Look Around You

*checks notes*

Yep, talented people still suck.

Look Around You is a British television comedy series devised and written by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, and narrated in the first series by Nigel Lambert. The first series of eight 10-minute shorts was shown in 2002, and the second series of six 30-minute episodes in 2005, both on BBC Two. The first series of Look Around You was nominated for a BAFTA award in 2003.

The humour is derived from a combination of patent nonsense and faithful references and homages. For instance, fictional items that have a passing resemblance to everyday objects are shown and discussed. Such items include the “boîte diabolique”, a box at the top of a piano scale which housed the “forbidden notes”; and “Garry gum”, a performance-enhancing chewing gum which has the unfortunate side-effect of inducing diarrhoea, necessitating the consumption of “anti-Garry gum”. Each episode begins with a “countdown clock”, similar to the one used on ITV Schools programmes from 1979 to 1987. The music that accompanies the countdown is in the same spirit as the original, but is played on a solo guitar, and at the beginning of the “Brain” module, the guitarist can be heard tuning.

The module subjects are distorted beyond recognition; for instance, germs are described as coming from Germany, and whisky is said to be made by combining water with nitrogen. The maths module features a distorted and inaccurate version of the ancient ‘seven cats’ puzzle by Ahmes. Additionally, subjects are mixed: for example, a chemistry experiment about eggs (In the episode Water) turns into a French language lesson. Each episode follows a general format, beginning with an introduction to the subject, followed by a series of silly experiments performed by the hapless (and normally mute) scientists, played by Popper, Serafinowicz and Edgar Wright, among others.

This is “Music,” episode 6 from the first season.

Bid On That Axe, Eugene

David Gilmour is probably my all time favorite guitar player, and he’s selling a bunch of his guitars for charity. 120 of them. He’s even selling the “Black Strat” that he played on Dark Side of the Moon, Wish you Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. So that’s the guitar that was used for Time, Comfortably Numb, Shine on You Crazy Diamond, and Run Like Hell. Day-um… I’d just like to see that guitar, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to own it. Check out the auction here…  

So if you’ve got $100,000 burning a hole in your pocket, go pick one up.

Fuck Me, Don’t Tell A Soul Is 30

Released February 1, 1989. This makes me feel older than turning 50. To put it in perspective, this post is the equivalent of the 20-year-old me in 1989 talking about an album that came out in 1959.

Wiki-wiki-wikipedia says …

Don’t Tell a Soul marked the debut of Bob “Slim” Dunlap, who replaced founding guitarist Bob Stinson. The album was recorded at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles and produced by Matt Wallace and the band. It was mixed by Chris Lord-Alge, who decided to give the record “a three-dimensional, radio-ready sound”. However, singer and guitarist Paul Westerberg was not satisfied with the new direction, commenting: “I thought the little things I’d cut in my basement were closer to what I wanted.”

To celebrate, let’s all take a moment and watch one of my favorite rock ‘n’ roll moments.

As explained by a lesser blog

Before the show, they were told they needed to change the line, “We’re feeling good from the pills we took.” Well, fittingly, Westerberg did no such thing, and the censors were obviously ready for it, as the tape goes silent during that section of the song. What the censors at ABC didn’t anticipate was this: Near the conclusion of “Talent Show” the lyrics address the time when the band hits the stage and there’s no retreating: “It’s too late to turn back, here we go” is repeated twice on the album version, but here Westerberg has changed the line to “It’s too late to take pills, here we go”—ha! The censors missed it and they’ve pissed everyone off again! To add insult, the line is sung three times.

Let It Be

This should be inneresting:

Peter Jackson has signed on to direct a second archive project: a film edited from the full 55 hours of footage of the Beatles’ Let It Be recording sessions.

Jackson will somehow produce a 65 hr documentary. Apparently the original version is getting a scrub and re-release to coincide.

Best Beer To Prevent Gum Disease

Short answer, IPAs. Or anything hoppy, I guess.

Because of the length of time needed to travel, beer had the propensity to spoil to a variety of bacteria. Yet, those that had a higher proportion of hops in the recipe appeared to survive without any significant product loss. This led to the requirement of hops not to offer a fulfilling flavor, but to stay fresh. Eventually, hops became a critical component in any beer recipe; a tradition that continues until today.

Although the beer bacterial burden was solved, microbiologists, curious individuals that they are, wanted to know why that was the case. The answer wasn’t known until 1937 when the antiseptic properties of hops were finally seen. When exposed to a hop extract, bacteria simply couldn’t survive. The finding not only gave more reason to drink hoppy beer, but also opened the door to a natural means of infection prevention.

