Wednesday, April 16, 2008

the flotsam that jets 'em

Before unterkayness goes into suspended animation:

uberkayness has yet more of various odd arcane stuff being posted.

Swapatorium has two great items up, Deltashine and Miss Fluffy.

FABULON
has two cool clips, Music to Watch the Girls Go By and Drop That Name ("Lassie!").

On Generator.x, this clip bent my brain in a good way. It brought to mind an image seen here on The Woodring Monitor.

And while no doubt biased, I have to mention the painterly mad science of this.

Nodding off now, preparing for deep space . . .

Saturday, April 12, 2008

step on through?

Who knows how long such portals can last before they close again, but here's one to a fave old Night Gallery episode, The Painted Mirror. Starring Zsa Zsa Gabor, Arthur O'Connell and Rosemary DeCamp.

the once & future Captain



In anticipation of a second childhood, thought I'd revisit the first via Captain Kangaroo. Had totally forgotten the little doors within the door and the big key ring. (Thanks to musicom67.)

There's even more of the early Captain here and a clip from Tom Terrific (thanks to shippingeverywhere).

Under the auspices of CatThatHasNoName, who also has clips up of Bunny Rabbit and Dancing Bear, here's a color vid of The Town Clown on percussion:



No sign of the shaggy haired sock puppet chanteuse, Miss Frog. Maybe sometime down the line . . .

Meanwhile, Bob Keeshan (aka the good Captain) can be sighted in a grand picture of CBS luminaries from 1978. Said photo is deservedly given a place of honor in FABULON and Deadlicious.

But, hey--no Miss Frog there either. Network politics for damn sure.

Friday, April 11, 2008

all about Saki

Saki, the writer known parenthetically as H. H. Munro, delivered his short stories quickly. Often in five printed pages or fewer. His work, being in the public domain, can be read online. Wikipedia lists several places to go.

If a book is preferred, check the local bookmobile for the Modern Library edition which is almost as compact as one of Saki's stories. It includes a biography by his sister which is not as brief as his stories but does start very promisingly:

My earliest recollection of Hector, my younger brother, was in the nursery at home, where, with my elder brother, Charlie, we had been left alone. Hector seized the long-handled hearth brush, plunged it into the fire, and chased Charlie and me round the table, shouting, "I'm God! I'm going to destroy the world!"


If those are Munro's first remembered words, his last ones were: "Put that damned cigarette out!" [supposedly said before his being dispatched by a German sniper in World War I]

In between are the stories he wrote as Saki. Darkly ironic ones like "The Interlopers" and "The Easter Egg" and funny ironic ones like "Shock Tactics" and "The Schartz-Metterklume Method".

Anyhow, when doing not doing something useful or necessary (like watching episodes of Kung Fu or Hawaii Five-0 on DVD), I'm reading these.

They go by fast.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

on with the show, this is it . . .

the music of sound posts a funny link on the dos & don'ts of bringing up baby. Plus for any audio, film production or motorcycle geeks out there, an excellent in-depth post on catching some revs for the film World's Fastest Indian.

Meanwhile on FABULON there's cool showbiz arcana from Vegas 1960.

The Boat Lullabies presents a still from must have been quite a one woman production of Sister Act.

PCL LinkDump brings us the ultimate showdown 'twixt the bands of Perez Prado and Spike Jones.

And if your next battle of the bands involves you singing like the Cookie Monster, Music Thing has some good news.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

videos young and old

Synthtopia just posted a cool generative video of Goldfrapp's "Lovely Head".

This monoglot can't recall having heard French sung in falsetto, but now I can thanks to Funky Junk Trunk's post of Michel Polnareff performing "Le Roi des Fourmis".

"Aujourd'hui . . . "

Gotta love his electrified 12-string acoustic and how the camera follows the slow windmill like arc of Michel's picking hand.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

painters pointers gleaners

Time for yet more special mentions/E for Excellent Blog Award recipients.

Dennis Hopper in one of his typically manic effusions quoted Duchamp while talking about Warhol. He said something like: the artist of the future will just point. As in the context of Warhol, the Campbell's soup can, the images of Marilyn, Jackie--that's art asserting their value. Or past a '60s pop purview, the idea is simply to point out or gather up wonders for others to see.

Artists, pointers, gleaners or all of the above, there really are a lot of people out there gathering up the pieces. And what shiny things they bring.

Having long wielded a spray can, Catherine Carter's been breathing easier with less airborne media for her gestural, calligraphic approach and using more collage. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there's her desire to get the resulting paintings out into the world. All on view in Catherine Carter's Art Blog.

John Borowicz favors the 000 brush. But as you can see in
son of the forest
, most anything from post-mod allegory to closely rendered portraiture issues forth.

ConcreteBeat takes a video camera into the NYC streets & subways to appreciate/document/help promote public performers. Many but not all are musicians like Melissa the Loud playing the Hurdy-Gurdy. There are performance videos, interviews and info on club dates.

