WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Concordia Sex Education: Take the High Road (MP3)

Today's post is of an album I picked up recently in a Salvation Army Thrift Store. The album contains the 19 minute soundtrack for a sex education filmstrip produced by Concordia. Each side has the same presentation, one with audible "beeps" one with inaudible tones, with the individual sides geared towards the use of two different filmstrip machines. This is the inaudible tone side. Let's all learn together.

Concordia Sex Education Series: Take the High Road (MP3)

Label (JPG)

Smog-Toast 16

Photo: Chia Yin Hsu

Tony Coulter here, re-back to share some discoveries and uncoveries. The sounds, per always, were recently obtained; the images have been hanging around a little longer. Several of said images are genteelly smutty in a vintage men's-magazine kind of way; NSIYLIAC, perhaps (Not Safe If You Live In A Convent). The photo above, by the way, is of a seafood restaurant's window display, and was snapped during a recent trip to Astoria, OR. Let me not forget to say thanks to both Archie Patterson and Thom Jones for some of the sounds.

Onward, my friends, onward....

Mutant Girls Squad Premiere and Sushi Typhoon party @ Japan Society

The other night, myself and a few friends; artist Hakumei Kusanagi (artwork here), Mad Man John, and the Geisha of Gore (read her column on the Cinema Knife Fight site), went to the Japan Society event thinking we were only going to see Mutant Girls Squad as part of the NY Asian Film Fest. I was unaware that two of the movies' three directors were to be in attendance, and the Geisha of Gore greeted me at the door with her copy of the promo poster for Mutant Girls Squad signed by both of them, as well as her DVD insert for Tokyo Gore Police signed by Yoshihiro Nishimura (which was his directorial debut). Her grin split her face in half as if she was Ichi the Killer. I knew it would be a good night.

I thought it would be prudent to use the rest room before the action started, and I got sidetracked in the Japan Society's ladies room. Each stall had it's own device (see photo below) with many bidet settings - including an underseat dryer! I could have taken in all the selections, but wanted to take in everything that was going on outside of the bathroom, so ran back out to the action, the presentation was about to begin! 

Yoshihiro Nishimura and Noboru Iguchi introduced the film with an interpreter, and Subway Cinema's Marc Walcow; the presentation was fun and whimsical; the two directors seemed genuinely thrilled to be there in  a demented childlike way. They gave out prizes to the crowd and a bit of background on the film: "He likes asses; you'll see a lot of asses and a lot of things coming out of them", and of course the deep meaning in the meeting of the 3 directors minds "we all got together and got drunk and wrote the movie"... Also on the scene was Masanori Mimoto of Alien vs Ninja, screened earlier that day.

Prairie Hypnosis

Tony Coulter here, speaking to you from the ever-receding past (Wednesday evening to be exact). As happens ever other week, I've laid out before you an assortment of sounds recently found, and of sights that have been with me a little longer -- for me, sight moves slower than sound.

Before the tell-and-show commences, let me just thank Cozmic Eddie, occasional guest-host of KPSU's Psychedelic Renaissance, for the loan of two of the audio oddities found below. 

And now ... dig in!

F•••••M From Porn

Last week Apple became the technology company with the most bajillions of dollars, knocking Microsoft out of the #1 spot and making Steve Jobs the iMan. But it turns out that the iProduct comes with an iAgenda - and it totally sucks.
I have a Macbook and I have an iPhone. I also love iTunes, it is probably my favorite piece of software in the world, and I love their podcast store - it has been awesome to see my WFMU show featured on their front page. BUT, this week, the love affair is over. Here is what happened: my show has become another unintended consequence of Steve Jobs' War on Porn.

