For those of you who missed it, The Onion ran an interview with Harry Shearer week before last. They don’t ask him anything about Le Show, which is fine, because they get him talking about things I (at least) didn’t know about him. For example, that he was a child star on the Jack Benny show. He also says a good deal about how Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, Spinal Tap and the rest were made.
Another link coming from Randy’s site: his mom’s sock company. She used to make these incredible, brightly-colored, very warm-looking socks for Randy’s friends by hand; then she went into business and developed machine patterns. They’re so cool! Pricey, but cool. I have to love any company whose motto is “Life’s too short for matching socks.”
I got word from old buddy Randy Wakerlin that he has a website up now. He’s been working on a documentary about hill tribes in Thailand. I’m looking forward to this — I hope it will be as innovative as his final project at Hampshire (which apparently doesn’t exist on the web beyond his few references to it, unfortunately).
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
so I introduce you to the Bowery Bowel Movement Comic Jam. Not unlike 1K Blank White Cards with people who can draw and are following a plot. (Big shout outs to the playas of the PyCon/Twisted deck. Toggle that mfckin sock.)
… some of their TV ideas are downright shitty. I can’t help but wonder how they get the hamster to act. Oh, and that’s definitely a RAT, not a mouse. Martha the RAT.
I convince myself some days that my mood has been affected by things I’m not aware of yet. Today I was pretty down. I found out just now that Nina Simone died.
I didn’t give enough attention to Bruce Haack in that last post. I didn’t mention that his bio reads like a lesser-known Jim Henson’s! Or that he’d been on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood! Or that, like all good things, he was Canadian! Or that there’s a movie about him! Holy shit, man, this guy makes Eno and Byrne look like self-conscious posers!
P.S.: They make “outsider music” just like they make outsider art. Who, you ask? Good ol’ Thoth is on that album, among other people.
Luaka Bop will always be the #1 label in my life, but you know me… I’m all about the polyamory. And there’s a new label in my life. I went looking for a genius little song by Bruce Haack called Electric To Me Turn, got the kind of heart-racy feeling I get when I find an artist whose entire oevre I will soon obsessively amass, and it slowly dawned on me after a few pages that his work was being released on Emperor Norton Records among all sorts of other fantastic stuff, some of which, like Senor Coconut, I’d heard before. On KCRW. And, um, people like Miss Kittin, who I heard about from my sisters.
Honestly, sometimes I’m so thick. I’m like, “Yah, music! I like it! I’m so hip and with it and I know all the stuff nobody else knows!” And I never bother to go and investigate the labels and network connections of groups I like, so I barely scratch the surface.
Annnnnyway, I want to have Emperor Norton Records‘s babies. Once again, that’s Emperor Norton Records. As in, Emperor Norton. Yessir. E-M-P-E– yeah, that gag doesn’t work as well as it does on the radio.
… because then I will be allowed to write copy which segues from earnest pop-feminism in one paragraph to a hearty browbeating over lifestyle choices in the next — and then to a not-even-veiled marketing survey on the next page — with nary an acknowledgement of the mind-boggling transition I have made.