WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Feeling B - Ich such' die DDR (video)

News of the Dead: Dead Me

Just in time for Halloween, I discovered my own grave today. Apparently I died in November 1918, age 31, and am buried in some little town in Pennsylvania. Sluggo and I are planning a road trip to go visit Dead Me very soon. If you'd like to find Dead You, then I recommend searching your own name at FindAGrave.com, one of my favorite websites. (My thanks to Find a Grave Member Beth for locating Dead Me, and to Patty Matthews for the photo of Nanticoke Cemetery.)

People usually think of cemeteries as peaceful places. Or maybe not, maybe they think of cemeteries as creepy repositories for dead, rotting corpses. Either way, I don't think most people think of the cemetery as the place to go for some hot hetero action. But that is because most people do not live in South Carolina, home of Roland Corning, 66, the former deputy assistant attorney general. Mr. Corning became a former etc. when he was found in a cemetery with an 18-year-old stripper, some Viagra, and a bag of sex toys. He claimed he was on his "lunch break," and I suppose he just must have grabbed the wrong bag—you know, he accidentally took the one with the crusty black strap-on instead of the one with the ham sandwich. Plus, he's in South Carolina, home of Governor Mark Sanford, who prefers "hiking the Appalachian Trail" to "hanging out in the cemetery with barely legal strippers." Also that douchebag who heckled the President is from South Carolina, and who knows what he's been up to. I guess if you want to have sex outdoors with old white guys, South Carolina is the place to go. South Carolina, home of the Gamecocks! South Carolina's got it goin' on!

Christmas Contest Update: Okay, so the special Disney's Christmas Carol AmTrak train was in Grand Central today because it's the day before Halloween, and I went through it mostly just because it was there and I think it's interesting the way the "property" has gone from being A Christmas Carol to   Dickens' A Christmas Carol to Disney's A Christmas Carol, and just before the exit from the train there were 4 people in Victorian costumes singing "Jingle Bell Rock" because that is what counts as a Christmas carol nowadays, I guess. But our contest is to be the first person to hear Christmas music being played in a store and I don't think being subjected to anachronistic performers on a marketing train counts. I did notice stores in Grand Central with all the Christmas stuff up, making this the first year I have ever seen totally Christmas-themed store windows before Halloween. Surely the Christmas music will not be far behind. As soon as you hear Christmas music in a store, email me at bronwync@wfmu.org. The winner will receive some not-yet-determined prize.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and Happy Halloween.

Dia de los Angelitos Update: Not My Grave. The Nanticoke Historical Society has a helpful list of locals who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic, among them "Bronwyn Charleton (Mrs. John)." And the Wilkes-Barre Record of May 17, 1905 has an announcement of the marriage of Bronwyn Davis of Nanticoke to John Charleton of Alden. So it looks like that Nanticoke grave belongs to Bronwyn Davis Charleton--close, but not my grave.

Numismaticism Update: So Where's My Guam Quarter, Mint Bitches?!

I've been a devoted collector of all the fine, fine, superfine commemorative state quarters, issued five a year for 10 years from 1999-2008, especially up through the 2005 quarters when anybody--school kids, pancake-house artists, lunatics--could still submit design proposals. From 2006 on it looks as if the Mint decided they'd had enough, because after that the only designs considered were the ones the Mint came up with themselves. No more 26 amateur designs, like Florida! (And even then, look what they ended up with.)  I have written about the state quarters here on Beware of the Blog—more than once!—and just when I thought 2008 was the end of it, the Mint announced that 5 MORE special quarters would be released in 2009: THE COMMEMORATIVE QUARTERS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND UNITED STATES TERRITORIES! Guam! American Samoa! Puerto Rico! THE NORTHERN EFFIN' MARIANA ISLANDS! 

I was SO ready for those quarters, even though the District of Columbia inexplicably chose Duke Ellington over Frederick Douglass for theirs. Sure, Duke Ellington was a great musician, but, you know ... Frederick Douglass. Plus, they didn't even consider Marvin Gaye or Marion Barry. But it's not like I've actually seen a District of Columbia quarter. You know how, with the state quarters, every few months  you'd get a new one: "Oh, look! Arkansas! The 'Moses-in-the-bullrushes-with-an-Egyptian-egret-and-a-giant-diamond' state!" But now it's mid-October and I haven't seen a 2009 quarter all year!  So the first one was supposed to be D.C., and one of our WFMU Listeners has posted and said he got one at his sister's house in New Jersey, so maybe they are out there, somewhere. And the second one was supposed to be Puerto Rico—and it appears they haven't decided on their design yet. Is that what's holding up the show? Puerto Rico? Because Guam is all designed and ready to go, and it is super awesome. It features both the latte and the flying proa! Even though half the time I get them mixed up and think it's the proa and the flying latte! Either way, I want my Guam quarter, dammit! 

