WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Clyde Crashcup Invents Hi-Fi

"When all's said and done Leonardo, there is such a thing as too much realism in hi-fi!"

Although spoken in 1964,  the modern quest for high definition imagery leads down some thorny paths as well. Today we find our protagonist 'Clyde Crashcup', a Ross Bagdasarian creation, in the fifth book of his short five-issue run, seeking to improve his hi-fi set with mixed results.

From the John Stanley / Irving Tripp creative team that wrote and drew so many terrific 'Little Lulu' stories for Dell Comics comes this quirky series about a 'real gone' scientist and would-be inventor, adapted from his segments on the televised cartoon program The Alvin Show between October 1961 and September 1962 as voiced by Shepard Menken (in his impression of actor Richard Haydn).

Discover who really put the 'woof' in your woofers right after the jump!

Smells Like Columbus Circle

Last Wednesday was Art Day, so Sluggo and I went to see Discovering Columbus, which was supposed to end on November 19 but has been extended through December 2. The friend who gave us the heads-up about the extension said it was because so many people missed seeing it on account of the Superstorm; I haven’t been able to confirm that, but as soon as she told us it was still on, I jumped online and got tickets for Wednesday morning. 

The piece is easy to describe, but its effect is not simple. Tatzu Nishi has built a living room up in the air around the statue of Columbus in Columbus Circle. You climb up seven flights of stairs, and enter a hallway, and then turn into some rich guy’s living room where the 13-foot–tall statue is a knickknack on the coffee table. It’s delightful. A little girl who followed us inside dissolved in a fit of giggles when she saw it, the kind of little-kid giggles where you finally have to tip over onto a chair and kick your legs like a bug. Then her dad started trying to teach her to say “recontextualize.”

It’s cool to get to see the statue close up; it’s cool to see it in that context, which brings up thoughts of the 1% and private art and public art. The furniture is mostly from Bloomingdales, but the wallpaper was designed by Nishi himself, and features images of things he knew about America when he was growing up in Japan: Elvis, Marilyn, Michael Jackson, Coca-Cola, Malcolm X, Mickey Mouse. It made me think about how Columbus didn’t even know he was in America, he thought he was somewhere else. Everybody’s always discovering America, and nobody ever knows what it is. The big, flat-screen TV in the room is always on, set permanently to Fox News.

After we discovered Columbus, I went across the street to the Museum of Arts and Design for “The Art of Scent,” which had opened the day before. It is the best museum show I have ever smelled. 

I was lucky to get there the day after the show opened—it really was delayed by the storm—before everything starts malfunctioning and they run out of the perfumes. When I was there, the only thing that wasn’t working was the player for the video interviews with some of the artists—no big deal. Also, I was there at 11:00, right when the museum opened, and when I walked into the main gallery, it was empty: empty of people, and empty of things. It looked like a big, white, empty room, until I noticed some faint depressions in the wall, about the size and shape of a row of urinals. This was the exhibit: 12 scents, arranged in chronological order, from Jicky (1889)—Jicky!—to Untitled (2010). You stick your head into one of the urinal-like devices, and a puff of scent envelopes your face. The sort of info that’s usually on a wall label is projected onto the wall next to where you’re standing, then disappears. The exhibits lead you through a sketch of developments in the art of fragrance—the introduction of synthetics and new molecules and new ways to construct olfactory compositions. Although all these scents were developed to be sold commercially, they are not treated as commercial products, they are presented as works of art.

In a smaller room off the main gallery, there’s a long table with bowls full of the 12 scents featured in the main exhibit. You’re invited to dip a scent strip in each one and then use a tablet to enter two words you think describe each. The words “hostile” and “unwearable” weren’t included, so I wasn’t able to say anything about “Untitled,” but I took a scent strip from each sample anyway. There were five slits along one wall, where cards were dispensed to show four mods in the development of Tresor, along with the final composition, and it was interesting to see how that happened and at what point I thought they should’ve quit while they were ahead.

I’m probably not the average perfume-wearing DJ, in that I would rather smell like the air from a bicycle tire (Bvlgari Black) or a stack of wet cardboard (Dzing!) than a flower. Even so, I think you should go to MAD for “The Art of Scent,” just because there’s never been anything like it. And because you’ll get to smell Jicky.

