Who Names Their Daughter Pistol?

(A quick one for Friday.)

Hey, remember Goof Troop? Remember how Goofy lived next to Pete, the old-timey Disney bad guy? Remember how Pete had a wife and daughter who kind of receded into the background behind whatever Goofy and Pete were doing with their sons? Remember how the daughter’s name was Pistol? Wasn’t it weird that that was her name?

Here’s Pistol, in case you don’t remember:

So why was her name Pistol? Well, back in the day, when Pete was playing this villain or that villain, he took on different names. When he was a pirate, he went by Peg Leg Pete, hence Pete’s wife normal-seeming name, Peg. When he was a bandit, his name was Pistol Pete, and Pistol’s name is a callback to that.

And that, my friends, is why a minor Disney cartoon character was named after a firearm.

Danger in Deling City

I’m going through a Serge Gainsbourg phase. That’s something awful people say to indirectly tell you that they’re classy, worldly, cultural, hip and other adjectives that, when combined, usually equal awful. Nonetheless, it’s true. I have been listening to him lately, because in spite of the pretentious people who may count him among their most recent obsessions, he’s actually quite phenomenal. In fact, he’s so good that you can be a non-French-speaking person who’s missing out on his expert worldplay and still enjoy his songs, and that’s saying quite a bit, seeing as how his lyrical prowess is one of his best qualities.

The song I’m posting today, however, is instrumental, so you monoglots and francophobes needn’t worry any.

Gainsbourg scored the 1970 Anna Karina film Cannabis, and one of the tracks happens to be one of my all-time favorites of his compositions. It’s titled “Danger.” Here it is:

But the thing about this track is this: It’s good on its own, but every time I hear it, I think of a track from a video game soundtrack I played years ago: “Under Her Control” from Final Fantasy VII. Here’s that one:

Can I explain why one makes me think of the other? No, not really. There’s not one specific detail about the former that I could say reminds me of the later. However, the whole gestalt of the Gainsbourg track nonetheless makes me think of the one my Uematsu. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve heard something “legitimate” in something from a video game, but somehow this one seems to linger more heavily than the others.

Anyone?

With “It” Being an Octopus Hat

I have exactly two posts on this blog featuring the label “what I think happened” — the one from Monday about the secretary posing with the opium in the candy box and then one from last October with the girl trying to do her best Mila Kunis from beneath a crocheted octopus hoodie. And it’s kind of weird that just two days after the candy box post, I get to refer to the other of the two posts. See, this new Fiona Apple video came out and lord-oh-God WHY IS WEARING AN OCTOPUS HAT?!

Who cares why, really? It gave me an opportunity to make this little side-by-side.

And while I hate to be a member of the faction saying “Boo, Fiona Apple, you demonstrated realistic aging since 1997 and now you no longer look like a teenager,” I have to say that Mila Poonis over on the right might look better with a cephalopod affixed to her noggin.

All that aside, I would just like to say that I’m really excited about the idea of more people wearing octopuses.

Who Wore It Better?, previously:

• Kris Jenner / Eclipso
• Michael Cera / Edith Crawley
• Lana Del Rey / Camilla Rhodes
• Tabatha Coffey / An angry, white cat
• Grace Jones / A cassowary
• Coco / The Venus of Willendorf

The Triumphant Return of Fluffy Butternums

I spent last Easter at my parents’ house and, while there, had a close encounter with a real, live, wild rabbit — a baby jackrabbit, in fact. And though he could not offer me chocolate in any traditional, acceptable or edible sense, he did exhibit commendable courage in the fact of what to him must have looked like a pink, hairless giant. And that’s something.

A photo:

Just today, while sorting through old photos on my phone, I realized I’d also taken a video of him. Just by virtue of nose-wiggling cuteness, this is a video the world needs to see. Apologies in advance for any motion sickness-inducing camera work. I am a novice rabbit documentarian.

I don’t know what became of him — and to be frank, his lack of fear in the face of a towering camera monster does not bode well — but I wish him the best.

Sweets for the Sweet Who’s Addicted to Opium

From the UCLA archive of old L.A. Times photos, I present a photo that ran in the June 5, 1947, edition of the paper with the following caption: “UNDER THE CANDY: A District Attorney’s secretary exhibits $40,000 worth of opium found concealed beneath candy in box. Drug was discovered in connection with investigation of robbery, kidnapping ring.”

And now, how this happened, according to my brain:

“Hey, Rocko — what’s the name of that set of ankles at the desk in the D.A.’s office? You know, the one who’s been sore at me ever since I busted her ma for pushin’ hop. Doris? Dorcas? Doreen? Ah, okay — Ada. Well, lemme run by you my idea to make Ada sweet on me like she yoosta. I assume you recall that stash of gum that Lou and Maloney found in that Jamaican candy store that turned out to be a dopehouse. Here’s what I say: We ask ol’ angelface Ada to pose for the news hawks tomorrow afternoon and finally yank that sour look off that button of hers. Yeah, see? It’s the ol’ gooseberry lay. Tell her that she needs to go out, find a fancy new set of rags to pin on, get her hair done like Betty Grable and then show ever shamoo in Los Angeles how greats she looks. I even got the lined picked out: ‘That’s some fancy candies you got there, but they’re not half as sweet as you, Doris.’ What’s that? Oh yeah — Ada.

