WFMU's Beware of the Blog

"You Shouldn't Have!", Pt. 1

With Christmas fast approaching (just 14 shopping days left!) I thought I'd help out a bit by suggesting gifts sure to induce jaw-drop in your recipients. Let's start with fake animals...

This year's Talking Billy Bass is Buck The Animated Stag. Click here for a video of Buck in action.

If Buck is a little cheesy by your standards, check out Animal Makers, creators of David Letterman's Late Show Bear. They design and build animatronic critters for Hollywood - and maybe that special someone on your gift list!

The King of Marvin Gardens

In my world, it's almost never a bad time to watch a bleak, neo-realistic 70s Hollywood drama.  These were often simple human stories, told in a sometimes opaque and slowly evolving fashion, populated by complex, layered characters.  Remember when movies didn't need to spell everything out for the dimwitted, AND carry a 30-minute epilogue?  Well I do.  Keep your Spielberg blockbusters, Sundance channel indie charmers, your Harry Potter movies and your Lord Of The Rings trilogy.  Give me Electra Glide in Blue, The Panic In Needle Park or Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

The other night I sat down to re-watch an old favorite, The King of Marvin Gardens, from 1972.  King... is especially relevant here, as the principal character, David Staebler (played by Jack Nicholson), is a free-form DJ of sorts, a morose autobiographical storyteller, representative of a style prevalent on the FM band during the late 60s and early 70s, though barely present today.  Staebler's stories are told in a slow, patient style that would never stand amongst modern computer-ordained commercial FM formats.  The character's closest modern equivalent might be public radio storytelling giant Joe Frank.

David, a doleful loner, is called away from his nighttime air slot and grim 2-story Philadelphia flat to Atlantic City, by his troublesome wheeler-dealer brother Jason, played by Bruce Dern.  In recent years, Dern had performed memorable turns as a psychotic guardian of Earth's last botanical garden in the moody Sci-Fi thriller Silent Running (1972), and as the last guy you'd want as an LSD-tour companion in Roger Corman's The Trip (1967), the latter written by Nicholson.  Dern and Nicholson had already worked together on several films, including Drive, He Said, Jack's directorial debut from the previous year.  The wonderful Ellen Burstyn (see Alice... above) also stars as the sweet nut-job Jason's been shacking up with.

Brandon's WFMU Diaries

I'm always fascinated by stories of how WFMU's listeners came to be so. It's like wistfully recalling losing one's virginity which, from what I understand, has happened to some of our audience already. The rest believe sex is overrated compared to the euphoric heights achieved hearing Kenny G singing Wittgenstein, or Mark Allen's Commercial Interruption episode.

New listener Brandon, a librarian from Atlanta e-mailed Station Manager Ken with a link to a site detailing his week of ravaging by the brusque and musky-smelling wfmu.org. (Hey, I just think it reads a little like the Story of O or something) He writes:

I haven't proofread lately for any embarassing comments I might have made in there, since this was just intended as a private email series... but now that it's on the web anyway, I thought some of you might be interested to read it. Loved what I heard that week, and I've become a regular listener. 
Just sent another donation, since you'd said in the "state of the station" program that
this is a slow time of the year for cash flow.  Thanks for helping maintain such a high quality station.

Thanks, Brandon!

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Christmas Lights Sequencer From Hell

Merry Christmas, Con Ed; or, I'm Glad I Don't Live Next Door to Them.

3-minute video (Windows Media) (Or here or here) (Music is "Wizards of Winter" by Trans-Siberian Orchestra)

(Artist neighbor unknown)

VARIOUS UPDATES:
Another arrangement on the same house, with Jingle Bells audio by (brace yourself) Barbra Streisand: 2-minute video (Windows Media)

(Users of better operating systems can view Windows Media video using the open-source video player VideoLan (a.k.a. VLC).)

The light arrangements are by Carson Williams on his Mason, OH house.  The show ran four hours a night at low volume, simulcast via low-power FM radio for drive-bys, and used 16,000 lights and the Light-O-Rama sequencer.

Or, play Pong on the side of an office building using your cell phone.

(Thanks to Barrett Golding and others for more info!)

UPDATE 12/5/05: How to make the EXACT same display on your own house using Carson Williams' sequencer file.

Yet another UPDATE 12/8/05: Williams has pulled the plug on the light show at his house, due to traffic problems and accidents in front of his house.

Blanket Fodder

In honor of my second week of hazy reality following hernia surgery, I present some "previously unreleased" material (i.e., I'm feeling too leaden and lifeless to churn out something shiny and new.)  These then, are my riffing sessions, ideas that might have been full-on essays (or blog posts), had they only jazzed more than 3 paragraphs out of me.  Hope you enjoy.

Don't Show Me Your Shit

One of my personal goals is to make it through life without ever seeing another person's faecal waste.  Well I've already failed, though by no fault of my own.  A holistic M.D. once asked me if I "looked" when I flushed after a dump (I have to assume this was a "psychological" question), to which I replied, "Yes, I look. I look FONDLY."  I say bye-bye.  But only to my shit, not yours.

The arrogance in "forgetting" to flush is staggering.  It's sort of the ultimate fuck you.  "Here, man, here's what I think of you.  Look what I left for you.  Isn't it pretty?" 

So don't show me your shit, OK?  I don't want to see it.  Don't take pictures of it, either.  (And that means YOU, Dave; your camera phone privileges should be suspended for life.)  The image of your brownish-yellow, spiraling doopy-doops will give me a bud of repulsion that will last a lifetime.

On Necromancy

If raising the dead were as easy as lighting a few black candles and reading from a book, everyone would be doing it.  The focus and dedication required to conjure up a spiritual entity within an exhumed corpse, usually for the purpose of divining information, is way beyond a guy like me.

Eliphas Levi, widely believed to have been somewhat successful in such ritual conjurations, most likely didn't have to punch a clock full-time.  Bon vivants such as The Great Beast, Aleister Crowley, were removed enough from ordinary society by wealth and class to afford them the time necessary to indulge in such pursuits.  I can't remember the last time I went on a horseback opium-poppy expedition, crafted a homunculus, or just performed a good ol' black mass.  There just isn't time for these things once your life gets going.

A Diagram of the Home

(hommage mineur à Bil Keane)

Blubber Chicken and Middle-Class Pie

Hello, everybody—nice seeing you again.

I was reading a social history of housework, because that's the kind of thing I do for fun, and in the chapter on cooking the author said that now that a whole generation has grown up eating Hamburger Helper, that's what Americans think home cooking is. They associate a good, home-cooked meal with Mom dumping the contents of a box into a pan and mushing it up with some ground beef. This made me feel very un-American, because I'd never eaten Hamburger Helper in my life. Then one night I happened to have a pound of ground beef in the Kelvinator, and it was a night Sluggo wasn't going to be home for dinner, so I decided to experiment. I walked to the store and, mirabile dictu, Hamburger Helper was on sale that week. There were a lot of flavors; I hadn't expected that. I didn't know which was the correct, all-American flavor to get, but there were empty spaces on the shelf so I figured probably the "regular" flavor was already sold out. I wanted to do my experiment, but I wasn't so committed to it that I was willing to get a raincheck and another pound of ground beef the following week, so I finally chose "Oriental" because its name seemed more politically incorrect, and therefore more all-American, than "Stroganoff."

Well, it was dreadful. The predominant flavor was salt, apparently as an attempt to disguise the bizarre chemical flavors of the other ingredients. I like salt—I sometimes snack on sea salt straight from the box—but Hamburger Helper was too salty for me. I am sorry for the Americans who eat this stuff, but on the other hand I'm not a foodie, either. Foodie food is peculiar in its own way. For instance, foodies are responsible for blubber chicken. For hundreds of years, American cookbooks have advised folks to roast a chicken by letting it sit in a 350-degree oven for an hour or two, depending on the weight of the bird. It was delicious, and it was fool-proof—but unfortunately it wasn’t foodie-proof. Pick up any new-fangled foodie cookbook, and you’ll discover that you should be putting your chicken in a 500-degree oven for a while, and then lowering the temperature for another while, and then you will wind up with a nasty, undercooked, blubbery bird which apparently you are supposed to pretend to enjoy because if you don’t you are an unsophisticated rube who only wants your food to taste good.

Poor Christmas

I have been poor most of my life. Not poor as in, “we have to cut back on the cleaning lady’s days,” but poor like being passed around from one relative to another to live, and wearing other kids’ used clothes, and going an entire north-Midwest winter with no winter coat because nobody noticed I didn’t have one. I don’t remember ever being hungry then, but I do remember being cold; I cried from the cold sometimes.

I worked hard in school so I could get a scholarship to college, because I knew that was the only way I’d ever get out. I got a full scholarship to a school in the Pacific Northwest. The winters were warmer there, so my lack of a winter coat didn’t matter so much. I arrived at college with my entire wardrobe: two sweaters, two pairs of jeans, underwear, socks, a pair of clogs, and a jacket. I don’t remember being cold there, but sometimes I was hungry. I stood in the cafeteria where the other kids emptied their trays and took the food they didn’t want. I remember when the price of a box of saltine crackers went up a nickel at the local store, because that meant I couldn’t afford them any more. Then my little sister came to live with me. One of the happiest days of my life was the day we qualified for foodstamps.

One year I started saving at the start of the school year, and by Christmas I had $6.00. I had three people I had to get gifts for, so I used the money to buy cheap little address books at a 99-cent store and some fabric scraps, and I covered the books with the fabric and decorated them and wrapped them in paper I drew myself. It wasn’t so bad, really. I think I have a naturally sunny nature that probably would have come out more if my life hadn’t been so hard when I was young, and that year I thought, “Well, at least I’ll never have a Christmas as poor as this one. Every Christmas from now on will be better than this.” But I was wrong. This year is worse.

(F:) Drive Video Vault

Rarely do my worlds collide with such hilarity as in this clip from grindcore band Dying Fetus.  To see the Blue's Clues "face" and other images from popular children's TV used in this fashion brings me great joy.  (Everyone knows that Death Metal vocals started with the Cookie Monster, anyway.)  Go on, play this video for your kids—with the given indecipherability of the lyrics, I'm sure no one's in danger, despite the title.  Here's more information about the band and the album, plus guitar tabs for the song.  [Dying Fetus - Kill Your Mother Rape Your Dog mpg]

Since there seems to be a Fall renaissance going on, it's timely to view these clips of the band in their salad days.  First, one of the earliest lineups performing "Psychomafia" and "Industrial Estate" (plus some interview footage), taken from the What's On? program in 1978.  Note the presence of original keyboardist (and Mark E. girlfriend) Una Baines.  The next clip is a raucous live performance of the song "Smile" from 1983, when the band was featured on the BBC's The Tube.  BBC Radio icon John Peel appears briefly in the intro; Peel waived his hosting fee, with the agreement that The Fall could perform on the show.  All this should make you ripe and ready for The Wonderful and Frightening World of Mark E. Smith, an outstanding 2005 BBC4 documentary that is so good, the lack of a subsequent DVD release would be criminal.  (RSM contributed)  [Fall clip 1] [Fall clip 2]

How cool were The Stranglers?  Look at Hugh Cornwell—you wish you were half as cool as he is in this Top of The Pops clip, where the band apes to their version of Burt Bachrach's "Walk On By."  Not the greatest lip syncher, but still way cool.  Start with a base stock of Roxy Music, add some Ray Manzarek keyboards, fold in four creative, decadent minds and stir, with lots of grit and sweat from the pub floor and voila! — one of my all-time favorite bands.  Why are The Stranglers not as heralded as some of their contemporaries from the UK punk explosion?  Was it Dave Greenfield's refusal to leave the prog era behind and cut his hair?  Perhaps they were too dark, too literary or too sexy for their own good.  The Stranglers still perform and record today, albeit without Hugh, who's busy with his solo projects, including two books and a touring/recording band.  [The Stranglers - Walk On By mpg]

Who Really Cares...

...about correct grammar, spelling and punctuation?  As someone who has pursued a career as a proofreader and copy editor for almost 20 years, I consider myself part of that withering breed of cranks who do care, but are at the same time aware we're fighting a losing battle.

The publishing and news media industries, for the most part, do not pay their editors a living wage (it's more of a live-at-home wage), and why should they, with all the chuckleheads out there nursing Jimmy Olsen dreams?  As a result, newspapers, magazines, Web pages and even books in print are riddled with typos, misused punctuation and poorly written sentences.  Just look at this doozy (pictured) I found on CNN.com a while back—sentences like this are commonplace on CNN, MSN and other Web media outlets.

If you want to make a living wage as an editor, you'll most likely need to go to work for THE MAN, in one of several "evil" corporate industries such as law, finance, pharmaceuticals or healthcare.  These industries don't generally care about correctness, either.  They care only inasmuch as it affects their bottom line, i.e., if something in print isn't as it should be, they could be fined, be sued, or even (gasp!) lose an important client.  (Don't even get me started on Continuing Medical Education, a wholly corporate-funded scam, and the subject of another blog post for another time.)

