• Oggy And The Cockroaches Episodes
• Oggy And The Cockroaches Intro

Oggy and The Cockroaches & Rocko's Modern Life: The Musical Movie! Is a 2020 French-German-American-Canadian-Russian-British Animated Crossover Fantasy Musical Adventure Romance Comedy Film. Coming To Theaters, June 17th, 2020. 1 Plot/Summary: 1.1 Opening Scene: 1.2 Scene 1: 1.3 Scene 2: 1.4 Scene 3: 1.5 Scene 4: 1.6 Scene 5: 1.7 Scene 6: 1.8 Scene 7: 1.9 Scene 8: 1.10 Scene 9: 2 Voice Cast: 3. Donkey Kong Country, Tom and Jerry, Oggy and The Cockroaches, Zig and Sharko, Popeye, Pat and Stan, & Open Season: Hairspary/Credits; Follow-Up film: Donkey Kong Country, Tom and Jerry, Oggy and The Cockroaches, Zig and Sharko, Popeye, Pat and Stan, & Open Season: The Count Of Monte Cristo.

La Cucaracha ('The Cockroach') is a traditional Spanish folk song. It is unknown when the song came about. It is also very popular in Latin America. In Mexico it was performed widely during the Mexican Revolution. Many alternative stanzas exist. The basic song describes a cockroach who cannot walk.

Structure[edit]

The song consists of verse-and-refrain (strophe-antistrophe) pairs, with each half of each pair consisting of four lines featuring an ABCB rhyme scheme.

Refrain[edit]

The song's earliest lyrics, from which its name is derived, concern a cockroach that has lost one of its six legs and is struggling to walk with the remaining five. The cockroach's uneven, five-legged gait is imitated by the song's original,

La cu-ca- | ra-cha, la cu-ca-ra-cha

| yano pue-de ca-mi-nar

por-que no | tie-ne, por-que le fal-tan

| lasdos pa- titas 'de' a-trás.— ^{[nb 1]}

('The cockroach, the cockroach / can no longer walk / because she doesn't have, because she lacks / the two hind legs to walk'; these lyrics form the basis for the refrain of most later versions. Syllables having primary stress are in boldface; syllables having secondary stress are in roman type; unstressed syllables are in italics. Measure divisions are independent of text line breaks and are indicated by vertical barlines; note that the refrain begins with an anacrusis/'pickup'.)

Many later versions of the song, especially those whose lyrics do not mention the cockroach's missing leg(s), extend the last syllable of each line to fit the more familiar 6/4 meter. Almost all modern versions, however, use a 4/4 meter instead with a clave rhythm to give the feeling of three pulses.

Verses[edit]

The song's verses fit a traditional melody separate from that of the refrain but sharing the refrain's meter (either 5/4, 6/4, or 4/4 clave as discussed above). In other respects, they are highly variable, usually providing satirical commentary on contemporary political or social problems or disputes.

Historical evolution[edit]

The origins of 'La Cucaracha' are obscure. The refrain's lyrics make no explicit reference to historical events; it is difficult if not impossible therefore to date. Because verses are improvised according to the needs of the moment,^[1] however, they often enable a rough estimate of their age by mentioning contemporary social or political conditions (thus narrowing a version's possible time of origin to periods in which those conditions prevailed) or referring to specific current or past events (thus setting a maximum boundary for a version's age).

Pre-Revolution lyrics[edit]

There exist several early (pre-Revolution) sets of lyrics referring to historical events.