For centuries, dentists have been trying to find natural means to prevent gum disease, which is an inflammatory process sparked by bacteria. When the antimicrobial activity of hops were found, dentists decided that it was at least worth a try. What they have found reveals that not only are they good for the mouth, they can potentially help to prevent problems in the future.

Through a series of experimental papers published over the last five years, we can understand exactly how hops help. In 2008, a team from Osaka University unveiled a group of chemicals known as polyphenols, which are known to help prevent oral cancer. Based on their experiments, these compounds stopped inflammation and kept gums pink instead of red. In the same year, a team from Nippon Dental University revealed the molecules also halted the development of dental plaque. By 2013, xanthohumol also proved to keep teeth happy and healthy by ensuring that bacteria could not stick to the teeth and gums.

Full article here.

That Missing Persons EP

Guilty Pleasure Time!

There’s a special place in my heart for the first self-released Missing Persons EP. Although technically, it’s the 1982 re-release I love, the one that replaced the original EP’s “Hello, I Love You” with “I Like Boys.” At this stage in my life, I don’t know if it’s an entirely accurate memory, but it seems like we spent a lot of time blasting this in a friend’s car one summer.

Anyway, as we’re living in the Digital Age, I now present to you the videos for the songs from that glorious EP.

I Really Want To See This

And I don’t care what you say.

Laurel & Hardy, one of the world’s great comedy teams, set out on a variety hall tour of Britain in 1953. Diminished by age and with their golden era as the kings of Hollywood comedy now behind them, they face an uncertain future. As the charm and beauty of their performances shines through, they re-connect with their adoring fans.

The tour becomes a hit, but Stan & Ollie can’t quite shake the specter of Laurel and Hardy’s past; the long-buried ghosts, coupled with Oliver’s failing health, start to threaten their precious partnership. A portrait of the most tender and poignant of creative marriages, they are aware that they may be approaching their swan song, trying to rediscover just how much they mean to each other.

Thief Or Hermit?

Did you ever think to yourself “fuck this shit! I’m checking out of society…”? Well, this fucker up in Maine did, and he checked out for 27 years until he got caught. he basically set up camp in the woods not far from some cabins around a lake. To get by he stole food and fuel from the nearby cabins. He kinda freaked out the locals, because not one ever saw him.

Eventually he was caught in the act and went to jail for a short period of time. He just couldn’t handle society. The sad thing is that the author has now made this guy the most popular man in Maine, and it wouldn’t surprise me if someone makes a movie out of this.

I basically told you the majority of the book, but it’s an interesting story and a fast read if you want to delve a little deeper.

Gum Disease May Cause Alzheimer’s

You bastards better keep flossing! According to NewScientist

If you bled when you brushed your teeth this morning, you might want to get that seen to. We may finally have found the long-elusive cause of Alzheimer’s disease: Porphyromonas gingivalis, the key bacteria in chronic gum disease.

That’s bad, as gum disease affects around a third of all people. But the good news is that a drug that blocks the main toxins of P. gingivalis is entering major clinical trials this year, and research published today shows it might stop and even reverse Alzheimer’s. There could even be a vaccine.

Multiple research teams have been investigating P. gingivalis, and have so far found that it invades and inflames brain regions affected by Alzheimer’s; that gum infections can worsen symptoms in mice genetically engineered to have Alzheimer’s; and that it can cause Alzheimer’s-like brain inflammation, neural damage, and amyloid plaques in healthy mice.

“When science converges from multiple independent laboratories like this, it is very compelling,” says Casey Lynch of Cortexyme, a pharmaceutical firm in San Francisco, California.

In the new study, Cortexyme have now reported finding the toxic enzymes – called gingipains – that P. gingivalis uses to feed on human tissue in 96 per cent of the 54 Alzheimer’s brain samples they looked at, and found the bacteria themselves in all three Alzheimer’s brains whose DNA they examined.

Full article here.

The Muck Monster

When I was a kid, my mom would take me grocery shopping. I would practically run to the magazine stand and then she’d collect me after check out. What she still doesn’t know is that I read TONS of inappropriate shit, from Creepy to Creem and whatever else you can think of. On one of those trips, I came across this story. Me being me, it had a profound effect. Unfortunately, I could never track down a copy as an adult, not knowing the artist, story name, or publication. Occasionally, I would ask other horror fans about it, but no one ever knew what I was talking about.

Of course, after I gave up looking, I accidentally found it online. According to some comic historian with a blog, “The Muck Monster” was originally published in the September 1975 issue of Eerie (#68) as a color insert. Comix International then reprinted it in October 1975, and then, a few years later in November 1979, it was reprinted in black & white for issue 113 of Creepy. (Which is when I must have initially read it.)

So here it is, pretty much as I remembered it. I uploaded the color version because it’s higher resolution, but the black & white version is much more impactful. I should have guessed Berni Wrightson was the artist and writer.