CollisionWorks

Just finished about six solid hours of writing/editing/conceiving work on Spell, with another hour or two spread out earlier in the day. Feels good.

Sent off the 22 pages of material I now have to the cast, to give them something to look at and think about at this point.

Here's the first page of what I sent:

SPELL
Moira Stone - ANN
Fred Backus - Doctor General Jane (aka 2 JANE)
Alyssa Simon - General Doctor Jane (aka 1 JANE)
Jorge Cordova - ANDY
Iracel Rivero - WITCH 1 (Cuba)
Rasha Zamamiri - WITCH 2 (Palestine)
Jeanie Tse - WITCH 3 (China)
Gavin Starr Kendall – The MAN
Olivia Baseman - Fragment 1 (girlfriend aka FRAG 1)
Sammy Tunis - Fragment 2 (woman of business aka FRAG 2)
Liz Toft - Fragment 3 (worker aka FRAG 3)

SEGMENTS currently conceived (not really in any order yet):

I. Opening – swinging lamp over ANN as she sings “Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray,” stopped by 2 JANE, then buzzer, siren, explosion and screams.

II. First Interview – same dialogue done four times between ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE from different perspectives.

III. Light Bulb Discussion

IV. The Bedtime Ritual (with diagnosis speech from 2 JANE) – midshow relaxation/expansion

V. The Firing Squad Dream Sequence (relates to following sequence listed – “Piggies”)

VI. The Witches or Fragments Become Manson Girls

VII. ANN as Patty Hearst as “Tania” (connect to Che Guevara’s “Tania”?)

VIII. ANDY’s revolutionary speech (with James Brown cape routine)

IX. The introduction of the FRAGMENTS and their positions

X. The MAN and FRAG 1

XI. The MAN and FRAG 2

XII. The MAN and FRAG 3 (includes stereotyped “chasing the secretary round the desk” sequence, set to “Yakety Sax” – 1 JANE makes ANN back up and tell the story “right”)

XIII. The Male Gaze lecture – ANN lines up the women downstage – the men gather upstage to be manly and laugh together

XIV. WITCH 1 spell sequence

XV. WITCH 2 spell sequence

XVI. WITCH 3 spell sequence

XVII. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – Cuba

XVIII. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – Palestine

XIX. ANN and 1 JANE/2 JANE discussion – China

XX. ANN and ANDY on trains, travel, and getting to know the country

XXI. Finale – ANN accepts her actions – exit – “Just Another Day”

When I have some that excerpts well, I'll put it up.

So, a couple of good ass-kicking images that brightened my day . . . first, from LP Cover Lover, a man who kicks arse for the LORD!

And from Photo Basement, Batman kicks ass because he's full of PAIN!

And in video land, this young man's "Pyro System" could kick someone's ass, maybe his own . . .

( Darwin Award waiting to happen . . . )

Gary Cooper kicks cyborg ass!

( High Tech Noon )

And the Mean Kitty is just ass-kicking mean . . .

( Hey, Little Sparta )

Enjoy.

Back from Maine, back in rehearsal.

On the way up there, I was on a tight schedule to make the first of two appointments I had to have to get my wisdom teeth out, and just 20 miles short of my destination, Petey throws a tire tread.

Nice.

At least I was near a bridge so I could limp there and be in shade, and wasn't too far away from a few exits (they can get sparse up there), so AAA could get to me quickly.

The bridge overhead turned out to be a somehow appropriate road:

Got the tire taken care of, made the appointment, got the work done, rested a few days in Portland.

While there, I got to see the other family animals, Bappers the cat:

And Sasha the dog (known to some of us as "Shasta" from a malaprop of my grandfather's):

So, got a little rest, then drove back for an Ambersons rehearsal on Sunday and then an Everything Must Go one last night - I needed to have both, but it wasn't fun with the post-wisdom teeth pulling pain. I canceled Spell rehearsal tonight as I didn't need it, and actually need to do more work on my own for the show to make any rehearsal work productive. Plus my mouth hurts.

The handout from the dentist says that I should expect the pain to get worse on days 3-5 after the work, but I've seen that before and it wasn't true then. It is now. Days 1-2 were no problem at all, but it has gotten worse and then slowly better since. Maybe just another day or two of this. I hope.

So I'll try and laugh at a few things. Ha. Ha.

I just gotta say, that there's one smooth-talking Siamese . . .