The latest episode is called "Kicking Against the Pricks." The phrase comes from the Bible, it means  "rebellion against authority." And just as it is for one of the characters in my show, this rebellion is futile. Here is what the show title looks like on iTunes:

 

It doesn't bother me that Steve Jobs doesn't like Porn, but if he is serious about making his world free from Porn - then I think he has to pony up some of those bajillions of dollars and hire some good old fashioned bible thumping human censors - because his computer censors can't do the job without f••king up. Here is another example: a recent episode from the WNYC Science show Radiolab

My friend and WNYC Colleague Ellen Horne, the executive producer at Radiolab, says the staff was more amazed than horrified when Apple censored the word SPERM. Plus she adds that the *** makes it sort of like a "fun adventure to figure out what the show is even about." I wish I could be as amused. But I am not, if this is the iWorld, I don't want to live in it! And just so you know, the Chinese Government uses the "freedom from porn" line to justify what it does too. Maybe Steve Jobs will realize the futility of censorship on his own, but perhaps a list of unintended consequences will be more effective. If you have more examples - add them in the comments.

Audio Letter From Europe / Part Two

"...Nay, these were the most beautiful women of the world; the whole world, not just the world of today, but the world since time began and the world as long as time shall run.
  Nor were the wild animals on display at the circus any less sensational than were the girls. Not elephants or tigers of hyenas or monkeys or polar bears or hippopotami, anyone and everyone had seen such as these time after time. The sight of an African lion was as banal today as that of an airplane. But here were animals no man had ever seen before; beasts fierce beyond all dreams of ferocity; serpents cunning beyond all comprehension of guile; hybrids strange beyond all nightmare of fantasy."
Charles G. Finney / The Circus of Dr. Lao

"Wind, flag, mind moves,
The same understanding.
When the mouth opens
All are wrong."
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Well, those two California native ladies are still traveling abroad in 1983, and I'm back with the sequel to last week's posting -  side two of the 90 minute letter we were working on; a scatalogical, sarcastic, sexy and swinging romp across foreign shores.I believe they're still in their pensione in Greece with the British girls when we rejoin them...

Tape One Side Two / part one

Tape One Side Two / part two

Your Very Own mp3s, Completely Life-Like in Every Detail

Tony Coulter here (there? somewhere?) with another cluster of things to listen to and to look at. No theme this time: just some recent audio purchases, and a bunch of images unpacked from moving boxes. Those images, including the one above, were clipped by moi so long ago I mostly no longer remember where they came from. If you know, do tell, and I will give credit where credit's due.

And now, dear reader's finger, please slide on through to the other side....

The Dargerfication of Miroslav Tichy

 I went to the Miroslav Tichy exhibit at International Center of Photography a few weeks ago, and then I went back again last Friday. (See Vinnie Smith’s earlier post here on Beware of the Blog.) Miroslav Tichy is an old Czech, born in Kyjov, Moravia, in 1926. He went to art school, and then stopped painting sometime in the late 1950s. He became very unkempt, dressed in rags, and started wandering around Kyjov with cameras he constructed out of garbage—shoe boxes, twine, lenses from broken eyeglasses. According to some of the local residents who were interviewed for a documentary on Tichy’s life, most people didn’t believe his cameras were real; those who did would call the police whenever he began “taking pictures”—mostly of women’s feet, legs, and butts. The police also hauled Tichy off to the local insane asylum whenever he showed up for the annual May Day parade, because they didn’t want the village weirdo spoiling their proper celebration.

 The images Tichy made are pretty great, because his cameras and his enlarger were made out of trash, and also because of Tichy’s obsession with his subject matter. Last Friday I watched a couple looking at the first few photos at the ICP exhibit; the young woman turned to her date and said, “He sure liked booty, didn’t he?” Clearly he did, which is pretty obvious to anyone who just looks at the pictures. But if you read the accompanying text for the show, written by some curator, you will discover that these images are all about esthetic choice as to how best to represent the experience of village life, or some such nonsense. Instead of shooting interiors or church scenes, Tichy chose to shoot at the local swimming pool for some esthetic reason or other. The fact that there are usually not a lot of half-naked babes at the church didn’t enter into it at all, apparently. But Tichy himself, in an interview in the documentary film that’s showing in conjunction with the exhibit, just goes on and on about sexuality, atoms screwing, dinosaurs doing it—he doesn’t say a word about his “esthetic choices.” He does say, “To be famous, you have to be worse at something than anyone else in the whole world.” So he’s not stupid.

