WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Please Kill Mr. Kinski (video)

In 1985, Director David Schmoeller found himself in the unenviable position of directing the crazed actor Klaus Kinski in the horror film Crawlspace. Kinski was already famous for hating directors, but Schmoeller soon discovered that even basic duties as yelling "Action!" prompted tantrums in Kinski. Schmoeller's crew and backers were soon begging and plotting to kill Kinski for the insurance money. In the late Nineties, Schmoeller made a short film about the experience, Please Kill Mr. Kinski (download video, 19 meg, wmv file). If you like maniacal Kinski (and you speak German) here's a track of him from his infamous "I Am God" tour (download MP3). Thanks for finding the video, Scott!

Anal Retentive Movie Fun

One of my favorite movies - 1970's Kelly's Heroes - showed up on cable tonight. Led by Clint Eastwood as Kelly, the all-star cast includes Don Rickles (Crapgame), Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland (as hippy-dippy Oddball: "Don't hit me with those negative waves so early in the morning."), Gavin MacLeod, Carol O'Connor, Stuart Margolin, Harry Dean Stanton and even Seinfeld's Uncle Leo, Len Lesser. They're a renegade World War II Army outfit heading into enemy territory to steal $16 million dollars in gold from a German bank. The film is the antithesis of the same year's Patton: the heroism is tangential to greed and entirely accidental.

As I do often these days, I checked the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) to see if it could tell me what song Oddball's Sherman tanks were playing (pre-dating Apocalypse Now by ten years, the Shermans feature huge PA horns that blast loud music when on the attack: "It calms us down...") when they attack a German railway yard. In the "Goofs" section of the movie listing, I found this:

Anachronisms: The song Oddball plays during the tank attack on the railway yard ("All for the Love of Sunshine") was not written until 1970.

Well, duh. The Mike Curb song (Curb also contributed Burning Bridges) was written for the movie so I'm not sure that's an actual goof. But I did find some other great anal-retentive comments, the kind that make the IMDB so much fun. I don't know who the men are submitting the goofs (and they're most CERTAINLY men) but these guys desperately need hobbies. Check out some of Kelly's Heroes "Goofs":

Factual errors: The German said there were 14,000 gold bars. Crapgame says that's "$16 million". When Kelly breaks open the box, it appears there are 12 bars per box (three wide, stacked four high) As they load it Crapgame says the 12 remaining men get 125 boxes, at $8,400 a box, totaling $10.5 million. But it's $84,000 per box. Also, at 12 bars per box, 125 boxes is only 1,500 bars. The errors go on from there (the boxes should weigh 146 lbs each) even if the value is about right for 200 troy ounce bars of gold.

I Don't Get It

Whenever I go to sign in to my Yahoo mail account, there's an ad with some heinous picture telling me that I should sign up for Yahoo mail. But I already have signed up for Yahoo mail, or I wouldn't be on the page that has the ad in the first place. And what is it about these awful people that's supposed to entice me into signing up? This guy is one of the worst, although there's also that fool with the orange flowers up his nose.
MGB, -B.

Young Dylan

Prepare to have your mind blown when you watch this 5 year-old boy's uncanny recreation of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," (19.3 MB QuickTime movie) as seen in D.A. Pennebaker's classic documentary Don't Look Back.

This Week in Sex: What Time Is It?

What time is it? According to my Ov Watch Fertility Predictor, it's baby makin' time! And there are 4 more days of it than you thought. Four more days a month of the unsexiest baby-makin' procreatin' fornicatin' of your life. 

Assorted condoms. Flavors include explodey snakey rosey key chainy Kit Katty chicken rameny Braziliany vibratey happy-y camouflagey brack powery and just plain huge.

Why we use condoms: contrary to popular belief, lugging an alien being inside you for 9+ months can be a bummer.

Baby toy. Plush fetus.
 

Mule-dog gives birth. Rottweiler Heroina, who was sliced open to carry packets of liquid heroin from Colombia to the U.S., is experiencing "the joys of motherhood."

It sounds like a good idea now, but that's just the hormones talking. Where the hell are you going to put a cast of your big pregnant belly? My guess is that it winds up in the basement with the Diaper Genie. P.S. This would also work for a beer belly, which is a keepsake you'll never get tired of looking at.