(Berit thinks that the kitty is Harry Robinson of "The Harry Robinson String Sound," but he looks to me like a music lover who knows what to play on the hi-fi to appeal to a fine woman)

In any case, that cat is cooler than this pair of 40-year old post-grads:

Did you know that Schlitz was a health food?

Again, Berit jumps in to note that this isn't exactly an incorrect claim - the pilgrims didn't move on from Plymouth to elsewhere because they ran out of beer - in times when water wasn't always so safe, beer was a good substitute.

And as Berit also likes to remind me, it's always good to remember when thinking about all the many many personages of history, and their works good and bad . . . they were, quite a bit of the time, drunk off their asses.

Finally, two pieces of Star Trek geek fun - two videos enumerating all the times Dr. Leonard McCoy used his two classic phrases:

( He's Dead, Jim )

( I'm a DOCTOR, not a . . . )

Enjoy. Ow.

Oh, yeah, there's stuff to share. A grab-bag. Lemme get rid of these things that are clogging up my blog reader, just sitting there, saved, mocking me, MOCKING me, I tell you . . .

(can you tell that I'm bored and nothing is coming to me as yet on the scripts I should be writing?)

First, I just saw on the TV that there's a National Geographic special coming up on the recently-unearthed scrapbooks of Karl Hoecker, adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz - an amazing look into the heart of "the banality of evil." The New Yorker had an excellent article on the subject, which isn't online but there's an abstract HERE and a gallery of images from the scrapbook HERE.

This is certainly a fine, honorable, and serious subject for a TV special. It is, in some ways, nothing new (I've spent a lot of time and much of my work on the subject of how normal people do evil things), but more examples never hurt in getting this important idea across, which so many people try to ignore or reject.

However.

They have chosen one of the most unfortunate, badly-pitched titles for such a piece that I think they possibly could. I understand why they went with this title - the sentiment is appropriate - but I don't think they quite perceived how this would sound or read - I found out about this by hearing an announcer stentoriously read it at the end of a commercial and I cracked up, mistakenly thinking I had Comedy Central on or something and it was a joke - and right as I typed that sentence, they played the spot again and I broke up again.

See, they've titled the show:

NAZI SCRAPBOOKS FROM HELL

Again, I understand the title, but the effect of the combo of the words "Nazi" and "scrapbooks" (about as sweet and Norman Rockwell a word as I can think of) and the construction "FROM HELL" (for at least two decades now an appendage used on the end of innocent phrases in a parody of exploitation film hyperbole) is just NOT what the makers of the special were going for, I would imagine.

See, just then, right as I typed that last period, they ran the commercial AGAIN on the TV next to me, and I was all taken in and abashed and moved again until the title was read so, SO seriously, and then I lost my shit again. It doesn't get old, hearing one of "those voices" use the (sensitive, serious, sad) tone you do when you are, say, doing a promo for a Holocaust documentary and winding up with a title more appropriate for a Roger Corman film.

I get two images in my head - one is a cartoony image of some kind of Jim Henson's National Socialist Babies, with 'Lil Adolf 'n' Eva and Baby Goebbels and Goering and Himmler (with their faithful dog, Blondi) playing together and fighting over the glue sticks, crayons, rubber cement and sparkles as they make their scrapbooks of unbelievable monstrosities.

The other image is of sentient monster scrapbooks, dripping blood and ichor like in some EC comic book, wearing swastika armbands and wandering a suburban landscape, wreaking horror and havoc.

Maybe it's just me.

And speaking of "those voices," here's a video created for a Vegas industry gathering that features the unfamiliar faces of several of the most familiar voices in the USA:

( IN A WORLD . . . )

Some links of interest:

io9 has a nice post about the 1970s toys The Micronauts, which I had and loved (I got a giant, almost complete set for Xmas of 1976) which led me to two other Micronauts sites that brought back great memories, MicroHeritage and The Micronauts Homepage.

These toys were the BEST - great figures, vehicles, and playsets - loads of fun - with lots of moving parts, including neat plastic missiles that really fired with some power. Unfortunately, some dumb kid shot one of those cool cool supercool missiles into his throat and choked, and wound up spoiling toys for all of us for years after, which weren't allowed to have neat shooting missiles like that anymore. Actually, I think they were still able to have them, but they had to make them bigger with foam tips, and then some stupider kid choked on one of THOSE from an original Battlestar Galactica Viper toy (very cool, but I never had one), and that was IT for neat shooting stuff. Jeez, we used to throw Jarts around each other and get set on fire by Estes model rocket engines, and it was FUN!

