Friday, February 28, 2003
207.224.60.109 = artifacts. "my grandparents were legendary (in my family) for their packrat-like nature. it is now my honor (and duty) to carry on that tradition to the best of my ability." Charming collection presented in a simple way. (via Poopscape)
More weird stuff to listen to!! This compilation is a goodbye gift from departing Cool and Strange Music editor Dana Countryman. It opens and closes with Dick Catan's "I'm Sassy But Classy" taped live at Cherry's Top 'O The Mall in Niles, Ohio. I'm frugging to this doll tie-in song right now! Mod, baby!! "Diary of an Unborn Child" freaks me out.
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Thursday, February 27, 2003
It's a sad day in the neighborhood. I must confess that, although it thrilled me as a small child, I was all jaded about Mr. Roger's Neighborhood by the time I reached the age of seven: "Oh, please. That show is, like, so 1973. Baby stuff. I just have it on while waiting for The Electric Company to start."
It was only as an adult that I truly appreciated Rogers' timeless, sincere message. You can't argue with this quote from Salon's profile of Fred: "The children of 1999, he told CNN, are 'deep down, the same' as the children of 1969 (and, you can surmise, the children of 1909 and 2009): 'We all long to be lovable, and capable of loving.'"
They made the right choice, and I applaud them. Now it’s on to the big push for Libeskind's plans to stay as intact as possible. It's such a relief that the competing THINK design wasn't chosen. The concept of putting lush public gardens and performance venues in the sky was appealing, but those giant tinker toy structures looked more appropriate for an Atlanta public park than downtown Manhattan. Too lowest common demominator.
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Wednesday, February 26, 2003
FameTracker once again does a bangup job tearing apart a lame-o celebrity filled magazine, piece by piece. Their latest victim: The Hollywood Issue of 'GQ'. Every paragraph has at least one laugh-out-loud bit.
From a page of Japanese movie posters spotted at Sharpeworld.
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Lively interview with the Onion's Maria Schneider (via Obscure Store). She is entirely too modest about what she does. Pathetic Geek Stories and Jean Teasdale are brilliant in the way they blend irony and pathos. Sometimes it catches me off guard how poignant her stuff can be.
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A flatbed scanner that plays vinyl records , well whaddayaknow.
Monday, February 24, 2003
 Got a new iMac last weekend. The kind with the 17" screen and a 800 mhz processor. Sweet. You can't tell from photos, but the base of the new iMacs are huge. They looked weird with a normal sized screen, but now that they come with larger screens the design is more proportionate. A beautiful machine, just plug it in and it's ready to go. The flat screen is nice, if a bit bright. The display gives you a choice between tiny, sharp type and large, blurry type. I chose the former, but discovered that this very page looks somewhat sucky that way. Sigh.
It might still take a few days to get settled with the new setup. As of now I'm unable to receive email at the scrubbles.net address. So, if you haven't heard from me lately, that's where I am.
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This Grammy recap bit made me howl - "a polite but sad audience sat through a repressed ceremony." Undoubtedly while Britney read her scripted banter off the teleprompter, everyone there quietly contemplated the gross vapidity of their lives. Glad I missed it.
Bob Thompson's 1960 "concept" album The Sound of Speed is available for download (via Robot Action Boy). Thompson's work is in the same vein as that pleasantly perky background music revived in 'Ren & Stimpy' episodes. His entire site has plenty of quality downloads. Get a load of the heavenly female "doo doo" vocals on "Mmm Nice".
Friday, February 21, 2003
Gary Panter's interview with The Comics Journal has been excerpted here. Hmm, I'd love to wallpaper my bedroom with the image above.
Joseph Cornell and the Art of Nostalgia - I read this New Yorker story at lunch today. Marvelous. See some of Cornell's collages and shadow boxes at the Artchive.