So who really cares?  Lynne Truss does.  Truss expanded her well-received BBC Radio 4 series, Cutting a Dash, into the best selling book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.  Anyone with even the slightest reverence for correct punctuation usage and grammar will find this a laugh-out-loud read.  To demonstrate the strength of her convictions, upon the opening of the film Two Weeks Notice, Ms. Truss went to Leicester Square with a six-inch apostrophe mounted on a stick, holding it strategically aloft so that, for a time at least, "Weeks" carried its proper possessive.

Most passersby told Truss to "get a life."  The sting of this comment, in this context, has been felt at one time or another by all intrusive, stickler-types like myself.  My own wife, bless her, has weathered years of my "pronunciation tips," and never once told me to "get a life."  But just try telling someone to "get a life" as they blab on about last night's NFL spectacle, the "tribal council" on Survivor, or Lindsay Lohan's drunken escapades.  These things, apparently, are more legitimate stuff of which to make up a life than our glorious and complex written language.

That Boy Jumpy Sure Can Dance

Hello, Everybody—Nice seeing you again.

The WFMU Record Fair this past weekend was the most fun ever. Everyone had been waiting a year for it, and folks were ready. There were great live acts, and bizarre entertainment in the AV Lounge, and album cover modification procedures, and dancing, and food—and, of course, tons of vinyl, CDs, and stuff. So much stuff. Usually I can’t even buy anything at the Record Fair, because when I’m confronted by that much recorded material the acquisitive part of my brain overloads and shuts down. I walk up and down every aisle, and then I leave. But this year I was on a mission to find a recording that featured washtub bass, and I want to thank that one dealer who came down $5 on the price so I’d have enough money left to get home. But still … there was a lot of stuff.

I don’t know anybody who doesn’t have a lot of stuff, huge accumulations of pop-cultural detritus: comic books, plastic toys, baseball cards, books, records, CDs, 8-track tapes, shoes, hats, teapots, watches, fountain pens, videos, art, little bits of metal picked up off the street, shopping bags, postcards—anything—everything—all of it at once. I never thought of myself or my friends as being participants in the great American consumer economy, but when I look at our itty-bitty living spaces stuffed full of crap, I have to reconsider.

I think there are various categories of stuff, or that stuff is acquired for several different reasons. There are things that are useful, but I think most stuff is not acquired to be used. One very nice wristwatch is a useful thing, but 37 assorted wacky watches hanging from nails on the wall constitutes stuff. People who collect things may take solitary pleasure from their collection: a philatelist can sit down and leaf through his stamp album and enjoy the collection. But stuff often seems to require an audience. The thing I enjoyed most about my collection of jackalope postcards was the reaction of people who appreciated the humorous aspects of anybody having a jackalope postcard collection in the first place.

Chinese Rocks

What has Wm. Berger been doing since he left the WFMU airwaves in 1999?  Well, a lot of things.  Among them, amassing a collection of great Chinese pop and rock music.  Mostly by way of recommendations from online friends in China and Taiwan, I've collected a handful of great, contemporary Chinese rock albums, and I have to assume that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

China has emerged in recent years as an economic giant, also seemingly in the midst of some dramatic cultural changes.  The children of upscale Americans are learning Mandarin, a language that may soon be as common here as Spanish if the Chinese have their way with the global marketplace.  Chinese hit movies like Hero and House of Flying Daggers play here (undubbed) to massive box office response.  There's no time like the present, then, to get acquainted with some of the Republic's rock underground.

Anthony Wong / Anodize - Hong Kong cinema star Anthony Wong Chau-Sang has acted in over 130 films since 1985. He made a name for himself playing opposite Yun-Fat Chow in blockbusters like Hard Boiled and Full Contact, and won awards for his portrayal of Wong Chi Hang in the notorious Bunman film.  I watch every Anthony Wong film I can get my hands on; he's a wonderful actor of great range and depth, bringing humanity and a dark, personal humor to even the seediest of roles.  He's also a musician, having released several CDs of idiosyncratic punk/new wave-inspired rock, sometimes accompanied by the metalpunk band Anodize.  His album of covers, Bad Taste-But I Smell Good (2002), is perhaps the most well recognized internationally.  Here's a nifty Anthony Wong page with some good photos, a (Japanese) fan page, and links to my IMDb comments for two of his films [1] [2].  (He should not be confused Anthony Wong Yiu-Ming, another very successful Hong Kong singer and actor, whose music is more the syrupy radio-pop variety.)  [mp3]  [mp3]  [mp3]  Anodize - [mp3]

Second Hand Rose Band - Part of the Beijing scene, Second Hand Rose derive part of their sound from traditional "Northeastern" music, blending Chinese folk instruments into a standard rock format.  Vocalist Liang Long always performs in drag, often in traditional garments.  Musically, they bring to mind 70s glam pop, especially Roxy Music.  Second Hand Rose have also made a splash in Switzerland for some reason, performing at several cultural festivals there.  Here are some Web pages about the band, in German and English.  [mp3]  [mp3]

Things to Think and Boo

Hello, Everybody—Nice seeing you again.
I always advise my Listeners to check the business news sections of web sites or the newspapers, because how else are you going to find out what’s really going on? For instance, how else would we know that the haunted house business is not what it used to be?

First off, who even knew it was a business? Well, it is. There are a couple of trade magazines called—surprise!—“Haunted House Magazine” and “HauntWorld” (“the ONLY haunted house magazine for professionals!”) There is a haunted house industry association, and haunted house trade shows where haunted house industry professionals can meet with haunted house vendors. But unfortunately it’s not the business it used to be. All those old houses are being seized under the new eminent domain rulings, and there’s all those new safety regulations, and the price of liability insurance keeps going up, and it’s getting hard for a simple animatronic zombie entrepreneur to scare up a few bucks. So don’t quit your dayjob.

I was trying to think of something really scary to leave leave you with this Halloween, and here it is:

When asked if she approved of the Park Slope Pavilion movie theater’s policy of searching the bags of all patrons. Ms. Bridget O’Connor said, “Oh, definitely, I hope they continue. It puts your mind at ease. It might take a couple extra seconds, but what doesn’t?”

Well, EXACTLY. What doesn’t?

Thanks for taking a couple extra seconds to read my blog entry, and happy Halloween.

The Stradivarius of the Washtub Bass

Hello, everybody—nice seeing you again.

One reason Sluggo and I are still together, after ALL THESE YEARS, is that he is never boring. He’s always finding some new thing, like Punjabi Radio   or the Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio.  And he likes all the weird, interesting things I dig up, too.

Sometimes people I don’t know very well, like someone I work with at my dayjob, will express doubt about our eclectic tastes; one guy I thought was a good friend of mine said he was surprised that I really like this stuff, and that I wasn’t just pretending to like it to seem “cool.” I still don’t understand that. Why would you pretend to like something? When I lived in the Midwest, I never assumed that people pretended to like Paul McCartney and Wings just to seem pathetic.

Anyway, the latest thing that Sluggo’s really into is washtub bass. Here’s THE web site.  And here’s a link you can start with if you want to hear what a washtub bass sounds like.  But before Sluggo could start playing washtub bass, he had to build one. First he built one out of an beat-up little galvanized garbage can we had lying around, along with an old broom handle and some sash cord, but already he’s improving on that. He went out on a local hiking trail and found a big tree branch that blew down in the last storm, brought it home, debarked it, whittled on it, and made a staff that’s the pole for his new washtub bass. Of course he’s carving a block of wood into a figurehead kind of thing for it, and now we have to buy some taxidermy eyes of various sizes. He’s already invented a double bridge, and is making me drive him around to garden supply stores to look for just the right kind of weedwhacker cord to make the perfect string. I’m sure it won’t be long until he’s the Stradivarius of the Washtub Bass. He’s also very excited about getting his photo up on this one web site that has a picture gallery of people with their washtub instruments.

When I was growing up in Iowa, the washtub bass was still around. It wasn’t exactly common, but it was common enough that I got the message that it was kind of outré and not a proper thing to like, even though I DID like it. I liked the sound of it, and the fact that it was made out of, you know, a washtub. I liked the cigar box banjo, too. (Now here is a digression—how is it that the people of Southwest Iowa are taking over WFMU? There’s me, sometime DJ Bronwyn C., from Pottawattamie County, and there’s DJ Clay Pigeon, from Audubon, and there’s DJ Bethany from just across the Missouri River in Omaha. What’s that about?) Anyway, I don’t care what’s  supposed to be cool, and what isn’t, I like what I like, and I’ve always been that way. I guess that’s why I like WFMU.

Thanks for reading my blog entry this week, and may God Bless.

What's On My Micro, Part 2

I'm back on the bus to NYC.  Off for a while, then on again.  Such is the life of a perpetually dissatisfied freelance worker.  The need arose, then, to refresh and revise the playlist on my Micro, resulting in the new inclusions below, though all but one of the artists are not terribly new (I must be at risk of High Luddite status; so few new artists impress me anymore.  With a few notable exceptions, new bands seem to often be just an amalgamation of older, better influences, unworthy of the sum of their parts.)

I also want to retract the statement made in my previous post about certain artists not qualifying as "music for being on the move."  Sooner or later, the complexity of moods triggered by commuting, and the city environment, will require a little Stockhausen or MB.

Apollo - Apollo (1970) - A gutsy Finnish rock act who were very much of their time, formed by members of the popular 60s group Topmost.  The album is evenly split between Beefheart-style screwy blues guitar numbers, and Aphrodite's Child-esque string-soaked prog ballads.  [mp3]  [mp3]

Association P.C. - Erna Morena (Live) (1973) - Pan-European improvisational rock band, with similarities to early Soft Machine.  Noodly psychedelic extrapolations, with some very rewarding emergent themes for the patient listener.  I wish more of their catalog were readily available.  A detailed information page about the band can be found here.  [mp3]

Bladder Flask - One Day I Was So Sad That the Corners of My Mouth Met & Everybody Thought I Was Whistling (1981) - Two sides of mind-warping sound collage created by the Rupenus brothers, aka The New Blockaders (see below).  The Rupenuses were also the masterminds behind the Mixed Band Philanthropist project and LP from 1986.  [mp3]

Haikara - Another great discovery in early 70s Finnish rock, Haikara were more progressive and complex than Apollo (above), with inventive song structures that sometimes incorporated Scandinavian folk themes.  Essential for fans of Arbete och Fritid and Panta Rei.  [mp3]
 

Back to the Books

Hello, Everybody—nice seeing you again.

I was very busy in September, and I only finished reading two books. I didn’t realize until I began to write this entry what it was that the two books had in common. Here, look:

The first book, “True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa” is by Michael Finkel, a former writer for the New York Times who was fired after being accused of inventing part of a story he wrote for the Sunday magazine section. This struck me as amusing and ironic, since I’ve always referred to the NY Times as “The Big Grey Pack of Lies,” although now that I’ve read Professor Frankfurt’s little book, I understand that it is actually “The Big Grey Pack of Bullshit.” (You can’t say that on the radio, though.)

In his book, Finkel describes writing the story that got him fired. He was assigned to write about the use of child slaves in cocoa production in Africa, but when he got to Africa he discovered that the story was pretty much a fabrication. Then, when he got home, his editors at the Times really, really, really wanted him to write the story from the point of view of one particular child cocoa worker—so Finkel invented a composite character and wrote the story, and then he got caught. He was home feeling sorry for himself when he got a call from a reporter in Portland who told him that a guy accused of murdering his family in Oregon had been apprehended in Mexico, where he was hiding out under the name “Michael Finkel from the New York Times.” This was so bizarre that Finkel got in touch with the guy and began a correspondence with him. The guy’s real name was Christian Longo, and although everyone is supposed to be entitled to the presumption of innocence, there is not one sentence in Finkel’s entire book that would lead you to believe that Longo was anything but guilty of the murder of his wife and three children. And yet, Finkel himself seems unsure of it all the way. He’s so flattered that some baby-killer would appropriate his identity that it’s not until he actually attends the trial, sees Longo in the courtroom, and picks up on the reaction of everybody else that he realizes that—quelle horreur!—Longo is probably a sociopathic mass murderer. Finkel himself comes across not as a bad guy, but just totally, terminally clueless.

W.C. Fields and International House

My wife Elisabeth is the curator in our home of all things I refer to (sometimes derogatorily) as "old timey":  The Beau Hunks, Betty Boop cartoons, bluegrass music, The Marx Brothers, vintage children's books, the Carter Family, and all films pre-1950.  Not that I don't sometimes take to these things as well, but I go reluctantly, as my aesthetic nerve center draws me elsewhere by nature.  I am often, however, pleasantly surprised after an initial pooh-poohing.

