'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Gifts for 2004
By Baron Dave Romm
One measure of how good or bad is the economy is... when Christmas begins. This year, it seemed to begin in August. And got into full swing after Halloween. (When did Halloween become such a big marketing ploy?) We barely had time for Thanksgiving ads. We went right from Orange to Red and White.
Here are some comparatively inexpensive but fun gifts you can give in this post-Halloween period of consumer excess.
Let's start out with my own contribution to the cause: Shockwave CDs. Shockwave Radio Theater had a dozen or so Distribution Tapes, and I have moved some of that material and much more into Distribution CDs. I'm especially proud of Shockwave Silver, Commemorating 25 years of science fiction humor. Twelve hours of audio in mp3 format, plus annotation and pictures, from 1978 to 2004. Featuring audio production from the Shockwave Riders; live stage presentations with guest voices including Phil Proctor and David Ossman; interviews with Douglas Adams, Jesse Ventura, Rev. Billy C. Wirtz and more; readings by Roger Zelazny and Tom Digby; and other stuff too. Let's Play Doctor is the remastered Shockwave Live Stage Show from Marscon earlier this year, featuring Richard Biggs, Dr. Demento, Luke Ski and more. Also included is my interview with Dr. Demento. The Food Wars Saga contains Food Wars and The Empire Bakes Off. The Fall of the House of Usherette is one of my favorite Live Stage Shows with a Dudley Do-Right parody and a Cerebus the Aardvark episode. Special to Bartcop-E readers: Buy two or more CDs and mention this column and I'll make a Sampler CD of some of the music I've been recommending. Offer expires on Boxing Day, so act now!
A subscription to Bartcop is cheap. You get Bart's trenchant commentary on CD and support one of the few web sites that dares to tell the truth (and some other stuff as well).
A gift subscription to Buzzflash supports one of the necessary resources we have. The Taliban Wing of the GOP works by keeping important news off the front page and pretending a story just isn't that important. But frequently, the real story was out there, somewhere, often from Britain, and Buzzflash cites the links. Even more, the premiums for membership are terrific presents themselves: America, the Book; Fahrenheit 9/11, etc. At least get the Buzzflash Alerts.
Prove Fox wrong! The network cancelled Futurama after the fourth season, but it was still going strong. The DVDs of all four seasons are out and selling so well that they're thinking of a fifth season. Apparently, a lot of the work was already done. (That's what happens when you're thinking in the future, not in the past.) Buying Futurama DVDs are not only fun for themselves, you're sticking it to the Fox network executives! Here is a link to the first season, Futurama Vol. 1, but all four sets are good.
A few years ago, common and/or family domain names were already snapped up. Well, the dot-com bust has brought a lot of them back! Check with Network Solutions or register.com or any of the numerous places that will search for you. Set up a family site. Pick a personal name for you and your kids. Get nifty e-mail names. Be your own admin as well! Many places will help you set up chat rooms and guestbooks and such. It's easier (and sometimes cheaper) than it was.
For the person who has everything: Sabbatum. Rondellus is a group from Lithuania that performs liturgical music of the 14th Century in the style of the period. Now, if you were a musical group that performs liturgical music of the 14th Century in the style of the period, and you wanted to do a tribute album, naturally your first tribute would be to... Black Sabbath. They take Black Sabbath songs, translate them into Latin, and sing them in the style of 14th Century liturgical music. This CD has been out for several years now and I've been recommending it for a while, but it's still good.
For the person who has everything including Sabbatum: The Great Luke Ski. Luke is one of the premier parodists of our day, right up there with Weird Al Yankovic and the Capitol Steps. Between Uber Geek and Worst Album Ever!, Luke takes the music of Eminem and the Baha Boys, among many to dig deeply into The Lord of the Rings and The Muppet Show, to give just a few examples.
For the person who has everything including Sabbatum and The Great Luke Ski but not Turkey & Gravy Soda: The Jones Soda Holiday Pack. The Five-Pack of bottles includes Turkey & Gravy Soda, Cranberry Soda, Mashed Potato and Butter, Green Been Casserole and Fruitcake Soda. No carbs, no calories, no caffeine. (And you can submit suggestions for more soda flavors.)
Is the Bush economy forcing you to cut back on gift expenses? Here are some free e-card sites: Images from the Chandra Observatory, New Yorker cartoons can be sent as ecards, Blue Mountain has been around a long time and you can design your own e-mail with sound and motion, cyberpaperboy.com, notmuch.com, castlemountains.com, mallunique.com, travelnotes.org, netscape.com's large list, mailameal.com (warning! Will make you hungry.), seva.org pics of kids, and finally keylink.com's large collection of postcard links (including some already mentioned).
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia with a radio show, a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. He reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E here, you can order Shockwave Radio Theater CDs, and you can hear the last two Shockwave broadcasts in Real Audio here (scroll down to Shockwave). Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air, and I'm continuing to collect extra-weird stuff.
