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Was It A Cat I Saw?

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Re: Was It A Cat I Saw?

#41
post #16

https://jonagee.com/html/wp_books.php OTTO: a Palindrama Was the best book I've read to my kids this year. My 6 year old has been running around the house talking in palindrome. My mind was blown, and I had a few chuckles at some of the inventive palindromes. The story barely made sense, but it didn't matter. Highly recommended.

I loved "Go Hang A Salami, I'm a Lasagna Hog" as a kid, learned lots of good ones from there. Another all time great, when it comes to media based around palindromes, is Weird Al's Bob Dylan style parody, palindromically titled: Bob. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQDzj6R3p4

I learned that one with the clauses reversed, which I incorporated into a haiku format:

I’m a lasagna

hog, go hang a salami.

This sentence no verb.

Edited: to add superfluous line breaks not that they could have been anywhere else.

Re: Was It A Cat I Saw?

#42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire song is made up of palindromes. It contains the following variation of the post title: Was it a car or a cat I saw?

The fact that it's a parody of a Bob Dylan song and Bob is itself a palindrome, is the cherry on the cake. It's my favourite Weird Al song for this reason.

And it was released in 2002.

Re: Was It A Cat I Saw?

#43
post #16

https://jonagee.com/html/wp_books.php OTTO: a Palindrama Was the best book I've read to my kids this year. My 6 year old has been running around the house talking in palindrome. My mind was blown, and I had a few chuckles at some of the inventive palindromes. The story barely made sense, but it didn't matter. Highly recommended.

I loved "Go Hang A Salami, I'm a Lasagna Hog" as a kid, learned lots of good ones from there. Another all time great, when it comes to media based around palindromes, is Weird Al's Bob Dylan style parody, palindromically titled: Bob. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQDzj6R3p4

Thanks for the Weird Al video. My kids are also Weird Al fans, but we haven't seen this one yet!!

Re: Was It A Cat I Saw?

#44

I was a bit disappointed that Barry's article did not contain any palindromes itself. I tried to reverse it and scan for words which might form palindromes, but found only one real candidate with a manual search before I, an insufficiently skilled/trained/devoted reader, glazed over: busy, nay! from "any subject". I'll continue to work on my reading, but don't have much hope. Fortunately, I'm a programmer, so a quick…

I think that's a town in Wales.

Re: Was It A Cat I Saw?

#46
post #40
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are a couple links. It may be a little heavy on the jargon, but Mark's explanation is fantastic, even for the layman. - Breaking down Mark Suciu’s “Verso”: https://andrew-hughes2012.medium.com/breaking-down-mark-suci... - Mark Suciu's "Verso" Part (note the highlighted comment which describes the main "controversial" sequence): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlcxbZbHTj8&lc=UgwTbcW99Wm9Z... - Mark Suciu Explains…

Wow, I... don't understand anything about this. I'd probably have to dig much deeper into this, or maybe even be a skater myself. I don't understand what the tricks are and why they relate to each other. This is where skating myself would probably be important. I don't even really get what a "part" is, what it is that is being named "Verso" here. I don't understand why the videos I'm looking at seem to consist of mul…

There is _so much_ nuance to skateboarding, and specifically street skating, one could take multiple college-level courses and likely still have much to learn.

Skate videos over time have evolved to become the collections of short clips containing a few tricks by one or more skaters set to music.

Historically, videos have been produced by skate "teams" which are made up of the roster of skaters the producing company sponsors.

For example, skateboard or shoe manufacturer will sponsor pros for a year while their parts are filmed, in the vein of a record company contracting a musician for an album.

This all dates back to the VHS days, when filming, editing, and distributing a video was nowhere near as simple as clicking "upload" from an iPhone.

Each clip is usually a short series of a small number of tricks without editing cuts, called a "line". Successfully filming a line can happen in a mythical single take, or can be the result of hundreds or even thousands of attempts because it often requires landing multiple complicated tricks in a row, with a small bit of choreography in between.

A collection of lines by an individual skater comprises their "part" in a video. Parts are often filmed over the course of year or more, across continents, in various cities, and, as mentioned in parents, the tricks typically progress in difficulty. Lines are to skateboarders what songs are to musicians. And parts are analogous to albums.

Video parts are usually assembled in progressing order of the skaters' prominence and skill as well, with new additions to the team shown first, followed by the veterans. The skater's name is shown in the lower third, and tricks roll with music playing in the background. There is not really much in the way of voiceover/play-by-play explanations which can lead to a surprising amount of artistic expression through sequencing and music choice.

Parts range 1-3 songs at most. Often a skater will struggle to film enough material to take up more than a couple songs. Skate videos have ranged in total length from 10 minutes to 1.5 hours, sometimes with silly skits or pranks (think Jackass-lite) mixed in.

Verso is the name of the video, and was distributed Habitat, a board manufacturer. The entire video comes in around 12 minutes or 4 songs, and only features Suciu. It might be referred to as his part, even though there are no other featured skaters.

The best way I could explain the way the tricks in the final line of Verso relate to each other would be as follows. If he rotates his body in a 180 to the left on a given trick, the "mirrored" trick will rotate to the right. If a board flips clockwise first, the mirrored trick flips counter-clockwise. Additionally, there is a component of foot placement: "popping" the board up from either the tail or the nose, and using a regular (dominant foot on the tail) or switch stance.

Verso's final line follows an ABBA format[1] in that spirit:

> The clearest view of Mark’s creative gesture comes in the fourth movement of Verso, where we find the “ender” behind the delayed release. One announcement of the gesture is the paint-dripped sign bearing an X of lines from A→B and B→A. Another is the basic-ass frontside fifty that’s so far beneath Mark’s abilities that it can only be a message. We see a second front fifty close the section, an anti-ender to affirm a pattern that in poetry and rhetoric is called ‘chiasmus.’ ABBA, the formal repetition of elements in a reverse order. Think of Matthew 19:30, “But many that are first shall be last, and many that are last shall be first.” Or Keats, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

1: https://www.jenkemmag.com/home/2019/10/03/serious-review-mar...

Re: Was It A Cat I Saw?

#47
post #42
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it's a parody of a Bob Dylan song and Bob is itself a palindrome, is the cherry on the cake. It's my favourite Weird Al song for this reason.

And it was released in 2002.

20 February, by any chance?

Re: Was It A Cat I Saw?

#49
post #46
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I... don't understand anything about this. I'd probably have to dig much deeper into this, or maybe even be a skater myself. I don't understand what the tricks are and why they relate to each other. This is where skating myself would probably be important. I don't even really get what a "part" is, what it is that is being named "Verso" here. I don't understand why the videos I'm looking at seem to consist of mul…

There is _so much_ nuance to skateboarding, and specifically street skating, one could take multiple college-level courses and likely still have much to learn. Skate videos over time have evolved to become the collections of short clips containing a few tricks by one or more skaters set to music. Historically, videos have been produced by skate "teams" which are made up of the roster of skaters the producing company…

Very insightful, thanks!
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