The Boat Lullabies and Swapatorium are giving us & numerous old found photos a chance to get acquainted. In a world where continuity is hard to come by and a blurry forgetfulness is legion, this is very good indeed.

In like fashion, the Roadside Architecture blog brings us along for the ride with new photos of old signs, old places.

In service of sonic dispersion, Awesome Tapes from Africa, Boot Sale Sounds and different waters all bring the knowledge & good vibes. And tho' my aging computer/OS won't do rar files, I visit A Closet of Curiosities just to see what crazy, cool records will show up next.

the music of sound
gathers some vibes of its own.

Paleo-Future is ever sifting & digging deep into what was once imagined as the shape of things to come. And Pruned deals what being imagined in landscape architecture.

Other pointer/gleaner blogs of distinction would be The World of Kane, PCL LinkDump, BibliOdyssey and MusicThing. All of them are so good at what they do that surely they've gotten the Excellent Blog Award ten times over. Well, here's their eleventh . . .

All the above blogs get the E for Excellent awards with special mention. (And if some blog slipped my mind, remember what I said . . .)



Monday, April 7, 2008

sick in a good way

Not to milk a recent honor or weasel out of my previous "power to the people"/meme chose for all awarding of the E for Excellent blog award, but as an amplification I'd like to give special mention to a blog or two.

Well, for the time being, one blog in particular:

That Mall's Sick And That Store's Dead!

On her way to work, school and Lane Bryant, Anita Rose has been keeping tabs on dead & dying retail in the Hampton Roads area and thereabouts. The now long gone Coliseum Mall and Mercury Plaza. The pretty much totally repurposed Newmarket North/Newmarket Fair mall. The extant time machine to '89 that is Southpark Mall.

Beyond southeastern Virginia, the Sickmalls blog has links to other retail blogs and sites dedicated to once ubiquitous chains like Caldor and Ames. And Anita also has a hand in Deadmalls.com.

But shunting over to the big grid experience, you'll miss some cool details and such.

So go see for yourself why That Mall's Sick And That Store's Dead! wins with special recommendation the E for Excellent blog award.


Saturday, April 5, 2008

uncurb your enthusiasm

In a vast web of begetting and begotting, four blogs within my field of vision got the E for Excellent blog award:

I'm Learning To Share!

FABULON

Schadenfreudian Therapy


Deadlicious

Congratulations to them all. And I'd add or amend it: E for Enthusiasm.

Which may sound like some bass-ackwards version of "nice try", but it's nowhere near that.

These blogs (and other blogs, persons & non-bloglike entities) are cool because of the sparks they throw off over the things that thrill them. Or make them widen their eyes, tap their feet, laugh their asses off, whatever.

I'd like to thank them for sharing those things & throwing those sparks around for the rest of us to marvel at.

And thanks be to FABULON for passing its second meme this week to this humble mirror in the vast online funhouse:



I went to where the award was begun, ProjectMommy (now The Mommy Project--ah, these evershifting domains), and skimmed the rules. Ten nominations are the minimum but not the max, and any blog rewarded can be re-rewarded.

Meaning I don't gotta fuss over this. Just as baikinange at Schadenfreudian Therapy did, I can just point to the links column and say: yep, they all get the E for Excellent award. Heck, them and all those blogs mentioned here but not yet linked.

But I'm just in a hyperinflationary frame of mind. To (very broadly & inexactly) quote my fave TV show: If you can be a slayer, you are a slayer.

And Blogger and WordPress accounts be damned. Your qualifications are being alive.

If you're reading this entry, congratulations. You just won.

Harp on Mouth Sextet



As this humble blog was kindly honored, it seemed past time to post something "strange and wonderful".

Luckily, my friend Mike just wrote me about the group Harp on Mouth Sextet, their combination of electronica with traditional Japanese gagaku, and anonymous hat-and-veil stage presence.



Both vids are courtesy rruubbyyoorrllaa.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

forces of nature

We'll skip "which of these is not like the other":

Not so natural but funny is a video PCL LinkDump posts that combines two great geeky pop culture talismans, Star Trek The Original Series and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Made my damn day . . .

Making her 33rd day on the road, Debra Jane Seltzer aka agilitynut has thus far driven through a big swath of the American South and Southwest with her four dogs and her camera taking many pictures and blogging along the way. She's just finishing up a whirlwind photo session through Los Angeles. Images of cool old signs, giant faux critters and interesting architecture are left in her wake. More will be showing up at her Roadside Architecture website.

The man behind FABULON is yet another in perpetual motion, creating the music of Arcanta. There's a recent podcast and all that good stuff. Plus in a 60s pop vein, a clip of Mama Cass on The Hollywood Palace (introduced by none other than Sammy Davis Jr.).

Not your thing? Well, I'm Learning To Share! does homage to Lawrence Welk. Great photo of him in a then new '56 convertible with a record player in the dash. And an drawing of him as a punk rocker.