Another Strong Bad email.
Beneath the Valley of Fuck It Friday
For Halloween, here’s my favorite comedy band’s take on Monster Mash. Special appearance by Liberace as Dracula’s son at 1:26.
Drawing a Dragon
Old, but still funny. Good song at the end.
You (Still) Get The Finger
The song that inspired a post title from last week.
This album came out in 2006 and I am old.
Dracula And The Shitty Piece Of Cardboard
If Target can put up Halloween costumes and decorations the first week of September, I can talk about Dracula. I never noticed this before …
Extreme Nerdy Horror Trivia! In the classic 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, why is there a piece of cardboard on a lamp? An error, or was it actually something intentional?
And best YouTube quote …
Why is there so much Dracula in my cardboard movie?
Replacements At A Turning Point
Here’s a great 32-year-old article from SPIN’s archives, from around the time that I was getting into them. (Yes, I was late to the party and had to work my way back through the Twin/Tone albums.) The band had just parted ways with manager Pete Jesperson, fired lead guitarist Bob Stinson, and released one of their best albums, Pleased To Meet Me. Recorded right here in Memphis!
“When we started,” [Westerberg] says, pausing to sip from a midmorning Schmidt, “we definitely had a fear of success. We had a fear of everything. We were all very paranoid, and I think that goes hand in hand with the excessive drinking thing. We’d get drunk because we were basically scared shitless, and that snowballed into image. Now we’re a little more assured of what we’re doing. We’re not positive which way we’re going, but we think we know what mistakes lie ahead, and we’re trying to sidestep ‘em.”
Full article here.
Ill Communication Is 25
https://youtu.be/pp_2E2K9_L4
This is worth a look.
‘Still Ill: 25 Years of the Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication’ features Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz diving deep into the making of the band’s epic 1994 album – and, arguably, one of their high points as artists and generational touchstones. The 15-minute documentary tracks the Beastie Boys’ rejuvenation in the years after the release of 1989’s Paul’s Boutique – now considered a masterpiece but at the time a commercial flop – first with 1992’s Check Your Head and ultimately with Ill Communication, which produced the epic single and music video “Sabotage” and returned them to playing arenas.
Featuring interviews with Diamond and Horovitz from this March in Austin, Texas — as well as new interviews with keyboardist Mark “Money Mark” Nishita and producer Mario Caldato and rarely-seen 1990s footage of the band – Still Ill focuses heavily on late Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch and his contributions to Ill Communication. Through footage and the words of his friends, the documentary captures Yauch’s journey into activism, which would blossom with the Tibetan Freedom Concerts later in the decade, as well as his famous denunciation of misogyny in hip-hop on the single “Sure Shot”: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue / The disrespect to women has got to be through / To all the mothers and sisters and the wives and friends / I want to offer my love and respect to the end.”
In Search Of In Search Of
https://youtu.be/ZvcApBICFks
Anybody remember this series from the Seventies? I used to scare myself silly watching it on Saturday afternoons as a kid. This episode (Killer Bees!) in particular freaked me out. I was convinced we only had months to live.
Entries about Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle, and UFOs also left an impression. And that theme song is the shit!
Other episodes here.
Abandoned Homes On Billionaires Row
This is bonkers.
Inside billionaires Row, London’s rotting derelict mansions worth 350 million pound a third of the mansions on the most expensive stretch of London’s “billionaires row” are standing empty several huge mansions have fallen into ruin after being abandoned for a quarter of a century.
I explored all that I could wear such risky explore.
Well Are You?
I had this poster when I was a kid, only recently discovering that it was created by Tom Shadyac, the director who now lives in Memphis. We ran into him at [REDACTED] when we were buying tile for our bathroom remodel. Small fucking world.
Remember the poster Are You A Preppie? It was printed in 1979 by University of Virginia undergrad Tom Shadyac, who went on to film school at UCLA and later directed Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Evan Almighty. The poster was wildly popular when it came out. I have to wonder whether it might have inspired Lisa Birnbach’s more in-depth anthropological treatment in The Official Preppy Handbook, which appeared one year later.