5-17-09 John Lennon – Woman Is the Nigger of the World

Cold Turkey? From John Lennon? NEVER!

Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired. So I’m just going to post a John Lennon song with a rather intriguing title, Woman fnord Is the Nigger fnord of the World. Which they are. Just look at Afghanistan fnord. Or Spike TV fnord.

Oh, and if you don’t know why this song isn’t work safe fnord, well, what can I say?

Courtesy of WiltatKansas.

3-19-09 Zoologic

Well, on a slightly more upbeat note, Shanoah, here’s a bunch of real animals who refuse to stay in the cages that society’s put them in! Yeah, man, they’re stickin’ it to The Man, man!

And I know I’ve said it here before, but it bears repeating: Go Penguin.

Made by CalArts alumnus Nicole Mitchell, who won a Gold Medal for Zoologic at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 2008 Student Academy Awards.

Courtesy of Future Shorts.

3-13-09 Jinx Lennon – Sticky Head

Sticky Heads, huh? I’m not sure if that was a request or a challenge, Shanoah. Either way, here it is. Lovely bit of no-tech cinema, this.

Courtesy of phillipmckenna.

2-6-09 They’re warm, they’re cozy, they’re great for sacrificing homeless men and hitchhikers to the fungi from Yuggoth… they’re Snuggies!

From the Desperately Trying To Find A Bridge From The Previous Post Department:

Well, Shanoah, since Deadheads are a cult… or maybe because cults often result in lots of dead people… desperate panting… yeah, they’ll buy that, that’s the ticket…

Anyway, you’ve probably seen the TV commercials for a bemusing afterbirth of our consumerist culture called the Snuggie. You don’t know what Snuggies are? Why, it’s a bathrobe! That you wear backwards! Kind of like those robes that you wear in the hospital! And we all know how much fun hospitals are!

If you’ve ever seen a Snuggie, I instantly saw how useful they are. Why, I can read a book in my Snuggie! Pet my cat in my Snuggie! Go to exciting athletic competitions in my Snuggie! And, when I come home, I can sacrifice the prostitute that I’m holding prisoner in my basement to the Snake Demon in my Snuggie! Oh, it rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again…

I’m not the only person to notice how useful Snuggies would be to someone who spends way too much time at the Psychic Eye store. Peter Coffin (site here) even remixed the Snuggies commercial to appeal to an heretofore untapped demographic: the mindless cult zombie demographic.

And the red ones are great for sacrifices. Those pesky blood stains just disappear.

2-5-09 Aspects of Physics – Cummulative erRor

I’m very tired today, Shanoah, so you’ll forgive me if I keep this short. I first heard this on Maria Levitsky’s show on WFMU back on Oct. 8, 2008, and YouTube has finally caught up to WFMU. This is Aspects of Physics’ electro-fantastic Cummulative erRor (and yes, that’s spelled right), off , off 2007’s Marginalized Information Forms Two: Cummulative erRror.

Courtesy of d0odman.

1-17-09 Lou Reed – Walk on the Wild Side

Lou Reed may seem like an odd choice after Kate Wolf, but I don’t think so.

There was a time, many years ago, when I had to get up at 4 a.m. to go into work. Now, Las Vegas is supposed to be a 24-hour town, but a drive down its backroads (read, the ones besides the Strip) instantly puts the lie to that. It was a lonely drive into work, with the streetlamps the only sign that there was anyone or anything still alive in the city. Even the partiers, the drunks and the druggies have to sleep sometime, and they do it in the hours just before dawn.

And, as is traditional for me, I’m writing this half asleep and in the early hours of the morning, long after prudence, piety, common sense and my body say I should be asleep in bed. This state of mind does strange things to you. Jack Kerouac and his ilk called this sublime state “beat”. You’re beat not because you’re hip, but because you’re beat: your mind and body are exhausted, your defenses are down and you’re open to new experiences… possibly dangerous experiences, certainly not experiences you’d have if you were right in your head.

Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side captures the feel of this time of day for me – of an exhausted city beautiful even in its savagery, calling out to me.

Video by DJ Fuggi.

Rooms

There are plenty of things I could have played about Zombies[1], but I felt like keeping to the theme of not having a consistant theme between posts, so instead, I’m leading you through a series of rooms. The entrance is in front of you.

>enter

Square Room – Them

You find yourself in a square room with just one table. Somehow, an atmosphere of the psychodelic 60’s seems to prevail. You feel a feeling of love in the air, but there is also an overpowering cloud of incense filling the room. Other then the way you came in, there is a door to the north.

