It never gets old.
Two men with an Olympic dream.
Saturday, July 31, 2021
Elephant feet
_How the N.R.A Head and His Wife Shipped Their Elephant Trophies Home
They had their names removed from the shipment, and placed an order for the animals' feet to be turned into "stools," an "umbrella stand," and a "trash can."
* * * *
The New Yorker offers the most repellent story of the weekend...
Synch or swim 2
_
A dazzling display of The Pool's Most Elegant Event.
The Andrea Bocelli warbling is a nice touch.
Thumbs down
Movies were so bad this year, that movie trailers were more like warning signs.
--Pete Correal
* * *
Ditto Netflix.
Friday, July 30, 2021
Kids love you, Rainbow Monkey!
--DailyMail
Parents' disgust as actor in rainbow colored monkey costume with fake penis and nipples appears at library event encouraging children to read
- Redbridge Libraries set up the event and has since apologised for the costume
- Full investigation has now been launched by the council to get to the bottom of it
- Labour councillor Jas Athwal apologised and tweeted saying he was 'appalled
Did Rainbow Monkey read them You Are Different and That's Wrong?
Kathy Was So Bad Her Mommy Stopped Loving Her?
Daddy Drinks Because You Cry?
Little Hands, Big Toasters?
Rainbow Monkey has a pet hog, kids.
Rimshot!
Guy stuff
Goofy is good.
If you've run out of tricks, here are a few you might not have considered...
Thursday, July 29, 2021
This ain't paintball
News item:
Omaha Man Attacks Shopper for Wearing a Mask
The unmasked attacker allegedly ran up and spit on the shopper, before firing a BB gun and shouting, "You're on the other team."
--Daily Beast
* * *
Un-vaxed ... un-hinged... unbelievable.
It's The Lone Stranger.
LOST SONGS: A Hard Day's Night, Peter Sellers
In 1965, comic Peter Sellers recorded two albums of songs by his pals, The Beatles.
Above, a Fab Four hit, done by a Goon.
Five years earlier, he went into studio with Sophia Loren and improv'd a dozen tunes in various accents. The most famous cut is below.
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
LOST SONGS: Dead Skunk, Loudon Wainwright III
_
It's dead. It's in the middle.
Stinkin' to high, high heaven.
#16 on the Billboard charts 1972.
Domino's on the moon
_ Domino's Japan is working to put a pizza store on the moon.
Domino's says this wasn't just some, "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if..." sort of scenario. It would cost a shocking $21.74 billion., They'd use the moon's resources to make concrete to build the structure. It would include living quarters, entertainment rooms, a gym for the staff, along with a 2-story dome with clear walls to give staff and customers a breathtaking view of Earth.
The outpost would grow most of the pizza ingredients. They're sure they can handle deliveries, too — there's a moon-bike in the works for that.
--www.mashed.com
Staff? Customers? Deliveries? To who?
It's the moon!
Branson, Besos, Domino's.
Next up: the Moon strip mall
Shine on, you crazy diamonds.
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Send in the clones
Watched The Boys from Brazil recently, and marveled at how contemporary the references in a 52-year-old movie can be.
Casual, mindless racism. Echoes of the Proud Boys. Mad doctors with obsessive ideas, the kind that spew vaccine mis-info on Fox.
The YouTube vault of old movies rivals Criterion, TCM and a few niche streamers for movie buffs. Brit black and whites from the 1930s-1980s. U.S. indies from the same period.
Art films unspool on YouTube un-interupted.
All a click away in the web's best search engine. (Search by star: Peck, Olivier, Mason, Hopkins.)
The algorithm tosses 30 more oldies at you.
This summer, YouTube's old movies provide welcome relief to Netflix's ho-hum dramas and endless murder porn. Prime? In the doldrums.
Besides the flick above on YouTube, I've enjoyed...
Five Fingers -- James Mason as a Brit Nazi spy.
The Naked Edge -- Gregory Peck in a murder.
White Dog -- Samuel Fuller's dog horror show.
The Paladin Affair -- Early Alfred Hitchcock.
Frenzy -- Hitchcock's necktie strangler.
Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Hopalong, Roy--all the Saturday matinee serials are on YouTube. Ditto Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, endless hours of classic Warner cartoons.