A three-hankie movie: The Da Vinci Load.

It's the "good mood software." Why would you want your keyboard to make "erotic sounds"? Because you can, man. SoundPilot can add a Smith-Cornona clickety-clack to your keyboard sure to make you the most popular kid in cube-land. But for those late nights, install an "erotic" sound scheme to encourage "more rhythmical typing."

Guilty As Charged: Distracted Grammys Report

Last night I had some plumbing done in my home which only slightly distracted me from the big awards show. This is what I can remember:

Madonna fell off her high horse awhile ago, but tonight is getting right the hell back up again with a dazzling opening number featuring Gorillaz. She has recently credited Pilates with giving her those curves she's sporting. Whatever, she could more easily have pounded down some bacon cheeseburgers and gotten the same result.  I get a kick out of seeing a movie star as much as the next guy. I would also prefer them to watch the Grammys from the sanctity of their nine million dollar homes, giving their seats up to L.A.'s homeless population. Keith Urban sitting next to a vagrant just seems to make a lot more sense.

Kelly Clarkson is the girl you ignored in High School and she just mopped the floor with Paul McCartney. Kelly's gonna celebrate with some bacon cheeseburgers with the homeless later while WFMU DJ Joe Belock and I have a shouting match.  Beyonce Knowles' expression speaks volumes...volumes of the Harvard Classics my cat has yet to read.  Kanye West. Brash, genius, Grammy Winner. Where the hell is R. Kelly to put some humility back into the show? Paul McCartney takes the stage, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. Not a reference to booty, this is a legend, A Beatle. Ahhhh, LOOK OUT Helter Skelter! Yes, it's fucking cool but I can't help but wish Yoko Ono were there to make it more...EVIL. Or maybe instead of those projected images of a rollercoaster ride, they could use some Tate-LaBianca trial footage.

Welcome to New Jersey: Now Get the Hell Out of the Way!

My new work routine finds me once again on the roadways of New Jersey, roads that I'm quite familiar with, and have traveled most of my driving life.  I've done enough traveling around the country to know that bad driving is a national affliction, but in the case of my home state, aggressive driving seems to have always been an epidemic.

(After living and driving in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost 2 years, I can tell you that drivers there may carelessly run a red light, they may even hit you or kill you, but it will be because they are dreamily contemplating their next move, or the alignment of their chakras, less because they are chomping at the bit to get to the office to close a deal and otherwise roll around in 3-letter business acronyms.)

Fortunately, the very congested nature of New York City traffic dictates that no one gets too far, or moves too fast, in a single clip.  This likely diminishes the number of road fatalities that might otherwise occur; though anyone who reads the paper knows that pedestrians are routinely mowed down in NYC, often with little or no punitive action directed at the driver.

There is certainly a "style" to Northeastern US and NJ driving, an often maniacally aggressive, thoughtless tear ever forward, fueled no doubt by coffee, 60-hour work weeks, hunger, sexual frustration, inebriation and other maladies, none peculiar to, but somehow exacerbated by living and working in this most densely populated, frustrated little second banana of a state.

The statistics reflect the aggression, too.  According to a nifty little pamphlet produced by the state, "...more than half of NJ’s drivers are angry when they’re behind the wheel. Almost half, the data show, are likely to try to "punish" other drivers. In 2003 in NJ, this attitude, combined with the above-mentioned driving behaviors, resulted in more than 68,000 vehicles being involved in crashes, an 8% increase from 2001.  These crashes resulted in approximately 200 fatalities and 34,000 injuries."  Download the pamphlet here [pdf]; then take the damning "Are You An Aggressive Driver?" quiz.

Donna Summer Meets Jean Jacques Perrey

From our relocated-to-Berlin DJ in exile Jason Forrest aka Donna Summer: "Last night I met Jean Jacques Perrey! I spoke to him, and he DEFINITELY knows and remembers WFMU! I said i work for WFMU in NYC, and he said: 'the free station, yes I like it very much' in a strong French accent..proof? attached...

A thrill!
AH!
JF"

Jason, get your pic with the real Donna Summer next? C'mon, it's got to happen.
In the meantime, here's a nice slab of JJP synth gloop from the rare Andromeda Strain soundtrack, "Strobe Crystal Green" (real audio), from Bob Weyersberg's show.