Her latest addition to our collection of things from the "bygone era" is the W.C. Fields Comedy Collection - a 5-disc DVD set that's rapidly winning me over.  First, we watched The Bank Dick (1940), Fields' much-heralded surreal comedy about a hapless, boozing idiot who falls into, out of, and back into good luck.  I suddenly realized where the template for bizarre, free-associated stream of comedy like The Simpsons might have come from.  "Has, uh, Michael Finn been in here today?" Fields asks the bartender, a signal to slip a mickey to Snoopington, the bank inspector.

I wasn't, however, prepared for International House (1933), a wild cinema burlesque of bits, sight gags, risqué jokes and bare skin.  International House is a hotel comedy set in "Wu-Hu, China" -  a precursor to films like California Suite, where big names in idiosyncratic roles hold together a film that's actually about almost nothing. 

A certain Doctor Wong (played by a very un-Chinese Edmund Breese), has invented a cumbersome device called the Radioscope, which displays visual transmissions from all over the world and "needs no broadcast station; no carrier waves are necessary."  Genius!  What a great way to bankrupt the television networks that didn't yet exist.  Interested parties converge on the International House to place their bids on the new device.  Dr. Wong keeps promising, "And now, the six-week bicycle race!" but instead, we see:

-Cab Calloway and His Harlem Maniacs doing "Reefer Man":  "Why, what's the matter with this cat here?" "He's high." "What do you mean he's high?" "Full of weed."

-Baby Rose Marie (eek!) performing "My Bluebird's Singing The Blues."  Yes, that's Rose Marie, later of The Dick Van Dyke Show.  She was even scarier as a kid, and at first glance I thought she may have been a midget.  Must be seen to be believed.

-Rudy Vallee singing a smarmy, religious-themed love song (and being rightly trounced by Fields, who enters the room mid-song:  "How long has this dog fight been going on?")  Fields bad-mouthed Vallee intentionally, violating an agreement between Vallee and director A. Edward Sutherland, who had promised to keep Fields' comments on a leash.

-Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd, a dry-as-parchment duo of radio satirists, presenting sight gag inventions, and the bizarre slogan "Stoopnocracy is Peachy."

Here Comes the New Technology, Same as the Old Technology

Hello, Everybody--Nice Seeing You Again.

Sorry I'm late posting this week--I seem to have lost track of everything, including whether or not I've already told you about the great Japanese CD Gramophone. See? You take all those nice free promotional CDs you've been using as coasters and pocket mirrors and put them on the gramophone and sing or talk, and then the needle cuts the grooves and you've made a wee, tinny recording of yourself. How fine is that? It costs about $30, depending on the exchange rate, from Hobby Link Japan.

But just in case someone else has already told you about the gramophone, here's the newest old technology, sure to be a hit with fans of Mac's Antique Phonograph Hour show--the Edison Cylinder Plastic Cup Recording Device!

Unfortunately, I think you have to speak Japanese to order this--the only place I've found it is on a non-English web site.  But Yuletide is coming, so put it on your list and maybe Hoteiosha will bring you one!

Me, I'm still hoping for the complete DVD collection of "The Immortal Yi Soon Shin" with English subtitles.

Thanks for reading my blog entry this week, and may God bless.
-Bronwyn C.

Adventures in the NWW List, Part 4

As we continue to approach the outer fringes of the Nurse With Wound List, information on releases becomes either scarce, or steeped in speculation and hearsay.  Since I know that I am, to a degree, facing an audience of fellow experts and enthusiasts, any further illumination (or correction) on these artists and their releases is always welcome.  I have acquired several of these titles as CD-Rs or as downloads, so in a few cases I don't even have the original LP sleeve in front of me to scour for what little information may have been available there.

For background information on the list, many other artists and links, please see this index of my previous posts.

Horrific Child - L'étrange Monsieur Whinster - The Horrific Child album is, to me at least, the jewel embedded in the forehead of the golden idol that is the NWW List.  Part rock album, part experimental album, part imaginary horror soundtrack, L'étrange Monsieur Whinster is a psychedelic pop audio show, flowing naturally from one surprising sequence to the next.  Horrific Child was the creation of one Jean-Pierre Massiera, also the composer behind the Les Maledictus Sound project from 1968.  Les Maledictus Sound were an inventive, high-brow concoction of Easy Tempo-style instrumental mod big band music, with heavy brass, plucky bass and fuzzbeat guitar.  Horrific Child is certainly the logical stylistic next step from that record, evidence of the composer's having survived several years beyond the psychedelic era.  A section from side 2 of L'étrange Monsieur Whinster was released in 1999 as a bonus track on the CD reissue of the Les Maledictus Sound album.  Originally released on the Eurodisc label in 1976. [L'étrange Monsieur Whinster - side 1 excerpt mp3]

Roberto Colombo - Sfogatevi Bestie (Ultima Spiaggia 1976) - Milanese composer, arranger and producer who worked with some of the giants of Italian rock and pop, like PFM and Patty Pravo.  Colombo recorded two solo albums in the latter 70s of this intense, tightly arranged Zappa-flavored progressive jazz rock. Here is a short biography in Italiano.  [Caccia Alla Volpe mp3]

David Cunningham - Grey Scale (1976) - Irish-born composer and producer David Cunningham is perhaps most well known for being in The Flying Lizards, and for their string of new wave hit singles ("Money," etc).  Cunningham is also a popular music producer in the UK, working with artists like This Heat and producing Peter Greenaway film scores with Michael Nyman.  He's also worked on countless projects with his long-time collaborators David Toop and Steve Beresford.  Grey Scale was Cunningham's first solo LP (released on Piano in 1977, predating the Flying Lizards by a few years), and remains a coveted collector's item.  It's an album of homespun minimalist themes for small ensembles, and quite cleverly conceived (make sure to read the sleeve notes at the following link.) Detailed information on the album can be found here. [Error System BAGFGAB mp3] [Error System C pulse solo recording mp3]

Things to Think and Do

Things to Think and Do

Hello, Everybody—Nice seeing you again.

I accidentally got a job writing fiction once. It was a pretty good job, and it paid pretty well, but the problem was that I’d never written fiction before and I wasn’t sure how to do it. Up until then, all I’d written were true stories of my real life, which apparently someone had mistaken for being fictional, but weren’t. (Of course, now that I know more about serious literary writing, I understand that it’s all pretty much just thinly disguised autobiography anyway, but at the time I didn’t know that.) So anyway, I panicked, and then I read that George Saunders—one of my favorite writers ever—was teaching up at Syracuse, so I wrote to him and asked him if he would teach me writing in a sort of freelance tutoring, don’t-tell-the-University way. He said no, of course, but he was very nice about it. As far as my writing job went, it turned out not to matter too much anyway. And George Saunders is still one of my favorite authors, so I was very happy when Dr. Colby asked if I wanted to go see an adaptation of Pastoralia at P.S. 122 on Saturday.

We did go, and we had a jolly time. The story, about a guy who works as a caveman reenactor at a failing theme park, makes a fine play. I haven’t had the chance to go back and reread it, but it seemed to me that director Yehuda Duenyas did a nice job of adapting it for the stage. All the technical stuff was good, and Michael Casselli’s sets and Kirstin Tobiasson’s costumes were excellent. I don’t go to plays very often because so much of the acting just annoys the crap out of me, but these actors didn’t, and both Aimee McCormick, who plays Janet, and Ryan Bronz, who plays Ed, were outstanding. Bronz conveyed so much with just his facial expressions, which can’t be easy when you’re wearing a caveman unibrow headband. He’s no Kim Myung Min, but he’s very, very good—although it might not be so successful in a bigger theater where you couldn’t see him right up close. Pastoralia is in the wee little theater space on the 9th St. side of P.S. 122 through next weekend, and I recommend that you see it if you get the chance.

Here are some other things I’m looking forward to doing to fill time until I get my Hepatitis shots and ship out for Louisiana:

Shit From an Old Glove Compartment

My Mom rarely throws anything away.  I wouldn't say that she's a hoarder of tragic proportions, not like some you may have read about, but her home is unquestionably a museum of old magazines, old clothes, useless furniture, dried-out magic markers and cat knick-knacks.  "No Surface Left Uncovered," I like to say.  Every once in a while, her hoarding leads to unexpected discoveries, like a plastic baggie full of paper items retrieved from the glove box of the Dodge I drove throughout the early 90s.  As I sorted through them, these papers recalled a tattered reality of past lives, past loves, old friends and past decadence.

I used to have an assortment of little cards like this one, which typically carried a handwritten signature on the back (otherwise it was fairly useless.)  That signature (theoretically) endowed the presenter with the ability to purchase certain "specialized groceries" at said location(s), which would not have been available to the walk-in patron.

"Song For Uncle Wiggly to Sing" - Lyrics that were never musically realized, penned for us by friend and genius painter/performer TJK Haywood aka Wooden Thomas.  His work also adorns the cover of the second Uncle Wiggly LP, Across The Room and Into Your Lap.  Here's a link to Wooden Thomas' web site, and a free mp3 from his milestone album, Age of Aquarium.

Envelope and postcard from Thailand.  Sent by Sari Rubinstein, now The Queen of Rubulad.  Inside the envelope were a personal letter to me, and this glorious postcard of the Wat Chayamangkalaram Buddhist temple in Penang.  The postcard lacked a street address, but was written and addressed in name to my friends Mark Ashwill and Julie Spodek.  I guess I was supposed to hand deliver it.  Note my proto-hip Bedford Ave. address.  Some goateed beatnik no doubt lives there now and pays 4X the rent my roommate and I paid in 1992.

Wouldn't It Be Nice—

if Brian Wilson called you on the phone? He will, if you just donate $100 or more to Hurricane Katrina relief through his web site, brianwilson.com. He'll also match your donation dollar for dollar. I figured probably you'd give the money and then get one of those auto-tape calls, like the ones from political candidates that are always clogging up our answering machine at election time, but no—Brian says he will call to say hello, or even answer a question if you've got one. Do you have a question you'd like to ask Brian Wilson personally? I can think of a couple. But you've also got to have the $100.

Waiting to Deploy

Hello, Everybody--nice seeing you again.

Here’s how I know that Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst disasters ever to hit this country: They’re willing to use me to help clean it up.

A couple of weeks ago, when the Red Cross said they needed 250,000 volunteers to go down and help the victims of Katrina, I went to their web site to sign up. (www.redcross.org) It turned out they weren’t looking for 250,000 volunteers, they were looking for 250,000 volunteers with specific disaster-response training. I can sort of understand that. I know they don’t want a whole bunch of kind-hearted people showing up and then standing around wondering where they’re going to eat and who's going to give them a place to stay. But I’m pretty self-sufficient and I’ve got skills: My first job in New York was driving a wholesale grocery delivery truck, so I can drive and I can lift heavy things. I know how to change the oil in a car, gap spark plugs, and use an engine timing light, in case somebody has a 30-year-old car that needs that. I know how to knit. I can type about 90 words a minute. I have a vast repertoire of obscure song lyrics and memorized poetry. I’m a pretty good shot with a handgun. I can play the cello. I know how to replace faucet washers and fix the toilet when it runs all the time. In college I had a work-study job that involved performing vasectomies on the rats in the psych lab, so I can do minor animal surgery. I got Red Cross lifeguard certification when I was 16, and Red Cross pet first-aid certification last year. That’s right: I have Red Cross pet first-aid certification, yes I do. And that’s why the Humane Society of the United States seems willing to send me down to Gonzales, Louisiana to clean the cages of the animals rescued from New Orleans.

Last Monday there was an article in the Daily News that said the Humane Society (www.hsus.org) was looking for volunteers to go down to the Gulf and rescue animals who are still trapped, but they also need people to walk and water and feed and clean up after the animals that have already been saved and are being held in the big emergency shelters in Gonzales and in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The story said “even people without experience can pitch in.” Actually, I do have some experience cleaning cages and all—I was an assistant at a veterinarian’s office for a while in college, too, because back then I was thinking about becoming a vet. I sterilized stuff and ran simple tests and fed and watered  and walked and cleaned up and washed the animals that were being sent home and held the ones that were being euthanized when their owners couldn’t bring themselves to do it. And I do have that Red Cross pet first-aid certification, so send me! Send me! SEND ME!

NOOIIISSSE!

When I awoke suddenly at 3 a.m. the other night to the sound of a ferociously loud motorcycle on the street outside, I knew then what this week's post would be about.  After trying to fall back to sleep for 30 minutes, I got up and started writing.

