Earlier in the year, I shared that Maribou and I were slowly working our way through all four seasons of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Well, this week, we finally finished season four. Happy sigh, the show was amazing.
Now, I am the guy who insists on watching the opening credits, yes, every time. So I have seen this little number a *LOT*:
The thing I started noticing 20 times in happens at 00:36 seconds. No, not Rocky. Look at the chauffeur. He’s wearing a mask. Huh. That’s something odd but… I waved it away as no big deal until a Friday night rolled around and I was enjoying some wine and some music videos from my youth and, holy cow, I’d seen it before!
Check out this Sting video for Desert Rose:
She’s wearing one.
And so then I got to wondering… what the heck? Did chauffeurs used to wear masks? I mean, those aren’t the pre-windshield eye-goggles that you’d expect in the horseless carriage days.
So I did some more research and quickly found Kato from the Green Hornet and, yes, he was wearing a mask too!
And then I totally hit a brick wall. Were the masks that the chauffeurs wearing on Rocky and Bullwinkle and in the Sting video based on little more than Kato? I mean, my first thought was that Kato was wearing the mask because chauffeurs wore masks and it had the added functionality of the whole “masked vigilante” thing but it allowed him to hide in plain sight.
Brilliant!
But… well, the last year and a half has kind of ruined googling “chauffeur masks” and googling the whole “domino mask chauffeur” doesn’t help.
So… instead of finding out the root of this, I just sort of hit a dead end. I mean, there are a ton of superheroes that wear domino masks and that goes back to the early days of the Spirit (1940) or the Phantom (1936) and, of course, The Lone Ranger wore one (1933). Or, at least, they say that the Lone Ranger wore one. (He kinda didn’t show up until the first serial in 1938.)
And… that’s it.
So this weekend I might try to research it a little bit more but, seriously, that’s a dead end if ever I’ve seen one. I kinda wish I had thought to google it back in 2018 but… woulda coulda shoulda.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “WIP: Green domino mask” by Eithin and is licensed under CC BY 2.0)
my plans are to mentally stick my fingers in the ears of my anxiety-about-omicron and scream “la la la can’t hear you” and go to the yarn shop that’s about 45 minutes away from me for the first time since February 2020. (So that’s what, 21 months? 21 years? I forget). (I’ve been boostered and will mask and will avoid crowds, but still). Might stop by the Ulta, I don’t know, will see how crowded it looks when I get near it. This is life for me now, I guess.
Classes will be done for the semester; next week is finals. I feel less triumphant and more flattened than I remember being before – this semester does NOT feel like a success and I’m afraid a lot of my intro students will be repeating the class through some combo platter of my teaching being less good than it was in the past, their own pandemic stress, and study skills that have atrophied during the last 2 years of “virtual” high school for most of them (this is the freshman level class). I wish this semester felt more like a W than an L, but it is what it is.
11 days before I go to see my mom for Christmas; hoping and praying I don’t have to decide “you know, it’s not worth the risk of stepping on an Amtrak sleeper car just to see her” and spend another Christmas alone. I’m more sanguine about the possibility of “what if things blow up so much it’s not safe to travel back home in January” because I have plans to deal with that.Report
I apologize for what I’m about to say if it comes across as manipulative or insensitive, but…my Mom died in March. She’d had some health problems over the last handful of years so it wasn’t exactly a surprise or anything, but it still floored us all when it happened. COVID kept me from really getting to visit her as much as I wanted to, apart from a socially-distanced visit in which we sat in the yard in lawn chairs and my parents sat inside and we talked through the sliding screen door.
So, just…time is short, and a visit would probably make you both feel better. By all means, make the decision that you’re comfortable with, but…Go see your mother.Report
So very sorry for your lossReport
First Christmas party in a long time, and boy am I ready. Still not enjoying the enforced bachelorhood, but I figure I better get used to it.
I’ll be burning my Xmas card CD (been doing it for 20 years). Shoot me an email if you’d like one. Still need some cover art, but the fun part of coming up with the songs is done.Report
I don’t need a cd, but I would *LOVE* a listing of the songs!Report
Here you go:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6hJN05DWVHMgaG5Ai8B6Mr?si=a0a6c6e4baee41aeReport
This one isn’t available on Spotify, but it’s so good I don’t want anyone to miss it. I liked it some much I made it the opening track on the CD. Very festive and upbeat.
https://blue-verylabel.bandcamp.com/track/another-christmas-will-come-around-this-yearReport
Awesome. Thank you!Report
thank youuuuuuuuReport
I’m pretty sure that Bullwinkle’s chauffeur was wearing driving glasses. Gotta keep the bugs and wind out of your eyes. At 1:06, those look a lot more like glasses than a mask. And I’m no authority on this, but I think Kato only wore a mask when his boss wore one.
ETA: Don’t forget that under Google Tools you can limit a search with a calendar.Report
The rings are too large, though.Report
Having viewed it more than 30 times now, I’m pretty sure I spotted Umbrella Man in the crowd.Report
Looking in the crowd, we see several people with spectacles. None of them have pupils.
This guy has pupils.
That’s a domino mask.Report
yeah but given the low quality of animation of the day, I’d probably be more likely to interpret it as driving goggles….or that the guy just had a really late night the night before. Or even it’s a shadow from the brim of the capReport
My wife and I are going to be relocating, but this time, we are buying a house. Earlier this week, we were shopping for houses. The first day was crazy, without anything great (but if you want a house with a shower in the dining room, I can hook you up). The second day we found a few we loved. We thought we had an accepted offer, but the seller wanted us to take it as-is. We said “fish no, this isn’t LA,” and we will be putting an an offer on the other house we loved.
This weekend will probably involve a lot of drinking and resting. Riding in a car and walking around houses is much more exhausting than I ever would have guessed, and all this back and forth and waiting on responses to offers is nerve-wracking.Report
It will be a difficult weekend to do anything constructive, as yesterday I got the new (and last in the series) Alex Verus novel, and the new (and last in the series) Expanse novel. Who lives? Who dies? Tying up loose ends…Report