Radiohead (live) the MTV ten spot

Metafilter's gift to me, regifted to you.

You see what happens, Larry?

This is the best censorship EVER!

Things to do in Saskatchewan when you're sober

...open a can with your teeth:


You know, in Alberta we have this thing we do where we pull the pull-tab forward with our hands so it pops the spout open. True story!
[via MeFi]

He who smelt it, delt it.

In the name of science, the intrepid crew at Mythbusters tackle perhaps the ultimate urban legend: Do pretty girls fart?

So, ya married Norm Sun-of-a-Gunnarson, eh?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central   "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The Midland
The West
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Well, not so much mistaken for Canadian, there...

"I would rather staple my ears to a horse."

From the inimitable BBC Top Gear, a sports car race with a difference: Can Clarkson & friends finish building a Caterham 7 in kit form before the Stig can drive a finished one to the track?

Albertans awarded new premier

Edmonton, Alberta -- After spending nearly $20 in quarters at the West Edmonton Mall skill-claw machine, Albertans were awarded a lovely, washable, polyester-free made in Canada Premier today. Also, Army awarded Alberta a seal for marksmanship and a gorilla for sand racing.

(Seriously, Stelmach was probably the least horrifying choice the PCs could have made--on a scale from 1 to Ted Morton, he rates an "ok, I guess"--but either the Sun editor hates him or he needs to give better photo, I'm not sure which...)

The joint is jumpin'

Duke Robillard (ex-Roomful of Blues), live in Paris, October 2006:

Kill the hippie! Kill the hippie!

It's official: The Young Ones is Britain's 31st best sitcom EVAR!



*smashes other 30 shows over head with cricket bat, screams "shut up you bastards!"*

More like Steve McQueen than Sheryl Crow will ever be

Five reasons this clip (the car chase from "Bullitt") is cool:

1. It's probably the number one non-Carroll Shelby reason '67 Mustang fastbacks rule. (Make mine red, though.)


2. The moment, right around the time the bad guys notice McQueen in their rearview and smoke the tires on the Charger, that the soundtrack music switches from the magnificent Lalo Schifrin to the gifted, Detroit-based composers FoMoCo and Mopar.


3. Like every movie of the '60s and '70s, every single city-streets shot contains at least one VW Bug. Punchbuggy would be a bloodsport.


4. The drinking game: Every time the Charger loses a hubcap, take a swig.


5. Steve McQueen. 'Nuff said.

Welcome to the jungle, baby!

Exhibit A: David Foster Wallace, author of "Infinite Jest"
(photo from the Onion's rather amusing Sunday Magazine thingy)


Exhibit B: Axl Rose, author of that bit at the end of "Sweet Child O' Mine" that goes, "Where do we go now a-whoooahooahoooahoa sweet chi-ee--iiii-ee-iii-ee-ii-ee-ii-eee-iiiild of mi--eee-iiiiiiine"


Am I the only one who notices a resemblace?

Q: What comes from Munich and sounds like a jet engine?

A: Hans-Joachim Stuck lapping the original 14-mile Nurburgring in a BMW M3.
[via the H.A.M.B.]

Brought to you by the letter "B-grade"

To get the full effect of WFMU's comprehensive roundup of Elvira-style TV horror movie hosts, try moving your head back and forth, towards and away from your monitor, while Joe Flaherty says "Looook at all the text on the web page! Isn't it SCARY, kids?" in a terrible Bela Lugosi impression.

Come to think of it, there's probably a Firefox extension to do this for you...

Couldn't stand the weather

Extreme Instability is a photo gallery of one man's obession--nature at its worst.
[via MeFi]

See America right

For some people, a journey as long and daunting as a drive from Tennessee to Las Vegas ought to be done in a reliable, comfortable, high tech late model sedan--something with full climate control, plush seats, loads of legroom and a full DVD/GPS navigation & entertainment system with more transistors in it than the Starship Enterprise. However, for the Baron of Bias-plies, the Wallah of Whitewalls, Corky Coker--who runs a tire company that repops every form of obsolete rubber from Model T-era skidless pneumatic whatchamacallums to hot rod-approved pie crust cheater slicks--your old man's Accord won't do. No, he's making the journey in style, in a freshly built '32 Ford roadster, complete with supercharged flathead V8. And in a rare (and welcome) concession to the bugaboo of modernity, he's blogging it on his Blackberry. Go and read it, folks, at least you'll learn what "raining pitchforks and hammerhandles" means.
[via The Jalopy Journal]

So this is where babies come from...