I really feel that the United State Mint has let me down on this. It made me reconsider the Ron  Paul dollar—the second-most popular currency in the United States!—and I was all ready to order some right now, but then I went to the website and it says, "We are Not Accepting any New Orders Until After the Trial." So I guess that's out. But I am getting pretty tired of waiting for the U.S. Mint (Home of the first-most popular currency in the United States!) to get the 2009 territorial quarters in circulation. After all, if the official agencies of our government are going to start acting like infomercial advertisers with all these weird "collectibles" (the Postal Service has been selling licensed-character crap for over a decade, for instance--some of which I was responsible for, I just remembered, but it wasn't my fault, they paid me to do it)--anyway, then they'd better learn to ship the product on schedule. No matter what Puerto Rico does.

News of the Dead: This Just In—Soldiers Die in U.S. Civil War

Deaths come in pairs, and sometimes it seems that News of the Dead does, too. In the past week there have been two stories about the remains of Civil War soldiers in this area.

First there was the ceremonial burial of the remains of a New York soldier who died at Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862—the bloodiest day of the war, with over 23,000 killed). A tourist at the battlefield found some bone fragments, uniform buttons, a belt buckle, and scraps of fabric about a year ago; the buttons identified the remains as being that of a soldier from one of the 24 New York regiments that fought that day. Government Scientists and Experts had a go and decided the soldier was between 17 and 19 years old when he died. That was about as much as they could figure out, so the bits and bones were put into a box inside a “period-appropriate” pine coffin and sent to the National Cemetery near Schuylerville. Civil War re-enactors stood guard over the coffin until it was buried last week on the 147^th anniversary of the battle. The grave marker says it’s an unknown soldier who died at Antietam. “We’re going to remember him as a hero,” says Donald E. Roy, the director of New York’s Military Forces Honor Guard (and a civilian)—although, of course, no one knows who the soldier was or what he really did.

Next was the story of John F. Wescott Jr., who was fooling around with findagrave.com and discovered that his great, great, great grandpa, Capt. Andrew W. Davis of the 8^th Infantry Regiment of New Jersey, was buried in an unmarked grave in Newark. Last Saturday the Wescotts got together and installed a marker from the Veterans Administration over the Captain, who died from the wound he got when he was shot in the leg at Gettysburg.

These two dead Civil War soldiers caught my attention because at the time I was reading This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust. Of course I was aware that the Civil War changed the way death was regarded in the U.S.—it furthered the development and use of embalming, for one thing. But Faust’s book explains how far-reaching the changes were. The slaughter brought about the Federal Government’s first foray into arranging its citizens’ personal lives, caused people to reject their religious beliefs, and resulted in both widespread sentimentality and cynicism. It launched a tentative move towards women’s rights, created big advances in the field of statistics, and made James Russell Lowell write bad poetry (and lots of people write atrocious songs). It caused people to fret about identifying and returning the remains of their dead—just like the box of bone bits in New York and the Captain’s grave in New Jersey. It’s a terrific book, well-researched and well-written, and I recommend it to you.

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

The Cookie Monster and 9/11

Just after the 8th anniversary of the WTC attacks, I discovered this shocking cover of a 1976 Sesame Street special "Monsters on the Loose!" on David Icke's official forum. Click the link to read more about this story the government doesn't want you to know.

Scripts and Clips

In the midst of our grand de-hoarding effort (Everything Must Go! preferably for cash) I came across a box full of scripts for “Truckstop Teaparty,” a radio show I used to do on WFMU. I’ve been told that people often didn’t realize there were scripts for that show, probably because I always sounded so befuddled, but in fact every word I said on-air was written out in advance. In fact, even the umm’s and uh’s were written out, in an attempt to make myself sound more “natural.” This was because I was so terrified of being on the radio that my mind went completely blank every time I went on mic. If I hadn’t had something to read, no sound would have come out of my mouth at all. So it was interesting to see what words were coming out in 1989-90-91.