I don’t understand why we have to do the Henry Darger on these guys. Nobody goes to all the trouble of making cameras out of trash unless their passion forces them to make those images. Why can’t people just look at the photos and appreciate them for what they are? It doesn’t lessen the power of the photos to accept that the photographer was the local creepy weirdo, or that any “esthetic choices” were being made by his Little Miroslav.

ICP show until May 9 (Friday is pay-what-you-wish after 5:00).

Also illuminating: the “Problems” section on the offical website.

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

 

Non-Marathon Money Maker #1

  Blind people are just like us: they have needs. Plus they are NOT just like us: They have no porno! There is already an amazing website that provides spoken-word descriptions of online porn for blind people, but it seems to be done by volunteers, some of whom are better—a lot better—than others. Here are some tips: 

1. Don’t bother telling blind people what color things are, they haven’t ever seen colors so it’s not that helpful. More helpful is the nice young lady who points out that the woman in the video has natural breasts and a belly-button piercing (“so that’s kind of fancy”). 2. Do not crack up as you describe the sexxxy scenes. As one guy’s friend angrily points out, “They don’t wanna hear laughin’ when they’re jackin’ it!” So true. 

The other thing that is maybe not so good about the free website is that they just use free teaser videos, so the scenes they describe are all only about 20 seconds long. [A digression: In the  mid-’80s there were free phone numbers you could call to hear tape recordings of sexy ladies describing naughty things. I think they were supposed to encourage you to call for pay-for-it phone sex, but they were pretty awesome on their own, and they were all definitely longer than 30 seconds. More like a couple minutes, I think.]

So, you know how WFMU is completely Listener-supported but last year we didn't raise enough money with our annual fund-raising Marathon and we had to do a shorter on-air fundraiser later on, and nobody really wants to do that? So my idea was that we could get some hot-sounding WFMU DJs, like Psue Braun or Bryce or William Berger, and have them record descriptions of some long porn scenes, and put them up on a website, and sell it to blind people who want some nice porn. I think we could definitely make some money that way for sure.

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

The Most Emotional Things That Came Out in 2009

Hey guys!  What's up, well sheeeit man.

As people consume content in smaller pieces and the influences from which content-creators draw their inspiration become more varied and well-integrated into finished works, things have settled into different categories than they're usually put into.

When I wander out into the new, overflowing marketplaces of digital and physical content, I find myself chasing not a scene, genre, or production aesthetic.  I find myself chasing EMOTION.  BIG, shining, unmistakable emotion. Lindsey Buckingham might call it BIG LOVE.  In a world full of the pulpy asscrap shit out of a million boring Macbooks, the only things that consistently rise to the top of the pile are the sentimental ones.  They come from associations drawn in formative years, from tunes attached to specific occasions or great sound systems.  Like: the first time someone slipped you some tongue, in the back of the car with the best stereo you've ever pumped to, all in front of shimmering fiery spectacle of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and you're pretty much there.

So here is the best shit from 2009, the stuff that cut into me the deepest, OK?  

Click on the links below the titles to hear the songs as they appeared in my shows over the year.

News of the Dead: Dead Me

Just in time for Halloween, I discovered my own grave today. Apparently I died in November 1918, age 31, and am buried in some little town in Pennsylvania. Sluggo and I are planning a road trip to go visit Dead Me very soon. If you'd like to find Dead You, then I recommend searching your own name at FindAGrave.com, one of my favorite websites. (My thanks to Find a Grave Member Beth for locating Dead Me, and to Patty Matthews for the photo of Nanticoke Cemetery.)