...the same place as lobster harmonicas!

(actual story here.)

Brought to you by the letter "beta"

So, a coupla weeks ago I signed up for an account on Six Apart's new blog community thingamy, Vox. Thus far, I've written exactly one test post. Impressed with the feature set I was, but unlazy enough to migrate all 146 of my posts here I wasn't. (Note: for maximum effect, the previous sentence should be read in a terrible Yoda impression.) Today, I find out Blogger's new beta, with some of the same features, finally relaxed the velvet ropes enough to let trash like me in, so the plan is to pit the two services against each other on a barren desert planet and see which one figures out how to build a rudimentary cannon. Why I expect anyone except me to care, I dunno, but there it is.

Simply amazing

Quebec acoustic guitarist Erik Mongrain combines tapping and slap harmonics to unique, hypnotic effect. The last acoustic player to blow me away like this was probably Kaki King, and I think I'm feeling Mongrain's compositional sense a little more. Might be the next Leo Kottke.

[via WFMU's Beware of the Blog]

UPDATE! There's a good MeFi thread on Erik Mongrain right now, with some links to other fantastic guitarists as well.

Tommy Emmanuel's "Day Tripper/Lady Madonna" lesson


Mark Wilson's "New Horizons"

Filed under:

• guitar
• acoustic
• harmonics
• music
• video
• erik-mongrain

Insane vehicular overkill, thy name is Vauxhall

Ever wonder what'd happen if you shoehorn a twin-turboed, nitrous-injected 572 cubic inch Chevy big block into a semi-teensy British compact? This guy did. And he claims it's the world's quickest and fastest street car.



Read more here. (Warning, headache-inducing red page background--try and make yourself colourblind or something before clicking.)
[via jalopnik]

Filed under:

• cars
• hotrods
• vauxhall

The '50s called, they want the future back

Fantastic gallery of '50s "Googie" signage and architecture--the flashy, futuristic style scientists say will adorn the amazing bowling alleys and drive-in restaurants of Tomorrow.
[via this MeFi thread, with even more tailfin-era goodness.]

Look out child 'cause I'm using technology

Iggy Pop's tour rider is kind of like "This Is Spinal Tap" if, instead of being a movie, it was a contract specifying the musical gear, food and refreshments required by the band, and instead of being fictional, it was 100% real. Sample quote:

We need one (1) monitor man who speaks good English and is not afraid of death.

(Only joking... or am I?)

Also, he needs to know a little bit about monitors. This may seem obvious, but believe me...

(For example, in Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia in Northern Spain, they appear to think--if they just ignore riders like this, then supply a fat, bearded hippy with a digital monitor desk (doh!) who doesn't know shit about eq-ing, and monitor wedges that would be better suited to wedging doors open, and a load of stage managers and PA geezers and promoters reps who shout a lot--that this is the same as providing what a band actually needs in order to do a gig to the best of their ability. And that if they deny that their gear is no good, it will suddenly, mysteriously become good.

I'd just like to say that the next time the Stooges get booked for their festival, I'm going to turn up with some pickled eggs, a small blue vibrator with a jelly dolphin balanced on the shaft, a set of dog-eared encyclopedias with the volume E-G missing, and a screwdriver that's been accidentally dropped in the toilet.
And then, when they say, "That's not the Stooges"
I'm going to say, "Yes it is!"
And then they'll say, "No it isn't!"
And I'm going to say, "Yes it is!!!"
See how they like it, fuckers.

Filed under:

• music
• funny
• iggy-pop
• smoking-gun

From the insanely great department...

Ask Metafilter thread: What is the appeal of Steve Wozniak?

Surprisingly humble response from... drum roll please... Woz himself. (Who joined just to respond, I might add.)

(Sadly, I suppose this means Adam Savage is no longer MeFi's official alpha nerd.)

