I never see candy canes without thinking of a billboard I saw many years ago towering over a Mexican restaurant in Playa Del Rey, just north of LAX. I didn't know it at the time I saw it, but it was part of an arts program in LA that gave grants to artists to create works on billboards all around the city. I have searched many times for an image of this - without success.
Anyway, the billboard looked a bit like a menthol cigarette ad. It featured a background of cool green and blue snow-capped mountains, over which giant letters, rounded and curved like candy-canes and in red-and-white candy-cane stripes, spelled out the word "LIPOSUCTION." I gasped at how beautiful it was, especially as we'd just come out of the Mexican restaurant and were trashed on margaritas.
When I was in Kindigarten, my class went on a field trip to a candy cane factory. I found such things fascinating as a child (still do) but the thing I remember some 60ish years later was the overwhelming smell of the candy cane goo. Cloyingly sweet and not all that pleasant.
The place is just south of Newport (Oregon), was still in operation when I first lived at the coast, but in the last 20 years the building has hosted a new occupant every few years (good luck to the family restaurant that's there now). Yet STILL, when I drive past, the memory of that candy cane smell comes into my mind and I shudder just a little.
One of my favorite childhood meltdowns was when my sister opened a candy Cane for me FROM THE WRONG END. #autismshit I lost my shit because how the fuck do you expect me to eat the crook first? Doesn't help that my sister probably did it on purpose.
lol YEP! We use ours as Christmas tree decorations, because ain't nobody gonna eat that stuff in this house ! (Well, except Vegan Niece's dogs. Dayummmmm)) Also, when the garlands go on said tree, I hafta go around and *Fix* them umpty times, bc they are always RONG. #also autism/Aspieshit :)
Ok - got a question - last night I watched ‘Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer’ - do you remember what Yukon Cornelius the Prospector finally hit with his pickax ?
Billie Mae Richards did the voice of Rudolph in that one. She did kids voices for Canadian voiced cartoons forever. In The Undersea Adventures of Captain Nemo she did all the female voices on top of doing Robbie and Chris, the brother and sister duo who travel with Mark Nemo.
Verne died in 1905, so the only copyright issue would attach to the unpublished novel that was rediscovered and printed for the first time a few years back.
But it may be that attaching the name Nemo to a completely different and unrelated character was considered to be (by the production company) confusing for the young'uns.
I can't claim to be an expert but I do remember a case involving the recording of a long-lost and previously unperformed French opera of the 18th (or 17th?) century.
The record company wanted to include the libretto but, not so fast! The scholars who found, edited, and published that opera claimed copyright of the text as was, it turns out, their right.
I have hunch that the Nemo to Simon was for the usual reason that producers arbitrarily change things: to prove to the investors that they are actually doing something.
In the original version, it was peppermint. In the revised version they show today (in the original, fans complained because Santa ignored the Misfit toys, so a new ending was made) he found "nothing."
Taylor came from London to Green Bay to watch her boyfriend Travis lose to the Packers on a Fail Mary pass. Olympic superstar Simone Biles saw her husband's team win the game. Some people went home sad, but many more people went home happy.
I have to admit I flinch a little for Black people, whom I rarely encounter hereabouts. I suppose I got it from my mother, who wanted it understood that her childhood home was in WEST Roxbury. I try not to. I was in a store and innocently commented on it being smokey (burn piles) and didn't realize what I had said until I saw the sales person jump. I wrote a note to the store how much I liked the thing I bought, by way of apology.
Jewish people in contrast don't really register with me at all. It didn't even occur to me that "Rebecca Shoenkopf" was probably Jewish until she brought it up herself. Wish I was like that for Black people, maybe next life.
1. Any movie about Santos that isn't a comedy starring Bowen Yang is shite.
2. If the democratic party could capably unleash oppo, we wouldn't have had Santos in the first place. That said, better late than never I supposed. I hope Johnson goes down faster than McCarthy.
I totally misunderstood the matching squirrel sweaters thing, because my first inclination was to offer up the pelt of the one that keeps squeezing under the slightly open kitchen window to come in to snack on whatever it finds.
As the wife and I do not do broadcast TV, cable or streaming, we mostly watch shows on DVD, and so we are often very late to the party when it comes to "I'll get around to it" TV. Of late, we have been bingewatching Justified. It is in fact just as awesome as promised, but for us it has the additional resonance of having lived for a while in the "deep, dark hills of Eastern Kentucky." In our case, it was in Pike county, two counties north of Harlan. We were teaching at a small college there.
Now, Pike, of course if where Sweet Betsy came from in the song about crossing over the mountains with her husband Ike. It is also the McCoys' base for shooting it out with the Hatfields (from across the state line in W. VA). Folks in Pikeville (county seat) can trace their lineage back well beyond the feud to Colonial times, and in some cases back to Northern England and Scotland, and they can tell tales of the feud. At concerts of Old Time music (Bluegrass is the new wave!), the bandleaders joke about staying after the concert for the knifefights. Harlan is the place folks in Pike County view as wild and untamed.
