this much coolness

Je ne parle pas français mais . . . Au carrefour étrange posts images of Claudia Cardinale, Elsa Martinelli, the movie Invasion of the Bee Girls and the art of Enrico Baj.

Deadlicious posts the stylin' embroidery of Jenny Hart. Her works include stitched up images of Dolly Pardon, Marianne Faithfull and a "dream bill concert poster" of the Staples Singers and Iggy Pop playing the hospital nursery ward where Hart was born.

Speaking of Dolly, she's making hay on FABULON. Not to mention Ava Gardner smoking it up in black & white. And over the top headgear the scale & nature of which will dwarf the pyramids.

Meanwhile, I'm Learning To Share! bids us Happy Leap Day with many neat things including old Shell Oil ads full of trippy gremlins and "this much acid".

And The Boat Lullabies posts some of the new pictures added to Square America's African American series.

against aural mush & dishpan hands

Tom Whitwell of Music Thing writes for The Word to let us in on Why records DO all sound the same.

FABULON kindly aggregates clips of old Palmolive TV ads featuring the ever wise(cracking) Madge.

of past futures and Furbies past

Paleo-Future has a cool post on a portfolio of probabilities, a way cool Flickr set of a future imagined in the 1960s. Images like this and this both bring to mind and surpass long ago memories of reading Popular Science magazine.

Synthtopia posts about a cool crank-controlled bent Furby sequencer. The creator of this glitch-filled gadget calls it The Furby Gurdy. (Now there's a name you can hang your hat on.)

If Furbies kinda freak you out, this ain' gonna help . . . But any fans of circuit bent toys and crazy well-machined gizmos will be happy, happy, happy.

Founders of Computer Music @ Tulane

A cool panel discussion held at Tulane University on computer & electronic music.

Sure, the video's about 84 minutes long (courtesy tulane).

But for any of you music technology enthusiasts out there to hear what folks like John Chowning have to say, it's time well spent.

the long & short of it

Having posted ten- or twenty-minute field recordings of geese and frogs and such on audiokayness, here come lo-fi recordings not even 20 seconds long.

Meanwhile in the city: busker, bus and transit announcements keep it moving.

and the world smiles with you

PCL LinkDump's good word from Michael McKean brought to mind McKean's wife, the lovely & talented Annette O'Toole.

You may know her from her role as Martha Kent in Smallville, but in the clip above she plays a wily beauty contestant in one of my favorite movies, Smile. The 1975 satire, also starring the likes of Bruce Dern and Barbara Feldon, is too drop dead funny not to be seen.

Thanks to filmchatblog for posting the clip.

And if you like Smile, the great 90s beauty pageant satire Drop Dead Gorgeous is also recommended.

and now a belated word from our sponsors

Given all the old TV ads I've blogged about, one might be surprised to know how religiously I use my mute button in real time viewing.

But p'haps commercials are, like revenge, a dish best served cold. Like maybe 20 or 30 years later.

Or how 'bout twelve or thirteen . . . ?

Here's a collection of ad breaks culled from thrift store VHS tapes circa 1995, courtesy mst3kanita:



Another '95 clip here. Full story here on Sickmalls.

ye olde Mr. Bubble commercial

Having recently subsisted on the coolness of so many other blogs, unterkayness today scams draws from YouTube this great old Mr. Bubble commercial.

Great thing when I was viewing this was how very slowly the old memories began to come back. Thus I went from "hmmm . . ." to "woah, I remember this".

Many thanks to HansPerk for uploading this.

one minute tops

Boot Sale Sounds just put up a selection from the 1980 LP Miniatures, a cool collection of tracks each lasting no longer than one minute. It was put together by Morgan Fisher who got folks like The Residents, Robert Wyatt and Fred Frith to contribute. Check it out, fer sure.

I've mentioned somewhere before the one minute vacations at quiet american. These are one minute field recordings submitted by folks all over.

(Way longer than one minute are my own field recordings . . .)

all about the soft serve

Actually, any ice cream'll do, so long as it's from a funky old ice cream place.

If the nearest such funkiness is a creamery too far, or you're on a diet or not on good terms with dairy, check these non-caloric vicarious thrills on Flickr, Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Stands.

