I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

Let this set the tone for the coming year…

Some kind soul converted all of the “Science Songs” into MP3s!

http://www.acme.com/jef/singing_science/

The “Space Songs” LP is probably my finest thrift score of my high school years.

Spaghetti Ice Cream

I haven’t been this excited about a novelty food product since the octo-dog.

(I wasn’t all that excited, really.)

So, I got these new shoes… from Zappos. Believe the hype, it’s great shopping site—good idea, well run. I assume they’re losing money with the free shipping and free returns jazz or if they are in fact making money, within a year they’ll have some bubble-bursting terrible Kozmo.com-type implosion. (I used to work for Kozmo.com part-time in college.)

In the interest of fair balance, I’d also say that their rival shoes.com is indistinguishable. I also bought shoes there and the service was similarly excellent. Plus, they wrap it with a printed packaging tape with “shoes.com” written over and over, leading to juvenile-hilarious/unfortunate boxes like this:

My shoes are green booties, really… very Robin of Sherwood. They don’t seem very warm or padded, but they’re slip on and slouchy and have ultra-cool extraneous straps on thes. Like keds wrapped in the corpse of Kermit the Frog.

I’ll be taking them on the town tonight to see what the man on the street thinks.

According to iTunes, I listened to “Georgie Girl” by the New Seekers 35 times today.

I may be mentally ill.

This weekend Mitch, Doc and their friends went for dinner and drinks in Williamsburg to celebrate their birthdays (Doc and Mitch, not the friends).

One highlight was having “Better Things” turn up on Barcade’s house music and the friends (not my friends, their friends) call it as “Cakey’s theme” and another was Mitch’s fevered pitch for a new show called Dudes with Attitudes which involved him doing kung-fu in front of a read-projected tsunami, but the conversation inevitable turned to the phenomenon of “smoked vaginas.” Not for eating, mind you… it’s a common “spa” practice in Indonesia that a friend of a friend at the party had tried where in the subject sits on some sort of port-o-potty type chair as a crucible of flaming herbs emits fragrant smoke right up in your business, leaving the subject with a herby, dried-out and one would assume slightly more Prosciutto-like set of genitals.

Well, risking having an easily mis-interpreted cache on my browser (leading to some ‘splaining to do when someone—probably a haughty, easily offended Margaret Dumont type—types an “s” into my google and it immediately suggests “smoked vagina”), I looked it up. It is a real thing. And here’s the info—
http://www.siecus.org/inter/connection/conn0058.html

Suck it, grandma.

The Scared of Santa Gallery

“Awww, applesauce”

Soviet era candy spot featuring rockbilly-esque pop and creepy Santa Claus recieving presents…those Reds got it backwards.

This puts me in the mind of my old favorite Lambrett-Twist (previously posted)

Q. What are sensory integration cookies?

A. Sensory Integration Cookies for Puppets that Swallow are pretend cookies made out of varying textures designed to stimulate tactile awareness when children explore them. For children who have sensory defensiveness, the cookies are a nice way to allow them opportunities to explore at their own pace and will.

You can now buy food on Amazon, which seems like a pretty terrible idea. What is funny is they’re using the same template from their book/music/other crap so fucking bananas have “product features” and “If you like _, you’ll like _” only it’s a fucking avocado because you gave lettuce five stars. [I’m seethingly furious and hate everything in the world]. Check the reviews before you buy, friend.

I also got too much glee out of this online mag of cinema review, for one article on silent comedians for referring to the party where Fatty Arbuckle allegedly raped an actress with a bottle as “...little more than a one-man orgy featuring Fatty and half a dozen naked whores.” Elsewhere in the article, a footnote states “It was always difficult to imagine why a woman would want to mate with Harry Langdon,” which also makes me laugh. I think I like sex jokes at the expense of the long-dead.

I’ve also been obsessively watching silents lately, working my way (via Netflix) through 9 disks of the Harold Lloyd box set and catching Buster Keaton Mondays at Film Forum for the next two months.

Today I went to the nominally “dramatic” Douglas Fairbank’s Mark of Zorro... which was pretty much physical comedy seperated by wordy screen-filling intertitles and constant denouncement of “oppression.” Zorro was less a master swordsman in this incarnation than a master jump-over-a-lot-stuffs-man.

(Next I will write about the most specific downside of seeing silents in a live audience… there’s less distraction from the horrible rude/senile old people in the audience.)

Helsinkians are amazing.

Oh Wikipedia…

As a follow-up to my previous post on the worst TV shows ever, here’s Wiki’s article on The Worst Films Ever

I have been glued to EtiquetteHell.com for the last couple days after being linked to it in a friend’s wedding invitation.

...What followed was an incredibly tacky performance by a pair of dwarfs or very short people dressed in doll-like bride and groom costumes. Apparently, they’re called the “little people.” It really did not fit into the elegant reception that we had planned…

I’m well familiar with this song but never saw the video before—
—lots more at Pitchfork’s 100 Awesome Videos

Wikipedia lists TV Shows Cancelled After One Episode

Of most interest (aside from Jackie Gleason’s rant about You’re In The Picture, which everyone who cares about TV already knows about) is the British sitcom misfire Heil Honey! I’m Home, which even the title broadcasts suggests will be no good. Not “contraversial” or “tasteless” but tiresomely unfunny and punch-pulling which, since finding on YouTube, I can confirm—

Two satirical fish in a barrell… Hitler and “old sitcoms” (really not based on any particular sitcom but the platonic dis-ideal of them). Even Mel Brooks’ mining Hitler for laughs became tedious long before 1990 and this is sub-that.

Also the premise is really confusing… is it 1930? 1950? Why are they all American—the funniest thing about Hitler is his stupid shrill German (or accented) voice.

(If you particularly hate yourself, part 2 is here.)

This is only confirming my desire to make my sitcom parody “Hitler’s Pizzeria” (temp title), but I’m so grateful youtube exists so I can find stuff like this.

Although I like that other Zuiiken clip for the drama… this one is more ready to be featured in a mash-up or sampled into a techno song.

If you’re very vaguely naughty, you may be interested in “Sexy English” taught entirely by Russian call girls and the yakuza… no native speakers need apply!

Your new favorite band…

Pizzicato Five through an Konami filter

http://myspace.com/ymck

A couple of new blogs I’m psyched to find…

a sampler of things from the guy behind Tick Tock Toys, an archive of food/candy packaging of an earlier era, where I found the source my favorite AIM/Message Board icon.

Ironic Sans has the hand-drawn crosshatched look I’ve often imagined doing to this blog as well as interesting observations on design stuff in general. The highlight for me was the colorblindness artwork for your wall— The Ishihara Triptych—which the blogger shares with the rest of us.

Finally, this thing… which inexplicably entertains me to a ridiculous end:

I know it’s so old, but I really enjoyed playing Eyemaze’s Grow Cube and other related games.

“Playing” isn’t the best word but it’s more efficient than saying “got really confused, then frusterated, then looked up the walkthrough and did it.”