WFMU's Beware of the Blog

You Be the Judge

WFMU DJ Kenny G, or John Travolta? I'm faceblind, so I can't tell.

Douche of the Century

Listeners to my Killing Time show on WFMU know that I have a regular-ish feature called “Douche of the Week,” which is just what it sounds like. But I may have to retire that feature now that I’ve learned about Guillermo Vargas (“Habacuc”), King Uberdouche, the Douche of the Century.

Last year Vargas paid some poor kids to capture a stray dog in Managua. Then he took the dog, chained it to the wall of an art gallery, and let it starve to death—this was his art installation. (There’s video on YouTube!) Now Vargas has been chosen to represent Costa Rica, his home country, at the Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008, and he’s threatening to recreate his installation there and in other art galleries.

Information about this douche is readily available online, including a translation of his “artist’s statement” as to why it’s really arty to torture another living creature to death. You can find it yourself, if you want. So I’m just going to give you the link to the international petition to the BCH, asking them to deny Vargas participation in their show.

Of course, if this guy was really committed to his art, he’d chain himself to a wall and starve himself to death. But I bet he won’t.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless helpless creatures.

Enough already

Spitzer went to prostitutes, and McGreevey had threesomes with his driver, and Paterson had affairs and did coke, and NOW we find out Bush is into furries.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

When I was a kid, Easter was a lot of work. We'd get these big baskets of candy, and when you're a kid, eating candy is like your job. There'd be the chocolate bunny, which was fine--even if it wasn't actually chocolate. The standard Palmer bunny, for example (Busy Bigby, Li'l Traveller, Sunshine, etc.) lists  "chocolate" as the third or fourth ingredient, so it's really chocolate-flavored. The jelly beans were okay, too, except for the disgusting ones--always the pink ones, and sometimes the purple, sometimes the white ones: Yuck. Fruit or "spice," which were better? I think spice jelly beans were marginally better in that they had fewer gross flavors. Sometimes you'd find another kid who would trade you the disgusting pink ones for the delicious, best black ones, but you couldn't count on that.

Then there were the hideous so-called marshmallow eggs: brightly colored, with a firm sugar crust and nasty chewy white sugary stuff inside. It wasn't so much the bland, too-sweet taste that was revolting as it was the texture. And always the inexplicable Peeps. Fun to blow up in the microwave, but eating them--not so much. But if you were a kid, you had to eat it all. Did you start with the most disgusting candy first, the marshmallow eggs, and save the excellent malted-milk-ball eggs for last?  Or did you gobble all the chocolate first and work your way through the stale Peeps over the course of the following week?  After careful analysis, I worked out a complicated formula wherein I alternated the disgusting jelly bean flavors with the good ones, so that I managed to get through the nasty ones and finish up with a burst of black jelly beans, my favorites.

I was thinking over the weekend that I hadn't seen marshmallow eggs in quite some time. "Good! Now I don't have to eat them," I thought. Then I realized that I never had to eat them: I could have just thrown them away, or given them to my little sister or something. But that never occurred to me when I was little. I had my candy, and I had to eat it.

Sluggo tells me that he used to get so upset when he'd come home from school and find the Huckleberry Hound show on TV. He despised Huckleberry Hound, but it was a cartoon show and he was a kid: He had to watch it. He would sit there vibrating with rage, forced by societal expectations to endure that stupid animated dog. It was a job.

That's why it's good to be an adult. You can watch 137-episode  Korean Broadcasting System historical costume dramas and eat chocolate-covered espresso beans and go to bed with your clothes on and drink champagne and do pretty much anything you want.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

And There's Always Cap Corse

Hello, everybody. Nice seeing you again.

I was pretty sick during most of our recent fund-raising Marathon. I really can’t handle staying up all night and then going to my dayjob the next day like I used to. Stn. Mgr. Ken suggested I sleep on the floor of his office one night, and I was surprised to realize that I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. I’m a grown-up old lady now, I guess. So the only way I could get through the various shows and co-hosting slots and public singing humiliations I’d signed up for was to ingest massive amounts of cough syrup.

That’s probably why I noticed the little pamphlet at the drug store last Saturday. It’s a Parent’s Guide to Preventing Teen Cough Medicine Abuse, from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Q: Where are teens finding information about cough medicine abuse.
A: There is little in current teen culture—music, movies, fashion, and entertainment—that promotes or even mentions cough medicine abuse. The one exception is the Internet. A number of disreputable web sites promote the abuse of cough medicine containing DXM.

I wanted to help, and I thought it would be good to make the FMU blog a reputable web site to promote the abuse of cough medicine. During the year he spent in a fancy, expensive, small liberal-arts college, my brother-in-law tried every cough syrup on the market and wrote up little reviews of each one, and I thought it would be nice to post those here, but he says he doesn’t have them anymore. Actually, he says he doesn’t even remember writing the reviews, and I’m not sure he remembers being in college, either.

