WFMU's Beware of the Blog

"How to Draw 1000 Funny Faces" Cartooning Instruction Record by Art Ross

Budding cartoonists and incurable doodlers take note: today's record will sharpen those skills!

From the front cover: "This amazing FUNograph record and cartoon course supplies countless hours of amusement for kids from six to sixty!  Anyone capable of writing his name can learn to draw more than a thousand faces."

No foolin'! This 1946 record by Art Ross (on the Funnyface Records, Inc. label, out of Forest Hills, NY) and the accompanying instructional charts will show you how!

Below is the record itself, so get out your pencils and paper and get ready to draw yourself raw - instructions follow right after the jump!

                               How to Draw 1000 Funny Faces

Print Fiction

Print Fiction is an online exhibition curated by artist Michael Alfred Seibert.

A Joy Division in Nazi Disneyland

Last week the web was wriggling with outrage over The Disney Store Corporation offering for sale a Mickey Mouse™ T-shirt in the graphic style of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures albumcover -- not that the iconic white-on-black waveform image (plucked from the Cambidge Encyclopedia of Astronomy by drummer Stephen Morris) was any stranger to absurd marketing schemes.

 

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!

Meet Me In St. Louis? Only If You're A Giant Praying Mantis!

I went to St Louis for the Old School Tattoo Expo, where world renowned tattooer Lyle Tuttle celebrated his 80th birthday; here's a photo of his cake (it's the Frisco Flyer tattoo machine that he made and made famous). The highlight of the weekend, aside from reconnecting with Lyle and other great friends in the business for me- was the visit a few of us made to the 10 story City Museum there. A cross between the works of Antoni Gaudi and Mad Max, it's an amazing playground created for the most part, from junk! There was a ferris wheel on the roof, alongside the praying mantis dome, and on the same level was a schoolbus that was perched precariously with 2 wheels hanging off the roof for patrons to explore. There were slides on every floor; nope, not visual slides; the kind you plant your ass on and tumble down! One was a 10 story spiral slide, not unlike the style that comes to mind when referring to water parks. All types of sculpture and found object placement that was delightful, including an area with discarded architectural features - lions and gargoyles and lampposts, oh my! There is a section called the Enchanted Caves, which looked just like it sounded. Part of the museum had an aquarium within it; stocked with turtles and catfish, completely accessible if you wanted to pluck a turtle out of the water and walk around with him, you could! The aquarium (pictured left) was part of the maze of walk through/get lost in sculpture that made up the majority of the ground floor. I may not be describing it accurately, mostly because that's a difficult task; The City Museum defies categorization, which is a breath of fresh air this day and age. There's also a couple of bars, a smoothie joint and a thrift store within the museum's expanse, not to mention the fuselage of an airplane, a series of monkey bars that stretches countless yards, animal sculptures made of gears, a castle turret and more.

No words can really convey what goes on there; the photos featured after the jump will do some of the inventiveness and beauty of it justice, and the real experience can only be yours if you visit. Yes. It's an experiential kind of place. Show up in sneakers!

Free Music Archive Radio & more from Music Hack Day

One of the 50+ projects to spring from this weekend's Music Hack Day, Free Music Archive Radio is essentially the template for a Creative Commons Pandora. Enter the name of any artist, and FMA Radio taps into the Echo Nest's musical brain to generate a similar playlist from the FMA's curated library of 40,000+ legal mp3s. Tweak your station further with Mood and Style parameters, and/or Creative Commons license filters.

Despite the fact that it's just a demo (works best on Chrome, not so well on Firefox) FMA Radio has already been written up in evolver.fm, the Dutch blog Muziek & de bibliotheek, and Germany's Progolog. Its awesomeness is enhanced by the fact that it's html5 (plays nice with iPhone/iPad), it's open source, and it was built over the course of 24-hours (whoa!). I spent much of the weekend hanging out with FMA Radio's creators Jeremy Sawruk, Robby Grodin (ConductiveIO) and Julie Vera, the Music Hack Day veterans whose previous projects include Sawruk's Feedtunes (turns Twitter trends into playlists based on song lyrics) and Grodin's Toscanini gestural interface. In addition to releasing open source code, Sawruk and Grodin are Creative Commons musicians, and they've really done an incredible service to the community via FMA Radio.

