Yesterday, I went to the grocery store during the workday to pick up a few things, including a bottle of Marsala wine I needed for a recipe. Our grocery store has a large wine section, praise Jeebus, but there’s not any particular display order I can discern.
The expensive stuff is on the top shelf and the cheap crap on the bottom, but aside from that, reds, whites, pinks, etc., are intermingled, as are wines from all regions. Because of this (and because I buy it so rarely), I had a helluva time locating the Marsala.
I left my cart at one end of the aisle and paced up and down the length of it, scanning the bottles and not finding the Marsala. I was pretty sure it’s an Italian wine, so I located the Chiantis to see if it was nearby. Nope. Ditto Spain.
A man asked me if I knew of a sweet wine that would be good to use for making fruitcake. I was unable to persuade him to abandon the fruitcake project altogether, but I urged him to go with a dark rum instead, and he thanked me and left. (The recipients of that vile fruitcake will thank me later too when the rum numbs their taste buds to the horrid fruitcake flavor…)
A store employee was restocking chips across from the wine, and I enlisted him in the Marsala search, but he had no better luck than I and went in search of someone who could help. The person he brought back located the Marsala in about two seconds — randomly plonked amid unrelated wines on a middle shelf.
Realizing the length of the Marsala search had put me seriously behind schedule and in danger of missing an appointment, I chucked the bottle in the cart and raced frantically around the store to gather the other items on my list. I flung produce into the cart, then hurriedly made my way to the dairy section on the other side of the store. There, I noticed that a box of Wheat Thins was in the cart. I hate fucking Wheat Thins.
There was also an outlandish flavor of yogurt I would never buy and some other random stuff I did not recognize. Moreover, the items that should have been in my cart — including my purse — weren’t there. I realized with dawning horror that I’d taken someone else’s cart on my frenzied race around the supermarket.
I figured the switcheroo must have happened on the wine aisle. And as soon as I rounded the corner at that location, I saw a woman standing next to my actual cart, who threw her hands up in a thank-bloody-Christ gesture when I arrived.
She told me she’d chased me all over the store before giving up and just returning to the wine aisle, thinking I’d have to come back eventually since my car keys were dangling off my purse. I apologized profusely, fished out several items I’d added to her cart by mistake and put them in mine, then proceeded to checkout.
God, I’m stupid. The end.
WereBear
I’ve done that. That Twilight Zone moment of I don’t eat that! is priceless.
WereBear
Just a reminder:
The Way of Cats Fund Drive
is still in progress.
Holiday Spirit? Love cats and kittens? Just want to see kitten Mithrandir at his smallest and fuzziest?
Click on the link.
Thanks so much! I really could not keep going without the donations, folks. As we have seen here, over the last few weeks, it is tough keeping a blog going.
Would you? For the kitties!
WereBear
Mr WereBear and I had a contest last night: picking all the most frightful Christmas movies from Netflix and Hulu and seeing how long the other person lasted.
I won: White Christmas, 4 minutes past the credits.
goblue72
Yes Marsala is Italian. When in doubt, usually hidden amongst the same part of the wine shelf where the sherry. madeira and port is located. That sad, lackluster part of the wine shelf in most American grocery stores.
But if its just used for cooking some chicken marsala, just go to the baking aisle and grab some cooking Marsala. There’s such low demand for Marsala in the U.S. that anything decent in terms of being actually drinkable is probably too expensive to be worth cooking with and the cheap stuff is cheap for a reason.
Doug!
I’ve done that before
BillinGlendaleCA
Betty, I had the same thing happen to me at Costco on my last visit. I was almost ready to head to the checkout line and went to look at a blood pressure monitor and came back to find my cart missing. It took a minute or so to find an elderly lady with my cart. I inquired as to why she had stolen my cart.
Butch
Sandra Boynton’s book Christmastime has a hilarious chapter on how to play a game called Pass the Fruitcake; you lose if you actually take a bite before you find someone you can fob it off on.
shell
@WereBear: Another one is where you’re sure you’re where your car should be, but isn’t.. Till you realize you’re in the wrong aisle.
