Category: lists

10 great movies with kick-ass women who don’t necessarily kick anyone’s ass

I’ve been putting together a number of lists of movies, TV shows and other media that feature women that I have called kick-ass. (For an index to the lists, see the kick-ass women project page.) The lists so far are mostly about movies and shows in the action genre, with lots of nods to those women characters who can really kick some ass. As in physical kicking of physical asses. It has recently been suggested to me that it would also be nice to see more about movies with women who kick-ass in a more figurative sense: strong, courageous, intelligent and in control. Possessing of dignity, integrity and wit. So, here goes:

10 great movies with kick-ass women who don’t necessarily kick anyone’s ass

  1. Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
    Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale) is a witty young woman who likes to put things in order. She is not easily daunted, even by her somewhat menacing eccentric relatives. (This is one of my favorite movies, too. Also a very funny and pleasant movie.)
  2. Dolores Claiborne (1995)
    This thriller features several strong and intelligent women characters, played by Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Judy Parfitt.
  3. Contact (1997)
    Jodie Foster plays Eleanor Arroway, a brilliantly kick-ass scientist. (I actually haven’t seen this yet, but have it on good authority that her character kicks ass.)
  4. Zero Effect (1998) Kim Dickens plays Gloria Sullivan, a young woman who brilliantly and calmly masterminds a scheme for her own ends. An excellent mystery movie overall, too.
  5. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
    Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) flouts tradition and disguises herself as a boy in order to pursue her desire to act on the stage.
  6. 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
    In this adaptation of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles), is a high school girl who knows her mind. And knows a lot of other things, too.
  7. Saving Grace (2000)
    Brenda Blethyn plays Grace Trevethyn, a courageous and innovative woman with a green thumb who turns to unusual measures to make money to save her house.
  8. Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)
    Audrey Tautou stars as Amélie, who uses her wit and creativity to make a difference in the world around her.
  9. Bend it Like Beckham (2002)
    Parminder Nagra plays Jesminder ‘Jess’ Kaur Bhamra, a teenage girl who defies her traditional family’s wishes to pursue her love of football (as in soccer). Also features Keira Knightly as another footballer.
  10. Volver (2006)
    This Almodóvar movie is dominated by strong women characters.Penélope Cruz stars as Raimunda, a daughter, a sister, and a mother of a teenage daughter. Courageous and resourceful, she pulls things together to protect her daughter after an incident where her daughter kills a man in self-defense.

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This post is being kicked over to the //engtech group writing project #3.

Thanks to bs, who suggested a version of the title of this post in a comment.

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seeing red

It’s Thursday once more. Which means it’s time for some Themed Things. This week’s Thursday theme is red folks, to follow up on those blue folks. Red-furred, red-skinned, red-shelled, or red cardboard, this post is red all over.

  1. The Devil. The big bad red dude. Frequently portrayed pitch fork-wielding, with pointy horns, and a long pointy tail. And also very red.

    devil_pd.jpg cute_devil.png

  2. Hellboy (2004) A movie starring Ron Perlman about a big, strong guy. Red. Looks like a demon but files down his horns. Based on a comic book character.

    3. hellboy.jpg     frylock.jpg zoidberg.jpg

  3. Frylock, from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The guy, or technically, the animate red-faced box of fries, with the brains and know-how.
  4. Dr. Zoidberg. The lobster-like alien doctor (from the planet Decapod 10) on Futurama. Fun to quote (note that Fry is a human male):

    Dr. Zoidberg: Now open your mouth and lets have a look at that brain.
    Dr. Zoidberg: No, no, not that mouth.
    Fry: I only have one.
    Dr. Zoidberg: Really?
    Fry: Uh… is there a human doctor around?
    Dr. Zoidberg: Young lady, I am an expert on humans. Now pick a mouth, open it and say “brglgrglgrrr”!

  5. Clifford, the Big Red Dog. A dog. Who is both big and red. A favorite book character from my childhood. Now a franchise with oodles and oodles of Clifford books and merchandise. And a TV show, apparently.

    6. bk_clifford_deluxe.jpg elmo.jpgwilt.png

  6. Wilt, from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Tall, skinny, and red.
  7. Elmo. The fuzzy annoyingly squeaky-voiced Sesame Street character. (Here’s an Elmo link to click at your own risk.)

    8. a_akadouji-kasuga-shrine-1488ad.jpg

  8. akadouji

    Literally “Red Youth.” Also often called Kasuga Akadouji 春日赤童子. A mysterious human figure said to have appeared on a rock immediately in front of the Kasuga 春日 Shrine gate. He often is shown as a youth (Jp. = douji), colored red (Jp = aka), standing on a rock, and leaning on a staff.

