josh pincus is crying

The challenge from sugarfrostedgoodness.com this week is “politics”.

W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel served as Texas governor and United States senator. Born in 1890 in Ohio, O’Daniel came to Texas at age 29 as a sales manager for Burrus Mills, a flour-milling company in Fort Worth. In 1928, O’Daniel took over the company’s radio advertising and started a country music program to promote the flour. O’Daniel hosted the show and organized a band called the Light Crust Doughboys. Many of the musicians who made Western Swing famous, including Bob Wills, got their start in O’Daniel’s band. In 1935 he organized his own flour company to make “Hillbilly Flour” and began to call his band the Hillbilly Boys. The slogan, “Pass the biscuits, Pappy,” made O’Daniel a household name throughout Texas.
Radio fans urged “Pappy” to run for governor, and in 1938 he did. He attracted huge crowds, ran on a platform of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, and won the election by a landslide. Unfortunately, O’Daniel possessed almost no qualifications for success in the governorship, and accomplished little of the agenda he had promised the people of Texas. He ushered in an era of censorship and limits on academic freedom at the University of Texas by his appointments to the Board of Regents. But despite his obvious shortcomings as a leader, he remained very popular due to his masterful radio showmanship.
In 1941, O’Daniel won election to the United States Senate in one of the most controversial elections in Texas history, edging out Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson by only a handful of votes. O’Daniel was ineffective in the Senate and was shunned by his more serious colleagues. With his popularity finally on the wane, he did not seek reelection in 1948.
In later years, O’Daniel was active in business and made two comeback attempts at the governorship, basing his campaigns on crude appeals to anti-communist and anti-civil rights feeling. But time had passed Pappy by and he attracted few votes. He died in 1969.
The character of Mississippi governor Menelaus “Pappy” O’Daniel, played by Charles Durning in the film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”  is loosely based on the real W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel.

“Furthermore, in the second Pappy O’Daniel administration, these boys is gonna be my brain trust. And furthermore, by way of endorsing my candidacy, the Soggy Bottom Boys are gonna lead us all in a rousing chorus of ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ …. Ain’t you, boys?”
“Governor, it’s one of our favorites.”

The sugarfrostedgoodness.com challenge word this week is “monsters”.

In 1927 Tod Browning directed Lon Chaney Sr. in the film “London After Midnight”. This silent film classic has become the most famous “lost” motion picture.
The movie told the story of wealthy Sir Roger Balfour. Balfour is found shot to death in his home. Inspector Burke, as played by Chaney, is called in to investigate. A suicide note is found and the case is supposedly closed. Five years later, Balfour’s old residence is taken up by a man in a beaver-skin hat, with large fangs and gruesome, sunken eyes. His assistant is a ghostly woman, with flowing robes and raven black hair. It is suspected by neighbors that Balfour has returned from the dead.
In addition to his portrayal of the inspector from Scotland Yard, Lon Chaney Sr. also played the mysterious stranger that moves into the vacant Balfour Home. Chaney, known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces”, designed his own make-up for his film appearances. His visual effects for London After Midnight were particularly horrifying. The teeth Chaney wore were made of gutta-percha, a hard rubber-like material. The bulging, hypnotic eye effect was achieved with special wire fittings which he wore like monocles. He allegedly put egg albumen in his eyes to give them a “clouded” appearance.
The film was well-received at the box-office, grossing almost $500,000. It was even remade by Browning in 1937 as “Mark of the Vampire” starring Bela Lugosi. However, in 1965, an electrical fire broke out in MGM Film Storage Vault #7. Countless films from the silent era, including the last known print of “London After Midnight”, were destroyed.
In 2002, Turner Classic Movies commissioned film restoration producer Rick Schmidlin to produce a 45 minute reconstruction of the film, using still publicity photographs shot while the film was in production in 1927.
There are rumors that one copy of the original remains in a private film collection in Canada.

…Capgras delusion.

Capgras delusion (or Capgras syndrome) is a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that an acquaintance, usually a spouse or other close family member, has been replaced by an identical looking impostor. The Capgras delusion is classed as a delusional misidentification syndrome, a class of delusional beliefs that involves the misidentification of people, places or objects. It can occur in acute, transient, or chronic forms.
The delusion is most common in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, although it can occur in a number of conditions including after brain injury and dementia.