Stupid clumsy kids . . .

From PingMag, "The Tokyo-Based Magazine About 'Design and Making Things'," an interview with and great set of photos by Frederic Chaubin of Soviet architecture of the 70s and 80s - some amazing buildings here, like sets from SF movies.

From Neatorama, "Mathematician Michael S. Schneider saw a wave form of the well-known drum sequence known as the Amen Break. It’s a drum 5.2 second sequence performed by Gregory Cylvester Coleman of The Winstons and has been sampled and used by countless artists since it was recorded in the 60s. Schneider, seeing the waveform through the eyes of a math professor, recognized a pattern, a relationship called the Golden Ratio. So he began to analyze the drum sequence and its deeper meaning."

Here's two found images I grabbed recently from other websites that collect "neat stuff," but I forgot to put down what sites those were. Oh, well.

Tyler Cannon pulled off quite a feat. Nice job, kid.

And please remember to bow down before The Lizard King:

From LP Cover Lover, a jacket that suggests that the best way to demonstrate high fidelity is by recording a deranged bikini-clad model talking to her hand puppet:

(and the sidebar . . . "Hunting thru Audioland with Gin and Chimera"? Wha?)

Dear god I WISH they would stop running that NAZI SCRAPBOOKS FROM HELL commercial every ten minutes or less on this channel - I guess the National Geographic channel (or, as they annoyingly call it in some promos, NatGeo - ugh) doesn't have a lot of sponsors, and there isn't anything else interesting on right now besides this (fascinating) show on a murderous chimpanzee.

Nice description of a movie from the onscreen channel guide for the Cable TV here, for Curse of the Fly (1965): "A mad scientist tries out a molecular disintegrator on people but cannot get the hang of it." Yeah, that can be a pain.

Here's a wonderfully classic sexist Folgers Instant Coffee ad:

( Sometimes a candle ISN'T Just a Candle . . . )

Paul Anka smells like teen spirit . . .

( A mul-LAT-to! An al-BI-no! A mos-QUIT-o! My lib-I-to! )

And if you haven't seen this one, which has been making the rounds, it's quite worth it . . .

( CHARLIE ROSE by Samuel Beckett )

And I hope the weather is as beautiful where you are as it is here.

( And pretty much everywhere, it's gonna be hot! )

Enjoy.

And another week done gone by.

Tonight, more Ambersons work.

Tomorrow, no work on shows, but off to a gallery opening of drawings by Ivy Dachman, my stepmother, in Pound Ridge, NY.

Sunday, watch a runthru of Babylon Babylon to figure out the lights, and more work on Everything Must Go in the evening.

Monday and Tuesday are nominally "off," but there's work I have to do on the lights for Babylon Babylon, and it looks like I need to see a dentist about pulling these last two wisdom teeth, one of which is giving me some problems - and figuring out if it will actually be cheaper for me to drive up to Maine and have the dentist I see up there do it rather than go someplace local (which seems to be the case, but I don't know if I can take off for two days at this point and deal with Babylon Babylon work).

So while I variously use what I have on hand to deal with the tooth pain (advil, vicodin, etodolac, single-malt scotch), a Friday Random Ten, from the 25,630 on the iPod:

1. "Your Generation" - Generation X - D.I.Y.: Anarchy in the UK - UK Punk I (1976-77)
2. "Editions of You" - Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
3. "When Under Ether" - PJ Harvey - White Chalk
4. "It Ain't Me Babe" - Johnny Cash & June Carter - Man in Black 1963-69
5. "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" - Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde
6. "Mirror Freak" - Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - The Human Menagerie
7. "Copy" - Plastics - Welcome Plastics
8. "Enthusiastic" - David Thomas - More Places Forever
9. "Lone Soul Road" - Sainte Anthony's Fyre - Sainte Anthony's Fyre
10. "Feel the Pain" - One of Hours - Diggin' For Gold - Vol. 10: A Collection of Demented 60's R&B/Punk & Mesmerizing 60's Pop

That was a great Randomosity to get me pepped up and less-miserable (I have to try and remember that "Editions of You" can always make me happy-peppy whenever I need it)!

