Tales of True Adventure for Rugged Men Not Unlike Yourself
Check it out, you magnificent bastards!
A massive treasure trove of vintage Star Wars and pop culture toys and collectible ephemera are going on auction at the end of this month, and the folks at Prop Store bring a few of the rarities to our studio. We learn about prototype mockups, international figures, and even retail display pieces that would be the prize pieces for toy collectors.
All those toys you lost or destroyed that are now worth thousands of dollars? Look for ’em here.
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.
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.
Anybody ever heard this?
Willy Wonka is usually a very pleasant (albeit eccentric) chocolate tycoon. But when Charlie Bucket and Grandpa Joe steal the fizzy lifting drinks, he succumbs to a maniacal fit of rage and informs them that they get NOTHING!
I picked up something a little different after finishing John Dies At The End. Jernigan is David Yates’s 1991 debut novel about a brilliant loser. Check out this uplifting description …
Well conceived and well written, this book examines the tragedy of a man whose life epitomizes failure on every level. A victim of circumstances, Peter Jernigan is now emotionally crippled and psychologically impoverished. His already distorted personal relationships, skewed further by a dependency on alcohol, sweep him forward, with horrifying swiftness, into a nightmarish cycle of failure, loss, and spiritual death. Bright but unsuccessful, Jernigan drifts through a bleak life that only becomes worse. He has lost his father and wife in successive accidents and now must deal with the adolescent traumas of his only son. His encounter with the divorced mother of his son’s girlfriend promises to lighten his life but instead complicates it even further. A disturbing first novel, Jernigan will cause readers, especially men, to shake their complacency and perhaps reevaluate their own circumstances.
What’s not to love?
Oh! My copy of There Was A Light: The Cosmic History of Chris Bell and the Rise of BIG STAR showed up yesterday, too. And of course, I jumped right in.
One surprising thing I’ve learned so far is that Chris Bell’s family lived in a house across the street from the one I grew up in. I missed them by about ten years, but still, what are the odds?!
https://youtu.be/mpUVOVDy0iw
This is a BBC4 documentary about Primal Scream’s trip to Memphis to record an album that wouldn’t see the light of day for 25 years. (These mixes, anyway.) I love this shit.
So now that all of us bastards are old, I thought it would be fun to revisit a holiday classic, except now it’s fast forward a few years. Check up on the Peanuts gang, and see how they are doing this holiday season. I always knew Peppermint Patty and Marcy would get it on one day. And that ending… bitch had it coming…
Please note the dancers in the background when he goes to visit Schroeder