> examine table

You see a record on the table.

> pick up record. examine it.

You pick up the record. (Your score has gone up by a point.)

It appears to be the album Now and “Them”. Looking at the track listings, you notice Square Room amoung them.

> n

Proceeding north, you come to…

White Room – Cream

You are in a white room with black curtains by the station. There is an exit to the east, but you were supposed to wait for a lady here. In the distance you see a train pull up.

>wait

Time passes… The train departs.

>wait

Time passes…

> wait

Time passes… A few more trains leave and depart. It doesn’t look like she’s coming.

>e

Abandoning hope of her arrival, you proceed to the next room.

The Cedar Room – Doves

You are alone in a cedar room. There are doves roosting by the window. You can exit to the north. You feel somehow different upon entering this room.

>examine me

You are a shadow of your former self. You also appear to have gotten much more angsty, and are pining away.

>examine pine

This room is made of cedar, not pine.

>examine doves

As you get closer to them, the feelings of angst deepen.

>n

You have entered a twisty maze of posts, all different…

[1] Such as songs by The Zombies, like “Time of the Season”.

1-2-08 John Lennon – Instant Karma

It’s not like I wanted to give that hamster mouth-to-mouth, Shanoah. But when they get all tarted up and start throwing you hints, I mean, really coming on to you, and you’ve had maybe a little too much to drink…

Perhaps I’ve said too much.

Anyway, faux John Lennon is nice, especially when it’s with performers he probably never would have performed with in real life. But I prefer the real uncut thing. And there’s no post-Beatles Lennon song that I like better than Instant Karma.

Talk about cultural illiterates… the first place I heard Instant Karma was, of all places, another Nike ad (directed by, of all people, David Fincher of Seven and Fight Club fame). I fell in love with the song the moment that I heard it. It’s ecstatic. It’s mystical. You could even go out on a limb (and have it snap underneath you) and call it gnostic. It’s chain-busting music. What’s not to like?

 But, like I said, I’d rather not steer any more business toward the corporate overlords than I have to because, quite frankly, they don’t need it.

So here he is, on stage and performing Instant Karma. As a bonus, it has Yoko doing her weirdo Dadaist whatever-it-is-she-does, blesserheart.

Courtesy of jigowatts.

1-1-09 Elvis Presley – A Little Less Conversation

Shanoah, it took me three hours to put those photos up, so no guff from the peanut gallery. The hamster running my parents’ computer went into cardiac arrest twice during that ordeal. Have you ever tried to defib a hamster, Shanoah? I had to do things that I’m… not proud of.

Anyway, this post is the first of the New Year (for you non-sun worshippers out there, at least), and first things are kind of important, yes? This is a time for resolutions and change and all that.

Well, I’m not making any New Year’s resolutions this year. If my life has taught me anything, it’s that if you’re resolved to do something, then grand declarations aren’t necessary. And if you aren’t, then grand declarations just make you look like a vacillating boob. I mean, you still are a vacillating boob, but there’s no need to advertise that, yes?

In other words, for 2009, Shanoah is going to shine a little light, while I’m going to put out a little less conversation and a little more action.

Speaking of which…

Courtesy of horror90vacui.

That was the original version, from the 1968 movie Live a Little, Love a Little. Modern audiences, though, being the cultural illiterates that they are, may know A Little Less Conversation better as a JXL remix from a Nike ad.

Now, the JXL remix is a pretty good version. But I don’t want to steer any more business toward the military-entertainment-industrial complex than I absolutely have to (yes, it’s un-American and unfortunate).

Luckily, I have a thing for fan videos. And Marius K. Hagevik and Anders Kaldefoss Tveite were happy to indulge it, with this class project of theirs.

Courtesy of moneyhoneyproduction.

12-8-08 Latcho Drom – Auschwitz

Well, I’d like to continue the Roma thread here, Shanoah. But I kinda want to get away from Gypsy Caravan. I mean, I don’t want people to think we’re a one-trick pony here. [1]

In 1993, Tony Gatlif – a Rom born in Algeria – released a French documentary of Roma music called Latcho Drom, (loosely translated: “Safe Journey” or “Safe Road”). It documents music from India (where the Roma originated) through Europe and Egypt. Needless to say, when they get to places like Germany, the songs tend to get a little raw.

I haven’t seen Latcho Drom, though I may try to track it down now that I’ve seen this video. It’s a song called Auschwitz, sung by Holocaust survivor Margita Makulová. It’s… hard to listen to, especially when you hear her voice breaking while she’s singing.

Courtesy of hit004541.

[1] Even though we are.