And here's the Friday Cat Photos -- Hooker resenting me bugging him this morning while he's trying to take a nap on one of Berit's clothes shelves:

Moni resenting Berit trying to hold her still this morning for a nice picture for the blog:

And the two of them, beyond resentment, having a nice nap together last night:

Finally, two pieces of video humor. First, a silent piece of Flash animation imagining a phone conversation between a couple of pop stars:

( P Diddy Calls Bjork About a Duet )

And this was apparently all over the net a few days ago, but it wasn't anywhere I saw it immediately, so maybe you missed it, too - a side of the Muppets I'd never seen before:

( Beaker Sings Something Different )

(more info on this can be found HERE, if you need it)

Favorite quote from elsewhere today -- Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith have an idea while chatting on Twitter (as reported on Ellis' site):

templesmith: I want Ray Winstone & Ian McShane in an hour long tv show where all they do is sit in a room & discuss how to kill ppl with cockney accents

warrenellis: we must write that show. Call your agents. It could be called THOSE BASTARDS.

templesmith: SOLD sir.

Back to work . . .

Various things seen and done . . .

First reading last night of Richard Foreman's Harry in Love: A Manic Vaudeville, for my August production, with the comparatively small cast of six. Went well, and the cast is damned good and has a good time mixing outside of the work as well. Some fine single-malt scotch was poured at the intermission break (thanks, Josephine!) and we had a well-lubricated time. Amazingly, the reading lasted one hour and 47 minutes -- when we originally performed the show, it ran two hours and 50 minutes, plus two intermissions. WAY too long, but we were doing the premiere production, so I felt we should do the complete play. Foreman's first comment (besides thanking me for the production) was that if I ever did it again, I should cut it, so I did. I cut 25 pages, which was less than I had hoped to, but they must have been the right 25 pages, because I certainly didn't expect to lose an hour with that - but I'm glad I did. It'll run a bit longer in performance, with business and so forth, but not too much longer (plus one intermission). A good length.

Another image from the Modern Mechanix blog with a headline that caused some hilarity around this home:

The hilarity was actually more from the fact that the moment Berit and I saw it, we began singing the intro to "The Immigrant Song" together without a pause.

Here's the video trailer for the Piper McKenzie production Babylon Babylon, opening soon at The Brick, which I'm lighting (and I appear briefly in the first minute of this trailer):

( On The Developmental Process )

There's also a blog for the show, HERE.

Jules Dassin, one of my favorite noir directors, has died at the age of 96. I've written enough obits recently, and plenty of people are paying tribute to this great filmmaker, so I won't go on about him too much.

He has been known best for many years for his later films Rififi and Topkapi. With the increased interest in noir (and fine rereleases from The Criterion Collection) the four great noirs he made, one a year, from 1947-1950, Brute Force, The Naked City, Thieves' Highway, and Night and the City, are now regarded as the best of his works. They are all essential noirs, and if you haven't seen them, I can't recommend them enough.

Consumer news: The new Region 1 DVD of Lynch's Lost Highway is pretty crappy and inferior to recent editions from France, England, and Germany - if you have a region-free player, go for one of those (I have the German edition, which is bare-bones and quite cheap, if you can find it).

Also, I'm making my way through the Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus 16-Ton Megaset DVD box set, and, besides looking better than I've ever seen them, the episodes are turning out to be more complete than I've ever seen them before -- I've watched every episode multiple times, on PBS, cable channels, VHS tape, laserdisk, and earlier DVD editions, I practically know them all by heart, and this new set has little bits and pieces throughout that have been sliced from the episodes for years. It's kinda weird (but great!) seeing these episodes for the umpteenth time and seeing new bits (and entire sketches!) that are brand-new to me.

Sean Rockoff told me that when he saw MPFC on channel 13 back in the 70s when they first ran it, there were still some Gilliam animations in a few episodes that have always been cut since (and I've read about them elsewhere) -- I'm expecting to see them show up when those episodes come around.

UPDATE: Nope. The three edited animation segments were still edited, even though lots of other little bits and pieces I've never seen before keep showing up (fewer and fewer as the series goes on). And while I'm glad to see all these pieces restored, it turns out that there's some other cuts/replacements as well - apparently for music rights issues (though for some reason, Graham Chapman's rendition of "Girl from Ipanema" in one episode is dubbed over with "I Dream of Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair," but is left in when sung by Cleese and Chapman in another).

