If you aren’t regularly perusing archive.org‘s ever-expanding selection of 78rpm recordings, you’re missing out, friend. It’s a treasure trove of vintage delicacies you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Their Paul Robeson collection alone is enough to send one into fits of rapture. And it’s all public domain, so you can download mp3s to your heart’s content, completely guilt free.

Nevertheless, something tells me you’ve been bad, very bad, this week, so here’s a cheeky little ditty from 1917 to usher in your weekend:

Download “Naughty, Naughty, Naughty” by Dan W. Quinn

I’m worried, I’m worried, thinking about you
and here’s the reason why
Its all on account of the things that you do
You know you’re naughty and I know it, too
You made me love you right from the start
Why do you play with my heart?

(Image from vintagespank.com.)

Naughty, naughty, naughty.
Can’t you be good? Can’t you be good?
Things you do just set me wild
Still you’re daddy’s angel child
If you keep on worrying me
I’m going to take you right across my knee
Because you’re naughty, naughty, oh so naughty
Just a naughty baby to me

With a grateful pat on the petudie to DJ Dead Billy for the mp3 link.

Passions ignite at The Crucible foundry in Oakland, CA.

Down by the West Oakland Bart station, often late into the night, one may observe mysterious flickering lights accompanied by loud explosions. If it ain’t gunshots, you can be sure some welder, sculptor or pyrotechnics whiz at the Crucible foundry is burning the midnight oil.

Founded by Michael Sturtz in 1999, this nonprofit educational hub of fine and industrial arts has attracted a highly motivated group of artists, artisans and students from all over the country. “From cast iron to neon, and from large-scale public art to the most precise kinetic sculpture, The Crucible is fast becoming the best-equipped public industry & arts education facility on the West Coast.”

Ballet star Tina Bohnstedt cruises in a vintage Pontiac (Firebird, natch).
Photo by Gary Wilson

Last year, audiences were astounded by the collective’s incendiary production of Romeo and Juliet. Their second annual “benefit fire ballet”, a decidedly ballsy interpretation Stravinsky’s Firebird, opens tonight:

[A] unique fusion of classical ballet, aerialists, acrobats, fire performers, break dancers…paired with fire and industrial arts. It’s definitely ballet with an industrial edge provided by Crucible artisans, a cameo appearance by a Pontiac Firebird, and a ballerina’s graceful pas-de-deux with a motorcycle stunt rider.

The production’s running every night through the 12th, with additional shows on the 16th, 17th and 19th. Proceeds from ticket sales will go directly towards supporting the Crucible school. All shows are expected to sell out, so if you’re thinking of going (and I know folks as far away as San Diego and Portland are making the trip) get your tickets in advance.

• official Crucible website
• Oakland Tribune article about Michael Sturtz & co
• “All Fired Up” Crucible feature in SFGate

Esteemed reader Tanya Vrodova says, “I love cabbage. I will do anything to spread the word about how awesome cabbage is.” To that end, she just introduced me to Chinese multidisciplinary artist Han Bing and his mischievous Walking the Cabbage (2000-2007) series.

Walking the Cabbage in the Subway Beijing, 2004 © Han Bing

Born in 1974 in an poverty-stricken village, Han Bing spent his childhood helping his parents farm the land and was the only student in his class afforded the chance to attend university. There he studied oil painting before moving on to less conventional mediums. His post-university work has focused on creating spontaneous, open-ended discourse that includes members of society who are often excluded or dismissed. He, like many other young Chinese artist, seems compelled to confront the dubious side effects of his nation’s obsession with urbanizing and modernizing at whatever cost.

From Bing’s website:

Walking the Cabbage (2000-2007) series of social intervention performance, video and photography works, Han Bing walks a Chinese cabbage on a leash in public places, inverting an ordinary practice to provoke debate and critical thinking. Walking the Cabbage is a playful twist on a serious subject—the way our everyday practices serve to constitute “normalcy” and our identities are often constituted by the act of claiming objects as our possessions. A quintessentially Chinese symbol of sustenance and comfort for poor Chinese turned upside down, Han Bing’s cabbage on a leash offers a visual interrogation of contemporary social values.

The Cabbage Walking Tribe in Harajuku I, Tokyo, Japan 2006 © Han Bing

Jhayne did it again. She made my day:

(Where on earth do you find these gems, love?)

No doubt I’m a jaded soul for questioning the sincerity of Fred Spencer and his lovely wife Sharon. Then again, I was raised on the deadpan weirdness of David Lynch. In a hyper-ironic meme world brimming with Tims, Erics, Liams, and Saschas, it’s impossible for this charismatic couple from Kelowna, BC to remain above suspicion. But… I want to believe!

What do you think? Friends, or faux? Either way, what’s not to love?

Famed German/American composer Kurt Weill was born this day in 1900. He’s best remembered for Threepenny Opera and other collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht.

A clip from the excellent September Songs tribute, shot in the early 90s:

September Songs includes some great interpretations from Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, William S. Burroughs and others, but this scene in particular slays me. Charlie Haden’s bass is just dripping with feel. The couple depicting Weill and his wife Lotte Lenya are dancing to a sublime old recording of “Speak Low” sung by Weill himself.