************N
No fruitcake, but each year I make Dresden Stollen. Apple jack is what i use to soak the fruits- golden raisins, dried cranberries and chopped apricots and citrus zest. (NOT those neon-colored rinds they still try to sell you at the store.)
?? Martin
Betty fashions some relevant item from the crime scene out of wine bottle foil while Cole gets visions of the motive while naked-mopping the victims bathroom.
Somehow the police simply accept this behavior as normal.
Doug R
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lMePJM86Ueo
Could have spiraled into something like this:
RSA
The baby in the stolen shopping cart was unharmed and probably amused.
Mary G
@WereBear: I gave you a tiny mite; sorry it’s not more.
I quit keeping my purse in the grocery cart when someone stole my wallet and car keys out of it when I wasn’t looking. Fortunately, my Mazda GLC did not meet with their discriminating taste and they left it in the parking lot.
Iowa Old Lady
A friend of mine has had other people take her luggage at the airport twice.
Hungry Joe
My least-favorite grocery-store experience is running into someone I know, talking for a minute or two, and then trying to dodge him or her the whole rest of the time in order to avoid the nod & smile (second encounter), tight-lipped grin & eyebrow raise (third encounter), and ignoring/pretending not to see (all subsequent encounters).
I’ve never figured out how to mitigate this impossible social situation. The only other possibilities, both of which are worse, are saying, “You want to shop together?” (not me, and not in this lifetime or any other imaginable one) and abandoning the cart and leaving the store, which I actually did once, when the other person was a former girlfriend.
?? Martin
@WereBear: Star Wars Holiday Special if you can find it. Guaranteed winner.
donnah
I tried to get into someone else’s car once. I was indignant until I realized mine was two rows over.
I was at Trader Joe’s looking for a cheese someone had recommended and gave up when I couldn’t find it. Fortunately the sales clerk asked if I found everything and when I lamented the cheese, he immediately went to the aisle and pulled it right out. So, thank heavens for kind store clerks!
beltane
Marsala is a “fortified” wine like sherry and is not normally kept on the same shelf as regular wines.
raven
I was in Lowes a couple of years ago and they called my name on the intercom. I went to the counter and the dude said “We have your drivers license”. It made no sense since I had not taken my wallet out since I went in the store. It was someone with the same name as me!
WereBear
Thank you so much, and please! It’s not the size of the donation… it’s the size of the heart that is moved to donate :)
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@WereBear:
Wow, you didn’t even make it to the blackface scene. Bing Crosby sure loved him some blackface, because he kept insisting on doing it well into the 1950s, at least.
TaMara (BHF)
Happens to the best of us. I’m forever leaving my cart parked, thinking it’s easier to zip back to some aisle where I forgot to grab an item than drag the cart with me, then I cannot find it. I swear I parked it across from the frozen shrimp…
In other absentmindedness news, I was picking up Bixby’s stuffies from the livingroom floor this morning, went to grab his monkey and turns out, wasn’t his monkey, was Emma’s leg and tail sticking out from under the couch. She was not amused and I was more than a bit startled.
beltane
@Hungry Joe:Living in a small town, this is a situation I encounter frequently. After the initial greeting, it is customary to ignore the acquaintance and retreat into your own personal space.
Emma
@Iowa Old Lady: I have this tasteful, totally without any identifying marks brown suitcase with the discreet fold-your-business-card-inside tag. It was a magnet for all the other souls using tasteful, totally without any identifying marks brown suitcases with the discreet fold-your-business-card-inside tags. I finally solved the problem by replacing the tag with the most garish oversize orange plastic tag which I got as a freebie at a conference I attended.
TaMara (BHF)
@Mnemosyne (tablet): OMG, there is a blackface scene in White Christmas, too?? (I never make it through that movie) I thought he’d only committed that atrocity in Holiday Inn.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Also, I was expecting a story like the one we used to have to deal with at Target at Christmastime, when if you left your cart unattended for even a minute, someone would take your stuff out of it, leave it on the closest shelf, and take the cart for themselves. That happened more than once until my (now ex) sister-in-law and I figured out that one of us needed to stay with the cart at all times. Vultures.
Mary G
@WereBear: The Way of Cats is my go-to when one of mine is acting up.
