Sunday, September 30, 2012

Painting: Acrylic Vortex

By Jack Brummet

[acrylic and pencil on 18"x24" stretched and primed canvas]

click to enlarge
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Music in NYC 1972-1977


I am reading a fascinating book about the NYC music scene from 1972-1977--Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever.  I arrived in NYC in '77.  The book details the emergence of hip hop and rap, the loft jazz scene, salsa, punk, the new serious music a/k/a/ classical of Steven Reich and Phillip Glass, and the new wave.  

It was pretty cool to be there and catch the tail end of it.  Anyhow, this reminded me of one night in 1977 when Kev Francis Aloysius Curran and I went to the opening of Hilly Crystal's new club in the East Village, CBGB 2nd Avenue, in an old Yiddish theater on 2nd Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets.  On the bill that night: The Talking Heads, The Ramones, Television, and Blondie.  The Hell's Angels, who lived across 3rd street from my future brother in law Colin, were out front of the theatre selling acid and nickel bags. The theater was almost 2,000 seats...way bigger than CBGBs proper.   Looking at who was playing, it's just stunning that it wasn't a sell out.  OK, rambling now. 

One of the most interesting facts in the book I'm reading is that the Talking Heads lived three doors up from our loft at 181 Chrystie Street in the East Village.  Keelin and I sublet a place there for three or four months.  I never saw any signs of the Heads, but we saw a lot of other weird stuff.   I still often listen to the Heads, Ramones, Blondie, and other bands from back then, but tonight I went back and listened to a couple of my Television CDs.  I'd forgotten just how good these guys were. . .

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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Faces No. 315 - "Please take a number and wait your turn"

By Jack Brummet

[pencil and Sharpie on surplus 2'x2' muslin autoclave cloth]

click to enlarge
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Friday, September 28, 2012

"If history has taught us anything..."



Tom: It would be like trying to kill the President; there's no way we can get to him. 

Michael: Tom, you know you surprise me. If anything in this life is certain - if history has taught us anything - it's that you can kill anybody.
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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Search.xxx debuts today—the first dedicated pornography search engine

By Mona Goldwater, 
Social Mores Editor

Porn fans, as of today, have their own search engine on the Internet.  And there is nothing anyone can really do about it.  In fact, however, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the other search engines already execute millions of searches for porn every day.  















ICM Registry, which runs .xxx, launched its own search engine — Search.xxx — today.  “There’s enough porn for anyone who wants to find it,” said Stuart Lawley, ICM’s chief executive and president. “If people hate porn, they can keep away from it.”

Sure, there's that.
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The botched Ecce Homo restoration now on trash and trinkets

By Jack Brummet, Art Editor



The disastrous Ecce Homo painting restoration, also known as “Potato Jesus”, refers to the botched restoration of a century-old Spanish devotional fresco.  An elderly woman named Cecilia Jiménez, acted as the amateur art restorer. The result of the botched restoration spawned a highly viral internet meme, where the trashed painting was edited in to other famous works of art, movie scenes and probably into a bunch of cat and FAIL images.  

Jiménez wanted to restore a damaged fresco created by Spanish painter Elías García Martínez named Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”), in the Santuario de Misericordia Church in the Spanish town Borja. According to the church, Jiménez restored the painting without permission. 


The original, and Jiménez's "fixed" version:

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Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Vote (and register to vote!!

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Shots from the Seattle Furthur show at the WaMu Theater

Shots from the Furthur show at WaMu Theater (a decidedly strange venue) and pre-func tailgater in the shadow of the Pinoeer Square sports stadiums.  It was a good show, with the band playing for 3+ hours. . .









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Sunday, September 23, 2012

Eat carp, America

By Jack Brummet, Culinary Editor



This is a scan of a 1911 Bureau of Fisheries poster encouraging Americans to eat carp.  This fish was introduced to American waters in 1877 and quickly proliferated to the point where the government needed us to eat as much as we could ("It can be cooked in such a way as to remove the muddy taste.")  I have to admit, compared to salmon, trout, cod, or snapper, they are truly ugly suckers.  I'm thinking that if our government worked the same way in Century 21, we would be getting handouts and recipe books for raccoon, opossum, bedbugs, and pigeon.

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Saturday, September 22, 2012

The Museum of Endangered Sounds

By Jack Brummet, Ephemera Editor



This is a cool site with a lot of sounds (and a lot of potential) we don't hear often, or never hear anymore--modems screeching, dot matrix printers, Pac Man, Nintendo Game Boys, rotary dial phones, and more and more.

They have a limited number of sounds right now, but I heard someone on the radio yesterday say that they have a lot more sounds to put up as times goes on.  Definitely worth a look and a listen. . .

Brendan Chilcutt, the alleged site owner, is a nom de plume for the creators, Marybeth Ledesma, Phil Hadad and Greg Elwood, all students in their mid-20s who met at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Brandcenter .

