Mostly Gonna Be Random Shit

moonbeam, you uncultured

fireball-brained wizard.

either way, she always has at least three kids, sometimes more. you don't want to ask when she had them, but she had to have them young because her youngest had to have been born when she was at least seventeen based on how time works. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

she's smiling but there's something missing in her eyes - a spark that should be there. there's no passion, there's just the movements of the day. sometimes she'll give an interview where she says she barely feels like getting out of bed, and other times she says nothing. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

her world isn't real - it's neat kitchens and made from scratch cheese. she tells you how she doesn't need feminism because she likes this life, she likes wearing pretty dresses, don't you dare pity her. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

you scroll up to an ex tradewife in her forties talking about how her husband divorced her and left her for a younger girl, leaving her destitute and penniless and twenty years out of the workforce. you scroll again to a pretty young girl saying she doesn't need a job, her husband will take care of her. you scroll again. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

another woman, this time in her early thirties, talking about how she just managed to leave her abusive husband and has nothing and he took the kids, warning and pleading young girls to not fall for tradwife lies. you scroll again to a young tradwife girl saying that would never happen to her, and you're just jealous of her. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

you scroll again. a teen girl tells you that she'll just track her period, she doesn't NEED a toxic chemical like birth control. you scroll again to an obgyn pleading with young girls to understand birth control is just hormonal, and that period tracking isn't effective. you just watch happen. you can't save her.

you scroll again, and it's jd vance saying how women belong in the homes and shouldn't be allowed to vote. that their husbands should decide how they should vote. you scroll again to a domestic abuse counselor telling women their vote is private and they can lie to their husbands. you just watch it happen. you can't save her.

Here’s HSTHETE, the 24 hour comic I drew this year!  Thanks to everybody who followed along on twitter this weekend as I posted these pages <3

because you cannot, you CANNOT, build a barn on your own, and without it, you will not be able to survive. 

most of the animation studios had their ‘thing’ to make their animation stand out, disney had fluid motion linked with quality music, warner brothers had top notch dialogue with carefully crafted facial expressions, MGM had comedic timing down to the individual frame that no live action comedian could dream of achieving, terrytoons had the budget of a ham sandwitch and a fistfull of nickels fleischer studios however had authentic jazz and heavy toned subject matter, often crossing the line of what we think of as ‘cartoon violence’ into realistic

While the gifs are from Minnie the Moocher (1932). Vices mentioned: sexiness / sex work (“she was a red hot hoochie-coocher”, generally meaning dancer, um, with benefits), cocaine (“she loved him though he was cokey”), opium (“He took her down to Chinatown and showed her how to kick the gong around”), and, in the last two verses, a string of classics like greed (“a home built of gold”, “a diamond car”, “a million dollars”), gluttony (“each meal was a dozen courses”) and more gambling (“racing horses”), all assumed to be the result of hooking up with a sugar daddy (“he gave her things that she was needin’”). 

HOWEVER, these two verses don’t tell us what Minnie has, they tell us what she dreams. In the film, Betty Boop forays into the exciting perils of the underworld and then flees back to her repressive but safe home. In the song, Min is of the underworld, dreaming luxuries she can’t have. Not unlike the Little Match Girl lighting a match, or Pirate Jenny, who’s not really a pirate, looking out a shitty brothel’s window and waiting for a ship that’s not there. That’s why the song is so funny and at the same time so dark, not because it lists “vices”.

See, Minnie the Moocher was a real person. Her name was Minnie Gayton, and she was a homeless beggar in Indianapolis, around 60 years old at the time: “she acquired the quaint nickname of ‘The Moocher’ by regularly begging food from grocers and carting it off in a baby buggy. She slept on doorways, on porches and in garages.” And she died about 20 years later, during a terrible blizzard, from exposure. They did get her to a hospital, but by then it was too late.

Do you think she ever lit a match, and imagined in its light extravagant meals and sacks of money and cars and booze and coke, and some sweet love to fight off the cold? Do you think she liked the song? Do you think it cheered her up? God I hope so.

Have you ever heard about Willie the weeper? Had a job as a chimley sweeper. He had the dope habit and he had it bad. Listen while I tell you ’bout a dream he had.

He went down to the dope shop one Saturday night. He knew the lights would all be burnin’ bright. Well I guess he smoked a dozen pills or more; When he woke up he was on a foreign shore.

The Queen of Sheba was the first he met. She called him lovey dovey and honey pet. She gave him a great big autie-mobile With a diamond headlight and a go-holden wheel.

Down in Honolulu Willie fell in a trance Seein’ the dusky beauties do the hula dance. His sweetie got in jail and Willie sure did shout When he got the news that she had wiggled out.

He landed with a splash in the river Nile Ridin’ on seagoin’ crocodile He winked at Cleopatra. She said, “Ain’t he a sight.” (‘N’ she said) “How ‘about a date for next Saturday night?”

He had a million cattle and he had a million sheep. Had a million vessels on the ocean deep. Had a million dollars all in nickels and dimes, Well he knew because he counted it a thousand times.

He landed in New York one evenin’ late. He asked his sugar for an after-date. Started to kiss her and she started to pout, When bang-blang! And the dope gave out.

By the way, I’ve found transcripts of “Minnie the Moocher's” lyrics with three extra verses (see here), but no recording that includes them except a cover by a modern revival band.

It’s also mentioned in the wikipedia talk page. And noted in this list of works but not in the transcribed lyrics. The recordings I’ve seen are all pretty consistent, and any adlibbing is usually in the call and response. But it could have been cut early on for sake of performance?

This blog post in French claims to have period sheet music with the extra verses.

That cover isn’t BBVD, but it might be Big Time Operator as suggested by a YT commenter. Album called High Altitude Swing. Can’t find even preview clips of it, but a brief compare with the one other song from this band on YouTube seems similar enough in style and voice.

Since I went way down the rabbit hole, have some more gems like this 1983 documentary

A whole movie

A later interview

And an autobiography that might have more information

You can see the mischief in this one:

The disco version!

The Rhythm and Blues Review (toward the end)