The challenge on sugarfrostedgoodness.com this week is “imagine”.

On March 5, 1983, Journey Into Imagination opened in Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Center (as the theme park was known at that time). The ride began with riders boarding their omnimover vehicles that seemed to be “floating” in the clouds. The clouds would part and riders would see the silhouette of a strange blimp mixed with a vacuum cleaner and hear the humming and singing of its pilot. In the next scene, riders come right next to this vessel and the pilot, an audio-animatronic man with a red beard dressed in a blue suit and top hat. He introduces himself as the Dreamfinder (voiced by Chuck McCann) and he says that he uses his vehicle (called the Dream Mobile or Dream Catcher by some fans) to collect dreams and ideas to create all sorts of new things. Soon he creates a Figment of his imagination: a small, purple audio-animatronic dragon (voiced by Billy Barty). [McCann and Barty previously appeared together in the 1978 film “Foul Play“.] Both of them come up with ideas to fill the “idea bag”. When the idea bag is full, Dreamfinder states that the ideas need to be emptied in the “Dreamport” which he states is “never far away when you use your imagination”. Academy Award winners The Sherman Brothers (whose compositions include songs from Mary Poppins, Winnie The Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Disney staple “It’s a Small World”) wrote the song “One Little Spark”, which is played throughout the entire course of the ride.
The omnimovers leave the side of the Dream Mobile and enter the Dreamport’s storage room, which includes a massive washing machine like device for sorting ideas. Also in the room there are numerous objects including boxed applause, a plasma ball, and a birdcage of musical notes. After leaving the storage room, the ride continues to go through several rooms representing Art, Literature, the Performing Arts and Science.
The Art room was mostly white colored, to represent a massive canvas, and had a large painting Dreamfinder was making using a large fiber optic paint brush, a carousel with giant origami animals, and a pot of rainbows held by Figment.
The Literature room was mostly focused on suspenseful tales and had Dreamfinder playing a massive organ with words coming out of it, words that turned into their meanings, a massive book featuring the raven from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem cawing menacingly, and books of horrible monsters Figment tried to keep closed.
The performing arts had Figment trying on costumes backstage while Dreamfinder was conducting a laser light show in the manner of an orchestra conductor.
The last room, Science, featured a large machine that Dreamfinder was operating that took a closer look at the workings of nature such as the growth of plants, the formation of crystals from minerals and looking into space.
At the end, Dreamfinder tells Figment and the audience that Imagination is our key to unlock the hidden wonders of our world. The ride then entered the final show scene as our picture is taken as we see Figment surrounded by several movie screens of him being a scientist, a mountain climber, a pirate, a superhero, a tap dancer, a ship captain, a cowboy, and an athlete. Dreamfinder, who is behind a movie camera gives us one last inspiring message and tells us to use our newly found sparks of imagination in the ImageWorks and the on-ride photo is shown to us on a screen next to the camera. This version of the ride closed on October 10, 1998 in order to begin a major renovation.
The ride reopened on October 1, 1999. This version featured Dr. Nigel Channing (played by Monty Python’s Eric Idle) and a considerably-reduced role for Figment. Figment only appeared in filmed cameos in the ride’s queue area and not at all in the actual ride. And Dreamfinder? Dreamfinder was sent packing. This incarnation closed a mere two years later, on October 8, 2001 and went through another rehab.
The current version of the attraction opened on June 2, 2002. Dr. Channing was back, with an altered storyline and Figment returned with a larger role and appeared in every show scene. The song “One Little Spark” also returned with new verses. Dreamfinder, once again, is nowhere to be seen.
Dreamfinder, I believe, is living in a discarded refrigerator box beneath the water bridge that connects Bay Lake and the Seven Seas Lagoon. Throw him a quarter on your next visit to Walt Disney World.

Imagine that.

The challenge this week on sugarfrostedgoodness.com is “noir”.