Since my various WFMU shows have always been drug-free zones, I decided promoting cough syrup abuse was probably not such a great idea anyway. I have always promoted drinking, though, and I was pleased to find the recipe for a fine, fine superfine cocktail. You mix Lipton Raspberry White Iced Tea with Rumpleminz Schnapps, and it’s supposed to taste exactly like Robitussin. Like you drink that stuff for the flavor. But at least the toxic ingredient is alcohol, not dextromethorphan. The drink is called a “WannaTussin,” and I swear I am not making that up.

Thanks to Flakmag.com for the nifty photo. And here is a video of Japanese schoolgirls eating Finnish salt licorice. You’d think anyone who would eat those salt plums would be all over salmiakki, but I guess not.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

Grindin’ a Rail with Jesus

I’m not a Catholic, so the impending visit of Pope Benedict XVI to New York wasn’t especially high on the Killing Time Watch List. But then I found out about the Papal Skateboard Art Design Contest! If only I were 11-18 years of age and living in the Archdiocese of New York, I could design some artwork for the Official Papal Skateboard. No, wait—I mean THE OFFICIAL PAPAL SKATEBOARD!

There are some rules, of course. You can only use four (4—they give you the numeral, in case the word is confusing) FOUR colors: Papal Gold, Satanic Black, Holy Ghost White, and Bleeding Wounds of Christ Red. (I made up the names, except for Papal Gold—that one’s real.) And they would really, really like you to use the official motto, “Christ Our Hope” on it, and they would especially really, really like you to incorporate the official Papal Visit Logo which is a photograph of the Pope and an abstract design of the dome of St. Peter’s Basillica, and three big long lines of copy. They would really like you to get that all onto the “convex side” of the skateboard (and then they explain that’s the bottom side, like you don’t know where the art goes).

I think they must have asked a professional designer to incorporate all those elements, and when the pro told them it was impossible, they turned to the blessed, innocent children to create a Miraculous Official Papal Skateboard Design. And the Miraculous Official Papal Skateboard Design artwork is going to be put on THE OFFICIAL PAPAL SKATEBOARD and it will be presented to Pope Benedict as a gift from the Youth of the Archdiocese of New York, and the winning designer gets three (3) tickets to the Papal Youth Ralley at Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers on Saturday, April 19. 2008. (They put the year in, just in case.) And why three (3) tickets? Maybe it’s so your Mom and Dad can go with you. But if that’s the case, why not nine (9) tickets so you can take your six (6) Catholic brothers and sisters, too? Where are they gonna go while you’re off seeing the Pope with Mom and Dad?

The best thing about the Official Papal Skateboard Design contest is some of the designs ostensibly submitted already. You can see them all at the Web site. I really love the ones where you can see the graphite pencil lines. Seriously. Although some of these were allegedly drawn by, like, 15-year-olds.

And the second best thing about the Official Papal Skateboard Design contest is imagining the Pope Benedict episode of my favorite TV show, Scarred.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

They’re Tearin’ Down the House I Was Brung Up In

I often get little messages from my subconscious in the form of song lyrics. I’ll be going along, doing something or other—taking a shower, walking to work, washing the dishes—and I’ll realize I’m humming a song, and then if I pay attention and figure out what song it is, it’ll turn out that the lyrics are making a little commentary on something that’s been on my mind. Lately I’ve found myself humming an old country tune called “They’re Tearing Down the House I Was Brung Up In,” and I sure wish I could post an MP3 of it for you, in case you’re not familiar with it, or at least put up the lyrics, but it seems that the whole wide Internet has never heard of it. But it’s a real song, I promise.

I guess the reason that song’s been in my head is that the people who own the Carpenters’ old house in Downey, California, are getting ready to tear it down. This is the house that was on the cover of some Carpenters’ album, and apparently rabid Carpenters’ fans (Who knew?!) are all agitated because they consider the house to be a SHRINE. It’s where anorexic Karen collapsed before she died! The fan who’s put himself in charge of saving the house calls it “our version of Graceland,” although apparently there are no guided tours, no souvenirs, no Richard Carpenter sightings—oh, wait: I think he’s still alive. Anyway, the people who bought the house are tired of obsessed weirdos peeking in the windows, crying through the locks, and they want to tear the place down and build a McMansion or something, while the fans are hoping the city of Downey will declare it a historic landmark. Maybe the fans should stage a hunger strike in front of Downey city hall.

