MUSIC VIDEO: Walt harks to the sound of the nickelodeon

It's been a long time since Walt opened the mailbag to respond to readers' questions. That's because most of the questions are inane or boring. But today I'll answer the most frequently asked query, which is... try reading this aloud with the intonation of Ed McMahon asking Johnny Carson... "How old are you?" Here is the answer.

I am so old that I know three distinct meaning for "CD". Younger folks probably think first of a silvery disc, about 4.75" across, which you stick into some kind of music machine [or the coffee cup holder on your computer. Ed.] to hear music. From their chairs in the home, your parents may remember when "CD" stood for "Certificate of Deposit", which was a fancy piece of paper that banks and S&Ls gave you in return for your hard-earned cash, sometime prior to 2008, and which turned out to be worthless. Their parents may remember being taught in grade school to "duck and cover" in the event of an A-bomb attack. That was part of the "CD", meaning "Civil Defence" drill.

Another word ["CD" isn't a word. Ed.]... OK, another term which has seen its meaning changed over the last century is "nickelodeon". If you're anywhere south of 40, you probably think first (and only) of "Nickelodeon", an American pay television network which was launched on 1 December 1977 as the first cable channel for children. I haven't watched it since they cancelled Ren & Stimpy, having belatedly realized that the excellent cartoon show wasn't really for kids. A poster on YouTube asks, "Why were we allowed to watch this?" Wouldn't happen today. Political correctness...

But I digress. The "nickelodeon" of which I speak is not the "Nickelodeon" mentioned in the first 1000 hits if you search the term on Google. Nooo... The nickelodeon was the first type of indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. Usually set up in converted storefronts, these small, simple cinemas charged five cents for admission and flourished from about 1905 to 1915.

"Nickelodeon" was concocted from nickel -- the name of American and Canadian 5-cent coins, and the ancient Greek word ᾨδεῖον [Ōideion], literally "singing place", a roofed-over theatre, the latter indirectly by way of the Odéon in Paris, emblematic of a very large and luxurious theater, much as Ritz was of a grand hotel. But wait... there's yet another meaning.

In 1949 a Tin Pan Alley lyricist incorporated into a popular song ("Music, Music, Music") the refrain "Put another nickel in / in the nickelodeon...", evidently referring to either a jukebox or... wait for it... a mechanical musical instrument such as a coin-operated player piano or orchestrion. That's a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll, like that used in a player piano. The sound is usually produced by pipes (smaller and with different voices than those of a pipe organ) as well as percussion instruments, sometimes including the piano.

The sound of the orchestrion is the sound I heard as a child -- yes, I was a child once -- riding the carousel at an amusement park called Sunnyside. You can hear the music of the carousel in an eponymous Folkways LP (LP - ancestor of the CD), or you can watch and listen to this terrific video featuring a restored Wurlitzer 146B carousel organ from Norumbega Park in Newton, MA.



Wurlitzer was the leading name in orchestrions, as well as the organs for which it is still rightly famous. But it wasn't the only name. The The J.P. Seeburg Piano Company of Chicago was the Avis to Wurlitzer's Hertz. In the mid-1920s, a group of Seeburg and Marquette Piano Co. execs formed the Western Electric Piano Company, as a secret subsidiary of the Seeburg company. In late 1926, Western Electric, which had been in a different location in Chicago, moved into the Seeburg factory. The cabinets and piano assemblies, and most of the pneumatic stacks, were made by Seeburg, with pumps, roll mechanisms, extra instruments, controls, and coin mechanisms of different design resembling the earlier Cremona (Marquette) parts.

TMI? OK, here's a fascinating video in which James Pavel Shawcross explores and explains "a piano like none you've ever seen" -- a J.P. Seeburg orchestrion which he found at Bill Kap's Piano in Cleveland OH. I find James a little bit "gee whiz" -- to him, everything is "so cool" -- but I'd probably have the same reaction if I had a chance to see and hear one of these wonderful machines up close and personal. Enjoy.

Eating your nose goblins could be good for you!

If you don’t know what a "nose goblin" is, you haven't been watching Ren & Stimpy! Yes, gentle readers, the videos that were too gross for kids TV are still out there. But if you don't like that kind of thing, this story is snot for you.

Canadian Press reports today that an associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Saskatchewan is trying to get more students interested in science by looking at the health benefits of picking your nose and eating it.

Prof S. Napper -- no kidding: his first name is "Scott" -- says nature pushes us to do different things because it is to our advantage to have certain behaviours, to consume different types of foods. Mucus traps germs and stops them from getting into our body, but if we consume that mucus, it could help train our immune system by exposing it to the germs. So he says when children have the urge to pick their nose and eat it, parents shouldn’t get upset.

Dr. Napper says he hopes to conduct a study where some type of molecule is inserted in people’s noses and then half the participants pick their nose and eat it and the other half don’t.
“I think the challenge would be getting volunteers to participate in this experiment,” he says with a laugh. [A snort, possibly. Ed.] “Especially if you didn’t know which group you were going to fall into.”

Napper also says making science more humorous and fun keeps students interested and engaged.
“I don’t try to convert them all to biochemistry. My goal is always if I can teach you one thing that you’re going to tell somebody else about outside the scope of this class, then I’ve prompted you to think a little bit, to question these things and I think with this example, it probably succeeded in that.”

Walt must admit that he always found such experiments fascinating, back in his school days. Haven't we all -- all the boys at least -- tried to find out if it's true that you can ignite a fart? We even had songs and poems about flatulence and other excretions... like this one...

Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it
Pickin' their nose and chewin' it, chewin' it.
They think it's candy
But it's not.

Budding career in cartooning nipped in the bud

For decades now, Canadians have been doing well in the exciting fields of animation and satire. There's John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy. And all those guys who write for the Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy. You knew there was a reason for all those Canuck jokes, eh?!

Jack Christie is a senior at Douglas A. Wilson Secondary School in Whitby, Ontario. He aspires to make people laugh and get paid for it, thus to rocket to the top of the cartooning heap, just like the creators of South Park, Family Guy etc.

And Jack has been practising. With his buddy Connor Brazeau [How's that for a Canajan name? Ed.] he has created three cartoon shorts which Walt predicts will go viral in about 35 seconds from now. Since embedding is disabled, all I can show you is a YouTube screen grab from "Jack Christie Talks to Children 3 - Run for the White House". Click here to see the video...if it hasn't been pulled down by the time you get to this.

Why should it be taken down? Well, Forces for Good at the Durham District School Board have deemed Jack's little opuses [opi? -- just say "works"! Ed.] a mite, errr, offensive. Apparently lines like "kill all the black people" and the assertion that Senator Joe Lieberman "sticks his penis in goats" are not politically correct.

Said board spokesthingy Andrea Pidwebecki, "If a student produces or submits work that encourages the destruction of an entire racial group, we’re going to report it. We have moral and professional obligations."

Ms Pidwhatever added that the matter has been referred to the school’s liaison police officer, Officer Barbrady. [Are you sure about this? Ed.]. She could not or would not comment on Jack’s statement that teachers reportedly found the videos -- this is the third in the series, so far -- funny. She said only that the matter had been suggested to him that he consider taking the videos down and that "he should be focusing on graduation."

Said Mr Christie, "I can understand why people take offence. Really, my problem in the end is people in power taking those films and labelling me as some sort of threat. I believe [that] does infringe on some very fundamental rights of the Constitution ... the right to freedom of expression and media."

Walt isn't sure that the word "media" actually appears in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. However, let it be remembered that cartoons are not required viewing. If someone is going to be offended, better they not look.