I saw “Scream” a few days ago on one of the many movie channels on cable television. I had seen it several times before. It’s not a great movie, but it is funny the way Wes Craven pokes fun at himself and the genre that made him famous.
The soundtrack features one of my favorite songs, Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand”.
Nick Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional actor. He is best known for his work with his band, the Bad Seeds, and his fascination with American music and its roots. He has a reputation, which he disowns and dislikes, for singing dark, brooding songs which some listeners regard as depressing. His music is characterised by intensity, high energy and a wide variety of influences. Cave’s music exhibits his obsessions with religion, death, love, America, and violence with a bizarre, eclectic blend of blues, gospel, rock, and punk. “Red Right Hand”, while obviously falling into the noir category, tells a story that is wide open to interpretation.

Take a litle walk to the edge of town/Go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms,/like a bird of doom/As it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires,/in the humming wires
Hey man, you know/you’re never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge,/past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes/a tall handsome man
In a dusty black coat with/a red right hand

He’ll wrap you in his arms,/tell you that you’ve been a good boy
He’ll rekindle all the dreams/it took you a lifetime to destroy
He’ll reach deep into the hole,/heal your shrinking soul
Hey buddy, you know you’re/never ever coming back
He’s a god, he’s a man,/he’s a ghost, he’s a guru
They’re whispering his name/through this disappearing land
But hidden in his coat/is a red right hand

You ain’t got no money?/He’ll get you some
You ain’t got no car? /He’ll get you one
You ain’t got no self-respect,/you feel like an insect
Well don’t you worry buddy,/cause here he comes
Through the ghettos and the barrio/and the bowery and the slum
A shadow is cast wherever he stands
Stacks of green paper in his
red right hand

You’ll see him in your nightmares,/you’ll see him in your dreams
He’ll appear out of nowhere but/he ain’t what he seems
You’ll see him in your head,/on the TV screen
And hey buddy, I’m warning/you to turn it off
He’s a ghost, he’s a god,/he’s a man, he’s a guru
You’re one microscopic cog/in his catastrophic plan
Designed and directed by
his red right hand

Sugarfrostedgoodness.com’s challenge word this week is “shy”.

Andy Partridge, the founder of eclectic rock group XTC, suffered a nervous breakdown, which manifested itself as uncontrollable stage fright. It was brought on by his wife, Marianne, throwing away his supply of Valium. Andy had become dependent upon the drug after it was prescribed to him as a teenager during his parents’ divorce. He was never fully withdrawn from the drug and became dependent on it.
Concerned about her husband’s dependence on the drug, Marianne threw his tablets away — without seeking medical advice — just before a 1982 Paris concert. Not surprisingly, Partridge suffered anxiety attacks of such severity that he was forced to withdraw from touring permanently. The remaining European and British dates were cancelled and after completing only one show in San Diego the whole US leg was also abandoned. Since then, XTC have been exclusively a studio band.

