WFMU's Beware of the Blog

This Week in Sex: Playmate of the Year

Amazing Amanda, Playmate of the Year

This year's It Girl-toy is Amazing Amanda. She says things like "Surprise me Mommy...I'll close my eyes!" followed by "I feel sick Mommy!" If you try to give her pizza when she asks for juice, she'll know the difference, because she's got a 32 bit chip in her head, plus pizza is way different from juice, jackass. She knows when she is on the potty or in her nightgown (apparently she can do one or the other, but not both at the same time—now who's so smart?). Her life-like face shows a range of expressions, unlike Un-amazed Amanda, who looks pretty pissed off most of the time. Best of all, Amazing Amanda has 2 way conversations, unlike Blogging Amanda, who just posts crap on the internet for her own amusement. Discuss: "Amazing Amanda: cute doll, or tool of Satan?"

The name of this vibrator is Talking Head. You can record your own voice on the Talking Head vibrator. Recording tips (after all the business about downloading and patch cords and audio jacks) include: "Be giving—focus on your partner's desires, not your own.  Don’t malign your partner, stay positive—don’t be mean or negative. Don’t be degrading towards your partner—it only promotes unhealthy sexual attitudes." Sounds like someone left a selfish, hurtful, inconsiderate message on someone else's vibrator. Now that I've sobered up, let me add: "Don't drink and dial your partner's vibrator."

Porn and the internet: so over.

Dirt: so dirty. Even dirtier when you lick it.

Get a room. Rikers Island, one of the only jails with a LGBT dorm, may shut the "safe haven" unit down soon.

That's edutainment. The Library of Congress has added 25 new films to the National Film Registry, including the notorious sex ed film "Mom and Dad" (1944), in which young Joan gets knocked up and for her punishment has to sit through three gruesome mini-movies of a live birth, a Caesarian section, and various VD ickies.

WFMU's BEST OF 2005

Hot off the presses:  WFMU's Best of 2005 List!

The best live shows, the best music, the best films, the best hair-dos, the best accidental snacks... simply put, the best of everything from MMV, according to WFMU DJs and friends, all compiled here for your amusement and education. 

 

Derek Bailey Vs. Min Tanaka and the Insects

UK improv godfather Derek Bailey has left us at age 75, apparently having suffered from Lou Gehrig's Disease. Simply put, Bailey invented an entire new approach to electric and acoustic guitar playing that shunned categorization; his was a method of iron dedication and reinvention of vocabulary that only expanded into uncharted realms of his own ability as he aged, and there has never been anyone like him in music. Starting out in 1951 in a more traditional setting of orchestras and dancehall bands, Bailey took apart the rulebook in 1966 exploring textures in playing that can only be called true free music. He took his approach into performances both solo and with groups (notably the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the late 1960's), founded the first truly independent UK free music label, Incus, with Evan Parker and Tony Oxley, and peeled off tons of records ever since while doubling as a major proponent (both in interviews and writing) for improvisation. His biggest rule: the past is the past.

Finnish Fashionistas

Williamsburg: it's not just a place, it's a state of mind.

via witz.org

Happy New Year, Enjoy It While You Can

Got big plans for 2006?  Here's hoping, for your sake, that they don't include food stamps, federally funded day care, or Medicaid.  Our President's 2006 Federal Budget Plan is "unjust," at least according to some folks that likely helped to put the smirky frat boy into office for a second term.  So much for Jesus' teachings on charity.  If even mainline Protestants are backing away from Bush, you've got to know that times are hard in this whitest of White Houses. 

Thanks for nothing, religi-os; we knew he sucked from the get-go.  Now we're stuck with him for another 2 years.  Very few even dare to breathe the word impeachment, as apparently spying on Americans (without informing the court or Congress), and leading the country into an unjust war (via scripted lies) are not obviously impeachable offenses; not like getting a blow job and then lying about it, which clearly caused the country much deeper and more far-reaching damage.

Perhaps even more surprising is the monumental lack of Internet hysteria over the coming date of June 6, 2006.  This is the Day of The Beast, peasants!  Can we please see some enthusiasm here?!  And I thought you people were hungry for apocalypse.  An albeit cursory 30-minute web search produced minimal links regarding the upcoming auspicious date for evil, though I did find this.  (Religious fanatics seem to have a penchant for ugly, garish and poorly scripted html.  Show me a professional-looking apocalyptic hysteria website, and I'll eat Werner Herzog's shoe.)

