'TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
New Music From Old Friends '05
By Baron Dave Romm
The Nick Atoms are always fun to be around. I've known 'em for several years, and their akimbo worldview is infectious. Sure, it's punk and they play with more enthusiasm then craft. Theme songs from 80s animation is not part of anyone's standard repertoire except The Nick Atoms. I collect covers of tv theme songs, so I'm a natural audience. And they're getting better... and more ambitious. With their fourth release, The Nick Atoms In the 25th Century, they have borrowed parody skills from the great Luke Ski (they play on his latest album) and music choices from all over. Heck, I think I suggested The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, and they do a bouncy version. Song of the Six Million Dollar Man is a parody of Son of a Preacher Man (mp3 here). Equally adept at South of the Border and Outer Space stylings, this is their most professional outing to date. If you liked their other CDs, or have fond memories of Firefly or Buffy or Thundercats or Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you'll like In The 25th Century better.
You can get In The 25th Century (and their other CDs) here, and t-shirts here. Still, it's best to see their act live, and watch them play in costume. Here's some pictures I took of The Nick Atoms at Convergence '05. (Click on the arrows at the top to navigate to other con pics.)
Perhaps The Nick Atoms are an acquired taste. If so, I have acquired it. I'm not necessarily going to say the same for...
The ABC's of Art Paul Schlosser is another highly personalized CD. You either get him or you don't. He goes out of his way to be anti-pop. The track listing is wrong (he doesn't include is long rambling intro telling you not to buy the CD as track 1 so all the other tracks are off) and he mispronounces his own name on the otherwise track 1, Just Another Folk Song On The Radio and few people would tackle Body Odor Blues. Heck, The Art Paul Schlosser home page doesn't even have this CD. Write him for a copy, tell 'im Baron Dave sent ya'.
Luke Ski (who produces some of his CDs) introduced me to Art, and I'm wondering how to return the favor. His songs occasionally pop into Dr. Demento's playlist, but you listen to Dr. D for (among other reasons) songs you're glad you heard once and then can ignore. But sometimes the songs work. Vacuum Rap is just Schlosser rapping, a vacuum, a kazoo and an apology at the end. Perhaps only a librarian will appreciate Want to be a Librarian?, and not all of them at that, but I admire the subject matter. Rudolph the Robot is unaccompanied poetry with a heavy flange filter.
Get Art Paul Schlosser CDs at your own risk. If you like infrunite jabs at popular culture, you will probably appreciate his work even if you don't exactly add them to your iPod. But you might. What the heck.
Cynthia McQuillin and Dr. Jane Robinson are separately mainstays of my filk CD collection. They combine for Midlife Crisis, "the 2nd in a series of Live at Leonard's recordings" (I've been waiting for the right grouping to review the first one, 1992's Bedlam Cats from.) All the songs are theirs from 1985-1993; hence the title, I suppose. Many of the songs are on previous tapes & CDs, often in more produced versions. The duo has the ease of long-time performers singing their favorite if not most popular songs. Fun songs include Ain't Got No Body (about waking up just a head), Movin' The Bones (a paleontologist's complaint about the indecision of upper management), Snakes (from Medusa's POV), and The PMS Song (guess).
Midlife Crisis is for fans of McQuillin and Dr. Jane (such as myself). While not the best introduction to their work, at least it's currently in print. See link above; to start, I'd recommend Fossil Fever by Dr. Jane if you're into paleontology (and who doesn't like dinosaurs?) and one of the Cindy CDs (which I haven't heard, but have several similar tapes from the 80s). IPodworthy stuff, to be sure.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a Live Journal demi-blog, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E , and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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Reader Question
Re: Florida Orange Juice
Am I the only one that thinks that the actor in the Florida Orange Juice
ads would be perfect to play Bill Frist in a made for TV Movie?
Wonder what his politics are? Anyone know his name?
Pete
Good question, Pete!
Anybody know the actor's name?
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Peter Dizikes: The scandal sheet (salon.com)
Print it out, send it to Harry Reid, or just read it and weep. Here are 34 scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush's presidency -- every one of them worse than Whitewater.
HELEN THOMAS: Reality of war spoils Bush's vacation (HEARST NEWSPAPERS)
Cindy Sheehan ... seemed to be particularly irked by Bush's statement that the sacrifices made by soldiers killed in Iraq were for a "noble cause." Sheehan told reporters: "He said my son died in a noble cause, and I want to ask him what that noble cause is."
BOB HERBERT: Blood Runs Red, Not Blue (nytimes.com)
... Mr. Bush is bicycling as soldiers and marines are dying. Dozens have been killed since he went off on his vacation.
