Potayto, Potahto, Tomayto, Tomahto

Just as there is only one Cher and only one Elvis (but truth in blogging compels me to tell you that there actually are three Elvises -- Elvis Presley, Elvis Costello who was born Declan Patrick MacManus, and Elvis Stoyko the ice-skater from Canada; I do not say that there are multiple Chers), there was also only one Ella and only one Louie. In case you are unfamiliar with them, they were Ella Fitzgerald (1917 - 1996) and Louis Armstrong (1901 - 1971).

Here they are collaborating on “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” (4:18), a song written by George and Ira Gershwin (who were born Jacob and Israel Gershowitz) for the 1937 film Shall We Dance where it was introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as part of a celebrated dance duet on roller skates.

Israel Gershowitz (Ira Gershwin) should not be confused with Israel Balin (Irving Berlin). Did you know that Jack Benny’s real name was Benny Kubelsky and Tony Curtis’s real name was Bernie Schwarz? Or that Marilyn Monroe was Norma Jean Baker and John Wayne was Marion Morris? But I digress.

I do apologize for the unflattering caricatures of Ella and Louie in the video clip. I do not apologize, however, for the music.

Speaking of a celebrated dance duet on roller skates, here are the one and only Fred and Ginger (1:01). At least this time Ginger didn’t have to do everything backwards and in high heels. Here they are in a more traditional role without the wheels (2:27).

You say potato, I say 馬鈴薯

As I begin my fifth year of blogging, what better way to pique (not peak) your interest than by being thoroughly and completely incomprehensible?

Please do not be so rude as to mutter under your breath, “Why should today be any different?”

According to Wikipedia, “Chinese, the Chinese languages, or the Sinitic languages (汉语/漢語 Hànyǔ; 华语/華語 Huáyǔ; 中文 Zhōngwén) is a language family consisting of languages which are mostly mutually unintelligible to varying degrees.”

Good, then, we’ll use Chinese.

Actually, there is method in my madness (as opposed to my madness being completely random).

Many of you know that I have another blog called Billy Ray Barnwell Here that was the vehicle to get my unusual book of the same name before the eyes of an adoring public. When I set the blog up, I encouraged people to leave their comments on the topmost post rather than on the individual chapters because this would make it easier for Billy Ray Barnwell to respond.

All was going smoothly until March 28, 2010, when someone named 宥軒 said, and I quote:

“小聊天室彰化聊天室豆豆聊聊天080人聊天室尋夢元聊天咪咪色貼咪咪情色區哈比成人網金瓶成人影片交流區金平梅近親相姦免費影片松島楓看波波貼圖區波波線上美女拳波波線上遊網波波線上戲網波霸美女貼圖區玩女人視訊網玩女人試看片玩女人影片直播色情片直播免費影片芭比成人情色花王影片哈比淫色網哈免費小遊戲洪爺色情免費影片洪爺色情網站影片洪爺色論壇洪爺免費直播片學生妹做愛自拍影片夫妻聯誼視訊美女豆豆聊天室”

I suspected 宥軒 was not a real reader at all and that his or her comment was pornography because a lot of pornographic Chinese comments were showing up on the internet around that time. So I ignored it.

After a year, though, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I decided to find out what 宥軒’s comment said. On April 18, 2011, Billy Ray Barnwell left a comment of his own:

“More than a year has elapsed since the preceding comment showed up, and curiosity, which as we all know eventually killed the cat, finally got the better of me, so using an online translator, I now know who my visitor who speaks Chinese is and what he or she said. Ready?

Yu-Hsuan Chang Hwa said ... small chat room chat room chat room 080 chat Peas dream element erotic chat areas Mimi Mimi Habib color paste gold bottle adult video adult net exchange area close relative Jinping Mei Matsushima Feng rape free videos Bobo Bobo map area to see beautiful women boxing online network wave wave line upstream of the online game network map area beautiful big breasts video network playing a woman playing a woman playing a woman Look at the film live porn video live free adult erotic video Barbie film Kao Habib kinky color screen Hung Yeh Ha free game porn free porn video movie Hung Hung Yeh Yeh Yeh Hung-color forum free live films making film school girl sex video beautiful couple friendship chat room Peas

and all I have to say to Yu-Hsuan Chang Hwa is A you have problems and B you definitely could use a good shrink, probably in more ways than one.”

So it was not real pornography; it was just silly. I did learn, however, that people in China use the word Peas instead of quotation marks.

Something very odd has happened, though. Neither Yu-Hsuan Chang Hwa nor anyone else, Chinese or otherwise, has ever left another comment on Billy Ray Barnwell Here. And that’s a shame, too, because it is a Rolls-Royce.