This is not to say that we don't have plenty to fear, the birth of the Antichrist child notwithstanding.  For one thing, some knuckleheads decided (presumably with the current high marketability of horror films) to remake The Omen.  Eeek!  Of course, it will be so much "better" than the original, if only for the inclusion of mega-CGI scary effects.  I can see the marketing tie-ins now:  lick 'em stick 'em "666" tattoos at Burger King (they go under the hair, kids); and giveaway disposable cameras that take pictures of people, revealing the violent ways in which they are destined to die.

In other ominous entertainment news, a $120 ticket purchased for the June 6 performance of Broadway's The Odd Couple may or MAY NOT include stars Matthew Broderick (a known killer) and Nathan Lane (a known unconvincing Oscar Madison.)  Please, NO MORE!  But wait, there's also the Newport International Film Festival, which for unexplained reasons commences on June 6, a day when we all should clearly be hiding and praying at home; one need only look at the photo of Billy Zane in the Flash sequence at the NIFF homepage to know that we have much to fear.

The Last Communication Breakdown Unshackled...

The last Communication Breakdown Unshackled will be webcast this Friday morning, 6 - 9 AM. I'm sorry to give up the show but I'm neither farmer nor baker Arising at 4 AM, even once a week, is wreaking havoc with my delicate constitution. I was hoping I could hang on until the Spring but two months in and it's apparent I need to get back to my usual routine. I wish I could say I've enjoyed doing the morning show but that's not entirely true. As confessed here previously, I'm not a DJ - I'm a Talkshow Host. Spinning nearly three hours of music is not my cup of tea, though I've gotten some great e-mail about the show:

Listening from Berlin, Germany
Susan

I'm just getting used to streaming fmu before 9 am. It sounded great this morning, yesterday too; good to hear your voice on the airwaves again. I know it's archived, podcasted, whatever, but for a busy/lazy guy like me, this is the only way it happens for me.
Brian C.

Love the show... keep up the good work...
Jesse O.

Ian Anderson and The Zeitgeist Follies

Earlier this afternoon, DJ Irwin wondered aloud (and on the air) whether Jethro Tull was just a common interest between himself and Wm Berger, or whether the band was in fact a part of the current zeitgeist, and it got me wondering -- why do the Germans get all the best words?

Zeit·geist  n.  The taste, outlook, and spirit characteristic of a period or generation.

What's English got to compare?  For the word itself, I'm drawing a blank past "Ziegfeld" and "gesundheit" - oh wait, that one's German too.  As far as the meaning goes, I suppose we've got "paradigm", but that's so mathematical in tone, and it lacks the all-encompassing fatality of zeitgeist.  Anyway, paradigm's definition is so complicated and self-congratulatory that its usage is generally limited to the kind of people who use words like "ersatz" and "natch" - out loud anyway.

scha·den·freu·de  n : delight in another person's misfortune.

"Schadenfreude".  Motherfuck...  I'm in awe of this word.  What's English for schadenfreude?  What indeed...

But let's not just look!  Jump past the Berk Breathed painting of a sneezing astronaut entitled "Gesundheit", and let's listen!  And talk about Jethro Tull some more...

Roots of Jackass: 1912 Eiffel Tower Jump (video)

What accounts for the glut of internet movies which show people doing incredibly dumb and disgusting things, like lighting their beards on fire, drinking their own vomit or jumping in front of moving cars? Surely it goes back further than Johnny Knoxville, back even further than The Gong Show. Finally, some proof that the practice goes back nearly to the early twentieth century: here's a film shot in 1912 of an Austrian tailor, Franz Reichelt jumping off the Eiffel Tower in a combination overcoat-parachute of his own design, expecting to fly. Or at least to to float gently to the ground. Suffice it to say things didn't go quite as expected. The film ends with men ceremoniosuly measuring the crater left by Reichelt: (download video, 1.5 meg wmv). More info on Reichelt here.

Here's the text that accompanied this footage:

Unused / unissued material - Paris, France. Franz Reichelt wearing the parachute that he designed and invented before ascending the Eiffel Tower. Reichelt standing on platform high up on the tower preparing to jump he hovers on the brink for some time and then eventually jumps falling straight down to his death. Police and small crowd around the body of Reichelt as it is carried away, they then measure the depth of the hole made by his fall.  The film has French intertitles. Cataloguer's Note: Old record suggests this event happened 4th February 1912.