Those who know me know that I am all for noise in the proper context.  I listen to music that often prompts others to say "that's not music."  I love Merzbow, MB, Goat, Yoko Ono, Whitehouse and The New Blockaders.  But noise in the public, urban landscape can be intrusive, offensive, disruptive, disheartening and sometimes rage-producing.  Usually this kind of noise is propagated by individuals guilty of what I consider to be the greatest of personal sins:  obliviousness.  They're oblivious to the fact that they share their environment with others who are trying to live their lives in relative peace and harmony, i.e., "that's me, and I'm doin' it 'cause it feels good."  Most city noise isn't personal or malicious, it's worse; it's negligent and casually disrespectful.

Every so often, I read something about the measurement of big city noise levels, or about some legislator who wants to mount anti-noise laws as a quality of life issue, but things don't ever seem to change that much, and I think the whole situation speaks to the sad limitations of human nature and humans in general.  Environmental noise is likely causing us more harm than mere annoyance.  There is also speculation that noise may be making our kids dumb (see this link too) and hard of hearing.   Noise may also be damaging our wildlife.

When I enter "street noise nuisance" into Google, 90% of the links on the first 3 pages are UK-based; is this because the British are more apt to use the term "nuisance" or because goddamit, we're the USA, we're loud, proud, aggressive and prone to preemptive invasions?  In fact, a battery of noise-complaint-related Google searches I did brought up more UK and Canada-related links in general, supporting the common notion (which I'd like to believe is wrong) that Canadians and the British are generally more civilized than we are.  (The few relevant links I was able to find that related directly to the northeastern US are collected at the end of this post.)

We all have our "if I were Mayor, President, or King of the Free World" fantasies, and here are a few noise-related offenses that I, were I to ever hold high office, would terminate with extreme prejudice.

The Card Man

Hello, Everybody--Nice seeing you again.

One day, years ago, I was walking down Madison Avenue on lunch break from my dayjob at a law firm. I was on the west side of the street between 39th and 40th, when a chubby little man with a bad haircut, wearing an ill-fitting, brown blazer, handed me a business card as he walked past. The card had the name of some employment agency on it, and I tossed it into the next trashcan I came to.

A few months later, he did it again. I was on lunch break, on Madison, near the spot where I saw him before, and he handed me the same card. “What is this?” I asked.

He looked a little startled when I spoke to him. “It’s about a job,” he said.

“What kind of job?”

The question seemed to make him uncomfortable. “You have to call,” he said, sidling away.

When I got back to my office, I did call. A woman answered. “Hi,” I said. “A gentleman gave me your card and suggested I call about a job.”

“You’ll have to come in to the office, “ said the woman.

“What kind of jobs do you have?” I asked. “Are you a temp agency?”

“I can’t talk about it on the phone,” she said. “You have to come in and see us.” Of course, I never did.

Adventures in the NWW List, Part 3

For background information on the NWW List and related links, see my previous posts.

The Sperm - Shh! (1970) - The 60s counterculture hit Finland with explosive results.  Even prior to the late 60s, Finland was considered an important center for contemporary electronic music and avant-garde art and performance.  If you then consider psychedelic and progressive rock on into the 70s, the Finnish scene was so rich that once you start listening you'll never run out of new discoveries; certainly, a wealth of curious releases remain unissued on CD. Several key titles have been made available on CD by Love Records.  For a detailed account of what went on, and the artists that propagated the mayhem, see the Finnscene site.  Also look for the indispensable compilation CD Arktinen Hysteria - Suomi-Avantgarden Esipuutarhureita (Love Recs), featuring several artists from the NWW List and other notable Finnish maniacs.

The Sperm were formed in 1967 by Pekka Airaksinen (who also features independently on the NWW List), J.O. Mallander and other giants of the Helsinki art/music scene, making them sort of an underground "supergroup."  They organized happenings, and made outrageous music using electric guitar, tape manipulation and other noises, spiritual grandaddys to the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Merzbow, Matthew Bower and The Dead C.  Yes, this album really is that good. [Heinäsirkat mp3]

Also quite worthwhile is the recently released Pekka Airaksinen/Sperm 2-disc collection including unreleased goodies, Madam I'm Adam (features 2 other tracks from the Shh! album.)

Patrick Vian - Bruits Et Temps Analogues - Excellent moog-based rock album released in 1976 on the legendary Egg label.  It's a wonder this hasn't been reissued, what with the intense interest in all things analog, to say nothing of the dozens of "sampleable" grooves herein.  Similar to early Heldon, or mid-period Tangerine Dream, but really its own thing and a very enjoyable recording.  Patrick Vian had previously led the group Red Noise (1970), also featured on the list.  [Grosse Nacht Musik mp3] [Tunnel 4 Red Noise mp3]

The Books of August

Hello, Everybody—nice seeing you again.

I thought August was a pretty good month for me. I’ve been feeling better and was able to get out and have a little summer fun--I went to a couple of parties, an art opening, and a wedding, and I saw Jean Nathan speak in Bryant Park about her brilliant book, “The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll.” But then I looked at the books I’ve read over the past month, and I started to wonder about what’s really been on my mind: Two of ‘em are about my childhood homeland, two of ‘em have the word “gothic” in the title, one of ‘em is about surviving in extreme circumstances, and one of ‘em made me think of a very dear, dead friend.

American Signs: Form and Meaning on Route 66, by Lisa Mahar (2002, The Monicelli Press). Is there anything better than reading a book by someone whose mind works just like yours? Lisa Mahar traveled Route 66 from Chicago to L.A. and analyzed the motel signs along the way--their history, evolution, construction, function, and the messages they convey--with charts, illustrations, and many photos. The fact that she even thought to do this thrills me, but the execution--the book itself--is even better. Here is the caption to one of my favorite illustrations: “Motels signs that included a saguaro [cactus] illustration were relatively common along Route 66, but none were located within the natural range of the species. This illustration, which locates the motels in relation to the plant’s native habitat, is based on an illustration in Douglas Towne’s ‘The Mysteries of the Wandering Cactus Unearthed.’” Okay, maybe she could have used a better copy editor, but the book is a real treasure. It’s 272 pages long, and I thought of Mr. Boyd as I read every page.

Adventures in the NWW List, Part 2

For the background and explanation of the Nurse With Wound list, see last week's post.  Also, last week I neglected to link to this great NWW List site, chock full of useful information.

Now on to this week's list of exceptional recordings.

Urban Sax - I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I avoided listening to Urban Sax for years.  You see, I have a thing about names, and the name Urban Sax conjured up visions of the stereotypical street alto player, clad in a loose-fitting geometric print blouse and a leather Stetson, bopping David Sanborn riffs to the aether somewhere near 72nd and Broadway.  How wrong was I?  Very wrong indeed.  Upon cautious investigation, I found that the "urban" in Urban Sax refers to the original project concept of creating sound environments in cityscapes via a large group of selectively positioned brass players.  Urban Sax is the creation of progressive music icon Gilbert Artman, founder of Lard Free and member of the experimental trio Catalogue with Jac Berrocal.  The band's discography up to and including the Spiral album in 1991 is varied and stellar, and perhaps most importantly, not what you might imagine.  Their sound is low on skronk, high on drone and performer interplay, such that the expected saxophone sounds are often submerged in harmoniously unrecognizable waves of tone, color and percussion.  For more information (and if you can at least somewhat read Francais) see their homepage; also see their brief but informative Wikipedia entry.  Though I believe that most of the Urban Sax catalog has appeared on CD at one time or another, nowadays the discs are reasonably hard to find.  Their self-titled 1977 album is a masterpiece, comprising four sidelong pieces of organic waft and shimmer. [Urban Sax Part 3 mp3]

Osamu Kitajima - Benzaiten - Debut rock/ethno/psych album released on Antilles in 1974, incorporating traditional Japanese instruments (koto, biwa, wood flute) into the standard rock mix. Largely instrumental and proto-new age, but definitely a rock record first and foremost, with heavy electric guitar passages.  Kitajima has an extensive discography, though my guess is that Benzaiten will appeal most to fans of the list.  Today he is "Dr. Kitajima," and runs new age label East Quest records. [Benzaiten (repris) mp3] 

Only the Realistic Survive

Hello, everybody--nice seeing you again.

Like everyone else, all I know is what I read on the Internet.  Of course, this week  I’ve been following the story of Hurricane Katrina, and I’ve listened to the mayor of New Orleans’ radio interview and I’ve watched the president of Jefferson Parish break down and cry, and I’ve read all those commentors asking, “How could this happen?” That seems a little disingenuous to me. People want to know why President Bush couldn’t attend to the biggest natural disaster in the country’s history, when  he was in Florida--the Bush Fascism Testing Ground, the state that “won” the election for him in 2000, where his brother’s the Governor--within 48 hours after one of the big hurricanes hit there last year. Well, why do you think? Within 48 hours of Hurricane Katrina the administration announced that all those Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard soldiers over in Iraq were NOT going to be allowed to come back early, and if that’s not a good, solid indication of their brand of leadership, I don’t know what  is. People say the Department of Homeland Security failed during this crisis, but actually they’ve continued to do their work--spying on American citizens’ public library records and preventing Canadian rescue teams from entering the country to help us. And the Navy has announced that Robotic Lord Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, will be restoring power and rebuilding three naval facilities that were wrecked by the hurricane in Mississippi. We can all take comfort in that, I guess.

Adventures in the NWW List, Part 1

In 1979, the members of Nurse With Wound, Steven Stapleton, John Fothergill and Heman Pathak, compiled a roll call of their favorite "outsider" musical artists to include with their first album, Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella.  No other details were provided, just 300 or so names in block type.  The second version of the list included several newly added names, and came with the To the Quiet Men From a Tiny Girl LP in 1980.  Stapleton and co. knew not what they hath wrought; the so-called Nurse With Wound List has since become a scavenger hunt of holy grails for fanatical collectors of Krautrock, progressive rock, psychedelic, post-punk, jazz, free improvised and experimental music.

Most of the artists on the list stem from the period 1969-1980, that gloriously creative, fertile era when most of my favorite records got made, boundaries were broken and excesses were indulged.  To date, many of these artists and their recordings remain unissued on CD, though a substantial number have been made available by stalwart reissue labels like Alga Marghen, Captain Trip, Fractal, Spalax, Paradigm and MIO.  In fact, the list is at least partly responsible (along with the Freeman brothers, Julian Cope and others) for the resurgence of interest in the Krautrock genre and the reissues that followed.

I have attempted to include here only selections that cannot be easily found elsewhere.  By and large, the labels that have endeavored to put these titles out are very small labels that deserve your patronage.  I have no desire to undercut their business, or the business of specialty stores and distributors around the world.  Most of what you'll see and hear here (and in future posts) are rips from my personal vinyl collection, or else they've been acquired as downloads via online file-sharing communities.

Orchid Spangiafora - Flee Past's Ape Elf - According to information found here, "Orchid Spangiafora is Rob Carey sometimes aided by Byron Coley & Chris Osgood (of the Suicide Commandos)."  This album came out in 1979, and has got to be the weirdest record ever released on Twin/Tone.  Brilliant, obsessive, hilarious spoken word-tape-cut-up-hell of the highest order.  For audio samples, or to purchase a "custom CD-R" from Twin/Tone, click here. [Sheer Madness mp3]

Sally Smmit and Her Musicians (1980) - Hangahar - This is The Mekons' Sally Timms like you've never heard her, long before she became the belle of skewed new wave-country music fans everywhere.  Released on the ridiculously short-lived Groovy label (Pete Shelley's label, which also released his now ultra-rare Sky Yen album), the album is two sidelong pieces of shambling post-Yoko Ono, post-Can jamitude. Undoubtedly an influence on Kraut-pranksters Damenbart. [A - Part One (edit) mp3]

Verto - Krig/Volubilis - Dark, hovering, French progressive psych released in 1976 on the Tapioca label.  Tapioca was associated with the obscure Pôle label, responsible for the original release of this and several other monumental French prog classics featured on the list, including the Besombes-Rizet double LP. Guitars, keyboards and ominous vocals. [Et Terre mp3] [TK 240 S 52 mp3]

Bronwyn's iPod Shuffle

Hello, Everybody—nsya.

There’s lots of things I don’t have, money being probably the main thing because if I had some money I might get some of the other things I don’t have now. Then I would have those things, but I wouldn’t have the money any more.

One of the things I don’t have is an iPod Shuffle. But if you go to the web site that explains how to automatically fill up your Shuffle with your favorite corporate listening product, you will see that Bronwyn's device is copying a tune called “Tonight We Fly.” I wanted to hear what that song sounded like, so I googled it and found a reference to a group called Divine Comedy, but I couldn’t find any links to that song or any little samples of it. I did find a record company called Divine Comedy that has lots of stuff I think I’d really like to hear. Maybe we can get them to send some things to Program and Music Director King Brian at WFMU. But even if I did have some money, I don’t think I would trade it for an iPod Shuffle, because if I were listening to real music I might not be able to hear the songs that are always on in my head.

Thanks for reading my irregular blog entry, and MGB.

