'TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Recommended Children's Music Part IX
By Baron Dave Romm
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Michael Mish doesn't write children's songs, he writes songs that children will understand. Unlike Joe Scruggs or Tom Chapin (both highly recommended and reviewed here earlier) who's songs are frequently from the child's point of view, Michael Mish presents adult subjects in a way that anyone can relate to. He writes about animals and the solar system, and the kids will get it.
The MishMashMusic Sampler is a very nice 12-cut selection from several releases. If you want to put your toe in the water, the CD is usually cheap (CDBaby has a nice $5 sale, if you get three or more of the Special CDs, and they have a large Kids/Family section, including this sampler) and a good start. It has the marvelous Gorilla Walk ("who took the jungle?"), the barnyard Coup de Cluck, some doo-wop with You (are the world to me) and the upbeat I Feel Good. Still, if you have kids (or want to feed your inner child), I'd recommend skipping the sampler and go get the originals.
Currently only on cassette, Sleepy Time is "for the restless baby and tired parent". Gentle lullabyes, soothing even for pre-verbalizing tots. Aside from one long story about a princess and one lullabye from a young girl to her newborn baby brother, the songs are lullabyes sung by a father to his child. After a hard day of Barney and Teletubbies, these songs are perfect naptime music.
Also only on cassette, I'm Blue refers to the Earth, and most of the cuts have kids talking about the various subjects before the adults explain the concepts. The title song is a wonderful, weightless, description of our home planet from the ground and from space. Pan flute on the ground, strings in the ether. Kids try to explain gravity, then Michael sends in the funk ("jump as high as you can jump, come down every time..."). Rockin' To The Sound of Nature is Elton John-style dance rock that teaches how to listen to sounds all around you. John Cage would be happy. I'm Blue is a friendly, tuneful, introduction to some advanced concepts that affect all children everyday. Help your child understand the world around them and provide the vocabulary to talk about some basic questions.
We Love The Animals is also available on CD and his web site claims "This is Michael's personal favorite recording" and I can see why. Loads of animal fun! Coup de Cluck is a bouncy, clucking, country tune about (are you ready) chickens. Betsy Bovine is a loping honky-tonk about a favorite cow. Gorilla Walk (my introduction to Michael Mish through its inclusion on a Radio Aahs CD) has a jungle beat, describing the primate's life and lamenting the loss of his habitat.
Michael Mish understands music; more, he understands sound. He talks to kids without talking down to them. All his CDs and tapes (even the ones I haven't heard) are worthy and highly recommended.
Michael is busy transfering a bunch of his tapes to digital, so this review covers only two that are currently out on CD and available on CDBaby are the MishMashMusic Sampler and We Love Animals. The other two were digitized review copies and they'll be available sometime, so bug him to keep at it! Even for adults, much Michael Mish Music is iPod worthy (MMM=iPw, heh).
April Winchell keeps a large collection of very strange music in mp3 form on her site. This week, she has 15 different covers of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, ranging from Paul Anka to British Ukelele to gregorian chant to (the best) Weird Al.
If you want Frank Sinatra Jr. singing the Gumby Theme Song or Norwegian Wood done to the tune of the Mission Impossible Theme or Milton Berle riffing off Yellow Submarine or the Star Trek theme as done by Nichelle Nichols or as German techno or have a desperate hankering to hear the Muppet Theme Song in Hebrew or YMCA in Cantonese or need the spiritual awakening of Amazing Grace as sung by Donald Duck... this is the place to go.
I don't know anything about her, but she was described to me as "Paul Winchell's estranged daughter", and she talks about her experiences in and around the show. She apparently has a weblog with archives going back to June 2001 and keeps a large multimedia collection available to the public. I just found out about all this from Shockwave Rider Brian Westley, and am passing the information on to you. Use your knowledge for good. With Dr. Demento not on locally, I can tell what I'll be listening to for a while.
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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Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Joe Garofoli: SAN FRANCISCO Honor for Flynt doesn't mean he's clothed in respectability (sfgate.com)
By the time someone receives a lifetime achievement award, he's typically no longer controversial. Unless the someone is self-described smut peddler Larry Flynt, who will be in San Francisco on Friday to receive the first-ever lifetime achievement award given by the Exotic Erotic Ball.
Gay homecoming king and queen elected by Illinois high school (advocate.com)
The homecoming king and queen of Buffalo Grove [Ill.] High School in suburban Chicago are a jock and a cheerleader, but they're far from typical. The boy is the cheerleader, the girl is the jock, and they're both openly gay.
John Hobbs: Adam Carolla's Best Gay: Matt Haber is out, proud, and playing with Adam Carolla's tools (Out.com)
As gay as he wants to be, 23-year-old Matt Haber puts the homo into home improvement as Adam Carolla's assistant on TLC's The Adam Carolla Project .... Here he talks about his unlikely bond with TV's most famous beer-guzzling manly man and goofing off on the set by using a powerful jackhammer to sing like Belinda Carlisle!
