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Monday, October 30, 2006

Have Fun, But Please Don't Scare Your Mother

Can’t sleep, clown’ll eat me

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog has an mp3 of Night of the Laughing Dead from Power Records from liiiike 1974. I had this when I was around six or seven years old, and I have literally never been so terrified of anything in my entire life before or since.

Night of the Laughing Dead was a 45 (!) narrated by Stan Lee (!!) in second person (!!??!) -- you are the Man-Thing (as opposed to DC’s slightly later but more popular Swamp Thing, and both as opposed to Hillman/Eclipse’s original Heap); you secrete a chemical corrosive when you sense fear; you witness a clown shooting himself in the head because your girlfriend, the tightrope walker, had an affair! (This always happens to clowns.)

Then the clown’s ghost appears and tries to make people laugh in a Roger Rabbit voice, while creepy circus music plays in the background. Then some other stuff happens. Then you get completely afraid-to-open-the-closet-caliber wigged out but can’t stop playing it over and over again until finally your mother gets worried that you’re not sleeping and tells you, “Why don’t we put this away until you’re older?” at which point she throws it away along with some flexidiscs you got off the back of a Honeycombs box about UFOs that also rattled me so much I wasn’t able to function.

I mean, you.

(Maybe this won’t be that scary to you; maybe I’m just remembering how scared it made me as a kid, but I just listened to this in my office on my iPod, with the lights out, and if anyone is reading this right now, will you please come to my office? And check the men’s room for dead clowns? Because I have to pee?)


N.B. In case you were wondering what the best blog in the history of all blogs ever, as of right now, is, it’s Scar Stuff, which has a lot of other recordings like this and has the added benefit of being named after the Halloween makeup from Imagineering, a company I kept in the black for much of the late 70s.

Mira:

Also available: Tooth Out Ages 8 and up

Thursday, October 19, 2006

TAFT!

Who’s the 27th President
That’s a sex machine with all the residents?
TAFT!
(You’re damn right.)

Who defended the Payne-Aldrich Act
And had a cow named Pauline in the White House?
THAT DOESN’T RHYME, BUT I THINK IT’S TAFT AGAIN!
(Can you dig it?)

Who served as Chief Justice on the Supreme Court after he was President?
UM, TAFT?
(Damn straight.)
REALLY? THAT’S WEIRD. WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES?
(Wikipedia and books)

THEY SAY THAT WIKIPEDIA IS A BAD MOTHER--
(Shut your mouth)
I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT TAFT.
(Then we can dig it.)

EPILOGUE:
Richard Roundtree was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 and has since been an advocate for cancer awareness.

“Roundtree” was William Howard Taft’s “Skull and Bones” nickname. Because he was fat.

(Fat like a damn tree.)

Taft died 12 years before Roundtree was born, which is a total coincidence because there are 12 letters in “moustachioed” which is something both of them are, N.B.


Taft had a secretary named “Richard Roundtree” who warned him to stop having obstructive sleep apnea and Richard Roundtree had a personal trainer named “Olmstead v. United States” that warned him not to do “Shaft in Africa”.

Every proper name in that previous sentence has a number of letters that can be multiplied by 12.

Both men want the Mets to win tonight.
Don’t fuck up, Perez.


v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^
7.11.08: Update, like 1.75 years later: Elephant Larry does an infinitely better version of this joke.
Thanks for reminding me I suck, Elephant Larry.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

If you are going deaf

Get one of those giant antique ear horns.

It might be your only chance to get people to like you.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

In the beginning sometimes I left posts on that blog.

Jessi Guilford is smart and funny and I am a bad group blog contributor.
Maybe it’s all the oxytocin in my nose spray but I Y Jessi’s post on BabelPop! about Wittgenstein’s Mistress and Metallica and plants.

Actually, since I also found myself enjoying Studio 60 last night, it might be the oxytocin.

Nevertheless.

Monday, October 16, 2006

How the West Was Fun: A Critical Survey

great movie
Reviewer: cyberj_83 from Iowa City December 26, 1999
I was distracted in watching this movie, because I kept thinking that if Mary-Kate traveled at the speed of light to the Alpha-3 star system, which is 25 light years away (a light year is the distance light travels in a year) and the trip to the star and back takes just over 50 years, then when Mary-Kate returned, Ashley would be 60 years old, but Mary-Kate would only be ten and a half! How can this be? Mary-Kate was away for fifty years but only aged by half a year! At one point, the twins ride a horse and save a ranch from greedy developers. Or something. I don’t know, man, I’m kind of messed up on corn syrup right now.

Great video!
Reviewer: A drummer from Dronfield January 8, 2001
On the one hand, I loved this video, but on the other hand I prefer the Olsens’ early work as the “Gelfling” in the movie “Dark Crystal.” I have other opinions to tell you, but I only have two handS!!!11!!???? Actually, I only have one hand.
--Rick Allen.

