technoknob

Before Its Time

2011-12-29T15:38:00.000-08:00

From Playboy, January 1981.

I always thought it was "we will sell no wine before it's time," as in "before it is time." Huh. This is as confusing as finding out the jingle was "nobody doesn't like Sara Lee."

Officially Too Much Neil Diamond

2011-10-13T05:16:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about "Hell Yeah" because, to be honest, it feels a little bit like that Bill Cosby joke about old people acting nice because they're trying to get into heaven now. Neil has been talking about dying since the mid 1970s! Get over it, Neil, you're going to live to be 100. Your mother is still alive, for corn's sake. Cut it out.

Behold the rock star ego in its native habitat. I've seen this before but only tonight did I notice that the girl who was holding her hand out to him during the entire concert passes him her key at about 2:55, which he takes and puts in his pocket.

I'm obsessed with the girl giving him her key. At 1:50 you can tell he notices the key. When he takes the key about a minute later, he does an "aw yeah" gesture with his arm. Other girls have their hands out too, but I don't see him taking anything. He goes back about 4:45 to who I think is the first girl.

So many questions. How does he know what hotel it is? Does Neil Diamond at the height of his fame really try to sneak into the downtown Motel 6 to get some groupie booty? What if he changes his mind, how does the girl get her key back? She'd be locked out of her room! Very inconvenient.

Every hotel across America probably had to change their locks because Neil had all the keys by 1980.

Anyway, another reason Neil is irritating me tonight is because he apparently did a song called "Diamond Girls" about his groupies and how they were hurting their souls with one night stands. Dude, you're getting booty and BJs out of this little arrangement, why don't you worry about YOUR soul and stop with the slut shaming?

I don't know, man. The 70s were too confusing.

I can't embed this, but it's Neil Diamond from May 27, 2011 interviewed on the BBC, where he apparently gave the female host a flower and kissed the male host. In 1976 in an interview I already linked to, the host gives Neil a flower at about 38:35, and at the end of the interview at about 46:00 minutes in, Neil flirts back. As irritated as I am with Neil tonight, I can't hate on him too much because he is adorable in both instances. Why is he never that adorable with female interviewers?

Found out tonight that Neil is responsible for getting Elton John his first gig at the Troubadour for a performance that became the "11-17-70" album, and since Elton John is my sworn nemesis I have very mixed feelings. It's a long story I'll go into on SBBN sometime soonish, but I decided tonight that I was going to punch that Diamond bastard if I ever ran into him [1] but then I saw this:

Yeah, that guy is wiry and has a reach on him. I'll steer clear, thank you.

[1] Attention Neil Diamond's security personnel: Not an actual threat.

Tacky and Misguided

2011-10-11T03:28:00.000-07:00

So this is pretty strange: Neil Diamond performing "Holly Holy" with really bad dancers distracting everyone.

It's from the "Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour," and the IMDb places it in 1970, probably an October episode. It is... well, I already said tacky and misguided, so all I got left is bizarre.

Neil had been on the show a year earlier. Interestingly, he's introduced as having had 8 top ten hits in the past three years, which wasn't true in 1969 unless you counted half of those hits as Monkees versions of the songs. To make things even more confusing, the IMDb has no record of either Neil or Cher appearing on this episode, so I have no idea what the date could be beyond 1969.

Don't watch this. It's terrible. It's a revoltingly smug Glen Campbell and slightly confused Cher singing a medley of Neil's hits with Neil playing a supporting role, and at about 4:24 when he gets a close up, you can see he's frightened to death, and I would imagine really damn irritated to boot. I can't believe human beings were subjected to this kind of crap just to get their art noticed.

Not content with having his work butchered by Glen Campbell twice, Neil apparently went back in 1971 to perform "Soolaimon."

This is listed as the "Glen Campbell Comedy Hour," but no such show existed. It's a rerun from CMT so obviously it's the "Goodtime Show" again, and it's certainly 1971 because Neil looks exactly as he did on the 1971 BBC performance... which is also not on the IMDb, I mean come on IMDb, what are you even there for? While I'm not comfortable with the white god standing over the African natives motif, the dancing is very good, the song is surprisingly strong 40 years after it was released, and the overall presentation of the white male singing about his black female "my woman" was pretty progressive.

Back to the bad: The 1977 "I'm So Glad You're Here With Me Tonight" special with Neil performing a medley of his hits with interspersed bits of slo-mo clips of his past concerts. It appears stretched out because aspect ratio is hard, and editing the width doesn't correct the problem.

The sunglasses are to hide his shame.

Honestly, the "I Am...I Said" breaks my heart, because I imagine the pained look on his face is the knowledge that he is about a million miles away from the earnest young man who could barely bring himself to perform such an emotionally revealing song in the 1971 BBC appearance.

And finally, speaking of 1971 BBC, here's Neil in almost the same outfit as the BBC appearance, performing "I Am...I Said" while wandering around a bunch of teenagers who aren't paying much attention.

No idea what show this is from. Does anyone recognize the tag on the upper left? I guess I should be asking if anyone is even reading this blog first, then asking questions of the few stragglers left behind. But if the tag can be identified, we can possibly figure out what reruns they show and go from there.

I have done nothing but learn about Neil Diamond for five full days now. I was about to say "nothing but devour Neil Diamond" but that turns this post into some kind of cannibal porn I'm just not prepared to think about right now.

Speaking of tacky and misguided, I guess I should actually create a Neil Diamond tag for the blog.

More Neil Diamond

2011-10-10T16:10:00.000-07:00

Another performance video from the same show that had "Solitary Man" which I put in the previous post. From a 1966 episode of "Where the Action Is" which was hosted by members of Paul Revere and the Raiders. Those are not imitation Raiders, they are the genuine article, which explains why they are so irritating.

I'm learning how to dance by watching the girl on the right. She is fantastic. I have an enormous crush on her right now, she is so terrific.

Special Note For Arachnophobics: One of the Raiders teases Neil with a small crab, which is a kind of freaky.

Neil and my nervous breakdown

2011-10-08T05:20:00.000-07:00

Brief interview with Neil Diamond on American Bandstand in 1966. There is so much to love about this. He looks 12 years old (to be fair, he looked 12 until he was in his 30s, the bastard). He has great hair, but then Dick Clark asks him a stupid question about long hair, which is hilarious in retrospect. Neil is too nervous to look at Dick Clark while talking, but watch at the very beginning for his instinctual "hey baby" suave look at the girls shrieking at him.

Solitary Man video performance from 1966. Includes bonus original nose.

Neil with Johnny Cash in 1970. He's started growing his hair out and he's gotten over his nervousness. The banter before the song is corny, but don't blame me, I wasn't even born in 1970. I just report the facts. Once again, the host has to compliment Neil on his hair, but you have to admit, Neil had the best hair in show business. No offense to Gary Sandy.

BBC concert from 1971. UPDATE: I changed this to the full version instead of the edited 30 minute version which was released on UK DVD. The edited version omits two songs and some really nice banter. Small audience, intimate performance. The version of "I Am...I Said" at 30:00 will ruin your life forever. If you want to see just that song and not the whole thing, try here, but the video quality isn't quite as good.

Promotional film to go along with the studio recording of "I Am...I Said" from 1972.

Audio-only interview with Geraldo Rivera on August 13, 1976 before his concert at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, after the nearly four-year hiatus he took at the height of his career. Includes a little sound check audio and performance audio at the end. I think this is audio recorded from a television broadcast. You youngin's don't remember, but in the days before VCRs we would put a tape recorder in front of the TV to record shows. Some "Doctor Who" episodes survive only in audio that fans recorded this way.

Absolutely insane 47-minute interview during Neil's Australian tour in 1976. The sound goes out of synch halfway through; the whole interview can be found on the DVD release of the concert footage.

According to the anchor, it's the first real in-depth interview he had ever given on television, and Diamond says early on that he agreed to the interview because he wanted to counter his image in the press.

UPDATE: I have the dates wrong on this. The drug bust thing was about 3 months after this, but I'll leave the story because it's interesting.

The media in mid-1976 was filled with news of his drug bust on the day before the launch of his comeback tour. A few dozen federal agents swarmed his house as he was packing for the tour, brought there by an anonymous tip that Neil had shitloads of cocaine in his house. He did not, but they did find less than half an ounce of pot, which was not a federal crime. It was a crime in California at the time, though, so a few months after this interview he went before a judge, pleaded not guilty, and was given diversion. That's like probation for misdemeanors. Go ahead, ask me how I know this. When he completed drug counseling, the charges were dropped. The big news about this was that Neil had been adamantly anti-drug prior to this, so he came across as a hypocrite. Like all things, time has dampened the scandal, but the news coverage is probably the first memory I have of Neil Diamond.

If you ever wondered why Neil Diamond is considered so damn sexy, watch the concert footage early in the clip. Those hips in those pants, and then the breeze pulls through his hair at just the right moment.

I know it's a long interview, but give it about 14 minutes or so because it's fascinating to see Neil when he drops his defenses. He's honest from the very beginning, but he's often very guarded, hidden behind tinted glasses and defensive postures.

Also, glory in the fashions of 1976. Hipsters would pay hundreds for knock-off vintage copies of those glasses.

"I Am...I Said" again, this time at the Greek in 1976.

I'm watching a ton of Neil Diamond concerts, TV performances and interviews during a pretty spectacular nervous breakdown tonight. You may have seen mention of this on my Twitter, which I use infrequently. So infrequently that in my inexperience typed "@NeilDiamond" instead of "#NeilDiamond" and thus directly tweeted news of my emotional distress to a major, international celebrity. I'm sure he appreciated that.