    9. redlionjacket.gif

  9. The Red Lion: A Persian folktale and book based on the same by Diane Wolkstein. About a prince who must learn to face his fears and fight a lion. Who is red. (The flag of Iran used to have a red lion on it, too.)

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So them’s the red folks. Want more color than just red? Feast your eyes on the latest Carnival of Colors.

sinking my teeth in

I’ve decided I need to organize my things. I have a tendency to make lists of things, willy-nilly, whenever the urge strikes. Any old day of the week. Whether it’s blue dudes on a Saturday, balls on a Friday, or pigs on a Sunday, or cheese on a Tuesday. Willy-freakin’-nilly, I tell you.

So I was all like “hey, I should pick a day. Have a thing day. A themed thing day.”¹ So to go all out with the alliteration, I’m going with Thursdays. Thus creating the Themed Thing Thursday.

So in honor of the onset consonant of the words theme, thing and Thursday, the voiceless inderdental fricative, my first official theme of things for this Themed Thing Thursday will be teeth. Because without teeth, it’s really hard to say things.

teeth.jpg

A few things toothy

  1. ϴ or theta.
    The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for the voiceless dental (or interdental) fricative. This sound is usually written “th” in English, though the sound is nothing like a t followed by an h. (Note also that not all instances of “th” are stand-ins for theta: there’s the evil twin ð, too. Sometimes called the “eth.” It’s the voiced dental fricative. You know, the one in the.)
  2. The Tooth Fairy
    A legendary individual who pays children for losing their teeth. In the version of the myth I grew up with, when you lose a tooth, you put it under your pillow when you go to bed. In the morning, you wake up to find a coin in place of the tooth. The explanation for this phenomenon is not that the tooth has metamorphosized, but that a strange woman, possibly with wings, sneaked into your room while you slept, and felt around under your very head for the tooth, grabbed and pocketed said tooth, and then left you a small payment. This was supposed to be a comforting tale.
  3. The Wikipedia Tooth Fairy page has a whole bunch of fun popular culture references to the tooth fairy by the way, such as the episode of the Simpsons where Bart loses his last baby tooth, or Darkness Falls (2003), horror movie about an evil tooth fairy.
  4. The movie Toothless (1997)
    I had actually never heard of this movie until some soul out there tried desperately to find quotes from the movie. I have no idea why. I’m assuming it was the same person, trying variations of “quotes from the movie toothless” and “toothless movie quotes.” And they kept getting my post on movie quotes where I quote the “tough and ruthless/rough and toothless” bit from Kentucky Fried Movie. Anyhow, the movie “Toothless” was a TV movie from 1997, and looks to have been pretty sucky. Kirstie Allie played a dentist turned tooth fairy.
  5. Speaking of dentists, there’s the movie Marathon Man (1976) (And also the novel by William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride.)
    The story features a famous (or infamous) torture scene involving an evil, sadistic dentist. (“Is it safe?”)
  6. Little Shop of Horrors. A 1960’s B movie that was later adapted to a Broadway musical which was later adapted to another movie. The main story is about an alien man-eating plant, but it also features a sadistic dentist. (Clearly, some people have issues with dentists.) Steve Martin plays the dentist in the 1986 movie.
  7. Just in case you fear that all pop culture portrayals of dentists are unfavorable, Monty Python offers this counter-example, featuring heroic feats performed by a member of the BDA. (“It’s a man’s life in the British Dental Association”):

  8. And speaking of Python, what list of teeth could be complete without those big pointy teeth from the Holy Grail. You may be happy (or dismayed) to learn that you can now purchase associated merchandise, such as slippers and hand-puppets featuring rabbits with big pointy teeth.

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¹ I’m also inpsired by some folks I admire who have their own weekly theme days, like KC’s Medical Advice Mondays and Sage’s Word Wise Wednesdays.

7 fun musical movies (that are not necessarily movies that are musicals)

Here’s a list of some great musically-oriented movies. Not musicals, necessarily. (Where I define a musical as “a movie or play where the characters up and sing a bunch of their lines, and dance around randomly in a way that has nothing to do with the plot.”) So, not musical movies, but music movies, I guess. These are about singing and playing music. (I’ll get around to the dancing later.) (Not that I’ll be doing any dancing. Or at least not that I’m willing to share. But I will make a list.)

