Frog Applause by Teresa Burritt for October 29, 2012

Wait for me,I’m free!

Maybe I’m not totally free, but I am really (cheep)!

Also sending thoughts and prayers to those in the path of Sandy.

Fly away, little birdie! Fly away and join your friends. I guess I’ll just read this newspaper, instead of using it to line your cage. Sniff.

blog – where do you get an ish watch. Since I’ve retired, that would come in handy for making appointments.

Blackbird flyInto the light of the dark black media night….

Dracula and Nosferatu!

Universal filmed two versions of Dracula in 1931; the English language version with Lugosi and a Spanish language version with Carlos Vilarias as the Count. The films were made simultaneously, in two shifts; the English version filmed by day and the Spanish version using the same stages and props at night. In theory they used the same script. Watching them shows the impact of Hollywood’s self-censorship on the movies. The Lugosi version often pulls its punches, andthanks to various cuts is a half-hour shorter than the Spanish version. (The censors were out to protect the delicate American audience; Hispanics, it seems, had tougher moral fibre, and needed no protection.)

The Nosferatu ad is for the film’s 1929 American debut in Manhattan. Along with its handsome, nay, debonair leading man, it is the first cinematic version of Stoker’s book. It makes some changes in the story which I believe reflect the German experience of the Great War: Knock, the sinister estate agent, makes a secret pact with evil. He sends Hutter off on a profitable adventure, and like many young men in 1914 Hutter is at first delighted with the prospects. He soon comes face to face with death and terror, and barely escapes with his life. Back on the home front, the consequences of Knock’s pact bring death and illness to the people (think Turnip Winter, blockade and Spanish Flu). It ends on a hopeful note as Knock is beaten down and Wismar (Weimar?) is freed of the evil.

(Probably other people have thought of this, but I haven’t seen it written anywhere.)

Of course that bird wants to fly the coop. Thanksgiving draws near and if he stayed, his goose would be cooked

Cat head biscuits, made with real lard, can’t be beat for good, down-home satisfaction.

I guess at the nudist colony they allow smoking at the sushi microbrew bar.

For all of you readers in Sandy’s path, my thought and prayers go out for your security and safety.

Tom waits for no bird . . . ☻

well, flock me.

Re Blog: I hope the STOP sign didn’t "stop " the reporter. OUCH!! That had to hurt!

’Twas early in the morningbefore the break of dayI went looking for my milk cowbut it had up and flown awayThe coop it lay so emptythere was poop all over the floorhigh up a raven twittered:“Bye sucker! Nevermore!”

SELF-PROMOTIONReminds me that as a regular here, I should probably stop using ‘Frog’ as a substitute for ‘God’ when cursing. Frog dangit!

ROUTINEAre we absolutely positive that sign didn’t originally say ‘Poutine’?

paddle her saddle?

Did you read the article “Some Girls Get Talked About”?

Take any one day of Frog Applause or Frog Blog, and how is that not an amazing collection of things to see! Now… take many days all in a row, that in itself is also an amazing thing to see. Way to go Teresa… and thank you! :)

The really old horror films were fun and entertaining. Hollywood has totally lost the knack to do it right- not even good date night films anymore ;-(

Hope you get those computer problems fixed without undue pain, Teresa. Sending you the best of energy.

The world is my newspaper. Unfortunately, the op-eds are often swift and bloody, but usually only for the slow and stupid, which is mostly humanity as it turns out.

@blog: Ruby Dee! Guy Davis’s mom. I’ve seen Guy live 6 or 8 times.http://guydavis.com/guydavis/biography.htm

Blog: Anybody know if that’s Sonny Terry playing harmonica and whooping for the dancing chicken? I think it must be.

Blog: There’s a band called Cathead Biscuit:

http://www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=54562017&ac=now

I hope Vlad can help Teresa cure her computer issues because I miss them both…. I can scroll through the archives only so many times….

Happy Halloween.

Since it’s Halloween and further given Teresa’s continued and mysterious absence, I propose a contest to see who can come up with the best cover story to explain her disappearance.

I think she was kidnapped by a gang of naked midgets who cooked her in a pandowdy stew that was then eaten by clowndiggers using sporks.

What other explanations could there be for the absence of updates to FA and FB?

Why would you keep old boxers in your basement?

Ms. T, We surely do miss you. Hope your computer problems are history soon.

Teresa came trick or treating at my door last night costumed as a rump roast with an expiration date of Aug. 6, 2009. That scared the pants off of me. Oh wait, I was already without pants. Never mind.

“Do not scratch or deface the table.” That’s what the “Attorney” sign on the blog says. It shows Robert Mitchum speaking with his attorney Jerry Geisler after his 1949 arrest and conviction for smoking marihuana. It’s partway down this page:

http://tinyurl.com/cj44k5d

Re: DO NOT SCRATCH OR DEFACE THE ATTORNEY

“I like my version of the sign better.”

Me too.

Welcome back, Ms. T. I hear all the frogs clapping.

Good to see you blogging again, Teresa. xx

What seems strange to me is that they had a problem with attorneys defacing the table.

