WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Forty People Working Behind the Scenes in TV/Film With The Same Names as Famous Fictional TV/Film Characters

Right on, spunky chookens, for $400,000 big bad smackers to ‘FMU!! Since I’m not Kenny G I won’t list four hundred people—forty will have to suffice. Nonetheless, to celebrate this auspicious milestone, here are in fact forty complete strangers with the dire misfortune of sharing their given names with only one other complete stranger…who ain’t real.

1: Shower curtain rings (?), “Getting Away With Murder” (1996)

2: Animator, “The Mad Magazine TV Special” (1974)

3: Actor, “Barry” (2006), “All For Melissa” (2007)

4: Sound designer, “Call Girl Wives” (2005);

Writer, “Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog” (1998)

5: Actor, “Out of Order”, (2003)

6: Actor, “Golf Punks” (1998)

7: Rough inbetween artist., “Anatasia” (1997)

    Inbetween artist “Bartok the Magnificent” (1999)

Meow Mix

Cats is rippin' it up on tha ones and twos...real cats.  These MC's (M'Duffy Catz) are the number one stunnas.  Of mice, that is.  Wreckin' and checkin', spinnin' and grinnin', thumpin' and bumpin', these is some baaaaaad felines, ya heard?  Na?  Well, they did; you done just interrupted their privacy, DAAS.

Severed Heads: 1977-2007

The Heads are calling it g'day.

Last month, after twenty-eight years of plunderphonic, electro-dysfunctional skullfuckery (well, closer to thirty, actually, if the “1977” on the cover to the forthcoming five-LP box set is their real ‘birthday’) Tom Ellard and Severed Heads made it crystal clear the lid to the coffin was being closed on any further collaborations with those who were enough of a threat to themselves and others to join him and, thus, the band responsible for the very first album released as an MP2—for good. Visiting hours are over. The family requests you not send flowers. Keep the gifts.

Dead eyes closed.

Nevertheless, all told, SH released 18 albums, the first five full-lengths and two EP’s unleashing the absolutely vindictive, unbridled experimental dementia for which a small group of doting tossers (this writer included) still lustfully pine. At the tender age of 16 I heard “Brassiere, in Rome?” and that was it; no more Mighty Lemon Drops or Xymox for me. Tape manipulation and unmetered beats were my new dextroamphetamines of choice. Then Stretcher (1985) came along and, for the most part, the Heads really just begun channeling New Order from there until Under Gail Succubus. With the exception of “Petrol”, “Mambo Fist Miasma 2” and “Don’t Say It”, Stretcher was the beginning of the end of the Severed Heads I cared about.

But do not mourn this passing. There are probably as many past and present Ellard and Garry Bradbury solo projects--about fifteen for Ellard, six for Bradbury--for every song they ever cut as Severed Heads since ’79: Coklacoma, Pissy Relay Switches, Inch Urch, Hiroshima Chair, Wet Taxis, the like. If you get right down to it, Ellard is the Robert Pollard of experimental electronic music.  In March, though, he will be releasing his own Box, only this time a final celebration of the Heads by showcasing their deranged beginnings instead of a final mourning.  Unfortunately, for the time being, you have to own a phonograph to buy it.  Adenoids: 1977-1982 is a collection of five vinyl LP's featuring all tracks from Ear Bitten, Clean, and Blubberknife as well as previously unreleased Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign--the pre-Heads group with original founding members Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright. 

The New English

There is an ethnic derivation of English mysteriously absent from the SIL International Ethnologue database: Schizophasia.  Mysterious because it is no longer only spoken by "Schizophrenics".  We have, among others, Paula Abdul and Shirley Phelps-Roper upon whom to heap eternal gratitude for that.  Each, upon returning from her own (ahem) "inward sabbatical", had been rigorously taught this hitherto non-indigenous language (by Walter Skinner, of course) and now wish to indoctrinate us in hopes of fostering deeper rapport and understanding between mainstream schizophrenics and the rest of us--who will become schizophrenics very soon if January 20th of next year doesn't hurry the fuck up and get here.

So, until the SIL International Ethnologue database at long last recognizes the legitimacy of Schizophasia as English's triumphant replacement, you can study up on common Schizophasic phrases for "Don't eat the chicken" or "Has anybody ever told you you look just like Amanda Plummer in "Freeway""? by these other native speakers:

Gerald (Pts. 1 & 2) / Heather / The real James Bond / Henry Wallace, artist (Pts. 1 & 2) / Unknown

Here are two speakers of a sub-IAL dialect first discovered in the 70's called Disassociative Pidgin English (formerly known by the peculiar designations "Multiple Personality Disorder" and "Disassociative Identity Disorder"):

Jaid / Some woman who calls herself "RainbowsBubble"

Here I Come To Save The Dazed

Bruce Wayne...owner of a private technology firm, philanthropist, Episcopalian, halfwit millionaire, uppity faux playboy, Caped Crusader, Dark Kni...

Episcopalian?

Hey, fictional average Joes with secret alter-egos--or, in Batman's case, fictional secret alter-egos with secret average Joes--have the right to worthily magnify, too.  Superheroes can make negligibly impetuous decisions from time to time ("Bruce Wayne, Dick...pleased to make your acquaintance") or might need a little hand to revive a dead guy (The Thing evoking the Godhead in Yiddish to attempt saving the life of Yancy Street's resident pawnbroker, Mr. Sheckenberg).  Nothing's ever dictated they can't summon the lean, mean Lamb and the Heavenly Host Posse when confronted with an ethical or spiritual quandary they can't seem to lick on their own. 

Let's face it; batarangs, lassoes or forms of a methyl trichloride-soaked towel or 5th Avenue bar laced with a gentle laxative don't lend much credence if, in some of the more heavily devout cases, they're not backed up by the messianic seal of approval courtesy of--dare I say--The Backhand.  The Big Black Bat, Zatanna (eclectic Pentecostal Dianic Wiccan--hoooo), The Man of Steel (Kryptonian religion AND Methodist) and many more are humbly belting out rousing flourishes of "Kumbaya" around the ecumenical campfire in this canonical compendium of superpower sectarianism.  Don't ask me how these creeps found their way into the circle.  Yeah...not warmly invited.

Anyway, praise the Lord--and pass the Holy Bat-Drinking Water Dispenser!!