WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Old Jersey vs. New Jersey, Part 2

Billy Jam sez:

In the first part of this series (posted a week ago) I included an MP3 of people on the streets of Jersey City speaking on their knowledge (or lack thereof) of the origins of the name of New Jersey. This time I am including an sample of what the folks I stopped on the streets of St. Hélier in "old" Jersey had to say when quizzed on their knowledge of New Jersey (MP3). I am also including my new favorite old Jersey song which sums up so perfectly the unique and special place that is the small island of Jersey, Hedley Le Maistre's "Jersey, Mon Vie!" (MP3).

Friday, October 2nd's WFMU live remote broadcast (during Doug Schulkind's timeslot) from Jersey's capital of St. Hélier during the Channel Island's 2nd annual Branchage Film Festival was an amazingly wonderful event to be a part of, and a rewarding one on many levels. First off it was a really great idea of the festival's director Xanthe Hamilton to link "old" Jersey with New Jersey via WFMU - something she presented to a receptive FMU station manager Ken Freedman about five months ago, and whose concept grew in scope since. And secondly for the dialog it began between the two Jerseys - one which we hope to keep going on the air here at WFMU. Expect to regularly hear "Jersey Bites" on Friday afternoons during the new WFMU Fall/Winter season which kicked into effect Monday, October 12th.

If you missed last week's broadcast it is archived - in playlist and audio forms - here, and includes a wide variety of guests getting on the FMU airwaves to share insights on the island of Jersey; a place that may only be 45 square miles in size but is incredibly rich in culture and history. A British Crown dependency the Bailiwick of Jersey, as it is officially known, is 100 miles south of England and lies only 14 miles west of the coast of Normandy, under whose rule it was once governed.

The WFMU remote show guests included Philip Malet de Carteret whose ancestors - several centuries ago - owned the land now known as the Garden State and were the ones responsible for giving New Jersey its name. The interview I conducted with him at his historic manor in the parish of St.Ouen (Jersey is divided into parishes, not counties) ran a lot longer than the segment included in the remote broadcast. Hence snippets of it will be played over the coming months on the air. Same for the organic Jersey dairy farmer Ian Mitchell, who was a live guest during the October 2nd remote but whose farm I visited the following day (see video below) and recorded more footage about the Jersey cow (a highly intelligent & unusally friendly animal) and its rich dairy product.

hot child in the city

For those of us who don't have shacks in the Hamptons, the city is our summer playground.  New York in the summer is not just for European tourists. Can you locate these inner city delights?  Answers in the comments section.

  

July 4th pin-up: hot fox diplomacy

Current occupation: Governor of Alaska
Age: 45
Residence: Wasilla, Alaska

Little-known public official interviewed in the August 2009 issue of Runner's World magazine:

"I feel so crappy if I go more than a few days without running. I have to run. No matter how rotten I feel before or during a run, it's always worth it to me afterwards. Sweat is my sanity. A great frustration I had during the campaign was when the McCain staff wouldn't carve out time for me to go for a run. The days never went as well if I couldn't get out there and sweat. ...

"I went for a run at John McCain's ranch a couple of days before the debate with Joe Biden. My favorite thing in the world is to run on hot, dusty roads. I don't get enough of that in Alaska. So I was in heaven and there were plenty of hills so I knew my thighs were going to just throb and my lungs were going to burn and that's what I crave."

Palin intends to continue running because she feels a commitment.

Sharon Tate, Commie Cheesecake

This Sharon Tate pictorial, shot by photographer William Helburn, appeared in the December 1967 issue of Esquire.  Is this the birth of the appalling communist chic movement?  Probably not, but I really don't know.

Unenlightened rube that I am, I've never been able to grasp the kitschy appeal of the symbols of a brutally repressive totalitarian movement.

        

More semi-risque photos after the jump.....

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.

Maria Levitsky: Building Photographs

Our talented (and exceedingly modest) radio compatriot Maria Levitsky (formerly heard 3-6pm Wednesday afternoons) is crafty with a camera. Her premiere NYC photographic gallery exhibit, Building Photographs, opens this evening at Deborah Berke & Partners Architects (220 5th Avenue, 7th floor) with a reception from 6:30 to 8:30. (Levitsky has previously exhibited in several Brooklyn venues and around the country.)

Dozens of black & white and experimental works can be viewed at MariaLevitsky.com. At left: Shoes on Stairs (Invisible Ascending), silver gelatin print from 2000.