Best Westenr Ever
Reviewer: A Movie Fan from New York City November 15, 2001
Consciously crafted by directors David and Jarnette Olsen as a piece of American mythmaking, “How the West was Fun” is on nearly everyone's shortlist of great movie Westerns. A buckskin knight (One of the Olsens), rides into the middle of a range war, quickly siding with the "sod-busters" (several digitally reproduced Olsens). While helping a kindly farmer (Possibly the other Olsen, but she looks like the first Olsen, but that wouldn’t make sense because then the one Olsen couldn’t be in the saloon because it’s a continuous shot from the pig sty to the saloon, which I just got is probably some kind of commentary on saloons, but anyway, unless she was really fast, it has to be a different Olsen), she falls platonically in love with the man's wife (Olsen as you’ve never seen her before). The photography, highlighting the landscape near the Olsen’s home in Sherman Oaks, California, won an Oscar. With Jack Palance as the guy who says “Git” a lot. “Git on out of here,” and so forth.

ok i guess
Reviewer: A viewer from Rhode Island June 12, 2002
i thought it would be enjoyable to watch as the olsen twins developed into young women before our eyes but it seems to me like it’s taking them longer than it should

yikes
Reviewer: A viewer from Rhode Island June 13, 2002
never mind

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Happy Aleister Crowley’s Birthday!

And (maybe..?) goodbye to the best thing about this past summer (*); although I haven’t seen the last maybe five videos, I still hope you don’t die, Bree! I will miss your weird eyebrows!

Here is what we learned from all this:

(1) Everyone on the Internet is (a) stupid or (b) twelve years old.
This is the generation that’s supposed to be so net savvy? You are not net savvy. You are stupid and twelve.

(2) Everyone on the Internet is a boy.
I kept hoping someone would post a blog entry titled, “WHO IS DANIELBEAST!??!?!??!!?11!!!” (he’s YouTube’s John Krasinski). But nope. Plus I know three separate boys who bought the Jane Doe’s album that “Junkie” is on, because it was the background music for the “Swimming” video. GET OVER IT. IT'S A ONE-PIECE.

(3) Everyone providing content on the Internet is stupid.
Seriously. That's how you end it? Please call me next time. (I guess next we all move on to this? The product placement is more helpfully put up front for us, so we don't have to try as hard.)

(*)
And yet and yet and yet there was a period at one point this past summer when basically my homepage was “LG15 talk”. But now Fall is here (where “Fall” = “September 7th”, specifically the date of the “From the Creators” note) .

(Please indulge me.)

It turned colder. That’s where it ends.
So I told her we’d still be friends
Then we made
our true love vow
Wonder what she’s doing now
Summer dreams ripped at the seams,
buut oh, those suummer
naaahhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiights.

Take care, Yousef and Jessica! I will miss both of your eyebrows!

------------------------

UPDATE, SEVERAL WEEKS LATER:
No one died, and here’s what everyone thinks about it now.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Our 69,105th post

My son just turned two, but about six months ago, I told him “Sam, go into your room and get a book and bring it out here,” and he did it, and I thought at the time, “Wow, he’s as smart as an Infocom game.”

This morning, though, when I was putting on his diaper, he rolled over onto his stomach, and I said, “Sam, flip over” and I got no response, so I said, “Sam, flip over so I can change your diaper,” and I got no response, so I said, “Flip over, Sam,” and got no response, so finally I said, “Sam, roll over,” and he did, which means he’s actually only as smart as “King’s Quest”.

Still pretty good! Keep up the good work!


I’m the kind of “really excited” that is “unfortunate for everyone around me” about “Get Lamp”, the documentary about text adventures that Jason Scott is working on. Those games meant way too much to me when I was eleven and a half.
A year or so ago, I was reading a list of bugs/nonsensical responses that you could get from the games, and it made them seem more intelligent (like the game was countering my nonsense with its own nonsense) or more realistic (in the reality of the game when you put a bottle into a sack and then try to put the sack into the bottle, of course they would both disappear).

Here is my all-time favorite bug, from Zork III:

> DUNGEON MASTER, KILL ME WITH THE STAFF
"If you wish," he replies.
If you insist... Poof, you're dead!
**** The dungeon master has died ****
The dungeon master follows you.
Your sword has begun to glow very brightly.

Compare that to Monday:

> ATTEMPT TO RUN REAL PLAYER ON MY WORK COMPUTER
“An exception 06 has occurred at 0028:C1183ADC in VxD DiskTSD(03)” the computer replies.
If you insist... Poof, you blue screened!
**** Your computer has died****
Your monitor has begun to glow very brightly.

Tomorrow, I’m going to teach Sam that when someone says “Hello, Sailor” to him, he should respond with “Nothing happens here,” and that before we turn on his nightlight he should request that we “frotz” it.

I will not stop until he is as smart as “Cornerstone”, at which point Activision will pay all of his outstanding debt. That, plus the TAP 529 we started should give him a head start.

> GO SAM GO