 

The Storm Next Time

The night before Superstorm Sandy was supposed to hit, I called my friend A to see what she was doing to prepare. She lives in a fifth-floor walk-up in the East Village, and had spent a few minutes talking with a neighbor about which local restaurants would be most likely to deliver in a hurricane—that was it; that was the extent of her preparation. Since then, I’ve heard her stories of going for days without electricity, heat, and water. Our friend V told us about walking down 17 stories with a couple of empty water bottles, filling them at an open fire hydrant, and walking back up, over and over, again and again. K ran out of money when the ATMs ran out of power. And so on.

As far as I know, none of my friends’ homes were destroyed, nobody truly suffered, but I was surprised at the things they didn’t think to think about, the simple steps they didn’t take to make it easier on themselves. The following list is for people who live in the city and need just the most basic reminders of what to do when a natural disaster is looming. I know there are plenty of serious urban preppers who take things a lot further—if you are one, this list is not for you. These are clues for the clueless: It’s for A and V and K and anyone else who has never, ever sat down to think about what happens when the lights go out.

1. Fill your prescriptions. You do not want to be going cold-turkey from antidepressants when the world really is dark and cold.

The Dog Day of Summer: August 26

Sunday was National Dog Day, which apparently is celebrated on August 26 each year by anyone who happens to know about it. Even though most people do not know about National Dog Day, everyone knows that dogs are awesome, especially Boston Terriers, which are the best dog ever for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that purebred dog people are always going on and on about how their dogs are still suitable for the task for which they were bred, e.g., they do not actually take their Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever down to the pond to lure ducks with his attractive white markings, but they could if they wanted to. The Boston Terrier, however, was originally bred to be a little super-deformo pit bull fighting dog, yet there never was a BT in the world who would fight, they just want to play and be happy and lick your hand and eat delicious treats. In other words, the breed was always a total failure at the task for which it was bred, and that is why it is still awesome even today.

How Not to Die in the Woods

Yesterday I got back from Squad School; today I’m a lot cleaner and covered in calamine lotion. Tomorrow I go back to work. I think Squad School was transformative, but I haven’t quite figured out how. I just know that I see things differently now.

I thought a lot about death while I was out in the woods last week, but then I always think a lot about death. (I wrote a book about it, so …) Of course, the human body is what it is, so the underlying causes of death are the same wherever you are, in the city or in the middle of the woods in a lightning storm huddling under a pile of sticks with a couple of strangers. Some of the main things that can kill you are trauma, wounds, heat, cold, dehydration, starvation, or disease, and those are basically the same wherever you are. But when you’re out in the woods, there’s another possible cause of your death, and that’s bewilderment.

 Bewilder, meaning to wilder; wilder, an old word meaning to take someone out in the woods and get them thoroughly lost. Why? Because when you’re lost, and the world is strange, and it stops coinciding with the world you know and the reality you’ve constructed in your head to get through your day-to-day existence, then you see things differently. Literally. Being wildered can cause hallucinations, to the point where some cultures use it ceremonially: You’re taken out of your reality, and you come back different, you’re reborn.

MP3 - A Crash Course, guest post by Jonathan Sterne

Today, there are more mp3s in circulation than all other recording formats combined. This alone would be cause to write a book about them, but I became fascinated with mp3s because of how they are made. An mp3 encoder uses a mathematical model of the gaps and absences in human hearing to remove some of the data in an audio file, in order to make it smaller. If the encoder “thinks” you won’t hear part of a sound recording, it yanks it out on the encoding end, so that the resulting mp3 file is smaller, and therefore easier to transmit over data lines or to stockpile on hard drives and flash memories.

I wanted to know where this model of human hearing came from and what it could tell us about our contemporary sonic culture. The result is my new book, MP3:The Meaning of a Format.

The technology behind the mp3 is called “perceptual coding,” and I quickly discovered it has deep connections to the development of hearing science and telecommunications over the last hundred years. Everything we think we know about hearing in the state of nature is a result of the interactions between ears and media in the 20th century.

MP3s also point to the importance of compression in the development of communication technologies. Each generation of new media is usually sold to consumers as being of higher definition and greater verisimilitude than its predecessor (think of how DVDs and Blu-Ray have been marketed, for instance). But developments in compression and lower-definition transmission are equally important for everything from telegraphs, to telephones, to color television, to satellite transmission to the internet. This other history is less apparent because it is manifest inside our hard drives, and inside the massive infrastructures that allow us to move data around. It is not as shiny or sexy as the latest consumer gadget, but it could well be more important for everything from aesthetics to policy.

A Few Words From Le Sun Ra

According to Hesiod, Dreams are the children of Night, and brothers and sisters of Death and Sleep. Like these they are represented in the Odyssey as dwelling in the far West, near Oceanus, in the neighborhood of the sunset and the kingdom of the dead. Deceptive dreams issue from a gate of ivory, true dreams through a gate of horn.