If you're paying bucks for a streamer that seems ever less fun, check out an unexpected oldies vault. Old is new.
And free is even better.
Tunes for Russian trolls
Our favorite Russian cover band has moved on from Chicago to Steely Dan.
My Old School by Leonid & Friends went up online a few days ago
The gang be stylin' in their way-kewl Ruskie summer duds.
Sending this one out to our bad buds at the Leningrad Troll Farm, blog readers here daily and counted by Google Analytics.
You crazy hackers. Go mess with Facebook.
FLASHBACK: Craig Ferguson Laugh Attacks
_
I miss this guy.
Midnights are hushed and dark.
No skeleton or horse.
No Craig.
Too quiet.
Monday, July 26, 2021
Entry level
Interviewer: I see by your resume you worked at Starbucks, then inherited $50 million from your grandma. Any other experience?
Candidate: I have a certificate from Richard Branson that I am an astronaut.
Interviewer: An astronaut.
Candidate: I know about gravity. Up and down.
Interviewer: We'll start you on fries.
Happy birthday, geezer
--picfair.com
Greeting card cover:
You have reached the age where you should seek help from professionals
Inside:
A maid, a chef , a butler
Double dare
Jacob Collier put his arrangement of a Stevie Wonder tune online, and challenged viewers to dub themselves over it.
This guy below is easily the winner...
_
A Singapore tech editing wiz matched Collier's challenge sample to a 1996 Stevie performance in Australia. Wonder's part is drawn from....
Hur mår du killar?
The strangest thing happened last week.
The day I wrote about Klaatu--July 24--this blog clocked 1,650 readers from Sweden. WTF?
Normally, a couple hundred people check this space, divided between Canada and the U.S. with additional reader clusters in France, Portugal, Germany, Japan, Ireland. We have four Russian readers--probably at the troll farm.
But Google Analytics--The Goog runs blogspot--says on July 24,
we were joined by 1.65K Swedes.
Did some Swedish aggregator or website post a link to Klaatu?
If you are in Sweden … WHAT HAPPENED?
Stats: Google says the majority here use a Chrome or Firefox browser. Safari's a distant third, then Kindle's Silk.
More of you use Mac operating systems than Windows, Android or iPhone, which come in second, third and fourth.
Over 94% of you arrive here from a bookmark or link you've made on your device. Referrers such as Facebook or Google hardly register.
Google would tell me more for a price.
Nope. I do this for my own amusement.
Hur mår du killar?
That's 'How are you guys?' in Swedish.
Entertainment insurance up 300-400% in a year?
"All of a sudden COVID strikes, and suddenly there's no one who will write [insurance policies] for the live music venues and festivals...."
A CBC interview that didn't get much attention at the time, surfaces an insurance dilemma facing bars and clubs as they attempt to reopen.
Several prominent live music venues say they might close or move.
The Horseshoe tavern is quoted here...
LINK: Horseshoe threatens move
This is the same insurance problem that caused many small ski hills to give up the ghost in recent decades.
Can we solve it?
Sunday, July 25, 2021
Yutaka
_
Back in the day, CTI (Creed Taylor) and GRP (Dave Grusin) were my favorite record labels.
The first surfaced Jobim and Deodato.
The second surfaced .. Yutaka.
Yutaka Yokokura is a Japanese musician. He loves Brazilian music, arranges, writes songs. A pianist, he also plays the koto, a string instrument. GRP put him in studio for five jazzy albums.
Reviewers: Steely Dan meets Michael Franks.
The lyrics were so simple in English, they often sounded like a bad night on Google Translate.
But Yutaka knew how to find hooks and knew the magic of another hemisphere's choro and samba.
If the chorus to this, and the constantly rising keys don't become tonight's ear worms, don't tell me.
Musical multi-culturalism.
Another world
_
_
Update: British Diver Tom Daley Wins Gold—at His 4th Games
British diver Tom Daley is one of several athletes putting up videos from inside the Olympic village.
Since he's an experienced vlogger, his images and insights are intriguing. Co-vid unusual.
In this quick walkabout, he (knowingly?) demonstrates the bizarre and demanding protocols the jocks live under.
Some--the individual shields at the dining hall for teams that spend days together--are odd.
File this under ... Hygiene Theater.
