Blog Archives
Rocktober Extra – The Majesty Of Rock
In the shade of a jungle glade
Or the rush of the crushing street
On the plain, on the foamy main
You can never escape from the beatIt’s in the mud and it’s in your blood
And it’s conquest is complete.
And all that you can do is just surrender– Spinal Tap, “The Majesty Of Rock“
Rap has beats, but rock beats rap. And lizard poisons Spock
Rocktober – Breaking Space And Time
12:30 Friday night and Halloween is near \m/
NASA has recorded the sounds of the universe. It is a hauntingly disturbing place. IO and Uranus seem especially unfriendly…
But it was not always so. At first, the darkness was silent… until terrible salvation emerged in rhythm and light and sound –
Rocktober – Nine Eternities Of Doom
It’s 12:30 am EST, another installment of Rocktober’s Friday Night Videos is here.
The first request is from Maeve –
Come As You Are
(because it creeps me out, especially when performed by Civil Twilight)
Creepy indeed, but personally I find the original more threatening, especially considering how unhinged Kurt was.*
Speaking of threatening and sinister… out of all the vampires and pirates and other assorted monsters, possibly the most dangerous is the quiet, methodical, coldly efficient killer. Like, you know, David Byrne.
Live wire he may be when he’s burning down houses, but Byrne is nothing compared to Vincent Price, who lays out his plans to the number with calculating ruthlessness –
This movie has to be seen to be believed. It’s billed as a comedy horror film, and there are some bits of humor (usually very dark), but it’s twisted as hell, and Price is absolutely convincing as a genius bent on killing.
Tonight’s feature presentation – The Abominable Dr. Phibes
* You knew it, everyone knew it, even before he died.
1st Friday Of Rocktober
It’s Rocktober and Halloween is coming. It’s Friday night 12:30 EST, time for a kickass Friday Night Video.
You do remember Friday Night Videos, don’t you? If not, you can stay but be quiet so you can learn something. In short, it was a music video show (well, yeah) that premiered in 1983 and ran through the 80s and 90s until 2002, well after MTV had stopped running music videos outside the 2AM-4AM timeslot.
Alice In Chains kicks it off –
She’s Been Living In Her BitCoin World
Like her transactions, I’m anonymous.
Look at her reading the Economist’s
Analysis
H/T Cafe Hayek, who gets all the cool digital-currency music videos.
Questions With No Answers
Some stuff I’ve been pondering….
Can someone point me to an explanation of Neoreaction? One that is geared toward the layman and not 30 pages long? I’m not very inclined to buy into it, but I would at least like to know what it is I’m not buying into so I can explain why I’m not buying into it.
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I recently asked two questions regarding the Hobby Lobby case. Since no one answered, I’m asking again. First, how much does birth control cost out-of-pocket? Is it really that expensive? It would seem to be rather affordable given how many women use it, and that mass production lowers costs. But I’ve never bought it, so I can’t say for sure. Second, I’ve seen comments claiming women often need birth control for medical reasons other than actual contraception. Do abortifacients provide any kind of medical benefit the way, say, birth control pills do?
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Proponents of population control are saying most people are nothing more than consumers, and will deplete the world’s resources. So why do they push for a welfare state, which is primarily a population of consumers who don’t produce?
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Have any of the very rich politicians or entertainers who complain loudly about income inequality ever just issued some poorer people a check?
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Will the Falco Tribute Band destroy civilization… or save it?
Title is from here. Mickey explains it’s historical significance. Although you should watch the original first or this one won’t make much sense to you.
Wednesday Golf Outing
Some more in the style of Hal Gurnee’s Network Time Killers…
– A woman gave birth to twins… six months apart. Doctor blames it on an “incompetent cervix.”
That’s the best turn of phrase I’ve heard all day. All week, even. It definitely deserves to attain idiom status somehow. I’m thinking – to take the easy route – that it would be a great name for a progressive-acoustic feminist wannabe-ironic hipster band.
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A raging AngerSad has erupted over the Hobby Lobby court decision on the Byrne Robotics board. I have a couple question about the decision myself. First, how much does birth control cost out-of-pocket? Is it really that expensive? Considering how prevalent birth control seems to be, it would seem to be rather affordable, given how many women use it, and that mass production lowers costs . But I’ve never bought it, so I can’t say for sure. Second, I’ve seen comments claiming women often need birth control for medical reasons other than actual contraception (which HL still provides). Hobby Lobby only refuses to provide 4 out of 20 birth control methods. The 4 types they won’t cover are abortifacients. Do abortifacients provide any kind of medical benefit the way, say, birth control pills do?
I’m not even going to get into all the issues about the government telling a privately-owned company what it can and can’t pay for, or how HL employees are free to work where the employers will pay for all forms of birth control, etc.
Getting back to the B.R. thread…. a commenter wrote “A single-payer system would have many problems, but it seems to work pretty well for Congress and our veterans.” Hasn’t said system and said veterans been much in the news of late? The commenter does link to a poll claiming most veterans are satisfied with the care they get, but I’m not inclined to trust the Veterans Affairs site’s reporting. As for Congress… drawing on the combined taxes of the entire country to support the health care of 535 people should work spectacularly well. It’s scaling it up to paying for 318 million people that’s the problem.
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Digging down into the internet vaults…. The Comics Curmudgeon examines(!) Rex Morgan M.D. (guest-starring LBJ. Or a lookalike from the same place Hal Gurnee found the Kenny Rogers clone) –
FORE!
I don’t know if they went golfing, but it sounds like someone scored a hole-in-one…
I don’t want to know if there were penalty strokes.
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Somehow I’ve ended up featuring Kenny Rogers twice in relatively rapid succession. I’ve got nothing against Kenny – “Coward of the County” and “The Gambler” are good tunes – but let’s spin another track from that same era and see how many people run screaming.
The guys look like they’re going to, uh, play golf when the ladies suddenly show up.
Random Static: Phoning It In
Allamagoosa recently got a new phone.
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Even though I was aware of the song, somehow it escaped my notice (or just as likely slipped what remains of my mind) that Kenny Rogers used to be a psychedelic rocker.
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Discovered this guy last weekend. He’s posted over one thousand videos of (mostly) acoustic guitar or piano covers of classic rock songs and oldies, like the Beatles, Elvis, Burt Bacharach, Frankie Valli, even some Steely Dan. And of course the Monkees.
He’s also taken requests for songs outside his normal sphere, which results in unusual coolness…
He did songs by Human League and Daft Punk just for the heck of it. There’s a Death Cab For Cutie piano cover in there somewhere. And his voice sounds almost dead on like the singer from Right Said Fred.
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I don’t recall if I posted this before or not… this guy is the greatest drummer in the world.
The host blathers until about the 40 second point, but the real show starts around 1:00.
I can offer no explanation about the toilet seat.
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I would apologize for the ultra awful Data joke at the top, but I would be lying.
The Low Rider Is Revving In The Drive
Listen and compare basslines –
There’s even some similarity between the opening drum rolls.
Actual video here, I used the other one because this version skips over the opening drums.
I was something of a Thompson Twins fan when I was in junior high. I had the records Side Kicks and Into The Gap (on vinyl), and I think I had some 12″ remix album of “In the Name Of Love.” While I didn’t collect clippings or anything like that, I did read pieces about them in music magazines when I was in a store. I was rather into New Wave thanks to MTV.
I pretty much lost interest in the band not too long afterward, partly because their new single “Lay Your Hands On Me” sucked, and whatever residual interest I had in checking out their new album was likely snuffed by this. I suspect that it also helped kill their careers as well.
nightskyradio 