For some reason the sight of a 30-year-old Neil on an old album cover a few days ago triggered an enormous emotional response that I cannot fully define, and of course one of Neil's most famous lyrics is "I am lost and I can't even say why." So I am fluxing between relating to that and feeling like an idiot for relating to that. To semi-define the problem, I'm absolutely consumed with this overwhelming feeling of loss for the past, and it becomes unbearable in the context of Neil Diamond. (See for yourself.)

We all go through life accepting that we get older and everything changes, but for some inexplicable reason I have lost that acceptance and am pretty much just wailing and gnashing my teeth about it 24/7. Maybe posting will help get it out of my head for a while.

Press Your Luck

2011-09-28T05:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't been around for a while because I'm busy. Busy busy busy. But I stumbled across this screen shot of an episode of the 1980s "Press Your Luck" -- my second favorite game show ever -- and had to share.

The audience pretty much shared that guy's WTF face. I remember this episode; the woman was a lunatic.

Hilda

2011-07-26T03:24:00.000-07:00

Hilda: 1950s-era pin up girl by Duane Bryers. More information about Hilda here. The article says that Hilda was never put in demeaning situations because of her weight, but I question this. Images of Hilda forlorn next to an empty sundae glass, walking a pet pig, or in a bikini made of a flour sack (presumably because she's too large for anything else) pepper the rest of the fun, beautiful art featuring nature and animal-lover Hilda. However, most of the pin ups are lovely, and I'm not going to complain about anything as lovely as Hilda.

Studney

2011-07-20T02:53:00.000-07:00

The Studney Twins: The irritating Godfather's Pizza commercial from 1988.

I don't actually recommend you watch it; I only posted it because the second commercial is the one that always showed in our area, and though it has been 23 years since I watched it, I still had the entire thing memorized. Didn't even have to turn on the sound to know what they were saying.

Stormtroopers 365

2011-07-19T03:48:00.000-07:00

http://stormtroopers365.com/

Once again, I'm late to the party. The original Stormtroopers 365 series ended a while ago (and I don't think is up to 365 separate photos yet), but Stefan has been creating new series to enjoy. More about Stormtroopers 365 here.

Heino!

2011-07-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

I love two things about this video: One, that he's singing about Rio de Janeiro in Brazil where the language is Portuguese, yet the "authentic" language he inserts into the song is Spanish. And two, Heino has the most infectious, contagious smile ever. You can't NOT smile when he smiles.

Mmm. Honey.

2011-06-27T01:47:00.000-07:00

I blogged about Nazis for a bit over on SBBN tonight. Also, I have the hots for Werner Klemperer.

Why?

2011-06-16T01:40:00.000-07:00

Sums up my week thus far.

Rock.

2011-05-30T02:36:00.000-07:00

Every conversation I have with my husband always ends up on the subject of Lord of the Rings instead. "The checkbook was off by 56 cents." "That's just like those trees in LOTR that sounded like Gimli but we weren't supposed to notice!"

Pecker.

2011-05-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

"England and America are two countries separated by a common language."
George Bernard Shaw

Beth Ditto

2011-05-09T02:36:00.000-07:00

Found on Chateau Thombeau:

"I Wrote the Book" by the fabulous Beth Ditto.

Because I wanted to, that's why.

Diana Dors Nude

2011-05-07T00:55:00.000-07:00

The "content warning" on Technoknob is because I plan on posting nudes of movie stars here. Like this one.

Attention Husband!

2011-05-06T02:14:00.000-07:00

Here it is, you lazy turnip.

Divorce is Entertaining

2011-05-05T04:25:00.000-07:00

This is not a hint to any husband-shaped person or persons who may be reading. Promise.

In truth, the only thing I want to divorce is my favorite restaurant, which closed down unexpectedly, just in time for Cinco de Mayo. But I guess since it closed without notice, it divorced me before I could divorce it.

Ham Still Sounds Delightful This Evening

2011-05-04T19:19:00.000-07:00

Toby Huss MTV Sinatra promos from 1994:

Toby Huss MTV "Go to hell!" promos from 1994:

Compilation of other promotional bits from MTV:

And yet I still cannot find a copy of Toby Huss as Sinatra singing Onyx's "Slam."

Danger: Catblogging

2011-05-04T02:14:00.000-07:00

My cat Simon.

So, about MST3K Vol 20...

2011-03-16T17:53:00.000-07:00

Remember how, last month, I said I couldn't wait to find out how the new Shout! Factory MST3K Volume 20 set was going to look?

This is from about 11 seconds into "Project Moonbase." You can see it's the same sort of thing that happened in the "Beast of Yucca Flats" disk I posted about a month ago. When it plays at regular speed, it looks like a white flicker, and it happens repeatedly on multiple disks.

I went through this set immediately because I was too late to return the other sets. I'm exchanging it and I won't be buying any more. The reason people buy the disks is so they can get nice clean copies of what they already have from "trading" copies, and this pretty much undermines that reasoning. Besides, neither Shout! nor the store I buy them from has responded to my complaints (except with a snotty email from Shout! that made it clear they didn't give a fuck), so fuck them.

I just wish MST3K fans didn't think that it was sacrilege to expect decent quality on disks. Most just say "Yay I don't care that it sucks at least I have it!" which is, honestly, not a very defensible life philosophy.

Posted for reference rather than entertainment

2011-02-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

Some Shout! Factory MST3K disks have quality issues where the image flickers and, after a lot of effort because my coordination sucks, I managed to get some pictures of the flickers. I'm posting these here for reference only. There may or may not be entertainment value in this!

These are from about 14:40 into "Money Talks," a short on the "Beast of Yucca Flats" DVD. This is probably where I mention that, while Vol 18 sucked as far as flickers go, Vol 19 had almost none at all. Can't wait to find out what Vol 20 is like.

submitted without further comment

2011-01-11T01:16:00.000-08:00

sometimes I post to technoknob when I run out of post-it notes

2010-09-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

I'll just leave this here.

I'm given to understand it might have the old MTV promo with the lounge guy spoofing on Onyx's "Slam" with a song about ham. Ham sounds delightful this evening. Anyway, I'll be back later tonight to actually watch this and find out if the promo is included, because I loved it.

Jeanette Jacobs and The Cake

2010-09-11T21:35:00.001-07:00

The Cake

I had to find out why Jeanette was just standing there, and this article explains it:

While Barbara and Eleanor skated, dipped and weaved to the rhythm, Jeanette stood stock still to their left, looking detached and aloof, holding her microphone down by her waist. When she did finally raise it to her mouth, she purposefully lip-synched the words rather than sing them.

Everyone assumed it was just part of their shtick. "Yeah, that was her gimmick," agrees Rodney Bingenheimer. Barbara recalls Greene and Stone also saying, "Yeah, it's different. Keep it!"

But Chelsea thinks there was another reason. "Everybody said, 'Why does she just stand there?' Most of the time Greene and Stone would have her mic turned off because she couldn't sing R&B. She felt left out. I didn't notice that was happening because I was overpowered by Charlie Greene."

Jeanette Jacobs, member of The Cake, close friend and lover of Jimi Hendrix, and wife of Chris Wood of Traffic has all but disappeared from rock history. Finding anything on her online that isn't incidental information from when she dated Hendrix or was married to Wood is almost impossible.

She had epilepsy -- one article online speculates that her "out of it" look in the performance is a result of her epilepsy medications -- and she died of a seizure at a young age. The date of death is listed 1980, 1981, and 1982 in various articles across the web, but this site about Chris Wood says she passed on January 1, 1982. Wood passed away in 1983.

That is a great article about The Cake at the first article linked, by the way. Highly recommended, although it is hard to read because the formatting screws up quotation marks in my browser, though.

Tura Satana at the Spiderpool

2010-07-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

Pictures NSFW.

This is such a long story, but I'll try to tell the short version: John McDermott, writer and director of silent films, cobbled together a crazy house in the 1920s. It was made of underground tunnels, tile samples and pilfered film sets, films such as "Song of Love," "Phantom of the Opera" and "Thief of Baghdad". The house held a lot of sexy Hollywood parties in the 1920s, not just because of its odd nature and slightly out of the way location -- way up in the hills of Hollywood -- but also because of the sexy sexy outdoor pool known now as the Spiderpool. Lots of gorgeous columns, a set or 2 of arches, a large round temple/hut, cement scallops, beautiful tile surrounded what must have been a featured area: A large tile spider (with a little wasp on its side "caught" in the web) which acted as a waterfall to the pool. No one knows where the spider tile came from, but it has been speculated it was a set piece for "The Spider and the Rose" which McDermott directed. (The plot of movie here.)

McDermott didn't make it after talkies came in. He died, some say from suicide, in the house in 1946. It was occupied by a friend of his until fire burned some of it in 1947, at which point McDermott's nephew inherited the estate. He never lived there but others did, mainly as caretakers. In 1950, almost as soon as McDermott died, the Spiderpool began to be used for nude photography. Harold Lloyd -- who probably knew of the McDermott estate back when it was a Hollywood party place in the 1920s -- is known to have taken the iconic photo of Tura at the Spiderpool below as well as other 3D cheesecake photos. I'm not sure if he took the other pictures I have below, but I assume he did and these are all from the same photo shoot.

