I was too upset about this to deal with it, yesterday:
Mickey Carroll, born Michael Finocchiaro on July 8, 1919, in St. Louis, who was one of the last surviving Munchkins in the classic film the Wizard of Oz, has died at the age of 89.
Up until January 2009, Micky Carroll lived at his his own home in suburban Bel-Nor but in February he was fitted with a Pacemaker because of heart problems and had to move in with his caretaker, Linda Dodge. Ms. Dodge said Carroll died peacefully in his sleep at her home in the Crestwood area of St. Louis.
Mickey Carroll was only 17 when he played the part of the Munchkinland Town Crier and marched as a Munchkin Soldier in the original Wizard of Oz film.
Carroll was the candy-striped Fiddler in the film’s most famous scene, where he escorted Dorothy (Played by Judy Garland) down the yellow brick road toward the Emerald City.
The last survivors of the Tiniest Generation are dying off, and America’s hardly taking notice. Freed from the tyranny of the Wicked Witch of the East when young Kansan Dorothy Gale, working for the OSS, dropped a house on top of her, the grateful residents of Munchkinland helped Gale cross dangerous territory to get to The City of Oz, and after more harrowing journeying to return home.
The epic tale was recounted in the beloved movie, The Wizard of Oz, based on a history by Frank Baum.
During the 1940s and 50s, and even into the early 1960s, the Federation of Munchkin States enjoyed a revival. In the 1970s, though, social unrest and upheaval took hold as the global market for lullabies and lollipops slipped, and civil war shook Munchkinland. In 1982, a peaceful Munchkin rights march turned violent, when gay protesters tried to join. Repeated crop failures, which some have linked to climate change, struck hard, and waves of unemployed Flying Monkey militia drove many Munchkins to seek refuge abroad. In 1987, a UN Commission on Munchkin Affairs estimated that only a few hundred native speakers of Munchkinese–which shares features with Cockney Rhyming Slang–remained in Munchkinland.
Famous for their gaudy vestiture, bits of Munchkin culture live on in the haute couture of Parisian and Milanese runways and in nouvelle cuisine.
In the grand scheme of things, this is small potatoes.
You are all smarter than me, but did you know that the original story, written by Baum at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, is a story about the gold and silver standard. William Jennings Bryan is represented by the cowardly lion, for example…
Don’t you care just a little bit, N. O’Brain? Don’t be small.
I suppose a quip about midget tossing would be totally inappropriate?
My daughter played the Wicked Witch in a local theatrical presentation of the Wizard of Oz. During the first rehearsal, her wicked witch laugh scared one of the munchkins so badly that he wet his pants.
They got invited to the annual Oz Fest and parade in Chittenango, NY. Some of the surviving munchkins, including Mickey attended. Chittenango is Frank Baum’s birthplace.
It must be odd to be famous for something you did as a kid.
Thankfully there are still a few moral midgets abroad in the world plying their humorous acts for the crowd’s approval. Take Hugo “Shorty” Chavez for example:
Sdferr — you sure that’s from Venezuela? Sounds like our president.
Carin,
Dwarf tossing, not midget tossing. Well, at least it was called that at the dives that used to advertise that sort of thing in Central Illinois (some number of years ago)…
JD’s life is incrementally improved as another vertically challenged individual passes on.
There will be slightly less screaming in the nightmares.
It was a more innocent time. You try to make the Oz movie again and the whole audience will be all hey those isn’t munchkins them’s just midgets dressed up to look like them. It’s a lot like the oompa loompa dilemma WB had remaking the Chocolate Factory thing. They ended up overcompensating and their new oompas were hideous and revolting. Munchkins deserve better. JD will have my back on this.
Sdferr: The cries of anguish from Mr. Potato Head and his lackys will ring the galaxy when his petroleum infrastructure finally collapses and the “working class” realizes that only Chavez has any bourgeois lucre.
The schadenfreude just might warp space/time.
I’m beginning to wonder Rob, whether some of these losing corporations don’t start thinking of ….. – ummmm – untoward, but relatively inexpensive, shortcuts – uh – …. aimed – at recovering their property, so to speak.
You forgot to mention that Cheney hunts Munchkins for sport. What a heartless bastard!
Here’s another moral midget performing for the mob. She should have been retired years ago but we take it her constituents just enjoy her show-biz skills too much to simply let her go (…well, that and the fascination at seeing the freakshow wonders of modern plastic surgery on display).
Time to tune in TLC’s Little People, Big World. The Munchkins live!
Ah, but he doesn’t waste anything. He uses every bit of each munchkin he takes.
You should see his bedroom slippers!
she recalled being told by the CIA that the techniques “could be used, but not that they would.â€
A positively meya-esque level of spinning there.
“Mr. Man on the moon, cover your ears! Obama is going to try to pronounce ‘bourgeoisie,’ and the cries of anguish from everyone who’s ever heard the word before will reach…'”
How would he? Bursh-WHÄR-zhay?
Is that the “Ancient Roman” pronunciation (that no one living has ever heard (my favorite “Oareeon” story)) or the official cocktail-party-shorthand name for a Bauhaus chair (which name, despite my owning two of them and drinking on and around them with art-douchebags for years, I’d never heard until the excuse-making for “Wasilly” began)?
His fans will need an alibi that makes him sound like he knows all things–except for a really weird-shaped chunk of everyday things.
“could be used, but not that they would.â€
Compare Miranda: “Anything you say can and will be used …”
You’d think the Speaker of the goddamn House of Representatives would understand that anything that a government agency can do, it will do.
How long will it take him to realize that the “means of production” are simply hunks of metal, rubber, etc. without the trained people who can use and repair them properly. Hugo is turning his country into the world’s largest scrapyard, well largest until O! gets the wind at his back.
Not helping Monster, insofar as she was told they had been used, any talk of the future tense reinforces Pelosi’s lie.
Is that the “Ancient Roman†pronunciation
Austrian, I think. Or maybe Pockeeestawwwwwwwwneee.
Sdferr, has there ever been a government agency that found out it could do something, then did it, only once, and never ever ever did it again (without a law being passed so that “could” no longer applies)?
And wouldn’t you fill the crankcases of your engine powered machinery with metal shavings before you abandoned it to Hugo? I know I would.
I can’t think of any instance of that Monster. And wouldn’t for a moment deny the validity of the proposition you’re offering. It just seems like a non sequitur, in the circumstances before us, that’s all.
Anyone who maintains any equipment know multiple ways to make it become inoperable a short while after. But then again you don’t have to do anything when stuff always breaks on it’s own anyhow. That’s my job making sure a bunch of equipment runs continually.