WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Entr’acte: The Rodeo Clown

 

So: Bullriding. You get on the bull in a chute, and the gate opens, and the bull comes out and bucks, and you stay on as long as you can, and then you fall off. Or, if you manage to stay on for eight (8!) seconds, then they blow a horn and you can jump off. And then what happens? You’re on the ground, in an enclosed area, with a pissed-off 2200-pound animal with big testicles, big horns, and also possibly ’roid rage. (There was a bull-doping steroids scandal in 2007.)  For your protection, they bring in the clowns.

There's A Super Genius In All Of Us

In February of 1990, I xeroxed 2 pages of the New Yorker magazine, to hold onto what I considered one of the funniest pieces of writing ever. It was titled Coyote V. Acme and was penned by regular New Yorker writer and NJ resident, Ian Frazier. In a nutshell, and I'll post part of it after the jump, Wile E. Coyote, plaintiff sues the Acme Company for product liability and the injuries he sustained over his career at Warner Brothers Entertainment. It's written in legalese and describes so well some of the cartoons and shenanigans involved, that you'll be able to be there with Mr. Coyote when he endures a violent feet-first collision with a boulder. Frazier published a book bearing the same name in 1996; a collection of his short humorous pieces, and has other books to his name, some humor collections like Coyote V. Acme, others full length adventures. I was reminded of the original piece the other day and wanted to share some of it, since it's been sitting xeroxed in my file cabinet in the FUN folder for decades. Ian's books are available through several online retailers. This time of year can be one of reflection and I'd like to look at the attempts of Mr. Coyote to capture his prey over the years, and the purity of his actions. Wile E. Coyote; Genius, and at some point in the Roadrunner cartoons, upgraded to Super Genius, was dedicated and single minded. He'd have made a great employee at the time of his upswing into the public eye. He was inventive beyond belief, and even when the same item would malfunction three radically different ways, he would remain a loyal customer of the Acme Company. Brick and mortars would die for a shopper like him! He is a reminder to all of us that perseverance and hard work pays off, or at least keeps you gainfully employed, and that there's a super genius lying in wait inside all of us. Perhaps it just takes an anvil to the head!  There was a response to the article published in 1995, I'm not certain of the source, which more or less takes the stand that since our beloved Mr. Coyote quite often looked directly at the camera before sustaining injuries that the Acme Company's products caused, that he was faking the extent of his physical damage. Imagine that!

Attention, Shoppers!

Good news this year as the Wal-Mart Shopping Season revved into high gear on the Friday after the Macy's Day Parade: Although there were plenty of police-on-shopper beatings, shopper-on-shopper violence, and in-store tramplings, at least no one died this year, as did Jdimytai Damour, a Wal-Mart temp employee, when he was trampled to death by a bargain-frenzied crowd in 2008.  (Well, actually, Walter Vance of Charleston, West Virginia, did die in a Target store this year, but that was from a heart attack and at least it didn’t impede any of the other shoppers, who just stepped over him and continued scooping up those half-price Cars 2 videos.)

Shopping: The Most Dangerous Sport is a relatively new phenomenon, but now Scientists and Financial Experts have an explanation: It’s just a manifestation of The New Prosperity! Yes, Americans—especially Americans without jobs—are rethinking their options, and redefining their values, such as the importance they’ve placed on things like food, clothing, and shelter. “Let’s get off this hedonic treadmill!” they cry, as they go to live in a cardboard box outside Penn Station. Scientists at the Ministry of Prosperity say that if we just redefine our terms, everything will be fine. Poverty is Prosperity! War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Who wouldn’t pepper-spray another person for the chance to buy a $2 waffle iron?

 

 

RIP Randy "Macho Man" Savage

The 58-year old American legend passed away this morning from injuries related to a heart-attacked induced car crash in Florida, survived by his wife of one year, Lynn, who was in the passenger seat.