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Thursday, February 20, 2003
Johnny Paycheck went to that great shit-kickin' honky tonk in the sky. Rolling Stone has an unusually thorough and engaging obituary on their website.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Max did it, Kris did it, and now I did it. Hit random play in iTunes and jotted down the first ten songs that came up:
1. "Postman" by Saint Etienne (Good Humour)
2. "Goodness Gracious" by Kim Weston (The Complete Stax/Volt Singles Vol. 3)
3. "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" by the Soulful Strings (Basic Hip's Digital Oddio download)
4. "He's All I Got" by the Supremes (Anthology [1995])
5. "People" by the Supremes (2000 Box Set)
6. "Sweet Cinnamon Punch (High Llamas remix)" by Tipsy (Tipsy Remix Party!)
7. "Love or Let Me Be Lonely" by the Friends of Distinction (Soul Hits of the '70s: Didn't It Blow Your Mind)
8. Theme from "The Patty Duke Show" (I forgot where download)
9. "U.S. Teens Are Spoiled Bums" by Half Japanese (Filepile download)
10. "I Like Cheese" by the Cheese Band (365 Days download)
Funky little set!
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C. forwarded this article about how museum curators are turning to Ebay for historic documents. Not a surprising development, but cool nonetheless. I usually avoid Ebay since the bidding process is too nerve-wracking, but today I actually won something! Getting this photo will help me along in my unexplainable obsession with the actress Joyce Compton (she's the blonde on the left).
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The Trained Eye Gallery - gorgeous closeup photos of decaying paint on freighter train cars (via Dublog)
Good article from the Village Voice on the proliferation of documentaries on TV (via Max).
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Photo of the day - Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Still #13.
Werner Weiss doesn't update Yesterland, his terrific site of discontinued Disneyland attractions, very often. Which is why I'm grateful he just added two new pages -- a look at Disneyland in 1955 and an explanation about why the currently empty submarine lagoon will likely stay that way for awhile. While we're at it, check out the groovy graphics on the Tahitian Terrace menu. Yowza.
Something else found today: the Disney Paper Resource Center, the Disney parks covered in books, magazines, maps, brochures and such. Keen.
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Monday, February 17, 2003
Updates: Christopher is still seeking photos for his Pets With Their Heads In Bags Of Food page. Also, we are both trying to find a publisher for the children's book we're working on. The project will be small, self-financed and would only require two color printing. If anybody know of a publisher that would take us on, please drop me a line.
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 Who is this girl? It's Nathalie Simard, who made one of the strangest albums in my vinyl collection. I found Simard's self-titled 1983 LP at a thrift store about five years ago. Never found much info on her since, but I just came across someone's blog entry that describes her as a French-Canadian Marie Osmond. True enough. Apparently she was famous enough to have her own clothing line, too. This album's cover looks like a plushie fetishist's dream come true, but the people in animal costumes are there because she does a song about cats and another song about ducks. She also sings a few nice ballads, but it's mostly weirded-out kiddie pop. The jarring synthwork sounds like what would happen if Kraftwerk decided to score a Syd & Marty Krofft special. Don't even get me started on her cover version of "Physical".
I wish I could make mp3s off it, but the best I can do is point to this page which has Nathalie's ducky song and plenty of other goofy Quebecian pop.
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Sunday, February 16, 2003
Old computer ads. Texas Instruments is kickin' it old school. Word.
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"The Mickey Mouse Gas Mask was produced as part of the war production program. The Sun Rubber Company produced approximately 1,000 Mickey Mouse gas masks and earned an Army-Navy ‘E’ for excellence in wartime production in 1944." (via Boing Boing and several others)
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Thursday, February 13, 2003
Miscellanious Diversions ... Music to Score By, about the utter lameness of stadium sports music (I've said it before and I'll say it again - were I a pro baseball hitter, I would use "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" to psych out my opponents). Another Simpsons article that laments how the show took a turn for the worse for since 1996 or so. Peter Bagge at an anti-war rally.