Creepy Safe Driving PSAs (video)

Here are two Public Service Announcements for the PSA Hall of Fame: (download video one, 5 meg,  |  download video two, 4.5 meg, both quicktime). These were produced in Denmark by Fredrik Callinggaard for an unidentified but presumably english-speaking market, and posted on the site of Duckling, a Danish post-production house. These rank right up there with the French AIDS PSAs, and the Grandpa Goes To Jail PSA. via Fulminatia.

The Birthday Paradox

Scientists and Experts—and Mathematicians—have determined that if you have 30 people in a room, there’s a very good chance that two of them will have the same birthday. (With 23 people, there’s a 50.73% chance that two will have the same birthday, and the probability goes up as you add more people from there.) I think all 30 of ‘em have had a birthday in the past couple weeks: First there was DJ Miss Amanda, then Sluggo, then our friend Punchy, then me (and Mozart and C. Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician himself), then Neil, then Lisa P., then one famous WFMU DJ that I think I’m not allowed to say, and then Listener Smartski, and Station Manager Ken, and my old friends Elaine and Harriet, and Dr. Colby’s birthday is coming up fast. Okay, that’s only 14, but it seems like more when you’re whipping around to 3 or 4 parties every weekend.

To celebrate Sluggo’s birthday, I took time off from my dayjob and we went to see the Egon Schiele show at the Neue Galerie. We’d never been there before because it costs $15 to get in and they don’t have any “pay-what-you-want” hours. It’s kind of a funny museum because it was started by a couple of rich guys (Ronald Lauder and Serge Sabarsky) who happened to have big collections of Austrian and German art and absolutely no idea of how poor people live. For example, an individual Neue Galerie membership costs $275, but don’t despair—student memberships are just $75! What kind of students can afford that? Rich ones, I guess. But the Galerie is very nice, and I enjoyed it. It’s housed in a gorgeous old mansion on Fifth Avenue, across from the Metropolitan Museum. It reminded me of when the International Center of Photography used to be in that old brownstone on Fifth up in the 90s—I really liked that building, and was sorry when ICP moved to Midtown, though I’m sure their new facility is more convenient and practical.

I guess the Schiele show was made up of work from Lauder’s and Sabarsky’s collections; there was some interesting personal ephemera—including a portrait head modeled in bread by Schiele when he was in jail for corrupting a minor—along with a few paintings, but it was mostly drawings, which was interesting because you could really see Schiele working out some artistic problems in them. My favorite thing in the whole show was in a room on the third floor, where a drawing of a seated woman from 1908 was hung next to a drawing of a seated woman from 1909. The 1908 drawing looked like a competent student work, and the 1909 drawing looked like an Egon Schiele. It looked to me like whatever it was that happened that made Egon Schiele an artist happened between 1908 and 1909. While I was standing there a docent came through with a tour of well-dressed blonde ladies, and one of them asked, “What about the common affluent people of the time? Were they repressed?” The common affluent people ...  I thought about that question for a second. It really ticked me off, but I couldn’t figure out why, so I moved on to the next room where there were some relatively wacky fashion drawings from 1910 or 1911. I couldn’t tell if they were fashion designs or fashion illustrations, and I couldn’t find any more information about them anywhere, either in the museum or online. Maybe they were from some freelance project ES did after he started to blow up in Vienna. The other things I learned were that Schiele’s wife, Edith, had a very nice Border-Collie-looking dog named Lord, and everybody died in the big influenza pandemic of 1918.

From the WFMU News Vault: "The past weekend was the come-on of the super-bummer"

Listener Ed K comes through again with another piece of WFMU History.  "This news article printed in the short-lived counter-culture newspaper, The Atlantic Weekly, reports the attack on FMU personnel in July of 1969."   

In it, TAW editor, Mark Kupperman opines on various setbacks in the local counter-culture movement, including the violent and drunken assault committed by a recent Vietnam draftee against three WFMU DJs.   It's a gem of an article, full of 1960's youth vernacular, from "the come-on of the super-bummer" in the opening sentence, to the announcement that there will be performances of "Hair" at the Rutgers Student Center August 8, 9, and 10.  Thanks Ed!

Werner Herzog Shot With Air Rifle

German Director Werner Herzog encountered the random violence of nature he speaks of so often as he was shot by a crazed fan during a BBC interview. In classic Herzog fashion, the 63 year old director stated "Someone is shooting at us. We must go." The interview continued, however, as Herzog's pants became stained with blood. Herzog commented, "It was not a significant bullet. I am not afraid." Thanks Fabio! Link to Yahoo story.

UPDATE: Two days before being shot, a Jesus-like Herzog pulled Joaquin Phoenix out of a car wreck.

UPDATE 2: Listener Evan has found a link to the video of the shooting: start streaming video.

Fighting Life: Rejoicing the Human Spirit

Found this on VHS in a thrift store. Kung Fu action (download 22 MB wmv file), but a little bit more than that.

In Honor of Fashion Week

We pay tribute to one of the original purveyors of style.

via Listener Marisa and Planet Dan

For more Fashion Week sass, I defer to Monica's last show: real audio  |  streaming MP3

Henri Chopin Films

  Four incredible films of legendary sound poet / electronic musician Henri Chopin (b. 1922): Henri Chopin at Home (13.9 mb, .MOV), Henri Chopin at The Garage, 1995 (293.9 mb, .MOV); Henri Chopin Live at Espcace Gantner, 2005 (204.3 mb, .MOV); Undated Henri Chopin Performance (19.3 mb, .MOV). Also see UbuWeb's vast collection of Chopin MP3s. Thanks Erratum!

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 8

A number of comments left on these posts have said the same thing-- that this series has in some way inspired them to consider twiddling the dial of a shortwave or AM radio again to seek out some distant signals. Well, it’s had the same effect on me.

And when I do get a break from everything else I pick up one of my radios to hear what’s out there. Just recently I discovered I can listen to the first hour of Lionel’s show on WCKY in Cincinnati, and I picked up Kuwait on shortwave for the first time in ages.  But I haven’t had time to reserve a few hours to actively listen and record the results. And adding to my desire is the fact that I recently a replaced a radio I’d previously had a lot of fun with and I’m trying to figure out how to reserve a future evening or two just to play with the damned thing. But the truth is I haven't had enough meaningful spare playtime lately.

Meanwhile, to write this I’m listening to more of the medium wave dial scan recording from August 2001 that I’ve featured in the last two posts. Two weeks ago, the audio accompanying my post started at beginning of the AM dial, at 530 KHz or so. By this week I’m up to the middle of the band, nudging the knob from 910 KHz up to 1060.

Not having any idea I’d ever showcase this recording, I now hear instances where I wish I would have fought harder to pull in a station or other notches on the dial I seem to have passed over in haste. But that’s the thing, when you’re DXing with a decent radio it’s easy to get frustrated with the ghostly echo of an almost impossible to read signal when a broadcast less distant, but more entertaining and intelligible, is probably just a slight turn of the knob.

At this point, I’m tempted to reach for some grand metaphor comparing the DX experience to something more meaningful, but I’ll resist. In some sense, scanning the medium and shortwave bands is no more of a significant cultural act than sitting on the sofa with a remote and flipping through the cable TV channels. It’s another type of self-appointed journey through contemporary media content. However, it is more of a challenge and a far less popular form of leisure.

The PMRC Of The 18th Century

In the 1730's, some anonymous prankster composed a scandalous little tune which dared to poke fun at King George the Second. Actually, there were two tunes, and so incensed was King George that he offered a twenty pound reward for the heads of the seditious tune-smiths, these colonial Weird Al Yankovics. Here is the proclamation, (rewritten into current English) as set forth by William Cosby, then Captain General and Governour In Chief of the provinces of New York and New Jersey:

Whereas ill-minded and Disaffected Persons have lately dispersed in the City of New York, and diverse other Places, several Scandalous and Seditious libels, but more particularly two Printed Scandalous Songs or Ballads highly defaming the Administration of His Majesty's Government in this Province, tending greatly to Inflame the Minds of his Majesty's good Subjects, and to disturb the Public Peace. And Whereas the Grand Jury for the City and County of New York did lately, by their Address to me, complain of these Pernicious Practices, and request me to issue a Proclamation for the Discovery of the Offenders, that they might, by Law, receive a Punishment adequate to their Guilt and Crime. I Have therefore thought fit, by and with the Advice of his Majesty's Council, to issue this Proclamation, hereby Promising Twenty Pounds as a Reward, to such Person or Persons who shall discover the Author or Authors of the two Scandalous Songs or Ballads aforesaid, to be paid to the Person or Persons discovering the same, as soon as such Author or Authors shall be Convicted of having been the Author or Authors thereof.

via Images of American Political History.

The Continuing Obsession With MES & The Fall: Live On The Tube 1983

In 1983, British television show The Tube asked John Peel to be a guest host. He agreed to do it for free- only if he could bring The Fall along for an appearance.

Here The Fall are at one of the many peaks of their career, lip-synching to their lurching ominous masterpiece "Smile" from the Perverted By Language LP. Note the hot-shit double drummer line-up of Karl Burns and Paul Hanley.

The Fall  Live on The Tube 1983 - Smile (20 meg AVI)

HERE are a couple new books by Mark E. Smith (thanks Fall Forum)

People's Temple Choir (mp3s)

(12 MP3 files below the fold)

Do you remember Reverend Jim Jones and the People's Temple? I guess most of you do, but for those who don't here is a quick recap of the history: In the 1950s, Jim Jones started People's Temple in Indianapolis as a church affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, a mainline protestant denomination. Looking for a safe place in case of a nuclear war, the group moved to California in 1965. Due to their left-wing political and social views and focus on racial integration they attracted many new members, especially in their time in San Francisco. Beginning in 1974, the People's Temple started preparing a move to Guyana, where most of the group relocated in 1977, to an agricultural settlement more commonly known as Jonestown. Unfortunately, Jim Jones grew increasingly paranoid and mentally unstable, and a visit by US congressman Leo Ryan in 1978 first lead to the murder of Ryan and a few hours later to the infamous mass suicide and murder of more than 900 cult members, including Jones himself. You can read much more about People's Temple, including many first-person accounts, at this excellent website.

Gunfight in Hoboken

I woke up to the sounds of a gun battle this morning. At 7am, about 20 shots were fired in front of my home in Hoboken, New Jersey. I ran to the window in time to see a Black Ford Explorer racing backwards down Park Avenue. I went outside to compare notes with two dozens of my neighbors. A single police officer arrived 15 minutes later. Meanwhile, an old Hoboken guy started examining the 15 bullet casings that were laying in the middle of the street, until my neighbors and I urged him to leave them alone.

Another crowd formed further up the street, where two parked cars had bullet holes in their windows. I wandered up there to find out what had happened. There were literally dozens of witnesses who saw either the Ford Explorer, or two guys on foot shooting back at them. The shots lasted about 30 seconds, so there was ample time to run to the window, and at least three people were on the street when the shootout occurred. But the police were only mildly interested in taking down any of the eyewitness accounts. It turns out that the Ford Explorer had been shooting at the two guys on foot, who were returning fire. The Explorer continued shooting at them as it backed down the one-way street (Park Avenue). One of my neighbors even saw the guy inside the car as he leaned outside the passenger window shooting at the other guys, who were now running north up the street.

You would think the police would be interested in details like this, but no. I walked up to a cop who was now blocking the crime scene around the two hit cars to tell him that I had pertinent information that might be helpful, but the guy just screamed at me to back off. I approached him from an angle away from the two cars with bullet holes, and let him know I had some possibly helpful information. I told him that I had a license plate number, and  asked if there was a detective I should talk to. This officer refused to talk to me, and finally just ordered me away from the scene. I wandered down to the other end of the street and finally found a cop who was interested in taking down my information.

Six hours later, the two cars with bullet holes are still sitting there, bullets presumably lodged inside of them. But there's no note on either car, no boot on the wheel to make sure that the owners can't drive the evidence away. Nothing. I guess because there were no known casualties, Hoboken's finest didn't really care to take eyewitness reports or even secure the bullets. This isn't supposed to happen in Hoboken. It's supposed to happen a half mile away, in Jersey City.

UPDATE: Three days later, the police blanketed my neighborhood with printed notices requesting any witnesses to call with information. I tried calling, but ended up in their labyrinthine voicemail system. Finally, I got through to a detective (four days after the gun fight) and gave him my information and license plate number.