Where else but here on rhymeswithplague could you read silly Chinese pseudo-pornography and see a photograph of a 1979 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II on the same post?

It’s a portent, a harbinger, a foretaste of things to come.

And how old are you today, little blog?

Cartoon time

Well, hello again, boys and girls! It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Won’t you be my neighbor?

Oh, wait, that was a different show.

Children today watch Spongebob Squarepants and The Fairly Oddparents and lots of other idiotic cartoons, but in my day the pièce de résistance among animated series, the one we couldn’t wait to see, even when we grew older, was (wait for it, here it comes):

Rocky & Bullwinkle!

Just in case Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose may have slipped under your radar, here in four parts is an episode called “Goof Gas Attack”:

“Rocky and Bullwinkle: Goof Gas Attack - Part 1” (7:24)

“Rocky and Bullwinkle: Goof Gas Attack - Part 2” (7:02)

“Rocky and Bullwinkle: Goof Gas Attack - Part 3” (7:04)

“Rocky and Bullwinkle: Goof Gas Attack - Part 4” (7:03)

So there you have it, not only something hilarious from yesteryear that was able to tickle the funny bones of children and adults alike but also more evidence that helps explain why I am the way I am.

All right, class, your test today consists of the following question:

Whose voice, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, was used for the character Captain Peter Peachfuzz? (Hint: Near the end of his career, he appeared in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Mary Poppins.)

And now, if you are very quiet while teacher is grading your papers, perhaps next time you can watch Dudley Do-Right.

Warning! Warning! No diabetic persons allowed!

If you haven’t met your sugar intake quota yet for today, spend the next fifteen minutes watching these clips:

"Till the End of Time" (1:40)

"Melodie D'Amour (2:25)

"May You Always" (2:53)

"Harbor Lights" (2:21)

"Here Comes My Baby Back Again" (2:34)

"Star Carol" (3:00)

The Lennon Sisters were a singing group consisting of four siblings: Dianne (born December 1, 1939), Peggy (born April 8, 1941), Kathy (born August 2, 1943), and Janet (born June 15, 1946). The group were a regular on the weekly television program, The Lawrence Welk Show, for many years. The original quartet were the eldest four in a family of twelve siblings. In 1992, younger sister Mimi replaced second sister Peggy who retired. Oldest sister Dianne (DeeDee) has now retired as well. The current group, which still appears in Branson, Missouri, and at Welk resorts, consists of Mimi, Janet, and Kathy.

Do the math. The original four -- Dianne, Peggy, Kathy, and Janet -- are now 72 (almost), 70, 68, and 65 respectively. This would seem impossible, but it is true. Here are Kathy and Janet talking to Kathy Lee Griffin and Hoda Kotb on the Today show in 2009. They don’t look like women in their sixties to me, but perhaps they have paintings in their cellars that tell a different tale. (For the literary-challenged, that was a reference to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.)

One thing is certain. The Lennon Sisters are a far cry from the likes of Madonna and Britney Spears and Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse.

Oh, one other thing is also certain:

Your system may not be able to tolerate any more sugar for at least a week.

Equinoctial Hodgepodge

I am old and getting older every day, and I can’t remember whether I showed you these photographs before. It may have something to do with today’s being the autumnal equinox, but then again, it may not. If I did show the photographs to you before, please be advised that I am about to show them to you again.

Here are 17 members of the Class of 1958 of Mansfield High School, Mansfield, Texas, at the class’s 50th-year reunion in 2008. Forty-some of us received our diplomas together on a May evening 53 years ago, but some have died and some, like me, weren’t able to attend the reunion. I can name every single person in the photograph. If you click on the photograph, though, you can see them better -- Linda Lee Harrison and Johnny Paul Howard and Roland Cope and Ona Faye Russell Roberts and Patsy Joan Hudson and Glenda Vincent Franks and Johnie Mac Day and Darrell Rayburn and Judith Crawford and John Galloway. and Alene Bratcher (standing) and Patsy Darlene Rawdon and Barbara Ann Pigg and Carol Daugherty and Brenda Sue Harrison and Sally Bratton and Jimmie Sue Raines (seated).

(Click photo to enlarge it)

And here, from either the fall of 1954 or the spring of 1955, is the Mansfield High School Tiger Marching Band, a motley crew if there ever was one. I can’t even begin to name everyone in this photo, but I do remember many of them.