Hungry Joe
I used to live about a block from a grocery store. I always walked. But one afternoon I was tired and drove directly to the store from work. Parked in the lot, shopped — and walked home, as I’d done hundreds of times before. Next morning: no car in my spot! I always park in my spot! SOMEBODY STOLE MY CAR! Did a 180 on my heel, stomped back to my apartment, picked up the phone to call the police … when a tiny click in my brain informed me that I was doing something wrong. Took me a couple of minutes to figure it out.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@TaMara (BHF):
Yep. I distinctly remember that I was live commenting on it right here one Christmas Eve from my hotel room in Arizona on a visit to my parents. I think my reaction was something along the lines of, HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS AM I REALLY SEEING THIS OR IS IT A HORRIBLE NIGHTMARE???
jl
With the horrid example of Trump, I thought all right thinking people would have learned to shun blind intolerance, bigotry, hatred and fear. So, why the fruitcake hatred?
shell
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I know. Christmas time at Target…carts as rare as hens teeth.
mai naem mobile
I left my cart towards the front of the store with some produce and dairy and then walked to the back to get some little item that I didn’t want to drag the cart to. I was back up front in less than ten minutes. The oh so efficient store staff had already returned the stuff I had had in my cart. Also too, I find myself going into the store for a single item(ofcourse in the back of the store) so I won’t get a cart. Inevitably, I’ll end up with several items coming back. I remember when stores used to have a few stacks of the handle carry carts towards the back of the store for idiots like me. No mas. Don’t know why. I think they would have more sales.
WereBear
Oh my gosh! I live in a small town and this happens SOOOO often. But what I do is just circuit the outside of the aisles… I don’t need to wind through the whole store like a line at Disney World.
WereBear
@?? Martin: You are right. But I believe all of LucasPower was brought to bear to make sure this will not surface in our lifetimes :)
Peale
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Two years ago at Target I was Christmas shopping. I had a few items in my cart and stopped to look at Christmas cards. I left the cart behind me a little and walked maybe six feet down the aisle looking at cards for a few minutes. When I turned around, to walk back to my cart, it was gone. It was the store employees themselves who took it to keep the aisles clear. But it really wasn’t in the way and no one bothered to ask if it was mine. I was the only person in that aisle the whole time.
01jack
I often shop at an Aldi store with narrow aisles and large carts where people often park, then walk about gathering. I’ve had someone else wind up taking my cart on three different occasions. The last time the woman told me “I was just standing here, going ‘Pepperoncini? I don’t even …'”
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Good heavens. I’ve never gotten that far.
I just loathe Bing Crosby. Now, it’s gone up a notch.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@?? Martin:
I have seen it more than once. Strong drink is recommended.
Carrie Fisher swears that she has no memory of making it because she was so high, and I completely believe her. There are times when the extras have to prop her up for her scenes.
WereBear
@Mary G: That makes me so happy!
Looking back, it’s funny that I had all these ambitions, some of which may yet be fulfilled, and some of which I have learned were better off not being pursued.
But making a difference for so many kitties and their people… never saw that coming. And now, it’s my purpose in life.
Ya just never know :)
Warren Terra
If this story goes viral, Trump will demand we block cartnappers from entering the country, and possibly relocate those already here to special cartnapper detention camps. You can just picture them now, trudging single-file off to their new prisons, each dragging a mixture of each other’s luggage …
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@WereBear:
Apple guru and movie fan Andy Ihnatko has a special loathing for “White Christmas.” Anyone who wants a Rifftrax-like experience can sync up his podcast commentary.
gratuitous
Perhaps you’re lucky your pursuer didn’t go all Crocodile Dundee on you . . .
Anyone who gets THAT reference could be a friend of mine.
WereBear
Probably for the best. I’m sure everyone else wishes they had no memory of making it.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (tablet): OMG, thank you!
We might just have to revisit the situation…
?? Martin
@WereBear: I have a copy. I figured I was deserving as I remember being so excited about it coming on tv back when I was 11 and how disappointed I was when it arrived.
Now I get to make my kids watch it. It’s far worse than I remembered.
NotMax
Variation of the old game of Shopping Roulette.
Walk into the store, find an unattended cart, push it to checkout, pay, take bags to car.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
The markets that have completely done away with hand baskets so you have to use a cart drive me batty.
