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Post by malaria on Mar 8, 2019 17:18:32 GMT -5
"119. A man and his Toupee will always soon be "parted!" BAHAHA!!! Classic. 121. Local 213 of the International Brotherhood Of Ol' Caps paid pretty good pension bennies (roughly 67K in todays bucks) for being a kindly old guy with a strange hair part. (I assume hazard-pay enhancement for having to live with *shudder* Louise Emmons.) 122. Brahms himself would have wept at the sight of Stymie, reverently looking upward, presumably toward God, during the the slow, almost elegiac bridge of his "Hungarian Dance #5." 123. Thanks be to God, both Bakst and Diaghilev died before Alfalfa and Spanky "Ruined... Russian Ballet!!" 124. Slapstick humor was dealt a subtle but cruel and largely irreversible setback when the pencil and the ball-point began to replace the fountain pen. 125. Roach made it through a zillion shorts without ever once stooping to cheap/easy jibes about FDR colluding with Russians, much less allying the USA with one of the worst murderers in human history. 126. Pretty standard for miniature-golf/"peewee"-golf courses back then to be chockablock with mechanical contraptions which would put to shame those of "Adventure Golf" courses 90 years later. 127. "Reform School" was a uniquely horrid agency of human torture far worse than the terrifying Room 101 of "1984" infamy, unless you really, REALLY liked sledge hammers. 128. Cut all the race-humor, fat-shaming, LGBT-sneering, ageism and other Sins Of The 21st Century First World out of the Our Gang shorts, and you're left with 3 seconds of Mr. Hood's epic birthday fail. 129. High schools back then probably had four tracks: academic, commercial, streetcar conductor, and Punk Blacksmith. 130. No matter what the circumstances, the locale, the plot, the background facts, the players or the scenery, the weather, the latitude, what have you...THERE WAS ALWAYS A MR. CRUTCH.
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Post by RJH on Mar 15, 2019 22:43:53 GMT -5
131. You can't play a brass instrument if you see someone sucking a lemon.
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Post by mtw12055 on Mar 15, 2019 23:27:46 GMT -5
132. You didn't have to go to school anymore by the time you were thirteen and could spend the rest of your day fishing. Speaking of which... 133. Fishing. That's what kids did for fun. No school? Great. What should we do all day? Go fishin', of course.
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Post by malaria on Mar 16, 2019 14:46:52 GMT -5
134. The only acceptable answer to any question was "and HOW!!"
135. Perhaps Billy Gilbert was right to keep his money in the wall compartment, given that there had been 700+ bank failures the year before. But he needed a better exterminator.
136. A telephone was something that you picked up almost entirely to hear an loud, officious and uncomprehending female voice repeating "number, please?"
137. If you wanted to ratchet up the melodrama, Wheezer was the default choice; Farina was the reliable backup.
138. Not exactly clear what the deal was if the Rascals caused you to be *entertained* in some way, yet still did not meet with your "approval."
139. Elmer Raguse: Sound engineer to the Rascals, guys who wanted to live off the "fatta the lan'"... and the world.
140. A medicine chest was, naturally, the place where one kept one's stash of... turpentine.
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Post by mtw12055 on Mar 17, 2019 14:20:58 GMT -5
141. The school bullies were so official that they announced their need to beat up the toughest kid upon arrival.
142. Teachers got away with driving their students to school, teaching them darn good lessons that would normally lay in the parents' hands, and even kissing kids on the lips(!)
143. Every car had a running board for you to ride on if there wasn't enough room - or if your daddy tanned you fluently.
144. Adults are easily duped into thinking little people are babies.
145. Parents gave their kids weird names.
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Post by malaria on Mar 17, 2019 15:37:47 GMT -5
10.0!!
146. If someone stepped on your sidewalk paving job, the thing to do was throw a tantrum and stamp on it even more rampantly.
147. Pretty common back then for kids to spend an afternoon hanging around an active railroad yard, "parents" not yet having been invented.