(Click photo to enlarge it, then click on the enlargement to enlarge the enlargement)

At the left is the band’s founder and first director, Miss Sally Pearce of Rochester, New York. Trumpet was her major instrument, but she had come to Texas to get her master’s degree at TCU in Fort Worth and write a thesis about The History of the Double Bass Viol (which she also played). She organized the band the year I was in seventh grade and stayed with us for three years (I was in ninth grade when the photo was taken). She was succeeded by a Mr. Thomas McDonald of Arkansas who also became the choir director at the local Methodist Church where I was organist. After two years with Mr. McDonald, the band’s director during my senior year was Mr. Richard Weir, who would get so angry on the practice field that he would curse out loud and kick people’s behinds. I don’t suppose he could do that today.

In my junior year, the band finally acquired brand-new uniforms to replace those ancient black ones, which not only had looked like police uniforms but also were already quite well-worn by the time we acquired them. Our new uniforms were a sight to behold: gold jackets, black trousers with gold stripes down the sides, and tall black hats with white plumes and silver chain chinstraps.

Unfortunately, we looked better than we sounded. Mansfield’s band in those early days had about 45 members, and during our halftime shows at the Friday night football games, if even a few band members were absent no one in the visitors’ stands could tell what our formations were supposed to be. Everyone in the home stands always knew what our field formations were supposed to be, because we could make only two: A big M for Mansfield and a football with laces down the middle.

The saxophone section in the lower right of the photo were all members of the class of 1958, as were the three people behind them. In front are Diane Phillips and Marshall Tyson and Bruce Hornell, and behind them are Johnie Mac Day (he’s also in the reunion photo in the middle of the back row, wearing a red shirt), Jerry Willis and another Judith, Judith Glaze. It pains me to have to tell you that Marshall, Bruce, and Judith are all dead now. Bruce was the first member of our class to shuffle off this mortal coil. A Methodist minister, he drowned during a flood while trying to help rescue people.

I can’t quite make out the sousaphone player behind Judith, but standing next to him is none other than your correspondent at age 14.

One other person in the reunion photograph is in the band photo as well. John Galloway, the tall fellow third from right in the back row of the reunion photo, is near the left end of the middle row in the band photo.

All my memories are a far cry from this band, the JSU (Jacksonvile State University) Marching Southerners (12:44), in which two of my children marched during their college years. The clip is from 2010.

To conclude our time together, let us all sing "Marching to Pretoria"....

Now go make an egg stand on its end.

Illikipilliky!

Speaking of Edward Lear (which we were doing in the preceding post), in addition to the nonsense poetry and limericks for which he is famous, he was a gifted painter.

Here are two of his creations:

Not too shabby, eh?

According to Wikipedia, Edward Lear (1812 - 1888) was the 21st child of Ann and Jeremiah Lear. From the age of six he suffered frequent grand mal epileptic seizures, bronchitis, asthma, and in later life, partial blindness. He also suffered from periods of severe depression which he referred to as “the Morbids.”

Edward Lear was known to introduce himself with one of his long names, “Mr. Abebika kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto phashyph” or “Chakonoton the Cozovex Dossi Fossi Sini Tomentilla Coronilla Polentilla Battledore & Shuttlecock Derry down Derry Dumps” which he based on Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos.

You just know I had to look that one up.

Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos was a book published in 1825 that contained a game in which players had to read the snippet for each letter of the alphabet as fast as they could without making a mistake. Alternatively, several players could read the snippets in a staggered manner. The snippets for each letter contain tongue-twisting mock-Latin names whose content is cumulatively appended at the end of each new letter snippet. The book is based on Chrononhotonthologos, which in turn was based on Henry Fielding’s Tom Thumb. The book was embellished with sixteen elegantly coloured engravings and sold for one shilling.

The following is the snippet for the letter O:

ODDS NIPPERKINS! cried Mother Bunch on her broomstick, here’s a to-do! as Nicholas Hotch-potch said, Never were such times, as Muley Hassan, Mufti of Moldavia, put on his Barnacles, to see little Tweedle gobble them up, when Kia Khan Kreuse transmogrofied them into Pippins, because Snip’s wife cried, Illikipilliky! lass a-day! ’tis too bad to titter at a body, when Hamet el Mammet, the bottlenosed Barber of Balasora, laughed ha! ha! ha! on beholding the elephant spout mud over the ’Prentice, who pricked his trunk with a needle, as Dicky Snip, the tailor, read the proclamation of Chrononhotonthologos, offering a thousand sequins for taking Bombardinian, Bashaw of three tails, who killed Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos.

And you think I’m strange.

Still, we mustn’t be too hard on Mr. Lear. There are, after all, those paintings.