In 1958, the house was bought and vandals who had been frequenting the place chased away, but the city building services essentially condemned the place and, as far as anyone knew, the entire house was torn town. The lots around it were divided in such a way that you cannot get to the McDermott estate without trespassing. The place was considered lost.

I've been reading about the Spiderpool for years, first on Usenet on alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.vintage, then from silent movie bloggers and colleagues. Several years ago, people who collect vintage nudes started to ask about the location they eventually called the Spiderpool. The columns, edges, and pool made the place easily recognizable even if you couldn't see the spider waterfall in the photos. These collectors pieced together the rough location from geographic clues in these old nudie pictures, and someone in 2004 found the location; pictures and notes from finding it here. While they found the pool, they couldn't find the house. In 2008, someone else found it and discovered some of the house is still standing.

More: Wiki and history here, archive.org capture of the old Spiderpool blog (defunct since 2006) here, and discussion of the original finding here.

And now, the pictures:

Comments turned off as of 7/22/10 due to spammers.

Kwan Yin

2010-06-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

This is an 11th or 12th century Chinese statue of Kwan-Yin, the Bodhisattva of the water and the moon, in the Kansas City Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Kwan-Yin is in a room that is my favorite place in the world, thus far at least. The entire room is filled with Asian artifacts, but the very far end of the room where Kwan-Yin sits is special. There is a large temple gateway that leads to a cold, quiet room where Kwan-Yin sits at the far end, in the center, with smaller statues to either side. (Those other statues seem to be gone in this photo; as the room was being renovated a few months ago, it has perhaps been re-lit and reorganized since I was last there.)

Behind Kwan-Yin is a painted mural wall from another temple, the mural known as Paradise of Tejraprabha Buddha (or Tejaprabha Buddha) and dates about 1279-1368. A similar mural is at the University of Pennsylvania. You can see the wall was cut into large chunks and reassembled later. It's so dark when you visit this part of the museum that you can't see the wall very well, which is what struck me about this photo. I hope this means the restoration is complete and the gallery is now open again.

However, I do have an old postcard, which always hangs on my wall because of my love of Kwan-Yin and of this room, and I scanned the postcard so you could see the detail in the painting:

But even if you're there in person, you can't see this detail well.

It's so beautiful, but it's also so sad, because I believe the wall and statue(s) were taken through some of the fabulously egocentric Western appropriation techniques that archaeology is so famous for.

Update 06/11/10 -- Comments turned off because of spammers. Sheesh.

everybody's doin' it

2010-02-13T01:18:00.000-08:00

I can't really be online while I'm working, so I miss out on all the cool stuff. Like today when I missed Twitter exploding about the John Mayer interview. For the first several questions I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. Finally, I decided he was a moron. You'd think a big name songwriter could express himself more clearly, and his choice of words was beyond unfortunate. My husband said Mayer sounded like an megalomaniacal introvert, and I agree, but the more I read of the interview, the more Mayer sounded like an immature train wreck. He hit all the high notes: Racism, sexism, homophobia. It's a bigotry buffet. (That's a phrase I used tonight on the LA Times article linked below. No idea if my reply will even get approved, though.)

All that said, Playboy interviewer Rob Tannenbaum wins at life for his response to this exchange:

PLAYBOY: Do you do something different in bed than other guys?

MAYER: It’s all about geometry. I’m sort of a scientist; it’s about being obtuse with an angle. It’s sort of this weird up-and-over thing. You gotta think “up and over.”

PLAYBOY: Maybe that’s easier at your height.

I love you, Mr. Tannenbaum, and would post your picture here if one was available. No, a picture of Mayer won't do. Instead, here's an interview of the interviewer talking about the interview. Seriously.

vintage mug shots

2010-02-07T03:13:00.000-08:00

May Russell, mug shot from Sydney, Australia, 1922.

Tons more of these fabulous mug shots and discussion about them can be found at Tracery here and SCAN Journal of Media Arts Culture here. These links are highly recommended, as is the Australian forensic photography website From The Loft.

hoot, man

2010-01-31T04:01:00.000-08:00

It's an owl in flight. NEAT. From slothunleashed.

1970s foods: it's my party and I'll die if I want to

2010-01-29T16:58:00.000-08:00

Once -- and only once -- Mom tried to host a birthday party for me. One of those "real" birthday parties with invitations, a theme, special games, the works.

A girl whose mom thought we should be best friends was invited, which was unfortunate for all because she was older than us by a few years, and I don't think she had a second of fun at the party.

Yeah, you totally can't tell which girl I'm talking about or anything.

This is the pre-party "I just spent 2 hours getting this together and I want to document it before those damn kids come over and ruin everything" photo by mom:

Check out that awesome paneling! Too bad that tablecloth is there, you're missing the lovely 1960s goldenrod kitchen set we had. Flecked formica, chrome details, matching goldenrod padded chairs. All of dad's 1960s bachelor furniture became our family furniture, and he had a thing for goldenrod, I guess. Everything was goldenrod. That's how dad decorated, he kept everything one color. It all matches! Yaaaay!

The theme for this wild ~~1978~~ 1977 blowout was trains, courtesy this recipe card from our beloved box of My Great Recipes:

Now, Mom did go to significant effort for the party. She bought a set of clown-themed invites, hats, plates, and games -- "Pin the Nose on the Clown" was the hit of the afternoon, even with the older girl -- and some special small loaf pans to make individual train cars with. The cake in all its Polaroid glory:

The problem was that Mom had no patience for kids. I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I tell you that Mom bitched for years about this party, as well as a few other occasions when I was allowed to have friends over. And those special pans she bought for this train cake? Oh lord. Every time she saw those pans over the years she would loudly sigh about what a waste of money they were and what a terrible party this was. Basically, I have no positive memories of this party.

Speaking of memories, my memory is apparently faulty about this bunny cake:

Pink knives for ears and angry red jellybeans for eyes! Evil bunny!

This is the photo that has been in the family album since about 1976, and my memory has always been that a neighbor gave me this cake for Easter one year.

Note that I didn't get knives for ears. Dammit.

Now that I've found this recipe card, though, I wonder if Mom made it? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing she would do. But I love how, once again, this card doesn't have a recipe, just an idea about inviting kids over to dye Easter eggs. The tips on shaping a cake into a bunny are kind of handy, though.

I hope you've enjoyed this little slice of the 70s in action! Me, I'm a little horrified by all the brown and brown-based yellows of the 1970s. Even the blues look brown.

Interested in all the scans I did of weird recipe cards? Click the tab on the sidebar labeled "the 70s beat up my grandma and pantsed my dad" to see 'em all.

1970s foods: putting the duh in dessert

2010-01-28T18:20:00.000-08:00

If these cards are any indication, dessert recipes were the most popular recipes to have. That's probably true; my mom's recipe collections are filled with desserts while the salad, soup, and vegetable sections are sometimes completely empty. While Mom was fond of whipping up dessert on a moment's notice, I've never been good at baking and steer clear from it when possible. I'm pretty good at eating dessert, though, and consider myself an excellent judge of tastiness by sight alone.

This loaf looks like a nice little cake, right?

Decent decorations on top, pretty layers, looks perfectly fine, right? Wrong. You're not looking at layers of cake, it's "unsliced sandwich bread" covered with butter. That's not frosting, that's cheese with salmon, chicken, and olives ground into it. The cake really is a lie. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, HEATHENS?

Do you know how long I stared at this picture...

...before I realized that those circles on the side of the cake formed a parrot and a pig? Weeks. I am completely serious, I had this in my pile of stuff to scan for weeks, glanced at it almost every day, and only yesterday did I see the piggy's face. That's when I started concentrating on the picture, yet that freaky parrot was still almost impossible to discern. Is that an olive for the eye? There is no recipe, again -- a lot of these recipe cards are nothing more than idea cards -- but there is a "fun" scrambled word game included.

HOLY SHIT THEY CUT A BIRD IN HALF AND STUFFED IT WITH

oh wait, that's just a pineapple.

This disgusting pile of once-edible fruits is called "Fonduloha", which was quite upsetting at first, since I thought the word meant "fondue" plus "aloha." However, it turns out just to be chicken and fruit salad. It contains bananas, so it is an abomination unto the heavens, but at least there is no cheese involved. The presentation could use a lot of work, though.

Another cake "recipe card" without a recipe:

WHAT.

The back of the card suggests, for a child's party: "Ask a friend to dress up as a gypsy and tell fortunes." Oh, dear.

This card...

...was just posted here because it's adorable as hell. TAKE ME TO YOUR GELATIN-BASED DESSERTS, BEEP BOP BOOP. Recipe for the "fat little space visitors" here.

And here are 2 more amazing desserts:

HOLY HELL.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA hey, I wonder why there's a recipe for Sloppy Joes on the back of a dessert card AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAggggghhhhhhhhhhh

Tomorrow, the exciting finale to our food-based tour de force concludes with rare, compelling, real-world documentation of these recipes as seen in the wild. Don't miss Part IV: It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want To.

1970s foods: fun with franks, puns with penises

2010-01-27T18:51:00.001-08:00

Immediate confession: There will be no penises in this post. Nor will there be puns, because all my wit and humor drained out of my body from fear when I saw this recipe card:

There are so many levels of disgusting in this picture that my eyes can't decide where -- if anywhere -- to land on this photo. The split wieners? The stuff oozing out of them? The forks and toothpicks jabbed in willy-nilly? Take your pick, it's all here, a nightmare-like Lynchian horror show. What's worse is that there is an unpictured recipe on the back called "Glazed Franks." Glazed. Franks. Wieners that have been made to look wet and shiny.