Francisco Rodríguez Marín records in his book Cantos Populares Españoles (1883) several verses dealing with the Reconquista, which was completed in 1492 when the Moors surrendered the Alhambra to Spain:

Some early versions of the lyrics discuss events that took place during the conclusion of the Granada War in 1492.^[2]

One of the earliest written references to the song appears in Mexican writer and political journalist José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi's 1819 novel La Quijotita y su Prima, where it is suggested that:

Other early stanzas detail such incidents as the Carlist Wars (1833–1876) in Spain and the French intervention in Mexico (1861).^[4]

Whatever the song's origin, it was during the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century that 'La Cucaracha' saw the first major period of verse production as rebel and government forces alike invented political lyrics for the song. So many stanzas were added during this period that today it is associated mostly with Mexico.^[1]

Revolutionary lyrics[edit]

The Mexican Revolution, from 1910 to about 1920, was a period of great political upheaval during which the majority of the stanzas known today were written. Political symbolism was a common theme in these verses, and explicit and implicit references were made to events of the war, major political figures, and the effects of the war on the civilians in general. Today, few pre-Revolution verses are known, and the most commonly quoted portion of the song^[1] are the two Villist anti-Huerta^[4] stanzas:

This version, popular among Villist soldiers, contains hidden political meanings, as is common for revolutionary songs. In this version, the cockroach represents President Victoriano Huerta, a notorious drunk who was considered a villain and traitor due to his part in the death of revolutionary President Francisco Madero.

Due to the multi-factional nature of the Mexican Revolution, competing versions were also common at the time, including the Huertist, anti-Carranza stanza:

An example of two Zapatist stanzas:

Among Mexican civilians at the time, 'La Cucaracha' was also a popular tune, and there are numerous examples of non-aligned political verses. Many such verses were general complaints about the hardships created by the war, and these were often written by pro-Zapatistas. Other non-aligned verses contained references to multiple factions in a non-judgmental manner:

La Cucaracha As A Female[edit]

Soldiering has been a life experience for women in Mexico since pre-Columbia times. Among the nicknames for women warriors and camp followers were Soldaderas, Adelitas, Juanas, and Cucarachas.^[5]

Soldiers in Porfirio Diaz's army sang 'La cucaracha' about a soldadera who wanted money to go to the bullfights. For the Villistas, 'La cucaracha' wanted money for alcohol and marijuana. She was often so drunk or stoned that she could not walk straight,' writes Elizabeth Salas in Mexican Military: Myth and History. 'Unlike corridos about male revolutionaries like Villa and Zapata, none of the well-known corridos about soldaderas give their real names or are biographical. Consequently, there are very few stanzas that ring true about women in battle or in the camps,' Salas writes.

Male artists often depicted the soldaderas as semi-disrobed hookers. One etching, by muralist José Clemente Orozco, 'The dance of the cucaracha”^[6] is especially insulting.

Other verses[edit]

Apart from verses making explicit or implicit reference to historical events, hundreds of other verses exist. Some verses are new and others are ancient; however, the lack of references and the largely oral tradition of the song makes dating these verses difficult if not impossible. Examples follow:

Performers of the song[edit]

• Paz Flores y Montalvo Francisco (1934) – a Villist version.
• Louis Armstrong (1935)
• Cagga Levander (1949-1956)
• Judy Garland (1935)^[7]
• Dick Mine (1936)
• Cuco Sanchez (1959) from The Soldiers of Pancho Villa
• The Skatalites (1964) – as 'Ska-Racha'
• Edmundo Ros & His Orchestra (1965) on Latin Melodies Old and New
• Bill Haley & His Comets (1966) – as 'La Cucaracha a Go-Go'
• James Last (1967)
• Kumbia Kings (2002)
• Chingon (2004) – as 'Cuka Rocka'
• Lila Downs (2004) on the CD 'Una Sangre'
• Orphei Drängar (2006) – 'La Cucaracha arr. Robert Sund'
• Big Idea (2008) – featured in DDR Disney Channel Edition
• Piñata Protest (2013)

Other performances, date unknown:

• Goin' Bulilit and Bubble Gang – Theme song to show
• The Gumm Sisters, featuring Judy Garland
• Mr. Bungle – within their track 'Hypocrites' from their album The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny Demo
• A Bug's Life – the parody of the song featuring the grasshopper gang from Hopper in his hideout.
• Leon Schuster–'Hie kommie Bokke' a support song for the South African National Rugby team nicknamed Springboks or Die Bokke.