148. What "reform school" was to kids, "the poorhouse" was to older folks, especially Kindly Old Grannies.
149. Yarmulke-wearing Spanky was mystified by the black baptisms and spirituals because he was obviously Jewish (McFarlandwitz), hence a stranger to such rites.
150. Speaking of religion, the whole point of church bells was to enable Wheezer to summon and reunite with his missing puppies. *sniffle*
151. Soap bubbles burst with a loud exploding sound, sometimes causing stuffy butlers to sneeze loudly, and otherwise causing mayhem at snooty society soirees.
152. Mules who tried really hard, but still didn't make it: Geometry, Calculus, Trigonometry, 12X, Statistics and Probability.
153. Taking care to give screen time to notoriously UN-cute kids as well, Roach hired... the Kibricks.
154. Marianne Edwards/"Miss Daisy Dimple", whatever the film, had exactly one screen attitude: The Woeful Pout
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Post by RJH on Mar 17, 2019 18:18:23 GMT -5
155. It is common for a teacher to have a bottle of sleeping potion on a shelf in his classroom. Such a teacher is not likely to notice that a globe has been replaced by a balloon.
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Post by tboneator64 on Mar 17, 2019 23:35:39 GMT -5
156. That making fun of the local Blacksmith right after he told his story about his mother telling him that someday he could be President if he studied real hard just isn't a very nice thing to do.
157. On occasion, the Blonde Schoolteacher could suddenly turn into a Brunette.
158. Shows can be staged in one's Basement with a complete Stage setup.
159. There's always a neighborhood Truant Officer lurking around to make sure that kids go to school when they're supposed to. He'll even turn them in the right direction to make sure they get there.
160. Nobody in the Gang ever makes it to High School in any of these shorts.
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Post by mtw12055 on Mar 18, 2019 0:30:59 GMT -5
161. You could carry firecrackers and pocket knives around with you anywhere, even if you were a small child.
162. Around 1929, everyone suddenly began to talk... very... very... sloooowly...
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Post by tboneator64 on Mar 18, 2019 14:26:37 GMT -5
163. Also around 1929, sounds could be rather intermittent and periodically disappear entirely.
164. Two fat boys fighting over a bottle of soda pop never ended well...for the bottle of soda pop.
165. Bee stings could cause one's proboscis to really swell up.
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Post by malaria on Mar 18, 2019 17:40:21 GMT -5
166. Nothing like ending a fairly funny short with horribly depressing fadeout music (see, e.g., "Yearning", at end of "Bargain Day", among others.) 167. The elevator had been invented decades before, but not improved upon much, so Depression-era versions of this important conveyance had doors apparently made of cardboard, if not rice paper. 168. As time went on, Rascals teachers got hotter and (for some reason) more Canadian, hence Ottawan Rosina Lawrence had it all over Minnesota's June Marlowe there, eh? 169. Roiling The Stuffed Shirts only worked approximately 146% of the time as a comedic device then. Monkeys invariably helped. 170. A surefire way to bust a foreign spy bent on nefarious deeds on American soil was to wave grandly to him and say "hiiiii, Crabby!" A blank look in return meant an anarchist at the least. 171. Tiny kids with little legs could still be made to appear to be running at roughly 380 mph, by the sinister device of Undercranking The Camera. 172. Prints of "Pomeranians Is Pomeranians" and "Basenjis Is Basenjis" have never been located, more's the pity. 173. The citrus fruit/freckle correlation had been noted but not yet fully explicated. 174. There was always one prissy male authority figure who looked (and dressed) like William McKinley. 175. If considering purchasing a Christmas present for Emerson Treacy, socks were right out.
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Post by mtw12055 on Mar 18, 2019 18:34:17 GMT -5
176. At least two kids in the neighborhood were named Buckwheat.
177. Veterinarians would gladly leave their office unlocked while taking house calls - and wouldn't even bother to kick out the group of kids that stopped by.