7 fun musical (though not musical) movies

  1. This is Spinal Tap (1984)
    This movie goes up to 11. Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer totally rock in this heavy metal mockumentary. Okay, the music is bad. Deliberately bad. (With song titles like “Lick my love pump.”) In spite of the bad music, this early Rob Reiner-directed movie is lots of fun. And you just gotta love the Stonehenge scene.
  2. The Commitments (1991)
    A group of unemployed, underemployed and otherwise down-on-their-luck Dubliners put together a band to sing soul. The music is great, the story is entertaining, and the music is great. Plus, the music is great. (It’s actually a fun and funny movie, too.) Features an excellent, talented, but largely little-known cast. Maria Doyle Kennedy sings an excellent cover of Aretha’s “I Never Loved a Man.”
  3. Bob Roberts (1992)
    This movie is possibly more scary than fun. Not scary in a blood-and-guts nail-biting edge-of-your-seat sort of way. Scary in a too-close-too-home political sort of way. Tim Robbins plays a liberal-bashing manipulative politician. Who sings.
  4. Little Voice (1998)
    Jane Horrocks (perhaps best known as Ab Fab‘s Bubble) can sing like others like no other. Borrowing the songs (and voices) of such folks as Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey and Marilyn Monroe, Jane Horrocks lights up the movie with her incredible range and talent. (Michael Caine also plays a memorable role as a skeezy talent scout.)
  5. O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
    Bluegrass music is one of the stars of this Coen brothers film. The other stars, George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson, play escaped convicts in the 1930’s deep south. Among the other adventures on their odyssey, they record an old-time song that becomes a radio hit.
  6. A Mighty Wind (2003)
    The brilliant minds and faces of Best In Show, Spinal Tap and Waiting For Guffman get together again. The amazing Christopher Guest directs. This time, the mockumentary is about folk singers. The music is fun, the dialog (improvised, mind you) is funnier. (“There was abuse in my family, but it was mostly musical in nature.”)

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This post is being warbled, crooned, chirped, yodeled and otherwise sung for the 3rd //engtech group writing project. Earplugs not included.

spam spam wonderful spam

Here’s a post about spam to follow up on all of last week’s cheese.

WordPress has a pretty decent comment spam filter, and not too many spam comments see the light of day. (According to my stats page, over 2500 spam comments have been caught by the spam filter in the 6 months I’ve had this blog.) I do still sift through my caught spam periodically, just in case something legit has gotten trapped. Often, I’ll see boring lists of links for hotels or celebrity photos, or prescription drugs, or drug scandals about celebrities who share names with major hotels. Sometimes I see links for porn sites that I really, really didn’t want to know existed. (I’m greatly disturbed by the non-consensual ones…) Anyhow, spam, when it’s not disturbingly offensive, can be downright dull. But lately, I’ve been seeing a trend that makes the task of sifting through the spam box a bit more entertaining: some spam that makes me laugh. I thought I’d share a few with you, though without the links to whatever it was they were trying to sell, and a few of my thoughts in response. (Mind you, these are supposedly left as “comments” on posts. Generally the “comment” has nothing whatsoever to do with the post it’s left on.)

Some spam comments that made me laugh

hot old babes

Hey, I’m not that old. Am I? But thanks for calling me hot.

bangers booty fat intro article

Yes, I’m starting some research on bangers booty fat, and I feel I need a good overview on the topic.

Books about spy cam upskirt.

Ah, yes, those would be in the spy cam upskirt section, which is between the section on booty fat and the books on hot old babes.

wholesale interior door intro

It’s definitely the way in. All the way in.

Fresh news on bag laundry.

Wow! I can hardly contain my excitement!

News about skinny big boob.

Not just big, but skinny big. I can just see the headlights headlines.

Good information source for tushy massage movie.

Wait, are we talking about a feature-length movie of butt-rubbing? Or just a short? I guess that’s why we need a good information source.

Variants of sweet ass.

I’m writing a poem for my true love, and I don’t want to overuse the expression “sweet ass.”

Fresh information about naruto hentai wallpaper.

All the information I can find on naruto hentai wallpaper is so damn stale, and I want to redecorate my dining room with an anime porn theme.

big gay bear introduction

I always suspected that there was more going on between Yogi Bear and Booboo than just stealing pic-a-nic baskets.

Good information source for bowling party bag.

Thank god I finally know where to go for this!

Actual news on car rental toyota category.

Yes, this is the news the masses crave. Hasn’t FoxNews stepped up to the challenge?

