The sad part is, I can't find any information about how it went. Was it hilarious? Boring? Called off at the last moment because the translators were a bit chafed? We may never know.

It may be difficult to keep the smot-spammers away from this particular thread....

And Flesh Gordon is indeed not very titillating. Too bad they didn't use the George Barr poster to publicize it....

Heck, I'd like to know if there was a recording that we could play over our own copies of Flesh Gordon.

Wake me up when I can get the Scots version of Behind the Green Door.

Speaking of Scots (this time Scots Scots rather than Ulster Scots), there's a topical reference in this parody of Scotland the Brave by the Corries.

The line, which got a big laugh from the audience, was "Councilors wi' part-time jobbies..."

If anyone knows what that was all about, what was it? Annotation, please.

Tom #2: They did indeed use the George Barr poster.

@5: 'Jobbies' is current Glaswegian for, um, faecal matter (at least among my friends there: it might be private slang though), but I don't think that can be right in the context of the song, not least because it would be hard to imagine what a 'part-time jobbie' would be. No doubt some more literal scandal involving a councillor moonlighting as a plumber is intended.

No, "jobbie" is general Glaswegian for "turd". See Billy Connolly.

Hence the general falling about.

I'm pretty sure Kirk fought the Gorn at the Vasquez Rocks, another popular location shoot site. The odds are good though that any Star Trek episode that features a cave was shot at the Bronson Caves. Heck, the odds are good that any movie or TV series that features a cave was shot at the Bronson Caves; with the use as the Batcave entrance in the Batman TV series is probably the most commonly remembered appearance.

I'm pretty sure Kirk fought the Gorn at the Vasquez Rocks, another popular location shoot site. The odds are good though that any Star Trek episode that features a cave was shot at the Bronson Caves. Heck, the odds are good that any movie or TV series that features a cave was shot at the Bronson Caves; with the use as the Batcave entrance in the Batman TV series is probably the most commonly remembered appearance.

Quite right. Vasquez rocks.

Bronson Caves was in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Added context here: Ulster Scots is basically a language that was officially invented when the Northern Irish assembly was set up.

Essentially, everyone in Northern Ireland speaks English. 10% or so also speak Gaelic to some degree or other (mostly other). Nevertheless, Sinn Fein insisted that Gaelic should be one of the official languages of the assembly and that official documents should be made available in Gaelic as well as English.

The DUP (hardline Protestant Loyalists) then argued that, basically, if the Dans were going to get their own language then the Billies would have to have their own language too. This would be "Ulster Scots".

The assembly administration, heaving a sigh, advertised for official translators. They found some who could do Gaelic, but couldn't find anyone who thought they they spoke Ulster Scots. In the end they improvised by getting a junior civil servant and telling him "to retype everything in the way that you think Ian Paisley would say it".

One of the interesting things about the different countries that make up the UK is that they tend to have their own styles of prudishness. Ulster is rather different from England: here's an example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_ulster_from_sodomy

David McNarry is a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, which is distinct from the Democratic Unionist Party, but mostly over personalities as far as I understand it.

This reminds me of an event we used to have during anime/fantasy/roleplaying/wargaming conventions (in Poland, the fandom is too small not to pool our rersources), called "Hentai Dub Night".

You gathered all the 18+ con-goers, chose 3 or four teams of 3 (at least one of which had to consist only of girls), gave them some microphones and put on some hentai (anime porn) with the sound turned off. Each member of the team then had a specific function to fulfil: one did the male voices, the other the female ones, the last one was sound effects. Funniest team wins.

Surprisingly, the girls team was usually the funniest.

Jim #5 - I thought it means there was something about councillors having dodgy part time jobs, as Jonathan said.
I've had no luck finding out when it was recorded either, it looks mid 70's or so. Deep sea divers were pretty new then. If I knew when it was recorded it might be possible to find some scandal of the period. When you think about it there has been a great deal of change in Scotland in the last 60 years.

Flesh Gordon is, at worst, cheerfully bawdy

...and features Bjo Trimble, along with character actor John Hoyt, who probably appeared in more works of Cinéma than the Bronson Rocks.

