I’d like to give a shout out to all my English major peeps with this “Pitch ‘n’ Putt with Joyce ‘n’ Beckett” a short film so rife with literary gravitas and pretentious humor that it nearly succumbs under its own weight. So load up your Calabash, ease into your favorite chair, and chuckle at each and every joke, satisfied that you are only one of a minority who could possibly grasp the humour found therein. Just don’t think about all the time you had to waste reading Finnegans Wake.
Have I mentioned lately that Archive.org is the sh…
…aving cream? It really is. You could stand to spend more time over there, trust me.
Avid listeners of Dr. Demento will recognize this song by Benny Bell. I’m too young to boast that I listened to Dr. D back in the day, when he first brought about the Jewish-American singer/songwriter’s revival. However, I was lucky enough to live down the block from one Mister Goodman, a charming alcoholic widower with a portable record player. On balmy late summer afternoons, he’d sit on his front porch nursing a tall glass of “ice water” and playing old LPs. Naturally, Benny Bell’s relentlessly juvenile double-entendres were a huge hit with the neighborhood kids.
Mr Goodman was more than happy to play us classic Bell ditties like “Without Pants”, “A Goose For My Girl” and “My Grandfather Had a Long One” over and over again, provided we promised never to sing them in front of our parents. We were more than happy to hang out on his lawn for hours, sipping cans of 7-UP and shouting “SSSSSHHHHHAVING CREAM” at appropriate (and inappropriate) intervals until Mr. Goodman fell too far into his cups and started muttering darkly about Korea. At which time we’d all claim we heard our mothers calling and head home for dinner.
Originally I wrote off Score For a Hole in the Ground as another one of ex-Pogues member Jem Finer’s conspicuous musical stunts, much like his Longplayer and its thousand year composition. Score is in much the same vein. A musical sculpture with a score composed by nature (opposed to the computer of Longplayer), it is based on the Japanese, ceremonial suikinkutsu (literally translated “water harp chamber”) and uses dripping water falling on resonant discs. In order to amplify the sounds Finer created a giant horn, based on the horn of a gramophone. The horn also channels sounds from outside the chamber, such as airplanes and birds, allowing them to meld with the sound of the water droplets.
It’s this that elevated the work for me, I think, specifically the picture above. It’s a ghostly scene, something out of an Edward Gorey illustration or an early Terry Gilliam film, this giant gramophone horn standing menacingly in the fog. It’s in this that Finer’s vision coalesces. Wandering through the forest one hears faint, metallic clangs. Following the sound, slowly becoming louder while remaining just as distant, a towering structure comes into view, emerging from the depths of Kingswood Forest. The real art here is in the discovery.
Compulsively watchable, this simple video will give you a happy-sad feeling. It features my favorite British actor, Mark Heap. Heap got his start as a street-performing juggler, and many will recognize him from his roles in the shows Spaced (where he played Brian), Jam (where he played characters so demented, there’s a Coilhouse Jam appreciation post all of its own), Spine Chillers (as a gothic landlord with a dark secret), Big Train, Green Wing, Brass Eye and many others. Heap is one of the greats of British surrealist comedy, co-writing many of his sketches and instilling his most memorable characters with a brilliant lunacy that seems to emanate from a very genuine place.
The music video above is not that new, it goes by very fast, and always puts me in a good, though vaguely wistful, sort of mood. A brief description of what you’re about to see, by music reviewer Ryan Dombal:
The entirety of the day-in-the-life short focuses on Heap’s head as he falls down bus stairs, see-saws with his toddler daughter, and finally sinks into a soothing bath. Ostensibly wearing a camera harnessed to his person (the same magnetizing technique recently employed to great effect by Pi director Darren Aronofsky), the whole thing is a fascinating face study with the middle-aged thespian’s worn creases and bluish bruises giving the camera gobs to work with. Heap manages to convey the heartbreak of a divorced dad, the workman’s daily grind, and, lastly, the song’s titular relieved expression with startling believability, making his nameless centerpiece a rare music video character worth caring about.
Perhaps this week more than others, seeing the red double-decker buses and London streetcorners in the background of the video adds to the mild nostalgia induced by this clip. See, everyone’s been asking me “Hey, Nadya! How’s London?” In a nutshell, the move fell through. To make a long story short: one day after I arrived to the UK, finally completing the relocation that had been carefully planned for more than a year, our London office was shut down (for economic reasons). I was forced to return the US. Luckily, my company was generous enough to offer a relocation package to any US city where we still had an office. I chose San Francisco. I’m excited. No use in crying over spilled milk, right? London will always be there, and one day I’ll return. In the meantime: Yay Area, here I come!
But back to the amazing Mark Heap. Enjoy the video! I’ve posted some more theatrical, fun and deranged moments from various points in Heap’s acting career after the jump.
The three hairs on the tip of a kitteh’s tail are Teh Debbil’s hairs, driving cats to prowl the night when all Lard-fearing beasts should be abed. And while all of The Lard’s blessed wee lambs lie asleep and dreaming of teh baby Jebus, underworldly Seitanic dreck like THIS is holding a Sabutt in the depth of the night, dontcha know. Such unholiness is presided over by The Debbil Himself in the form of a Grand Black Kitteh. Filth! Unclean!
*and apparently, so is After Effects.