A long time ago Sluggo worked the overnight shift as a proofreader at a big New York City law firm, but since he’s dyslexic he spent most of his time drawing pictures for the people he worked with. One of them happened to be an obsessed Carpenters fan, so one night Sluggo drew a picture of himself sitting on Karen Carpenter’s grave, eating a picnic. He meant it to be funny, but his colleague burst into tears and never spoke to him again. It’s kind of scary to think that if you get enough people like that together, they might make trouble for you, if you're the kind of person who would buy the former home of someone who sold a lot of record albums. In the 1970s.

Thanks for reading my blog post this week, and please give generously to the WFMU Marathon.

DJ Nightmare by Proxy

About a year ago, Evan Funk Davies posted a shocking expose of the WFMU DJs' terrifying shared nightmare. Since then, the nightmare's continued. One of my worst involved DJ Dave the Spazz trying to "help" me by giving me a Grateful Dead LP to play. But something strange has happened: The nightmare is growing, expanding, turning into something else--MUTATING. First, we heard about Listeners who are beginning to have the DJ Nightmare themselves. Here's Listener-Volunteer Rudy describing his DJ nightmare on my show--EVEN THOUGH HE'S NOT A DJ. Then this week I suddenly had a DJ nightmare by proxy. In MY dream, it was DJ Mr. Finewine of the Downtown Soulville show who was the one who was late getting to the station, didn't have any records, couldn't run the equipment, etc. Quelle terroir! I'm not saying this is Evan Davies fault, but he IS the one who first went public with this dreadful curse.

The Poodle Wins the Group

Again.

Super Bowl MVP

I’m a Giants fan, and all season I’ve been defending Eli Manning to a football-watchin’ friend of mine from Philadelphia. This has not always been easy for me. When you see some of the shots of Eli, mouth-breathing and vacant-eyed, he looks kind of like one of those special-needs kids who has to wear a helmet to keep from hurting himself. But the Giants are my team, and Eli is my quarterback, for better or for worse. I finally got tired of my friend giving me a hard time—especially after that game with Minnesota, with the 4 interceptions for 3 TDs—and I just told him, “Quarterbacks are for sissy teams!” Then the Giants started winning on the road.

Yesterday they won the Super Bowl.

Sluggo and I watched it at our friends' party, and half-way through we switched to SAP--even though none of us speaks Spanish--just so we wouldn't have to listen to stupid Joe Buck and stupider Troy Aikman kissing Tom Brady's pretty butt.

Here is a joke I made up this morning. Pretend I’m “B” (for Bronwyn) and you be “D” (for Douche of the Week Fox Sports Guy):

B:  Knock knock!
D:  Who’s there?
B:  Tom Brady.
D:  Tom Brady who?
B:  EXACTLY!

The funny thing is, I didn't even realize what a huge upset the Giants had pulled off until I read all the game coverage afterward. I always thought they could do it.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God Bless the Mannings.

The Empire State Triangle

Hello, Everybody—Nice seeing you again.

All the NYTimes-readin’ folks probably missed the story yesterday about how cars are mysteriously dying within a 5-block radius of the Empire State Building. Richard Weir wrote in the Daily News that some10 to 15 cars get stuck every day between 7th and Lex, from about 27th to 40th. If you draw a circle around the area where this is happening, the Empire State Building is right in the middle of it. Some cars’ remote entry systems won’t open the doors, and some cars’ engines won’t start even though everything else is working. The cars get towed 4 or 5 blocks, to outside the affected area, and then the doors open and they start right up and everything works fine.

Weir quotes “automotive experts and engineers” who say it’s likely a problem with radio transmissions from all the broadcast towers on top of the Empire State Building jamming the keyless entry systems that operate on specific wavelengths assigned by the FCC. The FCC says they haven’t had any complaints about car problems around the Empire State Building. The Empire State Building people say they don’t believe there’s any problem, and refused to give Reporter Weir a list of all the broadcast antennas there.

It was January 2003 when Sluggo and I tried driving into Manhattan one night—which was already weird, we never do that--and a cop stopped us from going down 5th Ave. at 42nd Street. The street was closed, he said, because of “ice falling from the Empire State Building.” In fact, all the streets for blocks around were closed. They were blocked off for the next couple of nights, too. I’ve never heard of ice falling off the Empire State Building before or since, and certainly not for several nights in a row, and not so that streets 8 blocks away had to be shut down. We naturally figured it was some Homeland Security thing being installed on the Empire State Building, something that would shoot down planes over Brooklyn or Queens before they could hit Manhattan. And how great is it that it turns out to be not a gun at all, but a giant transmitter that’ll make it impossible to open the airplane doors until they’re towed to, like, New Jersey.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

Killin' Me Softly With His Song

My favorite new product at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was the iTaser. It's just what it sounds like--an mp3 player combined with a Taser. So the next time I'm on the train, sitting across from some idiot who has his iPod TURNED UP SO LOUD I CAN HEAR IT CLEAR ACROSS THE AISLE EVEN THOUGH HE'S GOT THE EARPHONES IN, I'm for sure gonna think twice before I ask him to turn it down, 'cause I really don't need a 50,000-volt electric charge to spice up my day. If I did, I'd just go walk my dog around the Lower East Side and let Con-Ed electrocute us with some stray voltage.