The sugarfrostedgoodness.com challenge word is “dragon”.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, every summer usually included one or two trips to Atlantic City. My parents, my older brother and I would pile into the car and take, what seemed to be, the eleven-hour drive from northeast Philadelphia to the southern New Jersey seaside resort (Of course, as an adult, I discovered this ride is about an hour and a half). My father hated to travel. Everything except work and cigarettes was an inconvenience to him. He never liked to go anywhere further than Cottman Avenue. If it began to rain, my father would turn the car around and head back home fifteen minutes into our trip. My mom, however, loved to go anywhere and everywhere. She would plan and talk about our Atlantic City trips as if we were headed to the French Riviera. She would pack lunch, a thermos jug of her world-famous iced tea and an array of activities to keep my brother and me from beating the shit out of each other in the back seat. We would play “Car Bingo” or “Spot the Out-of-State License Plates”. We would discuss what the first thing we would do when we got to Atlantic City. We sometimes would stop for hot dogs and fresh produce at one of the zillion roadside stands that stood every few feet along Route 73 in New Jersey.
Our destination was usually one of the grand old hotels on the Boardwalk—The Traymore, The Shelburne, The Deauville— all eventual casualties of the casino era. Upon arrival, we would hastily put on our bathing suits and rush to the beach. In those days, beach attire was not permitted in the hotel lobby. A wooden walkway that lead from the hotel basement to the beach, under the Boardwalk, was set up for beach-goers.
After a full day playing in the sand, eating ice-cream from cooler-carrying, barefoot vendors, and actually swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, we would head to Million Dollar Pier. Opened in 1906 and situated on the Boardwalk at Arkansas Avenue, Million Dollar Pier was jammed with games of skill, giant spinning wheels where a ten-cent bet might win you a huge, pink plush bear and food stands selling hot dogs, cotton candy and Kohr Brothers custard. There was a sideshow featuring the Ape-Girl. The painted poster promised that a beautiful girl would transform into an ape right before your eyes (10 times nightly) and then, shockingly, escape from her cage (also 10 times nightly) —all to the accompaniment of a loudspeaker chanting “The Ape-Girl! The Ape-Girl! Was Darwin right? Did man evolve from ape? The Ape-Girl! The Ape-Girl!” Million Dollar Pier was also home to an overabundance of carnival rides. There was the Tilt-O-Whirl, The Scrambler (my mom’s favorite), Bumper Cars and numerous kiddie rides. After navigating the walkways of the pier, through the maze of rides, there stood the bane of my six-year-old existence —The Orient Express. Looming above the pier was that red, green and black abomination. It was a pagoda-peaked and faux-lacquer finished structure, decorated with funny squiggles I had only seen in Chinese restaurants and topped with a behemothic, blinky-eyed, smoke-breathing (on the summers that they could get it to work) dragon. I believed that dragon waited every year for me to return. For me to step close enough to its perch so it could eat me. I stood frozen in silent horror and stared at that fiberglass beast and I knew that bastard was staring right back at me.
Every year my mom and my brother would ride The Orient Express. Every year they asked if this was the year I would join them. And every year I gave the same answer — “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” Were they blind? Couldn’t they see the way that dragon looked at me? That horrible monster motionlessly and patiently waited for the day I accepted their offer, to finally savor the child it stared at and tasted in its pre-fab plastic and electronic-circuitry-filled mind all those years. So, my mom and my brother rode The Orient Express. I stood a safe distance outside with my dad. They climbed into the two-seat ride car and burst through the first set of shiny red doors towards darkness. At one point in the ride, the cars came back out of the building for a quick, roller coaster-like dip and then were rushed back inside. I waved to my mom and brother when their vehicle emerged from the building for that split-second. I shuddered as it went back in, wondering if they would survive this year’s ride. Finally, they arrived at the unload area, laughing as they had in previous years.
When my brother felt he was too old to take vacations with his family, the remaining three of us headed to Atlantic City. This particular summer I agreed, although with much trepidation, to accompany my mom on The Orient Express. I faced that dragon one more time, trying to convince myself that this was just a ride on a pier in New Jersey and not my ultimate doom. Nervously, I entered the ride car with my mom. She assured me I was safe. We exploded through the first set of red doors (which by this time were dull and in need of repair) into darkness.
And that’s pretty much what the ride consisted of — darkness. Save for the two seconds that our vehicle came outside to encounter the dip, we were in pitch dark. Suddenly a bright light shone on a mirror, giving the illusion of an inevitable collision with an another ride car. Then, the track sharply turned right, we noisily breached another set of doors and we were out.
The ride sucked and I was not eaten.

The challenge on sugarfrostedgoodness.com this week is “ape”.

In 1841, Edgar Allan Poe published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. It is considered to be the first detective story, preadating the first Sherlock Holmes story by forty-six years and Agatha Christie’s birth by fifty-nine years. Poe referred to it as one of his tales of ratiocination, meaning process of reasoning.
The story is told by an unnamed narrator and friend of the main character, C. Auguste Dupin. As the first true fictiion detective, Poe’s Dupin is a man in Paris who decides to solve the mysterious brutal murder of two women in that city after a suspect has been arrested. Numerous witnesses are quoted in the newspaper as having heard a suspect, though the witnesses each think it was a different language. At the murder scene, Dupin finds a suspicious hair that does not appear to be human. He places an advertisement in the newspaper asking if anyone has lost an “Ourang-Outang”. When he visits the sailor that answers the ad, he explains how he determined that the animal is the actual murderer in the Rue Morgue.
The Dupin character established many literary devices which would be used in future fictional detectives including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Many later characters, for example, follow Poe’s model of the brilliant detective, his personal friend who serves as narrator, and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it. Dupin himself reappears in two more Poe stories, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined Letter”.
The word “detective” did not exist at the time Poe wrote “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The story establishes an urban theme which was reused several times in Poe’s fiction, likely inspired by Poe’s time living in Philadelphia. His plot twist of “orangutan as murderer” was likely inspired by the crowd reaction to an orangutan on display at the Masonic Hall in Philadelphia in July 1839.

