We lost a total badass today. Loretta Lynn has hopped the twig, aged 90.
Friends Without A Laugh Track Isn’t Funny
Whoever came up with this concept is a genius.
You’re Welcome
I think these guys just played Gonerfest. CRANK IT UP.
Somebody’s Been Attending Apple Events
Tech Gadget Bingo
- Posh British accent? CHECK
- Moody background music? CHECK
- Shitloads of hyperbole? CHECK
- Aluminium (al-yə-ˈmi-nē-əm)? CHECK
If this were an SNL sketch, which it kinda feels like, one of these furrowed-brow guys would be shown doodling an enormous penis.
When You Hustle, You Gotta Have A Hard Shell
Viva Schroeder
I read Peanuts over and over as a youngster. Our discussion of “Well-Tempered Clavier” triggered an old panel in my head. I couldn’t find it, of course, but seem to remember Schroeder’s involvement. It was a good springboard to look up his outstanding output.
I’m sure the classically-trained bastard among us can identify Schroeder’s enthusiastic tunes by a single measure.
Pistols Ephemera Up For Auction At Sotheby’s
Check out all this cool stuff! By the way, that’s an Animation City single-cel composite for The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, c. 1978 (Estimate: 1,500 – 2,000 GBP).
From The Guardian …
If Pistol, Danny Boyle’s recent TV series, was the story of a rock band, then this collection is the story of an idea: a collaborative multimedia art project in which Reid and McLaren, who met at Croydon art school, were at least as significant as Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. “They all brought their own unique visions and the Sex Pistols was the pot that everyone threw everything into,” Stolper says. Many of the images, ostensibly created to promote gigs and records, hold up as artworks in their own right. You could see them without having heard a note of the Sex Pistols’ music and know that they represented a radically significant moment in British youth culture. “This is all at the service of something else,” Wilson says, “and working out what that something else is is the intriguing part of it.”
Bidding opens October 10.
The Queen Haters
Martin Short is a genius.
Classic Sluggo
Nancy homage from Chris Ware several years ago. Still makes me laugh.
La Cathedrale Engloutie
Claude Debussy’s “The Sunken Cathedral” is based on a myth involving, well, a sunken cathedral off the coast of Brittany. The beautiful princess of a prosperous coastal town named Ys had an affair either with Satan or one of his many lieutenants on earth (as beautiful princesses tend to do). As punishment, the town was destroyed by sinking into the sea along with most inhabitants. Local legend held that on certain days you could hear the bells of the cathedral of Ys ringing from below. On other days, it was believed to rise briefly to the surface. Debussy begins by representing both waves and the ringing of the cathedral bells. As the cathedral rises, chanting monks and priests emerge, culminating with the great organ at 2:25: a brief emergence of a grand, underwater zombie Mass of the damned. Then it all sinks again until we just hear the bells. Near the end, the great organ melody makes a muted reappearance from the murky depths.
Beautifully creepy stuff here, with the obsessively perfect Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli looking like he’s playing this from deep within his castle in Transylvania. (He actually never lived in a castle in Transylvania, but for a while he did live in one near Brescia).