Music Hack Day is a series of music/tech gatherings fueled in large part by APIs. After the big news last month that FMA's API had been revamped and mapped to the Echo Nest's Rosetta Stone leading up to WFMU's Radiovision Festival, this weekend introduced the FMA to the mother of all music hacking events. It was fantastic to take part -- some highlights after the jump:

Shock & Awetober Listener Meet-Ups

Shock & Awetober continues on WFMU! Tune in for amazing special programs this month and don't miss out on our many social activities. We've got tons of listener meet-ups lined up, and hope you'll join us for some extracirricular fun:

Tuesday, Oct 11th - Jersey City Barcade Night
Get your beer on at Barcade in Jersey City (163 Newark Ave) with Beer Hear! hosts Bob W. and B.R. (4-9pm). Make new friends (or enemies) over Frogger or Asteroids! Barcade is generously donating all tips from the evening to WFMU, so drink up! info/RSVP

Tuesday, Oct 18th - Aerial View Beer Pull
Join Chris T. and WFMU's resident Beer Baron Scott Williams (6 PM) at Pilsener Haus & Biergarten in Hoboken (1422 Grand Street) for a LIVE Aerial View Beer Pull and WFMU listener meet-up. Use the secret word LIEBERSTRAUM during the broadcast to buy one beer and get one free! Auf wiedersehn! info/RSVP

ALSO Tuesday, Oct 18th - Shut Up, Weirdo! Meet-Up
Come have an awkward drink with Andy, Frangry, and the rest of the weirdos at the first ever Shut Up, Weirdo Meet-Up (Luca Lounge, 222 Ave B, Manhattan)! There won't be any games or cotton candy, just some booze and a whole lot of regret. info/RSVP

Thursday, Oct 20th - WFMU Rock Jock Listener Meet-Up
Come down to Maxwell's in Hoboken to celebrate WFMU's Rocktober festivities (7-9 PM)! WFMU DJs Terre T, Joe Belock, Evan "Funk" Davies, Gaylord Fields, Mike Sin and the one and only Todd-O-Phonic Todd will be in the house, and you can expect free food and drink specials! info/RSVP

Friday, Oct 21st - Underwater Theme Park Happy Hour
Join Underwater Theme Park host Meghan at Full Circle Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (318 Grand St), for free skee ball, extensive happy hour specials, and good times (7-9pm). info/RSVP

Tuesday, Oct 25th - Thunk Tank Trick-or-Treat Meet-Up
Join Bronwyn, Jay, and Thunkers galore at Jo's, 264 Elizabeth St., NYC  for a live remote broadcast and scary story hour featuring readings by DJ's Amanda Nazario, Kurt Gottschalk, Bronwyn C., and Jay B. (6–9 PM, live broadcast from 7–8). There'll be treat bags o' swag for all, and Jo's will introduce the Thunk Tank Signature Cocktail! Costumes, masks, and furry outfits encouraged, because you gotta dress up to be on the radio! info/RSVP

ALSO Tuesday, Oct 25th - Antique Phonograph Music Program Live Broadcast
The Antique Phonograph Music Program will be hosting a listener meet-up and broadcasting LIVE from 7-9pm at The City Reliquary Museum in Brooklyn (370 Metropolitan Ave). Join MAC, his phonographs, and cheap beer for this gathering including records highlighting New York and other disc delights. info/RSVP

 

Listener Meet-Up: July 22nd WFMU Invades Coney Island

Announcing another Listener Meet-Up: Friday, July 22nd (6-11pm) WFMU invades Coney Island!

Join WFMU for fun, sun, rides, freaks, fireworks, and a live broadcast of "Downtown Soulville" with Mr. Fine Wine on the boardwalk at Wonder Wheel Park!

The plan:

6-7pm - Meet fellow FMUers at the Coney Island USA Freak Bar (Sideshows by the Seashore - 1208 Surf Ave. at W. 12th St, Brooklyn) for a drink and to pick up discount passes for the Wonder Wheel (click here for a WW MP3).

7-8pm - Run wild: check out the Sideshow, ride the Wonder Wheel or Cyclone, swim in the ocean, eat a hot dog or 10!