Germy
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I’m a Marx Brothers fan from an early age. My local TV station always played their comedies on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid. But it wasn’t until a few years ago, when I bought the DVD of “A Day At The Races” that I saw what my local station had been editing out all those years: The brothers escape from some bad guys by rubbing ash on their faces and “blending in” with a crowd of black stable workers.
Unfortunately, by editing out the whole scene, they also cut the incredible lindy hop dancing and soulful ballad by Ivie Anderson.
NotMax
Oopsie. Verboten word.
Variation of the old game of Shopping R0ulette.
Enter market, find an unattended cart, push to checkout, pay, take bags to car.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
The markets which have completely stopped providing hand baskets so you have to take a cart drive me batty.
p.a.
@srv: Goddamnit. I’ve got the fat guy’s cart. I don’t even like mustard. Fekit; I’m already in line.
NotMax
Partway through watching Happy Naked* Christmas, a Korean comedy movie.
Not great, not awful. Some amusing moments so far and I’m sure a plethora of cultural touchstones zipping right over my head.
*No, it’s not that kind of film. Get yer mind out of the gutter. :)
WereBear
Okay, it’s time. What are the worst forms of Christmas music?
a) jazz versions where they get waaaay too free form
b) novelty tunes where the first five hundred times were okay, but now it’s rubbing a nerve raw
c) ones you realize don’t actually have anything to do with the holiday!
d) Bing Crosby
Ajabu
@shell:
Fortunately, with the advent of remotes I can now hit the remote in the parking lot and my car will call out “Here I am!” as I chase down the sound. Makes getting old & stupid a little less painful.
Germy
@WereBear: I would say [A] gets on my nerves the most, followed by the novelty stuff (although I turn off both immediately if I can).
I will risk offending people here who may love them, but I do not like Mannheim Steamroller.
Denali
Once I in some sort of stupor left my cart in the meat aisle to look for something. When I returned it was gone, vanished. I enlisted the help of a guy behind the fish counter and started roaming the aisles. Found it near a very strange man in the card aisle. I am convinced he took it on purpose, maybe because he did not like it blocking the meat selections. Now I stay near my cart always. Is this paranoid?
Jerzy Russian
@Mnemosyne (tablet): What am I missing? I did not see any blackface in the linked scene.
Germy
Bach’s “Air on the G String” played on actual g-strings
NotMax
@shell
Also eschew making fruitcake, but do have a tradition of making killer-diller whiskey cake(s) each year during late December.
Wrapped snugly in plastic and then foil, lasts practically indefinitely in the fridge. Pairs especially well with a cup of hot tea.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m late arriving to this thread, but had to chime in with the Bing Crosby hate. The only thing of his I will watch is High Society, and that’s really only because of the wonderfulness of “Well, Did You Evah!?” (And because I had a girl-crush on Grace Kelly in 1956.)
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Jerzy Russian:
I didn’t watch the whole clip the first time around and didn’t realize whoever posted it cut it short. Note that it ends in the middle of a dance move. I’ll see if I can find the whole sequence at some point.
The number is called “Minstrel Show” so, yes, it’s in there.
ETA: Now I’m trying to remember if Crosby himself has blackface at the end of the sequence or is merely surrounded by white dancers in blackface. I’ll have to check the TCM schedule.
different-church-lady
What, no broken bones? No overturned cars? No missing clothing? You’ve got a long way to catch up with Cole.
On the other hand, check the bottom of your grocery bags — there’s half a chance a bottle of mustard you didn’t pick is down there…
different-church-lady
@WereBear: What about the Crosby/Bowie duet?
Kay
I like fruit cake and wish someone would make me one.
In other news, I thought this was funny:
Grifting accomplished :)
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: I’m not sure about “C” because I can’t think of a specific example at the moment. But I hate all the other ones. And I really can’t stand Paul McCartney’s “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time.” I just hate and despise that song so very much for no particular reason, aside from general suckitude.
J R in WV
Cars lost. We flew home from a 3 week vacation out in the south west – got into local airport way late, after 3 or 4 hours of snowstorm. We parked not in the being remodeled garage, but in a mile of fenced off tarmac, with minimal lighting. Did I mention midnight, snow, dark.