SXSW 2011: A Visual Landscape

I'm trying a new approach for this post. For multi-band events, my posts tend to be very very long, and the time it takes to do seems to make the effort moot, because they publish so far after the fact. So here are photos of some of the bands I took in at SXSW: bad vantage points are why some bands didn't make the cut. Here it is chronologically!    Below: 1/2 of Italy's The Secret, Keith Morris of Off!, Easy Action

    

The Poodle Wins Again (or not)

The Westminster Kennel Club dog show is today and tomorrow, but this year I won’t be there. Back before magazines ceased to exist, I worked as an editor at a dog magazine, and part of my job involved attending the Dog Writers of America awards dinner on Sunday night, and going to Westminster on Monday and Tuesday, and having Wednesday lunch at Sardi’s where the Best-in-Show winner was served a plate of steak. I am not kidding when I say that meeting Rufus, the colored Bull Terrier who won in 2006, was one of the nicest things that ever happened to me.

Westminster is the first dog show a lot of people go to, because it’s famous and on TV and in New York, but I bet it’s pretty confusing if you don’t know what’s going on. Basically all the individual breeds are judged during the day on Monday and Tuesday, and then the winners of each breed compete in their groups at night—Toy, Hound, Non-Sporting, and Herding groups on Monday night, and Terrier, Working, and Sporting on Tuesday night. The winners from each of the seven groups compete for Best in Show at the end of the night’s judging on Tuesday. So if you want to see, for example, a lot of Boston Terriers—the best breed there is, proudly owned by WFMU DJs X-Ray Burns and Bronwyn C.—you would go to Ring 5 at 1:15 on Monday, and there would be 24 little champions right there. Each breed is judged against a specific standard, but there is a definite element of subjective, figure-skating-type interpretation going on. The judges tend to say things like the winning dog “would not be denied” or that the dog had “the look of eagles.”

The dog-show world (or fancy, as they call it) is a very weird subculture, and the best way I can explain it is to say that Best in Show is one of the most realistic documentaries I’ve ever seen. There are a lot of crazypants rich ladies, secret eugenicists, and people with control issues left over from their tragic high-school careers in the fancy. But there are also some fantastically interesting people who really love dogs. It’s a subculture in which older women are revered and gay people are accepted warmly. Plus, David Frei is just the nicest, smartest, most charismatic guy around.

One of my genius ideas when I was at the dog magazine was that we should start a Fantasy Dog Show League. Dogs already accrue points as they win shows over the course of a year, and are ranked monthly, so it would be pretty easy to set something up. And for the past few years a Las Vegas sporting book has been posting odds on Westminster Best-in-Show. The Smooth Fox Terrier is this year’s favorite, at 6:1, but I’ll take the sucker bet: Boston Terrier, 75:1.

UPDATE 2/15: Okay, so I lose. But also, the Poodle did NOT win the Non-Sporting Group, a Chinese Shar Pei named Miss Jayne Hathaway won, which was a major upset. In fact, the Shar Pei was 110:1 to win Best in Show—even less likely than the dog that should have won the group (i.e., the Boston Terrier).