People usually think of cemeteries as peaceful places. Or maybe not, maybe they think of cemeteries as creepy repositories for dead, rotting corpses. Either way, I don't think most people think of the cemetery as the place to go for some hot hetero action. But that is because most people do not live in South Carolina, home of Roland Corning, 66, the former deputy assistant attorney general. Mr. Corning became a former etc. when he was found in a cemetery with an 18-year-old stripper, some Viagra, and a bag of sex toys. He claimed he was on his "lunch break," and I suppose he just must have grabbed the wrong bag—you know, he accidentally took the one with the crusty black strap-on instead of the one with the ham sandwich. Plus, he's in South Carolina, home of Governor Mark Sanford, who prefers "hiking the Appalachian Trail" to "hanging out in the cemetery with barely legal strippers." Also that douchebag who heckled the President is from South Carolina, and who knows what he's been up to. I guess if you want to have sex outdoors with old white guys, South Carolina is the place to go. South Carolina, home of the Gamecocks! South Carolina's got it goin' on!

Christmas Contest Update: Okay, so the special Disney's Christmas Carol AmTrak train was in Grand Central today because it's the day before Halloween, and I went through it mostly just because it was there and I think it's interesting the way the "property" has gone from being A Christmas Carol to   Dickens' A Christmas Carol to Disney's A Christmas Carol, and just before the exit from the train there were 4 people in Victorian costumes singing "Jingle Bell Rock" because that is what counts as a Christmas carol nowadays, I guess. But our contest is to be the first person to hear Christmas music being played in a store and I don't think being subjected to anachronistic performers on a marketing train counts. I did notice stores in Grand Central with all the Christmas stuff up, making this the first year I have ever seen totally Christmas-themed store windows before Halloween. Surely the Christmas music will not be far behind. As soon as you hear Christmas music in a store, email me at [email protected]. The winner will receive some not-yet-determined prize.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and Happy Halloween.

Dia de los Angelitos Update: Not My Grave. The Nanticoke Historical Society has a helpful list of locals who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic, among them "Bronwyn Charleton (Mrs. John)." And the Wilkes-Barre Record of May 17, 1905 has an announcement of the marriage of Bronwyn Davis of Nanticoke to John Charleton of Alden. So it looks like that Nanticoke grave belongs to Bronwyn Davis Charleton--close, but not my grave.

Fiancée of Dracula - Jean Rollin (2002)

With a few notable exceptions (Stuart Gordon, Larry Cohen), my horror-auteur gods have been letting me down in recent years. Granted, artists like George A. Romero and Dario Argento are working with much bigger budgets, and greater public expectations than Jean Rollin has ever had to deal with, and maybe that, in and of itself, is partly the kiss of death for these comparative big shots.

Why do I consider myself a huge Rollin fan, yet I've never, until now, watched a film of his later than The Living Dead Girl (1982)? Maybe I didn't want to risk having the master of vampire chateaus, beguiling female malefactors, moody beach scenes and the darkly absurd shot down in my estimation. Boy was I wrong. It took the recommendation of WFMU / My Castle of Quiet super-listener Richard Ridden to coax me into taking a chance on Rollin's 2002 feature, Fiancée of Dracula, and I have nothing but good things to report.

First of all, it's amazing to me that the same, crumbling, ruined pier Rollin has been using as a location since the late 1960s has never been fixed up (perhaps that's French infrastructure for you), and in this film, he's used that craggy pier for one of his most compelling seaside visions ever. Secondly, the classic Rollin motif of grandfather clocks as a travel portal for the undead is employed here again, some 30 years after the director's phantasmagorical 1971 feature, Le frisson des vampires.

What other visual and conceptual delights fill out the body of Fiancée of Dracula? What say thee to a convent of mad nuns, who smoke pipes and cigars, don funnels and quote Jarry, and have a mean kick in the bargain? Or a salacious blonde ogress, who feeds on live infants? How about a mind-boggling scene—perhaps the best in the whole film—in which a nun, having been brutally slaughtered, suddenly rises up and carries around her own bleeding heart? All this and more, including a minor, but pivotal role, played by Rollin's long-time star, the lovely Brigitte Lahaie. I fear if I say too much, I will most certainly curb your surprise and pleasure in watching this film. It's enough to say that maestro Rollin has maintained the visual sense, absurdity, and moody, ethereal vibrations that have defined his filmmaking career from the very start.