Filed under:

• computers
• apple
• '80s
• steve-wozniak
• ask-metafilter

It's rainin' down in Texas

Stevie Ray Vaughan, "Texas Flood" (live at Montreaux Jazz Festival, 1982)


[via MeFi]

Filed under:

• music
• video
• youtube
• guitar
• srv
• stevie-ray-vaughan
• '80s

Please do not bang your head on the display case

You see, folks, Aldomania (which for those of you not in the know, involves a very rare Mary Worth in which she advises a friendstalker to commit suicide) will never die. It'll just move to the Playstation. C'mon, Sony and Konami, make it happen. You know you wanna.

Can't you hear me yell-a? STELLA!

Fill your pockets full of quarters, grab your two-litre bottle of Shasta and your all-Rush mixtape and beepbloopbeep on over to WFMU's all-Atari mp3 roundup. You won't be sorry you did.

Filed under:

• music
• games
• retrocomputing
• '80s
• atari
• mp3

Ye cannae' change the laws o' physics, Captain!

There's a term in German, which translates roughly as earworm (I believe the original term is something like achtungeinzweivolkswagenleibensraumlengthendeustchenwordmitdercreepyfandomdasderdavidhasselhoff)[*] At any rate, it means "unwelcome song stuck in your head", but the word always reminds me of that scene in Star Trek II where Khan sticks that space slug in Chekhov's ear to try to discover the secret of the fine Corinthian leather the Federation used to upholster the luxurious USS Plymouth Reliant. Which kinda makes this video... apropriate, somehow.


[via the artist formerly known as ambush bugPhasor Burn]

[*] This, clearly, is a joke upon the Germans and their habit of forming ridiculously long compound words to describe every single situation, or as they would have it, gesundheitdasistcompletelytruethatanyphraseingermansoundenderscarylikeeinerammsteinlyric. [**]
[**] This, clearly, is an unnecessary footnote to explain a joke that probably wasn't all that funny to begin with, or as the Germans would call it, blinkenlightsistnichtfuhrgerfingerpokenuntnomatterhowmanyfootnotesyouuseyouarestillnotdavidfosterwallacejackassenschnitzelbratwurst.

Filed under:

• funny
• music
• sf
• star-trek
• parody
• video
• youtube
• annoying

Big Daddy is our leader!

"Tales of the Rat Fink" is the forthcoming docutoon about Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's chrome-plated, fuel-injected and steppin-out-over-the-line influence on nearly everything that is awesome in America. Here's the trailer for y'all [via The H.A.M.B.]


Expect the ride to the theatre to look kinda like this:

(Aaron von Mindin's blown Model A coupe as filmed by the Mad Fabricators Society)

Filed under:

• cars
• hotrods
• kustom-kulture
• movies
• video
• big-daddy-roth

Rock around the Communist Bloc

This has to be the ultimate excersize in "Odd Rod" absurdity: The BBC's Top Gear hand a six-year-old Lada Niva over to Lotus for 1000 man-hours' worth of high performance mods--tweaked suspension, new brakes, wheels and tires, a 180hp Fiat twincam to replace the original boat anchor and a sinister black-and-silver paint job. This has to be the ultimate borscht rocket. (Thanks, Melvin!)

Filed under:

• cars
• hotrods
• wtf
• lada
• tuner
• lotus
• top-gear
• video
• youtube

LEONARD BERNSTEIN!

Celebrate the early years of the definitive '80s college rock band (R.E.M., naturally) with an all-star jam on "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" at Athens, Georgia's 40 Watt club (where the boys had their earliest gigs.) Note that, while it is great, it does not start with birds, snakes or aeroplanes. Lenny Bruce, however, is not afraid.

Filed under:

• music
• '80s
• r.e.m.
• video
• youtube
• all-star-jam

Once more onto the penguin, dear fellows

I've been playing with Ubuntu Linux a little bit of late. I've grown tired of the slow bloat factor my Windows install has acquired of late, and decided that a few pennies for a blank CD-R beats the hell outta a few hundred for a new computer. Some observations:

• The install was very nearly a breeze--the only hitch was it choked on trying to resize the NTFS partition on my drive. It wound up not being a problem as I just clobbered an old Linux partition instead. Other than that, though, it was not only the easier Linux install I've ever done, it was considerably easier than any Windows install ever. Just pick a timezone, language and keyboard, and all your hardware should be detected and set up automagically.