Some of Maria's photos are spooky—one of many qualities I find appealing. Her works often frame scenic ruins marking time before the inevitable wrecking ball. This decaying architecture reveals few signs of life—but many signs of former lives (what Levitsky calls "evidence of disappearance").

Building Photographs runs through the summer by appointment.

Miniature Tableaux of Mark Powell

Mark Powell creates horrific and gory miniature tableaux of hellish interiors occupied by rotted meat monsters. The photo documentation of these little worlds is also impressive as it creates a cinematic narrative while also being very painterly in a Francis Bacon sort of way. His site is here, although I prefer the larger images and simple navigation of his Flickr account.

Mighty Titan, The Most Scary Lovely Dog

 
Sunday treat! Fantastic pictures of a flappy faced Bordeaux Mastiff gnawing and slobbering on a ball!

As an aside, I just spent ten minutes consulting Google on the proper capitalization of dog breed names. I can't find a definitive answer as it seems to be a case of style, so I decided to capitalize the whole damn thing because this goddamn dog deserves it. Look at him.

A Most Rare Vision

Way back in 2005, DJ Kelly and I were filmed for a movie called “Guest of Cindy Sherman.” I blogged about it here. Last year it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and now it’s having a theatrical run, starting this Friday at Cinema Village in Manhattan. It’s an interesting film, the story of Paul H-O, a guy who’d made a little niche for himself with a cable access TV show called “Gallery Beat,” and what happened to his life when he started dating an attractive young woman who’s widely considered to be one of the greatest artists of the late 20th Century.

What do you think happened? Try to guess.

In an interview in the 2008 Art Issue of The Believer, Robyn O’Neil describes the moment when she was 16 and growing up in Omaha and suddenly realized that friends were taking up too much of her time. “I made this really distinct choice, where I had to be a little selfish, that was the only way I could see this—being an artist—working out for me.” She stopped seeing her friends, and she started drawing more.

I think it’s a choice all women have to make: The friends, or the work? The baby, or the art? The husband, or the novel? It’s not the same for men: A male artist who chooses to get married is usually choosing to have someone look after his basic needs so he can work more. I remember reading a Reader’s Digest profile of some big-deal musician, back when I was growing up in Omaha, and this guy said about his much-younger wife, “My need of her gives meaning to her life.” Even as an 8-year-old girl, I knew that guy was an asshole. I can’t even remember who it was, but it was so offensive to me that I never forgot it. And I don’t think a famous, accomplished woman would ever say that about a guy.

So “Guest of Cindy Sherman” brings up a lot of issues about the construction of identity, and the art world and women’s place in it, and how men artists are treated differently, and the male ego, and how women are expected to be just a little less successful than men. But what makes it complicated, and more interesting, is that it’s clear these two people really cared about each other, were happy together. You can tell that Paul H-O adored Cindy Sherman. And then it’s not enough for him, and she has to make that choice.

In the end, I think “Guest of Cindy Sherman” is a very sad film. Paul H-O reminds me of Bottom, the ass-headed mechanic in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” who is beloved by Titania, queen of the fairies, when she’s placed under an enchantment. Once the spell is broken, Titania flees in disgust and Bottom is left to mull over what happened. “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was: Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was--and methought I had--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.”

Of course, Bottom didn't make a movie about their relationship and enter it in the Tribeca Film Festival.

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

Best Show Marathon Week 2 (Photos)

Last night's star-studded fundraising marathon edition of The Best Show On WFMU was a tremendous success. Tom Scharpling, AP Mike, and celebrity guests Ted Leo, Aimee Mann, Paul F. Tompkins, and John Hodgman pulled in a whopping $61,000 to help keep the world's best radio show and best radio station on the air for another year. But we're still far, far away from our goal of $1.2 million! We need to raise another $450,000 by the end of Sunday night, so please KEEP PLEDGING and keep reminding your friends to pledge, too!

Tom Scharpling

More photos of last night's Best Show after the jump...

P-R-A-W-D-A

From what I can tell, P-R-A-W-D-A is a duo of Russian women who create site specific performances in costume. Super-heroes, bunny costumes, plush headpieces- these are images that have been beaten to death in western hipster art...but P-R-A-W-D-A's approach seems more ritualistic, sexual and defeated. In their wonderful photo documentation, they arrange themselves symmetrically as in icon paintings, holding stoic stances even though their uniforms are bizarre concoctions seemingly picked out of the garbage.

like flies on sherbet

It's kind of startling to discover how something can be so breathtaking and so influential, that you can't point to a time when this force wasn't felt in your life.  I know many of us felt that TANG granulated soft drink was going to be that moment for us, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. 