Found and Found

To beef up a previous post on found items, I discovered a wealth of links for sites offering an array of cultural detritus and other people's crap:

Found photos: Big Happy Fun House
Sound collage artist listing: Detritus.net
An alarmingly expansive collection of found items, retro-heavy: Swapatorium (be sure to click on the video link for Laffun Head)
The Grocery List Collection: yep, 800 of 'em
Snapshots: Square America
Photos and pop ephemera: Happy Palace
Halloween-related crapola: Old Haunts
X-mas-related junk: Santa and me!
More found photos, organized by year: Time Tales

Whoa people, get a life. I mean, c'mon, don't you have something better to do than live vicariously through other people's garbage? Yeah, me neither.

Pablo Picasso, He Was No Porno

Hello, Everybody--Nice seeing you again.

Nick Bertozzi is smart, funny, good-looking, and talented. Unfortunately, he’s also a cartoonist. He started out the way a lot of alternative cartoonists do, drawing his own crude, obscene, and funny comic book, “The Incredible Drinkin’ Buddies.” Then he got all artsy and drew “Boswash,” a story about a cartographer that, instead of being printed as a book, folded out like a map. He won some awards for that one. He drew a bumper sticker for WFMU in 2001. His art got better and better, and he started getting illustration gigs, and he got married and had a little girl, and his comics got more and more serious and historical, ’cause you don’t want to draw dirty stuff when you’re thinking about keeping your daughter off the pole. That’s why I was surprised when I heard that some poor guy in Georgia might be going to prison for giving away a comic book with a Nick Bertozzi story in it.

Every year, the comic book industry has a promotion where they give away free comic books. This is supposed to lure people into comics stores, as if there’s anything in there you’d actually want to buy once they get you inside. I used to love comics, but I don’t go into comic shops any more because I got tired of pimply-faced 17-year-olds calling me “Ma’am” as if it were an insult. Anyway, this guy, Gordon Lee, owns a comic book shop in Rome, Georgia, and he had a bunch of books for 2004 Free Comic Book Day that he couldn’t even give away, so he decided to hand them out to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. One of the books was an anthology called “Alternative Comics #2” that featured an excerpt from “The Salon,” Nick Bertozzi’s graphic novel about Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. You know how kids love the early cubists. Nick did a lot of research on these guys, and the story is historically accurate, including the fact that the first time Braque went to Picasso’s studio, Pablo was painting in the nude. Naturally, that’s the part of the story that was excerpted in “Alternative Comcs #2.” Gordon Lee says the comic—which has a "Mature Readers" label—was accidentally put in the give-away pile, where it wound up being handed to a 9-year-old boy. The kid’s parents complained, and Gordon Lee was arrested.

Living Room Photos Found On Foxtons' Brooklyn Condo and Coop Listings

Here are some living room photos I found while perusing Foxtons' Brooklyn condo and coop listings:

What Really Happened...

...to Natalee Holloway?

How does someone just up and disappear?  Why can't they "tune up" murder suspects in Dutch territories?  How long can a European rich kid keep quiet?  These and other questions may plague us forever, but we can be pretty sure that it's unwise to get drunk in a foreign land and make out with a sadistic rich boy that you just met, however cute he may be.

I would like to see her returned to her family alive and unharmed, but with the passage of time, a positive outcome seems less and less likely.  Still, judging by the seemingly everlasting media coverage of the Holloway case (particularly by the always "compassionate" Fox News), one would think this were a global tragedy of tsunami proportions.  Get some perspective:  In the United States alone, more than one million people are reported missing each year; most of them do not have three Dutch F-16 warplanes with lasers and special cameras looking for them, either.

Chances are good that the Bad Thing has happened to young Natalee.
Running the acknowledged risk of extraordinarily bad taste, I offer these alternative possibilities:

-Shot by disappointed office seeker

-Harem girl at Brunei Palace

-Managing Aruba Denny's

-Drowned self, despondent over Terri Schiavo passing

-Drowned self, despondent over Jackson verdict

-Drowned self, despondent over choice in America's Top Model 2005

Wm's DVD Hit List

DVDs have been around long enough that releases pandering to more obscure tastes are now a given.  (If you remember, it took CDs a while to delve into the farther reaches of "good" taste; now we hardly blink when confronted with a 19-hour G.I. Gurdjieff box set.)  I no longer have any doubt that I will someday hold in my hands DVD reissues of WR: Mysteries of the Organism, Dellamorte Dellamore, Elevator to the Gallows and the works of Kenneth Anger.  There are a few films recently (and not so recently) surfaced on DVD that warrant mention, both for their outstanding quality as films, and for the celebratory fact that someone had the cojones to put these titles out.

The Ultimate Camper-Slasher Film
Forget Friday the 13th.  Forget the whole series.  Jason Voorhees (one of the dullest characters in the horror genre) has nothing on a couple of inbred Virginian twins.  Whatever camp appeal the loosely strung together kill scenes of the Friday series may provide, Just Before Dawn (1980) is guaranteed to thrill on a more sophisticated and cathartic level.  A worthy descendant of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Just Before Dawn has a subtlety and lingering creepiness not seen too often in this genre, i.e., what you don't see, or what you see quickly out of the corner of your eye, is ultimately more unsettling than any graphic gore that could have been provided.  Shriek Show's reissue packs a full 2nd disc of cast and crew interviews, trailers and stills galore.  Click here for my full review posted on the IMDb.

Eye Myth
I’m a whore for the early days of experimental film, especially of the 50s and 60s.  The thoughtfully-assembled, gloriously remastered Stan Brakhage double-DVD on Criterion (rel. summer 2003) was therefore a must-have.  Brakhage’s goal was to liberate the eye from learned perceptions, i.e., "How many colours are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'green'?”  Nowhere is this notion more manifest than in Dog Star Man, presented on disc 1 of the set.  In addition to the images filmed, the actual negative was painted on, scratched and distressed any number of ways.  The result is a fast moving (but not un-soothing) cavalcade of color imagery and superimposition.  That said, the sheer beauty of Dog Star Man, and many of the other films in this collection, will likely keep the uninitiated from feeling bored or over-articized; inasmuch as these are unquestionably experimental works, lacking plot or narrative, they are nonetheless accessible to anyone with a relatively open mind and a set of working eyes.  (Note: Some films in the set are not for the faint-hearted, including unblinking autopsy footage and a live birth; these are not, however, typical of what’s presented.)

Will Smith Does Ozzfest

OK, not really, but he's there. America's favorite ex-rapper, Mr. Will Smith is traveling on this year's Ozzfest. Why? His wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith is the lead singer of a "metal" band called Wicked Wisdom who is playing the second stage daily. Sigh. You know where this is going & it's gonna be ugly. So first, let's briefly talk about Ozzfest. 3/4ths of the performers on the 2nd (smaller) stage have to pay Sharon/Ozzy/Ozzfest Inc. the sum of $100,000 for the privilege of playing. Sound like a good deal? On the surface it seems like perhaps it could be worth it for the exposure (it doesn't to me, but someone's gotta play Devil's Advocate), but your money could be better spent on a publicist for a couple of years for that dough. The "second" stage starts at 9:30am, so whoever plays first (The Haunted the day I went) gets no new audience. Aside from whether or not it's a good idea to pay the money to play, Ozzfest has spots that are coveted by metal bands, new and old.

Cymraeg Ceraint Deilyngu Yn Deall

In a previous post, I solicited WFMU anagrams.  Now I'll propose another: 

Welsh Friends Merit Understanding.

Believe it or not, we've got a pretty strong Welsh contingent here:  Wales may claim myself (myfi), Brian Turner (Durniwr), Evan "Fwnc" Davies, Gaylord Fields (Barciau), and Bronwyn Carlton (no change). There may even be others, and I wish they'd stop hiding.

Ha ha ha, sheep at a fence - oh yeah, never heard THAT one before!  Ah, but frankly I'm not here to foster understanding and warm relations between Us Welsh and everybody else - not in that way, anyway.  We revel in your misunderstanding.  No, I just like the language, and since You People are always with the "what the, whaaa- it's all consonants?!", I thought maybe I'd address it... a little bit.

Back in the day when just about every DJ we've got took to mangling the band name Gorky's Zygotic Mynci on the air, I gained a reputation as the guy who knew how to pronounce it.  I had, after all, just returned from a trip to Llangollen, (mp3) host of the annual Eisteddfod, (mp3) where I learned how to pronounce both of those words.  Click on 'em to hear me say them, then look below the fold where I'll teach you how to do it too.

(By the way, "Gorky's Zygotic Mynci" actually contains no Welsh words, it's just all nonsense -- I think.)

So anyway, there I was, just back from Conwy Castle on the North Sea, and nearly every day I'd hear someone on the in-house intercom going "Scott, will you please come to the main studio and tell me how to say 'Merched yn neud Gwallt eu Gilydd', or 'Iechyd Da'".  It was a hoot - I even got a Welsh phrasebook.  I haven't picked it up since 1998, but I still have it.  Now along comes Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals with his "Chwarae'n Troi'n Chwerw" and his "Yr Atal Genhedlaeth", and I don't feel like such a smartypants anymore.

Ha ha ha, sheep at a water fountain...
 

The Dog With No Nose

Hello, Everybody—nice seeing you again.

I have a dayjob at a dog magazine, and when I first started there people kept telling me about the dog with no nose. They said he lived somewhere in the neighborhood of our office, and that occasionally they would see him outside being walked. As an extremely gullible person, I am always a little afraid of being pranked, and for a long while I thought this was probably just some kind of initiation trick, like going to camp as a kid and being sent on a snipe hunt or when the other production staff at the Village Voice used to threaten me with tales of Gauzehead, the dreaded specter of Deadline Doom. I did actually see Gauzehead once, and he was truly terrifying. He also had an uncanny resemblance to Andrea, the drummer for the Fuzztones,
but I’m sure that was just a coincidence.

Anyway, one day I went out for lunch very late, later than usual. I was talking on my cell phone to DJ Amanda, when I saw him—The Dog with No Nose. It is almost impossible to describe what he looks like, because it’s just so wrong. He’s a nice old Golden-Retriever-looking fella who’s missing the top front half of his face. His tongue laps out periodically as if he’s trying to smell things with it like a snake. He shuffles along the street leaving a wake of double-takes and horrified looks from the people he passes. “Omigod!” I hissed into the phone. “It’s The Dog With No Nose!” “Oh, I’ve seen him,” Amanda replied. It turned out she knew all about him, having run into him once when she took her Puli , Dodger, to the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan.

This would seem to confirm some of our office speculation that The Dog With No Nose lost his nose due to some awful accident or maybe an illness, dog nose cancer or something. Dogs are not vain, so the ghastly disfigurement probably doesn’t worry him, but how does he get along without the sense of smell that is so important to dogs? Was his nose removed to save his life, and was that a kindness or not, given the circumstances?

I have been thinking a lot about The Dog With No Nose lately, since my skin cancer’s come back all across the tip of my nose and a little spot on my upper lip. I’m just finishing my fourth week of chemo, and my nose is coming off in hunks. I realize now I’ve always been rather fond of my nose. I stare at it in the mirror and suddenly find it perfectly adorable. I know I’m going to miss it if they have to take it off. Having been through cancer twice before myself, and having been the friend or relative of a number of other people who have had other types of cancers, I know it’s difficult sometimes for well-meaning friends to know what to say or do. Of course, everyone is different in their reaction to serious illness, but here are a few things I’d like my friends to keep in mind, and maybe other folks would find these helpful as well:

1. Please don’t be afraid to ask how I’m doing. I want to know you care about that. But please don’t call me at work and ask for the full report while I’m sitting in a cubicle. E-mail is probably the best way to contact me, because even when I’m home I may be tired or may not feel like talking right that moment about being sick. Send me an e-mail and tell me you’re thinking of me. Tell me I can call you anytime if I feel like talking. Think of something fun we can do together that doesn’t involve my sitting in direct sunshine. Please don’t disappear from my life just because you’re afraid you’ll say the wrong thing. Telling me you care about me is always appropriate.

2. Please be optimistic, but don’t tell me your elderly uncle had skin cancer and the doctor just scraped it off and he was fine. I really hate it when people act like skin cancer is baby beginner training wheels cancer and not the “real thing.” I have already endured being told I was going to lose an eye from this. I have been through two major operations—one took four hours, and the other five hours, and I had to be conscious during both of them while pieces of my face were being removed. The left half of my face is so scarred up it looks like a hippie chick’s patchwork handbag. On the other hand, I don’t want to hear about how many people die from skin cancer every year, either. So this is tricky, I know. Maybe you can just concentrate on how lucky I am to live in New York, where there are so many great doctors to help me. There have been some terrific advances in treatment since I had my surgeries a few years ago--that’s a good thing to keep in mind, too.