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Reader Recommendations
Fun Links
Purple Gene Reviews
'Intersection'
Purple Genes' review of the movie "Intersection" (1994):
It was a lazy lazy sunday and I was looking for some movie adventure - maybe a romantic who dunnit!!!!!! I think it was a weak moment....my guard was down.....Annika Sorenstam had just played golf against 3 guys in the "Skins" tournament and looked average (I think she's an amazing athlete).......my local Pro teams are all so feeble I refused to even surf to watch them at all ........then I saw on AMC a movie called "Intersection" starring Richard Gere ("Looking for Mr. Goodbar" - "American Gigolo" - "An Officer and a Gentleman") as a moody successful architect (They showed the Vancouver Museum of Natural History as his work) unhappily married to an Icy and efficient Sharon Stone ("Basic Instinct" - "Casino") who is also his sort of secretary in his firm .......and the woman he falls in love with - a red haired Writer played by Lolita Davidovich ("Blaze" - "Santa Fe"). I should have taken a sharp left at this "Intersection" but no............I had to watch the whole goddam twisted, mis-directed, screenplayless, rainy Northwest, Hollow character big fucking FLASHBACK Flick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The movie opens with Vincent Eastman (Gere) in his little Mercedes 300 SL spinning into an oncoming TRUCK.........flashbacks begin.....Vincent meets his soon to be wife Sally (Stone) and they immediately have a daughter.....flash back to Sally becoming cold and distant and poor Vincent isn't GETTING LAID.......Flash back to Vincent first meeting Olivia (Davidovich) who is a spunky cute collumnist with HUGE HAIR (left over from "Blaze") and the triangle begins..........
I don't know why I stayed with this phony flashback farce.....I guess I was hoping that the catostophic lack of character development would be eclipsed by an amazing ending (That's how flashback flicks work - right????)...........Sure enough......The director never shows Sally working at the Architectural firm.........the director never shows Vincent working out the design of a structure...or even talking about architecture....and the director never shows Olivia writing her collumn!!!!!!!! ...... yet I stayed - yes I had hope against hope that we would have a DEEP ending....a romantic TWIST.......a poignant denoument......but noooooooooooooooo.....what did I wait all this time to get????
Vincents' car does indeed crash (he doesn't hurt any one - even though the hippies should have been hit - he was driving way too fast - he should have been beheaded by the logging truck) and they take Vincent to the Local Hospital and he dies....meanwhile Sally finds out and rushes over to the ER and gets given a letter that Vincent had planned to give to Olivia....Sally read the letter and it was basically chicken shit Vincent calling the whole thing (with Olivia) OFF.....well - Olivia just happens to be driving along the same two lane Canadian country road and sees the crane lifting Vincents' car out of a ditch.....Cut to the hospital and Sally and the letter....Is Icy old Sal gonna give Olivia the letter and break her little HEART.....Noooooooooooooooooooooo..........cut to the two gals saying sorry sorry and Olivia driving off thinking the big lunk still loved her....and Sally standing at the curb - tearing up the letter - watching it float in little pieces down the drain......knowing that the big lunk couldn't get over her................I hate fucking flashbacks !
Purple Gene gives "Intersection" 2 totem poles out of 10 for the scenes inside the Vancouver museum of natural history....that's All!
Purple Gene
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and cool.
Watched most of the Kelsey Grammer version of 'A Christmas Carol'. What a holy cheez-fest!
No, make that an imitation cheese-food product - a cheese-food product that makes Velveeta seem like the finest brie.
KNBC - NBC for LA - went off the air about 94 minutes in. Watched the snow for about 10 minutes, changed channels & returned just in time for end credits.
Poked Fun at Illinois GOP
Barack Obama
Democratic Sen.-elect Barack Obama poked fun at the Illinois Republican Party when he appeared as a guest on the "Late Show with David Letterman."
Obama told Letterman on Friday night's show that after Republican challenger Jack Ryan dropped out of the race in June, the state's GOP "couldn't find anyone out of the 12 million people in Illinois to run against me."
Instead, Illinois Republicans picked Alan Keyes, a conservative political commentator from Maryland, to replace Ryan on the November ballot.
Since arriving in Washington, D.C., Obama told Letterman he has had breakfast with Vice President Dick 'Go Fuck Yourself' Cheney and resident Bush's adviser Karl 'Turdblossom' Rove, and has been spending time answering mail from Illinois residents.
Barack Obama
Musicians Urged to Register
Royalty Windfall
More than 38,000 performing artists are owed royalty money for certain digital and satellite transmissions, but they only have until year's end to claim it.
SoundExchange, which was established in 2000 to issue the compulsory licenses for the transmissions, collect the fees and distribute the relevant royalties, has appealed to musicians to register with it to ensure that they don't lose out.
If artists or their heirs do not come forward by Dec. 31, they will not be able to collect their share of the first royalties collected from 1996-2000.
Royalty Windfall
French Film Not French Enough
'Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles'
Never mind that Jean-Pierre Jeunet's new film is a French story filmed in the French language featuring one of France's biggest actresses. A Paris court has ruled that "Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles" (A Very Long Engagement), which opened Friday in the United States, is too American to compete in French film festivals - because of its Warner Bros. backing.
