WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Unknown Austrian band, "One Potato, Two Potato", 1980-1981

My Kid Could Preach That

And I don't even have a kid.

From a devout Episcopalian to Samuel Boutwell: You're too young, sport.  There are words you are too young to say and understand, strings of inspirational pabulum you are too young to belt out extemporaneously, obvious signs of coaching you are too young to discern, ulterior motives in which your daddy is engaged of which you are too young to be aware and deeper meanings behind the messages to which you are too young (and naive) to relate.  But you're still very entertaining.

Samuel Boutwell: the next Marjoe.  Okay, I'm getting off my soapbox now.  Amen.

Apoohcalypse Now

Please Don't Stop

Finally...the St. Louis Metro Evening Whirl has an Internet presence!  But that isn't why I'm posting.

Two comments left on this post from April of 2008 are unmitigated classics and I sure wish more concerned mothers who have run-ins with the police or family members in the slammer--which reminds me...Arizona has a crime newspaper, too, called The Slammer--would leave more hysterically verbose comments.  Please--keep 'em comin!:

Commenter Amelda Walton:  I am a strong black single mother of two whom does whatever for my children to make sure they be great citizens in society. I have a 9 year old son who has been assaulting his teachers and peers at school. He has been suspended from school 5 times in the month of October. He bangs his head up against wall for attention. My son has sent a little girl to the hospital as well as pushed a little boy in the nose. He constantly runs away, I think just about every city cop on the Southside of St. Louis has had encounter with him. He cusses me out and has fought me several times. He is under a psychartic,a therapist, department of mental health, children's divison and no one seems to know what to do with him. Not mention there has never been any real physical abuse but I was accused of abuse when he had belt marks on his bottom. The skin was not broken. He has a dead beat father! They say he needs a father, so if anybody no where I can buy a father let me know! Because I don't won't NO man that likes little boys or girls around my children or no drugdealer or no woman BEATER! Not to mention he smears poop and urinates all over my apartment!Yes! he just whips it out. The state of Missouri says no spanking your child, I think this is exactly what he needs a down south big momma spanking, St. Louis what do you think? Oh, I forgot he has been in child mental institutions over 15 times! Now, I figure they don't want me to spank my son because this is another black man growing up diagnosis with ADHD who is ends up going to juve later and then to the pen or in the grave regardless if he ends up in the pen for murdering someone the state gets $10,000 a day for a prisoner, Why do my son have to be that prisoner? I fear the worst already and because I have been in every program that I possibly can enroll in for my child they are waiting on me to hurt my son and I be faced with prison time or if I hold on long enough, he will be faced with prison, What do you think?

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.

God Bless KCDX

One hour commercial-free classic rock blocks on FM.  Arizona has commercial-free classic rock blocks on FM--REAL commercial-free classic rock blocks, not bait and switch commercial-free classic rock blocks!!  If you know of any other rebel classic rock freeform FM's that are actually still around and kicking where you live I'd like to know about them.  Because I've never heard any like this...until two months ago, when my wife and I moved to Mesa.  Yeahhhh, other than a once hourly station ID the big AZ has commercial-free.  And the rock up in here is higher than all 12,562 elevation feet of Humphrey's Peak.

B-sides, concert versions, record collection slips-by...all of the very highest order from KCDX, 103.1 FM, Florence, Arizona.  Quick station ID then nuttin' but solid bada-bing.  Mint condition r-a-w-k.  Oh sure, you get the occasional "charters" out of a can...stir-fried lovingly with forgotten exotic--and even fresher--left out LP cuts that get the shaft on terrestrial.  Pretty much a seven-layer bar for the tympanic membrane.  No, maybe it can't match up with the likes of the radio station that holds this blog's reins, but out here 103.1 is a neck-in-neck second. 

Indeed, God bless KCDX!  Non...stop...ROCK.

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...

Big Mouth Christmas Rap, 1988

Unfinished Crime Movie, Oak Park River Forest High School Experimental Program Class Assignment, 1974

Thirty five years ago at my high school alma mater two students with really cool hair, James Fagervik and Jeremy Pollock, filmed this project for Oak Park and River Forest High's Experimental Program film class, no longer in existence.  It isn't cool soully because it's the only interesting OPRFHS YouTube vid (all the other vids are football highlights...booooring); it's cool because the camera is a Sony PortaPak and primitive 1970's video technology is utterly fascinating to me.

Mr. DeLay...Sir...I Strongly Urge You NOT To Do This...Tom...TOM!...NO!!

Jerry Jer a/k/a Tampon Man, Connecticut Public Access Channel 34, 199?

