Test of Acrobat.com embedding

Dawn Eden posted this on her website as scanned JPGs. I converted to PDF and uploaded to Acrobat.com, which offers 5 GB of free storage.

The Wilhelm Scream

Over Christmas, a relative tipped me off to a fascinating bit of movie trivia: A scream sound effect that has been used in over 100 Hollywood films from 1951 to the present, including everyone of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.

Here's a compilation of uses of the scream, starting in 1953.



Here is a short interview about the history and significance of the Wilhelm Scream, in which we learn that the vocal talent responsible for the original effect may have been Sheb Wooley, of "Purple People Eater" fame.



Steve Lee, the movie historian and sound man in that last clip, has a page about the Wilhelm Scream on his Hollywood Lost and Found website, which was "created to promote interest in the history of Hollywood and the art of filmmaking - with special emphasis on Film Sound, Movie Props, and Locations." In the props section, you can learn things like what happened to those 500 tribbles.

Al Jaffee, call your office

If you're printing an ad on the back of a map, you really ought pay attention to what it looks like when you fold it up. Mark Evanier has a funny example from a New York tourist map. Go see it.

Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham

It really happened! Witty banter, serious respectful discussion of faith, sin, premarital sex, and popular culture, and both men handle questions from the audience. What Graham says about the harm caused by premarital sex wouldn't have been amiss at last night's Modest Proposals event which Dawn Eden described as a gathering of "Chastity All-Stars."

Part 1:



Part 2:



The interview is part of Woody Allen's September 21, 1969, TV special, part of the Kraft Music Hall series. The show includes stand-up by Woody, skits with a 25-year-old and gorgeous Candace Bergen, music by the 5th Dimension (Wedding Bell Blues), and ads for Libby with Tony Randall as a private eye. Click below to watch the entire special, interspersed with classic TV ads:


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The Trouble with LOLtribblez

There's something about the Star Trek original series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" that invites parody.

We've already seen the episode reinterpreted in the style of Edward Gorey. Now click the picture to see the whole episode, done up LOLcat style!

Soup for you!

I was doing my payday shopping at the Costco and was amazed to see Al Yeganeh's face looking at me from a box. He calls himself the Soup Man; Seinfeld fans know him as the real-life soup kitchen owner who inspired the "Soup Nazi" character. I was surprised to learn that he has soup kitchens all over the northeast and is selling packaged soups all over the country.

Well, I bought a 15 oz. box of turkey chili and brought it home (almost eight bucks!). Back at the ranch, I had to surf over to YouTube to see if I could find any clips from that Seinfeld episode to put me in a proper frame of mind to appreciate the soup.

Instead I found this clip of the real Soup Man. The New York City Fox affiliate sent over a chirpy blonde reporterette for a live remote from his new location on Trinity Place downtown. In the first segment he almost seems reasonable in his protest against the reporter's carelessness (she went behind the counter and touched his ladle!), and I love it when he responds to the reporter's comment about how the interview will giving his restaurant publicity for opening day. "You are getting publicity your own self. I am giving you publicity!" Things get a bit more heated in the second segment. No one appreciates a perfectionist.



I am happy to report that the turkey chili was delicious and that, despite the fact that I stuck my finger in to see if it was hot enough, no one smacked my hand, scolded me, or snatched my soup away. Perhaps soup in a box is the solution for those of us who lack the self-discipline to be worthy of soup from one of his stores. When I brought the box into the house, I thought of that phrase from the Latin Mass: Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbum, et sanabitur anima mea. ("Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but say the word, and my spirit shall be healed.") Which could be paraphrased and modified a bit to mean, "Al, I am not worthy that your soup should enter under my roof, but say the word, and my stomach shall be fed."

Drink Freshy! It's the low-calorie Feh soda!

More vintage commercial goodness from Roadsidepictures: a set of vintage soda pop bottles, bottlecaps, cans, and signage. In addition to Coke and Pepsi, all sorts of obscure brands and generics are represented in this collection: Cragmont (the Safeway store brand), Del Monte, White Rock, Witches Brew (a licorice soda!), Foodtown Imitation Grape Soda, and Coffeetime carbonated coffee drink.

Once, in the early '80s, I was staying at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan, and the vending machine carried only White Rock products. In desperation, I bought a White Rock Orange Soda. Nasty stuff, but the little water nymph on the can was cute.

This photo shows an old-fashioned 10 oz. Mountain Dew bottle (back when it was sold as a hillbilly drink) and a squatty, non-conforming 12 oz. bottle for non-conforming 7-Up.

I don't know where they marketed the soda in the picture, but it can't have been anywhere in the northeast. The can looks like something MAD's Al Jaffee would have worked up as a parody. Feh! is probably too regional an expression for Wacky Packages to have used it. Note to product designers: If you're going to use alternating colors for a product name, make sure that each color's set of letters spells something like "Yum!" or "Good!" not "Ecch!" or "Ebola!"

(Update: Apparently Freshy was a Fresca knockoff for a line of Winn-Dixie store-brand sodas. Feh on a soda can wouldn't have registered in Winn-Dixie country, but it probably amused a few visiting Yankees.)

That "NO CYCLAMATES!" label takes me back. Remember the big controversy over cyclamates in the early '70s? Suddenly, saccharine became the artificial sweetener of choice, and then a few years later it was suspected of causing cancer. (Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Linda Ronstadt sang about it on SNL.)

More: The pretty nymph on White Rock beverages is actually Psyche, from Greek mythology. "Psyche has the wings of a butterfly to depict immortality. Her story represents the pre-existence of the soul suffering in this life, going astray but remaining faithful to her ideals. She accepts her fate while showing courage and counting on love to lead her to life."

But the Witty Banter guys say, Soda = Death.