If you liked the last stuff with the keyboards, you'll love this! Or, perhaps, not. Long before Devo did their devo thing, there was Kraftwerk. In some ways, I suppose they could be seen as a Teutonic Devo, although, it is more probably that Devo is an American Kraftwerk. With their hypnotic music, lyrical discussions of robots in German, and snappy makeup and outfits, it makes me want to get a really skinny tie, shave my beard, slick back my hair, and move in a jerky manner. Isn't that cool? Seventies Germany rocks - so unemotional and mannequin-esque. Just like me!
Having recently admitted my love and secret shame of MOR seventies soft rock, I have been, as I often do, hyper-looking at and listening to videos and songs of this genre. I must be OCD when it comes to music, because I get fixated on something like "sunshine pop" and then, for 3 or 4 weeks, can do nothing but download and listen to this type of music. And, as before, my new obsession has become seventies soft rock, and I have been sucking this stuff down like an opium addict. HOWEVER, this video by the band Exile has kinda creeped and freaked me out.
I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the disembodied lips on the wall and on the floor. Maybe it's the lead singer's rough androgyny that makes him/her look like a man, then a woman, then a man in such a way that makes me wonder if he is a demonic entity - the dance gyrations don't help. Maybe it is the singluar theme of the lyrics, which proclaim that the only focus of the protagonist will be to get his baby and kiss her all over, all over, all over, again and again - not that I am against kissing or kissing all over, for that matter, but the band's singleminded focus on this particular activity make me wonder if there might be tentacles and spinal fluid sucking involved. Maybe it is the fact that the band is, in my opinion, WAY to into their music, as if they are heralding a new age of utopian revolution or that their music rocks in a similar way as, say, the Ramones. Maybe I'm just overanalyzing it, but you have to admit that they don't make bands like this anymore, which might be a good or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. Either way, enjoy!
People like to suggest, sometimes, that I am some sort of acid burnt wacko, a persona that I, sometimes, encourage perhaps. However, if youtube had been around when I was doing chemical alterations to my psyche, THIS kind of video would have made me a prime candidate for a rubber room and arm and leg restraints. Hell, it's freaky enough WITHOUT drugs; I couldn't imagine watching this already out of my mind! Of course, I have watched it repeatedly today!
You know me - I like all sorts music, high brow and low brow. But this video just makes my bowels and nads hurt with an unimaginable horror - no wonder punk music needed to happen and happened when it did! "But, wait," you might say, "I thought you liked bands like the Osmonds!?! Aren't they similar?" I won't quibble on that point - both bands are somewhat of the same ilk. HOWEVER, the Osmonds were musical geniuses, a Mormon Beatles, if you will. They mined the depths and heights of our emotions and imaginations, making this world a better, kinder, and stronger place. They played their instruments AND danced AND sang AND smiled AND all the while searched for ways to end world hunger, fight Communist Aggression, and pursue the race to land a man-made vehicle on Mars. The band in this video, on the other hand, was so obviously only in it for the money - how else do you explain someone voluntarily playing this kind of garbage and doing so in public on television? For the joy of the music and the ability to entertain? HELL NO! Money, pure and simple, is the source of this horse manure! So, go tell "the Man" to honk on bubba for foisting crap like this onto us! Enjoy!
Every one should follow their muse and do the things that make them happy (within reason - zoosadism and pedophilia don't count). I have yet to find my overriding passion, but these folks seem to have found their's, although perhaps in ways that make the rest of us scratch our heads and go "Huh?" or "Do what?"
This first is Leslie and the Lys, the brainchild of Leslie Hall, a gold lame beehive-hairdoed lady from Iowa who envisions herself as a rap / hip-hop genius (who's to say she isn't?). Here she presents what is probably the only (that I'm aware of) musical pop tribute to the Ron Howard movie Willow:
Watching this makes me repeatedly wonder: why didn't we do stuff like this in the TA office?
