My Grandma is Awesome

This woman is 94 years old.

And just to be clear, she is airborne ...

... and she is happy.

Katakana Movie Titles

Katakana, one of the two Japanese syllabaries (a set of characters, similar to an alphabet), is specifically used for the phonetic spelling of foreign words, often English ones. If you can read katakana characters, you'll see "English" everywhere in Japan. Sometimes it sounds like English that English speakers actually use, sometimes not. A common example is クリーニング, or "kuriiningu" (cleaning) on a sign for a dry-cleaning business.

(If you see a series of question marks in the paragraph above, it's because your computer can't display Japanese characters.)

In the video store the other day, I noted that the majority of English movie titles had been written using "English" words in katakana, though their wording ranged from identical to wildly different from the original. A moderate example:

is called "Snake Flight".

It would be too overwhelming a task to search the entire video store for the best examples of these. Luckily I was able to find several winners by simply limiting myself to the sports movies section.

"Pretty League"

"Hard Play"

"Best Kid"

"African Dunk"

"Pro Golfer Gil"

"Sayonara Game"

"Boxing Baby"

"My Sweet Guys"

Super Mario as Quantum Theoretician and 9/11 Conspirator

Here's a video of someone's 134 superimposed playthroughs of a particularly difficult level of Mario World:

You can read (though I didn't) a related 2,400-word essay called "Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics".

And here's a video I acquired from a 25-year-old Japanese girl's cell phone (click on the image to watch 3 seconds of animation):


After I expressed and explained to her my shock at the video's contents, I learned that she was only vaguely familiar with the events of 9/11, not at all familiar with the Arabic expression "Allāhu Akbar", and apparently had made no associations with the video other than that it was an amusing depiction of Mario blowing up what appeared (indicated by the flag) to be an American building. It's been my impression that most Japanese adults aren't as poorly informed about world events.

Some casual internet searching revealed that the video was at one point available at somethingawful.com, but I didn't find any other discussion about it.

Vintage Sheet Music

Among various other forgotten items in storage at my grandmother's house, there was recently discovered a treasure trove of WWI era sheet music. Lest I misrepresent my grandmother's taste in music, I should mention right off that only a few of the pieces are as shocking as the image above, and it appears by the pencil writing on them that they were mostly acquired from a neighbor down the street. In any case, I've posted three of the more eye-popping titles below, along with their transcribed lyrics. They are, respectively, about:

• A mother consoling her child about the color of his skin
• A man's foolish, plucky, perserverence in his attempts to win at gambling
• A woman whose husband has gone to war
  

I also coaxed a musically inclined friend and his musically inclined mother into performing "Mammy's Little Coal Black Rose" on video - though they have yet to grant me permission to post it. Stay tuned for further developments.

Click on the thumbnail of "Seven or Eleven" for a larger image to verify that the man portraying Rufus Johnson is not, as he might have you believe, an African American.

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Mammy's Little Coal Black Rose
Lyrics by Raymond Egan
Music by Richard A. Whiting
Copyright MCMXVI

I heard a pickaninny crying
Down in Tennessee one night,
His little heart was nearly breaking
Just because he wasn't white;
Then his dear old Mammy kiss'd him,
And she said "Chile don' you sigh
Weep no more my baby,"
Then she sang a Dixie Lullaby:

(Chorus:)
You better dry your eyes, my little Coal Black Rose,
You better go to sleep and let those eyelids close,
'Cause you're dark, don't start a pinin',
You're a cloud with a silver lining;
Tho' ev'ry old crow thinks his babe am white as snow,
Your dear old Mammy knows you're mighty like a rose;
And when the angels gave those kinky curls to you,
They put a sunbeam in your disposition too, that's true,
The reason you're so black I 'spose
They forgot to give your Mammy a talcum powder chamois,
So don't you cry, don't you sigh,
'Cause you're Mammy's little Coal Black Rose.

And then I saw that dear old Mammy
Kiss those baby tears away
While in her arms the baby nestled
Happy as a child at play;
Then she whisper'd "Mammy loves you,
You're as sweet as 'possum pie',
Go to sleep, my honey,
While your Mammy sings a Lullaby:"

(Chorus)

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Seven or Eleven (My Dixie Pair O' Dice)
Words by Lew Brown
Music by Walter Donaldson
Copyright MCMXXIII

At the railroad station
Almost ev'ry day
Hangin' round the porters there
Tryin' hard to win his fare
You'll see Rufus Johnson
Gamblin' his dough away

(Chorus:)
'Ginny shore
It means I lose the blues
Means a hat and shoes,
Means an overcoat and cane
Means I'll have my fare, a little bit to spare,
Means I'm on the midnight train
Come on you Seven or Eleven
Oh! boy, won't that be nice
I'll be on my merry way back to Heaven,
With my Dixie Pair O' Dice.

Ev'ry time they break him
Rufus goes away
Gets a brand new bank roll, then
Comes to roll those bones again
Never seems to worry
While he's got dough to play

(Chorus)

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Nigger War Bride Blues
Music by "Mitch" Le Blanc
Words by "Jimmie" Marten
Copyright MCMXVII

Listen folks I'm goin' to tell you
Oh baby's gone an I'm feelin' awfull terribly blue
Done j'ined the war an' lef me all alone that's true
Oh I'm blue
He lef' a note
It was all edged in black
Jes' tellin' me that he never was a comin' back
Jes' staten' he was never never comin' back
Now that's fact.

(Chorus:)
Easy greasy breezy John
Easy greasy breezy John
Makes me blue an' sick an' out an' down
Easy easy easy greasy breezy John
Down the road just as far as I could see
Thought I saw my dear old used to be
Thought I heard my Johnie callin' me

Engine whistled like it ne-ev-er-er whistled before
Saw him walkin' inside,
Turn around and shut the door
I felt so bad I nearly fell down on the floor.
An' what's more
Two sixteen down carried poor John away
It's a long long way
So I heard mos' all the white folks say
Yes two sixteen done took my lovin' Johnie away
T' other day.

(Chorus)