And don't forget Jim Danforth, brilliant stop-motion animation expert (who, the last time I heard, had been forced into real estate sales after Lucasfilm had done their "GoMotion is the only way to do non-computer animation" pile-on in the 80's, making it impossible to get further work--I gather he may have done something on a miniseries where Holmes ended up visiting The Lost World after the Reichenbach Falls incident before throwing in the towel) who did the Beetle Man and who ended up getting his listing in the credits changed to Mij Htrofand--I think--when the producers decided to make the film a hard "X." (Within a week of the original release the producers decided they could make more money if it was recut into a hard "R;" they did so, instantly making Danforth's name change needless and pointless.)

My apologies if this reads oddly: some nights the pain meds work, and some nights they do not, and when they don't grammar tends to go out the window.

@12: careful Ajay, that sounds much too much like what might really have happened to escape criticism...

Was this the complete cut of the movie, or the usual cut? I once rented a VHS tape of what must have been the usual cut and was a bit surprised to notice one explicit act going on briefly in the corner of a scene that hints at what the complete movie may have been like.

Scots, wa hey!

@ajay, yes, that's roughly what happened to Ulster Scots as an official language. And I think pretty much everyone on both sides thinks of it as a bit of a joke as an official languange - though some think its a good joke and others a bad joke. But no-one in any part of Ireland is likely to need traffic signs or accountancy standards translated into Scots in order to understand them.

On the other hand Scots really exists and people really speak, and write in it. Depending on your point of view it is either a family of English dialects spoken in Scotland, or else Scots is a sister language of English that developed in southern and eastern Scotland in the middle ages and has since spread to the Highlands and to northern Ireland.

But it is certainly real. And have been used in government for centuries. A standardised version of it was used in formal writing, official correspondence, and legislation from the 14th to the 17th century (and occasionally into the 18th, especially in a church setting)

It is at least as different from standard English as the standard dialects of Norwegian are from Swedish - and a lot more different than Bokmal Norwegian is from Danish.

OK, since the 18th century, almost all the literature in Scots has either been, and there is an extensive literature in it, in a folksy, rural, setting, or else a deliberate political statement. And Ulster Scots, is, as Scots goes, not really that different from Irish English, but but it does exist and people do speak it in real life.

Aside to non-British-Islians: the Scots language or dialect is not the same as a Scottish accent, its the words and syntax you speak, not the voice that you speak them in. A Scottish accent with the occasional use of local or dialect words is not the same as speaking Scots - though there is a continuum between the two.

Oh, I can;t resist.

Here on Representative Poetry Online are the words of William Dunbar's Lament for the Makaris

And here, Hamish Henderson's great Freedom Come All Ye

Two wonderful bits of Scots verse well over four hundred years apart.

21: mony thanks fae the exposeetion, but I ken muckle anent the Scots tung and hae e'en scrievit flytes and jests in Scots on this verra wabsteid...

Thut wuld be uvrything thu wy Iain Pysly sys ut?

Fragano @ #23:

I never knew Iain Paisley was a Kiwi!

And now, for something completely different..
Kamikaze Scotsmen!!!

Fragano - no, that would need ALL CAPS as well.

23: Exactly right, except about TWICE AS LOUD.

26: dammit, david.

Fingers poised over BlackBerry, Ajay ...

THUT WULD BE UVRYTHING THU WY IAIN PYSLY SYS UT?

Paul A #24: Many people in the British Isles wish Paisley were in New Zealand.

Fragano @30

Needs more NOOOOOOO!!!

It's worth remembering that English varies quite a lot in England. I was once told, by the local Henry Higgins, one Loretta Rivett, that my speech is a mix of the accents of three different parts of Lincolnshire, essentially the birthplaces of my parents, and where I lived most of my life. But I'm still from the Anglo-Norse end of the country, and there are still traces of the dialect differences. Don't ask those of us who speak that way—we don't notice. But I wouldn't try this:

One Sunday morn young Lambton went
A-fishing' in the Wear;
An' catched a fish upon he's heuk,
He thowt leuk't varry queer.
But whatt'n a kind of fish it was
Young Lambton cuddent tell.
He waddn't fash te carry'd hyem,
So he hoyed it doon a well.

cho: Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs,
An Aa'll tell ye's aall an aaful story
Whisht! Lads, haad yor gobs,
An' Aa'll tell ye 'boot the worm.