Thrashing to Fitness and Good Study Habits

While driving earlier listening to an AM health-centered show, the doctor/DJ/host, asked his assistant if he liked "thrash music", their banter sort of went off into space, as the assistant seemed to have a grasp on some metal genres: "glam metal, death metal, viking metal, grindcore", yet the doctor had nothing to ground himself with, and at some point mentioned the Yardbirds, Barry Manilow and Phil Ochs ... regardless, he referenced this study, which reports that no matter what kind of music you listen to, if you're studying, it's still detrimental to your final outcome, especially if you're memorizing. What was amazing was that they kept on playing excerpts of Death Angel's "Thrashers" over and over again, repeatedly asking the question "do you like thrash music?" and joking. It's wonderful when the unexpected pops up, especially this 1987 gem, much like the first time I heard Peaches by The Stranglers opening the movie Sexy Beast...well, actually that was cool; this radio experience was just funny. Of course, I do need to mention here that former frontman of the Stranglers, Hugh Cornwell, will be gracing the WFMU airwaves by way of the Fun Machine on Tuesday, Oct 26th, and he's touring on a new release: New Songs for King Kong, note: even King Kong should not study wearing headphones, but I am not going to be the one to tell him! In another study about exercise and music, a study linked here relates the findings that although music is a great motivator in exercise, there are limits to it's benefits. The piece is not the shortest piece in the world, but I found it interesting that the average human (not the WFMU listener) liked the same music more JUST because it was sped up. To go back to the question of "do you like thrash metal?", well maybe some do and they don't even realize it! To conclude, when we really get into music itself being exercise, like these conductors pictured above (study from 2007 here), or the theory that Slovenian outfit Laibach had, that Bach's "Die Kunst der Fuge' was intended as an (intellectual) exercise rather than for performance- so they used it in their performances with physical exercise being performed, just makes a brain wonder, or at least start doing push-ups. And if you think the guys up top in the B/W photo are not exercising, think again! Note: Death Angel also has a new record out, it's calle Relentless Retribution out on the Nuclear Blast label. It's been awhile for releases from Barry Manilow, Phil Ochs, and the Yardbirds! Laibach is doing some live dates in Europe and the UK at the end of 2010.

The Trouble with Mascots

The official 2012 Olympic mascots have finally been let out of their cages. Yesterday a bunch of London students became the first children to be 'touched' by these oversized perverted teletubbies with scary names: Wenlock, and Mandeville.

Olympic mascots by their nature invite criticism, detractors often use the silly characters to make serious statements about the host country. China went through hell with it's 2008 mascots, the characters were appropriated by many foreign and domestic protest groups. The Chinese government got so red in the face over the trouble, they even changed the name from friendlies to fuwa.

Thus it is impossible not to look at these monstrosities and wonder about possible connections to the new coalition government. Was there a last minute mascot intervention at 10 Downing Street? Was one semi non-retarded creature split in two? Is the giant blue crotch more Cameron or Clegg? And just as the Chinese forced Fuwa designer Han Meilin to incorporate the aims of the state into his creatures, are the giant eyeballs supposed to be friendly CCTV cameras?

The official origin story is of course much more Disney but I am not fooled!  

***UPDATE*** This YouTube Vid suggests evidence of Free Masonry:

A Few Pointers From Ted Williams

Ted Williams was indisputably the greatest hitter in the game of baseball. The last player in MLB to bat over .400 in a single season (.406 in 1941), he was a two time American League MVP winner and still holds the highest career batting average of anyone with 500 or more home runs. Over the course of two decades Williams quietly advanced to the top of his profession earning accolades from his peers on and off the field.

Red Sox fans applauded their hero's multi-tiered success but on occasion turned on the thin-skinned slugger, booing and heckling him at the slightest sign of weakness. This bugged the hell out of Williams and he would mutter under his breath and eventually stop tipping his cap to these idiots. What the hell was this all about? Nobody ever booed Hoot Gibson or John Wayne. What kind of world had he landed in? Maybe a .344 career batting average might be better appreciated somewhere else. Perhaps in the future, away from the drooling slobs of Fenway Park, there dwelt an appreciative civilization where attaining everlasting life and eternal gratitude is only slightly more complicated than joining Netflix. Pumped up with steroids to end all steroids, a sports legend could roam the earth like a king--living, loving and playing ball with only the finest merchandising deals laid like rose petals at his frozen cleats. Ted squinted into the left field bleachers and with the saint-like fortitude that he often brought to the plate, sucked in his breath and waited.