Ah, now here's something we've all wanted for dinner: Food made from a recipe with the words "Tuck" and "Loaf" in the title. (Please leave your "tuck game" jokes at the door. Thank you. -- Mgmt.)

This is meatloaf stuffed and topped with hard boiled eggs. In this photo, the sliced eggs on top blend in with the eggs inside the loaf and it took me a while to realize there were eggs inside. And nothing says classy like setting a meatloaf on top of 5 lbs of lukewarm frozen peas.

Recipe here with a bonus recipe called "Tuck Away Baby Beefies." I am not funny enough to make this shit up.

Ladies' Seafood Thermidor:

Oh my god that is sick. I swear to you that I have not adjusted the colors on this card. This card isn't particularly discolored from age, either, you can tell from the white border. The food is supposed to be that color. I just can't with this, you guys. Recipe here, although I don't think you can find condensed cream of shrimp soup anymore. And who would waste lobster on this pinkish-brown globbity goo?

Now this is just sad.

"Twirlin' Turkey for a Crowd" is a phrase that will stick in your head for a week, especially if you've ever had too much to drink and started twirlin' your turkey in a crowd. While your best frenemy catches it on her cell phone and uploads it to YouTube while you're passed out after your 16th shot of butterscotch schnapps, and in the morning you don't remember exactly what happened, all you know is that there are a few dozen messages on your voice mail, most expressing various levels of disgust, but there's a couple of proposals in there, too, and... ahem. Moving on. All this "recipe" consists of is (1) turkey, (2) salt and pepper, and (3) melted butter. But check out this crazy shit in the background:

It's a glass of iced tea sitting on a daisy. A huge damn fucking mutant daisy with the strength of a circus freak! RUN!

This is one of the best photos on the cards:

But "Tres Chic Pic-Nique"?! I am embarrassed for everyone involved in the creation of this card.

At first I thought this was ridiculously offensive, then I remembered that when I was a little kid in the mid- to late-1970s, hobos were the bomb. For reals, homeslice. I read books about hobos, especially hobos that took trains, and The Boxcar Children was one of my special favorites. I owned a Boxcar Willie album and one year I dressed up as a hobo for Halloween, complete with rope for suspenders. The proof is here! The picture is from 1981 and I still have that end table and the chair, I'm sitting between them right now! Anyway, in regards to hoboness, it would be hypocritical of me to go off on the tastelessness of this recipe card...

...especially since it tells you how to make a "hobo dinner" and dessert -- called a "Shaggy Dog" -- in a coffee can over a grill. That. Is. Awesome.

Less awesome is the unfortunate name given to this recipe, which includes 2 cans of "boned chicken." You can buy chicken with bones in cans? Really?

I'm always up for a campsite quickie, though.

And finally, we're back where we started:

Hot Germans, you say? Men's Favorites, you say? Sigh. I miss Jack.

This is Part II of a very special episode of technoknob about 1970s foods. Tune in tomorrow for Part III: Putting the 'Duh' in Dessert.

1970s foods: deliciousness optional

2010-01-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

A year and a half ago on my old LiveJournal account, I mentioned a set of My Great Recipe cards that I got from mom's house after she died. These cards were either given out or sold by the Betty Crocker company, which becomes obvious once you realize every recipe calls for at least one pre-fab box of Betty Crocker product. Also, the cards say "The Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library." I'm all researchy like that.

Several cards were labeled as "Ways With..." and many used "'n" instead of "and". You know, to be hip and fun. This one uses both, which just drives me up the wall. Recipe scan here.

Mom's cards are apparently from 1971, with a few more added in 1984. We had the big custom made box that held all these cards, as well as the dividers and example menus. Mom even added a few other cards and her own recipes, and the numbers/letters written in the upper right hand corners were part of her own organizational system. The one that the cards came with just wasn't good enough for her, oh no.

My god, the things we ate in the '70s. These cards have an entire section devoted to fondues. That's plural, as in more than one fondue, which means great lengths were taken to create new and different fondue recipes:

A delicious, cheesy combination of ground up kitchens and teenagers.

Notice that the fondue is "Mock Fondue", meaning it's suitable for teens because doesn't have wine in it. Then they follow that recipe with a "Psychedelic Fondue" -- nothing says "acid trip" like melted cheese! Odd that the corporate minds of Betty Crocker felt a half cup of cooked wine in a teen dish was a bad idea, but the "psychedelic" drug reference was fine.

Another section was called "Men's Favorites". One of the salads in that section was an entire huge steak, sliced thin and placed on top of a single leaf of lettuce with a couple of rings of green pepper for garnish. The Man Salad looks delicious, but it is not a salad.

Speaking of Man Food:

This is a Man Drink. It is canned beef broth with horseradish and dill weed, heated and served in a glass. It is called "Pow!" It is to be paired with Rumaki, which I discovered today is chicken liver marinated in a soy-and-ketchup sauce:

As one would expect, these cards contained some really disgusting gelatin salads.

Jellied. Chicken. Two words that have no damn business being in the same sentence. Protip: Pink food is not appetizing. Scan of recipe here.

The funniest was this huge orange salad with carrots in it and slopped into an enormous rhinoceros mold. I stared at this picture for 5 fucking hours until I figured out what it was.

Seriously, how much pot must be consumed for someone to decide that what a standard molded Jell-O recipe really needs to make it fresh is a rhinoceros mold? Recipe here, but it's just Jell-O with carrots and pineapple in it. I hope no one paid for this "recipe."

And things just get weirder from there. For example, someone thought the name "Crusty Salmon Shortcakes" sounded good, and then went out into the world to find the worst professional food photographer in existence to illustrate the deliciousness:

It's pink, it's "crusty," it's got olives jammed into it. And it's paired with the weirdest fucking green nobbly shit I've ever seen in my life, I mean goddamn that's bizarre. Want to make dinner for someone you wish to emotionally destroy? Get your Crusty Salmon recipe here.

OH MY GOD IT'S STARING AT ME FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuu

This has been Part I of a hard-hitting expose on food. Tune in tomorrow for Part II: Fun With Franks, Pun With Penises.

i'm only here to help

2010-01-26T02:59:00.000-08:00

Useful and educational. From lesmy on tumblr.

things are fun

2010-01-25T04:14:00.000-08:00

I've been having fun lately finding props and outfits that were used in more than one movie. Today milesadrift has a great example on her tumblr blog:

Above, Lucy, Desi, and a teeny tiny James Mason in "Forever, Darling" (1956). Apparently, Lucy got to keep some of her wardrobe from the film:

It's the same dress, only instead of the Auntie Mame-style coat dress worn over slacks, it's been shortened and the skirt sewn together. Neat.

gah

2010-01-24T04:51:00.001-08:00

When you see it, you'll shit bricks. From awkwardfamilyphotos.

everyone loves the stang

2010-01-18T01:23:00.000-08:00

I've been given to believe that one of you likes the Arnold Stang.

water sports

2010-01-17T06:00:00.001-08:00

From sloth unleashed. The guy is playing with a Tomy Waterfuls Ring Toss toy. I know, because I had one just like it. Looks like he's doing pretty well, too.

That 18-inch long thing on the coffee table in front of him is apparently an ash tray. People may have smoked a lot in the 1970s. I'm just speculatin' here.

toxic taco, you say

2010-01-13T20:14:00.001-08:00

WHAT.

Skeezix Visits Nina

2010-01-12T03:57:00.001-08:00

I thought for the longest time that I had imagined the whole thing.

My dad, born in 1927, kept a ton of his toys from his childhood. One toy was a board game called "Skeezix Visits Nina". He let me play with his toys and I distinctly remember finding this game, realizing it was missing pieces, and drawing on the inside of the box to make it into a different kind of game. Probably pinball-based. I was very into pinball at the time. It was a time before video games.

In the late 90s I mentioned the game to Dad and how now, as an adult, I regretted writing in it. I said it was probably worth money and he nodded and joked a little about how writing in it must have killed the value.

Then in 2005 when both parents were gone and I had to clean out the house, the game was nowhere to be found. I really wanted to see that game again, too. So I came home and looked the game up online. Nothing.

For 4 years, nothing. Not a peep about the game anywhere on the Internets. I started to think I had imagined the whole thing, because the Internet is the repository of all human knowledge.

Until this guy listed one on eBay recently. (Link goes to the Italian version of eBay, the only one I could still find cached). His was complete and didn't have any writing so it wasn't the one we had -- which was a possibility since the seller lives not too far from where my parents lived -- but it's the only one I've seen since my dad's.

EDIT: I forgot to mention you can find the game on BoardGameGeek now, too. Same pics as the auction.

The game was boring, by the way. It had a spinner (missing in ours) and a board that was just paper glued to the inside of the bottom of the box. The board was a single path with a few little special spots along the way. You spun, moved your SweeTart-shaped piece along that many spaces, and if you landed on a special spot you followed instructions. First one to Nina's house won.

For very very low values of "win". I still wish I had this game again, though.

Futurama: 7 Damned? 7 Damned WHAT?

2010-01-11T02:24:00.001-08:00

I've been meaning to post this somewhere for 2 years.

In the Futurama episode "Roswell That Ends Well", at about 19:50 into the episode the ship flies through an Army building, a hangar I guess. The retro windows on some of the Army buildings are made up of a bunch of small bluish squares of glass. In this scene, though, the glass spells something out:

That's the 600 px wide version, click here for the 900 px wide one.

