Sid Laverents: Super Cool 100-year-old Dude

Sid Laverents is a former vaudevillian who started making movies in the late 1950s. I saw a series of his experimental shorts at the Wisconsin Film Festival last weekend, and boy oh boy were they fun! A real hoot. You can actually order 'em right from the man himself. I think I'm gonna do just that fairly soon.

Old-timey Slang of the Day

some pumpkins: "1. An important person or thing; an admirable person or thing. 1913: 'He is some pumpkins.' F.K. Sochrist. Used only as a pred. nominative. Since c1850, has been extremely pop. Though still in use by older people, young adults prefer stronger terms. 2. Audacious; mischievous; clever. Often used with affectionate connotation, esp. by older people when talking of children. Archaic and dial."

— Wentworth and Flexner, eds. Dictionary of American Slang. Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1960.

Old-timey Slang of the Day

Here's an odd one.

marfak: butter.

Apparently, this was used in the army for a while, and it comes from an old brand name for a chassis lubricant made by Texaco. Clever!

Old-timey Slang of the Day

Today's word:

darb: an excellent person or thing. As in, "Ain't that a darb?!" or "She's a darb, Sully, a darb!" or "My new jalopy is a real darb, I tells ya."

This comes up a lot in movies from the 1920s and 1930s. I've also seen it in an old Krazy Kat cartoon from the 1910s. Most recently, I heard it in Sons of the Desert, a great Laurel & Hardy comedy I saw on TCM the other day. I think I heard three different permutations of it in that one.

Old-timey Slang of the Day

I think I will start collecting old-timey slang and posting it on this blog. Here's one.


flub the dub: to loaf, to "screw up" (used in the 1940s)

Old Ladies With Guns

A 100-year-old woman in Russia is the best hunter in her area, according to local officials. This is a cool story; she became a hunter because she was "bored."

Note: that's not her pictured above. You can tell, cause she'd have a gun, or maybe a crossbow.