The First International Sex Opera Band - Anita (MP3s)

Supposedly only sold through sex shops in Amsterdam during a short time at the end of the 60s, this is a truly bizarre psychedelic freak-out of an album. There isn't too much information about it out on the net, but apparently it is rumored that this was recorded by members of the popular Dutch rock band Sandy Coast. It is probably impossible to find the original vinyl, and I bet it would sell for a fortune if it ever popped up on eBay, but here are the MP3s, just in time for your next sex opera party.

The First International Sex Opera Band - Anita MP3s
Anita's First Appearance (Part 1)
Anita's First Appearance (Part 2)

Oh, and despite the title this is safe for your kids, your office, and the FCC, if you don't mind to expose them to the occasional heavy breathing, moaning, and screaming, plus a hefty dose of deranged psychedelia...

This Week In Crossdressing: Manbras, Drug Addict Aliens and Pickle Surprise!

For a minute there I thought Japanese culture was odd.  Mostly because of facial saline implants.  Now I know they are visionaries, all of them - man bras have become a very hot (and hotly debated) item in Japan.  The Reuters report on the top left covers the emerging trand (you like that pun?).  On the top right is the trailer from a cult classic, 1982's Liquid Sky, about aliens who get high off of the endorphins in the brains of of heroin addicted models.  Anne Carlisle stars as both a male and female junkie models.  Fans of cinematic camp will be equally pleased by the film as fans of minimal synth - watch this scene and you'll understand.

Tom Rubnitz was known in the 1980s as a central artistic figure in NYC Village's drag queen scene.  His short on the bottom left, Pickle Surprise, features none other than RuPaul.  A whole bunch of his other videos are up on Youtube.  Bottom left are some highlights of an episode of Ring My Bell, a transexually themed internet call in show that tends to get pretty wild.  Is it too late in the post to say these videos aren't safe for work?

Nouvelle Vague Live at WFMU - hot vidz!

Oh my gawd, y'all, when these people were in Love Room, it was all I could do to keep myself from reaching through the glass and gently stroking their faces as they sang.

The two sexiest voices in English-speaking Frenchpop, covering Sex Pistols, Violent Femmes, Depeche Mode, and Talking Heads....DANG!

Listen to the whole show here.

Thanks a zillion to Aldona Watts and Raymond Park for doing the video.

2 MORE VIDEOS AFTER THE JUMP!

Nouvelle Vague's new album "NV3" will be out in September.  It features guest performances from Martin Gore (Depeche Mode), Terry Hall (The Specials), Ian MacCullough (Echo and the Bunnymen), and Barry Adamson (Magazine).

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.

Morgue Story & The Dead Outside

Of the films I saw in the San Francisco Roxie Cinema's 6th annual Another Hole in the Head festival, two features stood out high above the lot: the Brazilian horror/comedy Morgue Story (Sangue, Baiacu e Quadrinhos), and the almost static, post-plague survival drama from Scotland, The Dead Outside (trailers viewable at those links.) These are two very different films, to be sure, but they share two significant common ingredients: an empowered, gutsy heroine, hell bent on survival (these chicks are neither skinny, nor do they shriek and fall down when running); and a visual and color palette that distinguishes the story immediately as its own universe. (Sadly, I left town the night the tantalizingly Mother's Day-esque Run! Bitch Run! premiered; anyone who's seen it should feel free to chime in with their thoughts.)

Morgue Story is a taut, clever and grisly horror comedy with an Evil Dead II-like dual sense of calamity and humor that leaves nothing off the, uh, slab. When Ana, a successful graphic novelist (who has nonetheless lost at love, and whose most famous character is a "living dead") ends up not-quite-dead in the morgue, she runs afoul of a sleazily efficient, God-fearing necrophiliac coroner. Also in the mix is a self-effacing cataleptic, who looks like Lux Interior's younger, paler brother and may just be an (albeit weak-willed) ally for our heroine. The three spar off verbally and physically as the English subs fly by, unpredictable shifts of power occur, and you find yourself reacting with equal measures of laughter and revulsion to the fairly graphic scenes of necrophilia. Everything is shot in grey, green and sepia tones, the washed-out institutional colors perfectly underscoring the essences of death, depravity and sickness. This is the only film I saw in the whole festival where the crowd immediately erupted in enthusiastic and unanimous applause at the conclusion. That tells me the world needs more necrophiliac comedies—or at least this one.