• I did need to futz around a bit with xorg.conf to get my Wacom tablet working properly. Hopefully this'll work a little better in the next release.


• EasyUbuntu was a godsend as far as installing and configuring software that, for legal reasons, couldn't be included with the basic live-CD. Flash, video players and codecs, that kind of thing. Still haven't got embedded video of the non-flash variety working in Firefox, but YouTube works, and that's 90% of what I care about these days, web video-wise.


• General ease of use: Ubuntu ships with the Gnome desktop, which I've never really played with before, but it works pretty much like you'd think it should. About the only major adjustment I've had to deal with is having an application menu on top of the screen instead of a "Start" menu at the bottom. The live-CD contains one app for everything, rather than a lot of Linux distros that ship with 5 different web browsers, 8 mp3 players, 22 terminal emulators and 166 versions of Solitaire. This must add a whole lot of clarity to a Linux newbie's experience, and for power users any other apps you need are a few clicks away in the Synaptic package manager. Win/win.

Filed under:

• computers
• linux
• ubuntu
• nerdery

Turn around. Turn around, bright eyes.

PARIS, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Passengers on a flight from France to Mauritius have filed suit against Air France after musician Bonnie Tyler performed a song at the request of the co-pilot.

The passengers, believed to be Belgian, complained to the airline after the Welsh singer performed part of her 1983 hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at the request of the co-pilot, who retired after the flight, The Mail on Sunday reported.

"I was asleep in First Class. The stewardess came and said the co-pilot was retiring. And they asked me would I sing to him. They were having a bit of a party," Tyler said.

The complaining passengers reportedly claimed they were traumatized by the experience and had feared for their safety during the celebration. The complaint eventually escalated into a legal dispute.

An Air France official said: "The claim against Air France, which it completely rejects, is that the celebrations got more and more unruly and came to a climax when Bonnie sang.

"Air France is saying that any suggestion there was anything more than a few slaps on the back for the co-pilot is nonsense, and it completely rejects the claims that the passengers were at any sort of risk."

Any possible punchline I could add here would be like a moustache on the Mona Lisa, folks. [via Bedazzled]

The Well-Tempered Teenybopper

Danny Pi's "How to Write a Fugue" applies Bach's methods to Britney's material, with amusing results. Somewhere in Heaven, Glenn Gould is laughing his ass off.

Eeeerie.

Okay, unless you've been living under a different rock than me, you've probably seen Joel Veitch's (no relation) "Viking Kittens", in which a pair of cute, helmet and battleaxe-equipped felinelets "sing" Led Zeppelin's "The Immigrant Song." Behold, if you will, the eerie cosmic coincidences unveiled when that video is synched up with Jonathan Coulton's "The Ikea Song":


This is like the new "Dark Side of the Rainbow.

Vaaaaaaaaaaan Gaaaaaaaaaaaaalen!

Calgary's very own Chad VanGaalen brings the awesome with "Flower Gardens." Not only the music, that is, but the psychedelic animation as well. Let's see you top that one, A-Ha.



(P.S., the video's not broken, it's actually supposed to be more-or-less black for the first 15 seconds or so.)

Dead music legends of the world, unite!

Ray Charles on the "Johnny Cash Show":


[via telescreen]

Now if anybody's got video of Johnny Cash doing "Mess Around" or "In The Heat of the Night"...

Strum it like a polaroid picture

Matt Weddle of Obadiah Parker finds the bittersweet acoustic centre of the Tootsie Roll that is OutKast's "Hey Ya":


Ladies, I didn't blog this thing for nothin'. I wanna see y'all on your baddest behaviour. Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbour.

[via mefi]

Also, for those of you whose minimum daily requirement of F-bombs has not been filled, Nina Gordon (formerly of Veruca Salt) Lilithises NWA's "Straight Outta Compton":


And now, Interweb, I command you to cover Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" in the talkin' blues style a la "Bob Dylan's Dream".

Stephen says you're on notice!

Behold the glory that is the Colbert Report "On Notice Board" generator... and tremble, ye mighty, before its wrath.