I couldn’t find the F’ing VW anywhere. I walked up and down the aisles of cars with snow on them, while Mrs J sat with luggage in the dark and deserted terminal. It seemed like it took hours, even with the power lock buttton. Finally!!!
Home was never so good!
I’ve done the merry-go-round with grocery store carts, too ‘I DON’T EAT THAT!’ in your mind. And who knows who took who’s basket when, or who was first to daze out and grab any basket.
Less time consuming that losing your car in a snowstorm at the airport at midnight. But odd, too.
OT, but open thread:
Also, too, home made fruit cake with home grown or local organic dried fruit, and rum and brandy soaked, what’s not to like??? Really?
Geeno
@srv: Florida Man can be a recurring character
Betty Cracker
@Kay: My granny ruined fruitcake for the entire family, forever. She relentlessly bombarded us with them, and they were just awful. Even after I reached adulthood, expressed anti-fruitcake views and tried allegedly “good” fruitcakes at friends’ insistence, all I could think was, “This tastes like a somewhat more palatable version of that horrible cake Granny makes me eat every year.” We lost Granny this summer, and I miss her. I won’t miss that awful fruitcake, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Out of idle curiosity, I googled “Bing Crosby blackface” and it took me to a site devoted to Der Bingle. The author was ripping AMC for cutting the “Abraham” scene in a screening of Holiday Inn, and dancing all over the place about censorship and blackface was part of our history and such.
Then I read this, which caused me to slam shut the iPad in disbelief:
catclub
@WereBear: Drummer Boy, any style.
NotMax
As it is Hannukah, a bravura Hava Nagila.
Jerzy Russian
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yes, I figured it was cut short. I can’t recall ever seeing the movie, although I do have a memory of seeing Mr. Crosby singing “White Christmas” in some kind of war zone.
David Rickard
Another reason the UN and ICC are useless: neither one has declared fruitcake a crime against humanity.
Jager
Betty,
A friend of mine from high school is a retired beer/wine distributor. He and wife spent some time with us in Sunny SoCal a couple of years ago. It was a nightmare to go to a bar with him because he’d give the bartender a seminar on how to handle tap beer, temp of bottled beer, tap line cleaning. Worse at the grocery store because if there was a manager available he’d hammer the guy about proper stocking of the “product”. Shit like you described drives him crazy. It’s the bastard’s hobby.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Hah! I love how people approach it with such trepidation- “you probably don’t want this..” Sure I do!
The Lodger
@WereBear: But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.
NotMax
@Kay
Just the word “fruitcake” dredges up unwelcome memories of seeing billboard after billboard after billboard for this when drove down the East coast from NY to Miami area one holiday season many moons ago (so long ago that the interstate wasn’t yet completed).
kc
@WereBear:
What?!? I love White Christmas! [sings] “Sisters … sisters … There were never such devoted sisters!”
kc
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I’m pretty sure there is NOT a blackface scene in White Christmas. There’s a “minstrel” number, but it’s not done in blackface.
kc
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I also think you’ve got Bing Crosby confused with Fred Astaire.
JustRuss
@Betty Cracker: Heh, my brother refers to it as “Simply Singing a Horrible Christmas Song”.
I can understand the cart mixup (been there!), but I don’t get the Wheat Thin hate. They’re about the only cracker my parents regularly bought, so kind of a staple for me. I don’t often buy them them but they’re just Things You Eat.
Mike in NC
@NotMax:Do people still give fruitcakes at Christmas? I know they used to be a very popular item to “re-gift” and they apparently had an indefinite shelf life.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Ha! I remember those signs! I believe there are still some off I-95, or at least there were last time I was doing the reverse of your trip…
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@SiubhanDuinne:
The one and only blackface scene that I’ll kind of defend is in Buster Keaton’s silent film “College,” and is visible starting at 27:40. My defense is:
— He’s in blackface but doesn’t act stereotypically in any way until he thinks his romantic rival has seen through his disguise
— None of the black actors in the scene with him act stereotypically
— When the rest of the kitchen staff realizes he’s a white guy in blackface, they chase him out of there with knives
But I will freely admit it’s not a very strong defense.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Suppose some must continue to do so. Whether out of habit, laziness or guile. difficult to say.