Thanks Hemaworstje!

Adventures In Amplitude Modulation - Part 3

Very few Americans listen to shortwave radio these days. Except for a brief popularity of including shortwave bands on late 70's and early 80's boomboxes, almost no general purpose radios sold in America receive shortwave. If you’re interested in hearing shortwave radio you need to go out and purchase a special receiver just for that purpose. However, before the rise of the FM band in the 1960's, shortwave was a standard feature on many everyday radios in the U.S. Around the world shortwave radio remains a viable and important part of the media landscape. In some African countries almost every home has a shortwave receiver of some kind. And in many European and Asian countries well over half of the homes have a radio with shortwave band coverage.

Before satellite communications and the internet, the only way regular folks could hear broadcasts from around the world was shortwave radio. While AM (or medium wave) broadcasts reach a radius of hundreds of miles at night by bouncing of the ionosphere, with shortwave the effect is greatly increased and signals may travel thousands of miles, and even around the world. It's not all that difficult to pick up international broadcasts from Australia and New Zealand here in the U.S.

Unfortunately, most of the shortwave stations now operating in the United States are Christian propaganda outlets (although some do feature some non-religious broadcasting on their schedules). However internationally, shortwave remains an important source for news, information and cultural features. Many countries (including the U.S.) have state run international radio networks that broadcast in many languages. And although there are fewer than there used to be, many are still operating powerful transmitters that can be heard broadcasting English language programs that reach North America..

While in future posts in this series I may talk about some of the more obscure and annoying broadcasts out there (as well as a possible disscussion or two about the receivers themselves), this post will just include the audio from a few stations I picked up Christmas night twisting the knob on my Sony ICF-7600A up in the Hudson Valley. I wouldn’t call any of this DXing. Except for The Voice of Russia, all the radio I've archived here originated from the North American region. For example, the Chinese and Japanese programs captured here were broadcast from relay transmitters located in Sackville, New Brunswick.

The Year in Disasters

A year ago, a 9.3 richter earthquake ripped open the sea floor off the coast of Indonesia, causing the worst tsunami in history (judged by the number of fatalities). Here are two of the most dramatic videos I found of last year's tsunami - both show Banda Aceh, Indonesia as the ocean swept through downtown.

download: tsunami video 1  |  tsunami video 2 (wmv files)

Did this past year have more disasters than usual, more fatalities, or are we just primed to believe that the end times have finally crept up on little cat feet? First, almost 300,000 people die in the tsunami , then Katrina gave us the death of a major American city, and by the time 90,000 people died in Kashmir, I was numb to the enormity of it all. You make a donation, you do whatever you can and then you just have to blot it out and be grateful that it didn't happen to you. In September, I got a small taste of the frustrations of relief work while working with New Orleans' WWOZ-FM.

Some people like disasters. Like this guy, who also has a thing for large fonts. And Dee, who likes them so much that she takes credit for them.

Rich Christmas

Hello, everybody—nice seeing you again.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how worried I was about Christmas this year, because we are very  broke and, in spite of what people say, it’s obvious that one is expected to spend money at Yuletide. I suspected we weren’t alone down here at the bottom of the barrel, and from some of the comments and e-mails I got, it sounds like I was right about that. One thing I guess I didn’t make clear, though, was that I’ve always really loved Christmas. I love the bright, cheerful decorations, the happy music, the delicious food, the fun of going to parties, and the excitement of giving and getting presents. No matter what’s happened in my life, I’ve always tried to keep Christmas as best I can.

I think our Christmas this year turned out to be the best one ever. Over the years Sluggo and I have discovered what works for us and what doesn’t, and we’ve  adjusted our Yule celebration until it’s just right. First, we stay away from family on Christmas; intead, we visit them all on New Year’s day, when things are a little less fraught. We catch up on each other’s lives, exchange gifts, and then we go home. We did call the family on Sunday, though, to wish them happy holidays, and Sluggo’s mom told us she’d made a pork roast for Hanukkah, but something went wrong with the recipe (which she’d never tried before) and it came out all greasy and inedible. We could barely hear her over the background noise of our 11-year-old nephew pounding away on the drum set he got for Christmas. After we hung up, we were even happier to be snuggled in front of the fire in our own little house, eating Christmas cookies and watching a Harold Lloyd video.