[via xoverboard]

The years of sand and speed

Coop has a wonderful post featuring scans of Veda Orr's Hot Rod Pictorial, a late-'40s yearbook of the dawn of SCTA land speed racing. Orr was a fascinating woman--the first woman dry lakes racer, the first hot rod journalist (she wrote and edited for the SCTA's newsletter before the outbreak of WWII, and even put a couple of issues together during the war as a morale booster for the boys overseas)--and the period between the mid-1930s and late-1940s was a hugely influential one in terms of the look and technology of the traditional hot rod. Well worth a look.

I find your lack of funk disturbing

A glimpse at how things might have been, had Darth Vader been more of a streetwise soul brother, voiced by let's say James Earl Jones, rather than an athsmatic evil overlord, voiced by James Earl Jones:



[via Apropos of Something]

Sixteen men on a dead man's chest, and I been drinkin' from a broken cup

Tom Waits has to rank as one of my favourite artists of all time these days. His music ranges from heartbreaking jazz and country ballads, to rowdy blues-rock, to gonzo oddball circus-freak dances, to things that sound like a crime scene from a Raymond Chandler novel. Need Coffee (a sentiment I heartily agree with) has a killer, almost-all-inclusive roundup of Tom Waits' videos: Part One, Part Two.

And here's a couple more:

"God's Away on Business"


Probably his best-known song, "Downtown Train". You've probably heard the Rod Stewart version; Waits' original is pretty much note-for-note identical, but somehow sounds fatalistic instead of sentimental. Go figure.

Tourists of the world, unite!

Check out these e-cards from the Museum of Communism in Prague. Come for the amusing Stalinist kitsch, stay for the chilling reminders of how well-intentioned radical ideology turns into a worse system of repression than what it was supposed to replace.

Extra irony points for using the local McDonald's as a landmark to find the place.

[via adfreak]

Flight of the Kiwi

How a farmer in New Zealand built and flew an airplane nine months before the Wright Brothers.

Go fast, turn left

Before "stock cars" meant rolling billboards with multi-million dollar budgets that bear no resemblance to the cars they supposedly represent, the American midwest was full of dirt ovals, where local daredevils would brave bodily harm in stripped down, homebrewed specials. Hotrods & Roadsters of Central Kansas offers a glimpse into this bygone era.

Found on the HAMB, alongside this video:

Honk if you're horn-y, or "The Best Ever Death Metal Blog Post out of Crossfield"

See, I could be like every other smart-assed blogger in the Nine Circles of Bloghenna (or Bloggatory or Hades 2.0 or whatever they're calling it these days) and celebrate National Day of Slayer with some sort of curse-ory link to the NDOS website or something. It turns out, though, that the Dark Lord is everywhere you least expect him. Here's a brief Who's Who of the infernal servants of evil:

• Catholics. I mean, you knew the Pope had to be in league with something to pull off that hat, right? Confidential to J.R. of Vatican City: Next time, try a snappy fedora. No one will suspect a thing!


• Protestants. I guess it takes one to know one.


• The Jews. I mean, sure they invented the bagel--and have frickin' awesome hats--but any religion that requires you to skip the bacon and the cheese on your clubhouse? Get thee behind me!


• Okay, the usual suspects--Ozzy, Slayer, Marilyn Manson, etc., are a given. But did you know of the evil that lurks within REO Speedwagon? Or Amy Grant? I read it on the Internet, it must be true!


• The US Government. Wait a second, there's nothing to mock here...

Spot any more? Leave 'em in the comments box.

It ain't Paso, but it'll do

I went to the Diablos'[*] Rockabilly, uh, Whatchamadoodle[**] hot rod show today. Not a huge turnout--there were maybe 40 or 50 cars and a dozen or so bikes when I got there--but there were definitely some high-quality rides present. Nice tunes, too. Anyway, if you're craving eye candy[***], I've got all the goodies on my Flickr page. Or at least all the goodies I could capture given my sudden onset of memorycardus forgetticus.

[*] The Calgary Diablos, not the Liberty City ones.

[**] Ten second's googlage tells me it's plain old "Rockabilly Car Show", and not some catchy "Rockabilly Rat Rod Rumble Rebellion"-type thing. Hey, a rose by any other name etc. etc., right?