8-9pm - Soul dance party on the boardwalk at Wonder Wheel Park (Boardwalk & Denos D. Vourderis Pl - W. 12th St)! Live broadcast of "Downtown Soulville" with Mr. Fine Wine on the decks.

9:30pm - Fireworks show on the boardwalk.

10pm onward - Check out the burlesque show, belt out some tunes during boardwalk karaoke, toss a few back with the locals at Ruby's Bar, get in on more rides.

Hope to see you there.

The Foreskin Chronicles, vol. 1

Dear Listeners,

 I regret that I will be unable to co-host the show again this week, neglecting my duties and leaving Bronwyn and the ever-capable Tim to shoulder my responsibilities. The call of the foreskin is strong, however, and I know that if I can find this missing piece of Putin’s member, it will be not for my own glorification, but for the benefit of all WFMU-kind. In my stead, I leave these three humble tales, accounts of my recent adventures that will perchance entertain you until I return next week. —Cohost Jay

I was in a filthy, back-alley pirate saloon in Mogadishu, laying low after a smuggling run gone bad. To earn some extra cash to pay for my search for Putin’s foreskin, I'd cut a deal to sneak 1000 counterfeit Snuggies into Somalia. Unfortunately, a hundred miles off the coast, a Belgian naval patrol boat had sneaked up on my ship while the night watchman was engrossed in a game of Angry Birds. I was able to distract the officials long enough for my first mate to get below deck and dump the Snuggies before the inspectors got wise, but avoiding trouble with the law meant making trouble with the lawless.

Firesign Theatre Is Playing At My House

Episodes of the legendary Firesign Theatre Radio Hour are being rebroadcast on WFMU every Tuesday, 7-8pm as part of our new Summer Schedule.

Here's a guest post (including MP3s and a contest!) by Firesign Theatre’s archivist Taylor Jessen:

For ten years or so, the Firesign Theatre has been engaging me in a friendly round of “Stump the Archivist”.

Between 1970-1972, Firesign did about seventy hours of original radio broadcasts. The shows were mostly an excuse for them to riff, but they also played a lot of music breaks, sound effects, incidental music, and total dada noise foofaraw. During those original broadcasts of The Firesign Theatre Radio Hour Hour, Dear Friends, and Let’s Eat, they put the needle on the record about 1000 times, and one of the most fun aspects of restoring all those airchecks (soon to be reissued, yes the whole schmear, in remastered digital audio with an accompanying 108-page comic-book-size color fan guide featuring complete show rundowns, an historical essay, new interviews with the 4or5 guys and their engineer & producer, never-published photos, collages, found objects, scripts, and good God make it stop, it’s just too awesome. Please check regularly here and at www.firesigntheatre.com for an official announcement; we’re only making 500 copies and they’ll never be sold in stores) – one of the most fun aspects, I say, of all this obsessive archival work was identifying those 1000 needle-drops.

Firesign played hundreds of different records on their shows, and they never back-announced anything and kept no notes.

 

 

Red Dead Redemption and the Q*bert Problem

 Last night I played Red Dead Redemption, which is a fancy cinematic video game about Ye Olde West and outlaws and gunfights and whatnot. There are horses. It's pretty amazing, in the way that all these new games are. I've watched a friend play Heavy Rain and Alan Wake, and watching him play was sort of like watching a crap   old movie on TV—you could sort of just sit through it, and it wasn't terrible, it just is what it is. We could carry on a conversation and drink beer while he was playing, and I didn't mind not playing the games myself. But then last night I was at one of those target-shooting pigroasts I go to, and I got a chance to actually play RDR, so I did, and here's my problem:

 Remember Q*bert? Yeah, probably not. Q*bert was an arcade game back in the early 1980s, before you were born. Q*bert was this little character like a ball with eyes and legs and a tube for a nose, and the point of the game was to jump him all over a pyramid of cubes (whilst avoiding snakes!) and when you turned all the cubes a different color, then you got some more cubes to jump on. But if you just took Q*bert to the edge of the pyramid and jumped him off, he would fall, making an awesome bombs-away kind of noise, and then there was a very satisfying SPLAT when he landed wherever he landed, somewhere down below and out of sight. I never got past level one of Q*bert because I loved to hear him splat, and I would put in my quarter and jump him to the edge of the pyramid and send him over the edge, over and over again, until I realized how many quarters I was wasting and then went off to play, like, Tempest or something. 

