Ed. here. This is great! Having Walt gone, I mean. I can fill this space with anything I like. Anything! And I can post more than once a day, if I want. Twice. Thrice, even. Or how about four times, today!
And I can put up posts with no political or religious point whatsoever, things that serve purely to entertain you, our assiduous readers. Like this excellent video featuring Charlotte magician/comedian Chris Hannibal performing "the second oldest trick in sleight of hand." Enjoy
Want more? Click here to see Mr Hannibal do his favourite trick. You're welcome.
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entertainment. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Monday, June 10, 2019
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
A sad commentary on American arts and entertainment
My grandkids, or the younger ones anyway, were been bugging their parents to see Dumbo, the latest Hollywood remake. My recent illness gave me an excuse not to be part of a family outing, but when they descended on the ole homestead and mentioned that the movie was playing in nearby Fort Mudge, and they thought I needed to get out of the house, I was trapped. Trapped like a rat. So I went. Great modern animation and special effects, kind of a lame, PC (pro animal rights and "inclusivity") version of the original story. Harmless, gormless entertainment. When I see movies like this and the remake of Alice in Wonderland, well done though they may be, I can't help but wonder if no-one in Hollywood has any new ideas. It seems today that all we see is remakes in movies and remakes on TV. And some of them, extensions of franchises that are well past their best-before dates (Hello Star Wars!) are truly dreadful. Where's the creative talent, the imagination that begat the original movies, which were themselves adapted from stories that some truly talented writers devised a hundred years ago?
This is hardly a new thought. Here's what Brooks Atkinson, one of America's leading drama critics, had to say, nearly seven decades ago.
Something elusive and intangible seems to have drained the vitality out of the theatre and perhaps out of American arts as well. No one knows the reason exactly. But could it be that the spiritual climate in which we are now living smothers art that is really creative, and that the emphasis on public expression of all kinds is toward meekness and conformity? [My emphasis. Walt]
People are playing safe. They hesitate to say what they think. The intellectual and artistic life of the country has been flattened out. ...ignorant heresy-hunting and...bigoted character-assassination are succeeding. The hoodlums are in control here as well as in Russia, and the theatre begins to look as insipid in the one place as in the other.... We cannot expect to have vital art in our theatre if we emulate totalitarian countries and yield the control of cultural life to the Yahoos and hoodlums.
Quoted in William Shirer's Midcentury Journey, 1955. That was well before Mr Atkinson or Mr Shirer had heard the expression "political correctness", but political correctness is what is described in the emphasized words. Political correctness is killing not only political thought but also our collective imagination. We have become a society where original, non-conforming thought is the greatest of all sins. Sad.
Postscript: I can't get over how, the older Danny DeVito gets, the more he looks like me!
Friday, April 23, 2010
Is nothing sacred to the gay lobby?
A reader has taken issue with Walt's use of the term "gay lobby". Do I really believe, (s)he asks, that there's a homosexual conspiracy to infiltrate positions of power and influence? Well, just as there are some who believe that Jews control banking and finance, so there are some who believe that homosexuals run the worlds of fashion and entertainment.
Have a look at Fashion TV and tell me that those clothes aren't designed by people who hate women. Or want women to look like 13-year-old boys!
As for entertainment, one has only to note the number of openly gay characters who appear in American TV sitcoms and soap operas. Four characters in the Simpsons appear to be, or have declared themselves, part of "the LGBT community". So what? It's all part of an orchestrated campaign (if not a conspiracy) to make being queer seem "normal". That's what!
And of course there was Brokeback Mountain. Hey, there's two nice guys who just happen to love each other and like to spend time doing things together...manly things like riding and camping...so there's nothing wrong with them, right? They don't have those little toothbrush mustaches and do disgusting things in bath-houses, do they?
(Mrs. Walt, having led a sheltered life, asked me what they do do. If she'd gone to school in a place where they have modern sex education she wouldn't have had to ask!)
And then there's comic books. Are you ready for this? Remember Archie? Well, in No. 202 of Archie Comics, coming to your newsstand in September, a new character moves to Riverdale. His name is Kevin Keller and he's a hunk! And guess what, girls? He's gay!
Says Jon Goldwater, CEO of Archie Comics Publications, "We want to make Archie Comics move forward and make it fun and inclusive." Ah yes, good normal fun. "He’ll definitely be part of the gang," he said. And at some point, he added, Kevin will "probably" have a "romance". Progressive parents will doubtless want to snap up that issue so they can show it to their kids!
“We pride ourselves on being a mirror to society, especially youth," Goldwater continued. "The kids in our book are in high school and we want to reflect everything that’s going on in their world from social interaction, to fashion, to friends." Fashion...social interaction...homosexuality... if you're not into all that, hey, you're just not cool...like Archie and his friends.
Footnote: If you can't remember which Simpsons character came out of the closet, e-mail walt.whiteman@yahoo.com and I'll tell you.
Have a look at Fashion TV and tell me that those clothes aren't designed by people who hate women. Or want women to look like 13-year-old boys!
As for entertainment, one has only to note the number of openly gay characters who appear in American TV sitcoms and soap operas. Four characters in the Simpsons appear to be, or have declared themselves, part of "the LGBT community". So what? It's all part of an orchestrated campaign (if not a conspiracy) to make being queer seem "normal". That's what!
And of course there was Brokeback Mountain. Hey, there's two nice guys who just happen to love each other and like to spend time doing things together...manly things like riding and camping...so there's nothing wrong with them, right? They don't have those little toothbrush mustaches and do disgusting things in bath-houses, do they?
(Mrs. Walt, having led a sheltered life, asked me what they do do. If she'd gone to school in a place where they have modern sex education she wouldn't have had to ask!)
And then there's comic books. Are you ready for this? Remember Archie? Well, in No. 202 of Archie Comics, coming to your newsstand in September, a new character moves to Riverdale. His name is Kevin Keller and he's a hunk! And guess what, girls? He's gay!
Says Jon Goldwater, CEO of Archie Comics Publications, "We want to make Archie Comics move forward and make it fun and inclusive." Ah yes, good normal fun. "He’ll definitely be part of the gang," he said. And at some point, he added, Kevin will "probably" have a "romance". Progressive parents will doubtless want to snap up that issue so they can show it to their kids!
“We pride ourselves on being a mirror to society, especially youth," Goldwater continued. "The kids in our book are in high school and we want to reflect everything that’s going on in their world from social interaction, to fashion, to friends." Fashion...social interaction...homosexuality... if you're not into all that, hey, you're just not cool...like Archie and his friends.
Footnote: If you can't remember which Simpsons character came out of the closet, e-mail walt.whiteman@yahoo.com and I'll tell you.
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