"The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls.  Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in.

   Second soul, and the second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right button.

   Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out ... depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense- but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go back to heaven for another vessel. The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead.

Bloody Aliens And The Future Of Mankind: An Technocratic Education

by Gabriella Arrigoni

Vampires of Geona & The Masters of Geona (Gennady Tishchenko)

What's on Network Awesome today?

The Red Star (1908) is a Russian science-fiction novel describing the coming into being of a perfect Communist society on Mars, where the principle of egalitarianism is pushed to the point where even blood is a common good and must be constantly re-distributed and shared in equal parts among the whole extraterrestrial population. This process of transfusion also allows the communist Martians to overcome death and set up the basis of an immortal, omnipotent empire. In the Vampires of Geona (1991), the pterodactyl-esque blood suckers that gave the title to the cartoon are the bad guys and certainly not an incarnation of socialism, but it is not unlikely that their creator Gennady Tishchenko got to know the novel and the theories of its author, Aleksandr Bogdanov. He was one of the major representatives of that weird assemblage of science, philosophy and occultism which comes under the name of Russian Cosmism.

Cosmism's ideas about the possibility of a new man and a new society based on the technological triumph of man over nature to gain the resurrection of the forefathers, immortality and the progressive colonisation of the universe seems to fit rather well with the declaration we find in Tishchenko’s website about his own

Dr. Adrian Ostfeld Speaks on LSD Research, 1967 (Exploring My Reel-to-Reel Catacombs, Volume 28) (MP3's)

Today's sampling of my reel to reel collection features a tape containing a speech made during a gathering at Lake Forest College in Illinois, on February 22, 1967. On that date, Dr. Adrian Ostfeld, then the head of preventive medicine at the Univeristy of Illinois College of Medicine, spoke about his findings as an early researcher (at the beginning of the 1960's) into the effects of LSD.

As you will hear, he generally found the effects to be fairly limited, with the exception of a very few subjects who had quite extensive responses to the drug. Because of the many visual effects reported by those involved in the experiments, he expanded his research into those who were blind, and who had experienced the removal of their eyes, and he reports on the findings with those subjects, as well.

He goes on to discuss the vast difference between his rather banal findings and the amazing LSD experiences being reported by a variety of sources in the press and elsewhere, in those more recent days of 1966 and 1967, and speculates on some of the reasons for this, before ending with his own views on the likelihood of discovering anything worthwhile via the continued study of the drug.

This was apparently part of a larger presentation or event: the tape begins with a brief organ piece and an equally brief choral piece, before someone named Dr. Smucker introduces Dr. Ostfeld (another piece of music is beginning as the tape is shut off, after the speech). I have separated this four minute set of introductory items into a separate file, for those who might not be interested in this material, and the speech (which runs about 35 minutes) is heard in the second file, below.

Organ Prelude, Choral Piece and Dr. Smucker's Introduction (MP3)  |  Dr. Adrian Ostfeld - Speech Regarding LSD Research, February 22, 1967 (MP3)  |  Tape Box (JPG)

Numismaticism Update UPDATE: OMG, Canada!

No wonder Canada isn’t making pennies anymore—they’re using the copper for their new quarters! While the US goes on churning out those sad commemorative quarters that no one even knows about (Chicasaw?), Canada is creating the Greatest Quarters Ever, oversized cupronickel disks featuring bas-relief full-color dinosaurs—four of ‘em, starting with our old friend  Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai, and they are photo-luminescent so when you look at it in the dark, you see the glow-in-the-dark Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai skeleton!

And the obverse has the head of Queen Elizabeth, as per usual, but when you look at that side in the dark, you see the glow-in-the-dark depiction of her actual reptilian form!

Canadian money is so bad-ass! Next to the Thunk Tank Bieb (now the official currency of Iceland), it is the most bad-ass money in the world.

SEE YOU IN HEALTH: The Thunk Tank guide to the 5 most likely things that will kill you to death

Half of Thunk Tank almost died last week, which made us realize that we owe it to you, the WFMU Listener, to alert you to the Five Most Likely Things That Will Kill You (this week). Consider it a public service. (You’re welcome.)

1. All-Drug-Resistant TB. Okay, it’s not bad enough that you keep taking antibiotics for your headcold (Das viral!) and using antibiotic soap to wash your crusty dishes, which caused multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis even in a young female ginger who is also a lawyer and lives in London (much to the surprise of the BBC). No, now your stupid antibiotic lip gloss has caused ALL-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, which is just in India now, but will be killing you sometime next month.