[This is the sort of English which gives the Google translator conniptions.]

Annotated text, and bad pun, here

Tennyson wrote some verse in the dialect of the southern Wolds, such as Northern Farmer: Old Style.

Dave Bell@33: I have been wondering when that song came from; because it seems like chucking something down a well as a method of disposal is a very modern idea, basically dating to when open large-diameter shallow wells were relics, rather than a vital source of water.

I know it as "The Famous Dampton Worm", and it was "John Dampton" rather than "Young Lambton", and it doesn't have a chorus. But it preserves "queer" as the word for the fish ("mighty queer" in the version I know). In fact, this looks like a direct dialect variant of the version I know, rather than something produced by the folk process over time.

ajay, #12: That makes me nostalgic for the sort of trivial crap our government used to get up to when they wanted to ignore major issues.

DawnOfMinstrel, #14: You gathered all the 18+ con-goers

It being rather too early in the morning for my brain to be awake, I have to admit that my first parsing of this was, "Wow, that IS a small con!"

Both R and X versions of Flesh Gordon exist; while the R version certainly isn't porn, the X version might at least come close.

ddb @34

Music-hall song, mid-19th Century, much like Blaydon Races and Cushie Butterfield.

You wouldn't expect to get them on The Good Old Days: that might have been filmed in Leeds but it was very much a view centred on London's popular entertainment.

#34 ddb: But it preserves "queer" as the word for the fish ("mighty queer" in the version I know).

So this priest goes out fishing, and he catches a fish like no other he's ever seen. A nearby angler says, "Nice fukken fish."

"Such language!" says the priest.

"No, no," says the angler, "that's its name: It's a fukken fish."

"I see," says the priest, and takes the fish back to the rectory. And he calls to the nun, "Sister, I'd like to serve this fukken fish to the bishop when he visits tonight."

And the nun says, "Such language!"

But the priest explains, "No, no, that's its name. It's a fukken fish."

So the nun cleans the fish, and gives it to the cook and says, "It would be nice if you'd bake this fukken fish for the bishop's dinner tonight."

And the cook says, "Such language!"

But the nun explains, "No, no, that's its name. It's a fukken fish."

So the cook bakes the fish. That night the new bishop comes to visit....

And the cook brings out the entree and says, "I cooked the fukken fish."

And the nun says, "I cleaned the fukken fish."

And the priest says, "I caught the fukken fish."

And the bishop says, "I like you bastards already."

Lee (35): "Wow, that IS a small con!"

That's how I read it, too. Until just now. Thanks for the mental whiplash. :)

Years ago I went with Greg Jein to the building where the props for Flesh Gordon were being made (I was visiting the Trimbles, and Greg dropped by, and I got an invite). Everyone seemed to be having fun. Jim Danforth (at an exhibit of film props at a convention in L.A.) said that George Barr designed the beetle man that Jim did the stop motion figure of, and some other design work, as well as the famous poster. The Wikipedia page for Bronson Canyon has a list of films the caves are in, and a Google image search for Bronson Cave has plenty of pictures (plus pics of a cave of the same name in Indiana). Dave McDaniel took pictures of me in a THRUSH outfit (not one actually used on Man From U.N.C.L.E.) at Vasquez Rocks (the fort from Bengal Lancers was still there at the time) and at the intersection of Thrush Way and Magnetic Terrace in the bird street area of the Hollywood Hills (yes, the Bluejay Way of the Beatles song is nearby, and I've no idea why Magnetic Terrace is named that; it's about a half-block long). I've no idea if those pictures still exist anywhere.

Aa caan hyor thot in ma hyeed. My family (two+ generations back) are Wearsiders - Though I still much prefer Blaydon Races.

I've got used to following along to my true Mackem relatives, but my ex-wife couldn't. She'd last about 10 minutes, then she'd have lost enough of the thread to not understand what one was saying - she'd look to one of us to translate that sentence, which would allow her to fill in the gaps, and be able to follow along again for 10 minutes or so.