I DID finally find one of the cut animation segments on YouTube, and here it is:

( A Bad Connection on Line 422 )

We've wound up with a night off we didn't expect. More Python and ordering in take-out. Nice.

From around the series of tubes, some links and images for the dining and dancing pleasure of you and yours . . .

First, an album cover that went up today on LP Cover Lover that I couldn't resist ganking and sharing (dig the song titles) . . .

Next, great comic artist Wally Wood's instructions to himself on how to spiff up a boring, talky, and badly-written story (which I got from Joel Johnson Has a Blog): "22 Panels That Always Work!!"

(note: You might want to see this larger, which you can, HERE)

Finally, as a big fan of the retro humor-art of Bruce McCall, I am very fond of the site Modern Mechanix, and have posted images and links from and to there before . . . but this may be my all-time favorite.

From the March, 1956 issue of Mechanix Illustrated, an article and splash page that asks an important question facing America . . .

(again, can be seen larger HERE - full article is HERE)

Enjoy. Back to breaking down scripts into french scenes and scheduling for me . . .

Today, B & I have pretty much nothing to do. This is her first day off in weeks and weeks, and she's spending most of it passed out and recovering from illness. I am spending it awake, and in the middle of illness. And sending out lots and lots of casting emails. 30 so far. Waiting to hear back from the "first wave" before I move on to the second, if I need to.

Yesterday, I ran lights for 3800 Elizabeth. Here's what I needed by the light board to get me through it:

(that's tea in the cup)

So, made it through that, feeling only a bit feverish and uncomfortable by the end. As long as I keep up with the Advil and Robitussin, I seem to hold the worst of the symptoms at bay.

Maybe I can find some good and inspirational movies to watch. In the meantime, here's a couple of Star Wars-geeky videos that have come up by chance today in various surfs around.

( Now behind a cut for easier loading . . . )

Enjoy.

Good auditions today for Ambersons. Seeing more people tomorrow and on Tuesday. Now, home alone (with cats), enjoying downtime. Might as well clean out the bin of things I've been wanting to share . . .

First, the link to an article I enjoyed at Neatorama on the evolution of car logos.

Next, fun aboard the Starship Enterprise, as that 1960s view of the future is combined with another 60s icon to surprisingly appropriate effect . . .

( Now behind a cut for easier loading . . . )

Enjoy.

Let's see, I saved a few things here and there to pass on . . .

1. Ah yes, here's a May, 1935 page courtesy of Modern Mechanix -- look at this face - do you think that Mr. Charles F. "Boss Ket" Kettering here has found the SECRET POWER of some good Grass?

2. Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty is in danger. Maybe. I'm not entirely sure that change wasn't part of Smithson's wishes/desires. Maybe not this way though.

3. Neatorama gives an, indeed, neat overview of the changing of several familiar logos for tech companies over the years.

4. Go to Google. Type in "find Chuck Norris." Then hit "I'm feeling lucky." You cannot escape the power of Chuck Norris.

5. WFMU's Beware of the Blog has an overview of amusement park Dark Rides, including a link to the wonderful Laff in the Dark site, where I spent way too much time one day after first finding it.

6. Music video - Bat for Lashes - "What's a Girl to Do?" - I dig, I dig muchly (h/t: The House Next Door):

7. Essay video: from Goodie Bag, something for the font geeks, "Trajan Is the Movie Font":

8. Instructional video: A rather odd bicycle safety film from 1963, One Got Fat, with monkey faces and narration by Edward Everett Horton. Disturbing (and note, nearly 15 minutes long):

9. Insane video: Someone has mashed up and remixed an anime theme song with bits of Japanese Ronald McDonald commercials. Dear sweet merciful heavens, WHY? (h/t: Matthew Freeman, the fargin' bastidge):

And I'm at home again, trying to find something productive to do on any of my shows. Pretty much at a dead end (except for bits of writing and design) until I get more prospective cast response. No more by Monday and I move on to new people.

And Berit is making props for Untitled Theater Co. #61/Edward Einhorn's upcoming calypso musical production of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle:

So it goes . . .

Slow day at home -- studying my lines for tomorrow, checking emails, stopping fights between the kitties.

And in the midst of it, discovering a band I'd only heard vaguely of, but didn't know they had some actual recorded output.

The band is The Del-Byzanteens, and they recorded a single, an EP, and an LP in the early 80s. I acquired the EP and LP today (which include the single), and they turned out to be really good. Also, I'd forgotten that the band included a not-yet-known filmmaker that I'm a big fan of.