Robo-Clones Replace DJ's at NJ Radio Station

Just like Santa Claus, Thunk Tank cannot be everywhere at once, and so we do what Santa does—we hire some homeless men to dress up like Jay. But not anymore! Now Scientists and Experts in Japan have found a new answer to this age-old problem: the Robo-Clone.

We are not talking about 3-D–print dolls from the Clone Factory—Clone Factory dolls are so pre-tsunami! Plus, they’re small! They are not life-sized, unless you are only about a foot tall. Here, this video explains everything:

 

(You may want to fast-forward to see the Fat Guy’s tween harem get creeped out by the doll.)

10 Seconds from Every Top-100 Song Ever + A Free Cut-up Software!

1959 | 1960 | 1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1964 | 1965 | 1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1969 | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011

In 1959, Billboard began releasing their annual charts of the top 100 songs of each year.  Here are mp3s with 10 seconds of every single top 100 song ever.  Follow the lists along with the music on this site.  There are some errors here, so bear with me and do point out major imperfections in the comments.  If you've been following my column in the past, all of these mp3s are improved versions, with crossfades in between tracks and smarter choices of clips.

I produced these supercuts with a software that Frederic Cornu and I developed together.  Fred is a genius and I'm eternally grateful to him.  This software is VERY SIMPLE to use and 100% FREE.  It simply takes a music playlist of your choice (from iTunes or a similar program), finds the loudest point of each song and stitches all the songs together.  These supercuts are useful to condense information and I think they're totally beautiful too.

In a few minutes, you can easily make supercuts of your music collection, even if you are a luddite.  Download the file below, unzip the folder and click "Run Supercut-O-Matic"...there'll be a button to press in the program to give you further instructions.

UPDATE!  You can get improved versions of the Supercut-O-Matic at this link.  The new version gives you more options, such as changing the size of each clip, the crossfade, and more!

Download Supercut-O-Matic for Mac (2mb zip file)

Download Supercut-O-Matic for Windows (3mb zip file)

Source code for Linux

Once you've made your files, send them to me (contact info is provided in the program's helpme file) and I will release YOUR MUSIC on a CD!  Do you have a completist collection of yodeling music, blues singers, minimal-synth, presidential speeches or tuba solos?  Use Supercut-O-Matic and SEND ME THE RESULTS!  Please do contact me with any feedback.

"Supercuts Supercut", a CD with the best submissions I get, is available to anybody who pledges $75 or more to my radio show in the current WFMU fundraising marathon!  Use the widget below to pledge to the greatest radio station on the planet and help us broadcast for another year.  Also, if you pledge $30 or more to my show, I will remix a top 100 song of your choice LIVE on the air.

ASMR's Greatest Video Hits

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a physical sensation characterized by a pleasurable tingling that typically begins in the head and scalp, and often moves down the spine and through the limbs.

Most ASMR episodes begin by an external or internal trigger, and are so divided for classification. Type A episodes are elicited by the experiencer using no external stimuli, and are typically achieved by specific thought patterns unique to the individual. Type B episodes are triggered involuntarily by an external trigger, via one or more senses, and may also involve specific thought patterns associated with the triggering event. Both types of triggers vary between individuals, but many are common to a large portion of ASMR enjoyers.

70,000 Tons: Metal Mutiny 2012 Edition

1 cruise ship, 4 days, 42 bands, 2,000 fans! Yes, I had to do it again! 70,000 Tons of Metal, 2012! I had such a great time last year that I had to go for a reprise and see what would happen! I've got a photo album here with many more photos, and this entry is the companion to my radio show, airing Thursday Feb 2nd at noon. When the archive is posted, it will be linked here.

It's true, I had a lot of prior experience, so I had already been on the same ship, Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas, and knew my way around. The weather I was leaving was not nearly as horrendous as it was last year, but I was still looking forward to punishing my ears and my body for a possible 84 sets of music in 4 days. I arrived in Miami a day early to trek up to Ft. Lauderdale with one of my partners in crime for a Cannibal Corpse show, and to also pick up another partner in crime to head back to Miami. Why not get an early start on bludgeoning my senses? I have to admit we did find time to view a certain sporting event involving a NY team that day also. On to the cruise! Last year I never noticed how much was loaded onto the boat via crane; the pool stage was composed mostly of large items, let alone all the rigging, backline, etc. I watched the crane pluck pieces off the ground and onto Deck 11 for hours on Monday morning.