The sugarfrostedgoodness.com challenge word this week is “innocent”.

On August 29, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII succeeded Pope Sixtus IV (for whom the Sistine Chapel was named). And it was all downhill from there.
After his coronation, he went back all his promises and left his signatures unhonored, slyly revelling in his immunity. He abandoned the decorum of Pope Sixtus IV, and settled down to enjoy life in his own slothful way. He was a despicable creature; ungrateful, avaricious and cowardly. His only interest seems to have been the establishment of his numerous illegitimate progeny. The Vatican became overrun by his sons and daughters, their children and grandchildren.
Innocent VIII slept almost continuously. When awake his favorite pasttime was persecuting Jews. He squeezed every shekel he could out of them, and reduced the Jewish ghetto to a state of misery and terror. Such gross self-indulgence would naturally undermine the strongest constitution. The Pontiff grew immensely fat and his health gradually declined. By the summer of 1492, he had become an inert mass of flesh, incapable of taking any nourishment with the exception of being breastfed by a hired young woman.
A Jewish doctor offered to attempt a blood transfusion to save Innocent VIII’s life. The doctor indicated that the Pope only needed the blood of three healthy young men—Christians presumably. The donors, three 10-year-old boys, were procured from their parents, at one ducat (a gold coin used before World War I) each. The operation resulted in the three healthy young men dying.
Innocent VIII died on July 25, 1492, leaving behind numerous children, of whom only two were publicly acknowledged, the others presented in the usual way as nephews. Octo nocens pueros genuit, totidemque puellas; Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem. – The wicked man begat eight boys, and just as many girls, so that Rome might justly call him Father.

The challenge word on sugarfrostedgoodness.com is “wicked”.

“Wicked” Wilson Pickett was born March 18, 1941 in Prattville, Alabama, and grew up singing in Baptist church choirs. He was the youngest of 11 children. He made reference to his mother as “the baddest woman in my book.” He said, “I get scared of her now. She used to hit me with anything, skillets, stove wood. One time I ran away and cried for a week. [I] stayed in the woods, me and my little dog.” Pickett eventually left to live with his father in Detroit in 1955.
He rose to stardom with such memorable hit songs as “In the Midnight Hour”, “Mustang Sally”, “634-5789″, “Land of 1000 Dances”, “Funky Broadway” and many, many more. Pickett was also a popular songwriter, as songs he wrote were recorded by artists like Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, the Grateful Dead, Booker T. & the MGs, Genesis, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Hootie & the Blowfish, Echo & The Bunnymen, Roxy Music, Bruce Springsteen, Los Lobos, The Jam, Ani DiFranco, among others.
Outside of music, Pickett’s personal life was troubled. Even in his 1960s heyday, Pickett’s friends found him to be temperamental and preoccupied with guns. In 1987, as his recording career was drying up, Pickett was given two years’ probation and fined $1,000 for carrying a loaded shotgun in his car. In 1991, he was arrested for allegedly yelling death threats while driving a car over the mayor’s front lawn in Englewood, New Jersey. The following year, he was charged with assaulting his girlfriend. In 1993, Pickett was involved in an accident where he struck an 86-year-old pedestrian with his car in Englewood. Pickett pled guilty to drunken driving charges and received a reduced sentence of one year in jail and five years probation. Pickett had also been previously convicted of various drug offenses.
Throughout the 1990s, despite his personal troubles, Pickett was continuously honored for his contributions to music, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Several years after his release from jail, Pickett returned to the studio and received a Grammy nomination for the 1999 album “It’s Harder Now”. The comeback also resulted in his being honored as Soul/Blues Male Artist of the Year by the Blues Foundation in Memphis.
Pickett died of a heart attack January 19, 2006 in the hospital near his Ashburn, Virginia home and, ironically, was buried next to his mother in Louisville, Kentucky.