Hhgghhg kdfgdg sdgfgt sd gdsgdgsdg gd sdgdgsdg

I found this one to be a bit…gdtfgdgd cryptic. You know what I gsgsf?

:) Hi everybody! Does anybody know what is propecia? What a shirt? I go crazy about this!
I found it here:

Can I just repeat, “What a shirt?” What the hell does that mean? I go crazy about this!

Hi
You are The Best!!!
Bye

As for this one, I was sorely tempted to let it pass through. Gosh, thanks!

——————-

And here, in case that wasn’t enough spam for you, have another helping of spam, spam, spam, python and spam:

dances with cheese

Yes, it’s cheese week here at collecting tokens. Because I apparently just can’t get enough cheese.¹

Anyhow, inspired in part by the pants game (wherein a word in a known quotation, expression or title is replaced by the word pants) and in part by a post² I came across on adding the word cheese to movie titles, I offer up my own list of movie titles. (I got all these movie titles, or at least a previous version of them from the AFI’s 100 years 100 movies page. So these are high quality films that I’m making a cheese mockery of.)

Classics of Cheese Cinema

  • From Cheese to Eternity (1953)
    Passion. Betrayal. Cheese.
  • Bonnie and Cheese (1967)
    Partners in crime, partners in cheese.
  • Apocalypse Cheese (1979)
    A dark and dangerous mission of cheese.
  • A Streetcar Named Cheese (1951)
    Glimpse the cheesy underbelly of New Orleans.
  • Rebel Without a Cheese (1955)
    Trouble’s coming. And it’s bringing crackers.
  • Wuthering Cheese (1939)
    A haunting tale of star-crossed young cheese lovers.
  • Gone with the Cheese (1939)
    An epic saga of love, war and cheese.
  • The Wizard of Cheese (1939)
    If ever a wonderful wiz there was…wait, would that be the CheeseWiz?
  • It’s a Wonderful Cheese (1946)
    A sentimental film that shows a glimpse of a world without cheese.
  • 2001: A Cheese Odyssey (1968)
    The awe and mystery of a cheese unlike any other.
  • Raiders of the Lost Cheese (1981)
    When they find it, they really don’t want to smell it.
  • The Silence of the Cheese (1991)
    Is the cheese quiet now, Clarice?

    • —————
    ¹It has occurred to me that I must consider cheese to be a funny word. Much like pants, squid, banana, duck and monkey. However, I don’t see any mention of cheese on the Wikipedia inherently funny word article.

    ²Really, I promise to stop this daily linking to Words for My Enjoyment. What’s funny is that I first came across the blog via my takehome final, as mentioned previously, but then found it again totally inadvertantly and coincidentally while doing a google search for “cheese” and “movies”. (Did I mention that there’s aren’t too many cheese movies?) It was almost as if it was written in the cheese…Wait, “Written on the Cheese.” I think that’s a movie, too.

    extra cheese

    You know what really cheeses me off? When I finish a list and realize I’ve forgotten something.

    It’s like going to the grocery store to buy bread, eggs and milk, and then remembering I need cheese too as I’m driving on my way there, but I figure I’ll wait to add it to my list, since it would be hazardous to write while driving, even if it is only one word, and then when I get there, going into this trance as I wander the aisles with my shopping cart, and wondering what it means that supermarkets now play music that was actually popular when I was in high school, and feeling up the melons and squeezing the toilet paper, then browsing the cereal aisle and feeling nostalgic for the days of my youth when lucky charms were an exotic unattainable bowl of cereal at the end of the rainbow because my mother insisted on having us eat healthy cereals like wheat chex and when I finally tried them, they really weren’t that thrilling, and resisting the urge to buy cookies and redi-whip and donuts, and before you know it, I’ve filled up the cart and then I head home with my bags of groceries, and after I put away my bread and my milk and my pint of organic blackberry sorbet, which seemed like a healthier choice than the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, but screw it, I bought that too, and bananas and maple syrup and zucchini and oatmeal and frozen peas, and then find a crumpled up paper in my pocket, and it’s my grocery list with its three measly items (bread, eggs and milk) scribbled on it, and realize that I’ve forgotten the eggs, and (crap!) I also forgot to get more cheese.

    You know what I’m saying?