A Germs Whisky Christmas: Cruising For Oki-Dogs

December 23, 1979, Germs play the Masque Christmas Ball at Whisky-Au-Go-Go, performing what would be dubbed on-stage "art" by singer Darby Crash, self-proclaimed "Manimal" and possessor of "television and supervision," who read "every Bible story," and was educated in mind-control by public school Scientologists, an A+ hustler whose world-famous catchphrase was "buy me a beer" and whose demands for "beer and damage" do not go unheeded this night. Watch as Darby, spolight directly in his eyes, eats a lit book of matches, transforms into a panther, demands each audience member "hit the person next to you," sets fire to his (A+) lyrics (balls-on-fire-great teenage Blake) all before guitarist Pat Smear kicks a bouncer in the head (several times+) for crossing number one invisible line in rock n roll: the artists own the stage.

Masters of Communication: Charles and Ray Eames

By Robert Ham

The Films Of Ray & Charles Eames (part 2)

Watch Part 1 of The Films of Charles and Ray Eames

The spare beauty and narrative economy of the film work of Charles & Ray Eames should really come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the couple's design work. Their fabric patterns, chairs, buildings...everything they did was approached with an eye for combining simplicity, functionality, and beauty.

Applying those principles to films is a much trickier prospect than one might realize. Just take a look at any Hollywood creation from the last 15 years and you'll see what I'm talking about. In comparison, the Eames films are almost meditative to watch. They unfold slowly and patiently, getting the subject matter across using simple narrations and augmenting it all with a bouncy jazz score. It is impressively easy to drink in and absorb everything they are trying to accomplish and, yes, communicate.

Because for as much as scholars like to point to their 1968 documentary Powers of Ten as being their

Storytelling In Japanese Art at the MET

Up through May 6th at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an exhibit entitled "Storytelling In Japanese Art" with a main focus on the Emaki, or Emakimono hand scrolls; some dating as far back as the 12th century. What's interesting about these pieces is that they are physically lengthy, so only certain portions of the scrolls are available for viewing at a time. The scrolls will be advanced during the length of the exhibition, so if you visit more than once, chances are you'll see different sections of the scrolls, which contain illustrations as well as japanese character text. Some are faded and reflective of their age, and some are in phenomenal shape considering the fragility of the medium. The exhibition also includes full views of some of the handscrolls on iPad displays in the beautifully crafted reading room. The current of the presentation of the pieces is very fluid - literally, with a fountain by Isamu Noguchi in the center of the route and a study/bamboo mat room.

When visiting the exhibition, we learn narrative was not only told on the medium of the scroll; visitors will see illustrations on screens, fans, cards, hanging banners, books, kimonos and porcelain as well. Some are showing one or two ideas as a story, and other pieces have multiple scenes and many utilize the stylized cloud formations to separate panels or sections of the stories that is present in Japanese art through the years. Take a look at some of the details of this show in the photos after the jump and see if it doesn't pique your interest!

The Ecstasy Of Break-Up Psychosis: Possession (1981)

We are all the same, but in different words,
In different bodies, and different versions.

These words above (especially the dub-science word, version and the ultimate word, words) called out to me from the media feed of fellow sub sub Jason D. Bigelow, subtitling what seemed to be a still from one of the only 70s/80s Occult Horror Films Starring Moon Eyed Brunette I hadn't seen yet. The web search for the phrase brought only one return, an ancient message board movie-quote stump game for which this phrase proved successful in obscuring its source, the Andrzej Zulawski film, Possession 1981.

CYBERPUNK’S NOT DEAD!

By Chris Cantino

Doc - CYBERPUNK (1990)

Watch more on Network Awesome

Marianne Trench’s 1990 documentary on the world of cyberpunk observes digital outlaws on the forefront of new technologies, fighting for freedom of information. Founded upon the spirit of the first cyberpunk novels by William Gibson, the movement is a networking hub for politically-concerned technophiles who poke around inside protected digital databases and occasionally wreak mayhem by inducing malicious software. Sometimes for fun, and sometimes to extract information, the hackers are concerned with increasing access to knowledge and generally throwing a wrench into the system. Often set in dystopic near-futures in which the lower class is dramatically underrepresented, cyberpunk (and sci-fi literature in general) helped develop the context in which we discuss the arrival of new technologies: with a guarded interest, and sometimes fear that they might eventually wreak similarly undesirable results.

Unfortunately, this cyberpunk prescience is starting to look less and less like fantasy. Gibson once described his fictional futures as “social Darwinism designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button,” where the ones calling the shots cut corners at the expense of the