[***] "Candy" being a not-so-accurate term given my photographic ability. 'Spose I oughtta wipe the dust of my lens sometime this year, eh?

Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart

Proof that, for one weekend a year, Paso Robles, California is the coolest place on earth:





[via the H.A.M.B.]

Satan's Fingers, The Killers or the Hospital Bombers

Continuing the impromptu metal theme today, here's my current musical obsession, The Mountain Goats, rocking out with (most of) "The Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton". Throw the horns, people, throw the horns. It's like we're celebrating National Day of Slayer early.

From the crystal ice cathedrals of a mystic land called Sweden

Yngwie F***ing Malmsteen unleashes the f***ing fury
on "I'll See The Light Tonight".



(Note: I mock, but it would take seven or eight of me in perfect synchronization to play that fast. Presumably it's because I don't have a guy in a furry viking helmet waving a sword in front of a radar screen to inspire me. Somebody wanna get on that?)

When "sis boom bah" doesn't describe the sound of a sheep exploding

Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers

See, I'm pretty sure I was this guy's downstairs neighbour once. No wonder I don't live in an apartment anymore.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Proof that the mashup meme has gone too far--terrifyingly so:

Somebody has built robotic exoskeletons for cockroaches. Listen, buddy, next time you wanna combine Franz Kafka, Battletech and somebody's worst nightmare, howzabout just making a video or something?

Oh what a feeling

Traditional American style executed with obsolete Japanese hardware. Somebody needs to build one of these full-scale--mind you, a '59 Toyota is probably pretty tiny, so you'd have to be Vern Troyer to actually fit in one with that radical of a chop.

Original image here.

Further evidence of my retrofuturist fixation

Way back in my teenage years, I used to spend summers out at my grandparents' place in the idyllic hippieville of Nelson, B.C.

One of the many ways I loved to pass the time involved digging through one of my cousin's piles of pre-'80s Mechanix Illustrated-type magazines. There was something weirdly poignant about the mix of do-it-yourself ingenuity and overzealous faith in technology. Modern Mechanix fully groks the appeal of that era, the era when the future was a gleaming vista of jet planes, neon-lit martinis and, er, yodelling robots.

Hell of a dangerous time to be an actress, though.

Our secret is people

You don't have a mom
You don't have a daddy
You're just a bun and an all-beef patty
You're a hamburger
-- The Vestibules, "You're A Hamburger"

Tonight's feature presentation: "They're Made of Meat."

No, really. They are.

And they... is US!

The one, the only...

Muddy Waters, circa '68, doing "Long Distance Call". Not 100% sure, but that might well be Paul Butterfield blowing harp on this one.



Also, a guy playing slide guitar with a spoon. In his mouth. While playing regular chords with his hands.

Elaine, do archaeologists know about shrinkage?

King Tut's Penis Rediscovered.

Seems they just weren't looking deep enough in his, er, Valley of the Kings. At least now he knows how George Costanza felt.

We now return to your regularly scheduled, 73% penis-free Internet.

Dig through the ditches and burn through the witches

Grandpa Munster takes the Dragula for a ride:



[via the H.A.M.B.]

Do you want New Wave or do you want the truth?

Remember the oppressive boredom and the rising tide of conservatism that was the early '80s? Me neither. If I did, I'm pretty sure my coping strategy would have involved Hot Wheels cars, the Dukes of Hazzard and the Sesame Street Capital I song. But if I was a teen or twentysomething back then, it definitely would have required some sort of punk rock treatment. Thus, today's video schnippetry:
The Clash on NBC doing "The Magnificent Seven" and "This Is Radio Clash". Missing in action: Spiky '77 punk hair. Present and correct: Dive-bomber sound effects, real-time live graffiti.
Devo on the David Letterman show. Missing: Flower pot hats. Present and correct: Keytar!

Oh, and the post title? A reference to awe-inspiring West Coast punk oddballs, the Minutemen, here seen singing "Politcal Song For Michael Jackson to Sing":

It came from beyond the blue box!