(People still display lawn jockeys, too.)
bemused
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Inexcusable! Unless the person happened to be quite elderly/frail/disabled although he/she probably wouldn’t have walked a mega space without using a cart to hang on to in the first place. Or a frazzled parent with crying baby and a few toddlers darting around but he/she normally would have thought ahead to getting a cart too. So I am back to inexcusable and lazy.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@kc:
You’re thinking of Holiday Inn, which White Christmas is a remake of, and, nope, it’s Crosby there, too, with the entire cast. Please note before clicking that the scene is REALLY BAD.
The famous Astaire blackface number (and how I wish I didn’t have to type those words) is the “Bojangles” number from Swing Time. It’s a misguided attempt to do a tribute to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who Astaire genuinely admired but … yeah. It’s one of those scenes where you end up repeating to yourself, Well, he MEANT well …
Betty Cracker
@JustRuss: I’m so glad you told me your brother’s brilliant lyric swap; from now on, I’ll sing along and substitute those words.
As for Wheat Thins, I perceive them as ersatz-healthy crackers for people who are attempting to cut down their consumption of the far superior Ritz, Captain’s Wafers or Nabisco Saltines. This could be just my personal bias.
I remember one time one of my uncles made a big pot of chili for a gathering, and everyone was about to sit down to eat, and my aunt said, “We’re out of regular crackers, so we’ll have to use Wheat Thins.” My uncle gave her a look and said, “Bye,” meaning she should get her ass in the car and go fetch some REAL crackers and not disrespect his chili with so-called Wheat Thins. I agreed 100%.
Hungry Joe
Can’t quite figure out why I loathe Bing Crosby and always have. It was gratifying to learn that a lot of people said he was a Grade-A asshole. I once read a book by a pool hustler who said that when he was a kid he lived down the hill from Crosby, and whenever the neighborhood kids saw his (chauffeur-driven) car winding its way down they’d kick a ball into the middle of the street and take their own sweet time getting it, because they hated his guts and he’d go ballistic at being made to wait.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@kc:
The full “Bojangles of Harlem” number. His big entrance is … pretty bad.
Oh, Fred. We know you probably meant well, and it was only 1936, but … no. Just no.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Remember the “colorization” craze of the early 90s? Why can’t some enterprising geek go in and take the blackface out of that “Swing Time” number, and the “Abraham” one from “Holiday Inn” while they’re at it?
Juju
@Mnemosyne (tablet): given that the name of the movie is “White Christmas”, perhaps the black face shouldn’t be so surprising.
Steeplejack (phone)
@WereBear:
I think it’s on YouTube. Too lazy to check on phone, but I pointed someone to it a few months ago.
ThresherK
While someone else brought up the idea of the movies “White Christmas” and “Holiday Inn”: “Holiday Inn is just so much better.
I’ve got my reasons (for later), but I want to know what other Juicers think.
trollhattan
Florida Man’s splendidly ironic undoing
Darwin award given on the spot.
PurpleGirl
@WereBear: PayPaled you something.
ETA: Cassie (of the Kitten Kastle) also wasn’t intending on having her own shelter/rescue but from fostering a few litters, it just grew. (In 2015 she has homed 300-odd cats and kittens.)
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Steeplejack (phone):
It’s definitely out there. You can get a version from Rifftrax that still has the original commercials in it. My brother found it for us on a download site and made us a DVD complete with a custom cover with quotes from George Lucas like, I want to hunt down every copy and smash it with a sledgehammer.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@ThresherK:
I think they are both terrible movies, but the presence of Fred Astaire makes “Holiday Inn” suck very slightly less. The “Abraham” number drags it lower than the “Minstrel Show” number drags “White Christmas,” but that’s because “White Christmas” is worse right from the start.
kc
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
@kc:
No, I’m familiar with both movies (and White Christmas is NOT a remake of Holiday Inn, it just uses the song from HI) You said that White Christmas had a blackface number. It does not. I thought perhaps YOU had it confused with Holiday Inn, which does have a blackface number, featuring Astaire, not Crosby.