The members of the band were Phil Kline (guitar, vocals), Philippe Hagen (bass), Dan Braun (percussion, drums), Josh Braun (drums, percussion), and . . . Jim Jarmusch (keyboards, vocals)!

And some of their song lyrics were written by Luc Sante.

Here's a video of them doing "My World Is Empty Without You," which also features John Lurie on saxophone:

Years later, Jim Jarmusch would appear on Lurie's wonderful nature program, Fishing With John. Here's an excerpt from that episode:

And if you haven't seen this next video someplace else yet (which seems unlikely) - here's Sarah Silverman's tribute to her boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of his show. I've never seen his show, and from what I've seen of him, not much a fan of his, but he seems to be a good sport. Which is good.

And I didn't know that there's a running gag on his show where he often ends it by saying, "Apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time."

Enjoy.

And a joyous MLK Day to you all.

It's being pretty well covered in the blogosphere in any case, but rather than quote or embed any part of the "I Have a Dream" speech (time, familiarity, and the beauty of MLK's voice and cadences have worn off its prickly edges more than they should), I instead recommend reading the transcript of his "Beyond Vietnam" speech, from April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, NYC -- reprinted in full by Jason Grote at his blog - thanks, Jason, I've never read this in full before, only excerpts.

I also dug this photo from If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger . . ., in their continuing "When Legends Gather" series.

I've been saving a few links of interest; time to unload them, I think:

World's Greatest Guitar Amp Name - if I had $5,000 to drop on a guitar amp . . . I probably still wouldn't get this because I just couldn't fathom spending that kind of money on a guitar amp, but I'd be glad to know it exists out there . . . and it's probably pretty damned good, actually, given the company's rep and so forth.

Over at VetVoice, RockRichard, an NCO currently serving in Afghanistan, writes "An Open Letter to Bill O'Reilly" regarding Mr. O'Reilly's statement that there are no homeless vets (and his corollary that if there are, they're all addicts and it's their own damned fault).

A nice bit of irony, courtesy of Neatorama. Also, from the same site, a steampunk laptop!

And finally . . . since it turns out I missed this yesterday . . .

Happy 62nd birthday, David Lynch!

Berit really liked the album-cover-creating meme I participated in BELOW, HERE, where you create a fake band's album cover from images/words found in random web searches.

So, she had to do one herself. As she says, she could do this for fun all day. Well, it would take a while, since she goes through 19,000 fonts or so looking for the "right one" (I just keep hitting the interestingly-named ones until I find a really good one that works).

When we were doing the random generating that went into this, we first thought it was for a Laibach-type band, then Berit decided it was more like Electric Six. Now I don't know.

What kind of band is Frederick Gent School?

B's just said she thinks they wound up more Pixies-ish, but she isn't so sure either.

Here's the best meme I've seen in a while (coming from flemco, who finds it "silly," but I dig . . .)

Rules for Making Up Your Fake Band's Album Cover:

1. Your band name is your first hit on Wikipedia's Random Page

2. Your album name is taken from the end of the last quote on this random quotes page.

3. Your album cover is made from the fourth picture on Flickr's Interesting Photos.

Add a Back Cover:

1. Reload Flickr's interesting photos page twice. Use the seventh picture, but desaturate it.

2. Reload the random quotes page. Take the last few words of each quote to make song titles. Use them all.

Which brings me to that big hit album - from that new alt-prog group - that's sweeping the ocean . . .

So be on the lookout for when Amiret Township Minnesota comes to your town in support of their album Least Likely To Offend (with the college-rock chart-climber, "All Over The Floor")! Next stop, Lawrence, Kansas!

(Aw man, now I feel like I have to actually make up this entire album as some kind of art project or something . . .)

Courtesy of brooklynite, the Video of the Day, probably week, maybe month:

I've seen the same technique work much the same effect before - someone at WFMU made up a version of John Denver's "Annie's Song" in this fashion - but something about a Muppet makes it even better.

And it just reminds me of the actual newspaper ad I saw once for Sesame Street on Ice (reprinted in National Lampoon, wish I had it handy, it's funnier to see of course) that featured a picture of all the lovable Muppet characters that would be in the show, identified in the caption underneath: Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, the Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, and The Count.

Except they left the "o" out of "Count."

Someone lost their job over that one, you just know it.