3. Make me laugh. Send me a funny card, or a copy of the funniest book you’ve ever read. E-mail me a joke. Send me a DVD of a funny movie. If you’re SURE you know my sense of humor, you can even make jokes about my stupid illness. DJ Kelly told me that if I had to have some of my nose removed, she would donate tissue from her ass to replace it. This made me howl, because she knows her ass is a never-ending source of hilarity to me.

4. IF you can do it honestly, compliment me on some aspect of my appearance. Not only does my face look weird right now, but being sick makes me feel ugly. On the other hand, I’ve recently lost 22 pounds and I look pretty good. I just got a great haircut. Saying something nice would really boost my mood right now, if it’s sincere. We had a small electrical fire in our office last week, and the cutest fireman came to check it out. I said something flirtatious to him, and HE FLIRTED BACK. I can’t tell you how great that made me feel.

5. Pray for me. Scientists and experts have found that other people’s prayers have a positive effect on the recovery of sick people, even if the sick people don’t know they’re being prayed for. So please put in a good word for me with your deity of choice, or just picture me happy and healthy, flirting with some fireman, my adorable little nose intact. I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks for reading my blog entry, and may God bless.
-Bronwyn C.

A Trip To American Girl

This past weekend I joined my wife, mother, sister, and two nieces to witness first hand a fine example of the cult of marketing and conspicuous consumption known as American Girl.

For those of you who don't know, American Girl is a brand of doll that has insidiously worked its way into
the hearts and minds of little girls across the nation. Neither as ugly as Cabbage Patch dolls, or as curvaceous as Barbie, these seemingly harmless, All-American childlike dolls thrive as parents recognize that someday they'll be able to enter into the preserved rooms of their children's past and pretend for a moment that everything is as they wish it to be. There, the dolls and their accessories (and, boy, are there accessories; they could open another store next door just to sell the accessories) will provide a Norman Rockwell twinge of nostalgia for happier (ie. younger, less medicated) days.

Fury Fest: France's Answer to Heavy Metal Parking Lot

For Diane's accompanying audio archives on Fury Fest 2005, click here: Realaudio | MP3. For the playlist, click here and for the bigass Fury Fest Foto Gallery, click here. 

After the bloodbath in Paris, see this blog entry, was I really ready to go to LeMans for Fury Fest, the best metal/punk/heavy lineup of the summer for three days of camping and partying with my horns up? Hell yeah!

June 24th, Friday, my friend Rob & I were off, leaving from Paris for an uneventful but safe drive to LeMans once we found the Peripherique (the highway that encircles Paris, and basically the "way out"). Fury Fest was right next to the LeMans raceway at Le Parc Expo du Mans, but although the two sites were next to each other, both were huge and I could not get a decent photo of the racetrack from the site, it was still too distant.

We met friends near the festival entrance & proceeded to set up camp; putting up the tents was the easy part - finding an area where we'd be able to find our tents at night while in any condition, that was a bit trickier. A spot by a light pole was perfect, and the labor was done in minutes, voila!

The festival was set up with three stages, all inside; total band count for the festival is a whopping 96, and as far as I know, the only band who did not make it was Murphy's Law. Most of the bands on earlier in the day are given half hour sets, then 45 minutes to about 25% of the performers, then the headliners get anywhere between one & 1.5 hours to play. The Velvet Stage would be the first one I hit today; Belgium's Leng Tche, featuring the vocalist from Aborted on drums was on at 12:55. The Velvet Stage is the smallest

The Buttsex Conspiracy

My first tidbit of sexual misinformation came in the fourth grade, when Peter Heinz next door told me that babies were conceived in the anus.  Even at the time, this seemed confusing, but it wasn't until a whole year later that I discovered his information had been completely erroneous.  But perhaps Pete Heinz was a prophet in his way, a seer into the dark trends of the coming century in internet porn.

If modern pornography is a reflection of contemporary society, and I believe that it is, then there's an awful lot of buttsex going on.  And by this I mean straight buttsex; gays, of course, must employ buttsex as a means to express their affection - this is one of only two viable pathways in their case.  Straights, however, have no such excuse.  As a straight man, if you're fortunate enough to have a mate, or at least a woman willing to lie down with you, she comes readily equipped with a magnificent vagina, one of creation's greatest achievements, its labial folds and fleshy contours custom-designed to ensconce the penis.  So why do you wanna force your way in the back door, brother?

We have a saying in our home:  The butt is for "exegesis only."  Exposition, explanation and interpretation.  As far as our needs go, it's exclusively an exit, not an entrance.  No tongues, fingers or other appendages need traverse there for us to have a satisfying sexual experience.

Harrowing Goddamn Airports

I've been fortunate enough to visit five countries and a bunch of far-away US cities in the last few years, mainly due to the relatively cheaper airfares that have been available (though who knows for how long). Flying has always been a love-hate affair for me; I mean it's exciting and all, but for every event like seeing the Grand Canyon at 35,000 feet in clear weather like I did two weeks ago, there's been a screaming kid who would begin shrieking the second our flight pulls back from its gate at Newark and stops the second the plane pulls up to the gate at London's Gatwick 6 hours later. It's a real test of nerves, and I can never ever sleep, let alone focus on such great epics as Starsky and Hutch (and for some reason Iberia is very fond of Simone). I have a relatively good understanding of aerodynamics, so I know that a plane isn't just going to fall out of the sky, but the cold hard reality is that you are basically sitting in an unnaturally bouyant metal can filled with bodies and luggage, breathing other peoples' recycled air, while enormous amounts of flammable liquid are gobbled into more metal cans that droop from a wing to hopefully belch air fast enough to push the whole deal fast enough to take flight and stay there. And landing is the worst part, especially when you consider some of the quirkier aspects of some of the world's airports.

Philatelic Hallucinations

It seems in times of political turmoil in small countries, culture takes shape. You might never imagine though, that it would evolve into a trash-culture wayback machine. If a nation's pride is mirrored by who is represented on their postage stamps, then the countries of Rwanda, Tuva and Mordovia to name a few have some serious self-esteem issues. Cases in point:

God Save The Queen (of rock n' roll, Stevie Nicks),

Alternative life-stylings of Xena, Warrior Princess,

Karakalpakia, in central asia, honors a great warrior,

Tupac Lives! (somewhere in the Russian Federation),

Say My Name! The Congo shows it's Bootylicious pride.

The Cable Report 07/05/05 (TV That Scared the Crap Out of Me)

In tribute to TV Land's "Greatest Made-For-TV Movies Of All Time" campaign (this week, and next, I believe), I'm firing up a Cable Report.

The Day After
The preceding parental advisories were more than warranted. I've begun to mentally compile a list of grocery store freak out scenes, and The Day After has a spendid one. Watching this again, I was knocked back by the unrelenting bleakness, the degree of bickering insanity amongst the characters, and the special FX are not too shabby - look for the signature explosion scenes in which victims are x-rayed as if part of a cartoon. Additionally, who can argue with ANY Jason Robards appearance.

V.
This mini-series did nothing if it didn't convince me that my parents were face-peeling aliens. The scare lasted weeks, and was eventually replaced by the belief that my Mom was trying to abandon me in the middle of Sears.

Salem's Lot
I'd venture a guess that some of you didn't even know! It sucks so bad now, because it was a TV movie then. Not to discredit TV movies as a whole, but you wanted scary and gory, and this is neither. To note: Salem's Lot did prominently feature Geoffrey Lewis, father of Juliette, and the ultimate on-screen sidekick. Speaking of character actors, and as such, getting completely off track here, who knows the name Michael G. Hagerty? Let's end with a nod to Michael G. Hagerty:

For years, I was hell bent on the misconception that Michael G. Hagerty was John Candy's brother. The pop-culturally semi-literate will know him as the Mike Duffy in the "AAMCO" episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. His bio on IMDB.com reads as follows:

"Graduated from the University of Illinois. He worked at Chicago's Second City. He now lives in Los Angeles.

Often plays vendors or merchants."

Sites for Sore Eyes

From cameo TV appearances from grunge rock icons to floating Russian women to fear-mongering French people, Sites for Sore Eyes distills the web down to its most quizzical, unusual, and fascinating corners. This month, we offer the following for your consideration:

A Steel Drum Tribute to the Ramones
Ramones songs have been re-done in every style under the sun, and though I'm still holding out for chanting monks re-interpreting the entire "Road to Ruin" LP to ambient trip-hop beats, this is a reasonable diversion for the moment.

Unconfirmed Reports
Is it....? I mean, could it be? It couldn't be.... Could it?

King Buzzo of the Melvins
Caught in the stands, enjoying America's Pastime, & then ridiculed by television announcers. I still think he's got cool hair.

Make the Collector Nerds Sweat
To hell with your mortgage, car payments, or kid's future. Someone -- probably with the word "vinyl" in their email address -- is dropping a wad to take home this mind-bending stash.

Auto-Music's Automachine!
Release Stereo Total's next album before they do!

DirtDirt.com's Headacher
Don't eat the brown html, kids.

The Virtual Museum of the Boombox
In many ways, the boombox was the cultural bridge from the suburbs to the city. Re-live the magic here, while marveling over innovative (i.e. stupid) features like the boombox with a built-in synthesizer, the boombox with THREE tape decks, or the boombox with a built-in... phone jack?

Iraq War Fatalities
As "mapped across the dimensions of time and space". Note that this only charts coalition deaths, not those of the Iraqi soldiers or civilians. It's especially disquieting if you watch it with the map and city boxes unchecked.

Roger Moore's Fantabulous Eyebrows
'Nuff said.

Free-falling Russian Gymnist
The lava lamp for the 21st Century set. Or perhaps just another mildly pervy but totally addictive waste of company time and bandwidth.

Computer Programmer or Serial Killer?
It's as difficult as you'd expect to determine the difference, I'm troubled to say.

Many, many thousands of movie title screen shots
Why? I can not tell you, my friend.

Children who have been abducted by aliens
And the pictures they have subsequently drawn. Also includes information regarding thought-screen hats, which prevent FOUR (4) different breeds of aliens from reading your mind.

The Fatal Consequences of Masturbation
I dunno, I thought it made sophomore year go by a lot quicker. Feh, alarmists...

This month's links were contributed by Irwin Chusid,  Brian Turner, Evan "Funk" Davies, Lou Ziegler, Ken Freedman, Listener Pete from Boston (and NJ), Mister Science, and the editor.

Look Down

Formerly reserved for me when I catch you talking about Tom Cruise, looking down can now be used for the blowing of your mind, with art.

The artwork of Julian Beever uses a distorted perspective to give the illusion of three dimensions. It’s like that Hans Holbein painting you didn’t understand in grade 10 art history. He draws some cool stuff like Tony Blair falling down a well, a rescue operation not involving gravity, reality based pop-up ads and himself. Via:Flaphead.

If you prefer your visual perception sober but want your preconceptions about the connection between Stanley Kubrick and Jupiter squashed, see Toynbee Tiles.

Cleaning Out My Inbox

Time to move this stuff from my inbox to yours...

One of the true wonders of New Jersey.

Japan-bashing artwork by Korean schoolkids.

Finally, a roadmap to the wide world of sexual deviancy. Human Furniture? Turkey Men?

Amazing German karaoke version of Bohemian Rhapsody (MP3). I've got a ton more stuff like this to put up in the next few days, watch for it!

Cool trippy movie called Ministry Messiah by Dutch filmmaker Gints Apsits (Quicktime).

The Museum of Retro Technology, including rocket powered bicycles and alcohol-fueled record players.

Van Gogh's letters, indexed by keywords like "venereal" and "hallucinations."

A Russian painter's incredible online gallery and even more incredible gallery interface.

All hail The Toilet Union.

Catalog of various end-of-the-world scenarios.

Wonderful art by Alex Gross.

The Fifty Greatest Song Parts. It would be fun to do a FMU version of this.

Copyright-free spoken word samples of famous literary works via Penguin Books.

Beautiful gallery of early photographic technique of cyanotypes by photographer Edwardo Aites.

Good new mashup of Led Zeppelin and Snoop Doggy Dogg (mp3).

Do Not Click On This Link. 

Thanks del.icio.us, boingboing, peremeny, Sarah, Music for Maniacs, fazed, beatmixed, J-Walk

The Toughest Movies Ever Made

Prime Cut (1972)

Simple. Gene Hackman runs hookers out of a meatpacking plant and Lee Marvin (in a suit) chases him through a field with a machine gun. Not only is this the toughest movie ever made, that was the toughest sentence ever written.

Death Hunt (1981)

Again, this is very simple. Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Carl Weathers, and Ed Lauter run around in the middle of a Canadian nowhere and a lot of blood flows. A lot of blood…in a Peckinpah way. A man gets his arm caught in a bear trap, and in lieu of getting morphine or any sort of treatment, he gets PUNCHED OUT. Lee Marvin repeatedly kicks the dead body of a comrade, yelling, “You dumb son of a bitch!!!”

