purple-haired cyclops.

From Wikipedia and according to a 1999 article in LA Weekly: The full name of Futurama’s Turanga Leela is a nod to Oliver Messiaen’s 1964 Turangalîla-Symphonie. Messiaen said he derived the name of the work from two Sanskrit words: turanga and lila. Wikipedia claims that the pair together translate as “love song and hymn of joy, time, movement, rhythm, life and death,” without any mention of which word means what.

More than one online Sanskrit dictionary, however, offered instead that turanga meant “a swift-goer,” or, by extension, “horse.” Typically unflattering, but also appropriate, given that Leela appeared as a centauress through most of the most recent Futurama game, Bender’s Game. Lila brought up such translations as “a sport,” “diversion,” “amusement,” “playful imitation of a lover,” “dissimulation,” “disguise,” “pretence,” “charm,” “grace,” and quite a few others. My entirely unofficial and likely incorrect translation, contrary to what Massiaen offered, is “horseplay.”

Now to research whether a symphony also gave us the name “Clobberella.”

EDIT: In searching for an image of Leela to paste into this post, I found that an unfiltered Google image search for the terms “leela futurama” and “turanga leela” both turn up porn within the first page of results. Whee. Not wanting to further infect my computer, I Photoshopped together the above image from the third season episode “Parasites Lost.”Futurama, previously:

• The Futurama postcard extravaganza
• Rape of the Lock, Futurama, and The Little Mermaid
• Jam a bastard in it, you crap.
• Legend of the cyclops kitty

A Question for Spatula Number One

This week’s word is more notable for its meaning than its origin. Either way, it’s something few people would have reason to use often, but that’s exactly what you should have come to expect by now. It’s also has the distinction of being the first word-of-the-week that I learned mere days before it was featured on A.Word.A.Day, which it was late last year.

espalier (i-SPAL-yer or i-SPAL-yay) — noun: 1. a tree or shrub that is trained to grow in a flat plane against a wall, often in a symmetrical pattern. 2. a trellis or other framework on which an espalier is grown.

I wouldn’t have guessed that the “i-SPAL-yer” pronunciation would be the preferred one, but like I said — it’s not something most of us would have reason to speak, except for a certain kind of garden party or tour of some historical estate. I’m also not sure, exactly, why anyone would want to force a tree to grow into a shape its DNA wants so desperately to fight, but then again it’s mere meddling compared to the Dr. Frankenstein work that is the art of animal-form topiary. It is our desire, I suppose. After all, if man left well enough alone, we wouldn’t today have toy poodles and the appletini.

The word, according to Wiktionary, can also be a verb, as in, “Hey, Hector, let’s espalier this holly tree! I just can’t stand it in its offensively natural tree-shape.”

The end result is entertaining enough:

image from wikipedia

image from espalierservices.com

image from frenchgardening.com

image from wilsonbrosnursery.com

The etymology, perhaps, is less so, at least until I get away from trees and into swords and human bodies.

The American Heritage Dictionary claims espalier comes from French by way of the Italian spalliera, “shoulder support,” which in turn comes from the Italian spalla, “shoulder,” which goes back to the Late Latin spatula, meaning “shoulder blade.” This surprised me, as the Latin and scientific word for this particular body part is scapula and I’d never thought of the words as having a connection before. The same dictionary’s entry for spatula — which, by the way, can mean refer to the kitchen tool or what sounds like a tongue depressor, apparently — credits it as coming from a diminutive version of the Latin spatha, meaning “broadsword,” which elevates the act of scraping cookie batter from a bowl to whole new heroic levels. (The Latin spatha — and also the botanical term spathe — come from the Greek spathē, also meaning “a broad blade.”) From what I read, American Heritage Dictionary doesn’t reconcile these the two similar-sounding, similar-looking words scapula and spatula, which I thought was strange.

The more familiar backblade-related word, scapula, just meant “shoulder” in Late Latin, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. This site also claims that its origin is unknown, but it suggests a similar word: skaphein, meaning “to dig out,” and notes that not only does the bone look a bit like a digging implement but that early people may have actually used scapulas for digging. For its entry for spatula, the Online Etymology Dictionary offers little new, but proposes a connection with the word spade.

I couldn’t make any more sense of the situation. A Google search for scapula spatula didn’t turn up much, aside from evidence of the body part acromium, which confusingly means “the spatula-shaped outgrowth of the scapula.” I also turned up a Wikipedia page on the practice of scapulimancy, which would be so much cooler if it were called spatulamancy. Confusingly, the Wikipedia page for spatulamancy redirects to the one for scapulimancy.

Presumably, there’s more of a connection between scapula and spatula than I’ve found using my limited resources and my armchair etymologist’s license. It seems possible, at least, that the “c” and “p” in the former turned into the “p” and “t” in the latter, though I couldn’t imagine why. Of course, I would greatly appreciate an explanation about how these words converge — and if they don’t, why not.

Wasn’t I supposed to be talking about trees? Damn.

Previous words of the week:

• adulterine, ambeer
• barrack, bissextile, breastsummer
  
• catholicon, cecaelia, cranberry morpheme, cummingtonite
• deasil, decussate
  
• epeolatry
• fissilingual
• grandgore
• itaiitai
• jehu
• kakopygian
• lemniscate, limnovore, linsey-woolsey, longicorn
• malacia, mongo
• nobiliary particle
• ooglification, ordured, orf
• pareidolia, pismire, pong
• quacksalver, quagga, qualtagh
• roynish
• scrutator, shebang
• tiffin, tittery-whoppet, toby
• ucalegon
• veneficial
• witzelsucht
• xenodocheionology
• ypsiliform
• zanjero, zenzizenzizenzic

“F” Is for Failing to Keep Your Head

Corny as it may be, I can’t help feeling like this poster for the 1981 slasher movie Night School is amazing.

image courtesy of final girl

Also amazing: A slasher movie set at night school. “Please don’t kill me, Mister Ghostface! I’m just trying to get my GED!”