The karate student kicking the stranger out of her house reminded me of a story from Santa Rosa some years back in which a guy tried to attack a jogger, not realizing that she was staying in shape for a martial arts tournament… Stories like that kinda bring balance back to an unbalanced world.

Excuse me for noticing that the young lady in the kissing booth appears to be on her knees. That WOULD be the newest attraction. (Or the oldest profession …)

Diego, Dino is to Quicksilver as stevie is to Fleetwood Mac.

RE: blog “airless tires”- Under development by several companies and possibly in use on some few military vehicles for testing. Not for your grandfather’s Oldsmobile anytime soon.

Jonesin’.

There is understandably little to be found on Joseph E. Bissell’s 1910 “flying machine.” It’s briefly mentioned in William F. Trimble’s “High Frontier: A History of Aeronautics in Pennsylvania,”

http://tinyurl.com/bnotzme

where it earns one sentence in a paragraph that begins “Pennsylvanians during this period produced their share of peculiar contraptions, none of which exhibited the slightest capacity for flight.”

The “At the Dentist” picture is here:

http://tinyurl.com/c4fpcct

It’s a fourteen year old Irish-American boy in Boston, Massachussetts; someone could probably date the photo from the wristwatch, but I’m guessing Twenties or Thirties. The Forsyth Medical infirmary was (and still is) a dental clinic for children.

Hooray for the renewed “Frog Blog” – I was deep into withdrawal.

I had one of those “horror masks” – it was given to me by my stepbrother when I was 8. Green and white, stringy hair, very creepy.

The “at the dentist” kid made me think of young Willy Wonka in the Depp remake, which was just painful to watch (not because the movie was bad, but because of that hideous headgear.)

I knew that “At The Dentist” picture looked familiar:

http://obituarytypo.blogspot.com/2012/03/maxillo-facial-dept-walter-reed-general.html

Hell of a way to expose the teeth for a photograph.

Never give up. Never surrender.

—Dr. Lazarus

Teresa, You are missing Joe “Count” Viglione, a great denizen of the brilliant ’70s Boston music scene:

http://www.popkrazy.com/tags/count-viglione

After spending our five day mandatory evacuation high and dry in a friends apartment in Hell’s Kitchen we’re finally back home. We have phone service, we’re back online and happy to report that our humble abode … and my studio … has no damage. it’s difficult to explain how we escaped the wrath of SANDY but here we are … safe and sound.

Wildwood Island is five miles long and ranges from less than one to maybe a bit over two miles across. We’re in Wildwood Crest on the very narrow Southern tip and when I stand on our front porch I can see the back bay to the right and the ocean to the left. The prediction was that during the surge, water from the back bay and the ocean would meet and we would be under five to ten feet of water. When the storm made that sharp left turn … I’m sure you saw that on TV … the eye passed directly over us. But almost all of the damage was caused by the wind and wave surge to the right of the eye. So for reasons that no one seems to be able to explain … we were spared.

At four a.m. Thursday morning I had the good fortune of finding a gas station in Manhattan where I filled our van for the trip. That took about two and a half hours of waiting on line while NYC’s finest herded the hack drivers and pissed off delivery truck drivers into lanes … and stopped fist fights and adjudicated finder benders. Never has so many curse words been shouted in so many languages in such a small concrete covered plot of mother earth … hand wringing … flying spittle … waving fists … bulging eyes … yet somehow it all worked out … I have to give credit to those young police officers … somehow they made it work. As far as I know, not shots were fired.

On our way down the Garden State Parkway we saw five mile long lines of cars waiting at exit ramps … all trying to gas up … so purchasing gasoline before we left was a lucky break.

The destruction just a few miles North of us is mind boggling. What can I say except that we were really, really lucky.

Yay, my picture is in the childhood pictures now. I wore a really spiffy bow tie.

so glad the Frog Blog is as active as ever…. looking forward to Teresa’s computer repair. I browsed for some time with links on James Dean, never realizing his family farm is just an hour or so from where I grew up… must make that pilgrimage

In re Counts:

There was also Count No ’Count, the soubriquet given to William Faulkner at the U. of Mississippi while he was an undergraduate.

He was in charge of the college post office for a while and allegedly retained interesting magazines for his personal perusal, sometimes for several weeks.

That’s what you think.

FB seems to be flourishing. Hope the computer is well soon, so that FA may make its eagerly anticipated and triumphant return!

Teresa, with you gone, I’m expanding a browse of the site and found the 2 Frog Blog songs – both are exceptionally lame! Such a Score! Hurrrah!

sigh

VLAD! You are surrounded! Release the woman and no harm will come for to you!

Since we’re just hangin’ out and commenting on the blog, I got some nice shots this morning after we had freezing fog last night. I’ll post some here later — gotta get the RAW files converted to jpgs.

It seems we will have to take care of our own amusement and mental stimulation for a while. Oh well, as a wise man once said, “No frog, no applause”.Which, 35 translations on, comes out as “Frog applause just doesn’t.” I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

“Women of Protest.” Thanks, Teresa. British suffragettes were treated that badly; I hadn’t known we did it, too.