BARRY CRIMMINS: A visit to Camp Case (bostonphoenix.com)
On Friday, August 11, a reactionary radio blabber tried to sponsor sending several buses of Dallas Metroplex Bush supporters to Crawford. He was able to fill only one. In the most Republican major city in the nation, in the president's home state, barely enough people could be mustered to fill one bus. Even Cindy would be hard-pressed to make a more compelling argument about the lack of popular support for this war.
ROGER EBERT: 40-Year-Old Virgin (3 1/2 stars)
Here's a movie that could have had the same title and been a crude sex comedy with contempt for its characters. Instead, "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" is surprisingly insightful, as buddy comedies go, and it has a good heart and a lovable hero.
Fitness and Health: Max out your metabolism (herald-dispatch.com)
The editors of FITNESS help clear up the three most common calorie-burning myths.
The Democratic Loyalty Quiz: 10 Questions to Test Your Allegiance to the Democrats
Bruce's score is a perfect 10: Your score is 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. You are a pure, unabashed, die-hard Democratic loyalist. You are appalled by the way Republicans are turning America into a theocratic, corpo-fascist police state, and you'd gladly walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit to elect a Democratic president. In your view, there is no higher form of patriotism than defending America against the Republican Party and every intolerant, puritanical, imperialistic, greed-mongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which it stands.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still cooler than seasonal.
Had a couple of major power surges this afternoon - plane towing a banner dropped the banner in a backyard & on the power lines a few blocks north of here.
Performs For Crawford War Protesters
Joan Baez
Iraq war protesters camping out near President Bush's ranch got some support Sunday night from a prominent figure in the anti-Vietnam war movement: folk singer Joan Baez.
"In the first march I went to (opposing Vietnam) there were 10 of us. This is huge," Baez told relatives of fallen U.S. soldiers Sunday before performing a free concert just up the road from the ranch.
About 500 people gathered to hear her on a 1-acre lot offered by a landowner who opposes the war. Not far away, protesters continued a camp-out started by grieving mother Cindy Sheehan.
Baez said a movement like this was waiting to happen.
Joan Baez
Concert In Ramallah
Daniel Barenboim
Famed conductor Daniel Barenboim on Sunday brought Israeli and Arab musicians together in the West Bank for a concert that was as much about renewing channels of communication as it was about Beethoven and Mozart.
The 700-seat Ramallah concert hall was filled, with many standing in the aisles and doorways while others watched on closed-circuit television in a nearby hall. This was the first time that the orchestra, whose 100 musicians come from Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, has performed in Ramallah.
Some of the musicians travelled to the West Bank on travel documents issued by the Spanish government in order to circumvent political barriers.
The concert was held in memory of the Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said, who died in 2003. Barenboim and Said founded the West-Eastern Divan Workshop and Orchestra in 1999.
Daniel Barenboim
Party Notes
Hunter S. Thompson
Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson's ashes rained down on his Owl Farm property Saturday night as actor Johnny Depp, who paid for the $2.5 million ceremony, raised his champagne glass toward the night sky.
A star-studded crowd included 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and his 1972 counterpart, George McGovern.
The ash blast occurred at 8:46 p.m. while a kimono-clad Japanese drum band wailed away. The red-white-and-blue pyrotechnic show featured more than 30 firework missiles exploding into the dark horizon, punctuated by three hologram double-thumbed gonzo fists.
Those who toasted Thompson included actor Bill Murray, former Nitty Gritty Dirt Band musician Jimmy Ibbotson and a slew of his neighbors and friends.
For the rest, Hunter S. Thompson
Featured in AIDS Documentary
India.Arie
India.Arie is hoping viewers will be moved to action after watching VH1's upcoming documentary, "Tracking the Monster," in which she and actress Ashley Judd visit separate African countries grappling with the plight of AIDS.
While Judd visited the island of Madagascar and talked with women in prostitution about safe sex, India.Arie went to poverty-stricken sections of Kenya and met with people infected with AIDS or the HIV-virus and comforted children orphaned by the disease.
VH1 is premiering "Tracking the Monster" on Tuesday at 8 p.m. The 90-minute documentary will air without commercials.
India.Arie
Visits 'Hotel Rwanda' for 1st Time
Don Cheadle
40-year-old actor Don Cheadle toured the Hotel des Milles Collines in Rwanda's capital Kigali last month, speaking with several of the more than 1,000 people who were sheltered there during the country's 1994 genocide by manager Paul Rusesabagina, the character portrayed by Cheadle in the film.
