On Dollies (Helpful, Not Feminine)

Spoken by me yesterday: “The damn dog snapped at me because I was using a dolly and I think it scared him.”

My mother: “Where did you find a dolly?”

Me: “Outside, in the garage.”

A blank look.

Me, again: “No, it was a plant dolly.”

Blank.

Me: “Okay, not like an applehead doll or something. The kind of dolly that looks like a little skateboard and we put under big potted plants so we can move them. A dolly. Like… a dolly?”

This conversation brings up two small matters worth nothing.

First, the dog. He fears anything that can spin, as I have mentioned before. Though we all agree that Chief generally behaves well, he loses his composure around wheels and ceiling fans in a way that suggests deeply rooted canine emotional trauma caused by circular movement. Yesterday, a mere wheeled plank the size and shape of a shoebox top drove him to bark so furiously that I had to flip the object over and make the wheels face the sky in the manner of a dead or submissive animal. He approached cautiously, sniffed it, chewed on it a little and then chomped my hand in what I assume was a misdirected effort to injure the dolly more. It’s bizarre behavior. All attempts to teach him the value of wheels have failed. Once I heard him growl at a wheelbarrow.

What’s perhaps of more widespread interest here is the word dolly. I’m sure I’m not the only person to confuse someone by talking about dollies and not meaning the ones that come with tiny hairbrushes and pink convertibles.

dollies! all of them dollies!

In fact, given that dollies (industrial sense) could be used by manly men who move heavy things, it’s funny they share their name with especially cisgendered toys for little girls. (Also funny: a little girl asking for a dolly for Christmas and receiving the wheeled one from literal-minded parents who wanted to teach her the virtue of specificity.) I could not think of a reason these two objects should share a name, so I looked the word up. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, dolly has been used since 1790 to refer to “a child’s doll” and was “applied from 1792 to any contrivance fancied to resemble a dolly in some sense, especially a small platform on rollers (1901).” That’s it.

The hell?

Okay, so maybe the turn-of-the-old-century version of “dolls” basically amounted to sticks and nails jammed into unripe potatoes, but I fail to see how even the saddest, most destitute child’s doll could ever look like the dolly I was using yesterday. I mean, I’d love to see a little girl dress up a platform on rollers like a Bratz and have a tea party with it. Who wouldn’t have a chuckle at that tragedy? But what’s the connection between a miniature humanoid toy and a wheeled platform? I can’t stretch my mind enough to see the latter as a dolly (toy sense) because it’s already a skateboard (crappy sense). I looked around online and discovered nothing conclusive about why these two objects share a name. I found some lousy theories — dolly (industrial sense) comes from doily because both go under something more important, that something resembling humanoid-looking dolly pin would have existed on a railway handcarts — but none of them seemed plausible. In fact, all I learned was that dolly (industrial sense) can also refer to a portable anvil, a vehicle trailer, a hand truck and about five other specific contraptions used to facilitate various forms of hard work.

So I’m posting this then to both point out that the term’s history seems to be obscure (regardless of what Online Etymology Dictionary says) and to ask you to come forward if you can look at a simple wheeled platform and see a dolly (toy sense). And if you do possess such a liberal interpretation of the word dolly (toy sense), I’d also like to hear about the day your mud house finally got glass windows, the day you tricked Nellie Olsen into getting leaches on her legs, and the day your sister went blind and realized she’d never be a schoolteacher.

Surviving a Midday Moth Attack

Temporarily back at my L.B. Jeffries window, I get to once again observe the animal kingdom through protective glass. Today: a fearsome moth roughly the size of a quarter (the deadliest size that moths can come in, BTW).

Because this moth was flying around during daylight hours, I assume that it was mad with rabies — but thank god not rageful enough to break through the window.