The spokesman for the iTaser company says their product is aimed at women who want personal protection but usually choose to take a music player instead of a weapon with them when they go out. Now they can have both! "Personal protection can be both fashionable and functionable," he says. I'm not sure whether the leopard-print-design iTaser is supposed to be the functionable one, and I thought "personal protection" was a code word for tampons, but as far as I know they haven't come out with the iTampax yet. No way am I putting an iTaser up there, either.

Anyway, I'm all for combining weapons with traditionally nonviolent pursuits. My favorite Olympic sport is the biathlon, which combines skiing with shooting great big guns. I think it would be fun to combine shooting with other sports, too--like rhythmic gymnastics.
Just imagine some little girl running merrily across an exercise mat with a long ribbon, picking up a hoop and throwing it high over the judges' heads, and then whipping out a semi-automatic assault rifle and firing a few rounds through the center of the hoop as it spins in mid-air. THAT'S a perfect 10, for sure!

We had a guy in Brooklyn just this weekend who tried to add some explosive excitement to a sometimes tedious sport. When police arrested Ivaylo Ivanov in his Brooklyn Heights apartment, they found a pistol, a shotgun, a crossbow, a bullet-proof vest, some drilling equipment, and seven live pipebombs. Ivanov said the pipebombs were for fishing. Okay!  Maybe by this time next year we'll have the Popeil Pocket iBomb. 

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

I Want Ron Paul to Bear Our Children

Darren Garnick lives in New Hampshire with a camera and a baby. He’s had some attention lately for his little project in which he attempted to take a picture of his baby with every New Hampshire presidential primary candidate. That’s what he said the project was, anyway. And he proudly announced on Slate
“As of the day before Tuesday’s primary, I’ve photographed Dahlia [the baby] with every candidate except Fred Thompson.”

Except he hadn’t.

He photographed Dahlia with Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, and Barack Obama (twice). He did not even try to take a picture of the baby with Mike Gravel, because he thinks Mike Gravel is “creepy.” Garnick doesn’t say what that means, but maybe he should have said his project was to photograph Dahlia with every non-creepy New Hampshire presidential candidate.

Garnick said he didn’t photograph the baby with Fred Thompson, because Fred Thompson wasn’t in New Hampshire very much. So maybe he should have said his project was to photograph his baby with every non-creepy New Hampshire presidential candidate who spent a considerable amount of time in the state.

The Republican candidates with whom Garnick did photograph his baby were Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee—AND Chuck Norris. So perhaps the project would be better described as “Darren Garnick attempts to photograph his baby with every non-creepy New Hampshire presidential candidate who spent a considerable amount of time in the state, and with at least one amusing celebrity sidekick.” But NOWHERE does Darren Garnick even mention Ron Paul. No one ever does. It reminds me of the old B-52’s song that goes, “Why won’t you dance with me? I’m not no limberger!” Garnick didn’t mention John Cox, Duncan Hunter, or Alan Keyes either, but they didn’t beat Giuliani in Iowa.

So in the end the project probably should have been called “Darren Garnick attempts to photograph his baby with every non-creepy New Hampshire presidential candidate who spent a considerable amount of time in the state, and with at least one amusing celebrity sidekick, but not with the Republican candidate who came in fourth in the Iowa caucuses.” But if he called it that, it probably wouldn’t have got so much press coverage.

DJ Bronwyn C's 2007 Top 10

Bronwyn C’s 2007 Top 10

1. “Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison Wrapped in Clingfilm” — Absolutely the greatest novel of the 21st century (so far). Google “Troubador Publishing Ltd.” and order your copy before the green American dollar becomes completely worthless overseas.

2. Jerry Ford U.S. Postage Stamps — My favorite president EVER. Still waiting for the Rudy King Jr. postage stamp, though.

3. “Lepechaun IV: In Space” — I saw about 45 minutes of this movie around Halloween, and it made me happier than anything I’d seen in a long time. I keep meaning to rent it so I can watch the whole thing.

4. The Greatest Sentence Ever Written — Lead sentence to a crime-news story in the NY Daily News, by reporter Scott Shifrel:  “A baby jammed in a shoebox amid a swarm of cockroaches, a pile of drugs, and a loaded handgun was well cared for and loved, her teenage mother insisted as she was released from jail yesterday.” An entire novel in 36 words.

5. “Dae Jo Young” — Korean Broadcasting Sytem’s 100-plus-episode historical costume drama about the life of King Go of Balhae, circa late 7th century. Not as good as “Immortal Admiral Yi Soon Shin” but still pretty great. You can make up a fun drinking game based on every time Heuk Sudol says “Blasted Bastards!”