It took a long time before Sluggo managed to get over his aversion to holidays, but now he is starting to like them. We decorated our Christmas tree together this year, and he made some cocoa for us to drink while we hung the baubles. Every year Dr. Colby gives us some new ornaments, and now the whole tree is beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Oddsville. This year she sent two weird little snowmen—or they might be ghosts—made out of what appears to be toilet-paper papier mache. They are very strange, and we love them. 

I like to cook and bake, so we’ve got the food part taken care of. Some fancy-shmancy food writer once said that hell is two people and a ham, but ham was on sale at our local supermarket for $1.39 a pound, which is really, really cheap around here, and we are looking forward to reincarnated ham from now until New Year’s, when the bone and scraps will make their final appearance in the Hoppin’ John. We always think of Mr. Boyd when we eat that dish on New Year’s day.

Cleaning Out My Inbox

Cellophane sportin' one man boy band Gary Wilson has a new video, Gary's In The Park directed by Ross Harris. (Download video,12 meg Quicktime, via Antville.)

Who knew? Timeshifting George Bush down 50% brings out his inner boozer. (Download video, 2.9 meg Quicktime, via crooksandliars from Craig Ferguson's TV show on CBS.)

Ever wonder how the NSA plans to actually analyze the mountains of data they've been collecting? The Children.

More kids who live at the intersection of national security, adolescence and substance abuse.

Here's a creepy recruitment video, purportedly put together by an insurgent group in Iraq, (streaming google video, nsfw and extreme violence)

Blaupunkt panders to the furvert community by showing the raw, pelvic thrusting power of its car speakers: (download video, 2.5 meg mpeg)

52 (at last count) banned LP covers.

How to make a delicious soup out of your local FCC Inspector. Thanks Dan!

How far we've come since Love to Love You, Baby: DJ Triad's Moaning Music Spectactular.

Devil's Island Paintings: Lepers, Sharks, Escape, Guillotines.

Five links:

[Links found via peremeny, del.icio.us, hemaworstje, fazed]

Yngwie

               

Move over Stevie Nicks.... There's a new rock  n' roll muse in town: Yngwie!

(If you don't want to click all the images you can view them all on one page through the magic of opendirviewer)

Jesus Christ Moviestar

It seems only appropriate to hit the video store today and rent a couple of movies depicting the life of Jesus, but I know - you're stumped! There's alot of movies out there about J.C., "where do I begin?" you may well ask. Christ, I dunno. I'm a lapsed Jew-nitarian. My faves have more to do with who looks the hottest portraying The Man. Ted Neely screeching through 'Superstar, Robert Powell's bedroom-eyed Saviour in Jesus of Nazareth, Sin-Ewey Willem Dafoe In Last Temptation, Jeff Hunter (oops)...

Here's a couple of ramblings and resources to help you sort it all out: Celluloid Jesus The Christ Film Webpages, Celluloid Savior, Jesus On Film, and What Would Jesus Watch? Finally, here's a few of my fave actors who've donned the thorny crown (or clowny makeup in the case of Godspell):

                                                                                                

     

Terrific Outsider Film: Multiple SIDosis

Here's Sid Laverents' wonderful 1970 outsider film Multiple SIDosis (download video, MP4, 21 megs).

It opens on Christmas morning, with an extremely square-looking Mr. and Mrs. Laverents opening their presents, but don't let that scare you away. Adelaide has bought Sid one of the early consumer sound-on-sound reel to reel decks (an Akai M8), which he proceeds to play with, creating a multi-tracked version of the song Nola (one of those tunes you recognize instantly, but can't identify). It gets psychedelic as Sid adds to his foundation of ukulele and metronome, layering on tracks of ocarina, banjo, whistling, beer bottles and jews harp. Laverents, a former one-man-band performer on the vaudeville circuit, also confounded D.I.Y. filmmakers of the late sixties with his home-made multiple split screen techniques. Audio multi-tracking and split-screen techniques were both new ideas when Laverents started work on Multiple SIDosis in 1966. It was completed in 1969 and published in 1970.