The Strange Case of Lunchlady Doris

Anyone who has watched The Simpsons with any interest has likely noticed that Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz no longer appear, not as speaking characters or even silent background extras. The show’s higher-ups retired both characters after their voice actor, Phil Hartman, was murdered by his wife in 1998. McClure and Hutz aren’t the only Simpsons characters to have their associated actor pass away, however. In 1995, longtime script supervisor and occasional voice actress Doris Grau died of respiratory failure, effectively ending the run of two cartoon characters to which she lent her trademark emphysemic voice, Doris the Hairdresser on The Critic and Lunchlady Doris on The Simpsons. Granted, it’s not as tragic an ending for Grau, whose death came as a result of the cigarettes that gave her the voice that made her famous, but it is nonetheless strange to me that The Simpsons initially retired and then ultimately brought back Lunchlady Doris despite the death of the person most strongly associated with the character.

more testicles mean more iron!

Grau’s voice is heard for the last time in the 1997 Simpsons episode “Lisa’s Sax.” Then her on-screen counterpart appears as an unvoiced background character until 2006, when Lunchlady Doris speaks again in the episode “The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer” but voiced by Tress MacNeille, the cartoon superstar who also voices Agnes Skinner, Cookie Kwan, Lindsay Naegle, Brandine Spuckler, the Crazy Cat Lady, Mom on Futurama, Gadget from Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Rescue Rangers, Dot Warner on Animaniacs, Babs on Tiny Toons and ten-thousand other lady cartoon roles from your childhood. Amazing though MacNeille may be, it seems strange and comparatively insulting to Grau’s memory to have revived Lunchlady Doris — a character who is arguably more closely associated with the original voice actor’s real-life persona than McClure or Hutz are with Phil Hartman — and allow her to be voiced by someone else. But The Simpsons did it nonetheless. And when I watch the reruns, every appearance by Lunchlady Doris (whose full name appears to be Doris Freedman) or a Lunchlady Doris-sounding character only reminds me that the real, original Doris died long ago. Which is awkward. And not so funny.

So maybe retire the Lunchlady Doris character, Simpsons showrunners? Or at least stop making Tress MacNeille voice Lunchlady Doris and Lunchlady Doris-like characters?

Great Balls of Something Impolite to Mention

Via PopSucker, a Noxema commercial featuring Farrah Fawcett. It’s hawking men’s shaving cream — “in Wild Forest, Lime, Medicated Menthol and Regular!” — but that is not what you should find notable from the commercial.

It’s the jingle. Specifically the first line. Specifically the first four syllables. Please listen. It will take less than thirty seconds of your time to understand what I’m talking about.

Seriously, though: Never heard of it measured in balls before.

Verbal Adjectives (Not in the Traditional Sense)

Hey, world people: a question for you. Is there a term for words in English that function as both verbs and adjectives? I’m not talking about participial adjectives — “the pleasing puppy,” “the bloodied graduation cap” — but words like suspect, manifest and express, which all look like straightforward verbs but which can also function as adjectives without the addition of -ing or -ed. I’m fairly certain these adjectival forms aren’t participles since actual participial forms like suspected or manifesting already exist, but I’m curious how they ever would have come into use in English.

There are other examples, I’m sure, and please tell me if you think of any. Searching for those previous three hasn’t turned up anything but a longer list might.

Mega Man in Glam Rock Land

Warning: This post examines Night Work, the new Scissor Sisters album. Related YouTube clips feature the album artwork, so there will be Robert Mapplethorpe butts throughout. Enjoy!

In the month since Scissor Sister’s newest album dropped, I’ve been listening and enjoying it, certainly more so than the sophomore effort, Ta-Dah, and almost as much as their debut. And that says a lot, since the first album got a lot of play in my car, on my iPod and anywhere I felt could benefit from a beat. But something about the whole Night Work album reminds me of video games — old-school Mega Man in particular — and I can’t determine what.