6. The Bacon Shawl — A chart for knitting or crocheting a shawl that looks like an enormous piece of bacon. From Monster Crochet.

7. Program Director Brian putting the latest Britney Spears’ CD into the station’s New Bin in a disguised, handmade cover under the name “Anna Elektronische” to see how many DJs would play it without realizing it was a prank. Genius!

8. Bookbinding classes and the letterpress seminar at the Center for Book Arts, NYC.

9. DJ Mr. Billy Jam’s heroic board-op work during my live broadcast from the WFMU Record and CD Fair in November.

10. Our Boston Terrier, Henne’s Baxter Beans, got his CGC title on the first try! Yay!

Good News from the FCC

Hello, Everybody—Nice Seeing You Again.

The Federal Communications Commission recently announced a new ruling that will allow cross-ownership of both a newspaper and a radio station in the same top-20 market, because obviously there are no more conflicts of interest now that there’s no more free speech. This is good news for us, because now WFMU can buy the New York Times (aka the Big Grey Pack o’ Lies) and fix it. As far as I know, the Times is the only newspaper ever to inspire an almost-monthly magazine (“Lies of Our Times”) just to correct its blatant inaccuracies and distortions, although that was before the Times decided to run their own 2-page mea culpas for everything they print. (My favorite correction was the one where they apologized for misidentifying Mickey Mouse as Minnie Mouse .) I figure we’ll put DJ Kenny G in charge of plagiarism, and Program Director Brian will edit the Style section (I’ve read some of his fashion reports and they are really scary), and DJ Mr. Billy Jam can write the Home and Gardening stuff because I think he must know a lot about hydroponics and growing things indoors under lights. Station Manager Ken can be in charge of the Sports section and write all about water skiing, and we’ll start a new section called “Chimps of the Times” that DJ Dave the Spazz will edit. I’ll handle Obituaries and the Book Review, of course, and soon everybody will be reading “Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm.” This is going to be a really, really good thing, and the only way it could be better would be if we pay for it with Ron Paul dollars
—the second-most popular currency in the United States!

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God Bless.

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Or  maybe not.

Good Yule, Everybody!
from -Bronwyn C.

Band Announces Reunion Tour

The Spice Girls have announced a 25-city reunion tour.
Seen here, from left to right: Petrified Manmeat Spice, Gym Teacher Spice, Stevie Nicks Spice, Yo BabyMama Spice, Still-Scary-But-For-A-Different-Reason Spice.

If Proctor & Gamble aren't sponsoring this, they're really missing a bet.

The Lion Keeps His Rights

Hank Medress died the other day. He was 68, and he had lung cancer, and he used to sing with a doo-wop group called the Tokens, back in the 1950s and ‘60s. The Tokens had a huge hit with a song called “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in 1961, and then some more minor songs on the charts, and then Medress moved on to producing records for other groups like the Chiffons, and Tony Orlando and Dawn, and even David Johansen in his “Buster Poindexter” incarnation. The last thing Hank Medress was doing before he died was working as a consultant to Sound Exchange, which was described in his obituary as “a nonprofit group helping musicians collect royalties.”

That’s kind of ironic, because Medress got rich off royalties for “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” but the guy who actually wrote the song and recorded it in 1939, Solomon Linda, never got a penny of royalties in his life. Mr. Linda died in poverty, in segregated South Africa, in 1962, aware that his song—sung by some white guys from Brooklyn—was a worldwide hit. It’s only within the last few months that Linda’s daughters, who have also spent their lives in poverty, have settled a legal case for payment of a share of back royalties estimated to total some $15 million. I don’t know whether Hank Medress or Sound Exchange were involved in the settlement, but I kinda doubt it.

But maybe it was just that Solomon Linda was on Sound Exchange’s list of “Missing Artists.” This is a roster of people whose royalties can’t be paid because they’ve totally disappeared. For instance, Ted Nugent. God only knows what happened to him—he’s like the Judge Crater of pop music. And what happens to the royalties for these missing artists? Does Sound Exchange just keep them? If so, they’ll be keeping a lot more money once the new royalty rates for online streaming go into effect 0n July 15.

The whole RIAA/Sound Exchange royalty issue is pretty complicated, so rather than try to explain it here I’ll just refer you to Liz Berg’s post, below. Just be aware that this new, unilaterally declared royalty system is going to be especially punitive to listener-supported radio stations like us, WFMU, because although we’re not a commercial station, we’ll be charged commercial rates. So that’s why I’ll be boycotting RIAA/Sound Exchange music on my show this Friday, and many of our other DJs will be doing the same on their shows all this week.

Whimoweh, my ass.

