From the Archives & Archivists (A&A) List digest:
Subject: Storage of a grass skirt
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 20:43:43Hello!
Wanted to ask if anybody has any recommendations about how to properly
store a grass skirt?Thank you!
finally
About a year ago this post went up without much explanation:
Joel and Deron* have put on something over their jockstraps.
*The one he wears like a mask*.
*To block the image of Michael nesting in Troy Polamalu’s hair*.
*A frequent dream of Deron’s that leaves him feeling oddly aroused.
Originally created by Michael on September 9, 2010 and scheduled to publish the morning following the Super Bowl the post looked like this:
The NFL season has ended
And was changed by Deron on September 12:
I have the strength to say it. Deron, you are the handsomest man I know.
R.I.P. Don Cornelius (1936-2012)
Don Cornelius checked himself out, it would appear.
See him here — doin’ it to death — with Mary Wilson in the Soul Train line dance.
dear clusterflock
I don’t mean to go around hawking my wares, but this seemed so relevant and useful to you personally that I thought it would be wrong not to share it. Please keep in mind that I am financially involved with this offer, but even so I think you’ll find I was right to share this marvelous opportunity with you today.
Well now here I’ve wasted a lot of your time with technicalities and jibber jabber, I’ll come to my point quickly. Let me ask you just one question:
Have you ever wanted to have a spleen named after you?
The Mother Courage of Rock
She was skinny, quick-witted, disarmingly unprofessional, alternating between stand-up patter, bardic intonations, and the hypnotic emotional sway of a chanteuse, and she was sexy in an androgynous way I hadn’t encountered before. The elements cohered convincingly; she seemed both entirely new and somehow long-anticipated. For me at nineteen, the show was an epiphany.
Springtime 1976, I was living in the cinderblock building on the glorified median strip there where they split Highway 13, and one day I went over to this one girl’s apartment, she lived right by the guy who dealt me speed, and she said, “Hey, you know who you remind me of? You remind me of Patti Smith!”
Gave her a possum grin I’m still grinning.
There’s really one reason,
and one reason only, that I put this photo here on clusterflock.
Joel, I love you, man, but that photo out of context was beginning to make my tummy sad every time I stopped by.
Besides, I know you love Culver’s.
“Hit me!”
Sesame Street: Maurice Sendak “Bumble-Ardy” Animation
Inspired by Josh’s Maurice Sendak post (and by Casey’s link to the “Fresh Air” interview with Sendak).
Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing
4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
(From WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Via Brian Beatty.)
Blues in the Night
There’s a twisted thread that leads to my recalling this song, but I will not even try to unravel it, merely to recollect a boy named Danny Stevens, whom I knew when we were age seven or so, who used to sing this song as he loped down the halls of our school.
Except he only kept repeating the one line:
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Muh mama done tol’ me
Danny also used to say to his classmates, “Shu-u-t up. Beat-cha brains out.”
At the end of second grade, Danny and his family moved to a state he called Organ.
Happy New Year, Y’all
Smootch.
Chicago Screenshots
Chicago Screenshots is a (slowly growing) collection of Chicago-centric movie and television stills, presented as architectural and urban landscape photography.
Films sans subtitles
My friend Charlie is now living in Buenos Aires in a house full of folks from all over the world, and among them is Lauren Stephenson, whom some of you may know. The other night Charlie and Lauren went to the movies. Their command of Spanish was not up to the task of following the film as its makers intended, and Charlie reflected on the experience of watching a talkie without a solid grasp on the words the characters spoke.
There were a lot of solitary and broody fishermen in boats and seaside bars. And one mouthy whore. There was a girl thrown into the mix, but her character stared vacantly into the distance so often that I wondered what she was looking at. Was she psychic? Did she make that guy have a heart attack just by squinting through the window? What was she looking for in the distance anyway? Did she like to find beavers in clouds? Again, not sure.
I really shouldn’t post this . . .
You might actually look at it, and that will be bad. Worse, posting may generate more attention and more traffic. But I’m thinking that maybe Christmas light-lookers aren’t hanging out here with us.
This is the spectacle that nearly blinded us as we turned onto the block for Pam’s and Jam’s Christmas Eve party.
They’ve been living near this since Thanksgiving.
I am thinking they would rather have Carole for their neighbor.
Charles Coleman, the celluloid adventurist
Coleman, 47, is film programmer for Facets Multimedia.
One thing being lost is the art of conversation, of people seeing a movie and then actually having a good talk afterwards. — As told to J.R. Jones.
Man, does this put me in mind of my friend Charlie’s thoughts re: the “hidden cinema” he frequents in Buenos Aires.
Funk songs from Vietnam GIs
If you didn’t get a Christmas present from me, it’s because I’m waiting till the New Year to buy you East of Underground: Hell Below. (Thanks to Valerie for the tip.)
In 1971 the US was pulling troops out of Vietnam, and its bases in Germany were full of draftees at a loose end. “You were painting shovels, picking up cigarette butts – it was a lot of busy-work,” remembers former serviceman Lewis Hitt. “There was a longing by everyone, especially the draftees, to get home and go back to what you were doing before.”
This was the crucible in which were formed scores of raucous funk bands made up of servicemen, four of which have just been compiled by Now-Again Records. Adoring crowd noise was crudely dubbed on top of their records, which were then distributed in recruitment centres. These bands were used by the army to present service as varied, even hip. But the songs they cover – the bitter, suspicious likes of Backstabbers and Smiling Faces Sometimes – undermine any potential propagandising.
12 Indicted On Hate Crimes Charges For Hair Cutting Assaults Led By Break-Off Amish Group
I think this is my favorite story of 2011.
I am posting this post
because to now I have posted 1964 posts. So this will be 1965. And that was a beautiful year. I was just old enough to know that I wanted to be a grown-up woman. In 1965.
At least one of those grown-up women in the movies. Or to have a hit record.
Damar, Mon Amour (out of context)
In context: Starlingo ii.
Damar torn from the flock.
What is Damar? Who is Damar? What is Damar?
Art Institute adds Warhol’s ‘Empire’ to Chicago skyline
From 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. [Friday, December 9], the modern skyscraper [the Aon Center] overlooking Millennium Park will be acting as a movie screen onto which the Art Institute of Chicago will be projecting Andy Warhol’s eight-hour silent, black-and-white epic “Empire,” which consists of one long, unbroken shot of New York’s Empire State Building. Said to be the first outdoor U.S. screening of this landmark — if not exactly action-packed — film, the event marks the very public, logistically challenging kickoff to the Art Institute’s new exhibition Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977, which opens to members Saturday and to the public Tuesday.
Wil Freeborn’s Drawings Mapped
Our Wil is working on a new book of drawings that will include a map, and he’s been using Google Maps to create a place for his drawings.
Viva la Sauna Svedese (Mah Nà Mah Nà)
Ponder this if and when you view The Muppets.
A History of the Sky
A time-lapse study of the sky for a year. By Ken Murphy.
A camera installed on the roof of the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco captured an image of the sky every 10 seconds for a year.
[A History of the Sky] is a mosaic of 360 time-lapse movies, each showing [a] single day. They are arranged chronologically, and are synchronized by time-of-day, beginning before sunrise.
(Thanks to Ju Ju Pongo.)
Red trousers!
So I’ve been, like, trying to get some work done today, but I keep drifting off to look at all the fucking red trousers on the Look at my fucking red trousers! blog.
(Thank you, clusterflock friend @peteashton.)
What a lovely way to burn
Miss Peggy Lee. “Fever.” 1958.
(Courtesy of Tom Sale, the Texas artist a/k/a Pinky Diablo.)