Notes[edit]

1. ^There exist numerous versions of this line; the most common ones include 'una pata par' [para] andar' ('a leg to walk [on]'), 'la patita principal' ('the front leg'), 'patas para caminar' ('legs for walking'), and '(las) la pata de atrás' ('[the] two back feet'). Versions mentioning specific numbers of legs are associated with a children's game and counting song in which participants pull the legs off a captured cockroach, singing the stanza once per leg and removing the leg as the number (increasing by one per stanza) is sung. Other versions discard any mention of the cockroach's missing leg(s) at all, substituting unrelated material (e.g., the 'Marihuana pa' fumar' of the well-known anti-Huerta version).

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abcAdams, Cecil. What are the words to 'La Cucaracha'?. The Straight Dope. Chicago Reader. 27 July 2001.
2. ^ ^abMarín, Francisco Rodríguez. Cantos Populares Españoles Recogidos, Ordenados e Ilustrados por Francisco Rodríguez Marín. Sevilla: Francisco Álvarez y Ca. 1883.
3. ^Fernández de Lizardi, José Joaquín. La Quijotita y su Prima. 1819.
4. ^ ^abLA CUCARACHA (Canción Tradicional - Mexico). Lyrics Playground. Retrieved 6 February 2009.
5. ^Salas, Elizabeth (January 1990). Mexican Military: Myth and History. University of Texas Press. ISBN978-0-292-77638-8.
6. ^Orozco, José Clemente. 'El baile de la cucaracha'. Mexicana. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
7. ^'La Fiesta De Santa Barbara'. You Tube. TheJudyRoomVideos. Retrieved 7 December 2019.

External links[edit]

• What are the words to 'La Cucaracha'? on The Straight Dope
• Version with several references to the Mexican Revolution
• Sheet Music for Wind Orchestra: Parts & Scores

Joe's Apartment is a 1996 American musical-comedy film starring Jerry O'Connell and Megan Ward and the first film produced by MTV Films (then known as MTV Productions). The film was written and directed by John Payson, with computer-animated sequences supervised by Chris Wedge through Blue Sky Studios. It was the only MTV Films production not to be distributed by Paramount Pictures until the release of Eli, which was distributed by Netflix, but still had the involvement of Paramount.

The main focus of the story is the fact that, unbeknownst to many humans, cockroaches can talk, but prefer not to, as humans 'smush first and ask questions later'. They also sing (as they do many times in the movie) and even have their own public-access televisioncable TV channel. Actors providing the roaches' voices included Billy West (in his feature film debut), Jim Turner, Rick Aviles (in his final film role before his death), and Dave Chappelle.

Plot[edit]

Penniless and straight out of the University of Iowa, Joe (Jerry O'Connell) moves to New York needing an apartment and a job. With the fortuitous death of Mrs. Grotowski, an artist named Walter Shit (Jim Turner) helps Joe to take over the last rent controlled apartment in a building slated for demolition by convincing everyone that Mrs. Grotowski was Joe's mother. If Senator Dougherty (Robert Vaughn) can empty the building, he can make way for the prison he intends to build there, and uses thug Alberto Bianco (Don Ho) and his nephews, Vlad (Shiek Mahmud-Bey) and Jesus (Jim Sterling), to intimidate tenants.

Joe discovers he has twenty to thirty thousand roommates, all of them talking, singing cockroaches grateful that a slob has moved in. Led by Ralph (Billy West), the sentient, tune-savvy insects scare away the thugs in an act of enlightened self-interest that endears them to their human meal ticket. Tired of living on handouts from mom back in Iowa and after a series of dead-end jobs ruined by his well-intentioned six-legged roomies, Joe finds himself the unskilled drummer in Walter Shit's band. Hanging posters for SHIT, he encounters Senator Dougherty's daughter Lily (Megan Ward) promoting her own project, a community garden to occupy the vacant site surrounding Joe's building.

