Overheard:

I was told they don't put on as good a show as they used
to...

The Jarvis Cocker Story

In the early morning bedroom gloom, as I shuffled my aging mortal coil around looking for the belt I wanted, I asked the Bride, laying abed with child, "So, if this-era yoga Jarvis called and said 'come with me,' would you go?"

She assented without a nanosecond pause and added that I would have to stay here AND do yoga.

So that's where I stand.

Limited Edition "RAFE on KUBRICK" book!

These two posts can be printed out and put stapled together by me in a very limited edition for, I dunno, a hundred bucks? Send it and we'll work something out.

Here's the cover art mock-up, cover text will be in that "New Order 1981" font that doesn't load in MSPaint.

Act now!

MORE Rafe on Kubrick!

"Well, you know, I haven't actually seen any of Kubrick's movies, because, while I can see Dad's face in the morning when he changes my sodden didie, I can't really make out a lot of different colors and the like just yet, so I will wait...but that doesn't mean I can't have an opinion, you know?

So, I just got wind of this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/movies/room-237-documentary-with-theories-about-the-shining.html

These people really have much too much time, if you ask me. Couldn't it all be down to just great design? I'm sure I could watch, someday when I can see, I dunno, Flatliners, and if I watched it enough with proper intent, I could see all sorts of things about connections between Robert Goddard and Averell Harriman and the Crusades and Rosicrucianism and "Paul is Dead" and folding twenty-dollar bills to look like Hindenburg going down...but chance favors the prepared mind, as the man said.

If you really want a theory on The Shining, here's one: you know that movie The Shining? you're in it right now.

Makes about as much sense, to my infant ass! Ta!"

Well, if it ain't ol' Pumpkin Neck!

"Quicquid plantatur solo, solo cedit!" *

This junk find will come in handy to annoy the Bride and everyone else!
















* "whatever is affixed to the soil passes with a grant of the soil"

A REMINDER:

When you get a ticket stub on a toll freeway or at the airport, be sure to put it in the overhead sun visor thing for safekeeping, as Don Eddy always did!

Rafe on Kubrick/technology

"Well, you know, it's probably been said all over the place, but I wouldn't know because I'm only 15 weeks old, so pardon me if I'm being trite, but all these tablets and iPads and the like - they are a total play on the thing that Dave and Frank watch the BBC 12 interview on in 2001! But exactly: flat, all screen...I'm really looking forward to seeing Clockwork Orange, as well, just to see what came to pass out of that, besides the band name Heaven 17. Barry Lyndon [chuckles]...? Not so much!"

Mom, sacked!

Director found for my Gene Tenace dream project

Watched The Brown Bunny on Friday night, and it was every bit as horrible as one would expect. Even the "famous scene" was stultifying and pointless. Needless to say, loved it, if that makes sense. The super-Warholian "let's make sure we show every second of him getting his motorcycle out of his van, 'cos otherwise the audience won't believe he really got it out..." school of film making!

Anyway, old Vince has shown me with this that he is worthy of taking on my Gene Tenace project mentioned last week. Either him or a stranger I meet on the street who's never seen a movie before would do equally well.

Yeeech!

Was at a well-known fast food establishment and ordered a Coke with my other poison and when I got back here and inserted straw and sipped, it was DIET.

Godawful! I do not know how you diet beverage drinkers do it, even after they've been making diet drinks for three years or however long.

Weekend

"Kill Tenace, Anyone?"

Wow, that is indeed the (terrible) working title for my latest never-to-be-written/produced screenplay!

In the grand tradition of my other fab movie ideas (http://nickeddyrelents.blogspot.com/2010/03/three-movie-plots.html ), I was struck over the head with the sudden need to pretend to make a movie when I read this (in that very same book about 70's baseball players discussed the other day):

And so it was back to Cincinnati for Game 6 [of the 1972 World Series],
where - in the lone blow-out of the Series - the Reds hammered Vida Blue and
three other A's pitchers for eight runs and 10 hits, while the A's managed only
one run off Ross Grimsley. After the game it was revealed that local authorities
had arrested a man at Riverfront who had been overheard making threatening
remarks about [A's catcher Gene] Tenace; the 32-year-old Louisville suspect had
a loaded pistol and a bottle of whiskey in his pants when he was arrested. "If
you got to go, Gene," Reggie Jackson joked, "at least it will be on national
television."

Now, I want you to sit still a minute and really try to think of a reason that someone should not make a starkly dramatic (with moments of mordant humor), realistic, meticulously true-to-era feature film about some guy from Louisville in 1972 having a bone to kill fucking Gene Tenace, of all people. What?? You can't think of a reason, is the point.

I mean, the movie could just be the dude's entire day leading up to his arrest, with vintage pickups and stopping to get gas with "What Condition (My Condition Is In)" on the radio in the station and vintage beef jerky wrappers and shit, never mind getting a budget together to rebuild replicas of parts of Riverfront stadium (for this would be a prestige production, flying loftily above mere CGI eye-foolery). Plus the casting of all the various Reds and A's players and Vin Scully and Bowie Kuhn and Kissinger and James Caan and Mick Ronson and everyone else who was around in 1972.

You can go ahead and do this, is the point. You have my permission.

Perils of microfame, pondered

I forget who, but a few years back some wag modified Warhol's Maxim to "In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people." Or have 29 followers!

But this occurred to me today, as I thought about how quickly now memes come on, flourish and fade. Even the most original ideas are parody-fodder in less than an hour. Which is fine, I guess.

But it makes me think of the olden days, when a band, say, could know that they were getting ready to ride the rollercoaster o' fame, or actresses in the "starmaking" era would know that in mere days or weeks, their lives would change forever.

Earlier today I saw this:















I'm not on tumblr (should be, yes - you might actually be reading this if I were!) or pinterest or Pinteresque or any of the like, but I wonder if, on the morning of the 23rd, when this went up (http://www.junk-culture.com/2012/01/art-of-alex-gross.html ), old Alex Gross had that feeling of "hey! I'm meme-able!" and that his 72 hours of cyber-buzz were indeed starting, possibly to grow bigger into some impossible-to-imagine Shepard Fairey-style VF partydom, or maybe to be the apex of his career and then back to the trenches of working at the campus bookstore/art supply place (probably).

Either way, microfame sounds dangerous. I mean, look what happened to the poor guy who pulled that girl out of the well! Or her, even.

From the "shit I'm glad I missed" dept.:

Was bequeathed a September 2004 issue of Spin and was so glad, on reading, that I missed out on the whole Warped Tour phenom, by dint of being ancient as all hell.

I mean: Atmosphere? Taking Back Sunday? Bad Religion?

This is another example of being grateful I was around when I was, with all the Prefab Sprout cassettes that denotes.

Chinchilla Bandit captured!

Sushi night!

Going to our fave sushi dive (in Fairborn, no less!) with Jack and his parents tonight!

In fact, Jack is now sorta-standing up in his little exersaucer contraption, so maybe he will be called upon to grill some stuff, a la Benihana:




















Meanwhile, Raiford goes for full assistant-professorship at a womens junior college not far from a fairly popular ski run:

"You once said to me that I was a cruel man/and you know I almost believed you."

Technique Week 2012 was a roaring success! Probably three more listens today and then this LP goes back on ice for a while.

Save the dates!: Technique Week 2013 will be from Monday January 21 to Friday January 25.

Please join us!

I try to avoid these, but

I cannot resist:

"I'm ready, Newt!"

You'll never who's wanting to take command of the sure-to-happen moon base that Mr Gingrich is promising voters!

Nope! Guess again!

It's Cheddarbob, one of the (now grown) kittens from the Cement Yard Five!

"I understand the fundamental [heh] uselessness of this endeavor, but am ready to take charge! Why the hell not?"

Overheard:

"See, and I got into .38 Special free, 'cos..."

loaf update (formerly DC news)

Another band name

This came to me a bit ago and was so uncanny in its crapness I must share (lucky you):

Christmas Presidents

Accentuate the crappy

Ugh - those radio commercials for the Rosetta Stone language courses!

"With Rosetta STONE, you can blah blah..."

Accent should be: "RosETta Stone;" at least, that's the way everyone in the English-speaking universe has always pronounced it, from history profs to the same-yclept local faux-REM band at your local commuter college (playing with Foggy Notion on the 16th!).

Why would I learn a foreign language from a company that doesn't get its accents right in English?

WHY?

"A well bundled D_____ tot naps at +22F."

Not, of course, to be confused with:

Did not know and wish I still did not...

that the term "cybrarian" was out there on the loose.

Hey, Viv from Spinal Tap!

Oh, and look:

Yep, Nada Surf bass dude still with the dreads as we collectively, as a nation, feared:




















And, strangely enough, on the very same Magnet splash page, I found this pic of
the long-not-thought-of (thank god) Ani DiFranco, looking like a worth-a-second-glance Mom-of-three that one would see at the Washington Square DLM, say.

Crazy!

As if she didn't have enough problems...

Per NME, Lana Del Rey says she's been sober for eight years.

So much for the perception of her not being boring!

Overheard:

You sound like a big mouse...

The wit and wisdom of Pete Rose

Reading a book a friend sent called Big Hair and Plastic Grass about 1970's baseball, and it's pretty good. Did you know that Oscar Gamble had huge hair?, etc.

What needs to be discussed is an anecdote that occurred after Jim Bouton's from-the-inside expose (and popular Jeopardy! clue) Ball Four came out and all the other carousing players hated Bouton's guts. Per the book:

When Bouton took the mound against the Reds, Pete Rose berated him from the
top step of the Cincinnati dugout, screaming "Fuck you, Shakespeare!"

CLASS!

A peek inside The Podal Factory

Here's where those guitar pedals mentioned earlier are being made:

I can only imagine how I must look

And, yes, as we traverse the eternal 1989 of the mind, I don't think I mentioned anything about Stone Roses reuniting...but today, in pursuit of some facts for some other brilliant and possibly never to be written post, I stumbled across this photo of the reunited band:














I understand that Mani has been hanging out/in Primal Scream for years, which can't be good for one's constitution, but wow.

Technique Week

You remember, of course, that next Monday will be the 23rd anniversary of Technique coming out. I've been listening to it all week so far, and I see little reason to stop.







Also, I have mentioned here on this blog (any number of times, excessively, obsessively) about the "lost" tracks from Waiting for the Siren's Call that Pete Hook once spoke of, then I always have gone on to say "where are they?" Ah! They are coming out. I need to research further:

Very interested to see if this cover was done by Peter Saville. Phoned in!

DON'T let the Bride read this

(See, I keep a list of books I think I need and then get them every six months or so from Alibris or whoever's cheapest. That retronaut site had a post over the weekend about WPA posters and shitfire!, do I ever need a book of same! Will save this back on the list and then get one in a few months! Shhh!)

ANOTHER Ian item!

And, why, we wondered, did Ian's tech-as-hell gloves have extra friction tape stuff on all finger surfaces but the pinkie and ring finger?

???

"Making Ian Open a Package"

Speaking of XTC, they should have followed up "Making Plans for Nigel" with a song titled as above...

Ian was by late Saturday afternoon, in fact - to pick up some keys of his that were in my possession...

I thought it would make for a fascinating pictorial to have him open a mysterious package that had arrived from Chicago!

Let's watch!





























































[cameo by anxious onlooker!]















Apologies to all you Schoonmaker-like continuity freaks out there - in the spirit of the rest of these, the final "reveal" shot was such a blurry mess that I had to retake it the next day, at a whole other house!















It was a GUITAR PEDAL, handcrafted by Mike Po! Yay!

Strange picture

This framed photo was out in the warehouse waiting to be pitched until I rescued it.

Why was this framed in first place??

Various XTC matters

1. Just read a thingy online where someone said there should be a D_____-based XTC cover band called Drums and Briars. Haw!

2. Had never seen the video for "King for a Day" (1989) until last week, and, gee - the hats, the UK teeth, not-playing-live - how weren't these guys bigger than Whitesnake?

Peanut Green's signed Jerry Rice dog shirt - in full!