Come see The Dead Outside expecting buckets of blood and non-stop zombie action, and you will be disappointed. The Dead Outside is more the zombie-film equivalent of listening to your favorite Oval LP, which turns out to be not at all a bad thing. Moody and hovering, with an excellent soundtrack that veers from drony buzz into gentle piano melodies, The Dead Outside reads like a side tale to 28 Days Later if directed by Atom Egoyan. As with Morgue Story, the action here centers on an unconventionally attractive heroine, a hard-boiled, chip-toothed goth girl who's slaughtered her own family in order to survive, and is played with resonance by Sandra Louise Douglas (who seems destined to flash her violently blue eyes on bigger screens.) The danger in The Dead Outside is less in the infected that keep getting stuck in the barbed wire outside, than it is in the minds of the survivors who must live out the daily drudgery that is post-zombie-plague existence. Again, the expectations of horror purists may be let down here, and the film also loses minor points for dropping critical exposition to the lack of subtitles (it's been a long time since I saw Teenage Fanclub, and my Scots is rusty.) Though The Dead Outside does have a few scenes of seat-jumping zombie action, that won't be why you remember it. Its muted blues and greens, and matter-of-fact realism, tell a very atypical and understated horror tale.

P.S. - I'll be returning to weekly broadcasting on WFMU this summer, after a ten-year hiatus. Tune in for the premiere of My Castle of Quiet, Wednesday, June 24, at 8 p.m. ET.

A Proposition for Robert De Niro

From markmaynard.com.

Tonetta777 - Demented Spastic Gyrations

I have no idea...mental breakdown dirty dancing to self-produced jams that sound like a cross between The Pod-era Ween and Right Said Fred. Watch all of Tonetta777's videos on his youtube page. Not necessarily NSFW, but it might creep some people out. 

Horndogs Rejoice! - Sexlab Cometh

Have you ever wanted to ask a WFMU radio personality about cunnilingus technique, clitoral stimulation, anal doucheing or "the helicopter"? Yeah, maybe not. But this Friday you'll have your chance anyway, when Sexlab hits the Web waves.

Conceived in a hailstorm of double entendres by our illustrious Queen of Friday Nights, Pseu "Honey Pot" Braun, and gestated in a dong-shaped space station by Pseu and her colleagues / co-researchers Mark "ASS9000" Allen and myself, Wm. "Money Shot" Berger, Sexlab is designed to hold your, um, "hand" and glide you into this new century of suckin' and fuckin'.

While Dave Mandl fills in for Pseu at our FM frequencies and on the regular Web stream, Sexlab will be streaming (with volume AND distance!) at an alternate Web feed accessible at wfmu.org. As Mark says, "online only, because in the Internet the FCC can't hear you curse."

And me? I started rubbing it to Morticia Addams when I was eight years old, and I haven't looked back since. I've been told more than once that I have an "enthusiasm," a certain bonus zeal for the sex act, so hopefully my life of gradual transition from hyper-libidinous man-slut to happily monogged married man will be of service to someone. And my colleagues, well they're unrepentantly horny bastards, too. Either way, Pseu, Mark and I can pretty much guarantee it will be funny (and hopefully genuinely informative as well.)

Sexlab will be live on the Web, this Friday, May 22, from 8-11 p.m. ET. We'll be taking your calls at (201) 209–9368 (for those prone to jump the gun, store that load in your third eye and call us then, not before.) If you'd like to submit a question or suggest a discussion topic in advance (or during the broadcast), we've set up a special email address: [email protected]

Sexlab Facebook Page (for throbbing members only)