And if Ada’s not my new lady by the end of the week, I’ll just tell everyone she’s a communist.”

Embiggening Your Understanding of Embiggen

Even in its most Jerkass Homer-y seasons, The Simpsons has always manages to toss off a joke or two that suggest the writers know language well enough to play around with it. This, after all, is the show that assigned Alexander Graham Bell’s short-lived method of answering the phone, ahoy-hoy, to Mr. Burns, that got the phrase cheese-eating surrender monkeys in the news and that made a certain segment of humanity think that the name for a mythical horse with the head of a rabbit and the body of a rabbit is esquilax. The Simpsons popularized both meh as a term indicating apathy or disinterest and yoink as an interjection to punctuate thievery. And now even people who don’t watch the show would know what you meant if you D’oh-ed.

However, if you asked most Simpsons fans what comes to mind first when they think about the show and words, they would probably say embiggen and cromulent — in that order.



They are introduced in the same episode, “Lisa the Iconoclast.” Embiggen first appears in the motto of Springfield’s founder, Jebediah Springfield: “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” When Mrs. Krabappel points out that she’d never heard that word before she moved into town, Mrs. Hoover responds, “I don’t know why. It’s a perfectly cromulent word.” Later the same episode features Principal Skinner using both words in the same sentence: “He’s embiggened that role with his cromulent performance.” However, it’s only embiggen that found a notable life outside the show. And while some may have have heard it used since “Lisa the Iconoclast,” few seem to know that the word began before more than a century before The Simpsons hit the airwaves.

And that’s why it’s my word of the week.

embiggen (em-BIG-en) — verb: to make or become bigger.

There’s a connotation to embiggen that you wouldn’t find in a dictionary entry, and that’s the geekiness inherent in using it. We already have the word enlarge, but when you want to be all cute and reference-y about it, you can use embiggen. That’s why Will Wheaton uses it. And that’s probably why it was used by the science-minded types — or, if you will, dorks — who wrote this paper on gravity duality for the academic journal High Energy Physics. But embiggen was not technically born on The Simpsons, even if the show is solely responsible for the uses mentioned in the preceding paragraph. By a total coincidence, embiggen also appeared on page 135 of the 1884 edition of the British journal Notes and Queries: a Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc., according to Wikipedia. Quoting writer C.A. Ward:

But the people magnified them, to make great or embiggen, if we may invent an English parallel as ugly. After all, use is nearly everything.

So, yeah — he uses this word but then immediately points out what an awkward and unpleasant construction it is. And then it sat, alone and unloved, until The Simpsons used it. And now it belongs to the dorks.

A few other Simpsons coinages worth mentioning, via this page:

• acceleratrix and velocitator — what Mr. Burns calls the gas pedal and the brake
• walking bird and yellow fatty-beans — what Grampa once called turkeys and bananas, respectively
• ovulicious — a portmanteau of ovulate and delicious
• unfaceuptoable — which is actually pretty self-explanatory
• swishifying — gay-making, basically
• land cow — a buffalo
• zazz —je ne sais quoi for awful people
• kwyjibo —a big, dumb balding North American ape… with no chin… and a short temper

And yes, by the way, I think that Australians should have to call something chazwazzahs, even if it’s not bullfrogs.

Previous words of the week after the jump.