Shauna Swartz: Samantha Fox Needs Love Too (afterellen.com)
In her heyday in the 1980s, pop singer Samantha Fox would easily have won the poll for Female Celebrity Least Likely to Come Out as a Lesbian. Fox's career has seemed like a homage to heterosexuality, or at least an indulgence of male fantasies. She has long cultivated her image as a sexed-up yet accessible blonde girl-next-door who oozes sex appeal, but knows how to toe the Madonna/whore line without crossing over.
RICHARD ROEPER: Madonna should have kept fantasies to herself (suntimes.com)
It took some effort, but I was able to find Sex on a shelf in a storage facility on Tuesday morning.
ROGER EBERT: Top Hat (1935), A Great Movie
There are two numbers in "Top Hat" where the dancing on the screen reaches such perfection as is attainable. They are by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for "Isn't This a Lovely Day?" and "Cheek to Cheek." Because Astaire believed that movie dance numbers should be shot in unbroken takes that ran as long as possible, what they perform is an achievement in endurance as well as artistry. At a point when many dancers would be gasping for breath, Astaire and Rogers are smiling easily, heedlessly. To watch them is to see hard work elevated to effortless joy: The work of two dancers who know they can do no better than this, and that no one else can do as well.
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TWIN MOUNTAINS OF WOE
Just when I thought I was out, they [Supreme Court] pulls me back in.
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Cool and overcast, but no rain.
The kid has his first official cold of the season.
Had lots of fun on Erin's KIRO show - as usual. All the sites we discussed are here.
Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
Steve Martin
For his career achievements, Steve Martin is being honored Sunday with one of the nation's top comedy awards - the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Among those saluting the versatile performer at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts were actors Tom Hanks, Lily Tomlin, Diane Keaton, Martin Short and Claire Danes and musicians Paul Simon and Randy Newman.
PBS plans to air the Martin tribute on Nov. 9. Previous Mark Twain Prize winners include Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, Whoopi Goldberg and Bob Newhart.
Steve Martin
Marathon Reading Celebrates
Beloved Books
This book changed my life. That oft-mouthed phrase was the title of a 12-hour reading marathon on Saturday featuring actor John Lithgow, actress Rosie Perez and dozens of others - all celebrating 70 years of The New York Times best-seller list.
Lithgow's life-changing book was "Winnie the Pooh."
Rosie Perez read an excerpt from "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." But the writing that changed her adult life was "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman, where a grandfather reads to his granddaughter while skipping from fairy tale to reality and back.
Beloved Books
Glamour's Woman of the Year 2005
Mukhtar Mai
A Pakistani woman who won international fame but irked the government for speaking out about her gang rape left for the United States on Saturday to receive an award for her courage.
Mukhtar Mai, 36, has been declared Woman of the Year 2005 by Glamour, an American women's magazine. She's due to receive the award with a $20,000 cash prize Nov. 2 in New York.
In June, Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf barred Mai from traveling to the United States at the invitation of a rights group, fearing it would bring bad publicity to Pakistan, but later backtracked after Washington protested.
Last month, the Pakistani leader also got tangled in a controversy for reportedly telling a newspaper that many Pakistanis regard rape as a way for the victim to make money and get a visa to leave the country. Musharraf later denied saying that.
Mukhtar Mai
Truth Will Get You Jail
Orhan Pamuk
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is standing behind his controversial remarks about the killing of Armenians and Kurds, even though he could ultimately go to jail.
Pamuk, who is to go on trial in Turkey on Dec. 16 on charges of insulting his country's national character, is this year's recipient of the German Book Trade's annual Peace Prize.
"I repeat, I said loud and clear that 1 million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey," he told reporters Saturday at the Frankfurt Book Fair, but noted he never said the word genocide. "And I stand by that."
Orhan Pamuk
A Lonely Legacy
Anita Thompson
Owl Farm, which lies in Woody Creek, Pitkin County, Colorado, is an unassuming kind of a building, one without airs or graces or even, sad to say, a power shower or new refrigerator. But it is also legendary, in its way. It was in this ramshackle wooden house that Hunter S Thompson, the hard-drinking, hard-writing, drug-loving, gun-loving gonzo journalist lived for more than three decades. And it was here, too, that last February, at the age of 67, he shot and killed himself with a .45 calibre pistol. For a certain kind of person, this was - and still is - a place of pilgrimage. This was where you came if you despised bourgeois self-satisfaction, and shabbiness, and hypocrisy; this, too, was where you came if you loathed President Bush (though those who hated President Clinton were, conversely, every bit as welcome).
It was the high altar of freedom and bravery, of good jokes and living on the edge; it was, if you like, a temple to contrariness. And if you just happened to enjoy dope and cocaine and speed, and were prepared to wash them all down with a long glass of Chivas Regal, well, so much the better. A murderous hangover was as nothing to a true Owl Farm groupie.
Naturally, most of these groupies were - are - men. Thompson liked women, and had relationships with more than a few of them, but it was men he spoke to, appealing, I guess, to their insecure, macho sides. Or at least, this is what I find myself thinking on my way over there to meet Thompson's widow, Anita. God, how male this world is. I've been picked up by a taxi driver who happens to keep a tired copy of Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 on his dashboard. And this man, in blue jeans and check shirt, is now telling me that he has written a book - it's in iambic pentameter - about the fact that, for the last seven years, he has refused to pay his taxes. On and on he goes, dogged and angry and full of testosterone.