For a brand of drive-in you can trust, you can try The A&W Pool or Scrumpdillyishhus Dairy Queen!.

Do a search for one of my favorites, Tastee-Freez, or check out the T-F photos at agilitynut's supah terrific Roadside Architecture site.

Seek ye also the very frosty cool Tastee Treet.

For a meal as well as a snack, try The I Love Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives! pool.

'kay, enjoy--I'm gonna go eat some broccoli . . .

everyone's gone to the picture show

Once the province of the Creature From The Black Lagoon, now in a Flickr wonderland: the Theatres pool.

FABULON proclaims Viva Maria! and viva Gabor.

Attack of the Killer Insects: also on Flickr, the cool set bug of the day.

Deadlicious spaces out in the best way with cool gear used to traverse the celluloid galaxy. All that and the most excellent images from the Francophone regions of sci-fi imagining.

Meanwhile, I try not to favorite every other photo I see on Flickr.

are you ready for the country?

Already nonplussed by the Urban Decay pool on Flickr (yes, again with the Flickr), I was further humbled by a cursory glance at the Rural Decay pool.

Damn, so many good (yes, great) pictures out there, so many really good photographers.

Having arrived at this exam halfway through, I'll hide under a pile of coats [add'l Simpsonian gloss here].

Or in plain sight.

covers, colors, flicks & frames

I'm Learning To Share! has some cool book covers just posted to Flickr.

On FABULON, a fun color saturated music vid.

Deadlicious presents yet another great Flickr collection in The end. Also its own aggregation of old motorcycle photos.

Music Thing posts some selected links to the homemade musical instruments project on YouTube. My fave below (thanks to MT's link, posted by sxipshirey):



A more finessed & lo-tech version of the ebowed toaster oven?

on uberkayness--pixels aplenty

Seeing the neat stuff on Flickr, I've had the perhaps unfortunate impulse to upload some pics of my own.



As part of my experimentation with worldwide media hegemony (wheeeee!), much of this has been posted on uberkayness:

just starting to dawn on me

to Flickr into view

all yawns great & small

also the unFlickr-ing one frosty morning


If you like photos of dawn or snow or cats, you're prob. safe. Otherwise, check back later . . .

my friend Flickr

I've kinda avoided Flickr--either as a place to post photos or to browse through others'. Blogs alone are overwhelmingly vast, so I've not been too game.

The Sickmalls aligned Look In the Tunk has been pretty much the extent of any Flickr visits. The retail pics esp. cover the area where I grew up.

But after reading about el estratographico on PCL LinkDump, I thought time to take another look around.

Having not scratched the surface, I got lost in the Urban Decay pics from the Southern US. I think Urban Decay overall covers the world, but even this geotagged slice is a lot to bite into.

This may be my favorite so far, with the green and red painted brick.

And this one. And this. And, oh, yeah--this one.

No doubt, faves of your own await.

culottes in outer space

Maybe I meant culottes and outer space. Eh, works either way . . .

Each to illustrate a point: Breezy summer fashion and les aventures wiz-bang with intergalactic babes and such.

Love times three

FABULON posts no fewer than 3 video renditions of Love Will Keep Us Together.

The top 40 music wuss in me digs the Cap'n & Tenille lip sync version. The fan, the man and the ironist in me all love the Charo version. And the Lawrence Welk dance number--well, the costumes alone could power a nuclear sub.

new show @ Square America

Square America has just put up its show of African-American Portraits & Snapshots. Along with the great pictures is some cool old home movie footage of a Shriners' parade.

A fun auditory adjunct: PCL LinkDump's posting of the Crazy Rockers video. Lots of the funky finesse of 60s guitar instrumental music, plus midway through the tune, some super suave volume swells.

point & run

With Super Tuesday coming up, it's all I can do:

Swapatorium reflects on the mirror image.

Deadlicious goes to Mars.

I'm Learning to Share! bespeaks the "thrum" of many geese and other fun, tripped out stuff. (Shameless link: goose & geese & distant sounds field recording.)

PCL LinkDump presents Sputnik the mag.