Even more interesting were the hefty piles of newspaper clippings I’d saved with every show’s script. These were news stories I’d reference as I talked about “News of the Dead” or “Danger!” or any of the various other regular Truckstop Teaparty features. It’s incredible to me that newspapers—common, everyday tabloids--were ever so informative, with long, well-referenced articles about all sorts of actual news. There seemed to be a lot of stories about eroding privacy rights, the plight of homeless people, the environment, and political upheaval in other countries: Iran, Romania, Panama, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and so on. There were “first woman” stories (the first woman to lead U.S. troops in combat, the first woman minor-league umpire, etc.) and weird racism stories. There were way too many stories about accomplished, talented people dying of AIDS. There were stories about drugs, murders, serial killers, and the successful development of the first genetically engineered foods. There was a story about how the first President Bush had admitted falsifying intelligence information to win approval for the first war in Iraq. These newspaper stories were literate, well-written, and told you something, and it was kind of shocking to see how much newspapers have changed in just … well, okay, 20 years ,,, and how much everything else is still the same.

 Anyway, I threw ‘em all out. The only clipping I kept was a torn bit of a longer article, the final three paragraphs of what apparently was a review of something—a book or TV show involving Nat Hentoff?—written by someone named Vince Passaro. Here’s what he wrote:

 “Censorship begins in fear: fear of contradiction, fear of insult and injury, fear of confusion, paradox and despair. Hentoff points out that in many cases the censoring parties have valid objections to the material they wish to suppress. Yet he also shows that the best way to deal with ideas you don’t like is to inform yourself about them and counter them with ideas of your own—to debate, in other words. But where does a culture learn the language of debate? Currently, we willingly misuse the word to refer to the meeting of opposing political candidates in which rehearsed speeches pass as answers to predictable questions. If that’s what we call debate, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll last as a democracy.

“In fact, the great censorship of our times is the self-censorship of our reporters and editors, our writers of books, our television commentators. Why is it that the Iran-contra story had to be broken by a Lebanese weekly, although several American journalists knew of it? Why was the great menace of Iraq trumpeted far and wide, with fancy graphics and musical scores, while the arming of the menace, by us, illegally, is still only mentioned in whispers? Why is it that there is so little discussion, in an election year, of the S&L failures and a possible collapse, of greater magnitude, in commercial banking?

“Like vampires or cave-dwelling fish, we have lost the ability to live in light because no one has been shedding any. Unless you have a $40-million production budget, it’s pretty much impossible to disseminate an upsetting idea in this country; when you do, the crowds scream as if they’ve been hit with acid. Hentoff, for all his fervor, never takes the parties responsible for our condition to blame. We don’t need to be introduced to school boards in the heartland to see censorship in action; all we have to do is open our major dailies, or watch network news.”

 “Major dailies”—who’s even gonna know what that means in 5 years? And yeah, I googled him. I don’t think Vince Passaro is writing book reviews for tabloid newspapers anymore, and I don’t think any future Vince Passaros are, either.

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

Radio News You Can't Use

I apologize, it's been far too long since I've used this blog to geek out on radio news. A few recent happenings have drawn me out of this whole "working in radio" thing and into talking smack about it on the internet for a few minutes!

First up: Webcasting Royalties
In case you haven't heard, webcasters and SoundExchange (the web streaming arm of the RIAA) have renegotiated terms for webcasting royalties. Instead of accepting SoundExchange's initial offer of web performance royalty rates that would surely put webcasters out of business, webcasters threw a fit (we were part of the fit), held rounds and rounds of negotiations, and over a year later accepted a new rate scheme that would only nearly put them out of business. These new terms, which for large webcasters is a minimum of 25% of annual revenue, have been lauded by some. However, if you look at typical performance royalty rates for satellite radio (6.5% in 2009), or ASCAP/BMI royalties for terrestrial radio (roughly 1 - 3%), that 25% figure starts to look bloated. Luckily for WFMU, NFCB and CPB made separate negotiations with SoundExhange including more affordable rates, and we are covered under these terms.

New FCC Chair
The Obama administration's nominee for FCC Chair, Julius Genachowski, was recently confirmed by the Senate. After outgoing FCC Chair Kevin Martin thoroughly angered congress and the public with scandalous antics like that Details magazine spread, relaxing media consolidation rules, and "losing" an important study on media ownership (and all the while leading the fight against broadcast indecency) Genachowski has some mopping up to do. The good news is, Genachowski has heard of the internet: he believes in net neutrality and might actually re-do the FCC's website to make it a little less 1996ish (more on the Genachowski team here). The bad news is, Genachowski leans towards the gestapistic view of broadcast indecency (he supports enforcing fines for fleeting profanity), and the FCC's main proponent of 1st Amendment protections, Jonathan Adelstein, will be leaving the commission soon.