This show does a better job of capturing the feel of the place better than any other portrayal. And it is odd. I am certainly not nostalgic for those days. I was underpaid, underappreciated and culturally isolated (you're always an outsider if your grandparents weren't born there). But it's a place with a unique feel to it. It's almost like Africa, where you'd know you were there before you see your first person or baobab tree. The love and frustration you feel for the place and the people in it are so intertwined that you can never untangle your feelings.
It’s 8:30 AM local time, and Babby Teen Axl has a serious case of the zoomies. And all I want to do is go back to sleep, because I woke up 4 hours ago. #Kittehs
Hey, you guys probably want to read about where candy canes come from. So I wrote about that.
https://martiniambassador.substack.com/p/candy-cane-chronicles
I never see candy canes without thinking of a billboard I saw many years ago towering over a Mexican restaurant in Playa Del Rey, just north of LAX. I didn't know it at the time I saw it, but it was part of an arts program in LA that gave grants to artists to create works on billboards all around the city. I have searched many times for an image of this - without success.
Anyway, the billboard looked a bit like a menthol cigarette ad. It featured a background of cool green and blue snow-capped mountains, over which giant letters, rounded and curved like candy-canes and in red-and-white candy-cane stripes, spelled out the word "LIPOSUCTION." I gasped at how beautiful it was, especially as we'd just come out of the Mexican restaurant and were trashed on margaritas.
When I was in Kindigarten, my class went on a field trip to a candy cane factory. I found such things fascinating as a child (still do) but the thing I remember some 60ish years later was the overwhelming smell of the candy cane goo. Cloyingly sweet and not all that pleasant.
The place is just south of Newport (Oregon), was still in operation when I first lived at the coast, but in the last 20 years the building has hosted a new occupant every few years (good luck to the family restaurant that's there now). Yet STILL, when I drive past, the memory of that candy cane smell comes into my mind and I shudder just a little.
Wait! No elves?
They've been replaced by adorable little AI files.
Still hitting the acid.
One of my favorite childhood meltdowns was when my sister opened a candy Cane for me FROM THE WRONG END. #autismshit I lost my shit because how the fuck do you expect me to eat the crook first? Doesn't help that my sister probably did it on purpose.
How are you supposed to use it as a shiv to stab someone who opens it from the crook end, when they opened it from the crook end?
If you get the mini ones you can just stuff the whole thing in your mouth.
lol YEP! We use ours as Christmas tree decorations, because ain't nobody gonna eat that stuff in this house ! (Well, except Vegan Niece's dogs. Dayummmmm)) Also, when the garlands go on said tree, I hafta go around and *Fix* them umpty times, bc they are always RONG. #also autism/Aspieshit :)
Hey, you guys
https://youtu.be/K48I6ay4tbM?si=41D0p6RyXcqzOmM0
I loved this show when I was a kid. I wished we lived on the east coast so that I could try to be part of the ZOOM crew, too.
I was a weird kid.
Ok - got a question - last night I watched ‘Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer’ - do you remember what Yukon Cornelius the Prospector finally hit with his pickax ?
Himself watched it as well and came in bent over laughing to the point of breathless. #WTF,husband???
One of the many "hey, Santa is kind of an asshole" Christmas specials
Billie Mae Richards did the voice of Rudolph in that one. She did kids voices for Canadian voiced cartoons forever. In The Undersea Adventures of Captain Nemo she did all the female voices on top of doing Robbie and Chris, the brother and sister duo who travel with Mark Nemo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JljzW1ljIH4
Interestingly the French version was called Capitaine Marc Simon.
Verne was French so maybe copyright issues? I don't think Nemo is Imperial so the Le Royale instead of Quarter Pounder is prb not responsible...
Verne died in 1905, so the only copyright issue would attach to the unpublished novel that was rediscovered and printed for the first time a few years back.
But it may be that attaching the name Nemo to a completely different and unrelated character was considered to be (by the production company) confusing for the young'uns.
Is that french copyright law? I know there are International agreements on some of these things, but I also know that there are exceptions.
I can't claim to be an expert but I do remember a case involving the recording of a long-lost and previously unperformed French opera of the 18th (or 17th?) century.
The record company wanted to include the libretto but, not so fast! The scholars who found, edited, and published that opera claimed copyright of the text as was, it turns out, their right.
I have hunch that the Nemo to Simon was for the usual reason that producers arbitrarily change things: to prove to the investors that they are actually doing something.
In the original version, it was peppermint. In the revised version they show today (in the original, fans complained because Santa ignored the Misfit toys, so a new ending was made) he found "nothing."
Yep, BallerAnnie was excommunicated by that asshole Santa....
It was mint of some kind (because, ha "mint" is sort of treasure-esque). I only recall because he kept licking his pickax.