The National Center for Cinematography, or CNC, made state funds available for Jeunet's movie in October 2003. A producer's association immediately questioned the film's nationality and filed a complaint.
On Thursday, the court canceled the CNC approval, saying that 2003 Productions, a French company acting as the delegated producer for the movie, was created solely "to allow the company Warner Bros. France ... to benefit from financial help even though (the fund) is reserved for the European cinematographic industry."
'Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles'
Baby News
Hazel Patricia & Phinnaeus Walter Moder
It's a girl - and a boy - for actress Julia Roberts and her husband, cinematographer Danny Moder. Roberts gave birth to twins Hazel Patricia Moder and Phinnaeus Walter Moder on Sunday morning at a Southern California hospital, publicist Marcy Engelman said Sunday.
Roberts, 37, was confined to bed last month after experiencing a series of early contractions and wasn't due until early January. Engelman said Sunday in a phone interview that "mother and babies are doing great," but didn't release the twins' weights or other details.
Hazel Patricia & Phinnaeus Walter Moder
DirecTV Terminating
Trio
DirecTV is pulling the plug on NBC Universal's cable channel Trio at year's end.
The satellite service confirmed that it will begin running a crawl on the channel at the end of the month informing subscribers of its intent to drop Trio unless the companies come to terms on a renewal of its carriage agreement. NBC Universal struck a new deal with DirecTV for the rest of its programing in July.
The loss would slash 12 million of the 20 million homes where Trio is available. Although NBC Universal has openly speculated about shutting down the upscale channel, the company said in a statement that no final determination has been made.
Trio
Plath's Daughter Pleads
Frieda Hughes
Sylvia Plath's daughter pleaded from the heart -- enough is enough.
Forty years after her mother committed suicide, one of the most famous poets of the 20th century still exerts an enduring, almost morbid fascination. Unrelenting analysis of her short, but tragic life shows no signs of fading.
"Leave them in peace," Frieda Hughes said of her mother, who killed herself in 1963 at the age of 30 and of her father, Ted Hughes, vilified by critics as a philanderer who drove the clinically depressed poet to suicidal despair.
Eager to quell the myth and lay her parents finally to rest, she has written the foreword to a restored edition of her mother's last volume of poetry "Ariel" in which Sylvia wrote with such chilling foreboding: "Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well."
In the foreword, she mounts a stout defense of her British father and says she has revised the once saintly image of her American mother, saying she had "a ferocious temper and a jealous streak."
For more, Frieda Hughes
US Antarctic Road Riles Adventurer
Sir Edmund Hillary
Famed New Zealand adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to conquer Mount Everest, has lashed out at the United States for building a 1,600 kilometre (1,000 mile) road across Antarctica.
Hillary, who is in Antarctica to deliver a reading at a memorial service Sunday on the 25th anniversary of the Erebus disaster, when an Air New Zealand jet crashed killing all 257 people on board, said the United States should continue using aircraft as they have done for years.
The 85-year-old Hillary, who drove 2,000 kilometres from Scott Base to the South Pole by tractor as part of the first trans-Antarctic crossing in 1957, described the US project as "terrible".
He said the journey to the South Pole would be destroyed by using huge vehicles to plunge through the snow and ice so the Americans can get to their base at McMurdo Sound.
Sir Edmund Hillary
Hospital News
Peter Garrett
Australian rock star-turned-lawmaker Peter Garrett was hospitalized after collapsing on a Sydney beach following a morning swim, authorities said. Garrett, former lead singer of Midnight Oil, was taken by ambulance to Prince of Wales Hospital after collapsing on Maroubra beach in southern Sydney early Saturday.
He was discharged from the hospital Saturday evening, saying he would undergo further tests to determine why he had collapsed.
Peter Garrett
Germany Unveils
Chocolate Room
German artists have unveiled a "Biedermeier"-style room made entirely of chocolate and marzipan, complete with panelling, vases, cutlery and pictures all fashioned from the confectionery.
The eight artists at a chocolate factory in the eastern city of Halle took three months and used 1,764 lb of chocolate and 200 kilograms of marzipan to complete their creation, the first of its kind in Germany.
The project was part of the 200th anniversary celebrations at the Halloren chocolate factory, which lays claim to the title of Germany's oldest.
Chocolate Room
In Memory
Ed Paschke
Chicago artist Ed Paschke, who earned international acclaim for his startling, vibrantly colored canvases of images and icons from popular culture, has died at the age of 65.
A prolific painter and the city's best-known artist, Paschke died at home in his sleep on Thanksgiving morning of an apparent heart attack, a family friend told Reuters.
Paschke belonged to a 1960s school of artists known as the "Imagists," whose work incorporating images from the media and pop culture contrasted to contemporary abstract art.
Survivors include his Paschke's wife, Nancy; daughter, Sharon; son, Marc; mother, Waldrine; brother, Richard; and a granddaughter, Erica.
Ed Paschke