Patent Quiz

After the unfortunate passing of Michael, everything from His favorite pill combos, to His child custody problems, to His music publishing issues, to His preferred brand of toothpaste have been dismembered, torn, and tossed into the final press to eek out any remaining dregs of data for the (us?) media vultures.

During this whole circus, you may have discovered that the guy from Toto actually wrote "Human Nature" (thanks Doron). Or perhaps you came across Michael's patent for "Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion" (thanks Listener Colin & Ron) - PDF here, diagram below.

My buddy Dennis also sent along a few other patent documents filed by notable folks: images are below the jump, see if you can put a name to the images.

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Seen, but not really believed...

 This was scrawled on the wall of a post office I frequent. I can't say that MAIL is my biggest complaint in the world, but maybe I'm alone in that thought.

My Ill Na-Na

So last week I went to the gynecologist, and before I could see the doctor I had to sign a form that said I had read the 6-page “Notice of Privacy Practices,” effective date 4/14/03. They seemed pretty surprised that I actually wanted to read the Notice before signing the form that said I had read it. So they gave me a copy, and I did read it, and I was very relieved to see the section on National Security and Intelligence Activities. I have now given permission for my gynecologist to release medical information about me to “authorized federal officials for intelligence, counterintelligence, protection of the President, other authorized persons or foreign heads of state, for purpose of determining [my] own security clearance and other national security activities authorized by law.” I hope it makes the President and all those other foreign heads of state (Stephen Harper! Hugo Chavez! Kim Jong-il!) sleep better, to know that my ladyparts are thriving.

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

You’ll Never Walk Alone

Twenty years ago today Liverpool was playing Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final soccer match at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium. There was construction work on the main highway from Liverpool to Sheffield and a lot of fans arrived late, just minutes before the game was scheduled to start. There was a big crowd at the turnstiles, and a lot of shoving as people made their way through a narrow tunnel that led to the standing-room pens behind one of the goalposts.

In retrospect, there were a lot of things that could have been done: The game could have been delayed; the fans could have been directed into less-crowded pens; the police could have pulled their heads out of their asses. Instead, there was a perfect storm of crowd hysteria, police stupidity, and bad stadium design. 96 men, women, and children died, some by being stomped on and crushed and some by compressive asphyxiation (they remained standing, but couldn’t breathe). Meanwhile, the soccer game started promptly at 3:00 and went on as the fans were slaughtered; the referees didn’t order the players off the field until 3:06.

In the aftermath, there was the obligatory government inquiry, an inquest that failed to take into account anything that happened after 3:15 that day, and the early retirement (with full pensions) of some of the police. One of Rupert Murdoch's so-called newspapers blamed the victims.

BBC News’ UK Web site has video of some survivors today; I thought Damian Kavanagh's segment was particularly moving. And most of the memorials feature an old Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the Broadway musical “Carousel,” which for some reason has been associated with Liverpool F.C. since the early 1960s.

Thanks for reading today’s News of the Dead blog post, and may God bless.

Hope and Change in the Exhume-Me State

Harry Stonebraker was well-liked in Winfield, Missouri (population 723). Last week he was about to finish his third 2-year term as mayor of the town, was running for a fourth term, and was pretty much expected to win. And he did win, by a landslide—90%. He didn’t let the fact that he was dead keep him down, nosirree. Elaine Luck, Lincoln County clerk, said, “I figured he’d win because he seemed to get even more popular after he died, just like Carnahan.” County Clerk Ms. Luck was referring, of course, to Democrat Mel Carnahan, who was elected U.S. Senator from Missouri in 2000 after dying in a plane crash. (Carnahan defeated Republican incumbent John Ashcroft, of “Let the Eagle Soar” fame.)

I never cared much for Missouri when I was growing up in a much-better neighboring state, and I really grew to dislike it during the year or so that I actually had to live there. I felt weird and out-of-place, although they did have the cheapest beer I’ve ever seen anywhere (Buckhorn, $3.00 a 6-pack), a lot of pinball machines, and the Kansas City Art Institute. But that was long before Missouri opened up the electoral process to dead candidates. Maybe now I’d get along there; after all, some of my best friends are dead people.

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

Kustom Kompilation: War Pigs

In 1970, Black Sabbath created what I consider to be the ultimate anti-war song.  Far from a whiny, folksy, gently phrased call to resistance, "War Pigs" is an electric nightmare, heavily drenched in gloom, placing war in its deserved, real-life horror context, and re-casting our generals (and by extension, our statesmen) as "sorcerer(s) of death's construction." The song is a perennial rock anthem, and its riff-vocal-riff-vocal call/response pattern in the verses must be familiar to almost everyone in the world.