For the interview - Anita Thompson
Student Shines as Strongman
Kara Mann
To Kara Mann, part of the fun comes from shocking guys who don't understand why any woman would want to take part in strongman competitions.
"Then they see me flip like a 750-pound tire," Mann said. "I do lots of fun things - like where they're flipping the 350 tire, and I go over there and flip the 750-pound tire right next to them."
The 5-foot-6 woman with long brown hair may look like any other student on Vanderbilt's campus, but she definitely likes to be different. That's why she's majoring in chemical engineering and spending her free time competing as a strongman - both male-dominated fields.
"I love the sport. It has become my thing, and I want to try to get more people into it. More women need to try it because, honestly, it's empowering," Mann said.
Kara Mann
Alums Celebrate 25 Years
'Friday the 13th'
Happy 25th birthday, Jason. Alumni of the long-running "Friday the 13th" horror-flick series gathered at Universal Studios for closing night of the ScreamFest Horror Film Festival and a 25th-anniversary party celebrating all things Jason Voorhees - that hockey mask-wearing, machete-wielding, mass-murdering central character of the 11 low-budget films.
The Saturday night gathering also marked the unveiling of the sort of item usually reserved for a higher-brow Hollywood party: a glossy, lavishly illustrated, hardcover coffee-table book, "Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th," by entertainment reporter Peter M. Bracke.
With a young actress on his arm - screaming, of course - an actor in a Jason costume was treated to "Happy Birthday" sung by many of the performers who'd played Jason's victims.
'Friday the 13th'
'Commander' Creator Cedes Control of Show
Rod Lurie
ABC's new hit drama "Commander in Chief" has a new commander.
Creator Rod Lurie said while it was painful to leave the show, he is confident in his successor, veteran producer Steven Bochco, known for "NYPD Blue" and "Hill Street Blues." Lurie was asked to step aside after he became bogged down by the demands of producing, writing and directing.
"I feel like my baby is being adopted," he told Time magazine. "But at least it's being adopted by a Rockefeller."
Rod Lurie
Installs Anti-Moose Mat
Wasilla
The municipal airport at Wasilla, a town about 40 miles north of Anchorage, has installed an electric anti-moose mat around the airfield.
The barrier, similar to grated cattle guards on ranches, aims to prevent collisions between aircraft and the area's large moose population.
"They'd feel a shock and they'd also hear a snap. Those two things would cause the moose to not go in there," said Archie Giddings, public works director for Wasilla.
Wasilla
New Point Of View
Anne Rice
Sometimes Anne Rice won't leave her bedroom for days on end-and neither would you. Glass doors open onto a terrace that looks over the red-tiled roofs of La Jolla, Calif., to the Pacific Ocean. A live-in staffer brings meals to the table at the foot of her ornately carved wooden bed, which faces an ornately carved stone fireplace. She exercises in a huge bike-in closet. She's got two computers and enough books to last her a year. Splendid isolation? Splendid, sure. But she's often got family visiting in a downstairs guest suite, she reads The New York Times every morning-"Nicholas Kristof is a hero to me"-watches news "till I can't stand it anymore," and spends up to an hour and a half a day e-mailing with her extraordinarily faithful readers.
They've been worried about her. After 25 novels in 25 years, Rice, 64, hasn't published a book since 2003's "Blood Chronicle," the tenth volume of her best-selling vampire series. They may have heard she came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18. They surely knew that Stan Rice, her husband of 41 years, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And though she'd moved out of their longtime home in New Orleans more than a year before Hurricane Katrina, she still has property there-and the deep emotional connection that led her to make the city the setting for such novels as "Interview With the Vampire." What's up with her? "For the last six months," she says, "people have been sending e-mails saying, 'What are you doing next?' And I've told them, 'You may not want what I'm doing next'." We'll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and-under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure-of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" announced that he'd been born again.
For the rest, Anne Rice
In Memory
Tony Adams
Tony Adams, a producer of many of the films of director Blake Edwards including six "Pink Panther" movies, "S.O.B.," "10" and the screen and stage versions of "Victor/Victoria," has died of a stroke. He was 52.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Adams started in motion pictures as an assistant to director John Boorman on "Deliverance" (1972) and later went to work for Edwards as an associate producer on "The Return of the Pink Panther" (1975).
Among the other "Pink Panther" movies he produced or co-produced were "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (1976), "Revenge of the Pink Panther" (1978), "Trail of the Pink Panther" (1982), "Curse of the Pink Panther" (1983) and "Son of the Pink Panther" (1993).
Adams also worked on several films starring Edwards' wife, Julie Andrews, including "10," "S.O.B" (1981), "Victor/Victoria" (1982), "The Man Who Loved Women" (1983) and "That's Life!" (1986). He also produced "Julie," a short-lived television series, starring Andrews, in 1992.
Survivors include Adams' third wife, actress Anne Runolfsson, and four children.
Tony Adams
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