The film has won dozens of international amateur film awards, and Multiple SIDosis was one of the only home-made films included in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry (along with the Zapruder film, among others). Sid Laverents is still alive - you can e-mail him at sidchar at CTS.com, and you can purchase other music and films from him: Sidney N. Laverents, 3705 Mesa Vista Way Bonita, CA, 91902-1135.

Here are MP3s of this version of Nola (mp3) and Sid's Fatman (mp3), thanks to Fatty Jubbo's Cake and Polka Parade. Sid's work has also been featured extensively in Roctober, the New York Times and Other Cinema. I stumbled across Multiple SIDosis the other day on Antville, although it's certainly been around the block, and for good reason.

Jesus Christ Almighty!

On Deadwood's first season he was slimy weasel Jack McCall,
droop-eyed killer of Wild Bill Hickock.

He gave another riveting performance as Francis Wolcott, psychopathic prostitute-killing Hearst emissary, on its second.

He's Garrett Dillahunt and you can call him Jesus from now on...

Merry Christmas

Kurtis Blow   - Christmas Rappin' (MP3)

Staple Singers - Respect Your Own Damn Self

Sing We Now Of Christmas

I'm standing at our bay window, curtain pulled aside, watching for my father’s truck. We can’t eat until he's at the table. Dinner is chicken with some vegetable. It smells good. I'm hungry. I usually am. My family hates me. There are five of us and not enough of anything to go around. My father is our sole support. My mother doesn't work. Feeding seven people is expensive. And I take more than my share. That's why they hate me. I try to be a good person, stay out of the way. I’m the youngest and shit rolls down hill and — why I should I care?

“Why should I care?
If I have to
cut my hair
I got to
move with the fashion
or be outcast.

"I know I should fight.
But my old man
is really all right
And I'm still living at home
even thought it won't last.”

Jesus Will Survive (video)

Tony Clifton he ain't, but here's the Prince 'o Peace having his way with the Gloria Gaynor classic, I Will Survive. Download Video [3.5 MB, Quicktime] Thanks Stephanie, via Javier.

This Week in Sex: Merry Fucking Christmas

Best of 2005: The WFMU elves are compiling smart and inspiring Top 10 Lists of all sorts of cool cultural detritus, but since my Top 10 List is just a Top 1 List, you can open it now:

The category is "Amanda's Best-But-Not-Happening Online Hookups of 2005." The winner is Phiggins813 (left), who was kind enough to send me a wink via one of the popular online matchmaking sites. Unfortunately, Phiggins does not live in my neighborhood, though he has lived in Chicago, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. His picture is in a motel, so I think he really means it when he says he likes to travel. He also loves nice restaurants, such as Ruby Tuesday's, Chili's, etc., and he is in the food-service business. Since he and I are not geographically compatible, I am re-gifting Phiggins to interested parties within 120 miles of Swansea, Massachusetts. Just remember to thank me when you make your wedding toast.

It's not too late to make holiday decorations out of tampons. How you get them up your hoohoo in January is your business.

A Christmas Story. Make that a Christmas photo story. Featuring one of Santa's elves, a lonely little homeless girl from Singapore, who visits a lonely little girly-boy in his bed on Christmas eve, and gets busy. We read it to the kids every year.

Attention shoppers! Buying + bitching = theconsumerist.com. Keeping a beady, greedy eye on deals, complaints, digital rights, evil, Amazon, and Walmart (not in that order).

He knows if you've been bad or good, because he's been a bad, bad Santa. Spanky bad.

Statistics say holiday office parties officially suck.  20% of Irish office partiers tell their bosses off during extended holiday happy hours. But they're Irish, so the other 80% don't remember the next day. To keep a lid on the nights of "photocopying one's bare buttocks" and "groping interns," experts suggest having  your event at an art gallery in the afternoon. Preferably an art gallery without copiers or interns. If you must go, please review the metafilter guide to work (mis)behavior.

Reindeer sodomy. There, I said it.

What would naked Jesus do? Make a naked calendar of bible scenes. Duh.

Lend a hand. Wank for peace. Or if you've got a penis goiter, whip it out for peace, maybe. I can't quite make out what the sign says, plus there's that distracting penis goiter, but let's say it's for peace. [on viceland.com; scroll down for goiter guy]

Sexsomnia. That's how we do it here, people. G'night.