I just came back from the William Eggleston retrospective at the Whitney museum and I am still agog with that feeling.  His photos seem so effortless, but that's because we have been looking at his influence in the photo world ever since he touched down in the 1960's.  Coming of age in an era that wasn't engulfed with constant technological innovation, Eggleston made his mark through his viewpoint, a much harder innovation to identify.  He shot in black and white at the outset of his relationship with the camera and then switched to color when color was yet to be cool. Following the trail of American vernacular that Faulkner had trod so surely before him, Eggleston presents us with who we are, without the blinding glare of the American Dream.  His reality surrounds us in a loving embrace of old and torn, new and shiny: what we are whether we like it or not.

Eggleston was born in Memphis. It's the same Memphis that gave us Big Star.  The original cover of Radio City is wrapped with his 1973 photo "The Red Ceiling".  Another photo of a waving bunch of dolls astride a big old Caddy welcomes us to Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbet.  David Byrne invited Eggleston to chronicle the making of his film True Stories.  There seems to be a natural kinship between the construction of his photos and the unmasking that some music offers.

Eggleston's 1973 film Stranded in Canton is also on view in the Whitney's galleries. A rambling mix of late night jams, shot in friends houses and on the street, it feels like an odd night relaxing with William.  Two documentaries centering on William Eggleston and his photography: William Eggleston in the Real World, and By the Ways: A Journey with William Eggleston are available through Netflix.  The exhibit closes January 25th, 2009.

More Treasures From The Life Magazine Photography Archives

In a Beware Of The Blog post dated Nov. 23, Listener Kilph Nesteroff was the first one to clue me in to the fact that a super-colossal chunk of LIFE magazine's photographic archives have been posted online, hosted by Google.  Ever since then I've been compulsively ogling this embarrassment of visual riches.  Here are a couple of handfuls of my favorite discoveries. I had to force myself to quit hunting for more images.

For the most part, the photos are titled here the same way they are in the archive, but in some instances I added a few words to better indicate what the image is. Go here to do your own searching.

Plane Over Midtown Manhattan.  Margaret Bourke-White, 1939 (Twice the size of the photo posted nearby).

Eero Saarinen-Designed TWA Terminal At Idlewild Airport.  Dmitri Kessell, 1961.

Pan-American Terminal At Idlewild Airport.  Dmitri Kessell, 1961.

Mid-Century Modern Architecture.  Circular Motel.  Location And Year Unknown.  Yale Joel.

Trick Shot King Bob Geesey Shattering Egg.  Bernard Hoffman, 1948.

Trick Shot King Bob Geesey With Wife & Assistant.  Bernard Hoffman, 1948.

Beautiful Legs Contest (Women Wearing Lone Ranger Masks).  Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1949.

James Brown Teaching Johnny Carson How To Dance.  Alfred Schatz, 1967.

St. Louis Radio Station WIL Plays 40 Recordings of St. Louis Blues In Tribute To W.C. Handy.  Frances Miller, 1958.

William B. Williams, Disc Jockey (With Towers Of Records) During Payola Hearings.  Joseph Scherschel, 1959.

Another 100 or so links follow the jump.

Marsh's Free Museum

Marsh's Free Museum in Long Beach, Washington features many monstrous taxidermy oddities such as the Devil Fish and Jake the Alligator boy. Also crammed into the claustrophobic confines are musical cabinets, the largest collection of glass fishing balls and a cast iron sausage stuffer.

Flickr set 2 / Flickr set 2 / Roadside America Entry

70's Rock Dinosaurs in the Homes of Their Mums and Dads

Culled from a Life Magazine pictoral (via the Daily Swarm) on famous rockers of the era hanging with their parents in their assorted styling abodes. Wishful thinking: seeing parental pads of Jobriath, John Morton, Jim Dandy (where for some reason I would envision a lot of moose heads hanging on the wall).