It obviously says "7 DAMNED" or, at the least "7 DAMN". Until I grabbed this cap I couldn't see the last 2 letters, but now that I enlarge it they seem like "ED" to me:

I thought the commentary would address this, but it didn't. There's nothing on Google about this, either. Surely I'm not the first one to see this.

EDIT: Light bulb! There are 7 windows in this bit, or "7 DAMNED" windows. Were they hard to animate? Did someone at the studio get bored? We will probably never know.

catbox fishcoin

2010-01-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to figure out why I don't own this.

Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen

2010-01-04T04:17:00.001-08:00

Great storyboard art from my favorite Ren & Stimpy episode, "Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen." Which you can see here because I am your friend:

Ren & Stimpy - The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen Anthem
Uploaded by Bodhisattva1956. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

I need to post here more.

dear advice givers

2009-12-09T02:32:00.000-08:00

So, givers of advice, a question.

I'm applying for jobs but have no references. Well, I do have one, my teacher from school, but otherwise my supervisors from previous jobs aren't even allowed to be references. Both places forbid potential employers to talk to specific supervisors, only to someone in the HR departments. And co-workers apparently don't count as references, and my local friends are really more acquaintances who I wouldn't bother with a request like this.

So. What do I do? Just give one reference, or give supervisors as references with a note saying they can't actually talk to said supervisors?

I am actually kind of stunned that these applications want the names of HR people, supervisors, AND references from each job. Probably a credit check, too. It's crazy.

at least you get a brief glimpse of Ted Knight

2009-12-06T03:38:00.000-08:00

Someone mentioned this YouTube clip recently on a post that no longer exists, but which sadly was still in my RSS feed. Did you know that if you delete a post it doesn't get deleted from the RSS feed? I didn't know that until now. Anyway, this nameless person who decided to spare his blog readers this pain was so horrified by this clip that I had to see it for myself. Words cannot express how wrong this is. P.S. A little background knowledge of Capote's research on In Cold Blood is necessary for the understanding of the wrongitude.

The "accidental" mispronunciation of "mugger" at about 1:50 made my headache come back.

in lieu of actual content

2009-12-01T23:55:00.000-08:00

You tell us, Dick.

From everyone's favorite psychotic expressionistic comic strip, Dick Tracy.

because I need youtube vids to express my opinion for me

2009-11-25T20:29:00.000-08:00

A video from Jay Smooth about the Roman Polanski thing.

He gets a little wordy in the middle there, but basically, this is a really good and reasonably short primer on why the people who think Polanski needs to be held responsible aren't just prudish flyover American hicks who don't understand what the 70s were about. Because honestly, that's the vibe I get from the pro-Polanski people, and it's disturbing in about 50 million ways.

I tease people when they use YouTube videos to illustrate their own opinions instead of creating their own way to express it, but in this case so much has been said that I'm certain my own words don't need to be added to the 'net noise.

you know it's awesome

2009-11-12T23:26:00.001-08:00

You cannot deny the awesome. Click for superhuge version.

i'm done, bitches

2009-11-11T17:50:00.000-08:00

I generally don't post about my personal life here because, meh. Boring. But I thought a few people might be interested in this, especially people who were on my old LiveJournal friendslist. Also, I want to rant a little bit before I go sleep for 97 hours straight. If you want to skip the rant, don't read past the demotivator.

For about 2 1/2 years I've been in online tech school to learn m*dical tr*nscription. And I use the asterisks because I don't want G**gle to find me with those keywords. Today, I finally fucking finished! Yay me!

What this means for SBBN is that I might now actually get a chance to go back and finish all those half-done posts that have been sitting around as drafts for the past year and a half. Until I get a job, then who knows if I'll have free time. Or hands.

Speaking of hands...

I'm going to hell for laughing at that. And you're all coming with me. (It's from the made-for-TV movie "Evening in Byzantium," by the way.)

Rantage: School was only supposed to take 1 1/2 years, but I got sick and I had a horrible teacher who took up to 6 weeks to reply to emails and all sorts of other stuff that sucked. A few months ago I got a new teacher, I've been zipping through at a fairly good pace, and today I finished.

Meanwhile, you might be asking yourself, Self, is m*dical tr*nscription a good field to get in to? No. No, it is not. First of all, the schools suck. Mine certainly did, and I expect most other schools do as well. They just want people to enroll and give them money, they don't care about anything else, and they certainly don't tell you the truth about getting a job as a tr*nscriptionist.

There is no job security in m*dical tr*nscription, and they don't tell you that. Clinics and hospitals now often outsource m*dical tr*nscription to other countries. To you, the patient, that means someone who isn't trained and doesn't really understand English is typing up your medical records. Even after all my training, I still have trouble understanding English-speaking doctors. You can just guess how bad the errors are in your records which have been typed by untrained non-English speakers. Also, plenty of places use v*ice recognition s*ftware which is often quite buggy. Some VR files aren't looked at by humans, so again, yay mistakes. It's a wonder anyone fucking survives a hospital stay.

All I can hope for is some kind of a job, and soon, otherwise I'll be dealing with some serious financial consequences. See, I thought I could make a living off of Internet dollars...

this text is not very sub

2009-11-07T17:39:00.001-08:00

The interior cross-section schematic of the famous JBL Paragon D44000 stereo system:

Tell me I'm not the only one who sees it.

For more about the JBL Paragon series, see the link above or the post at Pour 15 Minutes D'Amour. Which is in French, so you may have to translate it.

because you'll need something to do Monday while you pretend to be working

2009-11-01T02:48:00.000-08:00

About 3 1/2 years ago, some clever people on a clever forum did this:

MackJ on Truth and Beauty Bombs took full Garfield strips and removed Garfield's dialogue, creating some surreal masterpieces of comic art. By "full strips" I mean this was done without the randomizer, utilizing the panels from an actual strip and not 3 random panels. The entire Truth and Beauty Bombs thread is a glorious sight to behold. Don't make any plans for your day, just read the whole thread.

And yes, you probably did see this years ago, but awesome never dies.

you did a what now?

2009-10-18T20:55:00.001-07:00

I wish I had one of these so I could send it to someone and confuse the hell out of them.

Courtesy Swistle, photo from re-wolf on Flickr.

hippo birdie

2009-10-15T01:53:00.000-07:00

Hippo birdie two mes! Yes, it's my birthday, and I'm gloating because I'm 38; my only regret is I didn't spend enough time last year telling people, "I'm 37, I'm not old."

And you can tell it's my birthday because I got about 3 dozen "happy birthday" emails from various forums I've joined over the years. October 15th is the annual remembrance of forums past. I'm always asking myself, "When did I join the Waffle Fanatics Who Hate Pancakes forums?"

<-- Those are the flowers my hubby gave me. They're pretty, but you can't really tell that because I arrange flowers like a spastic planarian.

taste the fun

2009-10-01T03:10:00.001-07:00

I just found this in my grandma's stuff and thought it was neat:

It's a postcard of the Saltair Pavilion (the 2nd version) and lake. This postcard was sent to my grandparents and dad in 1938; dad would have been almost 11 at the time. And look -- it came with a tiny bag of Salt Lake salt attached! I didn't open it of course, but it smells like salt so I don't think it's lying to me. Can you imagine trying to send this through the mail nowadays?

Here is a huge 1500 px size version so you can see the details. These postcards were colorized photographs printed on thick linen cardstock. I love looking at all the people in the picture.

In the lower left hand corner is a man floating that I swear to you is W.C. Fields:

If it is him, the colorist forgot to redden his nose.

Get!

2009-09-23T01:31:00.001-07:00

I'm sensing a theme here. From October 7, 2008:

From everyone's favorite Mark Trail-based comic strip, Mark Trail.

headshot

2009-09-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

Ok ok ok ok, this is awesome, you have to try this.

First, you need a head shot of someone, yourself or just grab a picture online, doesn't matter. I've even provided one for you if you need one. (I haven't tried with this pic of Bruce, if you use it, tell me how it works.) The pic needs to be on your hard drive.

Then go here:

http://labs.mppark.jp/hige/

It's in Japanese but should be easily navigable. Click CHANGE, wait until it says UP and then click on that. Then choose the photo on your hard drive that you want. It has to be a head shot like that pic of Bruce over there, it doesn't work otherwise.

Wait a minute and then REVEL IN THE AWESOMENESS. Warning: Nightmares may plague you for a few days.

KGB Handbook: Spy Identification Made Easy

2009-09-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I often kept cartoons I really liked, and at some point I got the brilliant idea of saving them by laminating them. Except "lamination" was "cover them with clear Contact paper." You can see how well that turned out:

Even though it's brown with age and wrinkled because the Contact paper shrank over the years, I still love this cartoon. Apparently written by Jim Meddick in 1986, the year he started "Monty", it's a nice slice of Cold War humor. I used to think the first panel was about Pan Am Flight 73, although that wasn't exactly a KGB job. I guess it references the KGB penchant for hijacking planes as mentioned in this interview with Ion Mihai Pacepa, former (Communist) Romania's chief of espionage:

In the late 1960s, a new element was added to the Soviet/PLO war against Israel and American imperial-Zionism: international terrorism. Before 1969 came to an end, the KGB's Thirteenth Department -- known in our intelligence jargon as the Department for Wet Affairs, wet being a euphemism for bloody -- invented airplane hijacking. The KGB constantly lectured at us that no one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should feel safe anymore. The hijacked airplane became an instrument of Soviet foreign policy-and eventually the weapon of choice for September 11, 2001.