Cheadle, who earned an Oscar nomination for "Hotel Rwanda," had never seen the hotel because last year's film was shot primarily in South Africa. Through the movie, however, he developed a new passion for the vast continent.
During his 2 1/2-week visit in late July, he met with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, attended the premiere of "Hotel Rwanda" in Uganda and toured displaced-person camps in the country's northern provinces. More than 1.5 million Ugandans have fled their homes to avoid a campaign of murder, rape and abduction waged by rebel group Lord's Resistance Army. Cheadle met with young girls who said they were taken as wives by rebel soldiers.
Don Cheadle
Medical News
Victoria Gotti
When Victoria Gotti learned she had breast cancer, she kept the news to herself - hiding her draining treatments from her three sons and the producers of their reality show, "Growing Up Gotti."
With the show set to begin its third season on the A&E network this week, the daughter of late mob boss John Gotti revealed the details of her struggle to the New York Daily News.
The 42-year-old said she learned she was sick after a mammogram in November. She told her sons about the cancer earlier this month, after going through months of cancer treatments in silence.
Victoria Gotti
Producing Chinese 'Apprentice'
Donald Trump
Communist mainland China will soon have its own version of "The Apprentice" - Donald Trump's reality TV tribute to capitalism.
Trump will be the executive producer of the Chinese show, which will be hosted by Beijing property mogul Pan Shiyi, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported Sunday.
The show will run in direct competition with "Wise Man Takes All" - which was inspired by "The Apprentice" and backed by Trump's business partner, Vincent Lo Hong-sui. That show offers a cash prize of about $123,400.
Donald Trump
Won't Challenge Harris
Joe Scarborough
Talk show host and former congressman Joe Scarborough said Saturday he had decided not to challenge U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris in the Republican Senate primary.
Scarborough said he doesn't want to return to politics right now and instead will renew his contract with NBC to host "Scarborough Country" on MSGOP.
Scarborough cited his show, which is taped in his hometown Pensacola, and his desire to be at home while his youngest son finishes high school.
Joe Scarborough
Mysterious Stranger Identified
'Piano Man'
It was thought he was a musical genius who'd lost his mind, tried to kill himself and retreated into a world of silence.. but he's really a gay German who fooled docs and can barely play a note
The mysterious Piano Man has finally broken his silence after more than four months - and has been exposed as a fake.
An insider at The Little Brook Hospital in Dartford, Kent, claimed: "A nurse went into his room last Friday and said 'Are you going to speak to us today?' He simply answered, 'Yes, I think I will'.
"We were stunned. He has been with us for months and we have got nowhere with him. We thought he was going to be with us for ever."
For more details, 'Piano Man'
150th Anniversary Bash
Miller Brewing
When it's Miller Time, Miller Brewing knows how to party. The nation's second-largest and oldest major brewer threw a 150th birthday bash Saturday with more than 100 descendants of the Miller family attending.
Lured by the Goo Goo Dolls, Bon Jovi and Miller beer, the invitation-only event called "The Big Brew-Ha" was expected to draw about 35,000 people to Miller Park, less than a mile from the brewery.
Miller, which established light beer, relished the underdog role, even back to its roots in 1855 when the brewery began on the outskirts of Milwaukee.
Miller Brewing
Hospital News
Natasha Lyonne
She rose to stardom in "American Pie," but now actress Natasha Lyonne is fighting for her life.
The New York Post broke the story that the missing actress had been found. Natasha, 26, is struggling to survive in New York City's Beth Israel Hospital intensive care.
Reportedly, Natasha is suffering from hepatitis C, a heart infection, a collapsed lung and is covered in track marks.
For more, Natasha Lyonne
Original Manuscript Discovered
Albert Einstein
The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1925 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, scholars said Saturday.
The handwritten manuscript titled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas" was dated December 1924. Considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs, it was published in the proceedings of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in January 1925.
The paper predicted that at temperatures near absolute zero - around 460 degrees below zero - particles in a gas can reach a state of such low energy that they clump together in one larger "mono-atom."
Albert Einstein
China Tries To Wipe Internet Icon From Web
Sister Furong
Floozie or role model, attention monger or free spirit? For months, China has been debating what to make of its latest Internet-born star, a young woman known nationwide as Furong Jiejie, aka Sister Furong.
She is seen as a pioneer pushing the boundaries of traditional media controls but in the process has become a target of government censors in the tightly controlled country.
But when her cult status began to sweep the whole country, Beijing stepped in.
In late July, authorities told the country's top blog host to move Furong-related content to low-profile parts of the site. Her pictures can still be found online, but links to them and chatrooms about her have disappeared from the front pages of major Web portals.
Sister Furong
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