A gift to Lily while working on her garden is enough to woo her back to Joe's apartment, where the cockroaches break a promise to keep out of his business and a panicked Lily flees, only to discover the garden she'd worked on has been burned to the ground. During a fight with his roommates over his spoiled romantic evening, the building suffers the same fate as the garden. A mutual truce between our hapless and now homeless roommates leads the cockroaches to 'call in favors from every roach, rat and pigeon in New York City' to try to make amends to Joe. Overnight, the roaches scour New York to gather materials to convert the entire area into a garden and take care of all the necessary paperwork to ensure harmony reigns over all.

Cast[edit]

• Jerry O'Connell as Joe (AKA Joe F. Grotowski)
• Megan Ward as Lily Dougherty
• Jim Turner as Walter Shit
• Sandra Denton as Blank
• Robert Vaughn as Senator Dougherty
• Don Ho as Alberto Bianco
• Jim Sterling as Jesus Bianco
• Shiek Mahmud-Bey as Vladimir Bianco
• David Huddleston as P.I. Smith
• Vincent Pastore as Apartment broker
• Paul Bartel as NEA scout
• Richard 'Moby' Hall as Club DJ
• Graham Dewar as Pizza delivery guy
• Nick Zedd as customer
• Solange Monnier as customer

Oggy And The Cockroaches Episodes

Production[edit]

John Payson originally created the short filmJoe's Apt. in 1992, which aired on MTV as filler in-between commercial breaks. Payson said he was inspired by a 1987 short film called Those Damn Roaches and the 1987 Japanese film Twilight of the Cockroaches, the latter crossing hand-drawn animation and live action. After the short received a CableACE Award, MTV executives were impressed enough to discuss producing a feature adaptation with Payson. In 1993, MTV made a deal with Geffen Pictures during development to produce films based on the network's properties and release them through Warner Bros.. While Joe's Apartment was put into production with a $13 million budget, a feature film adaptation of Beavis and Butt-Head was also put into development.^[2][3]

Joe's Apartment was the first feature film Blue Sky Studios was involved in, having produced company logos and animated commercials before. Under Chris Wedge's supervision, Blue Sky produced computer-animated sequences of the cockroaches. However, the film also blended them with scenes of puppetry, real cockroaches, and stop-motion animation (including the TV roach porn). Executives at 20th Century Fox were impressed enough with Joe's Apartment to acquire Blue Sky, and eventually the studio became a feature-animation company.

Oggy And The Cockroaches Intro

Reception[edit]

Even with the enthusiastic billing as 'MTV's first feature movie' and the support of the company, Joe's Apartmentbombed when it opened on July 26, 1996. Opening to 1,512 theaters but earning a dismal $1.8 million, the film closed all screenings in the middle of August and finished with only $4.6 million. Warner sold distribution rights for later MTV Film productions back to MTV's parent company, Viacom, not long after.

Reviews were almost universally negative, mostly distaste at the blending of grimy gross-out gags and up-beat musical humor. Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four, stating 'Joe's Apartment would be a very bad comedy even without the roaches, but it would not be a disgusting one. No, wait: I take that back. Even without the roaches, we would still have the subplot involving the pink disinfectant urinal cakes.'^[4] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of 'B+' on a scale of A+ to F.^[5] On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a rating of 19% from 27 reviews with the consensus: 'Audiences will want their security deposit back from Joe's Apartment, a lame comedy whose dancing cockroaches are more charming than the human characters.'^[6]

References[edit]

1. ^Joe's Apartment at Box Office Mojo
2. ^Andy Marx (1993-07-07). 'Geffen and MTV pair on 'Apartment''. Variety. Retrieved 2015-11-08.
3. ^'The Geffen Camp Heh-Hehs All the Way to the Bank - latimes'. Articles.latimes.com. 1997-01-17. Retrieved 2015-11-08.
4. ^Ebert, Roger (2 August 1996). 'Film Review: 'Joe's Apartment''. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 11 June 2014.
5. ^'Cinemascore'. CinemaScore. Archived from the original on 2018-12-20. Retrieved 2020-07-21.
6. ^http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/joes_apartment

External links[edit]

• Joe's Apartment on IMDb
• Joe's Apartment at AllMovie
• Joe's Apartment at Box Office Mojo
• Joe's Apartment at Rotten Tomatoes