178. If traffic cops were annoyed enough with false alarms of ambulances that turned out to be goat-powered ones, they'd gladly encourage the other cars to run over the six-year-old driver.
179. Kids apparently liked to imitate the Ku Klux Klan, though only the dress code and name.
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Post by malaria on Mar 18, 2019 19:04:05 GMT -5
180. The song "Babyface" was so irritating it is entirely possible it eventually caused WW2 if not also the Cold War afterwards.
181. Though everyone was broke, paper money and bonds flew through the air with amazing frequency. 182. The only thing we Had To Fear Was Butch Himself (and maybe Woim).
183. "Greasing Wheezer" was a mandatory, health-related activity, and not some smirking reference to autoeroticism.
184. The most prevalent mammal in the general area of Culver City, CA was something called a "polecat", followed by dogs, monkeys and mules; cats, less prevalent, nonetheless achieved distinction via their own accompanying "meow" music.
185. The universe was not expanding. Spanky, however, was.
186. Roman candles made hilarious Three Stooges-type noises and burned holes in clothing.
187. When Otto Phocus tearfully pleaded for "just one more bust", he emphatically was NOT thinking about the female bosom.
188. Doctors answered telephones themselves and responded to medical emergencies with almost unimaginable dispatch, never mind that the average car of the day could go about 6 mph.
189. The major problems facing the world were stepmothers, bugs, Japanese handcuffs, schoolteachers getting married, and perfidious Al...falfa.
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Post by myhomeo on Mar 19, 2019 13:41:39 GMT -5
190. Thirty-five cents was almost a million dollars 191. Large potted cacti were frequently found in many of the nicer homes 192. Every family had a pet mule 193. Getting taffy recipes off the radio was a risky proposition 194. It was often too cold to go swimmin' in the raw 195. Abraham Lincoln had to study hard to get to be President 196. Candy was hard to come by in those times 197. Small, loquacious children and savage wild men could bond over their shared distrust of technocracy 198. Watermelon rarely waited for children to finish school. It had a very busy social calendar
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Post by malaria on Mar 19, 2019 14:54:09 GMT -5
"Small, loquacious children and savage wild men could bond over their shared distrust of technocracy" "I don't want no wild anti-technocracy types nibblin' on me!"199. Someone at Roach Studios had a strange fixation on Uncle Tom's Cabin, one so pervasive he actually thought a kiddie audience watching decades after the Civil War would know who Topsy and Simon Legree were. 200. Whenever the plot or the humor started to lag, it was time to drag out a small bottle of Tabasco Sauce and have someone lace food with it. 201. You got the idea pretty strongly, looks even notwithstanding, that kiss-beggin' Mickey Daniels didn't exactly have his mojo workin' with the fair sex. 202. The music was great, but the tune titles were TERRIBLE. Why not "The Stymie Being Chased All Over The Amusement Park By The Truant Officer Overture?" 203. The social welfare net was a little threadbare, with orphans, poor kids, stepkids and old ladies falling into the clutches of a congeries of the most ugly-arse, cheesy and just stone evil people imaginable. 204. Alfalfa, sadly, really DID prove to be Poor Poor Alfalfa. 205. Jerry Tucker: The Least Imitated Rascal In The History Of The Series. 206. People hit by runaway Rascals vehicles on downhill runs would be thrown straight up into the air and exclaim "Whoaaahhh" in the exact same tone of voice. 207. Roman numerals not having been invented, "counting" was done by making four upright lines, and then crossing them with a diagonal to indicate "five"... ad infinitum. 208. Porcine cleanliness was a highly sought-after attribute of the decade, and Chubby was an acknowledged master of the hog-washing trade. 209. Miss McGillicuddy was a buxom, saucy redhead with a perfect smile, legs from Culver City to Coquitlam, a perfect upturned Irish nose and a song in her heart.
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