Nicki Rose, "Personality Crisis"/"Nicki's Way (The Rock Stars)"/"Battle In The Sky (The Desperate)", (199?)

(Big apologies to Brian Turner.  He already posted the "Electric Warrior" vid by Nicki Rose in June of last year.)

But the man submitted more "demos" to record companies around the country hoping to get signed.  He didn't.  As the hair obviously blows independently--without the use of a fan--so does Rose himself.

No, no, no...I'm just giving you a hard time, big guy.  Nicki Rose, you're perfect.  You are going through to the next round.

The Zero-Star Hotel

We have squats.  Switzerland has Null Stern Hotel. 

 

Essentially it's one very large conceptual art piece as egalitarian sociology experiment as place to stay when you're f***ing tired after a long day of being a tourist. 

Little Pixies Barked

Here comes your kid.

Omegle

We don't know each other.  Me "you", you "stranger".  But I'm going to strike up a chat room conversation with you and hope you're in the mood to strike up a chat room conversation back anyway.  Actually, I don't care if you are or not.  I just got back from work and, like Steve Albini, I'm in a baaaad mood.  Me "DiNozzo", you "hapless puke".

No, no, no...I love you, "stranger".  Please accept this pittance of my openness of heart and extension of friendship.  I already have this feeling that I know you.  Really know you.  Whoever the hell you are.

W*A*L*T*E*R (videos)

About that third M*A*S*H spinoff CBS decided not to pick up because the Pacific and Mountain time zones were broadcasting the '84 Democratic National Convention and Radar wasn't a stooge anymore?  Endure:

(Apologies for the distractions in the form of the Cyprus Corners DVD logo and explanation leading off part one, which starts at :27 in).

Austin, TX City Council Public Hearing, 8/24/06 (video)

Ronnie and Donnie

How the hell do Ronnie and Donnie Galyon do it?  Permanently fused at the collarbone and ending at the groin.  Fifty-eight years of coming back around to having to look each other dead in the eye again for another twenty-four hours once they're done checking out girls and heckling the ref.  The Schappell sisters have it easy, as far as I'm concerned; sisters whisper secrets in each others' ears and don't stop when they reach "the age" where they're not supposed to do that anymore.  Given the choice I believe most sisters wouldn't mind sharing a brain.  Each one would be right there for the next secret that cannot be disclosed to anyone else, the next problem that needs immediate unlicensed psychoanalysis and treatment.

Brothers joined at the head?  They'd bleed to death from pelting each other with cans of half drunk beer.  They'd drive each other batshit and you and I know it.  A six-inch sub's distance is enough of a proximity, and even then.  My twin and I quit whispering secrets ear-to-ear by age nine.

   

The RealiTykes and That Guy, "Jesus Loves the Little Losers" (An Easter Song) (video)

Easter is about more than just contemplating how we are tiny and insignificant specks of dust in the grand scheme of things, how we must learn how to humble ourselves before our creator and how we can improve the nature of our lives through sacrifice and repentance.  Easter's about ham, loveable furry bunny rabbits and finding a dimebag inside a big plastic blue pastel egg.   

Oh, it's also about how you can't make a sammich from any of the leftovers because your friend Timmy from next door found the egg with the cooch.  Here to put these and other important holiday life lessons in perspective are The RealiTykes and That Guy, performing live at LA's Sacred Fools Theater Company:

  

They're here to Sunday school us in the virtuousness of dropping to our knees in the omniscient presence of our Saviour and confessing we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.  And the weed...ahem, the Wielkanocna Babka?  It's for after dinner.  Hey, Jesus loves you, whether you're parading around in orthodontic headgear saturated with drool and wayfarers or the curly haired kid who hasn't used deodorant or washed his hair in two weeks sitting against the school building at recess.  You're still okay with him. 

Happy Easter and, uh, pass it around.

"Still Worse Than Missing A Meal": More From The St. Louis Metro Evening Whirl

Right about this same time last year (it's 70th anniversary) I found an incredible paragon of throw-down urban journalism resting on the counter of my local 7/11 store.  To say The St. Louis Metro Evening Whirl is unlike any newspaper printed and distributed in the United States would be giving it so little credit it's not even funny.

 

Headline templates and the stories to which they belong in the Sun-Times', Journal-Stars and Plain-Dealers are so prosaic and unimaginative it makes you wonder why there aren't more print machine operators filing workers comp claims over their hands just getting hacked off because they fell asleep reading the template cuts.  The Whirl busts out headlines--and lead paragraphs--fully intended to cause anyone within ten feet of you to shield their faces because you're getting ready to puke all over them from laughing.