Racecars, Lasers, Aeroplanes

Katherine Barber’s neat little book, Six Words You Never Knew Had Something to Do With Pigs, gives some interesting news regarding the Clueless catchphrase “as if.” Barber claims that the expression is far from post-Moon Unit Zappa teenspeak. In fact, the first documented use of it as the kind of canned retort that Alicia Silverstone and company made popular is the 1903 Frank Norris novel The Pit. The exchange, as Barber re-creates it: “Maybe he’ll come up and speak to us.” “Oh, as if,” contradicted Laura.” Strangely, the phrase seems to have faded from phrase until 1981.

And here I thought that Clueless just ripped most of its lingo from Bio-Dome and Encino Man. Turns out it was turn-of-the-century novels.

Encyclopedia Drew and the Mystery of the Knock-Off Clock

(A narrative of obscured origins.)

Where to begin?

I have websites saved on my list of Google bookmarks that I cannot remember saving. Nor can I remember why I found it necessary to save these sites for later viewing. Like this: the Wikipedia page for the fictional card game Cripple Mr. Onion, which I saved on December 13, 2006. I have no clue why. I don’t play cards and I have almost no awareness of the works of Terry Pratchett, from which the game originated — and, for all I know, remains.

Other things have meaning, but I can’t remember why or how the entered my life. This post concerns this type of mysterious bookmark — specifically one concerning Cinnamoroll.

A quick Google search tells me — and likely you too! — that Cinnamoroll is a Sanrio character, which apparently means he exists in the same universe as Hello Kitty. I have almost no understanding of the Sanrioverse. In fact, the closest my personal universe has ever come to treading into this land of things anthropomorphic, big-headed, and relentlessly cheerful was a girl in my seventh grade class who had a Sanrio-themed pencil set. She was mocked ceaselessly, even after the pencil set stopped going to school with her.

Regardless of whether I acknowledge the Sanrioverse or not, Wikipedia tell us that Cinnamoroll is “a white puppy with long ears that enable him to fly, blue eyes, and a plump and curly tail that resembles a cinnamon roll. He starred in his own anime movie which was released in autumn 2007. Some people mistake Cinnamoroll for a rabbit because of his long ears and rabbit-like looks. Cinnamoroll was created in 2001.”

Somehow, I or someone who knows me stumbled onto a YouTube clip of a Japanese commercial for a Cinnamoroll toy. Now, I am not an eight-year-old girl, but to this day the toy looks like one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

Call it good marketing. I don’t know if it’s the jingle or the fact that doll seems to be powered by, among other things, a motorized ass, but I can’t help but think this toy must be amazing. If it had been available to a younger me, I would have demanded it and then told no one that I had it. Its mechanobutt would drive it to countless flips and twirls in my room — my own private dancer. Also, in my imagination of how this would go, it would sing the song from the commercial and move in time with it.

Somehow — whether before The Age of Cinnamoroll or during, I’m not sure — my house came into possession of an alarm clock that looks a hell of a lot like Cinnamoroll, though just enough unlike him that its creators would avoid a lawsuit. The alarm clock lives in Aly’s room, though knock-off Sanrio appliances aren’t really her thing.

One day last summer, while I was home and bored, I took photos and videos of various strange things in the house and included in the long list of subjects was the Pseudo-Cinnamoroll alarm clock. As a YouTube user informed me via comment, the clock is Korean, not Japanese, thus more points in favor of the theory that it’s a knock-off.

The video has been viewed 435 times since I posted it in July. This itself I find strange, that 435 people would sit through even a short video of an alarm clock making noise. But I must remind myself that people will watch anything on YouTube. Even the video I took to document our downstairs neighbor covering A Taste of Honey’s “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” which I posted under the title “not worth your attention, this video” and with no tags, still managed to get sixteen views. (Yes, she had no idea I took the video. No, you can’t see her in the video so I don’t think it’s creepy. Yes, all the sound was recorded from within the walls of my house, which means she was singing too loudly. And no, she doesn’t do a very good job, but that wouldn’t stop her from singing the song as loudly as she could — often repeatedly but sometimes alternating with “Son of a Preacher Man.”) No comments have yet clarified whether the character is supposed to be Cinnamoroll or just something that happens to look just like him.

I am personally unable to say which came first — the Cinamoroll clip or the clock — but both have been languishing on the Google bookmark list and I felt they needed to be freed and shared with the world. Spencer or Aly could probably talk me through how the house apparently became fixated upon them for a period, but until then, they shall remain parts of one of the stranger and more Asian-influences Encyclopedia Drew mysteries yet.

EDIT: The story has been clarified, not that any of you all were on the edge of your seats. Aly received the clock from a roommate some time before she moved in here. The Cinnamoroll video was found in an effort to look into what character the clock was ripping off. While Spencer was in Hong Kong, he took some photos of licensed, legal uses of Cinnamoroll’s image. He — she? — apparently shares equal standing with Hello Kitty nowadays.



Previous Encyclopedia Drew mysteries:

• The Phantom Skull
• The Mixed-Up Currency
• The Troublesome Tang
• The Look-Alike Cats
• The Barfing Bathtub
• The Rabbit-Eared Woman