 With Red Dead Redemption, I have the Q*bert Problem. I'm tearing along in a horse-drawn wagon race on a twisty mountain road, and I realize I can just drive the damned wagon over the edge of a cliff and watch my character fly out and the horse fall and the wagon split apart ... And then I'm back in the wagon race, and there's a different cliff to fall off of, and this time everything lands in a river. It is really astonishing that someone figured out all the possible scenarios for wagons going off cliffs in this one race, and animated each one differently—I mean, it really is amazing. I know that crashing off the cliff isn't supposed to be the point of the game, but if they only had John Marston make that Q*bert noise when I sent him off the edge, Red Dead Redemption would be the best game ever.

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

Another Weird Guy Named Raymond: Raymond Taylor on "Wheel of Fortune", 1994

Perhaps I ought to make this a regular feature: deeply eccentric men named Raymond, victims of labored physical or cognitive mobility (or both) who make their way on to network or public access television.  Raymonds of great fearlessness, bravado even.  Raymonds who don't give the name Raymond a good or bad name...just an astonishingly weird one.

There's a chance I could have stopped at the single most glorious individual to have ever emerged from the blessed Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but what fun would that have been?  Meet Raymond Taylor, Wheel of Fortune contestant...and stalker.

Miami is So Raw!

Miami. It's beautiful, perfect weather, and is the home of the best drugs and Cuban food a person could ever want. Sadly, it's isolation makes it hard for music fans. Bands don't want to drive all the way down to Miami on their tour when they can only get a few shows. Life must be hard for all the record collecting teens in Miami.

Well right now the punks are taking back Miami and the stuff that's happening is super exciting. I went down last June for the first ever Miami Is So Raw festival and had maybe the best time of my life. Jacuzzi Boys brought the jumpin' garage rock, Melted Sunglasses punched the crowd in the face with haunting psychy punk, TeePee killed the ladies with soulful lo-fi jams, and Brian's Dirty Busines" was the most perfectly executed joke band I had ever seen. But the band that most stands out in this happening scene is The Electric Bunnies.



The Electric Bunnies have released a handful of singles, and have just released their debut LP, Through The Magical Door on Florida's Dying. The LP is beautiful from start to finish, the psychedelic magical grooves seem to try to tear apart what you already know of garage rock at the seams and sew it back together into something insanely awesome... and most importantly, the sleeve of the record folds out into an Electric Bunnies board game that you can play with all your friends! Totally worth it!

Electric Bunnies - The Green Octopus
Electric Bunnies - Cross The Street

From Mt. Angel Abbey to Olympia, with a Visit to My Closet

 Tony Coulter here, with a fourth post from Portland -- this time bringing you sights and sounds from Oregon and from that other solidly Northwestern state, Washington. All LPs, by the way, were found by me since moving here, and all tracks are things I would have played on FMU. As a special bonus, I'll also show you two strange artifacts I brought with me from my longtime Brooklyn home....

Before I get started, I should tell you that the image of Seattle's Space Needle seen above was created by Jim Cherry for the inside cover of a KYYX-FM compilation LP called Seattle Grown....

Anyway, enjoy!

Coolie's Last Minute "Game of Things" New Year Scenario Card

Things you would say to the year 2009 if it was a person.

"David Carradine was a nice touch, asshole!"

I yield the floor...

Blip Festival starts tonight w/ WFMU live stream (+ mp3 preview)

Tonight, the leading lights of the worldwide chip music movement are convening at Brooklyn's Bell House  for the fourth-annual Blip Festival. And as you may have heard, WFMU will be webcasting all 3 days'  worth of pixelated madness LIVE on a separate super-special blip stream, beginning at 8pm ET tonight!

WFMU Blipcast HeadQuarters  |  full schedule at blipfestival.org  |  Live stream (.m3u -- starting @ 8pm ET)

The webcast is hosted by Trent of WFMU's Sound and Safe, who'll be DJ-ing between sets and talking with Blip Festival organizers, performers, & attendees throughout. Trent hosted a Blip Fest Warm-Up radio show on Monday night -- check out the playlist & archive here for live performances from Je Deviens DJ En Trois Jour and Patric Catani, plus special guests C-Men and Peter Swimm.