That “Bojangles” bit has such great choreography and dancing. I wish Astaire hadn’t chosen to do it in blackface. I know he meant no disrespect but it just doesn’t go over today, and from what I read, it was an iffy decision back then.
kc
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Goddamnit, nobody’s in fucking blackface.
EmDeeBee
I know this is gonna sound stoppid, but is it possible the wines were in alphabetical order?
kc
@ThresherK:
Why not just avoid the movie? If it offends you so, don’t watch it … I really don’t understand how “colorizing” it would make it less offensive.
kc
@Betty Cracker:
Wheat Thins with chili? That’s just disgusting …
craigie
In some places, she would have shot you for that.
Denali
Also too Little Drummer Boy, as well as Do you see what I see.
ThresherK
@kc: No, I didn’t explain my oddball solution: The scenes with the blackface are taken out of new versions of the movie. I can’t remember when I saw each, but they were with those two musical numbers. Like Mnemosyne, I remember the Bojangles number, and everything she mentioned holds true for me.
So, if technology can take a B&W movie like Yankee Doodle Dandy and make it color (ish), can’t someone alter the movie to take the blackface out of the images so those two numbers can left in those two movies when they’re broadcast?
PurpleGirl
@NotMax: I like Adam Sandler’s Chanuka Song. Detest it after a few dozen hearings, though. Eight crazy nights….
kc
@ThresherK:
I imagine someone could do that, but I dunno, it just seems like a band-aid to me. But I mean, if it’s just the makeup that offends you, and not the whole spirit of the thing …
If I had any skills I’d just superimpose generic yellow smiley faces over the faces of Astaire & the girl in those numbers and post the YouTube here for your enjoyment. :)
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@kc:
Watch them back to back sometime. It’s the same basic plot, updated with some postwar elements. They even used the same “inn” set for both films.
I’m 90 percent sure the backup chorus in the minstrel number is in blackface, but I will need to see more than the one edited YouTube clip.
kc
@kc: @ThresherK:
I’ll add, I don’t mind watching the “Bojangles” number so much. I realize everyone else’s mileage will vary. But the blackface bit in Holiday Inn is a whole ‘nother level of what-the-fuck. It starts out bad and gets worse. There are black musicians featured in that scene; I always wonder what they thought about it.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I consider “White Christmas” a strange piece of Technicolor (in a bad way) 1950s attempted excess. In an era where musicals were getting big and ponderous and losing what humor the best brought to bear, the “save the General’s farm” story doesn’t help. And when spectacle was the trump card movies played to compete with TV, Paramount could not “out-MGM” MGM.
“Holiday Inn” is, to me, the last movie musical of the “1930s”, even though it was made in 1942: It’s B&W, has more than a ring of an Astaire/Rogers backstage plot, and just crackles with that kind of slightly giddy urbanity, topped off perhaps by Fred Astaire’s “drunk” dancing routine. This movie introduced a song which is of course writ very large on the national conscious especially with the separation of families during wartime, yet itself doesn’t mention WWII, and just sneaks in under that wire. Pretty soon musicals would trend to direct war effort stories, like “For Me and My Gal”, and things would never be the same. Not better, not worse, just decidedly different.
But, hey, that’s just me. (And your notes about the blackface numbers hold true.)
ETA: “Holiday Inn” has music by Bob Crosby and the Bobcats. Uptempo numbers in it really swing. That is a rare thing in musicals which aren’t particularly starring swing bands (i.e. Glenn Miller Orchestra in “Orchestra Wives”), and a unique pleasure point for me.
kc
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
@kc:
Nope, sorry. Completely different plots. I mean, sure, they each feature Bing Crosby playing an entertainer, and there’s an inn in both movies, but the plots are not the same at all, or even similar. I don’t think it’s the same set, either, but I’d have to check on that.
I’m 100 percent sure it isn’t..
ETA: I stand corrected on one point: IMDB says the same set was used for the inn in both movies.
ThresherK
@kc: Well, for “Holiday Inn”: The song “Abraham”, in itself, isn’t bad, and there’s no attempted rhyme with “Abraham”. The soudn? It’s given a nice herky-jerky arrangement which very much suits the off-kilter rhythm Irving Berlin wielded precisely (see the verse of “Top Hat”). The number built around it? Yeah, I can leave it.