Ah, time to catch up on videos and links collected as of recent . . .

First, as I've now seen mentioned on Boing Boing and Gothamist, a surprising animation from the vaults of Sesame Street: Geometry of Circles - no indication of who the animator is, but the music is an original piece by Philip Glass! And from my favorite, classic period, the mid-to-late 70s, with the Ensemble (and vocal group)! It was shown on SS in four parts, but here some nice YouTuber has weaved them all together into the longer piece they must have originally been (are there more?):

A new song by DEVO created for a Dell commercial, and released as an internet single, which I found as part of an excellent overview article on Mark Mothersbaugh, DEVO, and his soundtrack company Mutato Muzika in the L.A. Weekly:

Meanwhile, in last night's Special Comment (and thank you MSNBC), Keith Olbermann reminds us - if we needed reminding, and apparently we do - that The President is a liar:

And Jack Cafferty (thanks for this, at least, CNN) reminds us as well - any everyone should be constantly reminded - that the Administration is a pack of actual, literal criminals:

Enjoy. If that's the right word . . .

If you haven't seen this, you probably should -- Malcolm Nance (who is a counterterrorism consultant for the government's special operations, homeland security and intelligence agencies) has written an essay discussing why waterboarding is definitely torture, and how he knows:

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required to undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil, totalitarian enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as a torture technique.

The full, long version of the essay is on the Small Wars Journal site HERE, and a cleaner, shorter version was published as an op-ed in the New York Daily News HERE. The op-ed hits most of the main points, but the MUCH longer essay contains a lot more pertinant information, examples from experience, and a bit more about why (besides any moral considerations - a BIG "besides") torture just don't work.

And, related, but from the Lighter Side of our Numbing of the Moral Sense Department, here's Mr. Harry Shearer with a musical look at the issue (h/t Mark Evanier):

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. So get to't me 'arties!

I know that some of you may demur, understandably, but at least please try to throw a little "Arrrr" in somewhere in your day, for the hell of it.

Back at boarding school, about 23 years ago, I and a group of friends were into this "pirate voice" thing way before it became the popular craze with the young folks it is today (ah, youth, with their big pants, and their tattoos and their rock and rolls . . .), until we discovered that talking in pirate voices was a sure way to have women avoid us -- as it was put to us (somewhat as an ultimatum) by our female friends who would no longer eat lunch with us if they heard so much as an "Ay, matey" at the table: "Chicks don't dig pirate voices."

This seems to be one of those not-examined-enough lines in the gender wars, a sure line between what men and women appreciate, along with The Three Stooges and the music of Frank Zappa (h/t Tom X. Chao). Luckily for me, Berit is the exception who digs the Stooges, some Zappa music (anything other than "the noodley jazz shit"), and will tolerate the pirate voice, and sometimes even join in.

If you yourself would like to participate, but are inexperienced in this, here is (h/t Language Log) a fine fine superfine instructional video for your dining and dancing pleasure:

And for the advanced student (and I know I've posted this before, but what the hell), you can try singing along with Mr. George 'Arrison:

Oh, yeah . . . I had those videos to put up, in a kinda sorta stream-of-consciousness order . . .

First, here's Little Jodie Foster doing a Serge Gainsbourg song with Claude Francois on a French variety show sometime in the 70s - the original was by Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot, and when I saw the title I expected that Foster would be doing the Bardot part. Nope. Here's "Comic Strip:"



(and HERE's more of Foster on that show, doing a solo number, shot in classic William Shatner, "Rocket Man," 70s variety-show-style, though without nearly as much cheese)

And from the first thought ("songs in foreign languages") we move to the next one ("songs in foreign languages with subtitles"), with this song in Flemish from a Belgian kids' show:



(oh, right, I didn't say the subtitles would be accurate, now did I?)

And continuing along that "inaccurate subtitling" thought, Hitler has some car trouble:



(this original video led to another video that is funnier - if you follow video games at all - but has already been linked to and embedded everywhere, so I went with this - if you haven't seen the sequel, follow the link . . .)

And continuing with the fine theme of Hitler humor, who else but Mel Brooks knows how to find the yuks in Nazis, with this video that actually wound up "banned" from most TV in the USA when it was released to tie in with his To Be Or Not To Be movie (I have it on Beta tape somewhere from when it was shown in the USA Network's Night Flight, surrounded by warnings that it might be "offensive"):



Enjoy.