Let it be known that I have always (and probably always will) loved carnivals. I love the smells of greasy food, sweat, ride grease, and quiet despair and fear. I love the cheesy rides and the crappy games that allow you to win a cartoon animal toy stuffed with sawdust and broken dreams. I love the actual food - yes, even the food. I even once designed a carnival of my own (will upload the pictures at a later date). My father remarked that it was highly probable my family possessed significant amounts of carny blood. To be sure, he did not elaborate on why he felt assured of this particular fact. Yet, he seemed very sure of it, all the same. With this in mind, I recently went to the Tennessee Valley Fair, eager to be amongst my people. I had not been there since, probably, 1986. However, this most recent visit was not for fun. Instead, I volunteered to aid Boy Scout Troop 58 in their fund-raising job of cleaning the fairgrounds after the park closed.
I watched this video, hoping to show something of the fair's true nature. And, to be sure, the reporter's views were not unfounded. But, despite her rosy assessment of the Fair's participants, I witnessed a myriad of strange and disturbing sights, starting at around midnight as the people began to leave.
I could go into graphic details about the trash we picked up under the bleachers at the tractor pull area. I could rail about the dirty diapers I picked up in the parking lots. I could shock you with tales concerning the carny village we walked through at 1:30 in the morning. But the most disturbing thing for me was the amount of wasted junk food littered throughout Chilhowie Park. The United States IS the Hot Dog Nation, as we picked up (conversatively) close to 1000 half-eaten corndogs (funnel cakes...now that's another story entirely). It is little wonder that the rest of the world hates us, what with our wastes and our waists (I know I'm not Charles Atlas, but I can touch my toes and see my crotch without looking in a mirror). The amount of food lying in the dirt under the bleachers there was appalling. Lord help the bacon-clad men from my last post here - the tractor pull / rodeo crowd would probably eat them alive, literally.
Maybe we should reconsider cannibalism a la Soylent Green. We wouldn't waste food, it would minimize our food production costs, and we would only have to sweep up crumbs at the fair (instead of picking up half-chewed up corn dogs). Something to think about...
It is rare that I pat myself on the back for my own brilliance. Indeed, I'm usually suprised at how dense I can be. However, while avoiding doing my work for school, I had the most amazingly intense fit of creative juicing since I was first inclined to start this stupid blog. What I have imagined is a new sci-fi adventure series that combines The Prisoner with V: The Miniseries. This idea has limitless possibilities, especially if set in Knoxville, using the Sunsphere as the new command post for the new Village, whatever that might end up being (we need a good session at the Bean to work out all the details). Here's the brilliant part: the show could be titled All Your Base Are Belong To Us! I'm anxious to hear from all you out there in the webosphere what you think. I think I'm onto something really special...
I recently purchased the movie Zardoz for my collection, best known as the one that dressed an out-of-work Sean Connery in a speedo/loincloth getup, in which he overacted through a heavy-handed allegorical film filled with pseudo-psychological noodling, unerotic eroticism, and an unnecessarily complicated story-line, kind of like The Muppet Movie. Most people may remember the movie solely for the floating head and its phallus speech, given to you here free of charge, just because I want to enrich all of your lives in a meaningful and dramatic way. Enjoy!
One thing that always bothered me about Logan's Run is the fact that they made such a big damn deal 'bout putting a robot dude (named Box) in the movie that looked cool and sounded cool and, then, they let him go down like a chump after getting shot once by Michael York's green gas Sandman gun! He was, definitely, an unexplored character that warranted more of the limelight than he got (even though most guys were probably more concerned with Jenny Agutter's nudeness in the freezer). I think that Box should be given his own series. Maybe a sitcom where he becomes the headmaster of a bunch of lovable but irascible young scamps who can warm our hearts as Box cools their evil passions. Either that, or a kind of bloodbath machine gun foo sci-fi shoot'em-up that takes the violence of Where Eagles Dare and combines it with the cross-dressing high jinx of Some Like It Hot, all set in a world run by Box and his legion of monkey-brained robot squid soldiers! Now that's the kinda movie that needs to be made and the kinda movie that I'd pay to see!