Saturday, July 24, 2021
LOST SONGS: Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft
Can you say "Klaatu"?
They were really the Beatles, yeah yeah.
That Klaatu rumor was the greatest hype since "if you play the end grooves on a record backwards, you can hear secret messages like 'Paul is dead."
After you ruined your Lp back-scratching in 1973, maybe you'd buy another one. Record companies were such fun-loving devils.
Canadians John
Woloschuk and Dee Long were Klaatu. They named themselves after an alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Their hit: Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft.
"We are your friends..."
The Carpenters' cover version appears above, mostly because it was a world-wide hit and includes the cheesy disc jockey intro. But Klaatu's original is at the link below. There is also an eight-minute version.
Eight minutes? Take me now, Space Lords.
Dee Long surfaced last year, writing about co-vid for Readers Digest. He lives in a log house in B.C. From the photo below, it looks like he's doing okay on his home planet.
--DeeLong 2020
Close Encounter
Everybody sticks to the cue cards.
Kate McKinnon flies.
Ryan Gosling makes a fine victim.
Aliens are watching.
Giggle fits.
_Friday, July 23, 2021
Are You Ready for Miraitowa?
Miraitowa. He's Creepy. A dead-eyed anime. A cartoon pervert. He has a pink sidekick.
Mother Jones has a unique and funny view on the Tokyo Olympics mascot ...
LINK: Olympic mascots suck (Mother Jones)
It's not stopping here...
While Canada diddles with more swoony, press-friendly dreams of 177 kilometer per hour trains in the Toronto-Montreal-Quebec City corridor...
Japan's Shinkansen does 260 kph ... thru a station.
China's bullet train tops out at 364 kilometers an hour...
It takes six hours currently to chug, bump and stall your way from Toronto to Ottawa, nine to Montreal...
Ottawa's open air train station is a snow-swept Siberia from November to April. VIA calls it "airy." LOL.
_Come bye!
--foxnet.net
Update: Since this item, the KST Facebook page now advises that the competition will not be open to the public.
No spectators, just dogs, sheep and owners.
* * *
A cyptic message appeared on the Kingston Sheepdog Trials Facebook page in recent hours:
<<
Breaking news for competitors
September 21 through 26
Game on
for Kingston Sheepdog Trials at
Grassy Creek Park
>>
A glimmer of hope.
But nobody will be e-mailing fat guys soon.
The Collingwood Elvis festival is dead. Tweed's Elvis Festival is virtual and unskedded. Niagara Falls Elvis Fest is now planned for April, 2022.
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Sundown
"Yes, the tornado riding the melted glacier smokestorm is alarming,
but it's providing the perfect natural filter for this sunset."
- - - - -
--M.Reuter/newyorker.com daily humor letter
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
You must sing to your cat
The work just never ends for cat people...
Cat thought: "Who is this idiot?"
Bennett-Gaga
_Not sure whether to be impressed or depressed at plans to put Tony Bennett onstage for his 95th birthday next month with Lady Gaga.
They do two nights at Radio City Music Hall. And it turns out a duo album is coming soon.
Didn't we learn Bennett has been battling Alzheimer's since 2016? Is this joy ... or exploitation?
LOST SONGS: Let's Go Do The Flop
_
Doin' the flop lakeside today.
Watching a distant Hobiecat.
Is there a reason oncoming summer choppers ride the centerline? That leaves less than two feet of clearance. I get over. Some might not.
Time for a swim.
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
Tick tock toke
If you think pot shops have seized every block of Toronto, fear not.
There's a serious cull under way.
Many are up for sale.
Owners were stoner optimists.
Have they never seen HGTV's sad house flipper stories?
Pot shops outnumber LCBO stores in the city 10 to 1. Too much? Too many?
Ya think?
_
_
_Monday, July 19, 2021
_
Sunday, July 18, 2021
Joe Mahoney: "The CBC and me"
Adventures in the Radio Trade. Joe Mahoney.
Published online! One click away, right now.
LINK: Joe Mahoney's online memoir
Mahoney's in the catbird seat at master control above, with Joram Kalfa and Peter Chin.
The author of two books, Joe spent decades at the CBC and has been putting up what amounts to his memoir. So many shows, stunts, radio stars, crafting the national ear food.