Ever wonder exactly what happens to your recyclables after the homeless guy picks 'em out of the dumpster and parks his severely overloaded 1988 Sears mountain bike at the bottle depot? The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has a neat infographic-type thingamy explaining the process. Hey, anything that involves both saving the planet andshooting aluminum through the air with oscillating magnetic currents gets my vote. (You're only shooting it three or four feet, though, guys? You've gotta do waaaaay better than that if we're gonna repel the invading armies of evil with a stack of crushed beer cans and some Tesla-grade mad science.)

Long time ago when they was fab

The Beatles:


Only partially The Beatles:


Definitely not The Beatles:

Putting the "uge" in Nuge

No, I don't know what I meant by that either. Still, behold the glory that is "Journey To The Centre Of Your Mind" by The Amboy Dukes...



..then wonder what made Ted Nugent the man he is today. Apparently, this is what happens when you say no to drugs.

Off the road again

One of the most notorious drunk drivers in the Ottawa area has been found not criminally responsible on his latest impaired driving charges because of a mental disorder that makes him believe female celebrities are controlling his actions.

...

The 33-year-old man told psychiatrists that he knew the legal repercussions of his actions, but believed singer Shania Twain was helping him drive.

I believe this legal precedent will in the future be known as the Carrie Underwood defence.

1UP PRESS START

The Mario and Zelda Big Band and friends in concert, covering Nintendo videogame themes. Keep watching; after the first few songs this manages to transcend the novelty value and actually become mesmerising.

Doin' the headline boogie

The Aural Times sings the news so that you don't have to. Kind of like T. Herman Zweibel meets Tom Lehrer. Or like Songs To Wear Pants To without the restrictive dress code.

I mean, pants? I'm with Homer on that one.

this post brought to you by the one-man committee to subconsciously rip off dong resin's writing style, in association with metafilter post number 49784 and Viewers Like You. please give generously, or if you prefer a different adjective, indifferently, obsequiously or supercallifragillisticexpialadociously.

Oooo waah oh wah-o-wah-o!

Entrancingly weird video for a 1948 Japanese swing tune, "Jungle Boogie." Directed by Japanese film legend Akira Kurosawa ("The Seven Samurai", etc.) Click it to play it.

"Aaaah, that's one heck of a nurse."

Perhaps one of the greatest televisual artefacts of the Jack-FM generation, and the greatest justification for Phil Collins' existence outside of that one point in "In The Air Tonight" when the tom-toms come in--c'mon, you know you air-drum to that when no-one's looking, too--Brit puppet satirists Spitting Image doing the video for Genesis' "Land of Confusion." The following are not safe from mockery: Reagan, Thatcher, the Ayatollah, Godzilla, Mr. Spock, Live Aid and of course, Genesis themselves. Click the pic and crank yr speakers.

(I still reserve the right to find the earlier, obtuse and pretentious prog rock of their Peter Gabriel/"The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" era better musically, though.)

Watch for flying hippies

Das Oldendukeboys ich hab gern ein whole mess o' trouble; Herr Enos, Herr Cletus unt Boss Haagendazs ist hot on zee tail, but zer ist ein shortencuten...

Imagine the damage he could have done with a kazoo or jew's harp...

Rajesh Pabary, prosecuting, said that when the officers arrived at the flat in Seaford, East Sussex, last June Jones "armed himself with the didgeridoo and shouted, 'I'll f***ing have you and any copper who dares to come in.' He continued to shout in a similar vein, swinging the didgeridoo at windows. They did not smash but bowed a little.

When asked why he committed the assault, Jones replied, "He tied me kangaroo down, sport. He tied me kangaroo down!" (Thanks, Melvin!)

The man in black meets the bird in yellow

Johnny Cash rewrites Don't Take Your Guns To Town for Sesame Street. Counting ensues. [via screenhead]

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

I've got some photos up of the Calgary World of Wheels show.

Two fingers, my friends.

I may very well have blogged this video before somewhere else, but WFMU's got a great video of gypsy jazz guitar legend Django Rheinhart. That guy played better with only two fingers on his left hand than most guys--yours truly included!--can with five. Killer.