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Wednesday, February 12, 2003
OK. I've been meaning to write about our trip to the humungous local booksale since we went last Saturday. Forgive me. Things have been pissy lately. I've been plagued with computer problems at work (damn pages won't print out) and home (why won't my mac burn CDs anymore?). Anyway, this booksale happens every year in a cavernous building near our house. The place was packed, yet civilized. For the most part. Christopher noted two smelly guys in the cookbook section who would rush through and throw stuff in their cart willy nilly. I noted two kids who insisted on going over their Star Trek paperbacks right there on the table where I was trying to look around them. The booty --
Bennett Cerf's The Laugh's On Me (Doubleday, 1959). Since I liked him on 'What's My Line?', I decided to look for a Bennett Cerf book in the humor section. I didn't have to look too hard. His name is on as many books as Bill Cosby, Steve Allen and Arts Buchwald and Linkletter combined. This particular one is a collection of funny-in-a-mainstream-way anecdotes that I imagine were read aloud at Bob and Betty Smith's split level living room cocktail parties to the mild delight of their neighbors.
Gerald Clarke - Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland (Random House, 2000). Looking through the biography section was interesting place to find flash in the pan celebs of years gone by. I'd come across, for example, a pile of Frank McCourts towering over a single, lonely Jim McMahon. I'd see dozens of Barbara Mandrells and wonder if that many people were really interested in her near-fatal auto accident enough to read about it. Anyway, this Judy Garland one is perfect for me, it's showbiz and tragedy and has plenty of b&w photos spread throughout the text. Just the way it ought to be.
Shirley Jackson - Life Among the Savages (1953; Penguin reprint). I've enjoyed Shirley Jackson's suspense stories and so this one got picked up. Surprisingly, it's a gently humorous memoir of sorts about life with Jackson's daffy suburban family in '50s Connecticut. I'm looking forward to this.
Michael Korda - Another Life: A Memoir of Other People (2000; Dell paperback). Another memoir. Korda came in contact with many larger-than-life personalities as an editor at Simon & Schuster. Not too highly praised by Amazon customers, but I already read the Joan Crawford chapter and it's a gem.
Not Quite TV Guide (Crown, 1983). Back in the '80s, some 'National Lampoon' veterans did a series of hilarious magazine parodies that were sold on newsstands alongside the publications they made fun of. There was a Cosmo one, a Rolling Stone one, and this one. Design-wise, it even fooled the checkout ladies into thinking I located a real TV Guide among the books. The level of detail is fascinating, right down to a cheezy looking page advertising the 'Seers Child Cleaning Service'.
Arthur Prager - Rascals At Large, or The Clue in the Old Nostalgia (Doubleday, 1971). A curiosity about popular kids' books between WWs I and II. Mr. Prager has a strange, overly baroque writing style somewhat inappropriate for dealing with the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew.
Evelyn Waugh - The Loved One (1948; Penguin reprint). Since the movie was wickedly funny, I figured the novel would be just as good. Bonus: this paperback edition has a lovely Deco revival illustration of a coffin on the cover.
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Tuesday, February 11, 2003
I was so impressed with Today In Literature's brainy arcana that I signed up for their email updates on the spot. Today's entry is on the ill-fated affair of Dante Gabriel Rosetti and Elizabeth Siddal Thanks to Portage for pointing to this.
Reynolds Wrap promotional playing cards. Because nothing goes together better than cards and aluminum foil. Another swell item from Lileks' Jetsam Cove.
Oscar nominations came out today. In the acting categories I'm rooting for Julianne Moore, Daniel Day-Lewis, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper. How cool is it that 'Bowling for Columbine' got a Best Documentary Feature nom?
Monday, February 10, 2003
The L.A. Weekly on song-poems; more in-depth than usual (thanks, Terry!).
The New York Times on song-poems (via The Minor Fall, The Major Lift).