During those years of intensive airplane hijackings, I became amazed at the almost identical pride both Arafat and KGB General Sakharovsky exhibited over their prowess as terrorists. “I invented the hijacking of [passenger] airplanes,” Arafat bragged to me in the early 1970s, when I first met him. A few months later I met with Sakharovsky at his Lubyanka office. He pointed to the red flags pinned onto a world map hanging on his wall. “Look at that,” he said. Each flag represented a plane that had been downed. “Airplane hijacking is my own invention,” he boasted.

The second panel is about News & World Report's Nicholas Daniloff, who was taken by the KGB and accused of being a spy. He was held for almost 2 weeks.

I really wish my copy of this cartoon was in better condition. I don't know that it's ever been collected in a book or reprinted anywhere.

ruining the internet, one cat video at a time

2009-09-16T21:23:00.000-07:00

Just doing my part to kill you with cat cuteness.

you'll poke an eye out with that thing

2009-09-02T01:45:00.001-07:00

An entire 1964 Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue via the Flickr of "What Makes the Pie Shop Tick?" Check out the padded butts on girdles for the "come hither" look. Also, note that the "edgy" bra Madonna wore back in the early 90s during a concert tour is the exact same thing sold in this catalogue. She wasn't daring, she just bought "daring continental look" and "feather light foam pads" bras from this catalogue.

interesting if true

2009-08-13T21:24:00.001-07:00

This squirrel will get photoshopped into more pictures than Pedobear.

pimp pants

2009-08-12T22:38:00.001-07:00

Check out the pants on Kaz! From everyone's favorite coach-related comic strip, Gil Thorp.

his wife? a horse.

2009-08-02T18:46:00.001-07:00

Yes, Sultan is a horse. A sexy stalking horse in love. From my favorite comic and yours, Juggs Parker.

good morning, the world is blocking 4chan

2009-07-27T01:23:00.000-07:00

Apparently several sites are blocking 4chan.org. AT&T was discovered to be blocking /b/ and /r9k/ boards earlier, but about 25 minutes ago (3:00 AM Central) moot updated the status page to say:

Cogent Communications has joined the club—they're now blocking all of 4chan. I can't even access the site at this point.

(EDIT: As of 4:05 AM Central, the entry about Cogent has been deleted from the status blog. No idea why.)

I think Cox Communications may be blocking 4chan as well, as I can't get to it at all. Unless there's a DOS attack on 4chan again, which Encyclopedia Dramatica hints at, so it's possible. (EDIT: It came back up at the same time I noticed moot had deleted the bit about Cogent. Plenty on 4chan are reporting they were unable to get on too, from a bunch of different ISPs. I wonder if this was a technical issue separate from the AT&T issue?)

Are ISPs taking it upon themselves to tell their users that they aren't allowed to go to certain websites? If so, that's not the ISP's job. This is a dangerous precedent if it's an ISP deciding it doesn't want to allow people to go to 4chan due to content.

It's possible that the constant DOS attacks against 4chan (presumed to be by Anontalk) has caused ISPs to cut off access in an effort to reduce bandwidth. Since no one is confirming anything -- this happened on a Sunday, just like every other Internet fiasco (Amazon's homophobic sales rank problem, anyone?) -- it'll be Monday before we know more.

Pic related, as kids these days say.

president spaceship head

2009-07-09T16:34:00.001-07:00

I welcome our new spaceship-shaped head overlords etc. etc. From obama_daily on LiveJournal.
You really should see the whole post, there is some extreme awesome in there.

the mysteries of the universe are vast indeed

2009-06-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

Early in the movie "A Mighty Wind", there is a montage of archival folk musician footage combined with fake archival footage of the fake folk bands in the film. One of the real snippets of footage, just after 1 minute into the film, shows a couple of young guys playing banjos. It appears to be the late 1950s or early 1960s:

Is it me, or does the guy in the middle look like Steve Martin? It's so hard to tell from a screencap, it looks even more like him in the actual footage. It's the right time frame for it to be Martin, too. I can't upload the film online, but if you have "A Mighty Wind" on DVD you might want to check it out.

I don't know what to make of it. It's as weird as Albert Finney in drag for a brief moment in "Miller's Crossing", something that as far as I know was never explained.

Okay, it's not that weird. But I would swear that's a young Steve Martin.

blogger a go-go

2009-06-17T22:23:00.001-07:00

Charlie and His Go Go Boys:

The Atoms:

After spending a lot of time collecting these as I found them on the 'net, I discovered tonight that most came from one magical animal: David Greenfield's huge collection of 1960s and 1970s Asian pop records.

Free Jean-Claude!

2009-06-13T22:24:00.000-07:00

Just moments ago I finished watching "JCVD". I'm still stunned. It was so amazing, and of course I haven't the words to describe it, because I never do. You know I love films, you know I watch and enjoy a ton of movies, but only rarely do I watch a film that affects me as much as "JCVD" did. It's one of those films where, after watching it, I can't imagine living my life without the memory of this movie affecting my entire worldview. "JCVD" is part of my memory, my consciousness, and everything is the better for it. How do I explain this feeling to those who don't react to films in the same way I do? I can't explain it fully. But I don't need to.

Blog, The Magnificent Ferret

2009-06-13T17:37:00.001-07:00

A "New Scooby Doo Movie" is on Boomerang right now (started 7:00 PM Central). It's "Haunted Carnival", the one with Dick Van Dyke as a guest star. About 35 minutes into it, Dick is in front of a carnival attraction which is labelled "Blog, The Magnificent Ferret". This ferret is 6 foot tall and 10 stone! That is magnificent! See Blog for just 10 cents!

I wasn't able to record it because my DVR was busy finalizing a disk, but I am not the only one to report on this amazing discovery. Alternately, you can watch it on this poor-quality Youtube video, starting at 8:10.

Is it not magnificent? The whole episode is filled with that trademark Hannah Barbera accidental pervertedness.

being out in public is fun

2009-06-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

I would like to share with you something that happened today at about 6:00 PM at the Kansas State University Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, and which is a very good example of why the K-State vet med can suck it.

I was buying some cat food when a vet (student vet, I'm sure) and 2 customers with their cats in carriers came walking in behind me. They talked a bit about how one of the cats is a real problem behavior-wise. The vet starts a line of conversation that absolutely floored me:

VET STUDENT: Yes, all tricolor cats are behavioral problems. That's because nearly 80% of tricolor cats are female.

MALE CUSTOMER: Ah, it's a woman thing.

VET STUDENT: Yeah, exactly, the female of every species is difficult to get along with and control.

MALE CUSTOMER: *laughs knowingly*

VET STUDENT: Today I was being assigned my patients and I was given a tricolor female, and I put the file back in the pile and grabbed another one. No way will I work with a tricolor female.

This tricolor bitch hag female cat has ruined the lives of many innocent men.

Now, keep in mind a few things: Nearly 100% of tricolor cats are female. It's no "nearly 80%", and a vet student should know that. I knew that and I've never even seen a true tricolor cat. Secondly, I can't find anything online that supports the idea that all tricolor cats, especially female, are behavior problems. (I used keywords like behavior, behavioral problems, unfriendly, and aggressive. Nothing came up.)

And I'm sure customers love hearing that you, their vet, deliberately refuse to help cats just like their own because you have a crazy bias that almost seems sexist. Sexist... against cats. Who thinks like this?

the evil midnight genre what stalks at midnight

2009-06-06T23:45:00.000-07:00

That damnable film genre -- 1920s stage plays made into early 1930s movies -- is stalking me again, this time in the form of a film THAT NEVER WAS A PLAY. Well, not until Grahame Greene's 1970s version. But I still recognize the genre when I see it, even if it's in disguise. You bet I do.

"Raffles", the 1930 movie starring Ronald Colman and Kay Francis, isn't all that bad. It's pretty predictable though and some of the supporting cast -- including David Torrence, older brother of Ernest Torrence -- is really awful. I can't believe David Torrence's Scots accent was genuine, it was so completely awful. And both of the Torrence brothers freak me the fuck out. I hate seeing them, they scare me. It's not rational, but there you have it.

The best part of "Raffles" are the few really good sets, designed by my boyfriend William Cameron Menzies and filmed by my other boyfriend, Greg Toland. Just look at this set. Look at that font in the sign at top. Look at those curtains. That floor! It was hard to see in this screencap (my caps aren't very sharp nowadays, since I don't have Beloved Lappy right now) but that door is a lovely art deco iron-and-glass design.

Colman and Francis were, of course, ridiculously glamorous and lovely and fun to watch. Alison Skipworth, as the large and elderly Lady Kitty, was in the tightest gown I've ever seen. If she'd just had a bra it would have been better, but as Pauline Weston Thomas notes:

Big busted girls turned to bandaging their breasts flat, but many adopted the Symington Side Lacer, a bra that could be laced at both sides and pulled and pulled in to flatten the chest.

None of the bras gave much shape, but few ladies were seeking anything more than stopping the bust from wobbling...

Which is clearly what was going on here. Very disconcerting. I don't know why I think about these things when I watch movies, but I do.

this may break your minds

2009-06-04T19:46:00.001-07:00

Minds blown yet? No, I have no idea where I got this. Yes, I know it scrolls too far right.

Sorry I've been neglectful of my blogs lately. Life gets busy, etc. etc.