SFL Mid-Season Review

The Summer Fun List is one of DJ Kelly’s more genius ideas: Sometime in late spring you make a list of all the fun things you want to do during the upcoming summer, so that the whole season doesn’t fly past without your having done anything fun at all. (This is especially useful for former Midwestern Protestants such as myself, who tend to forget that “fun” is not the same thing as “evil.” Or maybe it is, and that’s why it feels so jolly. But I don’t wanna get all philosophical about it now.) A few weeks ago I was feeling pretty unhappy about something and I drew a big X across the Summer Fun List page and wrote “KILL MYSELF” instead, but I’m sort of over that now, so I figured I’d take another look. Plus, it finally got sunny for three days in a row, and it’s starting to feel a little bit like summer at last. Here’s what’s on my SFL this year:

UConn Puppet Museum
Rosendale (more bees?)
Fireworks
Yankees game
Bruno
Musical Saw Festival
Book Arts Lounge and/or Class
Bacon Retrospective (& other art)

So far, this has not been a particularly successful SFL season. I used to try to go to one Yankees game a year, but now that tickets cost more than I make in a month, I won’t be doing that. And because of Global Economic Change, there weren’t any 4th of July fireworks anywhere near where I live: All the usual displays were canceled. So Sluggo and I went up on a hill near our house and looked down the Hudson toward New York City and saw just the tippy-top of the Macy’s fireworks—we wouldn’t see anything for two or three minutes, and then there’d be a little puff of red light, and then nothing for another couple of minutes, and then some silvery sparkles. Even though I tried as hard as I could, I wasn’t able to convince myself that it was actually “fun.” And I have been SO looking forward to this year’s Musical Saw Festival on Saturday, July 18. I went last year, and it was truly fantastic. I heard Satie’s “Gymnopedie” performed by a musical saw and the Trinity handbell choir, and I am not kidding when I say that it was life-changing. Seriously. It was great, and weird, and great-and-weird, and I have been looking forward to going again for a whole year—and I have an unavoidable conflict that day and can’t go. But you should. It’s in Astoria, it costs only $10, and this year they’re going to try to break the Guinness World Record for “largest musical saw ensemble.” This is a musical event I sincerely recommend for any WFMU Listener, so add it to your Summer Fun List and go.

That’s the disappointments so far, but there’s been some surprise fun, too. Sluggo and I got invited to cocktails at the penthouse residence of an ambassador to the U.N., which was clearly some kind of mistake but we went anyway and had a very nice time. We also went to the “Agitprop!” Book Arts Lounge at the Center for Book Arts, where we talked about Russian constructivist advertising art with polymath poet Mr. Jeremy James Thompson and letterpressed some little flyers that say “Money is No Object.” I got to take the “Brown Bag Bindery” class, too, and built my own piercing cradle, sewing frame, and finishing press. Sylvia Alotta, the teacher, used to be an industrial designer for GM, and has come up with the most beautiful, functional, simple designs for binding equipment. She is my new hero, and almost makes me want to move to Chicago just so I could study with her there. (*Almost.*) Now I’m looking forward to the “Embroidered Bindings” Book Arts Lounge on August 14. Maybe I’ll see you there.

My friend Miss Manytitles has arranged for me to attend a free screening of Bruno with her this week, but the movie I’m really looking forward to seeing is ROBOGEISHA. Here's the trailer, so you will want to see it too. OMG, I have to see it! My Grammy Carlton used to say, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings,” and when there are movies like Robogeisha in the world, I think she was right.

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

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.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up with String

Observe and Report. Dr. Colby has a way of rating movies on a scale of 0 to 12.5 dollars (because that's how much a movie ticket costs in Manhattan), and on that scale I give Observe and Report $25 because I liked it so much I saw it twice. The first time I went with DJ Kelly, and the nice ticket lady gave us tickets to Obsessed by mistake because she just could not believe that a couple of dames like us, out by ourselves on a Friday night, were there to see a dark, violent, completely incorrect comedy. (Which might describe Obsessed too, I guess, except that in that case it wouldn't be intentional.) On our way out of the theater, DJ Kelly stopped, considered carefully, and then said, "That was the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen." And she liked O&R.
So then I went to see it again with Sluggo, and he liked it too.