Things My Father Taught Me

Father’s Day got me thinking about my father, and fathers in general, and how one of the most important things a father does is to teach his children lessons he’s learned, the essential knowledge that will help them through life.

The first thing I remember my father ever teaching me was when I was 2½ and he asked if I wanted to help him paint our basement floor. We were standing at the bottom of the basement stairs, my dad holding a brush and a bucket of paint, and he said, “Okay, Scout, where should we start?” “Here!” I said, pointing down at my own feet.

My dad just smiled and said, “Let’s pretend we’re painting.” So we did. We pretend-painted all the way from the stairs to the far corner of the basement. “Uh-oh!” my dad said. “What’ll we do now? The floor’s all covered with paint!” I saw at once the fatal error in my original plan, and I couldn’t wait to run upstairs and explain Painting Yourself Into a Corner to my mom. Learning things was so exciting.

My dad worked for the telephone company and sometimes, after my sister was born, he’d take me with him while he drove around southwestern Iowa looking at phone lines. First we’d go down to the big garage to pick up a dark-green telephone company truck, and my dad would brag about me to whoever was there and I would have to demonstrate how I could read already, even thought I was only 4. Then we’d drive away and spend all day on the little county roads: Shenandoah, Creston, Glenwood, where the apple orchards were, Red Oak, with the butcher who made great dried beef, Atlantic, or Villisca, where the ax murders happened. Every once in a while we’d pull over to the side of the road and my dad would look at the telephone wires, and usually he’d try to explain the Pythagorean theorem to me. “See, Scout, if the pole is 4, and the guy wire is 5, the length of the ground between the guy and the pole is 3!” I might have been able to read, but geometry was still a little beyond me. Still, I could see what a kick he got out of math and years later, when geometry came back to haunt me in 10th grade, I found I had a real affection for right triangles.

My dad told us stories about when he was in England during the war and they used newspapers in the beds, under the sheets and between the thin blankets, to keep warm. This came in very handy when I went away to college and ended up living in an unheated attic room. When I started repairing and refinishing antique furniture to make extra money, my dad taught me that “two thin coats [of varnish or paint or shellac or wax] are better than one thick coat,” and he was definitely right about that. He taught me how to double-clutch, how to replace a faucet washer, and how to gap the sparkplugs in a car.

But as my sister got older and our mom got sicker, my dad’s lessons became less and less relevant. By the time I was 8 and my sister was 5, he was showing us how to knee someone in the groin and then, when the pain caused them to bend over, grab their ears and headbutt them—hard!—in the face. He explained to us that if we went out drinking, we should eat a stick of butter first because it would coat our stomachs and allow us to drink more without getting drunk. (The legal drinking age in Iowa at that time was 21. I was 10.) He told us that if we ever had to shoot anyone, we should shoot to kill because “then the only story told will be yours.” I didn’t even understand what that meant until a couple of years ago. In the only acknowledgment he ever made that we might, one day, begin going out with boys, he made sure to tell us never to eat spaghetti on a date. And even though he never explained how it was supposed to happen, he was adamant that we were never, ever to become pregnant. And we never did.

America Fears the Penis

A few months ago I got to go to a special unveiling of the first dog ever to be immortalized in wax by Madame Tussaud’s: Bullseye, the Target dog. (Of course he’s the first; we don’t even need to discuss why.)

There was a lot of canine genderbending going on at this event. All the press people stood around outside the wax museum, where there was a red carpet and special dog bodyguards—two Rottweilers wearing vests. The Rotties were supposed to look tough I guess (being large and black), but they were actually two girl dogs and both sweet as could be. Big limos pulled up, and various dogs representing dog-adoption agencies got out and walked up the red carpet while the press folks shouted and took photos. Then an incredible white Bentley limo came, and a big white Standard Poodle wearing a plaid taffeta ballgown got out. The Rotties were brought forward to “protect” her from the scrum of press, escorting her to one side of the red carpet. I forget the Poodle’s name, but she was supposed to be Bullseye’s girlfriend.

Lassie showed up next, the real Lassie, because the new Lassie movie had just been released. She sat next to the Poodle and seemed pretty interested in her, and you might have thought Lassie was a lesbian except that, as always, “Lassie” was a boy dog. (Boy Collies have a bigger, thicker ruff of hair and are more photogenic, supposedly.)

After a short delay, another limo glided along, stopped, and Bullseye himself jumped out. He was obviously a LOT more interested in Lassie than in his alleged girlfriend Poodle, but that was because Bullseye was being played by a girl Bull Terrier (easier to train than a male?) and Lassie was a boy. And the big tough bodyguards were sweet girls, and who knows what was under that Poodle’s dress?

I was wondering how the Madame Tussaud’s people were going to portray Bullseye—as the boy he’s supposed to be, or as the girl who plays him at special events? But it turned out not to be an issue, because the wax Bullseye, while a very good likeness of a Bull Terrier, is completely smooth underneath, with no genitalia whatsoever. C’mon, waxworkers! It’s a DOG! Are they afraid that some child will see the wax doggy’s weewee and be traumatized for life?