You can visit the museum here. 
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Friday, September 21, 2012

The Ink Spots "video" of Shout Brother Shout, with some amazing dancing

By Jack Brummet, American Music Editor

The Ink Spots music is, as always, great, but this clip is really about the dancing. I don't know a lot about dance (other than having attended a couple of modern and ballet performances), but this video must be some of the inspiration of Michael Jackson's moonwalking.  Or maybe dancers have always done this...because it always just looks so cool.



Copyright (C) 2012 by All This Is That. All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com).
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Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Romney Campaign: it could be worse. No wait. Could it?

By Mona Goldwater, G.O.P.-Tea Party Editor

Sure, there are non-stop headlines about the implosion of the Romney-Ryan campaign, the brisk gaffe-a-day pace they've set, dwindling confidence ratings, and their plunging numbers in polls in the critical battleground states.  But looking at this illustration of the candidates that lost in the primaries, and bailed out, you realize that things could possibly be even worse for the GOP than they are today.

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Ezra Pound and Canto CXX

By Jack Brummet, Poetry Editor

Photograph from Pound's booking for treason


Ezra Pound, friend and supporter of Hemingway, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, and many more, wrote an incredibly beautiful, maddeningly convoluted, tantalizingly allusive, and frustratingly obscure poem over the course of his lifetime. The final Canto was the shortest in the entire book, and undoubtedly the most accessible.  It was published posthumously in the collected edition of the work:

______________________________

Notes for Canto CXX

by Ezra Pound

I have tried to write Paradise

Do not move
Let the wind speak
that is paradise.

Let the Gods forgive what I
have made
Let those I love try to forgive
what I have made.

______________________________

A decent summing up of Ezra Pound's life, and The Cantos (although skipping his conviction and incarceration for treason following World War II):

From Project Muse: "No major work of modernist literature reveals so intensely conflicted a relation to the public, simultaneously spurning and courting it, as Ezra Pound's Cantos. At the age of twenty, when he was captivated by the exclusionary poetics of the coterie, Pound nonetheless declared his ambition to write a "forty-year epic," a poem, he would claim later, "containing history"--a people's history, "the tale of the tribe." As the poem evolved over the last fifty-five years of Pound's life, however, it grew ever more erudite, ever more removed from its public aspirations, until it confronted even the most devoted scholars with a mass of obscure references, cryptic "facts," and fractured narratives. As Pound himself lamented in 1919, only two years after the first three cantos had appeared in Poetry: "I suspect my 'Cantos' are getting too too too abstruse and obscure for human consumption." Despite moments of assurance and bravado, this suspicion would haunt Pound increasingly throughout his career."
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Copyright (C) 2012 by All This Is That. All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com). 

Painting: Bigfoot

By Jack Brummet


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Poem: Stages

By Jack Brummet


I am no longer
Anyone's grandchild, nephew or great nephew.
I've never been a great grandson.

I am still a son,
Still a brother and uncle,
Son-in-law, and brother-in-law,

First, second, and third cousin,
Daddy, and husband.
I am still to be a grand- and great-grandfather,

Or father-in-law,
But always have been,
And always will be, God's boy.

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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The Isolator by Hugo Gernsback

The Isolator eliminates outside noise with an isolation hood attached to an oxygen cylinder.



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The best Hollywood Squares answers ever

All This Is That Reheated—from September, 2007

 

I don't remember ever enjoying any of the quiz shows except Hollywood Squares. It was always interesting to see these B list celebrities, and the screamingly campy, men that Americans hadn't even realized were gay. This show was tawdry, and depressing if you were a glass half-empty type, and hilarious if you could just accept it as good, clean knucklehead fun. The show, and the celebs liked to claim that their answers were completely spontaneous and unscripted. It's clear they were not. Here are a few of the gems that have surfaced on the 'net.

Peter Marshall: Paul, can you get an elephant drunk?
Paul Lynde: Yes, but he still won't go up to your apartment.


Peter Marshall: In Hawaiian, does it take more than three words to say "I love you"? 
Vincent Price: No, you can say it with a pineapple and a twenty.

Peter Marshall: According to Cosmo, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think he's really attractive, is it okay to come out directly and ask him if he's married?
Rose Marie: No, wait until morning.

Peter Marshall: Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?
Charley Weaver: My sense of decency.

Peter Marshall: Prometheus was tied to the top of a mountain by the gods because he had given something to man. What did he give us?
Paul Lynde: I don't know what you got, but I got a sports shirt.

Peter Marshall: What are "Do It," "I Can Help" and "Can't Get Enough"?
George Gobel: I don't know but it's coming from the next apartment.

Peter Marshall: What are "dual purpose" cattle good for that other Cattle aren't?
Paul Lynde: They give milk and cookies...but I don't recommend the cookies!

Peter Marshall: If you find someone lying unconscious in the street, should you do anything?
George Gobel: I'd probably crawl around him, I guess.