I'm not recommending this movie to anyone, though, because I can see how other people might not like it. Dr. Colby herself went to see it because I said it was good, and at first she gave it $2, but then she started adding a a little more here and there, like an extra $1 for the portrayal of the alcoholic mother, and she ended up giving it about $8 in the end. Still not a ringing endorsement. And if you're the sort of person who bursts into tears when someone says, like, "hospital clown" or something, you should not see it at all. But if you're curious about how a typical summer raunch-fest movie could strip away all the cliches and get down to the brutal rock-bottom awfulness of people's lives--and still be hilarious--this is the film for you. It's definitely the film for me--it might be my new favorite film ever.

The Nytpicker. It's not Lies of Our Times, but it's short and funny and free. And a couple of days ago they figured out that New York Times is an anagram for Write, Monkey. (I put the comma in because it bothers me too much to leave it out.) It's at www.nytpick.com.

The Local—Sweden's News in English. I check out The Local whenever I can remember not to keep calling it The State. (I don't know why I do that.) I finally bookmarked it so it doesn't matter what I think it's called. Swedish news is pretty warped. Last year there was a happy article about all the shop-window Christmas displays that featured penises. And without their sports reporting, I would have been completely unaware of the fact that Sweden had a fantastic come-from-behind, sudden-death OT  6-5 victory over the U.S. in the World Ice Hockey Championships last week. In fact, I wouldn't have even known the World Ice Hockey Championships were happening, unless the U.S. had won, in which case it would have been on the front page of, like, the New York Times. And then Nytpicker would have found something wrong with it.  www.thelocal.se

Numismaticism Update: The Guam quarter is out! Although I haven't seen one yet. But it features both the latte and the flying proa! And the Martin Van Buren gold-colored dollar is out, too, but, um ... you know. No flying proa there.

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.

The Poodle Wins the Group

Again.
Gosh-darned Poodle.

Damned Good Eatin'

A few weeks ago, back before the Giants’ ignominious collapse, I won a football bet.  The Iowa Hawkeyes were playing the South Carolina Gamecocks in something called the “Outback Bowl.” I grew up in Iowa, and claim to be an Iowan when it suits my purposes, so even though I knew nothing about the match-up, or either team, I challenged my pal in Columbia, South Carolina, to bet on the game.

I wanted to bet typical regional food, which was easy for my friend because South Carolina has lots of delicious things to eat, but it was hard for me because, first, I’m not in Iowa, I’m in New York, and second, because Iowa food is pretty terrible. Or it was when I was growing up there. Maybe by now they’ve figured out some way to get ahold of fresh vegetables, or fish, or something. Or maybe not everyone cooks like my Grammy C., with her giant vats of boiled beef, boiled boiled boiled until it was a grey, stringy mass in a thin and tasteless broth. Don’t forget the gummy noodles! It does seem odd that Iowa has no indigenous barbecue, since it is God’s little pigpen on earth, the pork producing capital of our fine land, producing more than 25% of all American pork. And then what do we do with it? I dunno. Boil it, I guess.

But in other states, they barbecue it. They smoke it, baste it, sweet, hot, or vinegary—barbecue is one of my favorite things. And by virtue of winning my bet (Iowa 31--South Carolina 10), I was privileged to eat THE BEST BARBECUE I HAVE EVER TASTED. I have eaten vinegar-based so-called “Carolina” barbecue up here in New York a few times, and it is pretty good (and probably what I had wasn’t even the real deal), but apparently that is North Carolina style. South Carolina barbecue is based on a mustard sauce, and now I can tell you that it is scrumptious, BBQalicious, and superb.