In 2003, swollen with frustration over the new Iraq war (which continues to rage on in idiocy), I was inspired to create a compilation of my favorite versions of the Sabbath classic, as well as render a deconstruction of my own (see track 5.) The compilation was purely subjective and is not intended to be comprehensive at all, hence the exclusion of versions by Rondellus, Gov't Mule, Sacred Reich and Hayseed Dixie. Since 2003, I have added a very worthy interpretation by Cake (complete with Latin brass.) Obviously, all these versions meet my standard, but I'm especially fond of the opener, by hardcore-techno-gabber freaks Doormouse.

War Pigs, by:

Doormouse | Faith No More | PIG | Slaves on Dope | Sinistre! | Cake

Download CD insert / artwork

If you have a Facebook login, you can join the Death and Hatred to Mankind FB Group—where our discourse on this great song can continue indefinitely....

The Inauguration String Quartet Revealed (video)

YouTube: [link]

Cassetteboy vs. Obama - We Are The World (MP3)

Who'd have thought that Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper The Times would commission an Obama remix by none other than Cassetteboy? And yet that is exactly what happened last week, you can watch it here.

It doesn't seem to be possible to extract the video to post or embed it here, but I was at least able to get you an audio version in MP3: Cassetteboy vs. Obama - We Are The World

Blagojevich!

Living in Chicago, I have been obsessed with Rod Blagojevich ever since his campaign posters plastered the city years ago. Like Gefilta Fish, it's a name I love to repeat over and over again...BLA-GOY-A-VICH...BLAG-OYA-VICH...BLA-GO-YAV-ICH. It's an ugly word that rolls around the mouth like a pair of soiled underwear, tumbling around your tongue and throat until you suffocate in glottal spasms.

...and of course the fluffy hair helmet, the creepy grin, the hilariously coarse Chicago accent...and this picture from my friend Andy Beaman.

Numismaticism Update 2008

I got my first Alaska quarter last week and it had a big old grizzly bear on it, which was kind of neat but it seemed to put an end to my hopes of seeing a US state quarter with THREE buffaloes. Kansas came out with their one-buffalo quarter in 2005 , and then North Dakota upped the ante with their two-buffalo quarter in 2006. There were still some buffalo-possible states that could have come through with three buffalo—either Montana or Wyoming seemed kind of likely—but they didn’t. (If you are a true numismaticist fanaticist, you can check my blog post from April, 2007 to see what happened with Montana.) Anyway, once Alaska came in with the grizzly, the only one left was buffalo-unlikely Hawaii—OR SO I THOUGHT. But no!

It turns out that 2009 is gonna be the year of the Commemorative Quarters of the District of Columbia and United States Territories! I vote for the three-buffalo quarter from Guam! The Northern Mariana Islands! (Where?) It’s up to you, American Samoa! C’mon, Puerto Rico! Show us your buffalo!

2009 is gonna be the greatest numismatic year EVER.

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

Raymond Lyman, The Scranton Avenger (videos)

Raymond Lyman has a problem.  Let me rephrase that: Raymond Lyman has many problems.  But I'll get to that in a moment. 

City Council meetings in Scranton, Pennsylvania just wouldn't be the same without the city's most illustrious local schnook.  Nestled among the many barriers to justice Lyman faces--large drifts of snow after a massive storm are totally blocking off the stop signs but the city doesn't send out its plows...we get the stupid, underpaid DPW guys plowing the street near Ray's favorite local greasy spoon; weakly enforced ordinances--the worst of them he was put on this earth to crush are the city council members themselves.

Videos start after the jump.

Three Really Bad Obama Videos For Three Really Bad Obama Songs (videos)

I have some good news and I have some bad news.  The good news is the people have spoken.  Bad news?  They've also sung. 

Love givin' for our new President-Elect may not have come as hard or as fast from here as it did from those far reaches of Earth kids in school here still can't locate on a map.  But it came worse.  And there would have been far more from whence below vids came if time and work constraints hadn't kept me from the unmitigated joy of posting them.  These three vids are insidiously bad.  In other words, pure sweet gold. 

Inhale (and he actually DID) to the Chief-Elect!!!

Electile Dysfunction '08 Archives

If you missed out on WFMU's special Election Day webstream, fear not! Electile Dysfunction '08 archives are available right here.

Enter WFMU's all-spin zone of political music, comedy, commentary, and audio art with your favorite DJs. You can check your hologram interviews at the door.

Thanks to Hatch for spearheading this effort!