• aasvogel, acné excoriée des jeunes filles, adulterine, ageusia, ambeer, anosmia
• barn, barrack, beeturia, bissextile, bloofer, breastsummer, brinicle
• catholicon, cecaelia, cephalophore, cherpumple, chilver, chyron, cockernonnie, collywobbles, coprolalia, couvade, cranberry morpheme, crwth, culaccino, cummingtonite
• darkle, deasil, decussate, deuteragonist, dingbat, dingle
• eidolon, epeolatry, epopt, espalier, etui, exoterica
• fabiform, Feghoot, fissilingual, Föhnkrankheit, folderol, formication, freekeh, froward
• gallinipper, gnaborretni, grandgore, grue, guilloche, gyaru
• hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, hobson-jobson, hogo, honorificabilitudinitatibus, hoyden, hyetal
• ignivomous, iracund, isabelline, itaiitai, izod, izzard
• jabroni, jamais vu, jehu, jumentous
• kaffir, kakopygian, kayfabe, knipperdollin
• lagniappe, leman, lemniscate, limnovore, linsey-woolsey, longicorn
• malacia, malison, maroon, merryandrew, milt, mongo, mooncalf, morepork, muzjiks
• narrenfreiheit, nef, nihilartikel, nobiliary particle, nosism, nudiustertian 
• obelus, ochanee, ogonek, ombré, ooglification, orchidectomy, ordured, orf, osculate
• pace, padiddle, paraprosdokian, pareidolia, pavonated, perendiate, perigee, perverb, petrichor, pettifogger, pettitoes, phlegmagogue, phpht, pismire, pixilated, pogonip, pong, pruniferous, puggle, pulveratricious, purse
• quacksalver, quagga, qualtagh, quidnunc, quiff
• ronion, roynish, rubirosa, rumpsprung, runcible
• salmagundi, scrutator, seneschal, sharrow, shebang, sherd, sinople, slampadato, slubberdegullion, stan, stevedore, suovetaurilia, suzerainty
• tappen, tatterdemalion, teratogenesis, tergiversate, tetromino, thagomizer, thon, tiffin, tittery-whoppet, tmesis, toby, tutoyer, tyro
• ucalegon, ultramontane, umiaq, umquhile
• veneficial, verdigris, vespertilionine, vinegeroon
• weeaboo, widdiful, williwaw, witzelsucht, wooper looper
• xenodocheionology, xyster
• yazoo, ypsiliform, yoink
• zanjero, zenzizenzizenzic, zinnober, zugzwang

Beyond Castle Frank-N-Furter

If you’re talking about what the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie cast did with their later careers, it’s easy to name off projects that Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Tim Curry appeared in post-“Time Warp.” Oh, and Meat Loaf continues to be Meat Loaf. How could he not be? The rest of the castmembers, however, didn’t exactly ride that midnight movie magic to mainstream success. But they didn’t just vanish, either. For example, Patricia Quinn, who played the evil domestic Magenta, appeared prominently in the BBC series and public TV mainstay I, Claudius.

guess which one is from i, claudius. go on — guess!

Quinn plays Livilla, Claudius’s sister, whose affair with solider played by a weirdly hunky Patrick Stewart earns her the grim fate of being locked in her room… forever. Literally. Her pained screams do nothing to move her mother, who’s so ashamed of Livilla that she’s fine with just letting her starve to death in the family home.

(Quinn is also the aunt of Jonny Quinn, the drummer from Snow Patrol. Who knew?)

But my favorite from Rocky Horror was always Magenta, the tap-dancing maid who talks like a gangster’s moll and whose solo in “Time Warp” is one of the best parts of the movie:

(Does Columbia kind of remind you of Harley Quinn a bit? The voice and the accent and the penchant for slapstick?)

So what did the actress who played Columbia, “Little” Nell Campbell, do after Rocky Horror? Well, she has acted quite a bit. She was in the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Great Expectations, the Michael Caine-less sequel to Alfie that I just found out existed, and most randomly of all, The Killing Fields. But she also had a recording career that saw a disco cover of “Fever.” Weird as that is — and, I mean, go ahead and click that link, because it’s pretty weird — it’s not what ultimately prompted me to post all this. No, the song really worth mentioning is “Do the Swim,” from the album Aquatic Teenage Sex & Squalor. Honestly, it wouldn’t have been out of place in Rocky Horror itself, and it’s no surprise that the video has been screened before some presentations of Rocky Horror.

Here it is:

Some stray thoughts:

• Wow.
• If that’s how she actually swam, she’d have drowned by now.
• Actually, the way the camera pans up into the bubbles at the end — and away from Campbell — kind of makes it look like she did drown.
• I like how the song tells a story, and that it makes a point of setting the story last long weekend. Post pop songs lack such explicit narratives.
• Doesn’t she kind of look like NewsRadio-era Vicki Lewis? And isn’t this something Vicki Lewis’s character from NewsRadio might have done?
• You can’t say she’s not trying her damnedest up there.
• I wonder if this arises from the same pop-cultural trend that was responsible for similar retro throwbacks by Kristy MacColl (1979’s “They Don’t Know”), Dee Walker (“1984’s “Jump Back”), Pat Wilson (1983’s “Bop Girl” — check for a 15-year-old Nicole Kidman in the video), Tracey Ullman (1983’s “Breakway”). And yes, that Tracey Ullman — the one responsible for The Simpsons.
• All the names in the above bullet point sound like those belonging to women my mom might be friends with.
• Doesn’t it sound like it’s “Yummy Yummy Yummy (I’ve Got Love in My Tummy)” at the beginning?
• I will always be okay with songs that explain to you how to do the dance. This is why I continue to hate “The Loco-Motion.”
• Her red one-piece makes it seem like one of the less famous Baywatch chicks got real drunk at a party and embarrassed herself.
• I wouldn’t say it’s a great pop song, really, but it’s catchy as hell. I will be muttering “She’s a mer-mer-maid” for hours now.

And that, friends, is everything I have to say about the non-Susan Sarandon female castmembers of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.