 My South Carolina friend sent me three pounds of Maurice’s Gourmet Barbecue and a bottle of Maurice’s Southern Gold BBQ Sauce Original Flavor, the one that says “HONOR ALL HERITAGE” on the label, next to the picture of the Confederate flag. Since Maurice’s last name is Bessinger, I don’t know why he doesn’t want to honor his German heritage by putting a swastika on there, too. Plus there is a picture of the flag of the Sovereign State of South Carolina, which looks like the flag of some Caribbean banana republic. And Maurice will be happy to sell you his autobiography, which I suppose will explain his heritage-based beliefs. But I just wanna eat the food.

In spite of his shout-out to “heritage,” Maurice is all modern and up-to-date, since the instructions on the barbecue said it had to be heated in a microwave. Maurice is a lot more modern than me, actually, since I don’t own a microwave and never have. In the spirit of football wagerism, I took the barbecue over to Green Bay Packers’ Hall-of-Famer C. Kiel’s house because she has not only a microwave but also a husband who bakes killer pecan pie, and we ate while watching the Baltimore/Tennessee playoff game on Saturday. It was kind of like afternoon tea, but with pork. It was sublime.

I have been trying and trying to think of the words to describe the flavors of the tender, smoky meat and the tangy-mustard-sweet sauce, and have concluded that it is beyond my power to describe. I can only advise you to get your own and try some.
And what the heck is “colonial hash?” That’s what I want to know.

Bat Day

Baseball season is a distant memory - even more so for those of us in the NY area - it's rare that a local team isn't in contention- we've been uninterested for so long now, it seems like the schedule ended sometime in 2007.

I was at the humble abode of my brother and his family the other night. The kids were winding down and the McBoingboing residence was descending into the lull that marks the end of the weekend. A shriek, and then a stampede of people come running up the steps from the family room. There's yelping, howling and other modes of expression coming from what I knew to be humans; eyeballs nearly popping out of heads, hands clasped to mouths and a lot of  stuttering. A BAT IS DOWNSTAIRS. So the weekend hasn't yet ended, apparently.

One Day, Three Boadrums

Friday was 8/8/8, a day I and many other slaves to the freakish rhythm had been waiting for for a year and a month - the sequel to Boredoms' 77BOADRUM, 88BOADRUM.  88 drummers performing in a spiral around a psychedelic center stage: this year, Boredoms held court at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles while Brooklyn's Gang Gang Dance did their own version on the Williamsburg waterfront.

Nothing surprising to report, really: while the whole Brooklyn production was predictably spectacular, it would have been otherworldly mindblowing with an insane dreadlocked visionary from another planet leading the spiral by screaming in tongues and smacking a seven-necked guitar with a trident in front of a full-size diorama of baby mammoths sinking into lakes of oil in the middle of Los Angeles, instead of a regular ol' Williamsburg dude hitting electronic drum pads in front of the regular ol' East River.

The biggest story of the day, though, was that both versions of 88BOADRUM got they asses boadrummed hard on a very large scale by these mofos in Beijing.  Turns out China can pour more money into production than Boadrum sponsor Nike Sportswear can.

Here's hoping Boredoms can get their hands on some galaxy-sized money for 9/9/9.

Seriously, if you didn't see the opening ceremonies, you owe it to yourself to check them out.  I know you'll like it.  To watch a highlight reel, go here and install Microsoft's annoying but gorgeous new video player, Silverlight.  (All the Youtube clips have been pulled)

For photos and video of the Williamsburg version of 88BOADRUM, go here.  For photos and video of the LAX version, go here (thanks Fogindex).

Honey, have you seen the mothballs?

if you like your Euro 2008 soccer players 10 meters high, quickly hop on a plane to Zurich, or just click here.

Can on German TV 1971 (video)

This is a great German TV special from 1971, featuring Krautrock legends Can doing some avant-gardish things, playing foosball (better known under the name "table football" in Europe), jamming around, and talking about socialism and music. The clip is taken from a 1999 Can documentary (which you can order with some other goodies on DVD at Spoon Records). I don't know whether the introduction is from the same program, but it was just too good to leave out.

For slightly better quality, you can download the video (32 meg MPEG-4).

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.