I thought that was his sample testing technique.
Yea he sampled the pickax each time he tossed it into the snow - I just never remembered the scene - kinda like Jiffy peanut butter -
Choosy mothers…
Actually- what intrigued me most was I never remembered seeing the scene where he finally succeeded- “WaaaHooo!
It's probably where "A Christmas Story" got the idea ;-)
I'm a sucker for stories like this.
...
...
...
/snicker/ SWIDT?
Stroke1 found skewered on sharpened candy canes.
Boo, hisssssssss! 😝
Overweight Polish barbers?
Somewhere, somehow, someone has to have written a thesis on the phallic implications of the candy cane.
Am I weird for thinking they were wearing something like this?
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/jCsAAOSwrNBfrr~a/s-l1600.jpg
They've been replaced by adorable little AI files.
NFL Watch:
Taylor came from London to Green Bay to watch her boyfriend Travis lose to the Packers on a Fail Mary pass. Olympic superstar Simone Biles saw her husband's team win the game. Some people went home sad, but many more people went home happy.
PACKERS WON THE SUPER BOWL!
I have to admit I flinch a little for Black people, whom I rarely encounter hereabouts. I suppose I got it from my mother, who wanted it understood that her childhood home was in WEST Roxbury. I try not to. I was in a store and innocently commented on it being smokey (burn piles) and didn't realize what I had said until I saw the sales person jump. I wrote a note to the store how much I liked the thing I bought, by way of apology.
Jewish people in contrast don't really register with me at all. It didn't even occur to me that "Rebecca Shoenkopf" was probably Jewish until she brought it up herself. Wish I was like that for Black people, maybe next life.
1. Any movie about Santos that isn't a comedy starring Bowen Yang is shite.
2. If the democratic party could capably unleash oppo, we wouldn't have had Santos in the first place. That said, better late than never I supposed. I hope Johnson goes down faster than McCarthy.
That is my cranky pants opinion for the day.
"Dog pee is not great for nature"
Essential reading: David Quammen's essay "Street Trees" in his book "Flight of the Iguana."
I totally misunderstood the matching squirrel sweaters thing, because my first inclination was to offer up the pelt of the one that keeps squeezing under the slightly open kitchen window to come in to snack on whatever it finds.
Funny!
As the wife and I do not do broadcast TV, cable or streaming, we mostly watch shows on DVD, and so we are often very late to the party when it comes to "I'll get around to it" TV. Of late, we have been bingewatching Justified. It is in fact just as awesome as promised, but for us it has the additional resonance of having lived for a while in the "deep, dark hills of Eastern Kentucky." In our case, it was in Pike county, two counties north of Harlan. We were teaching at a small college there.
Now, Pike, of course if where Sweet Betsy came from in the song about crossing over the mountains with her husband Ike. It is also the McCoys' base for shooting it out with the Hatfields (from across the state line in W. VA). Folks in Pikeville (county seat) can trace their lineage back well beyond the feud to Colonial times, and in some cases back to Northern England and Scotland, and they can tell tales of the feud. At concerts of Old Time music (Bluegrass is the new wave!), the bandleaders joke about staying after the concert for the knifefights. Harlan is the place folks in Pike County view as wild and untamed.
This show does a better job of capturing the feel of the place better than any other portrayal. And it is odd. I am certainly not nostalgic for those days. I was underpaid, underappreciated and culturally isolated (you're always an outsider if your grandparents weren't born there). But it's a place with a unique feel to it. It's almost like Africa, where you'd know you were there before you see your first person or baobab tree. The love and frustration you feel for the place and the people in it are so intertwined that you can never untangle your feelings.
Is "Holiday Szn" a thing? Or did Cosmo just run out of digital space to write out the whole word?
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/g29087582/beyonce-gift-guide/
I love Ryan! The videos of movie pitches are the best! Thank you for sharing!.
Doctor Santos and the CV of the Multiverse
The George Santos movie should be something along the lines of "The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen", played as a comedy.
I was thinking Scorcese's "King of Comedy" played as a Costa Gavras film.
George Santos is Forrest Gump
Ryan George is hilarious. Having this posted here made finding this latest video really easy, barely an inconvenience.
It’s 8:30 AM local time, and Babby Teen Axl has a serious case of the zoomies. And all I want to do is go back to sleep, because I woke up 4 hours ago. #Kittehs
My Viggo decided that 3:30 was the time for us to get up this morning & again at 5:30 so I sympathize! #Kittehs
Those darn cats! #Kittehs
but can we live without them? NO!
Of course not! I turned on the heating pad on the couch and had a nice little snuggle session.
I know twitter sucks now, but it's stuff like this that keep me coming back. One full minute of cats vs. xmas trees.
https://twitter.com/ShouldHaveCat/status/1731397923299062043
Better than cats on turntables.
Even Xitter can’t break the awesomeness of cats!