As redwood to bonsai in trees,
As hurricane to trade-wind in breeze,
As limburger to cheddar in cheese,
As Chamberlain to Mom-and-kids in appease,
As Vienna Boys Choir to Hoboken High in "Glee's",
As taxes to bus-fare in fees,
As diamond to gardenia in please,
As hospital to Primatene in wheeze,
As Roman Empire to Granada in seize,
As Earl Grey to Lipton in teas,
As killer to honey in bees,
As Paul Newman to Mickey Rooney in "he"s,
As Marlene Dietrich to Shirley Temple in "she"s,
As Claire's to a camel's in knees,
As the Rosetta Stone to Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring in keys,
As Gypsy Rose Lee to the Pink Poodle in "G"s,
As circus-trained to our dog Bud's in fleas,
As the National Enquirer to the Christian Science Monitor in sleaze - - -
So there was this INCREDIBLE
SNEEZE ! ! !
PS. Being less well in touch with popular culture than Mom, I had to double check about Primatene (asthma spray) and Hoboken High and Glee (a musical comedy about a group of eager and ambitious students who strive to outshine their singing competition to win nationals while navigating the cruel halls of McKinley High).
ReplyDeletePPS. Possibly the youngest among you might not recall the Reagan Administration’s 1983 invasion of Grenada, but I’d hope that the names of actors like Paul Newman (one of Mom’s heartthrobs, after Robert Redford), Mickey Rooney, Marlene Dietrich, and Shirley Temple (before ST was primarily known as the eponymous drink) were at least generally familiar. Not everyone will recall why Gypsy Rose Lee was famous: her striptease act. Aside from burlesque, she was also “an actress, author, and playwright whose 1957 memoir was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.”
PPPS. Predating even my memory are Little Orphan Annie Decoder Rings . From the always more than you want to know, Wikipiedia: “Secret decoders are generally circular scales; descendants of the cipher disk developed in the 15th Century by Leon Battista Alberti. Rather than the complex polyalphabetic Alberti cipher method, the decoders for children invariably use simple Caesar cipher substitutions. The most well-known example started in 1934 with the Ovaltine company's sponsored radio program Little Orphan Annie. The fan club's member's handbook included a simple substitution cipher with a resulting numeric cipher text. This was followed the next year with a membership badge or pin which included a cipher disk - enciphering the letters A-Z to numbers 1-26. Similar badges and pocket decoders continued with the Captain Midnight radio and television programs. None of these early decoders were in the form of finger rings, but "secret compartment" rings were common radio program premiums… and in 2000 Ovaltine offered a Secret Decoder Ring to be worn on the finger which used their traditional A-Z to 1-26 scheme. Ovaltine and other companies that marketed early decoders to children often included "secret messages" on their radio shows aimed at children. These could be decoded for a preview of the next episode of the show. There is an urban legend, immortalized in the movie A Christmas Story that the Little Orphan Annie radio show transmitted a secret message that deciphered to: "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine." This, however, is incorrect. Although the announcer instructed the listeners to set their decoder rings to "B-2", thus indicating that the letter "B" (the first letter in the supposedly decoded message) was represented by the number "2", the first code number in the message was not "2"
PPPPS. Not a French film buff? Le genou de Claire, or Claire’s Knee (1970), by Eric Rohmer is not likely to be at the edge of memory for you.
PPPPPS. What about the Pink Poodle? I have to admit, this one had me stumped. However, the reference to Gypsy Rose Lee was an invaluable clue, and sleuthing reveals that the PP is an adult Theater on Bascom Avenue in San Jose, not all that far from where I grew up. I have to imagine that with Mom’s scientific background, her interest in this G- was more in theory than application, noting further that it was clearly more about “string” than “rated”.