One of the ironies is that at the same time we treated these women so badly, we actively recruited some 30,000 women into military service:

http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvets4.html

Even more women worked in defense plants, or took over jobs done by men who had entered the military. In September 1918 Woodrow Wilson urged Congress to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment (I doubt the nobility of his intentions; I think he did it to keep women motivated. But women’s service was a definite factor in wining the right to vote.)

Here’s some pictures of stuff coated in ice crystals after last night’s freezing fog. Each picture links to a much larger version. Some wild fall asters:A blackberry leaf:A rosebud:I’ll post more tomorrow if no one objects.

I find the Tea Party coloring book disturbing on more than one level.

Always a thrill to see Japanese monsters on the blog, but the title of this one has been mistranslated:

http://obituarytypo.blogspot.com/2012/11/underworld-vs-frankenstein-monster-1965.html

The film’s actual title is “Frankenstein vs. Baragon,” though it was released in the US as “Frankenstein Conquers the World.”

The more well-known “War of the Gargantuas” is a semi-sequel to this film.

Fun trivia:

When Baragon appeared in the 2002 film, “Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah, Giant Monsters All Out Attack,” stunt woman and actress Rie Ôta wore the Baragon suit and in so doing, became the first woman ever to play a monster in a Godzilla film.

Rie was chosen for the role because the story called for Baragon to be considerably smaller than Godzilla and the other monsters, who were played by male actors.

Regarding that mistranslation of the Frankenstein movie’s title, further research reveals that it was also known in Japan as “Frankenstein versus Subterranean Monster Baragon.”

So you can see how “Subterranean” would have gotten mistranslated as “Underworld.” Not sure how or why Baragon’s name would have been left off, though.

Here’s some goldenrod pictures with ice crystals on the flowers gone to seed from yesterday’s freezing fog. As in the post above, each picture links to a much larger version.Different from the one above, but the same plant lit by the sun and backlit.

Mother Thalweg’s French Word of the Day

bulletin de vote {boolahteen de voht} – ballot

“Teresa a écrit secrètement son propre nom sur le bulletin de vote Présidentiel.”—Teresa secretly wrote her own name on the Presidential ballot.

Larry, Great pictures.

You can too buy it. Look in the fertilizer aisle.

The commerce clause in Article I, Section 8 gives a more solid basis for allowing the government to “create jobs.” Historicaly, one reason we replaced the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution was because he articles made interstate commerce virtually impossible. Before he was president, George Washington wanted to develop some land he owned by arranging the construction of the interstate Patowmack Canal. Doing that required signing trade agreements between several states. The Constitution put supervising and regulating commerce in Federal hands.

When it comes to “creating jobs,” the government has been doing that all along, subsidizing canals, railways, airlines and now astronautics (the recent Falcon 9/Dragon launch to the ISS was on a NASA COTS contract, meant to support the development of private space companies.) Every ship, aircraft and gun built for the military is built because the government hired someone to build them.

In light of the recent blog entry on the persecution of suffragettes:

http://www.shorpy.com/node/14016?size=_original#caption

Any news?

We do have one of those head massagers… and ours vibrates. Yes. Yes. Yes!

I live in a violin… it is very comfortable… I speak like the hip, you dig?

“Hail Mary, Full of grace”…my words exactly as I gaze upon such delectable offerings.

The bicycle lane says “Jitensha” (bicycle). I’m impressed with myself that I could read it. Had it been written in kanji (自転車) I probably would have only gotten the “sha” bit. The characters mean “self-rolling-vehicle”.

Re: HOW TO SPEAK HIPThat’s not Hip!This is Hip Talk!

The C-47 Dakota on the blog appears to be one that was submerged in mid-2011 to help form an artificial reef. The site is off the coast of Kas, Turkey, which has developed into a tourist destination for scuba divers.

“Dakota” is the name the British gave the C-47 Skytrain during WW II. This is definitely a C-47; it has the navigator’s glass dome above and behind the cockpit. The civilian version of the Gooney Bird, the DC-3, didn’t have that feature.

Please! I’m trying to tapir off.

WHERE BABIES COME FROMAre you missing the mother’s expression? Seems to me she’s trying to figure out how to tell them.

That is not a typical gocomics reader. My horn points up.

Director of Pharmaceutical DistributionATTN: Little Pink Pill DivisionFrog Applause/Blog EnterprisesSomewhere, USA

Re: Little Pink Pills

Dear Sir or Madam

Where do I find some?

Sincerely,

I really miss FA! Please hurry back, Teresa!

ON THE OTHER HAND, I LOVE WHAT YOU’VE POSTED ON YOUR BLOG!

Yes. I am suffering from FA withdrawal!

Teresa, I don’t always understand what your cartoons are trying to say but your blog is ALWAYS interesting.

It’s definitely sub-optmal, there has been a recent but significant (~100%) drop off in strips. Given the flown avian nature of the [final] strip is this permenant?

Love the horny bacon mask!

as far as where babies come from… in an effort to share her point of view, my mom told me – then 11 years old – that I would know i had become a woman when I would drop an egg every month….at the time, all I could imagine was the proportion of a chicken to her egg… and considering the size of a newborn…. it was a scary proposition wondering where I could hide during the dropping part, how much it would hurt and…