The French Connection (1971)

There’s really only one scene in The French Connection: When Popeye Doyle (a 41-year-old Gene Hackman) leaves a bar at dawn, trashed, and manages to pick up a beautiful girl riding her bike around his crappy neighborhood. This scene is tough…tough to believe.

Love Liza (2002)

Tough. Tough to sit through.

Cannonball  (1976)

Paul Bartel’s unfunny account of the elicit coast-to-coast race was the first movie that disturbed me with violence. A good example of how PG-rated violence in the 70’s would be R-rated violence today. Cars crush people, and they bleed from the mouth. Drivers are head-shot by snipers, and it contains a Carradine.

Uncyclopedic Knowledge

If you thought Wikipedia was unreliable by allowing my kid sister to rewrite the article on tort reform, drop by the Uncyclopedia for articles so content free they may only pass as sources with like 30% of professors and maybe one or two news sites. Discover the Pope's Discography, liberal leanings at Fox News and why Communists adhere to a strict typographical style which forbids all capitalization, punctuation, and spacing, so that all letters may be brought together as equals.

Remember, since it's a Wiki you can freely edit and expand upon the Uncyclopedia, so who's going to write the WFMU entry?

Capsular Reviews of Anything 1.1

Out of the Blue  (1980)

Dennis Hopper runs up and down the hallway, waving his hands and screaming. Dennis Hopper sits at the breakfast table, drunk, waving his arms and screaming. Linda Manz, later of Gummo "fame" (Solomon's mom), runs away to carouse around with a "punk rock" band. Not much fits in-between the (these) lines, here. An entertaining wreck (no pun intended).

The Ice Pirates (1984)

This is the eleventh or twelve movie that I remember seeing in the theater. Condorman was the fourth, and The Black Hole was the first. The all-knowing North Pole glowing crystal that creates the universal star rating system is pulling one over on me. This movie got two stars. The climax is loaded with pre-MTV scatter-brained editing tricks. Oddly "name" cast with Robert Urich, Anjelica Huston, Ron Pearlman (ok, ok), and a Carradine.

The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber (2004...it's a book)

Best true crime I've read in months, and I read the living shit out of true crime. This past Christmas, I went on a cruise with my mother. When I wasn't drunk (afternoons at pool and prior to daily nap), I read the 2003 and 2004 editions of The Best American Crime Writing in the space of a week. Totally engaging, easy, and addictive. Scary Monsters and Super Freaks is in the same territory, but more entertainment biz related. Perfect vacation fare. In order to fit in better on the pool deck, I purchased Robin Cook's Seizure from the duty-free shop, but I couldn't dance with that thing. The Nashvillian real estate agent sunning next to me was engrossed in Robert B. Parker's Stone Cold, but we're veering into fiction here, with my only point being that THIS BOOK, the story of Attila Ambrus, is a must and erases all other true crime...for now.

Do's & Don'ts: 10 Years of Vice Magazine's Street Fashion Critiques

Do your research. There is a picture of a corpse-painted Black Metaller. The caption refers to him as "Speed Metal" and goes on to make a tired joke about metalheads huffing glue or suffering from incest down the line or something. Practitioners of speed metal do not wear corpse paint. I felt like I was reading Andy Rooney on Metal, if, of course, that existed.

Every Thin Lizzy album before and including Chinatown

...is worth owning. Why, at this late stage in the game, do I have to keep telling people this?

Staring into the thin air...

  I was thinking that if the drinking/running club Hash House Harriers was to merge with the ham transmitter-chasing T-Hunters or Bunny Chasers , another club could form comprised of drunks running around the woods looking for radio signal sources.

Speaking of my listeners, two of them sent some blog fodder. Listener Laurie wanted to share Joe Pernice's indie version of MTV's Cribs . Listener Tom inadvertently mentioned poutine which I was ignorant of, and hope to remain so (at least in practice). On the Canadian tip, enjoy the Crucified Mountie visions of painter Michael Harris.

Thank you, that'll be $59.99.

Well, no luck snaring my soulmate, but I'd say Richard Sandrak's is ready for an e-card.

The Candy That Kills Is The Candy That Saves

Jumbo mint balls the size of peach pits are responsible for the tragic choking deaths of two young New York City girls only two days apart. It's freakish flukes like this that are hog heaven for New York Post headline editors. And while it's no "Headless Body In Topless Bar," today's "KILLER CANDY" cover, with a photo of the peppermint perpetrator looming over its innocent pig-tailed victims, was certainly enough to make me gag on my Cap'n Crunch. Paramedics rushed to the scene but I coughed it up just in time for the following candy-as-redeemer item on Page Six.

CBGB owner Hilly Krystal and chi-chi downtown confectioner Chocolate Bar are unveiling two limited edition lines of chocolate CBGB products this Monday. The CBGB's Punk Rock Box includes a 16 piece truffle collection embossed with the history and iconic images of CBGB's illustrious past, complete with a postage-paid petition to save CBGB's. Also available are CBGB Retro Bars in two flavors - dark chocolate with espresso crunch or milk chocolate with hazelnuts. We suspect Joey Ramone was more of a no-frills Gem Spa egg cream kind of guy but he'd no doubt appreciate the sweet sentiment.

Dick Cheney's Skin Pores

If the idea of numerous local brothels or furry human music has got you a little to frisky for church tomorrow, go ahead and take advantage of Google image search’s most revealing feature for an instant buzz kill. It’s the ability to browse only high resolution images by clicking the "large" option in the upper right corner after a search. What you’ll find after a little browsing is all your favorite famous people in the kind of frightening detail once only available to their plastic surgeons. I’ve gone ahead and located (Warning, these are very big jpegs) Elvis Costello, Bill Cosby, Salvador Dali, Harrison Ford, former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and current boogyman Dick Cheney for your viewing displeasure, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. I have a feeling that with HDTV becoming mainstream there is much more extremely disturbing wrinkle detail on the way, so go on and be the first amoung your friends to own the Steve Buscemi photo that's just gotta be out there.

To boldly go where no Vic-20 has gone before

Five photos of William Shatner in a Commodore Vic-20 commercial.

"Why buy just a video game from Atari or Intellivision? Invest in the wonder computer of the 1980s for under $300, the Commodore Vic-20. Unlike games, it has a real computer keyboard. With a Commodore Vic-20, the whole family can learn computing at home. Plays great games, too. Under $300! The wonder computer of the 1980s, the Commodore Vic-20!"

Not good enough? Then browse through the rest of the current issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly online magazine, or browse through the past 100 issues for all your TI-99, TRS-80 Color Computer, Commodore 64, Timex Sinclair 1000, Colecovision, Odyssey 2, etc. needs. Y'know, game reviews and stuff!

Ashtray Heart

  There's an underground movement to make smoking sexy again... Coherent Light is an adult site that caters to fans of dominant babes who light up and don't give a flying fuck. In fact, they wanna blow smoke in your face and maybe snuff a Kool 100 out on your ass. 

Despite warnings by the Surgeon General about its effects, butt sex may be gaining popularity as we become increasingly fetishistic in reaction to ever-shrinking national liberties. But never mind what I think, take it from Valentine and her Lucky Strikes (wmv) or Nadja with her long Marlboro (wmv).

Audio cassette tapes. Beautiful cassette tapes!

project C-90 is an online museum of images of cassette tapes.  I didn't THINK this would get me so excited, until I stumbled onto images like the one at the right, sending me back to forgotten early childhood memories of making little home radio shows on my portable tape recorder, taking apart and unravelling the cassettes, and marvelling over how  quickly the audio quality deteriorated in such a distinct way.

Enjoy the cassette pr0n!

(Thanks to Soviet listener Andrei for the link)

Get your anti-mind-control software now! (For Linux & Amiga)

MindGuard is a program for Amiga and Linux computers that protects your mind by actively jamming and/or scrambling psychotronic mind-control signals and removing harmful engrammic pollutants from your brain. It also has the ability to scan for and decipher into English specific signals so you can see exactly Who wants to control you and what They are trying to make you think.

MindGuard works by leveraging your computer's aluminum-based innards to both detect and emit psychotronic energy using advanced quasi-quantum techniques. Once a mind-control signal is identified and analyzed, MindGuard can generate a specially tuned anti-signal that will jam the incoming signal. If MindGuard is unable to properly identify the signal, it will generate psychotronic white noise to ensure the signal's harmful message is scrambled.

If you think protecting your hard drive from viruses is important, but give no thought to the safety of your mind...

Read more and get it here!  http://zapatopi.net/mindguard.html

One Less Car

If you haven't heard the Cosmic Cowboy's show on the current Critical Mass troubles, go ahead and  do so: (Realaudio archive). Critical Mass is a fun, legal and peaceful event that is fairly cop free in most locations and I highly recommend it. Okay, now that that's out of the way, what is a cyclist to do when they want to break the law and probably their spine? They repress that urge and leave it to the pros. Lucas Brunelle has got some terrifying movies of street races through busy, chaotic traffic. My favorites include drinking & racing, monster track, drag race NYC and ice ice . Check them out!

If less extreme bicycle photography is more your style maybe you would like to mount your own camera the coat hanger way or the bottle cap way.

Finally, if you're searching for a way to make your spokes spell out "Fuck Bloomberg" maybe this is more your style.

Another geeky diversion

Go forth and waste away your workday, you nerd.

In Related News

The internet is still not safe for anyone.

Ode to the Vee-Dub

Mike Lupica’s last post mentioning his favorite teenage past-time of destroying shopping carts using his VW Rabbit made me all teary-eyed and nostalgic… my first car was also a VW Rabbit (’83 convertible, holla’). Alas, we reminisced about the endearing mechanical misgivings of the Volkswagen anymodel, circa late-70s through mid-80’s, and discovered that our vehicles had oh-so-many maladies in common.

Here is the shortlist of our favorite vee-dub idiosyncrasies:

1. Temperamental horn or oil alarm
2. Simultaneous malfunction of speedometer, odometer, and gas gauge
3. Water dripping on feet while driving in rainy weather
4. Side window/rear view mirror spontaneously detaching
5. Sh-sh-shudder if driven over 80 mph

VW-inspired tunes from the WFMU archives (click to hear Real Audio):
Il y a Volkswagen “Kill Myself”
Gilberto Gil “Volks, Volkswagen Blue”
Os Incriveis “If My VW Bug Could Talk”

To further establish the divinity of the VW Rabbit, this ’84 beast that runs on used veggie oil says it all. Take that, Delorean.

And speaking of garbage-powered vehicles from the future... Crispin Glover (interview, Real Audio) swung by WFMU last week for a chat with Pseu Braun.

Kate's Lazy Meadow

Kate Pierson from the B-52's  operates a fantastic motel in the Catskill Mountains.  All the rooms are decked out in 50's style decor right down to the tchotchkes.  Includes high speed internet access, full kitchen/bar and a selection of unusual DVDs.  One of the rooms is even pet friendly.  Head for the hills!

Your Kicked Ass

Sadly, your ass has already been kicked, many many times over.  This is not entirely unfortunate.

In any event, please send my regards to your ass.

[Diabolical Media Player for macs]

The Sounds of Scientology

In an attempt to raise the bar of blog posting, I humbly present to you… more celebrity smut! Yesterday at the fun factory, Brian Turner flashed a copy of the new Beck album carrying the theme of game-boy music, and made a comment about how his beard-rock phase must have been a failure (see failed beard to the right). Brian thinks that Dave Navarro must’ve told Beck that game-boy music is the next big thing while they were each on the receiving end of a lapdance. Click to hear the next big thing (Real Audio) deconstructed in an archive of Kenny G’s show from 2003.

The Beck-talk got me thinking about Scientology, cult of choice for the uber-fabulous. In all honesty and laziness, I don’t give a damn about the principles guiding this religion/school of thought, so I’ll skip it for the sake of us both. But if you're truly curious, this L. Ron Hubbard song lends a rather lucid explanation (click to hear "Terl, The Security Director" in Real Audio). On with the smut! Here are some names of interest that are or were involved in the enigma that is Scientology (thanks, internet!):

Lisa Marie Presley
Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson)
Isaac Hayes
William S. Burroughs (eventually left)
Chick Corea
Beck
Courtney Love
Billy Sheehan (Mr. Big)
Edgar Winter
Leonard Cohen
Leif Garrett
Nicky Hopkins (Savages, Cyril Davies All Stars, Jeff Beck Group)
Doug E. Fresh
Edgar Winter (Edgar Winter Group)
Darby Crash (went to an experimental high school run on principles of Scientology)
Chaka Khan
Gloria Gaynor (ex member)
Ricky Martin (ex member)
Charles Manson (eventually left)
Incredible String Band

What To Do With Your Spare Time

Illegal Karaoke?