No other book makes me love the CBC more. Mahoney is frank and funny about the Corp's quirks and clunkiness.
Joe's one smart writer.
I've ordered copies of his other books. His short story collection, is this one...
--amazon.ca
Saturday, July 17, 2021
LOST SONGS: The Ballad of Tim Horton, Go! Bimbo Go!
I spent the afternoon shuffling thru old cassette tapes, hoping to find The Ballad of Tim Horton.
With a great-from-the-get-go intro, it's the ultimate Canadian campfire song:
He was doing 110 in his Lamborghini that fateful day
He had a big french cruller wrapped around his wiener when God took him away
Oh his fans went into fits,
when they found he'd been smashed into Tim bits....
- - - -
It gets crazier after that.
Lucky for me, there's a Facebook page for Go! Bimbo Go!, a hibernating musical foursome with three chords and vague connections to the Toronto Sun.
There I find photos of Bimbo cassettes I treasure, a live version of the Tim tribute and lyrics to their hits. Do You Wanna Be My Food? Why Are People Bursting Into Flames? Unforgettable. And I've tried.
I saw the band kick butts in a hotel basement, dubbed by Ryerson's Eyeopener as "the biggest s--t hole in Toronto" and can't disagree.
Thanks to BJ Del Conte, I never lacked news of the Bimbos, once beloved outlaws in the city's throbbing punk underbelly. Grins should be shared.
LINK: The Ballad of Tim Horton (live)
Lyrics to Tim song for your camp fire...
Always nice to be remembered.
Space junk
Space Jam: A New Legacy opened.
Daffy Duck and Looney Tunes faves join LeBron James in the hoops sequel.
But only Steve Cutts knows what happened to Roger Rabbit, Garfield the Cat and all our other pals in nearby Toontown....
_
It's not pretty.
LINK: Jim Slotek's Space Jam2 review
Friday, July 16, 2021
LOST SONGS: Please Baby Don't, John Legend & Sergio Mendes
_
John Legend showed up as unlikely guest on Sergio Mendes' classic Timeless CD back in 2006. This song was the charted hit.
John Roger Stephens wrote the tune. Who he? It's Legend. Speaking "hypothetically." LOL.
Wild Pigs and their behbehs
_
"Suck it, cheetah!"
zefrank1--Mother Nature's best bro--does a dazzling dip into Wild pigs.
If zefrank had been your science teacher, you would have paid way more attention.
Moral: Bros can kiss. If they want to. And one pig "looked like a baby elephant trying to kick its way out of a cow's face."
Genius.
Hail Ancubus! Your New Cat God.
Tokyo is ruled over by an all-powerful 3D cat.
Crowds gather in the Shinjuku district to marvel at his wisdom.
Does this have something to do with Hello Kitty?
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Fearful new font
_This curious new typeface is called Coastline.
It riffs on how the world's coastlines
will look, after the polar ice has melted.
"Nobody gets killed in a musical"
_
"Woke and weird."
That's what one entertainment writer calls Schmigadoon, a made-for-streaming musical for people who like musicals a little Too Much.
It's up on Apple TV+ tomorrow.
Brimming with parodies of Too Famous Showtunes and familiar hacky plots, the Lorne Michaels musical is chockful of SNL alums. Schmigadoon seems aimed at the niche audience who watch all three hours of the Tony Awards, or trot out I'm Just a Little Girl from Little Rock at parties.
If you've ever been beaten to death by yet another reprise, teared up at Glee or been pulled on stage in a Christmas panto, this could be both your dream and your nightmare.
Trapped in a sunny town with cheery townsfolk. Relentlessly tuneful. Absurd, fey, silly, huggy-feelies for musical buffs.
"Where men are men and cows are cows..."
Schmigadoon, made while a fearful world was in lockdown.
Nuts.
LINK: Schmigadoon, Woke & Weird (Daily Beast)
LINK: Schmigadoon, Makes You Smile (Globe & Mail)
Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Rocket men
"I think we all understand the obsession with rockets, right?" Amy Poehler sez to Seth Meyers.
"Even Freud is like, you don't need me for this, right?"
* * *
Poehler calls wannabee astronaut billionaires Space Dicks. Ride 'em cowboy.
Early launch vehicle
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