An obvious fake, or those choristers wouldn’t be keeping straight faces. I died laughing anyway.
Pop-Punk Candy
Mrs. Renfield put me on to this sugar rush of an album (really more like a longish EP). Many tracks are one-idea songs, but who cares when the hook’s good and they don’t belabor the idea: all but one are under two minutes. It so happens this band/person/whatever played Gonerfest last week, although it was an afternoon slot on a 90-degree-plus day, so can’t say I’m sorry I missed them. But this stuff hits my sweet spot. Good hooks throughout. Here’s another:
Children of Despair
In the 50’s or 60’s, Marshall McLuhan coined the term “class transvestism” to describe the then-recent trend of leisure-class youth wearing jeans, which previously had been worn mostly by people who actually worked for a living. I think the term also applies to some current well-heeled parents who expensively dress their children like storybook orphans or 18th C. French peasants. It’s just not cool to look rich, but you need to be rich to look poor in a non-Walmart way. Throw in some kids who are very good at looking grim, and you’ve got something that looks straight out of the rollicking Werner Herzog.
There are more videos about clothes. They’re all hilarious.
But wait! There are toys too.
A Hero For Us All …
… and better than we deserve.
Fat Bear Week
October 4-10 is Fat Bear Week! Your vote decides who wins. The single elimination tournament contestants will be revealed 10/02/23, on explore.org’s Brooks Live Chat Channel. Vote for your favorites.
Fat Bear Week is a subjective competition. Many factors lead to success in brown bears. Cubs and subadult (teenage) bears grow proportionally more each year than even the biggest adults. Mother bears must feed themselves and their cubs so the family can survive winter. An older bear can have difficulty finding access to its preferred fishing spots due to competition with larger and younger bears.
The bears you are watching on the cams in Katmai National Park, Alaska, are brown bears. Grizzly bears and brown bears are the same species (Ursus arctos), but grizzly bears are currently considered to be a separate subspecies (U. a. horribilis). The difference between a grizzly bear and a brown bear is fairly arbitrary. In North America, brown bears are generally considered to be those of the species that have access to coastal food resources like salmon. Grizzly bears live further inland and typically do not have access to marine-derived food resources.
Besides habitat and diet, there are physical and (arguably) temperamental differences between brown and grizzly bears. Large male brown bears in Katmai can routinely weigh over 1000 pounds (454 kg) in the fall. In contrast, grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park weigh far less on average. There have been no documented cases of grizzly bears weighing over 900 pounds (408 kg) in Yellowstone.
Friday Fanaticism
This guy again. I think he’s schizophrenic.
If This Is Punk, What Is Non-Threatening New Wave
LEGO Product Review
Subtle parody from a guy who used to edit The Onion.
Grass Roots
Just learned that it’s Creed from The Office on that guitar intro.
These Guys Are Doing Gonerfest Saturday
Guys who can play – pretending they can’t – while dressed as monsters is fucking genius.
The Mummies are an American garage punk band formed in San Bruno, California, in 1988. Exhibiting a defiantly raw and lo-fi sound, dubbed “budget rock”, the Mummies’ rebellious attitude and distinctive performance costumes exerted a major influence on garage punk and garage rock revival acts later in the decade, as well as in the 1990s. Their recorded output was intentionally completed with poor, cheap equipment, including their first and only studio album Never Been Caught, which was released after the group’s initial break-up. Since then, the Mummies have engaged in several positively-received reunion concerts and tours, including appearances in Europe and the US sporadically through to recent years. The band is currently working on a movie.