I like movies, except when I don't

2009-05-28T01:52:00.001-07:00

I've been on a movie kick lately, because my beloved laptop has gone tits up and there's nothing else to do in the living room except watch movies. And when I say "movie kick", I mean more than the normal 20-odd movies I watch per month. The problem, though, is that I've recorded a bunch of movies that suck on toast.

Well, let me back up: I haven't watched the entire movie in most cases, so the film may actually not suck on toast. It may be brilliant. Perhaps these films include giant mechanical spiders, which automatically elevate any boring old movie to genius level. That was Orson Welles' big secret, you know. Giant mechanical spiders. They always stole the scene from Joseph Cotten, which is why he eventually went mad and invented Cherry Garcia ice cream. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

These are the films I've recently been unable to finish, some because they might, perhaps, just maybe, suck out loud:

1. Danger Lights (1930) - I should have known that this was going to blow when I saw in the opening credits that Hugh "Captain Mumblypants" Herbert was the fucking dialogue director for this film. Come on, people. Hugh Herbert? The mumblemumbleWOOWOO guy? I actually wrote down a couple of things Alan Roscoe said in this film, which I think you'll enjoy: "Whine on you mumpus menargh!" and "What is the shoe doo, bupuko bakah?" Great job directing the dialogue, Hugh! Alan Roscoe doesn't sound like he's speaking in tongues at all.

Of course, I turned up the volume, as people are wont to do when they can't hear shit. Too bad that every spare moment between lines of dialogue was packed to the gills with train sounds. Loud, stroke-inducing, teeth-grinding, pillow-punching train sounds. I gave up after 25 minutes. Maybe you will, too: the movie is here on archive.org.

2. Within Our Gates (1920) - I only stopped watching because my ding dang DVD got full and didn't record the last half. Very disappointing.

3. Love In the Rough (1930) - I recorded an epic buttload of Robert Montgomery movies a few months ago, and found nearly all intolerable. Of the three films I tried to watch, this was the worst. "Their Own Desire" (1929) was decent enough, despite the fact that the film is not 100% Norma Shearer free, and I made it through that one in its entirety. The next film was "The Easiest Way" (1931), which I'd seen a long time ago and liked quite a bit. The 3rd film, though, was "Love in the Rough", one of those snooze-inducing late-20s stage plays with a ridiculous premise and a sidekick that's supposed to be funny but is really annoying. Like, pluck your eyes out and stuff them in your ears kinds of annoying.

4. Guilty Hands (1931) - I finished this one by judicious use of the fast forward button, stopping only for the luscious Kay Francis. I won't tell you what the super secret trick ending was, but for whatever reason, I saw it coming a mile away. Even though it was stupid. So stupid I yelled at Lionel Barrymore, "Why you so stupid, Stupid?" But he flipped me off and made "The Devil-Doll" just to make me cry. Bastard.

5. Menace (1934) - Okay, this is kind of funny. A friend of mine let me "borrow" some movies, one of which was supposed to be "The Menace" (1932). Instead he sent me "Menace" (1934), which is another one of those early stage-to-film murder mysteries, a genre I had just sworn off of for a little while. I'm being stalked by an entire film genre! It's not a bad movie, really, but I've seen so many that I always know what's going to happen, even when the movie allegedly has a ton of twists and turns. It's my keen mind. No, for serious, I should have been all like a detective and shit.

"Menace" starred Gertrude Michael, pictured here in lovely art deco glory.

Note that neither "Within Our Gates" nor Gertrude Michael were given toasts. There is a reason for this, but it's very cryptic and complicated and, quite frankly, you'd never understand it.

Randopic #4: Scandals!

2009-05-25T19:20:00.000-07:00

A 1945 advertisement for Reis underwear. No seams to sit on!

The Kitteh in teh Lake

2009-05-21T17:34:00.001-07:00

I discovered today that my kitteh Petey's favorite movie is "The Lady in the Lake" (1946). He usually never pays attention to the TV, but he couldn't stop staring at the movie today, especially when Audrey Totter was on screen. He even ran up to the TV to try to catch her when her bracelet shone particularly brightly.

Audrey Totter is friend to kittehs everywhere!

Best. Day. Ever.

2009-05-20T03:48:00.001-07:00

KAZ' EARRINGS ARE BACK WOOOOOOOOOO!!! They're all big and gaudy and you can see them! YAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY

Boeing Boeing (1965)

2009-05-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

I officially give up on 1960s sex comedies. Enough is enough.

"Boeing Boeing" (1965), also known as "Boeing (707) Boeing (707)", is a sex comedy starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis.

Curtis plays Bernard, a reporter in Paris who has an apartment he shares with 3 female flight attendants. None of these women know anything about each other; they're all lead to believe this is their permanent home and that Bernard is their fiance. He makes sure they're all away at the appropriate times by keeping strict control of their schedules and noting the times when they're away on their respective flight schedules.

This is skeevy enough, but his maid Bertha (Thelma Ritter doing the same damn role she did in every movie she made) helps him in his scheme. She changes out the ladies' underwear so the German woman doesn't accidentally find the French woman's bras, changes the photo in the living room to the appropriate girlfriend, stuff like that. Even takes the blame when something suspicious happens so that the girlfriends hate her and think she's the cause of all the weird goings-on. Bertha's ire is almost always directed at the women, too, while she's just moderately frustrated with Bernard.

Not skeevy enough? Good, there's more! Bernard's acquaintance Robert (Jerry Lewis) arrives and decides he likes the set-up so much he's going to steal it from him. Not just the apartment, but the three girlfriends and even Bertha, who he lies to in an extended scene where he tries to woo her away from Bernard.

When I said aloud that this was incredibly skeevy, my husband noted that this wasn't just skeeve, it was a case of "skeeve vs counterskeeve".

Basically, it's yet another 60s sex comedy where women are things. They are rarely referred to by their names, instead referred to by the airline they work for; the German woman is called "Lufthansa", the English woman "British United", etc. They're credited this way on the IMDb.

In the opening credits the actresses' measurements (i.e. 36-24-36) are listed under their real names, with no mention of the characters. So it's not just that the characters are objectified, the actresses themselves are turned into nothing more than objects valued based on the size of their breasts and buttocks.

The best part was when Bertha, told to keep girlfriend Lise away from the other two girlfriends, drugged her with so much sleeping potion she really thought she'd killed her. Ha ha! The fun we have!

The film isn't even funny, so you can't make the argument that objectification is all in fun. There aren't many jokes, it's all Scooby Doo-like hijinks with the running around airports and the hiding women in rooms and the hey. Curtis has all the charisma of soggy cardboard and the comedic talent of dry oats. Thelma Ritter... god, don't talk to me about Thelma Ritter. The most annoying actress on the planet. All she does is play the goofy maid, or sometimes a mom who pretends to be a maid. That she was nominated for an Oscar 6 damn times for playing the same role says as much about the Oscars as it does about her.

Jerry Lewis is wonderful and is sadly, sorely, terribly wasted in this film. The female leads are played as stereotypes, given bad wigs and stilted dialogue, and are all as wasted in their roles as Lewis was. Susanna Leigh's role in "The Deadly Bees" was a lot better than her role here, as was her performance. Go watch "The Deadly Bees" and leave "Boeing Boeing" alone.

As to this genre of movie? Enough. There are so many good movies to watch and, as the cliche says, so little time. I've given the 1960s sex comedy enough of a chance that I'm confident that it will not be a mistake if I avoid it for the rest of my life.

Wayman Tisdale

2009-05-17T21:08:00.000-07:00

Wayman Tisdale was the first "wow!" musician I discovered when I started listening to smooth jazz a few years ago. My enjoyment of light jazz first began as a casual listener who just turned on the smooth jazz channel while eating dinner, but then I realized that not everything was just "elevator music". Of course, I knew Tisdale's name because he had been a basketball star, but was surprised at how lively, complex and enjoyable his music was.

Tisdale died Friday, May 15, at age 44. He had been taken to the hospital after having difficulty breathing, and he had been battling bone cancer for two years.

Of course, because some people are insane when it comes to sports, Tisdale once reported that former coaches and players actively wished he would not survive the cancer, their animosity against him from his basketball days was so great.

This seems like hyperbole, but allow me to illustrate: In keeping with being a big fucking asshole, Chuck Woodling, retired reporter for the Lawrence Journal-World, decided it would be a good idea to bring up some trivial college basketball incident for no reason other than to cast the recently-dead Tisdale in a bad light. See, back in 1984, Oklahoma played University of Kansas in Lawrence and the team, led by the arguably psychotic coach Billy Tubbs, acted poorly. Tisdale was a 19-year-old on the Oklahoma team at the time, so Woodling thought now would be a great time to grouse about how horrible Tisdale was because he was associated with the incident.

Except, if you'll read the article, you'll see Tisdale wasn't really involved. And the article isn't about Tisdale at all, except for a sentence or two saying, essentially, "Wayman Tisdale died, oh hey, remember when Oklahoma University was TOTES MEEN to our team?"

Chuck Woodling, you may suck it.

As you can see from the comments in the article, almost everyone thinks Woodling was out of line. And he was. It wouldn't matter if Tisdale was alive or not, the fact is that he was not a big player in the incident, that the incident was 25 years ago, and every sane person in the world has moved on by now.

Every day, I get a little more disappointed in humanity.