The Life Magazine Internet Photo Archive

This is too cool for words, which is fine and also makes sense, since it is an incredible archive of photography. The work of Life Magazine's legendary photographers (artists like Allan Grant, Yale Joel, John Dominis, Gjon Mili, N.R. Farbman, Grey Villet, Peter Stackpole and countless others) is now available in a massive internet archive powered by a handy dandy search engine. Regulars to Beware of the Blog know I'm pretty much obsessed with anything having to do with old showbiz and these classic black and white Life stills really conjure up the walls of an ancient cigar chompin' Broadway agent. Find yourself lost for days in a Broadway Danny Rose world with this super cool development put together by behemoths TimeWarner and Google. I've organized some of my favorites on my own site - click on them to enlarge. Check out:

Ed Sullivan
Bill Cosby
Lucille Ball
Milton Berle
Woody Allen
Mort Sahl
Groucho Marx
Bob Hope
Jerry Lester
Edward R. Murrow
And the beautiful Yma Sumac

These are just some meager examples. There are thousands and thousands of amazing photos to unearth. Now go search for your own favorites.

Photoshop Contest Winner!

A few weeks ago, Reuters gave us a gift:

And with this gift, WFMU told the people to remix the hell out of it. Now in honor of election day, we are prepared to announce our photoshop contest winner: Brian C! Congrats to Brian, and everyone who participated in the contest, clogging my inbox with more McCain tongue than I could shake a lollipop at.

WFMU's Overexposure October reaches Cleveland

Listener Joe Tait shares some of his photos, art, and a story about Chalkfest to go with it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had the chance to do some impromptu WFMU promoting at the Cleveland Museum of Art's Chalkfest a couple of weeks ago and wanted to pass along some images. The crowdshots give some context- beautiful day, band playing lukewarm Obama-boosting reggae (let's hope Ohio learned its lesson in 2004...), uncensored art being made by people of all ages, levels of ability and interests. You "rent" a stone with a donation to the museum. They provide the chalk. I got to support two of my favorite institutions with one reference to a German Expressionist I'm fond of. Talked to a couple of people who were made curious by the picture about what WFMU is too. Not a bad day.

The painting I had in mind was "The Death of the Poet Rainer Werner" by Conrad Felixmuller -- a leftist Expressionist whiz kid in his Weimar day. While the painting has a grim backstory -- the subject is the painter's friend who was an addict and leapt from a high window in Berlin -- I can't help but find an uplifting quality to it -- quite literally that the figure is rising more than falling. It made me think it appropriate. I replaced the syringe with an I-Pod.

More photos after the jump.

Photoshop contest!

Thanks to Reuters for the excellent fodder! We're too lazy to photoshop this pic, but you might not be... UPDATE: check out tons of great photo remixes below the jump! The deadline for this contest has passed and a winner will be selected within the next few days, thanks for all of the great entries.

Overexposure October: from WFMU to You!

Big thanks to everyone who stopped by WFMU's tent at the Atlantic Antic street fair in Brooklyn yesterday! It rained, then it was cloudy, and finally the sun broke through... the next thing we knew, your esteemed WFMUers were horking funnel cakes and other gastrointestinal monstrosities as if it were a team sport.

We won. And we have the powdered sugar stains to prove it. Thanks to Jeff Mullan, Sue P, Martha, Keili, Lisa, Chad, Bryce, Therese, Mike Lupica, and birthday gal Liz F for representing!

WFMU continues Overexposure October with more great events, please drop by to say you're sick of seeing us out and about:
- Seven Second Delay broadcasts live from Maxwell's in Hoboken (1039 Washington St) this Wednesday, Oct 8th, 6-7pm.
- Wire and Times New Viking @ Fillmore NYC (Irving Plaza) on Thursday, Oct. 9th - Live broadcast and free show (tix no longer available, so tune in over the air or web to live vicariously), 8-11pm.
- Trent broadcasts live from Will's backyard in Austin, Texas on Monday, Oct 13th (8-11pm EST). Austinites can contact Trent for directions to the soiree.
- Join Dave the Spazz and WFMU's Cavalcade of Stars at the Tip Top Bar & Grill in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn (432 Franklin Ave) on Oct. 16th, 8-11pm.
- Just in case you missed out, Billy Jam did a live broadcast from Oakland, CA last week.
- And of course, keep the weekend of Oct. 24th, 25th, and 26th open, because you'll be dropping serious wads of cash when WFMU's Record and CD Fair hits the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan (125 W. 18th St)!

Here are a few pics from the Atlantic Antic: