March 31, 2008

Retrotech: Jill

Jill operated via two-track cassette tape. One track contained the audio, the other contained information for the doll's movements (just like teddy ruxpin, and similar to the earliest animatronics at disneyland which used audio signals on multitrack tape to control both sound and robotics). It needed four 'C' batteries and a 9-volt. This hideous, cassette walkman atrocity cost $100 retail, and additional tapes were for sale. I'm not so sure about the "I'm smart" claim. Considering the technology, I'm guessing it's bullshit.

March 30, 2008

F'd Puppet of the Week 3/30/08

Fredrick had an imaginary friend called Mr. Buttons. Mr. Buttons spoke into Fredricks ear through a link of psychic energy tendrils. He told Fredrick wonderful things like stories of magical creatures in far off lands, and all about the secret drawer in Daddy's dresser where the gun was. At the trial Fredrick told everyone about Mr. Buttons, but they did not believe him. Just before the execution, Fredrick painted this picture, and then he cheated justice by choking himself to death in his cell with his own sock. The End.

March 27, 2008

Jerry Lewis Live In Las Vegas, 1984

I was given a beat up copy of "Jerry Lewis LIVE!" on VHS years and years ago, and I have to say that it was really damn entertaining. Here's a clip from that performance. Jerry delivers what has become my second favorite quickie joke of all-time at the 4:05 mark. Watching his act, you get the impression that Jerry is willing to do absolutely anything--ANYTHING!--to entertain these people. Is he willing to sing? Yes. Tell jokes? Absolutely. Dance? Of course. Physical tomfoolery? Just say the word. Cut his wrists? Sure. Crush a puppy with a kettle drum? Hey, whatever it takes.

Light Cycle, Cardboard Cycle

March 26, 2008

Exidy, Inc.: Purveyors Of The Exceptionally Strange

Man, oh, man! Did Exidy, Inc. create some weird-ass games during the golden years of the video arcade or what? Their first and most most popular optical light gun game was Crossbow (1983). Your mission is to protect a D&D-like party of slobs from the murderous ghosts, chimps, pterodactyls, archers, flaming chunks, buzzards, etc, etc, etc, as they march slowly toward the lair of the sinister, smiling bastard who shoots lightning bolts from his eyes. Yes, the visuals alone elevate Crossbow to an esteemed position in the pantheon of electronic weirdness, but like all the Exidy games of that time, it is the SOUNDS which put it over the top. Just listen to the carnage in the video below. They've managed to make the deaths of those whom you have been entrusted to protect INCREDIBLY entertaining and shocking at the same time. Crossbow was the first arcade game to use fully digitized sound and speech. From my experience, the fastest route to the smiling bastard is to choose the paths in the following order: red, red, red, green, red, red. Three years later, having disbanded with the altruistic notion of protecting on-screen characters, Exidy released Chiller, a sadistic gore-fest which holds the distinct honor of being the very first video game banned in the UK. Check out the video below and see if you can figure out why. Those were the two big ones, but the other games they released all had the same demented, politically incorrect flavor to them. Who Dunit has jive-talking pimps & murderous children, Cheyenne has whores & cranky Indians, Combat has a booby trap which cruelly launches soldiers to their deaths, Top Secret is like a horrific Spy Hunter...I love 'em. Below I've included links to the M.A.M.E. ROMs for most of the Exidy games. To play them, get the latest release of M.A.M.E. (version 0.124 as of this writing) and drop the .zip files directly into the "roms" folder--no need to unzip. For the light gun games, you'll need to adjust each game's preferences to allow you to use your mouse. The Macintosh version of M.A.M.E. can be found here. And should you require it, here's a handy video tutorial which walks you through the process of setting up M.A.M.E. 32 (the version I use) on your machine.

"Lost Highway" On Region 1 DVD: About F***in' Time!

I'm just really damn happy that, after more than a decade, Universal finally got around to releasing the last remaining Lynch film, Lost Highway, on DVD Tuesday. It's a total "McDVD" (no extras whatsoever) but I don't really care. Having that stuff would probably spoil the magic anyway. It just looks really, really beautiful--way more beautiful than the low resolution clips below might lead you to believe. The marriage of sound and image is simply fantastic. My only gripe with the film (and it's a minor one) is that, when the Mystery Man shows up at the desert cabin toward the end, he's a little too talkative and weird in a forced way. Much of the discussion at the time of the film's release was about Marilyn Manson's involvement (he was a lightning rod for controversy at the time), but his cameo is incidental, and his cover of "I Put A Spell On you" fits the mood of the scene in which it appears.

March 24, 2008

PIZZA TEEN! Readers Poll Results

QUESTION: Which comedic entertainer is most in need of a swift, firm kick in the balls?

  • Will Ferrell. 50%
  • Someone other than Will Ferrell. 50%
Be sure to vote in the current poll!

The White Elephant Record Exchange Project

David Bratton over at safetybear.com passed along a link to a bit of audio playfulness in which he recently participated. "The White Elephant Record Exchange Project was undertaken by 20 individuals in the late part of January 2008. The project involved sampling, composition, and ultimately all kinds of editing and manipulation of various original source material. Participants were first to find the "worst" and "most unusable" 12" vinyl record possible and hand it off to the curator. Those records were then distributed to the participants insuring everyone received a different record than the one they submitted. After receiving this record, the first goal was to complete one song..." Click HERE or the image above to read the full description and listen to the submissions. Fun stuff.

March 23, 2008

Retrotech: Captain Power

This blip on the pop culture radar lasted for one season, and was long after my time; in 1988, I was already serving in the military and stationed in Germany. But this show aired on the "american network" on saturday mornings, and at the time, I considered the technology to be groundbreaking. Similar to a home video arcade console from the 70's, the toy fighter jet or laser pistol you've bought to go along with the show fires light beams at the tv screen when enemies appear. What makes it all the cooler is the fact that they can fire back, so you have to dodge your weapon out of harm's way. If you do get hit, the cockpit of your toy blows up. Besides the broadcast show, there were videotapes consisting exclusively of battle action. Relive the thrill here. For the full experience, place your bid here, and fire up the VCR.

March 22, 2008

F'd Puppet of the Week 3/23/08

This delightful little scamp is a minor celebrity in England. I think it's his excellent puppet manipulation and simple charms that attract me the most. Happy Easter to all!

March 19, 2008

A PIZZA TEEN! WTF?! Photo Of The Day

Yours truly as a Japanese cowboy (left), a friend (center), and Umberto St. John (right) in the best Halloween costume ever! I'm guessing the photo is from '94 or '95.

March 18, 2008

Retrotech: Texas Instruments TI-99/4A

For only $525, it was the first consumer-level computer with a powerful 16K processor. 15 Colors. 64x48 pixels in "multicolor" mode. This was a quantum leap from my only previous computer experience, an atari 2600 basic programming cartridge. It was also a beautifully designed console. This model constituted 35% of all computers sold at the time, a huge corner on the market if you remember how many systems were available. My family got it for Christmas in 1981, and my seventh-grade geeky self immediately adopted it as my new best friend. Like the atari, it took ROM cartridges for games like this classic, "Hunt the Wumpus": A 5 1/4" floppy disc drive was an optional peripheral. So was a telephone cradle modem and, most impressive of all, a voice synthesizer. We didn't get any of that stuff, and only bought two ROM games before I permanently put in an Extended Basic cartridge to amp up the power. I soon started learning how to make my own programs. "Basic" computing was very intuitive and rewarding. I also subscribed to a texas instruments magazine which had programs printed out for you to copy. The most complex one was a pitfall clone. I spent several hours keying it in, and after it didn't work, I double checked for stray or errant keystrokes. Finally, it was running. Then I hooked up the audio tape interface and recorded it. The next day was the big test: hook up the cables, turn on the tape player, listen to it make glitchy noises for five minutes, boot up the program.... it works! I Am Computo! If you own a PC running windows, you can download a TI-99 emulator here. and check out the "microprocessor" on that stud!

March 17, 2008

CONTINUED AFTER NEXT PAGE #1

With this feature, I intend to showcase some "classic" comic-book advertisements. I feel this one is bizarre enough for a proper start:
Back cover of Fantastic Four #190

GOSH-WOW! #10

from Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #186

The Reason We Celebrate

This St. Patrick's Day, ask yourself this: What are we celebrating? If you are like most people, you probably don't have a confident answer and find it annoying that someone like me is killing your green Mardi Gras buzz by raising the issue. Are we celebrating nationalism? Christianity? Alcoholism? The vanquishing of snakes? Things were a lot simpler when I was a midget: St. Patrick's Day was mostly about shamrock shakes. Sad but true.

Everything's Gone Green

March 16, 2008

F'd Puppet of the Week 3/15/08

As an add-on to Lance's musical post for Harold and Maude, I offer these cute little finger puppets of everyone's favorite death-loving May/September romantics...

March 14, 2008

PIZZA TEEN! Readers Poll Results

QUESTION: Which of the following traits is the least "sexy"?

  • Intelligence 0%
  • Kindness 75%
  • Sensitivity 25%
Be sure to vote in the current poll!

March 13, 2008

Johnny Rotten, Television Personality

1976- a 19-year old from a poor family with rotten teeth and a permanently deformed back (from a childhood case of spinal meningitis) becomes frontman for the most infamous band in the world. Their notoriety is largely due to Johnny and company's remarks on the Bill Grundy show: 1979- after the Sex Pistols self-destruct, Johnny immediately forms Public Image Ltd. with guitar pioneer Keith Levene. Still a prankster, he pulls off what I consider to be one of the most subversive moments in television history, a call to arms on "American Bandstand": 1997- Johnny appears on "Judge Judy", presumably to promote the Sex Pistols reunion to an audience of daytime tv-watching housewives: 2004- Johnny appears on the British version of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! In most cases, reality shows are the final circle of hell for washed-up celebrities. But he proves himself still capable of getting on people's nerves by calling the show's viewers a bunch of "f*cking c*nts" during a live broadcast. Sadly, this moment is not available on youtube, nor is the series of insect documentaries he hosted for the discovery channel. What's next? A cooking show? (if the title "Rotten Food" showed up on my digital cable menu, I would definitely click on it. He lives nearby, maybe I should pitch the concept to him).

March 12, 2008

The Case Of The Vanishing Chet Baker Videos

Not so long ago, there used to be a ton of Chet Baker videos online, but they've vanished. This clip below was the best I could find. It's a montage clip from the great 1988 documentary Let's Get Lost. Toward the end of Baker's life, he frequently had to explain to audiences that they should be quiet and respectful because their obnoxiousness was ruining the mood. Here again, we see him having to chide the audience. At some point during my lifetime, people starting shouting and howling at the end of EVERY performance, even the quiet ones like this. If you're at the rock show, okay, fine, let it rip. But at a Chet Baker performance? Yes, congratulations to you, sir or madame! I hear your Braveheart war cry above all others assembled here tonight at the piano recital. As a reward for your inappropriate behavior, may cancer take root in your throat. The guy below just cracked me. I doubt Chet is seriously at risk of fading into obscurity because of an absence of streaming videos. His demands are out of line, but I sympathize with his frustration.

March 11, 2008

Revisiting The Third Reich n' Roll

Sure, we've all seen this before, The Residents' first film using a excerpt from their second album, The Third Reich n' Roll (1974-75). It's constantly showing up in music video retrospectives and exhibits. But until recently, I've forgotten how good it is. In two tracks (one for each side of the record), they parody 30 pop songs from the 60's, often layered on top of each other with machine guns and explosions mixed in. Even by Residents standards, it's abrasive. But it's also very funny, innovative, and punk rock, from way back when punk was just a gleam in Malcom McLaren's eye. The album cover portrays Dick Clark in a Nazi stormtrooper uniform. He allegedly found it amusing and had it framed for his office. These guys did it all: composed music, designed their artwork, made movies... no wonder I was so enamored with them in art school, when I spent many evenings drawing, tripping on acid, and listening to the Residents simultaneously. I owned every release on first issue Ralph Records vinyl. Commercial Album and Eskimo were my favorites, but these days, Third Reich n' Roll sounds refreshingly different. I'm also now familiar with the 60's songs they were destroying, which makes it more rewarding. I'm not into any of their studio recordings after the acclaimed Mole Trilogy. but I always enjoyed the theatrical, mind-bending live shows I attended in the 90's, and after nearly 40 years, they're still prolific and unique. If you're brave, give a listen to their cover of the Stones' "Satisfaction", a single which was released to promote the album but not included on it. Guaranteed to cause cranial hemorrhaging.

March 10, 2008

Retrotech: Magnavox Odyssey

The Odyssey home game system predated Atari's Pong by years: the first prototype was built in the late 60's (currently displayed at the Smithsonian) and it was on store shelves by 1972. It came with a storage box which included the colored plastic overlays (an idea pioneered way back in the 50's with Winky Dink) and a scotch tape dispenser for attaching them to your television screen. There were also playing cards, fake money, poker chips... they went as far as they could with the accessories, but it was still a primitive system: it made no sounds, and the removable cards didn't even contain components, only circuit jumper pins for the minor variations between games. And it needed six (!) batteries. After a year on the market, only half a million Odysseys were purchased. Part of the problem was that nothing like it existed before; people were confused by the concept of attaching something to their antenna terminals, and even some retailers told their customers that the unit would only work with Magnavox televisions. But a few years later, when home video games were ubiquitous, Odyssey inventor Ralph Baer helped develop the excellent Coleco Telstar, and scored a hit with Simon in 1978.

March 09, 2008

F'd Puppet of the Week 3/9/2008

Yes, it's retro childhood funtime with Hot Fudge. My favorite was the obvious Fonzzie rip off puppet complete with toothpick in the mouth and leather biker jacket. But the Seymor character was the stuff of nightmares. Skip ahead to the 3 minute mark to see him make the legacy of baseball hero and civil rights legend Willie Mayes into a nightmare...

March 08, 2008

March 07, 2008

March 06, 2008

Real Names From The New York State Census Of 1900

I like to haul this list down from the proverbial attic from time to time. The names below were those of actual, living citizens of New York state in the year 1900. The list was compiled by Nell Brady while she was doing research for her employer many years ago. Reading this list makes me ponder two scenarios: (1) back then, more people were poetic and adventurous when it came to naming their children, or (2) back then, people were way more fuckin' nutty than they are today. Or maybe both. Either way, it was certainly cooler than the legions of Haleys, Ashleys, and Ethans of today. Maybe I can get Nell to leave a comment in this post, providing a little more detail on how the list was compiled. Here are the names.

Fannie Ten Elshof Lottie Dibble Gridje Homdink Harry Sink Gertie Priest Fannie Fiddler Royal Klink Mamie Graceland Pearl, Otto, & Orange A. Sink Fetty McBoon Ole & Almond Alred Hattie Flatto Minnie & Amos Moakly Rettie Dewy Barty Elver Phillelia Orvis Lina Legg Valentine Quell Ignatz Klink Prid Pixly Beatrice Hamberger Calling K. Kay Nellie Quack Peter Parsley Hazel Baron Eliphelet Burch Archie Dumpy Fern Noble Lemon Small Cary Coffin Day, May, & Ray Seaburg Roxie C. Seabury Christ Topper Thorough Polite Standish Deake Green Speight Netty Bippy Maple Petters Stedwick Stedman Alphonses Kronheimer Tennessee Throop Cary A. Fork Tromp Wacker Ophelis Bustin Lucinda Butterly Louella Gee Myrtle Duddy Elish Bean Francis Fatman Wolf Gunsberg Emma Mess Orange Harrass Fannie Baron Chinky Mass Klikenny West FIRST NAMES ONLY Peril Flossie Striped Zippera Biddy Kissy Coonrod Plinny Pleasant Roach Cooch Zebulon Cooke Raper

10-Second Clips Of Cranky, Faded Celebrities

Prepare yourself, because this is some dark shit, man. Think life sucks? Well, it can't possibly be any worse than having to supplement your income by hopping from one nondescript convention center to another on the autograph circuit. I guess this is the future: no more still photography, just 10-second video clips of life's most banal moments accompanied by the buzz of tedious small talk. Everyone seems so bored or depressed, and the pounding fluorescent lighting sucks the color out of everyone,...even Gary Coleman. "Look, pal, I've heard it all before, so just give me your twenty bucks and shove the glossy up your ass, for all I care. Why do you hate me, God? Why?!" Johnny Whitaker / Butch Patrick Gary Burghoff / Erin Moran Lou Ferigno / Gary Coleman Marc Singer / Joyce DeWitt & Priscilla Barnes

Ephemeral Video Alert!: "Whatever Happened To Mason Reese?"

The video won't last long. I'm sure director Brett Ratner's lawyers are already on the case.

Blue Screen Perfection: "Megaforce"

The amount of money spent promoting Megaforce must have been out of this world! I recall seeing ads for it everywhere, especially on the backs of magazines & comic books. It even had it's own Atari game at a time when only the biggest movies where given such lavish treatment. Megaforce came out in 1982, but it looks at least 5 years behind it's time-- Blade Runner came out in 1982, for crying out loud! I only saw it years after its release on network TV, but man, my friends could not WAIT to see it, and I recall how crushed their souls were afterward by the sheer boredom of the experience. In hindsight, the film plays like the highest budget hardcore gay porn film ever produced featuring a lesser known Gibb brother...but stripped of all the screwing. There were, however, two extraordinary moments in the film which would have been worth the price of admission, and they are both preserved in the video below.

March 05, 2008

PIZZA TEEN! Readers Poll Results

QUESTION: How many votes will this poll receive?

  • No more than 6. 10%
  • About 7 or 8. 40%
  • 8 to 10. 20%
  • More than 10, but less than 15. 20%
  • 15 or more. 10%
The poll received 10 votes total. Be sure to vote in the current poll!

"Go Baby Go!"

Benny Hill Kung Fu Satire

More than anything else, it was this little Benny Hill film which caused me to save my money and buy an 8mm movie camera. The time reverse and dummy tricks never get old. I would stay up late every night during fourth and fifth grade, risking my mother's wrath, praying that this film or the one with the red-afro soccer player would be shown.

Six Modern Chanteuses Who Float My Boat

If I'm perfectly honest with myself, I have probably had a mild crush on each of the six ladies below at one point or another. The accompanying tracks are the ones which I feel really seal the deal for me. If I found myself in the presence of any of them even today, I would certainly flip out and make an ass of myself. They've all got a great set of pipes, that's for sure. I'll swap you two Beyoncés, half a dozen Kelly Clarksons, three Avril Lavignes, the entire Mariah Carey musical library, and a six-pack of Bud for just ONE Sharleen Spiteri, kid. Nicole Blackman, American, born 1971 performance artist, poet, author, vocalist The Golden Palominos "Drown" Elizabeth Fraser, Scottish, born 1963 former Cocteau Twins singer Cocteau Twins "My Truth" Toni Halliday, British, born 1964 former Curve singer Curve "Frozen" Sharleen Spiteri, Scottish, born 1967 lead singer of Texas Texas "Dream Hotel" Tracey Thorn, British, born 1962 singer of Everything But The Girl Massive Attack "Protection" Anka Wolbert, Dutch former keyboardist/singer of Xymox Xymox "Imagination"

A PIZZA TEEN! WTF?! Photo Of The Day

No, these are neither stills from the latest Paul McCarthy performance nor promotional images from the forthcoming film Mask 2: Rocky Dennis Takes Manhattan. I snapped them tonight while passing the window display of New York Costumes, located at 4th & Broadway, the site of a vanished Quaker blood cult's burial ground, apparently. Three words: fetal...alcohol...syndrome.

March 04, 2008

Phantasm Memories

My mom had a hot date with this guy named Dick Erskine some Saturday night in the fall of 1981. He had two teenage sons. They were several years older than myself, but we got along okay because we'd bonded over Atari. I was nine-years old. Mom brought me over to their swanky house that night then hit the road with Dick (who, in the long run, revealed himself to truly BE a dick). The two kids had rented a couple of movies. Back then, VCRs were really goddamn rare because they were so expensive. One of the movies was a really gory samurai movie I've long forgotten about, and the other was Phantasm. They turned off the lights and cranked the sound. The film opens with a couple getting it on in a graveyard, and I distinctly recall the older kid laughing and saying, "Hey, Lance, you know what they're doing, right?" I was addicted to re-runs of Benny Hill at the time and I'd developed a pretty good British accent, so using that British accent, I responded, "I'd rather not say!" which cracked them all up. It's 27 years later, and I'm STILL talking about that film, so obviously the experience was pretty powerful. I've come to recognize that much of it's appeal for me is the soundtrack by the late Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave. Don Coscarelli, the film's writer and director, says the following in the soundtrack's liner notes: "...The circumstances surrounding the creation of the score for the original Phantasm were extremely difficult, because Fred faced the challenge of creating over an hour's worth of music on a minuscule budget. Fred, however, managed to turn adversity into advantage. He made up for the lack of financial resources with ingenuity, enthusiasm and energy. Unable to afford any semblance of orchestra and today's sophisticated synthesizers not available at that time, he, and Malcolm Seagrave, assembled a palette of unusual instruments which brought a unique and insidious texture to the score..." I'll say! I love stories like that, because it's exactly those kinds of cruel restrictions which occasionally have impressive results. Yes, there's an actual musical theme to the film which is iconic in its own right, but much of what is heard is simply textures and weird noises. It's two guys hitting wrenches against pieces of metal and dragging screwdrivers across mattress springs, but the effect is unsettling and eerie. The temptation today would overwhelmingly be in favor of scoring the film through any number of music programs, and I think that (as the Phantasm sequels have demonstrated) the results would have been less effective. Here are 4 tracks from that spectacular soundtrack.

The Cult Of The Real Genius Soundtrack

What was it about the 1985 film Real Genius which caused so many people to form a kind of cult around it? Yeah, it's funny, but if you look at it objectively, is it really THAT funny? If you run a web search for the soundtrack, you will find dozens of fan sites (most of of them peppered with defunct or cryptic links) dedicated to assembling a complete track listing-- a retail version of the soundtrack was never released. The movie is one I never get tired of, but it's a peculiar kind of romance I have with it, one I have a difficult time justifying. I think people my age gravitate to this film mostly because they played the holy hell out of it on cable at a time when American households finally began to surrender en masse to the lure of subscription television. For me, watching Real Genius is about experiencing a weird kind of enjoyable melancholy. Despite the comedy, the film has it's own particular mood, kind of like how the look and sound of those old original-series Star Trek episodes are imbued with a weird melancholy of their own. Then again, maybe the film simply is as good as the fans make it out to be. Here are two montage scenes which the fans tend to be ravenous for. They succeed almost entirely because of their marriage to the soundtrack. Out of context, they are really kind of boring. Sorry about the sound being out of sync on the first one. I've included downloadable versions of the tracks below. A tip of the hat to Umberto St. John for providing them. Again, they're not especially great songs or performances, but if you are a fan, you hear them and you smile automatically.

March 03, 2008

"A Fearsome Half-Man Half-Ape With The Strength Of Twenty Demons!"

I was sitting alone at lunch, and as often happens, a random thought floated to the surface and caused me to snicker aloud to myself. Today, the catalyst for this laughter was the fossilized memory of the last 15 minutes of the 1970 film Trog. What a coup it must have been for the producers to land Joan Crawford for this film! You get a sense of their bewildering good fortune in this excellent trailer-- they mention that she's in it with big, bold letters TWICE! "Holy shit! Are you serious?! She said yes?! She fell for that line about it being just like Planet of the Apes, but better? Seriously?!" I like that whoever edited the trailer was thoughtful enough to include two completely pointless shots of a guy busting up a laboratory. And, man, that crazy narration really deserves to be extracted and juxtaposed over a video of something genuinely startling, like John Hagee, for example, doesn't it?

A Solvent Collection

Retrotech: Blip

"the digital game"? The only reason this thing needed batteries was to light up the LED. The movement required you to wind it up by hand. A series of cogs and cams somewhat randomized the action, but not enough to keep me from getting bored with it in a few seconds when I was eight. And it made a terrible racket. But it was Christmastime in 1977, and all the rich kids got the high-tech pong in their stockings. The poor kids got this instead. The box actually said "no TV set is needed", as if that were a good thing. Dig that awesome 70's future-font.

Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us"

I'm reading the book being promoted in this video... The World Without Us is fun and interesting, and although I'm only about a third of the way thought it, so far it's good enough that, if you asked me, I would recommend it. But I noticed on the author's website that this work of speculative non-fiction is being turned into a movie. So, really, that's what this post is about: the perception that a book is an inadequate, time-consuming or unexciting vehicle for one brain to communicate with another brain, and a movie is the inevitable endpoint of any type of popular narrative artform. Or to put it another way, it doesn't count until it has been made into a movie. I'm so glad that there are books which utterly defy attempts to transform them for the stage or screen. Take Catcher In The Rye, for example. It all takes place in Holden Caulfield's thoughts. It's a book. Not a movie. Not a painting. Not a video game. Not a TV miniseries. Just a book. On a related note, this post on Gawker utterly depresses me (as most Gawker articles do) because it describes bookshelves as "a medium of social interaction... a format for the 'performance of self.'" Oh, fuck you.

March 02, 2008

F'd Puppet of the Week 3/2/08

Bill Baird was the genius behind such productions as the puppet show in "Sound of Music". He was the Jim Henson of his day. Here he uses his artistry to hawk Wild Root Cream Oil, a classic American product with one of the most famous jingles ever made. Bill shows us, through these puppets how you can use this product to get some action, and how cool it is to smoke!