C.F. Wick, Berlin, Theater des Westens, 1987

Weimar culture flat out refuses to die. There’s still a freshness and an urgency to the stuff that keeps generation after generation coming back. So many of us cut our teeth on either Liza and Joel or Alan in Cabaret and that damned Doors’ cover of “Alabama Song.” Without Brecht and Weill, there could be no Rocky Horror Picture Show. I must’ve played “Pirate Jenny” with the band Barbez a thousand times, and even after all these years, the sight of my friend Amanda battering her Kurzweil keyboard (altered to read KURTWEILL) still makes me grin from ear to ear. We have yet to tire of the cabaret. Why should we, with its immortal pledge to sexual freedom, inclusion, and playful rebellion? I think so long as there are perverts and revolutionaries in the world with a taste for whiskey and melodrama, Weill’s music, and its filthy little children, will have relevance.

• Kurt Weill Foundation for Music
• Kurt Weill Onstage: From Berlin to Broadway
• abbreviated Kurt Weill discography
• Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin

Via Matrixsynth, the Furby Gurdy:

Inventor Nervous Squirrel explains:

Each furby has 4 controls: mute, crash, loop and reset. The handle turns 8 cams which operate corresponding microswitches to create interesting rhythmic patterns. Part of the ‘setting up’ section at the beginning has been fast forwarded. Please commission me to make lots more of these machines!

Hang in there ’til the furbies gets revved up. It’s actually rather beautiful.

Thanks for the heads up, Jhayne! (If you haven’t been over to Whitechapel’s filthy and absurd “Things That Should Not Exist” thread, go now. Bring wet naps.)

Adam Shepard, this one’s for you:

(Song dedication inspired by Siege, thanks.)

Shepard is the author of Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, a book that’s getting an awful lot of buzz right now. From an article at the CSM:

Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor’s degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charles­ton, S.C. But Shepard’s descent into poverty in the summer of 2006 was no accident. Shortly after graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., he intentionally left his parents’ home to test the vivacity of the American Dream. His goal: to have a furnished apartment, a car, and $2,500 in savings within a year.

To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education. During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

Adam Shepard asks, who is John Galt? No, really… who is he? Why are you laughing? (photo by Nicole Hill)

I’ll preface my opinions by stating that I believe wholeheartedly in the power of self-perpetuating positivity, of elbow grease over idle hope. Self-pity is certainly one of the more corrosive emotions in the human canon, and I have to think that even in the most dire circumstances, one can improve a bad situation by somehow preserving their sense of self-worth. (Easier said than done, of course.) That being stated, Scratch Beginnings is a self-aggrandizing, dishonest account that does not deserve the hype.

A fresh-faced, educated young man in excellent mental and physical health who keeps an emergency credit card tucked into his back pocket isn’t starting from scratch. He’s starting from privilege. Shepard has had a lifetime of parental “you can be anything you want to be, sweetie” hand-holding to bolster him. It shows in every page of his solipsistic account.

Yeah, okay, I know. Everyone and their granny has already blogged about this, but I just gotta chime in to quickly say that Garfield Minus Garfield is the most unexpected laff riot this side of Cthulhu Family Circus. Some sage old fart once said something along the lines of “the greatest truths are the simplest, so likewise are the greatest men” and that tenet definitely applies here:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.

It’s a shame that any attempt to make a Garfield Minus Garfield day-to-day calendar would be cockblocked by copyright litigation. Hey, I freakin’ loathe day calendars. They’re pointless, inane, a waste of trees. But seriously, I’d consider running out and getting some soul-destroying cubicle day job just to have an excuse to purchase and read the paper version of Garfield Minus Garfield every gosh darn day. Suck it, Dilbert!

(Via Circle the Globe, thanks.)

Occasionally, while exploring the wild untrammeled frontiers of the world wide interwub, you’ll stumble across something so revelatory, so mind-bogglingly exquisite, it knocks you back several feet, clutching your head and speaking in tongues. Today I had just such an experience. Like Nietzsche who gazed too long into the abyss or Icarus who flew too close to the sun, I shall never be the same, for I have seen the cruel, implacable face of G*d:

Three examples of finely crafted deer butt alien head taxidermy, a.k.a. “assquatch art.”

Via Redneck Craft Tips by Don Burleson (the web page that cracked my poor brain open like a pistachio nut):

For centuries, families have enjoyed the camaraderie and joy of making alien heads from deer butts. Join the fun! Once you know the secrets, it’s easy to transform an ordinary deer butt into a work of redneck fine art. Let’s take a closer look at this ancient and noble craft…

All you need to create your own deer art is a styrofoam mannequin head, a fresh deer butt, a sharp knife and some glue and you are ready to get started making your own deer masterpiece.

This is indeed a disturbing universe.

Many people say that the real red neck art is the shaping of the deer anus to look like a mouth. This is the true test of the artists loving hand.

The anus can be made very simple, or you can stretch the anus for realistic effects such as smiles and frowns. In general, the leading deer butt artists concentrate on the details of the mouth.

Thank you, Mr Burleson, for exposing an ignorant city mouse like me to this rustic art form. Not since 1996 –when I fished a homemade hunting video called Mostly Squirrels out of the bargain bin at Poughkeepsie Video Barn– have I known such divine ecstasy.

The bald, glistening pate of Telly Savalas has always stirred unutterable longings deep within me. I’m having trouble deciding which video for his cover of “If” I love more. This first version, where Kojak’s officially the shy one at some orgy…

Woo! Sphincter Cam! (via Fark)

or this one, in which he serenades an enormous, nonplussed, vaseline-smeared head:

All I know for sure is, I really want a cigarette right now.