An interesting twist to the ever-growing copyright saga: one enterprising man has obtained the North American rights to many Cantonese pop songs and videos and is busting karaoke bars that use bootlegged versions. Labels including EEG, Universal, Warner, Go East, EMI, and BMG have signed agreements with Nicolas Chai and his royalty collection company Entral.

About 300 karaoke bars across the U.S. are being investigated for using bootleg karaoke videos, and will have to pay $20,000-$30,000 (!) per year in royalties to Entral. Bars refusing to pay are being sued, and their karaoke equipment seized by local authorities.

Read the whole story here.

CSI: Audio

If you treasure audio like some of us do at WFMU,  you would think Coppola's The Conversation would be the apex of dorkdom rising from the darkest realms of the recording world. But that shit is soo '74.

I haven't really kept up with how Hollywood has been portraying those in the business of "audio forensics". We hear alot about surveillance nowadays, but that was only part of Harry Caul's (Gene Hackman's character) job in The Conversation. The real meat of his job and of the film came from the decoding of the recorded information.

Now that magnetic recording devices have been relegated to the status of artifact , one wonders if Harry Caul would get as much female action in 2005 without having to roll around on a dusty warehouse floor, wrestling with yards of tape surrounded by tractor wheel sized reels. The audio forensic scientist in this day and age likely has a flat ass and an oversized forearm from sitting in front of a Mac with his digital editing software for hours on end.

A company called Computer Audio Engineering is one of the cutting-edge places out there in the business of decrypting audio for clients like the U.S. Department of Justice, insurance companies and defense lawyers. They perform services like "intelligibility enhancement" and "event sequence analysis", stuff I never would've imagined could be so sensitively disseminated. They also do good old fashioned telephone recording, of course with a digital retrieval system, duh!

Here's descriptions of their services, which I assume represents technology offered by similar firms out there. So if you're a Junior Dick with an ear for the ghosts in the machine you might want to investigate the possibilities in this field.

ADDENDUM-de-dum: Gorge yourself on audio geekdom, including flawed experiments and stupefying mp3s over on The Science of Sound blog!

Synergy & Fatigue

Some years ago I went to work for a little family-run business. One of the two brothers who started the company had come up with a brilliant idea: he saw how the home office market was building, how people were buying laser printers and getting into desktop publishing. He realized no one had paper to run through these new machines. The only paper available was white “Xerox” paper, lightweight stuff.
He got everyone he knew, including his Dad, to lend him money and he started an offshoot business from his brother's office-paper business. He printed up a catalog, rented some mailing lists and was off and running. The company turned a profit its first year.

The entepreneur's dream so far, right?

I came along as employee number 53. I started as a phone operator, someone who took orders from people calling the 800 number. I had been out of work for seven months at the time and would've taken anything.

The company grew incredibly, adding ten employees a month soon after I started. Hiring was based solely on competence: color or age or sexual preference were no barrier to being given a chance to prove yourself. And the brothers were there every day, even their dad, who was in his mid-fifties.

The dad and I would step outside for our cigarette breaks and converse a bit. We talked about Roosevelt, how he pulled the country out of a depression, how the current job market stank, about the fucking Republicans and so on. The father was a very smart man, had always been self-employed, taught his sons how to make their own way in the world. He’d never been rich but he had never been hurting either. He helped his sons when they needed help. He staked them to their seed money.

The sons were good businessmen. They hired one of their best friends to build the company up. All of them liked their employees - or gave that impression. They talked to us like we were friends, called us by our first names, lent us money when we were between paychecks. They gave nice raises and generous bonuses. They threw parties often. The Christmas parties alone were legendary, lavish affairs in huge catering halls. They grew more elaborate every year, with nice gifts and dancing troupes and a full sit-down meal. One Christmas the father stood out in the front room, entreating us to fill up bags from the huge appetizer and dessert spreads on our way out the door.

This policy of generosity extended to the customers. Early on we borrowed the Nordstrom's philosophy: “If the customer is unsatisfied - for whatever reason - do what it takes to make him or her happy”. It was the first lesson taught to new employees. We went out of our way to communicate to customers that we wanted their business, that they could trust us to take care of them. Some customers abused the policy, weaseling free stuff out of the company, but the owners understood it as the price of doing business. The majority of our customers came back time and time again because they knew we they’d end up satisfied with the goods and the service.

Make This Squirrel Lamp!

It's a lamp, it's a squirrel, it's FUN!

Tall Tales from Hometown U.S.A.

Last week at WFMU I bore witness to a conversation about the indie-star-studded history of Maplewood, NJ, thanks to FMU’s own Maplewood pop culture historian, Noah. Bill Zurat and I were surprised to hear such a laundry list of who’s who associated with Maplewood in some way. I remember thinking, “What’s the deal with Maplewood? My hometown wasn’t nearly that cool, and it's in the East Bay, so close to Berkeley and SF…”

Then I came up with a mental list of hometown claims to fame for Martinez, CA. That list contains three items:

1. Joe DiMaggio was born there. I saw some PBS special on him a while back, and when asked where his hometown was, he merely said “San Francisco.” Maybe he was afraid that any mention of his unremarkable origins would trigger a fall from the glory of being a baseball superstar who was married to Marilyn Monroe.

2. John Muir built a home in Martinez, and lived there for about 25 years, as he taught the public to respect nature.

3. Birthplace of the Martini. This, however, is a point of contention. Martinez, CA is one of three cities to insist that they hosted the fateful introduction of gin to vermouth and an olive. The other two cities are San Francisco and New York. Of course, we must put these three claims to the test.

Who would win in a fistfight?
Strike 1 for Martinez.

Who has the plaque?
Martinez gets points here. They have an honest-to-god plaque sitting on a city street “documenting” the birth of the martini and the lore surrounding that fateful night. A plaque, man. That’s pretty legit, right? Well, I’ll give you a little Martinez, CA background. The former mayor of Martinez was in office for about 15 years or so, and didn’t even live in Martinez. The City of Martinez’s website adds even more clouds to further obscure their legitimacy, as it states “We feel that we have a beautiful city and we cordially invite you to come and visit ‘Shangrila.’” Back up the train. Claiming credit for the martini is one thing, but Shangrila? Well, I guess as long as Shangrila includes an oil refinery and a lot of antique stores, they might have something here. As for plaques in SF or NYC, I have yet to either come across any or seek them out. Let me know if you've found any plaque-like documentation in these cities.

Who wins the name game?
San Franciscini: nope.

New Yorkini: nuh uh. Manhattini: gettin' there.

Martinezini: ok, I didn’t need to go there. But actually, both SF and NYC have some decent name associations (see below).

Which story holds the most water? You decide:

San Francisco: Alleged birthplace, Occidental hotel bar. Sometime near 1849, a miner asked bartender "Professor" Jerry Thomas for "something special" and instead of being escorted to the back room by the “Professor,” was apparently served the first martini in history. Incidentally, the alleged first documented recipe for the martini was written by "Professor" Jerry Thomas in 1887 (in his bartender's guide, listed as the "Martinez", a sweeter predecessor to the modern martini). Some stories claim that Thomas was from Martinez, closing off doubt in the name dept.

New York: In 1911 at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York, head barman, Martini (name fits!) di Arma di Taggia, allegedly mixed half-and-half London Gin and dry Vermouth with orange bitters. He then chilled the drink on ice (no word on shaking vs. stirring) and strained it to a chilled glass. Apparently Knickerbocker regulars asked for variations of the drink and added the olive.

Martinez: Aforementioned official-looking plaque reads, “On this site in 1874, Julio Richelieu, Bartender, served up the first martini when a miner came into his saloon with a fistful of nuggets and asked for something special. He was served a ‘Martinez Special.’ After three or four drinks, however, the ‘Z’ would get very much in the way.” Another alleged “first documentation” of the martini in a bartender's manual was in O.H. Byron's Modern Bartender's Guide in 1884.

If you wish to read more about the unremarkable town of Martinez, CA, click here. This article doesn’t quite do justice to the multitude of toothless yokels yammering to themselves along the city streets, but you do get a PG rated version.

WFMU eBay Auctions

Check out the latest crap WFMU is offering up for auction on eBay!

Click here to bid away.

Highlights include Ministry Motor Oil, tube socks with the Breeders’ logo, and a few Plastic Ono Band shirts to please the Yoko fans.

How Debbie Got Her Spots (So To Speak)

Tell me a story.

Okay.

I have this '68 Les Paul I call Debbie. Let me explain: A Les Paul is an electric guitar, designed - supposedly - by the guitarist Les Paul (formerly Lester Polfuss) and manufactured by a company called Gibson, after Orville Gibson, the founder. So I named my guitar Debbie, as in Debbie Gibson, because I thought it was funny and because Debbie Gibson grew up not far from where I did on Long Island. Debbie has a very special paint job, a truly magnificent coating of metal-flake blue which reminds me of a ceiling in a horrible Italian nightclub, the kind of ceiling that captures the merest whisper of light and irridesces like there's no tomorrow. One of those ceilings that's supposed to approximate the Milky Way or the night sky or some damn thing but just looks like an Italian nightclub ceiling.

I love Debbie in a way I couldn't possibly explain. I COULD explain but I'd sound foolish. Listen: Debbie is the most wonderful thing I've ever held in my hands. She's beautiful and shapely yet ugly and beat up. She weighs a ton (the heavier a guitar, the more it'll sustain). And she gives up this sound, this ungodly boom and clang that hits me dead between the eyes and makes me feel omnipotent. If you hit a chord just right you're rewarded with angel trumpets and devil trombones, like pulling the lever on a one-armed bandit and finding quarters up to your knees a moment later.

I don't hold Debbie as much as I once did. I can't bear to see her these days because we went through some tough times together in a band led by an ex-girlfriend. Debbie reminds me of the ex-girlfriend, which isn't Debbie's fault but is unavoidable and understandable. But I love to look at Debbie and pick her up and plug her in and flail away on her for awhile. She never fails me. I leave her in the corner and turn the lights down and gaze into her paintjob, getting lost in the deep blue metalflake. Wasn't I telling you about her paintjob?

The Big Duh

THE BIG DUH: A True Story

In the rear of the 1980 Lindenhurst High School Yearbook, the alphabetical listing of graduating senior's adacemic and extra-curricular achievements included a future goal:

National Honor Society
Marching Band
Ski Club
To own my own clam boat

Most kids had similar down-to-earth aspirations. One said: To see the Mets win the pennant. I copped a line from Steve Martin: To be all-knowing master of time, space and dimension. It never ran.

Tommy P. also never got his goal into the yearbook. He dropped out in junior year. I knew Tommy – not well – but we’d say “Hello” in the halls. He was like a lot of guys in Lindenhust High: not too bright or terribly ambitous but always playing the angles. He did one thing well: he sold pot.

Once I graduaited, I heard no more about him. During a holiday visit to my mother’s house, I turned on the local news to see Tommy’s parents seated side-by-side on a crummy couch in a sad-looking living-room, tearfully appealing for the return of his head. “We want to bury our son as he lived.” his father said.

All the time I knew Tommy he had a head. What happened?

Apparently, Tommy and an accomplice set up a phony drug deal. They were to sell non-existent cocaine at a late night rendezvous in a shuttered Farmingdale gas station. They brought along a loaded shotgun and a bag stuffed with newspaper. Around three in the morning they meet the money men. Tommy’s accomplice pulls the shotgun. The money men scatter. One of them is clobbered with the butt of the shotgun. It goes off, hitting Tommy full in the chest, mortally wounding him. Never hit someone with a loaded shotgun.

The gas station is now empty, save for Tommy – dead or quickly dying – and the accomplice. He decides he must dispose of the body. Hunting in the dark, he finds a knife. Deciding he'll fashion a mystery corpse, he begins cutting off Tommy’s head. He’s not familiar with the job, having seen too many horror movies where heads pop off like bottle caps. It’s a slow, labor-intensive job. Blood is everywhere. He also slices off Tommy’s hands, placing them in a garbage bag with the head. The torso with the legs goes in another bag.

Both bags are thrown in the trunk of the accomplice’s American sedan. He drives to the Great South Bay. In the pre-dawn gloom, at the end of a long dock, he chucks one bag into the water. He drives a few miles east, to another dock, weghs down the second bag with stones, and flings it in. Then he drives home.

A few days later, the torso bag surfaces. Sufolk County cops arrive, open the bag and are shocked. Will the identity of this bloated headless, handless corpse ever be known?

On the news they never identified the cop who reached into Tommy’s back pocket and pulled out a sopping wet wallet stuffed with ID but I imagine him letting out a big “Duh!”. Like that wouldn’t be the biggest “Duh!” ever.. They must’ve wet their pants over that one down at the precinct house.

When Tommy’s head and hands surfaced several days later, no ID was needed. His parents collected the parts and had a closed-casket funeral. I did not attend.

So long, Tommy.