Once the host of witches and sorcerers swoop in on salve-anointed broomsticks, the infernal rituals begin. The coven pays homage to their enthroned Debbil Kitteh, making offerings to him of unbaptized children and reading particularly noxious passages from Teh Hairy Pooter seriez. Each minion of Seitan must renew an oath of fidelity and obedience, shuffling past the felonious feline in single file to kiss his dingleberry-ensconced bunghole (some witches claim that he keeps a second face under his tail that looks like THIS). They then celebrate Teh Black Mess, lighting black candles from a flickering torch balanced atop D0OM KITT3h’s head, and turning their backs to the altar. The Sabutt feast commences. The flesh of hanged men, hearts of unbaptized children, Twizzlers, and a variety of unclean animals (like THESE) are then consumed.**
**Text reiterated vaguely from SnikSnak‘s entry on Cat Devilry.
(This post brought to you by muscle relaxants and the finest pipe-weed in all the Shire. Meow meow meow meow…)
Are you ready to have your mind blown? If the answer is yes, prepare for the bass stylings of one Hyunmo Kim, a South Korean man who “hopes to be the world’s greatest stupid idiot bass player”. He does this in a dress. With pigtails. He is a pigtailed man in a dress with mad bass skillz who does not drink milk until he gags or examine his delicate faux-cleavage with the aid of his camera. You must be imagining things. It’s probably the awesomeness of his bass, frying your brain.
Whether it’s jet-lag delirium, an abiding love for handcranked slapstick comedy, an abiding love for my homeland’s Rayban-wearing forefathers, or an abiding love for Tony Millionaire that has sent me over the edge, this is making me die:
By the way, The Art of Tony Millionaireis coming out on Sept 2nd. A most beautiful and long overdue collection of gorgeous, fanciful and hilarious art. Geddit.
Perhaps, like me, you find yourself in the midst of a tedious post-lunch session of completing TPS reports or contemplating non-work related questions like if science will be able to conquer the problem of cooking pancakes in space or, perhaps, you are simply staring blankly into space, a thin thread of drool dangling from your chin. If so, cheer up. No one reads those TPS reports anyway and spacecakes will be more wondrous than you could ever imagine. Now, wipe the drool off your chin and prepare for the wonder of internet archived filmic majesty.
Today’s offering is the short television documentary Aleister Crowley: The Other Loch Ness Monster, detailing the history of Boleskine House, where once Wickedest Man in the World and occult obsessed trust fund baby Aleister Crowley intended to perform the ritual found in The Book of the Sacred Magick of Abra-Melin the Mage, in order to call forth his guardian angel. The six month operation required Crowley to summon a number of demons and attempt to turn them towards good. However, he was called away from Boleskine House in order to help his mentor — and then-head of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn — Samuel Liddell, leaving the ritual unfinished and, more importantly, the evil spirits he called forth unbanished. He did not banish them! They are still there! Nessie might be one of them! Jimmy Page’s friend totally heard one outside his door one time!
It’s crazy, crazy shit, yet completely entertaining. Besides it will eat up some time between now and five o’clock.
HOLY SHIT. I just discovered the website Everything Is Terrible (which should really be called Bad Touch Central, or Kill It With Fire). JACKPOT. I kind of feel like a kid who’s just come downstairs on Christmas morning and discovered grandma giving Santa a hummer a living room filled to the brim with goodies.
Be warned: at about 1:45, this clip gets downright demonic.
After discovering stuff like RE/SEARCH, those Incredibly Strange Music comps, zine culture, and wandering the specialty video store booths at the (then much smaller, homegrown) San Diego Comic Convention, I realized there were entire fringe communities of weirdos compelled to do exactly the same thing! I was so excited! We were all trading these grainy, janky 4th generation bootlegs of our favorite oddball material. Pre internet, those communities were more localized. One the internet kicked in, it went global. Of course, now we have YouTube [and better yet, Vimeo]…
…and Everything Is Terrible –bless their black, festering hearts– has a channel chock full o’ madness. These are only a few of the more soul-rending clips they’ve culled from the etherstatic for our pleasure. If you’ve got an hour (or several) to kill (as violently and memorably as possible), you should probably head on over there. Or, if you quailed upon viewing these clips, click here instead.
More Everything Is Terrible curated gems after the jump.
EDIT 1 2009/08/04 1:50pm: Oh no! YouTube just suspended EIT’s account. “[You] won’t be able to watch most of our videos until we find a new home for them. We’re working hard to rebuild, but it’s going to take a little while. Sit down, breathe into a paper bag, and try to relax. We will keep you updated. Don’t worry, we will continue to post new videos.”
It’s been days since we hastily cooked up that batch of bathtub MDMA in honor of the Zobogrammatron’s incept date. Still, I don’t think I’ve quite come down yet, so I’m not really sure what we’re watching right now, folks. I do know that it is very colorful and shiny and retro and Japanese and somehow vaguely Lovecraftian by way of Fisher Price, and thus, it cannot help but to be better than coffee.*
OctopieInTheSky, who has created an entire YouTube channel devoted to the show, may be able to clarify:
A messed-up kids program which first appeared on the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation’s JOCX-TV on October 1st, 1973. Every episode is basically about Kure Kure Takora wanting something that belongs to the other characters and then tries to steal it. While the episodes only run 2 and a half minutes each, you’ll be treated to acts of:
antisocial behavior (always guaranteed)
random violence (guaranteed)
cannibalism
Love triangles that cross not only species but also plant/animal classifications
