My version is better. I moved Groucho's backwards lines to where Groucho speaks, and the same for the other two. In doing so, it becomes obvious that this is how it was accomplished originally, that the backwards lines we hear are actually the brothers speaking live in the studio, and that the sound engineer later broke this into four pieces (not two, as Stan Baker did), reversed them, and spliced them back in.
Galen's version is a QuickTime movie file which you can download and watch. (That's on my server. If someone has the time to upload it to Daily Motion or YouTube, I'll switch the link over and appreciate it. At the moment, I have to go to San Diego and host fourteen panels...)
UPDATE, later in the day: Here it is on YouTube...
Over two dozen of you have taken up my "challenge" to reverse the audio on that Marx Brothers clip and found that the decoded dialogue is pretty innocuous...what you can make out of it, anyway. Thanks to you all. Stan Baker edited the reverse reversed audio back into the clip and here's how it comes out...
I have a pretty good Spam filtering set-up but for some reason, this one keeps getting through. Plus, I just peeked into the filter collection folder and found more copies. I think I've gotten it about three hundred times in the last few days, all of them worded exactly like this...
Hello! I am bored today. I am nice girl that would like to chat with you. Email me at [address] only, because I am writing not from my personal email. If you would like to see my pictures.
Pretty standard Spam...except that of the three hundred or so copies I've received, about two hundred have male names on them as the sender. I keep getting them from Bruce and Arthur and Sid and Harry and so on.
I don't know about you but I don't particularly want to chat with a nice girl I don't know, and especially not one who can't type with proper sentence structure. But I really don't want to see pictures of Bruce and Arthur and Sid and Harry and so on.
Okay, here's a challenge for somebody out there. This YouTube clip is of a scene in A Night at the Opera with The Marx Brothers. To simulate a foreign language, several lines of dialogue were reversed when the film was originally made. That is, they're running backwards. So who reading this knows how to work a little audio magic and reverse the reversed lines so we can hear them as Groucho and the others spoke them? There must be some software out there that can do this in a flash. Here's the scene...
The other day here, we reported on a reunion performance of The Ding-a-Ling Sisters from The Dean Martin Show and wondered aloud how it went. Faith Marie sent me the following...
I am with the Endless Summer Band. We performed with the Ding-a-Lings last night at the Vietnam Vet conference. The crowd loved them. We had a blast having them on stage with us at the beginning and at the end of the evening. They stayed the duration and danced with people during the show. Their enthusiasm was infectious. I am glad we got to meet them. I will always keep their autographed picture!
Sounds like a hit to me. I'm told there will soon be video on YouTube and if so, I'll link you all in that direction.
Also, going back a few days, we brought you the opening to the 1967 sitcom, Mr. Terrific, starring Stephen Strimpell as a milquetoast superguy. Several of you reminded me — and I clean forgot — that the pilot for that run was the second Mr. Terrific pilot. The first, which never aired, had some of the same elements but some different ones, as well...and the title role was filled by none other than Alan Young! Reportedly, the folks in charge decided he was too old for the part. He would have been 47 or 48 at the time. Frankly, he's such a good actor that I'd think that would have made up for it...not that I think one better actor would have saved Mr. Terrific.
Gotta go pack. Let me see if I can find a nice Video Link to leave you with...
July 26, 2007