Some time after the wax dog event, I found a Crazy Frog CD in the new bin at the radio station. It was really annoying so I played one of the songs on my show, and afterwards Program Director Brian told me that while Crazy Frog in Europe has a little penis, the Americanized Crazy Frog is completely smooth down there. This is not just an animal, it is also a cartoon, but even cartoons must not have peepees in the land of permanent war.
America fears the penis.

Ant Adoption Update

For the past few weeks on my show, "Killing Time with Bronwyn C." I've been reading DJ Noah's riveting updates on the ant infestation in the WFMU studios. Last week Station Manager Ken sat in on my show and discussed my idea for putting the ants up for adoption. Here are some ants who are available now:

Jessica

Justin and Otis

Bryce Junior

Adam

And here's the questionnaire to fill out for official ant adoption. Good luck, and may God bless.

ANT ADOPTION QUESTIONNAIRE

Please fill out the following and submit it with your non-refundable adoption fee. Please note that the non-refundable fee is non-refundable.

Ant adoption is a serious responsibility. The policy of the WFMU Ant Adoption Department is to ensure that each Listener who adopts an ant is aware of the emotional, physical, and financial commitment required when taking an ant into your home. The following questionnaire has been designed to aid both you and the WFMUAAD in determining whether you and your family are adequately prepared to assume responsible ownership of an ant.

Name:
Address, City, & Zip:
Home Phone:        Work Phone:         Cell Phone:
How many people live in your household?
Do you have children and, if so, what are their ages?

Who will be primarily responsible for the ant?

Are there any other ants living in your home?
Are their any aardvarks or other anteaters living in your home?
Did you know that a zookeeper in Argentina was killed by an anteater last month? Really.

Do you understand that the non-refundable adoption fee is non-refundable?

Are you aware that the ant you are adopting is required to be spayed/neutered?
Can you figure out how the heck you’re going to do that?
(NOTE: The non-refundable adoption fee does not include the cost of the ant’s spay/neuter.)

Do you understand that the ant will be fitted with a teeny-tiny radio receiver before leaving WFMU?

Type of home you live in: Messy __ Dirty __ Disgusting __ Sticky with Filth __

Where would the ant be left alone, and for how many hours a day?

Have you previously owned an ant?
If so, what happened to it?

What is the primary reason you want an ant?
Are you aware that behavioral problems such as scuttling, climbing, and crawling in the trash may occur once the ant is taken home?
Under what circumstances would you not keep the ant?

What's 40 inches long, rock hard, and pink?

The bats used in major league baseball games on Mother’s Day. What every mother wants, I guess. And some guys, too, according to ZOO, the documentary about a Boeing engineer who died in 2005 after having sex with a horse.

[WARNING: DON’T READ THIS IF HORSE SEX OFFENDS YOU.]

Program Director Brian and I went to see ZOO last week. It was kind of an odd movie, as the director, Robinson Devor, decided to experiment with the documentary form. That’s usually a euphemism for “the director didn’t know what the hell he was doing,” but in this case I’m not sure whether he did or not. Maybe he meant for it to be like that. For the soundtrack, Devor used audio interviews with a few of the men who were involved in the same zoophilia group as the dead man and with Jenny Edwards of Hope for Horses, who “rescued” the horses involved in the incident. The visuals were all “reenactments,” mostly by human actors and horse actors. Most of the male actors were gingery haired and middle-aged and had facial hair, and were very hard for me to tell apart. The horses were easier, since a grey Arabian stallion portrayed the “Before” horse, and a horse of another breed entirely was the “After.” The name of the man who died is never mentioned in the film, where he’s referred to only as “Mr. Hands,” his Internet pseudonym, although I found his name—along with a naked photo of him—in less than two minutes on line. In fact, most of what I know about this case comes from a little online search I did in order to write this review.

The film itself was not very informative, about either the actual incident or zoophilia in general. Another odd thing about ZOO is that they never used the horse’s real name either, although I found that out, too. There are many lovely shots in ZOO, I guess in an attempt to contrast the natural beauty of Enumclaw, Washington, with the ugly behavior of the zoophiles. Or maybe it’s supposed to emphasize the underlying naturalness of their behavior—it’s not really clear. Mr. Hands is treated fairly sympathetically, although some of the film’s implications about him—where he lived, which horses and how many horses he owned, etc.—are misleading at best. It’s very confusing sometimes, such as towards the end of a particularly nice scene in which Mr. Hands is writing a check for child support. The phone rings, he answers, and a woman’s voice says, “We’re here.” Meanwhile, the soundtrack has part of an interview in which one of the men is explaining how the group was contacted by other zoo’s (as they call themselves) and how they decided which ones to invite out to their horse-sex parties. I was interested in the idea that women might be involved, too, and then disappointed that she was never mentioned again. It wasn’t until I started writing this that I realized the woman on the phone was supposed to be Mr. Hands’ ex-wife, calling to let him know that she and their son had just arrived in Seattle for a visit.