Recently, by chance, I've been listening to a whole bunch of 70s soul music and getting into it more than I once did -- The Delfonics, Roberta Flack, Ashford & Simpson, The Dynamics, others. Soothing - what I need, right now.

Sometimes, a voice full of feeling, slow, full, is what you need for a while. And it can be in any kind of music.

Jason Stone, at Get On Down with the Stepfather of Soul!, points out in this entry that there are different kinds of soul, and pays tribute to the late Mr. Pavarotti with links to the great man singing with some unlikely collaborators. I've embedded them here for your dining and dancing pleasure. These are apparently from his annual "Pavarotti and Friends" charity concerts in Modena, Italy. I'd heard vaguely of these, but didn't know it was an annual event, nor so BIG.

So here is Pavarotti with the late great James Brown:


(and, for some reason, it seems less odd to me that Pavarotti is singing with JB as it is that he's singing a James Brown composition!)

And here, with the also late, also great, Mr. Barry White:


And here, the beautiful "Miss Sarajevo," with (the still alive) Bono, The Edge, Brian Eno and (late, great) Michael Kamen conducting:

I can't remember what blog guided me towards this link this morning, but here's a little something on Joel Veitch's rathergood.com, an animated tribute to an apparent special fondness of this great tenor's:

Pavarotti Loves Elephants

Ciao, Maestro.

Whoa. For once, I've actually been able to sit back and relax once up here and away from NYC. Not even worrying so much about what COULD possibly be happening that MIGHT be disastrous for me back home.

Good.

So, a morning Random Ten from the iPod now at 20,766 songs, 72.32 gigs:

1. "I'm Allergic to Flowers" - The Jefferson Handkerchief - Pebbles Volume 3 - The Acid Gallery
2. "My Way of Loving You" - Wallace Collection - Laughing Cavalier
3. "I Am" - Molesters - Plastic 7"
4. "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" - Martha Wainwright - Martha Wainwright
5. "Eloise (Hang On In There)" - William Bell - Soul of a Bell
6. "Get Back" - Laibach - Let It Be
7. "On the Road Again" - Andy Prieboy - ...Upon My Wicked Son
8. "Town Talk" - Ken Woodman & His Picadilly Brass - That's Nice
9. "You Were Born for Me" - The Tunespinners - Oceanic Odyssey Volume 09
10. "Baby, Baby Don't Cry" - The Miracles - Hitsville U.S.A., The Motown Singles Collection 1959-1971

Meanwhile, a couple of links from our Rotten Sons of Bitches Department . . .

toddalcott, as always, writes something smart, in this case about Katrina, two years on, and what he's learned about the government as a result.

And shortly after Alcott's opinion piece, I was led by Jason Grote to a lovely piece of investigative journalism by Matt Taibbi that just seems to confirm all of Alcott's (and my) worst suspicions about the Administration's view of its job not to be the steward of this country, but to enable its cronies to loot as much from the Treasury and taxpayers as possible during their stint, and then get the hell out of Dodge and leave the mess to be cleared up by others. Depressing and enraging.

Some pertinent lines from a film noir (I forget which one) that I quoted in WGW/WGW:

THOMAS ARNOLD, the gangster-businessman: When I spill a drink on the carpet, the maid cleans it up for me.
NED DALEY, the honest private eye: When you spill blood, your lawyer is expected to do the same.
THOMAS ARNOLD: Exactly.

And from the Department of Cheering You Up After That Department, imomus has let me know that you can find the entire (hysterical) series The Japanese Tradition on YouTube. I have one of them on videotape, "Sushi," with an English-dubbed soundtrack -- which, frankly, I think increases the deadpan humor of the "trying to educate foreigners about our ways" -- but it only seems to be up on YouTube in Japanese with subtitles, and here it is:

There are more in the series, which I haven't watched yet, but I'm glad to know they're all there. Judging from the comments on them I see at YouTube, a LOT of people don't get the joke, and are confused or angered by them. Berit has often commented on how well the British and Japanese do this kind of deadpan humor that so many in the USA don't get (though judging from some of the comments, it's Japanese who are angered by the series - "Don't tell lies about us!"), and Momus, in his piece on these, makes the excellent comparison to the British Look Around You series. Well, I like them. A lot.

Also, from toddalcott again, a cheering-up link that made my morning, and will serve for this week's Friday Cat Blogging In Absentia, HERE.

Enjoy.