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Sunday, February 09, 2003
Imagine my surprise finding this article on song-poems in the new Entertainment Weekly. It says there's a new PBS documentary and CD compilation on the subject coming out this Tuesday, yay. The song-poem industry, which peaked in the '60s and early '70s, allows would-be songwriters to submit their own lyrics to be recorded by faceless musicians for a fee. The two songs with the EW article are typical, sounding like sub-standard, indifferently performed pop music smushed with unstructured, bizarre lyrics. My description of it doesn't sound so wonderful, but believe me it is.
Friday, February 07, 2003
 The Tiny Pinapple Nurse Book Collection includes plot synopses and lovely cover scans. Great artwork. I'm mesmerized by Nurses Three: A Career for Kelly.
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Thursday, February 06, 2003
Mark Evanier had an amusing post on his weblog about a mystery on the back cover of the dvd for 'The Producers'. It concerns a picture of an attractive young woman who apparently wasn't in the film. This may seem strange, but not really. That's because the dvd was released by MGM Home Video, home to perhaps the worst graphic designers ever. Packaging-wise, just about everything the company produces completely defies logic.
First things first. If Photoshop Abuse was a crime, these people would be doing hard time at Sing Sing. I'd love to know what goes through their minds as they do the following: smooth out flesh tones and shadows until the actors have a doll-like complexion. Place a gauzy white sheen in the background. Colorize a black and white headshot, then carelessly plop it in front of an image which may or may not be from the movie it's advertising. Who knows.
Worst of all are the designs that cheapen otherwise good films. I'm thinking of their recent Thelma & Louise Special Edition in particular. Go ahead and look, if you dare. If you're feeling masochistic, compare it with the earlier dvd package, which was adapted from the theatrical poster. That design simply told what the movie was about: friendship, freedom, solidarity. By contrast, the special edition cover shows a bored looking Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis pursued by oddly blurry police cars and carefully placed helicopers (or should I say "helicopter and clone of helicopter that underwent Photoshop's 'flip horizontal' feature"). And it's tinted piss yellow. What's so "Special" about that?
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Wednesday, February 05, 2003
A German church organ just started playing the first note of a John Cage composition called "As Slow As Possible." If all goes well, it should be finished in 639 years. Yow. (via the Sound Scavengers List)
Toomorrow was an outer space-themed bubblegum rock musical, a big budget flop from 1970 that's been rarely seen since. It's best known for having a young Olivia Newton-John in the cast. I just thought the picture above was cute, don't ask me why. More pics here.
Two "actresses who played housekeepers in sitcoms" obits found via TV Tattle: this Nell Carter appreciation reads like an elaborate joke. Not very sincere, but funny nonetheless. And here's one for Nedra Volz, the tiny, white haired woman who replaced Charlotte Rae on 'Diff'rent Strokes'. I was surprised to find she lived not far from me in Mesa, AZ -- which can only mean that she was already dead before actually keeling over. Ba-dum-bump. Thank you, thank you, you've been a lovely audience.
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Tuesday, February 04, 2003
Today's 365 Days selection is "Creative Freakout" by the Hellers, a rare demo reel of various '60s advertising jingles tied together with narration by a gumshoe detective called Johnny Spots. I downloaded this two years ago when it was posted at Basic Hip's and it truly is a groovy time capsule.
Bad news for McMansion inhabitants with bare walls - the galleries of Thomas Kinkaide, Painter of Light (TM) are hitting hard times. Awww. (via ArtsJournal). Speaking of robots: look at Michael Cricton's Westworld site - cool clips and everything! (via Consumptive)
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All about Coyle and Sharpe, early masters of the put-on and street prank. Jennifer Sharpe did an outstanding job here, very thorough and crafted with an intimacy missing from most "fan" sites (in case you're wondering, Sharpe and Sharpe are father and daughter).
Sunday, February 02, 2003
What do I have to show for this weekend, where everything happened and nothing got done? A selection of TV Guide Ads from 1953-54.
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