Some more guitar video goodness:


Frank Zappa doing the Allman Brothers' "Whipping Post"--not really into the rhythm section sound on this, but Frank's solo is devastating


Joe Maphis, country picker extraordinaire, puts his double-neck Mosrite through its paces on what looks like the Barbara Mandrell Show


Surf guitar legend Dick Dale, circa his '90s comeback, doing "Nitro"

You know what you are, Randy? A reshitivist.

Announcing the Swearing Festival.

Because, in the words of Trailer Park Supervisor Jim Lahey, "A shit leopard can't change its spots."

It seemed funny ten minutes ago

sight gag in response to this

Open up your ears and clean out your eyes

Music video addicts, meet your new crack. WFMU alerted me to the existence of this ILX thread linking to about a metric gazillion rare/underground music videos on YouTube. (YouTube's previous claim to fame was being the world's number one place to watch bored teenagers crack fart jokes and injure each other without the multiple horrors of interacting with actual bored teenagers.)

Thrill! to quasi-blues wierdnik Captain Beefheart on some circa-1966 Dick Clark Beach Hullabaloo show!

Spill! to Iggy and the Stooges' proto-punk/free-jazz mashup, with helpful play-by-play during Iggy's crowd-surfing antics! ("That looks like peanut butter, folks!")

Chill! to the Miles Davis quintet doing "So What"--but remember, you're never gonna out-cool Miles. Not when John Coltrane whips out the sax. You'll be thinking bluelight revelations from an elder god, Miles was thinking "Smoke break!"

Hang around the arcade and Mill! about to Rush's spot-on evocation of '80s suburban teen angst, ennui and maybe even some emotions that have names in English, Subdivisions.

All of which might drive you to take a Pill! to the trippy backdrop of Yo La Tengo, Spacemen 3 and, er, whatever the hell this thing is. (Remember, kids, song titles and band names are good, unpronounceable jumbles of punctuation not so good.)

You might wanna avoid the drugs, though. Otherwise you're gonna wind up killing your neighbours over a dandelion, or worse yet sharing an awkward cab-ride with John Lennon and Bob Dylan. Don'r say I didn't warn you.

Put the needle on the record, and the drumbeats go like this

Most people see the teeming, unsorted pile of LPs at the back of every thrift store and garage sale in the world as something to be avoided.

A tiny few see it as a chance to score some classic rock n' roll for pocket change, or as a potential source of that one killer breakbeat sample no other DJ on Earth will know about.

Vinyl Odditites, on the other hand, sees a comedy goldmine.

On Disco Tex and his Sex-O-Lettes' self-titled LP:

AN LP FROM the only time in human history when you could dress like Truman Capote and, with the addition of some gold jewelry, look like a pimp.

On psychiatrist Dr. Murray Banks' comedy album:

HOW WE PINE for the days when neuroses were cute. During the Fifties and Sixties, comedians mined their petty ticks and anxieties for a comedy motherload. Where you a nervous, stammering Jew with a persecution complex and a problem with women? You were Woody Allen! Were you a milquetoast, overly deferential nobody terrified of authority? You were Bob Newhart!

Pixel pushin'

Playing around with photochopping some cars using the Gimp. Neat details about this one: Chrome grille and headlights using Alien Color Map (they were body colour on the original pic), metalflake paint using one of the noise generation tools and some creative airbrushing and transparency hacks.

Oh yeah, and it was beige originally, on ugly '80s wheels.

(Car is a '47 Chevy Fleetline, original pic is I think from Carnut.)

The rain in Svensh0lm falls mainly on the plain

Swedish flatpack furniture + post-Eliza AI = The IKEA dialogues. Hilarity ensues. [via a whole lotta nothing]

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

Off to Vancouver for a week. Expect posts here to be even more sporadic than usual.

Bettie Page has a posse

Playing around with the Wacom and Inkscape vector drawing software. I'm kinda diggin' high contrast black & white right now.

You can't do that on stagerecord store shelves anymore

"You've got a naked woman on all fours, wearing a dog collar, with a man's hand pushing a black glove into her face, forcing her to sniff it? You don't find that offensive? You don't find that sexist?"
"What's wrong with being sexy?"

52 banned album covers. [via vidiot]

(also, on a completely unrelated tip, why the f. is the track listing wrong on the new Kanye West? Seriously, record labels of the world, if we wanted bad metadata and virus infections, we could get that for free.)