    Anyhow, I realized that I left off some key pieces of cheese from yesterday’s cheeseful bounty. Such as:

    1. Richard Cheese, a musician who, along with his band Lounge Against the Machine, provides cheesy lounge music reinterpretations of so many your favorite contemporary songs. Also in the music category is the band The String Cheese Incident. Then there’s the apparently sadly now-defunct Cheese Patrol, a

      yearly homage to all the songs that people vociferously hate but secretly know all the words to. These are the songs we grew up with; overorchestrated. overwrought, oversynthed, over the top.

    2. Somehow I also managed to leave off the appearance of the cheese guy in the Buffy episode “Restless“, as well as a few other cheesy references. And in my research I came across this brilliant essay “An Analysis of Cheese as Metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Apparently, the layers of cheese in the Buffy series run far deeper than I’d realized.
    3. For more on cheese philosophy, you can check out this essay “on the non-existence of cheese.” Is there proof of the existence of cheese in the universe? Perhaps not.
    4. Then there’s the Cheese Burglar. But I’m not really a big fan of the cult of which he is a member. So instead I offer this cartoon mouse classic, The Cheese Burglar (1946). (You can even see it on YouTube. Though I admit to not having watched anything close to the whole 7 minutes.)
    5. I actually like the animation of this (shorter) shortThe Cheese Trap better, which features a cg version of the board game Mouse Trap, one of my childhood favorites.
    6. Do you hanker for a hunka cheese? Do you remember this rather creepy cartoon psa from the 70s? You might also be interested in the hunk-hankerers guest appearance on the Family Guy.
    7. Yesterday’s cheese did not include much in the way of cheese activities for those of you with too much time and not enough cheese on your hands. Options include: a quiz to let you know what kind of cheese you are. (There’s also a similar-veined one-step cheese “comparator,” but the reviews are not stellar.)
    8. There’s even an experiment with cheese that you can perform at home on your own. (However, the author does recommend exercising caution if you are lactose tolerant.) (And no, my dear seester, this is not the same cheese experiment you tried with me that one time when we were little. I’ll write about that later.)
    9. Most thrillingly, you can actually watch cheese *live* online. That’s right, you can watch watch cheddar cheese aging. Not only is it just as exciting as it sounds, it is also apparently the cool thing to do. (If you don’t have the months to spare to see the change in progress, you can also check out this time-lapse video encapsulating 3 months of the cheese-aging process.)
    10. And even though I offered it up yesterday, no cheese list would be complete without The Cheese Shop sketch. This time, I serve it up in its youtubiful glory:

    say cheese

    swiss_cheese.jpgYou might think you need to go to the grocery store to find cheese, but I have found cheese in a variety of unexpected places: books, movies, music and more. (And yes, it can get messy. Let me tell you, camembert is not something you want to find in an unexpected place.) I’ve come across so much cheese that there’s far too much for just me. So, I offer up to you this delectable platter of assorted cheesy goodness. Get your crackers ready.

    1. “The Big Cheese”: an expression meaning “the top banana” or “the head honcho.” (Please note that the “head cheese” means something totally different.) Here’s something I did not now about the origins of the expression “big cheese“:

      This use of the word probably derived not from the word cheese, but from the Persian or Hindi word chiz, meaning a thing.

    2. Little Miss Muffet This nursery rhyme girl not only sits on her tuffet, but she eats her curds and whey. That’s cottage cheese, my friend.
    3. “The Cheese Alarm,” a song by Robyn Hitchcock. This is a song of many cheeses:

      Roquefort and grueyere and slippery Brie
      All of these cheeses they happen to me

    4. “the cheese stands alone“: a line from the song “The Farmer in the Dell”. The title of I am the Cheese, a young adult book by Robert Cormier, and also a movie based on the same, references this line of the song, and the loneliness of being cheese.
    5. Cheese has long been used as a bait in mousetraps, and is especially good for trying to catch cartoon mice. Recently, this cheesy bait concept has been extended to motivating office workers with the book Who Moved My Cheese. This irritating-looking parable appears to have spawned a slew of cheese parody books, at least three of which are entitled “Who Cut the Cheese?”
    6. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by the illustrious Lane Smith. This picture book features, among other things less cheese-oriented, a cheesy reinterpration of the gingerbread man fairy tale. Catch it if you can.
    7. “Cheeses of the World Series“: Jefferson Mint’s series of hand-painted collector’s plates featuring the cheeses of the world. Available only as an extra on the Austin Powers DVD. This is funniest deleted scene I can remember. It’s part of the overview that Number Two (Robert Wagner) gives of the activities of Virtucon, the “legitmate face” of Dr. Evil’s evil empire.
    8. Wallace and Gromit, Grand Day Out. Wallace loves cheese. Enough to go to the moon for it. And as we all know, the moon is made of cheese. (The other W&G features also feature some cheese, at least I know that The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave do. I have yet to see The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but I would be sorely disappointed if it was cheese-free.)
    9. You know, there just aren’t enough movies featuring cheese. Paul Davidson, whose blog I found while doing my takehome final, offers a solution to this perennial problem by suggesting “ten movies whose plotlines would change by simply adding the word cheese to their titles.” An excellent proposition. (cf. “A Touch of Evil Cheese” and “Stand by Me Cheese”)
    10. The Cheese Shop sketch. In the land of the cheese, this sketch reigns supreme. John Cheese, I mean, Cleese and Michael Palin perform this legendary Monty Python gem. Hey, I was just making a joke about the John Cheese thing, but check out this slice of trivia from the John Cleese Wikipedia entry:

      John Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England to Reginald Francis Cleese and Muriel Cross. His family’s surname was previously “Cheese”, but his father, an insurance salesman, changed his surname to “Cleese” upon joining the army in 1915.

      Anyhow, the Cheese Shop Sketch features 43 kinds of cheeses. Well, the names of 43 kinds of cheeses. Whether you’re looking for Cheddar, Brie, Wensleydale or Venezuelan Beaver Cheese, you will find no better place not to buy it.

    carnival fool

    I’m running off to join the carnival. More than one carnival, actually.

    First stop: The 3rd Carnival of Colors thought my blue people would make an attractive side show.

    Second stop: Ms. Mismanners has been dragged off to the 73rd Carnival of Satire to demonstrate clause contortionism, comma-juggling, epithet-throwing and her latest note-writing tips.

    Third stop: I was going to put together a fun and exciting carnival list, but instead I’ll share with you some tidbits of Carnival Jargon that I snagged from the Wikipedia Carny page.

  • Mark

    A target for swindling, especially one whose gullibility has been demonstrated. Derived from the covert use of chalk to mark the backs of especially ripe targets. The term has entered the popular lexicon, usually as “easy mark.”

    So that’s why I kept getting chalk on my shirt. (Don’t worry, though. A nice young man said he’d go buy me a new shirt. I’m sure he’ll be back any minute now with my new shirt and the change from that large bill.)

  • Sharpie

    The opposite of a mark: an experienced player who is wise to traditional carny scams and is skilled at the games themselves.

    Is that what the marker folks had in mind?

  • Some money terms:

    Scratch – the revenue from a concession.

    Oats – stolen money from a concession.

    “The Nut” – The sum total (in cash) of a performance, or group of performances

    “The Kitty” – Budgeted amount of finance, regulated by the management of a carnival for purchasing food and supplies for its workers. (“We wanted a new tent, but there’s no more scratch in the kitty”)

    I had no idea kitty was a carny term…Though I’ve found possible other origins. (Wait, you mean Wikipedia might have inaccurate information? But it must be true. I read it on the internet.)

  • Then there’s “Sugar Shack”:

    a concession or food-stand that doubles as a front for drug commerce & trafficking.

    Wow. This makes me really suspicious of all those places that claim to sell things like maple syrup, candles and most suspiciously “quilt kits.” (Oh, fine, so the term has a legitimate maple-syrupy meaning, too. Or at least that’s what they want us to think. I bet their fingers are just sticky with illicit activities.)

  • Burn the lot

    To cheat players with little or no attempt to conceal the subterfuge, in the carny’s expectation that the same town will not be visited again.

    I try to take this attitude when visiting relatives. I mean, really, do I want to be invited back?

  • And ooooh. An infix:

    -iz- – inserted between the syllables of words to serve as a cipher or cryptolect.

    (This -iz- may or may not have a relationshizip to the –izz– infix.)

  • Here are some more assorted bits:

    Bally – A free performance intended to attract both tips and visitors to the nearby sideshow.

    Slough – Tear down your “joint”. Get it ready for the road.

    Spring – Open the carnival.

    “Rousty” or “Roustabout” – A temporary or full-time laborer who helps pitch concessions and assemble rides. In the 1930s, American Rousty’s would work for a meal and perhaps a tent to share with other workers.

    “Donniker” – Bathroom

    “Alibi” – A technique used where the player has apparently won the game, but is denied a prize when the jointee invents a further, unforeseeable, condition of the game. For example, a player may be disqualified on the grounds of having leaned over a previously undisclosed “foul line.”

    • Okay. There will be a quiz later. For your homework, please use one or more of these words in a sentence.