As promised, here are my final 25 cuts by the unforgettable Elton and Betty White. I think that due to the shortness of their songs, one needs to hear rather a lot of them to gain a better feel for what they did. I suppose I should describe their music to those who haven't heard it, I keep assuming that WFMU reader/listeners know about them; the best and most I could say is that they sing straight from the heart about some earthy, patently human things, and what they may lack in skill as poets and players disappears under the weight of their charm. I didn't even expect to be doing Elton and Betty as my first couple of regular posts here on BOTB, but fate seemed to push them into this spot, in several ways.
By the way- I'm tickled to be here.
The second tidal wave of E & B hits after the break.
Continue reading "Elton and Betty White / Folk stars of the fin de sie`cle / Part Two (of two)" »
Earlier this week, a little bit of awesome turned up in my inbox, via the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of all places. This gallery of retro cereal boxes is fun not necessarily because it's a reminder of all the crap I used to eat, but rather because it nicely highlights all the cereal ideas and kooky design ideas that didn't quite work.





Check out the full gallery.
UPDATE: More on King Vitaman after the jump.
And while we're at it, how about a little musical homage to Alpha-Bits with the Jackson 5.
Continue reading "Retro Kid Cereals" »
This week, animator/comic genius Brad Neely dropped a new short musical animated piece. I wrote a bit about Neely in a previous post, and he is popping up on screen as one of the subjects of the new film We Are Wizards, which examines the subculture around the Harry Potter books (the film played at the NY Underground Film Festival earlier this month, as is in the Independent Film Festival of Boston this weekend).
His new cartoon is musical ditty in which "all of the woodland elves, satyrs and hobgoblins are finally coming together for a ragtime protest ditty against us Homo sapiens." They have a rather impressive list of all the things we get wrong.
Dirty, crude, juvenile, and completely reprehensible. And catchy as hell...
NSFW video after the jump.
Continue reading "Fxxk The Humans!" »
I sometimes hear guys talking about how mystified they are by choices women make when it comes to a hetero partner. Frankly, even as a broad, I can offer little insight into what goes on in the minds of women myself. I just know that girls start a hell of alot earlier than you may have been led to believe when it comes to creating a sexual inner life. Add to that mix the fact that most boys find girls icky until they are almost thirteen and you've got yourself the first giant chasm in the gender gap.
As early as the age of four back in the late sixties/early seventies my preoccupation with and crushes on celebrities were a mental tsunami drowning the village of my own potential. Worse was the fact that my crushes were on personalities so incredibly unsexy to other young girls who dreamt about the classic version of Prince Charming that I could not even share during girltalk, leaving me left out of that whole female bonding thing. The endurance of each of my manias made Wuthering Heights look like a Peanuts cartoon. Meanwhile other girls flipped their crushes as quickly as they thumbed through the latest Tiger Beat. Similarly when other little girls collected 45s, I sat transfixed with my LPs stacked on the return arm of the stereo.
For the sake of some (any) logic, I've lumped my pre-teen loves into three different categories. Mind you, some of the celebrities are literally shoe-horned into these groups but I'm trying make things easier for you people. Anyhoo, there are "The Nice Jewish Boys", "The Pan-Sexuals" and "The Feel Funnys".
In the first category, I give you Barry Gordon From A Thousand Clowns, one of the more influential films for me as a kid. I guess I related to Barry's geekiness. He plays Larry David's Rabbi now on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Then there's Wes Stern. You might remember him from Getting Together with that douchey Bobby Sherman, and also The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where he played Lou Grant's nephew who wanted to lose his virginity to Mary. Later I think he grew up, changed character and did it with Brenda Morgenstern on Rhoda. Scott Jacoby was the Nice Jewish Boy who played Bad Ronald, one of the greatest '70s TV-movies ever. There's quite a bit of Scott up on youtube and I still think he
was pretty hot back then.
Inevitably, we come to Gene Wilder in this first group. When I finally did get a friend by the sixth grade, she and I fought over who was going to marry him first. I really resented her for this. Can I just say a million dorky girls like me were really really happy when he married Gilda Radner because we actually could relate to her just a little bit more than say, Farrah Fawcett-Majors?
Continue reading "My Secret Garden (the weird alienated one)" »