Peter Swimm runs the True Chip Till Death blog, and curates weekly highlights from the chip music world on the Free Music Archive. Earlier this week, he posted a mix featuring some of the artists who'll be performing at this year's festival. Check it out after the jump!

WFMU Webcasts The entire BLIP FESTIVAL to your home computer - next week!

WFMU will be webcasting this year's edition of the amazing BLIP FESTIVAL in its entirety!

Three days of pixelated madness LIVE from The Bell House in Brooklyn: Trash-bin symphonies and ray-chasing pixel pushers rule at the music and arts festival on December 17th, 18th, and 19th.

Entering its fourth year of celebrating the best and brightest from the realm of chipmusic and its related disciplines, the festival showcases the use of the former heavyweights of computing such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga, the Atari ST and 2600, and the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy to create arresting music and visual art.

DJ Trent will host and DJ between sets both on the stream and in person at The Bell House.

Stay tuned to wfmu.org/blip and blipfestival.org for more information and broadcast schedule coming very soon!

NOTE: WFMU's webcasts from the Blip Festival will stream from a separate virtual location and will not pre-empt any normal FM or web broadcasts.

Tune into this Monday 12/14 from 8-11pm as DJ Trent gears up for Blip with a visit from some of the folks behind the fest:  Patric Catani, Peter Swimm, Je Deviens DJ En Trois Jour, and Glomag exploit the deepest, brightest sounds from the edges of the 8-bit live on Sound and Safe.

The Blip Festival is presented by Manhattan arts organization The Tank, in partnership with NYC artist collective 8bitpeoples.

Burroughs narrates Poe (video, MP3)

This post arrives slightly late for Halloween, but I'll take both William S. Burroughs and Edgar Allen Poe any time of the year. After some Poe readings by James Mason, we have this gem from the 1995 videogame "The Dark Eye", featuring William Burroughs reading "The Masque of the Red Death", accompanied by some creepy slides.

YouTube: Part 1 | Part 2
Just the audio, in slightly higher quality: The Masque of the Red Death (MP3) from RealityStudio

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.

Charles Grodin Mad-Libs

The all-news radio station I listen to in the morning features occasional “commentaries” by Charles Grodin. At first I thought they were meant as jokes because they’re so random, but they’re presented dead seriously—plus, they’re not actually funny. I had to google Charles Grodin to find out he’s a former actor who somehow has convinced people that his political opinions matter. Sort of like Ronald Reagan, but without the nuclear access (as far as I know). Beethoven vs. Bedtime for Bonzo.

Grodin’s radio commentaries are very brief, and they all follow the exact same format. That makes them painful to listen to, but it also makes it easy to construct your very own Charles Grodin Commentary as a game, like Charles Grodin Mad-Libs. Here’s how it goes:

The other day I was [common daily activity] when I suddenly noticed [really, really common daily occurrence]. I called my friend [name-drop D-list politico] and asked what s/he thought. S/he said I should [really, really, really obvious thing to do.] This is Charles Grodin, for CBS 880. 

Some Examples:

1. The other day I was walking down the street when I suddenly noticed my shoes were untied. I called my friend, former New York Republican State Senator Nick Spano, and asked him what he would do in a situation like that. He thought for a moment, then advised me to stop walking, lean over, and retie my shoelaces. Next time, I’m getting those shoes with the Velcro straps. I’m Charles Grodin for CBS 880.

2. I was on the phone recently with my friend, Connecticut Republican State Senator Toni Boucher. I was interested in learning if there was anything a person could do when they were driving on the highway and they see a car going about 100 miles an hour, or more. She did some research and advised me to call 911. … I think it’s a good idea for everyone to do, wherever you live. It could save lives. I’m Charles Grodin for CBS 880.

3. The other day I was sitting on the toilet when I noticed an unusual smell. It was so unpleasant that I picked up the bathroom phone and called my old friend, Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari to see what he had to say about it. I described the odor as best I could, but all he did was swear at me and hang up the phone. That wasn’t very helpful. This is Charles Grodin, for CBS 880.

Extra Credit: Can you tell which one of the three examples above is the text of an actual Grodin “commentary”?
Have fun, and may God bless.