Fashions of 1920

2009-05-14T00:39:00.000-07:00

I was watching part of "Within Our Gates" (1920) last night -- only part of it because my disk had run out of room about an hour into recording, so I was a wee bit peeved -- but I was absolutely enamored of the fashions of that era. Sylvia especially has a gorgeous white dress in the early part of the film. I'm not usually into fashion of any era, but I was so struck with Sylvia's dress that I thought I'd do a little fashion spam post.

This is Evelyn Preer, who played Sylvia in "Within Our Gates". (sauce: Omega418 on flickr) She's so gorgeous. She was reportedly one of the best actresses of her day, but sadly very few of her films survive.

Sylvia's dress in the movie looked a lot like Bess Truman's, seen here in her 1919 wedding to some guy named Harry. I think he did something once. Maybe a couple of somethings.

Here are some patterns of dresses very similar to ones seen in "Within Our Gates". Alma, the supporting female role, wears a suit almost exactly like the one on the right. (sauce - some fun early fashion stuff here)

Another set of patterns. So pretty.

Sylvia had a coat in the film a lot like the woman on the left does. Photo circa 1925. (sauce)

A 1920 fashion study by photographer Baron de Meyer. Beautiful. (Update March 2010: A terrific link on de Meyer here at Aesthetes Lament, courtesy Dfordoom of Cult Movie Reviews.)

School Frocks of 1919! (sauce)

Paul Poiret fashions (sauce)

headphones

2009-05-13T19:31:00.001-07:00

My headphones suck. I need suggestions.

I use headphones daily for medical transcription and thus I need a set that has pretty decent sound quality. They also need to be comfortable, which is the biggest hurdle for me to overcome.

I really hate earbuds, they always make at least one of my ear canals hurt like hell within minutes. The large over-the-ear kind tend to make my ears itch like big fucking itchy things, and I have just mutilated my $20 pair of Sony headphones because of the itch. Now my ears feel great and I have a pile of headphone debris! Win win.

I like the feel of the cheap kind that are over the ear but are loose, like these (link goes to Amazon), but the sound quality is iffy. Since my "good" headphones are in pieces, I'm using an old $3 pair of Radio Shack headphones, but I suspect my elite transcription skillz will now suffer.

What headphones do you use, and why? Headphones, won't you?

Willy!

2009-05-12T01:10:00.001-07:00

Well... that goes without saying.

Life. Don't talk to me about life.

2009-05-07T17:38:00.000-07:00

Due to a bit of a family emergency, I will not be around on Le Interhole for the next few days. This goes for She Blogged By Night, Twitter, LiveJournal, and email. Thanks.

awwwwwwww

2009-05-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

This made me "awwwwww" more than cute kitties.

defending the home

2009-05-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

We have some minor repairs on the house from last year's hail storms and tornado, and I had some calls in to a local repair place to call me back so we could set up a time to get a couple things done. This morning at 7:30 AM some guys from this repair place show up unannounced and start hammering on our house. I should mention we're on a night schedule and so at 7:30 AM we had barely gotten to sleep. (Somewhat unusual for me, but I stupidly stayed up all night doing research on Marie Prevost.)

Of course, we didn't know what the hell was going on at 7:30 AM, except it sounded like someone was trying to break in. So my husband ran outside to defend the home...

...in his Mr Bubble t-shirt.

The weird thing is that this didn't scare the repair guys off. Despite telling them to wait until we called to schedule a time, they came back a few hours later and started breaking down the house again.

Randopic #3

2009-05-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

I don't even remember where I got this. A LiveJournal community, I think.

Interesting Stuff

2009-05-04T02:58:00.000-07:00

Jacques Rivette is quoted about "Titanic" and Kate Winslet:

the actress is awful, unwatchable, the most slovenly girl to appear on the screen in a long, long time. That's why it's been such a success with young girls, especially inhibited, slightly plump American girls who see the film over and over as if they were on a pilgrimage: they recognize themselves in her, and dream of falling into the arms of the gorgeous Leonardo.

Yes, this man:

said this actress:

was "slovenly".

I don't even like "Titanic", but come on, Jacques.

The rest of the interview is here, and there are some real gems in there. As Madeline Kahn would say, "What a nice guy."

Randopic #2

2009-05-02T22:40:00.000-07:00

I love these demotivators thingies. I'm such a tool.

Randopic #1

2009-05-01T19:34:00.000-07:00

I love how none of their feet are touching the ground.

Cox Communications can suck it

2009-04-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

For 2 weeks our local cable company -- Cox Communications -- has run the Emergency Broadcast Test at least once a day. It's always called a "weekly" or a "monthly" test, but it's quite obviously a daily test. I called them to complain because that's the kind of person I am. Cox said it was because of storm season, but why do they need to run a test daily or more to make sure it works? Why can't they do it 3 times a week or something?

Basically, we've ended up with something like 10 movies ruined because of the test. It ran over the last 45 seconds of "Gone With the Wind" the other day, and ran through the exciting ending of "Thunderbird 6" last night. I recorded a Jack Benny film that got really screwed up, because the Emergency Broadcast Test didn't cleanly cut off when it was over, and the picture stayed off for 10 minutes until it was fixed.

In conclusion, Cox can suck it.

Because I am here to help

2009-04-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

Someone used this search string that sent them to my "real" "blog":

'classic movie' about a silent movie actress with a terrible voice after talking movies

You're looking for "Singin' in the Rain". The character is Lina Lamont and is played by the amazing, wonderful, beautiful, and wildly underrated Jean Hagen. And she was robbed of the Oscar when that psychobitch Gloria Grahame won instead.

Image stolen from Film Experience Blog, which you should all be reading right now. So get your hands out of your pants and go read it. Damn, do I have to tell you everything?

Louie Louie is too radical

2009-04-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

Important determination: "Louie Louie" is too radical for anyone's parents. Especially mine, who are dead and thus don't rock down as much as they used to.

Next on my mix -- provided by a friend of mine who goes by the nym Goofproof -- was "Whole Lotta Shakin'", which I think was too radical for me. Sinister in its obscenity! Who's barn what barn my barn, indeed.

Image stolen from 45 RPM but not hotlinked because I am a wonderful person.

"Certain Things Are Likely" lyrics

2009-04-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

These come from Jeff Grote, who was kind enough to scan the lyrics to the Kissing the Pink song "Certain Things Are Likely". A few years ago I decided to sit down and figure out the lyrics myself, since they weren't available on the web anywhere, but discovered that I couldn't understand a dang thing. I tried to buy a copy of the KTP album but every time I ordered a copy from a seller on Amazon, they mysteriously didn't have the album to send. Frustrated, I gave up. That's why I am extremely, unendingly grateful to Jeff for scanning these in, and I offer them here in text mainly for convenience.

CERTAIN THINGS ARE LIKELY - Kissing the Pink

Girl lean over bendy chair
Peer at creaky card
On her feet the white sock pair
Beneath the ground is hard

What's your mind on
What's your mind on

Patience in the line she sees
Snaps another card
Curtain wave above her head
Sun it shines so hard

What's your mind on
What's your mind on

Health shape body weight
Body made of steel
Push it up, drive it hard
Drive it like a wheel

Certain things are likely
Certain things I blame
Certain things are likely
They hypnotize me, hypnotize me
Like falling in love

In this race, fever face
Girl stand on her toes
China blue, look at you
Tattoo how it grows

What's your mind on
What's your mind on

Health shape body weight
Body made of steel
Push it up, drive it hard
Drive it like a wheel

Certain things are likely
Certain things I blame
Certain things are likely
They hypnotize me, hypnotize me
Like falling in love

Drive it like a wheel
Body made of steel
Sun it shines so hard
Hypnotize me, hypnotize me

Certain things I blame
Certain things I own
Some are too expensive
Help me build a throne

Buckle this, buckle that
Buckle all the way
Certain things are likely
Like falling in love

In this race, fever face
Girl stand on her toes
China blue, look at you
Tattoo how it grows

In this race, fever face
Girl stand on her toes
China blue, look at you
Tattoo how it grows

Note: This post originally appeared on my old blog Stacia's Stuff on 11/25/08

Apparently, I am a pervert

2009-04-27T23:17:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I used to watch "Bless Me, Father" reruns on PBS. The show starred Arthur Lowe as the priest of a small parish and Daniel Abineri as his young curate.

VERY young curate, apparently. I had a huge crush on Abineri as a teen and when I recently learned the show was on DVD, added it to my Netflix queue for sentimental reasons as well as to see Abineri again. You know, because he was so damned gorgeous, but also I haven't seen him anything since, or so I thought. More on that in a minute.

The first disk showed up today and I popped it in the player after dinner. Within a few minutes Abineri entered the scene... and he was just a boy! Look at him:

For some reason (insanity, I suppose) it never occurred to me that someone who looked so much older than me when I was 12 years old wouldn't exactly look as old to me now. He's still cute, though he's only 19 or so in this show. It seriously threw me for a loop when I saw him. I... I could be his mother! I'm a pervert who likes little boys!

A few years ago I realized the only time I'd seen Abineri was in the "Bless Me, Father" twenty*mumble* years ago. Since then, though, I had seen him and didn't realize it. He was behind the 2007 viral video "Mr President":

And he played Dr. Frank-N-Furter in a road performance of "Rocky Horror". I defy you to not find him unbearably hot as Frank. DEFY. YOU.

The moral of the story: It's marginally more acceptable for a thirty*mumble* me to think a 23-year-old Frank-N-Furter is sexy than a 19-year-old curate. At least that's what I tell myself.

This post was originally posted at my old blog Stacia's Stuff on 4/2/09