Peter Marshall: Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?
Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

Peter Marshall: Charley, you've just decided to grow strawberries. Are you going to get any during your first year?
Charley Weaver: Of course not, Peter. I'm too busy growing strawberries!

Peter Marshall: In bowling, what's a perfect score?
Rose Marie: Ralph, the pin boy.

Peter Marshall: Eddie, according to the Institute of Motivational Research, a wife should be beware if another woman takes an interest in a certain item of her husband's clothing. What item?
Ed Asner: Well, shorts immediately springs to my mind...

Peter Marshall: It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps. One is politics. What is the other?
Paul Lynde: Tape measures.

Peter Marshall: True or false...a pea can last as long as 5,000 years.
George Gobel: Boy it sure seems that way sometimes...

Peter Marshall: Is there a weight limit for bags on airline flights in this country?
Charley Weaver: If she can fit under the seat, she can fly.

Peter Marshall: During a tornado, are you safer in the bedroom or in the closet?
Rose Marie: Unfortunately, Peter, I'm always safe in the bedroom.

Peter Marshall: Can boys join the camp fire girls?
Marty Allen: Only after lights out.

Peter Marshall: When you pat a dog on its head he will usually wag his tail. What will a goose do? 

Paul Lynde: Make him bark.

Peter Marshall: True or false, George...experts say there are only seven or eight things in the world dumber than an ant.
George Gobel: Yes, and I think I voted for six of 'em.

Peter Marshall: If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?
Paul Lynde: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark.

Peter Marshall: According to Ann Landers, is there anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people?
Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army!

Peter Marshall: It is the most abused and neglected part of your body; what is it?
Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused but it certainly isn't neglected!

Peter Marshall: According to Movie Life magazine, Ann-Margret would like to start having babies soon, but her husband wants her to wait a while. Why?
Paul Lynde: He's out of town.

Peter Marshall: Dennis Weaver, Debbie Reynolds, and Shelley Winters star in the movie "What's The Matter With Helen?" Who plays Helen?
Charley Weaver: Dennis Weaver - that's why they asked the question.

Peter Marshall: Who stays pregnant for a longer period of time, your wife or your elephant?
Paul Lynde: Who told you about my elephant?

Peter Marshall: When a couple have a baby, who is responsible for its sex?
Charley Weaver: I'll lend him the car. The rest is up to him.

Peter Marshall: Jackie Gleason recently revealed that he firmly believes in them and has actually seen them on at least two occasions. What are they?
Charley Weaver: His feet.

Peter Marshall: If you're going to make a parachute jump, you should be at least how high?
Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it.

Peter Marshall: Do female frogs croak?
Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water.

Peter Marshall: You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake!

Peter Marshall: In a very famous movie who said, "God, what a dump?"
Paul Lynde: Dumbo.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Painting: Mitt Romney, Moneychanger

By Giotto di Bondone/remix by Jack Brummet


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The Free Hugs Campaign

By Jack Brummet, 
Memes, social movements, and pop culture editor






Juan Mann, Free Hugs Founder




 



http://www.freehugscampaign.org/




What became known around the world as The Free Hugs campaign was started by Juan Mann in 2004, December 1, 2004 when he began giving out hugs in Sydney, Australia.  That fall, Mann had felt  depressed and lonely.  But, a random hug from a stranger made an enormous difference.  Mann, quoted in the Wikipedia, said that "...I went out to a party one night and a completely random person came up to me and gave me a hug. I felt like a king! It was greatest thing that ever happened."



Mann wrote a sign advertising Free Hugs and went to the Pitt Street Mall in central Sydney, where he stood for 15 minutes before an elderly lady took pity on him. Her dog had just died, she confessed, and the hug had made her feel better. 



Soon Juan Mann (a pseudonym - 'one man') was handing out hugs constantly. As the days passed, more volunteers with their own handwritten signs came and stood alongside him. Initial distrust  gave way to many people willing to be hugged.  






  










In October 2004 the Sydney police told group they must stop--to be legal, Mann would need to buy public liability insurance worth $25 million. Mann and his group started a petition to convince authorities that his campaign should be allowed to continue (uninsured).  They submitted 10,000 signatures and were allowed to continue the free hugs. 



From Wikipedia:  "Mann befriended Shimon Moore, lead singer for Sick Puppies, shortly after commencing his campaign, and over a two-month period in late 2004 Moore recorded video footage of Mann and his fellow huggers. Moore and his band moved to Los Angeles in March 2005 and nothing was immediately done with the footage. Meanwhile Mann continued his campaign throughout 2005 and 2006 by appearing in Pitt Street Mall in Sydney most Thursday afternoons."


 




"In mid 2006 Mann's grandmother died, and in consolation Moore made the music video using the footage he had shot in 2004 to send to Mann as a gift, stating in an interview that, 'I sent it to him on a disc as a present and I wrote down This is who you are."



The video was later uploaded onto YouTube.  It is now one of the most viewed videos there, with over 73 million views as of August 2012.



 

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