Amazing LP Friday: A Certain Ratio - To Each (1981)

ACR's second LP arrived in 1981 with a cover designed by the late Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, an aura of gloom and static and fog courtesy of Martin Hannett, haunted,cobwebbed funk numbers and a long eerie-ambient-noise-festooned Latin-tinged percussion track ending the darkest of dance parties.


Folks seem to prefer their glossier third record (Sextet released in '82), but I am still quite taken by To Each. There is a foggy, lonesome atmosphere amidst the funk on the record that has never been matched by anyone since.

Terrible Film Terrors Tuesday: Spookies (1986)

Terrible can sometimes mean terrifyingly cool or just plain bad...it all depends on your perspective, taste, the amount of beer consumed, your education, your socio-economic status, the exact length of time you held that bong hit in your lungs...




That pizza you ordered just arrived. You get up to pay the dude, put a couple of pieces of that greasy pie on a plate and open another beer. The film you thought you were watching has changed into something totally different. This incoherency is what makes this film terribly cool! It's incoherency and the fact it took two years to complete is explained here.

The film was released in VHS, but sadly enough has never made it to DVD. It is available through some of the fine dealers of out of print films. Take a gander at my links there to the right!

Amazing LP Friday: Nocturnal Emissions - Fruiting Body (1981)

Nocturnal Emissions' second album (Fruiting Body) was one hell of a life changing LP for me.




Intimidating, scary and disorienting.

Saccharine Everythings - Vol. 1

Here are list of five things that make my world (and possibly your world) a much happier place.

1. I believe owning this sweater would make me a better person.

2. George Segal is a very under-rated actor. Take a gander at this films. I bet you'll agree!



What did you think?

3. When I was a child, I owned this gun.



Now that I have children of my own, I sometimes feel that their childhoods will be less fun without this gun in their lives. I feel that way about Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces, too.

What a world it was in the 70s!

I can remember shooting ghosts in my dark basement and then dressing up Hugo in his weird Beatle's Hair-do for yet another attempt at assassinating my brother's Charlie McCarthy doll. I'm getting misty-eyed just a-reminiscing on it...

The children of today will never know fun like that!!

4. Speaking of Charlie McCarthy...



Hindsight being absurd, this film is actually a prime example of the dadaist movement's influence over Hollywood films of the late 30s.

OK...it's not,but if you pretend that it is you will fall in love with it or at least tolerate it's presence on your boob tube.

5. This has made its rounds about the internet for sometime now. I find it deeply and profoundly hilarious.

Excerpts from Mo Watson's Self-Published book, The Clink and Clank in My Cranium

"Worm Liver and Fried-Eyed Cheese"

It was easy to
free my
mind
but
my ass...
my ass
stayed
behind

"My Wheeze-Bag"

The malapropisms were no
longer humorous
when
the lunkhead father died
of ammonia.

From Mo Watson's book, The Clink and Clank in My Cranium. Published in 1990 by Please Remove Your Hat Lady, I Can't See the Movie Press

I Was Drunk When I Bought This - Part One

There are nights (far too many too mention) when I sip beers with a higher alcohol content than I normally drink (A craft-brewed IPA as apposed to Black Label) and surf the net. There are many who use these drunken-surfing-times to post rude comments on conservative-leaning message boards, search for videos of Asian women playing volleyball in the nude or begin a search for the bully who beat the shit out of you for kicks in 3rd grade.

But not me.


These are the times I spend money on things I never thought I needed or wanted until the moment I added them to my virtual shopping cart. I have a very cumbersome list of wants, but not a one of those objects seems to enter my mind when I'm left alone and just a little bit drunk with a laptop.

It's best to begin at the beginning with this drunken purchase.


An LP of Dylan Thomas Narrating Under Milk Wood.



This is somehow appropriate, because I was drunk when I bought it and...maybe...Mr. Thomas was drunk when he recorded it.


And I'm drunk as I am Writing this and I lost my train - the train carrying my precious thoughts from Cleveland to where...I forgot...I'm just a little drunk over here. Oh wait! I was talking about the first John Trubee record right?



No!? Wait.
That...the...this...
Ho hum.

Peter Lorre Does Gleason

Your lips are cold. Where have you been?