Don Simpson @ 40... I presume that Bronson's list included "The Invaders". And the Zanti Misfits.

Last Saturday's poem on 3 Quarks Daily* has some phrases with the following translation footnotes:

kye pairks: cattle fields
onsneck't: unlocked
wha'd: who'd

e’s powie wad dirl
as e pín’t oot the airn
bruntin the win wi e’s darg:
his hammer would ring
as he struck out the iron
scorching the wind with his labour

I would guess that "kye pairk" is cognate to "kine park", and "onsneck't" to "unsnicked", and so on. Accent and spelling are part of it, but so are word choices and words you wouldn't find in English. I imagine that if I heard it spoken, I'd be totally baffled.

*A site I highly recommend:
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/

I had not noticed until just now the phrasing "rubs Member up" in the Guardian's headline. Well done, sirs!

Serge @ 43 -- No, those are not on the current list, which only has a hundred or so films. But it's Wikipedia; you could add them if you want to.

Clifton Royston @ 45:

Given the choice between serious British newspapers and serious American ones, I'll take the British ones for the headlines alone.

In my never-ending quest for the Truth, I asked one of the local Belfast folk how the event went.

This was the reply:

hurrah, first comment that's not Russian spam!

no, I don't think that anyone had ever followed up with a report. It was held in a bar and on the whole it all went rather well. With lots of booze, how could it not? I thought that a couple of the readers/translators should have practised a bit more to keep up with the on screen dialogue but the main bloke who was also compering it (??Roger) was very funny, especially when he went off script. Alas I'm not aware of a recording

all in all wile good craic hey, as they say in these here parts

the Ulster Unionist Party, which is distinct from the Democratic Unionist Party, but mostly over personalities as far as I understand it.
The Ulster Unionists are the old establishment that ran Northern Ireland for fifty years, while the Democratic Unionists are more representative of ordinary protestants.

"the Democratic Unionists are more representative of ordinary protestants."

Mad as a box of frogs?

Sorry, did I type that out loud?

50: yes, I sincerely hope that's not true.

The Bronson Caves are part of the Union Rock Company's long-abandoned Brush Canyon Quarry, which provided most of the crushed-rock ballast for the Pacific Electric interurban trolley system of LA myth and legend.

(I'm not sure why "Bronson Caves' is the common name - there's only one; and, really, it's more of a tunnel than a cave.)

You have to watch your angles when you're shooting there if you don't want to end up with the Hollywood Sign in the background.

Vasquez Rocks is a popular location because it's inside the 30-mile "studio zone", so you don't have to pay the crew travel & accomodations to shoot there.

I've seen four versions of Flesh Gordon - a hard-core porn version; the 'uncut' X-rated release; the R-rated version that's shown at most conventions and many revival houses; and, most improbably, the PG-rated version that turned up one night at the local 'family drive-in' in west Phoenix - it was 38 minutes long and the plot was a bit hard to follow - but it still had a lot of cool special effects.

The porn version was most certainly porn - real porn, not the "I-saw-a-bit-of-exposed-flesh-and it-made-me-think-of-sex" that so many internetizens refer to when they (mis)use the word.

It looked like it might have been made by adding hard-core inserts to the X-rated version; but it was definitely porn.

Glen: I always heard it as, "Bronson Cavern", and yeah, shooting there (I was modelling for a video game cover for a game in the late '80s) was interesting.

Oh... and I've seen the same version of Flesh Gordon Glen Blankenship has... it was porn, and there was no doubt about it.

My favorite bit in Flesh Gordon was when Jerkoff turned on his phallic rocket with a VolksWagen key.

52
Thirty mile zone, measured from where? (I know where Vasquez Rocks is; I've seen it in aerial views for work, because we have stuff going right past it.)

Thirty mile zone, measured from where?

The intersection of Beverly Blvd. and La Cienaga - "where Beverly Center meets the Beverly Connection."

(A couple of sites outside the official boundary are also deemed included - MGM's Conejo Ranch, and an independent production facility in Simi Valley.)

For further details, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_zone

...also, see map here:

http://www.filmla.com/zonemap/