But the Astaire-dancing-in-the-style-of-Bojangles is something I would like to enjoy, and could do so without the blackface.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@kc:
Really, “let’s save the farm with shows” is a totally different plot than “let’s save the farm with shows”? Okay, if you say so.
And if you can provide a clip of the full “minstrel” number to demonstrate your claim, it would be appreciated. I don’t have the DVD and will have to wait for it to show up on TCM, which is the most likely place for it to show up uncut. Most TV broadcasts delete blackface numbers.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Roused myself to look. For those who are interested, a somewhat censored full version of The Star Wars Holiday Special (“holiday?”—war on Christmas!) is here. A “best/worst of” selection is here.
And I will take this opportunity to vent about something that has been irritating me in the run-up to the new Star Wars movie. Since Day 1 George Lucas has been the whoriest ad/promotion/product placement/tie-in whore of all time, and Disney is going all out to keep the tradition alive. I fully expect to see Darth Whoever stop for a Pepsi break in the middle of a light-saber duel. The holiday special was not a mistake. It’s who George Lucas is.
kc
@kc:
Holiday Inn also had a pretty stereotypical “Mammy” character, who was called “Mammy …”
TOP123
I think my favourite Christmas card I ever sent was one with an Edward Gorey illustration of a family out on a frozen pond at night, dropping fruitcake a through a hole cut in the ice.
kc
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
.
Surely to god you can google this for yourself! White Christmas won’t show up on TCM, though you may see it on AMC. There won’t be any need to cut blackface out of the musical numbers, cause there is no blackface.
kc
Not White Christmas, but, well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCERfa8LcS4
kc
@kc:
Oh, now this is cool! I didn’t even know it existed. The things you learn arguing with people on the Internet …
Emma
@Mike in NC: No. Now they give panettone. Which is utter crap unless made by a 95 year old Italian grandmother using her grandmother’s recipe.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@kc:
It shows up on TCM every couple of years — it doesn’t seem to be scheduled at the moment, but they should update this page when it does get scheduled. You can also buy the DVD from them, but I ain’t biting.
FWIW, on that page Leonard Maltin calls it a “partial reworking” of Holiday Inn.
Captain C
@WereBear: Mannheim Steamroller. I once worked at a record store that had overbought their Christmas album. Guess what was the only thing we played for an entire month…
Madeline
@kc: Lurker here. Have to agree with just about everything you’ve said re White Christmas. My favorite Christmas movie. Own the DVD – watch it every year. No blackface. Different plot. Except my favorite number is The Best Things Happen When You’re Dancing. Vera-Ellen can dance.
Jay Noble
Holiday Inn plot: Bing and Fred open an Inn that is only open on Holidays.
White Christmas plot: Bing and Danny plan a big show to help save the “Old Man”s Inn from going under due to lack of snow.
I caught something a few days ago about the “moved” Thanksgivings that took place around the time the movie was made.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-thanksgiving-thing-i-did-not-know.html
MaryRC
@kc: Well, actually, she was called Mamie. But maybe her two little kids called her Mammy, I don’t remember.
MaryRC
@Jay Noble: Bing retires from showbiz and opens the inn after Fred steals his girlfriend and dancing partner. Bing is afraid that Fred is going to steal his new dancing partner so when Fred shows up at the inn as they’re celebrating Lincoln’s birthday, Bing gets the bright idea of performing the number with her in blackface so that Fred won’t recognize her. It truly is cringeworthy as is the New Year’s Eve scene with the African-American housekeeper’s little kids dressed up as Baby New Year and Old Father Time. The rest of the movie is actually enjoyable if you can accept the concept of Bing and Fred as chick magnets.
MaryRC
@kc: Incidentally, Mamie was played by the great Louise Beavers who often played the stereotypical jovial Aunt-Jemima domestic.
pluky
@goblue72: Basic rule applies here: If one wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it!
JustRuss
@Betty Cracker: Yikes. Never done Wheat Thins with chili, and never will. As a delivery platform for cheese or salami, they’re OK.
kc
@Madeline:
Thanks! Yep, Vera-Ellen is great. I love her in this bit (this is the super-fast “Abraham” number): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHBI2vZvqss