Maybe it’s the thumping synth beats. They give a specific energy to the songs that’s not unlike what would propel players through early-generation video games. The soundtracks to the Mega Man games themselves often mimicked rock and pop music of the day — the Elec Man stage music sounds suspiciously like Journey’s “Faithfully,” for example — so I suppose it could follow that Scissor Sisters would produce a similar sound as they fuse together genres like glam rock, disco and new wave and then zap the result with digital magic. The notion of Night Work having an overall Mega Man-like sound, however, doesn’t satisfy me. As I listen to its tracks, specific parts of certain songs trigger memories of Mega Man hopping and shooting through levels. I just can’t remember which levels in particular. And in posting this I’m hoping others who have noted the similarities can help me out.

So far, I have pinpointed one similarity: “Sex & Violence” and the music from the Splash Woman stage in Mega Man 9. Listen for the synth melody that begins at the seven-second mark in the Scissor Sisters song and compare it to the whistle-like melody that starts in the Mega Man song at the thirteen-second mark.

Not a perfect match, but if the melodies were played by the same digital instruments, I think the similarity would be striking.

I also hear something in the especially tinny-sounding digital effect that starts around 1:42 in “Any Which Way,” but I can’t place it.

Anyone? Anyone?

Two more connections, neither of them video game-related: the blatantly sexual “Harder You Get” plays very similarly to a strange and very raunchy disco track, “Walk the Night” by — ahem — the Skatt Brothers. (Funny story: I either downloaded “Walk the Night” on accident or while drunk, because I had no memory of it until it started on the iPod one day and filled my unsuspecting ears with some explicit and violent sex talk — the aural equivalent of an ambush biker gangbang.) Check the sung part in the Scissor Sisters song at 2:16 and the almost identical part in the Skatt Brothers song at 3:35, but maybe don’t do so at work unless your office permits the discussion of rough sex.

The track “Invisible Light” also caught my attention. It’s good, and most reviews of Night Work have noted the novelty of its “Thriller”-style spoken word segment, courtesy of Ian McKellan. (It starts around the four-minute mark.) Just prior to buying Night Work, I bought some tracks by La Roux, including “Tiger Lily,” which was announced as a single only a few days before Night Work was released. “Tiger Lily” also features a spoken word section. (It starts at about 2:20.)

Two tributes to Michael Jackson’s greatest song, maybe? The timing would work out to about right.

Finally, I must confess that the only track from Night Work I despise, “Fight Fire With Fire,” happens to be the first single. I yanked it from my playlist after about two listens, and I’m baffled by the decision to lead with this. If you’ve only heard this one, give the rest of the album a spin as well — it’s infinitely better. I mean, hell — I enjoyed Night Work enough to spend this much time thinking and writing about what could have inspired it, right?

If only the Scissor Sisters had some emblematic tie-in with the Mega Man universe to bring all this together… Oh, wait.

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The Good Word Is a Mixed Message

Look past the chain link fence in the below photo and gaze in wonder at a curious landmark that I walk by once or twice a week: what I’ve come to call the Jesus Dumpster.

One day, I’ll stop and ask the owner of the Jesus Dumpster what his or her intention was in plastering the waste receptacle with pro-Christianity bumper stickers (“Got Joy?” “Got Life?” “Got Hope?” ... but not the obvious question, “Got Garbage?”). Is it public art critiquing the Christian message? Or the result of a Bible-beater who didn’t fully consider the implications of linking Easter propaganda with things unwanted, spoiled, broken or otherwise unfit to keep around the house? Or was the Jesus Dumpster born simply because its owner felt that the garbage man could benefit from a little more color during his weekly rounds?

For the record, I think similar things when I see American flag designs on ratty T-shirts, baby diapers or bathing suits stretched across flabby torsos.

Religion, previously:

• Demons get divorces, and other fun demonology facts!
• Jesus is not the only person of note to be born in Bethlehem
• A reading of the imagery on a Jehova’s Witness flyer
• Jesus rose on the third day, more or less. But who’s counting?
• Kaffir limes are for heathens