Earn It

I was listening to the radio yesterday--to a station other than WFMU--and I heard one of those vague "news reports" that don't actually tell you anything. Sometimes they're only a sentence long and leave you with a LOT of questions, which I find very frustrating. This one said something along the lines of the MTA was cracking down on workers' comp fraud, including one woman bus driver who played drums with a rock band while she was out on disability. "Uh-oh," I thought, because I know of only one woman in the world who meets that description, but of course that's all the so-called report said before they were off to another account of traffic on roads that I don't even know where they are.

It wasn't until I saw the Daily News this morning that my worst fears were confirmed: Valerie Scroggins has been indicted by a Brooklyn grand jury for taking more than $13,000 in workers' comp payments for a shoulder injury that left her unable to drive a city bus, while she toured Europe playing drums with ESG. "Drummer snared in $13G MTA scandal" said the headline, complete with a mugshot and a photo of VS on drums that featured a banner reading "Caught in the act!"

ESG has been one of my favorite bands since the '80s, and one of the highpoints of my life was when I got to introduce them at a WFMU benefit show some years back, even though I kind of mangled what ESG stands for (Emerald, Sapphire, and Gold) and was wearing the infamous "Eat Pie" t-shirt. But still. And I really admire Ms. Scroggins and kind of paid tribute to her in another blog post here. So I'm not unbiased. But it seems to me that it's a lot more important to have a healthy shoulder when driving a bus full of passengers than when playing drums. Couldn't an injury be severe enough to prevent safe driving, and not be so bad that you couldn't bang out a beat? Couldn't it?

Sportsy Talk

Yesterday the NY Yankees announced they’ve resigned Roger Clemens. Roger Clemens! Why don’t they just sign Nolan Ryan while they’re at it? Or Fernando Valenzuela—I think he’s available. Shoot, why don’t they just pay ME $28,000,000 a year, and I’LL throw at the batter’s head.

The $5 Cracker Box Amp

The new issue of MAKE is out. MAKE, the magazine that costs like a book: $14.99 for 192 pages. Luckily it only comes out once in a while, or maybe it’s just that it’s hard to find so sometimes I miss it entirely. But whenever I come across it, I gotta have it. It fuels my fantasies of actually creating something, and this issue, MAKE vol. 09, features “fringe” projects (a Hieronymus machine?), a panoramic pinhole camera, and a guitar amp you can make for just $5 worth of parts, depending, I guess, on how much an LM386N audio amplifier costs where you live. Plus you need an empty cracker box. I don’t know about your neighborhood, but a box of plain Ritz costs, like, over $3 upstate where we are. I got all fired up about building this cool little amp, until I bought the magazine and actually read the instructions, which say things like “Install the 0.01uF capacitor so one leg connects to pin 2 of the chip and one leg is in a 'proto row.' Flip it over and solder it.” I almost understand what that means. Kind of. They have other projects that look simpler, until you find out they’re assuming you already own your own cement mixer or something. But it’s still a pretty fine magazine, and at least they advocate making things, instead of just buying them at the store.

MAKE reminds me of Popular Mechanics, which my Uncle Bikey subscribed to. When I was little, whenever we visited our cousins, I’d always check out the Popular Mechanics collection. I don’t remember if Uncle Bikey ever made any of the featured projects, but he could have. My dad and my uncles could do all that stuff, which is something I’ve always admired. My great and abiding love of pinball comes from watching my dad restore an old Gottlieb Flying High  machine that we played with for years afterwards. My dad could’ve made a $5 cracker box amp, for sure.

MAKE also has a sister publication, CRAFT. I’m a sucker for that one as well. I do like knitting—I even started a little knitting club at my dayjob, and we made felted squeaky dog toys as a group project and I finally had to learn how to use double-pointed needles, and now all I want to do is knit felted tams in blinding colors because I really like little hats. So I’m actually more likely to make some of the stuff in CRAFT, even though lots of times they show you photos of cool things and then don’t include patterns. But when I saw Liz McGrath’s faux taxidermy in CRAFT vol. 02, I thought, “That’s for me!” I already have a collection of appalling real taxidermy, but the idea of making my own specimens opens up many new possibilities.

If you’re really gung-ho to make the $5 amp, the instructions are here. And If you want to check out back issues of MAKE and CRAFT, you can order them—and many other cool things—here.
As for me, I guess it’s time I broke down and actually got subscriptions to both of those fine magazines.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.