007: Punching out bowls of cereal, meditative drone, Martian sounds, etc.
There is no better place for a “Hot Summer Day” than in our February mix, where spiky and sparkly instrumentals mingle with a gothy Buzzcocks song, spacey Detroit jazz, and Unsolved Mysteries-y ambient.
🥣 Weird Promotional Food Doodz: Breakfast Brawl
Where: Here!
Breakfast Brawl is a parody of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out produced by Dannon in an effort to market its yogurt smoothie to men. It’s delightfully weird and surprisingly cathartic to punch these characters out.
🕳️ Music: Vertigo KO by Phew (2020)
Where: Bandcamp
Droney, meditative noise with a cover of my favorite Raincoats song? INSTANTLY took up residence in my heart and has yet to budge. Phew came up in Japan in the ‘70s/’80s punk scene, first in the band Aunt Sally, and is still making music of a different kind to this day and it rules and I will give her the last word on these comfortably unnerving soundscapes.
“The hidden message of this album is: What a terrible world we live in, but let's survive.”
P.S. It’s “The Void!”
🎞️ Viewing Material: Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris
Where: MUBI [Hit me up for a link to a free trial or maybe get one on the site?]
A short documentary that is as uncomfortable as it is illuminating. I like MUBI’s description: “Tense, combative, discursive: A meeting with James Baldwin doesn’t quite go according to plan for a group of presumptuous white filmmakers in this rarely seen, Paris-set short film. An illuminating snapshot of the great African-American intellectual’s worldview that bristles with friction and ideas.”
Baldwin is prickly, delightful, and always fucking cool.
🧚 Reading Material: Shelley Duvall Interview
Where: Hollywood Reporter
Thank whatever you believe in that the Dr. Phil interview was not the last word on Shelley Duvall. The author of this piece clearly has both respect and affection for Shelley, who has battled with obvious demons but does seem to be doing better than she was made to appear on the show.
My favorite part? A longtime Faerie Tale Theatre fan she has developed a relationship with facilitated a surprise FaceTime call with Paul Reubens (Faerie Tale Theatre’s Pinocchio) for Duvall's 70th birthday. They had a party at Red Lobster, Shelley’s favorite restaurant, with a special ‘Faerie Tale' cake. I’m not crying, you’re crying!
🐡 Unexplained Phenomena: What caused strange blobs to rain down on the small town of Oakville for weeks?
Where: Reddit
I came across this Reddit thread after trying to find more information about Yunopon here. The real-life blobs in Oakville, Washington (which sounds like my perfect mix between The Twilight Zone and Goosebumps) are described as “small blobs of jelly-like goo.” They fell all over the town, blanketing over 20 square miles on the first day. They rained off and on throughout August 1994 and sent some people who interacted with them to the hospital. No one seems to conclusively know anything at all about them, still. Of course they appear in an Unsolved Mysteries, though I have yet to watch that one.
🎸 Podcast: You’re Wrong About & Porn Rock
I have a feeling that most of you are well aware of both You’re Wrong About and the hilarity of the PMRC Senate hearings of the ‘80s, but I’m too fond of these latest episodes not to share them. My favorite thing I learned was Tipper Gore’s insanely stupid idea to have every record store keep printouts of ALL the lyrics to ALL the records for sale in case a parent needed to consult it before buying something. ALL OF THEM!!!
These episodes also led me to discover that C-SPAN has an incredible archive of videos that I’m sure have tons of weird cameos if one is willing to sift through. (I already found John Denver and the Dalai Lama palling around on behalf of the environment.) (Speaking of John Denver, if you have never heard his testimony at the hearings, listen to the podcast for those alone. They play the best bits on the show and it’s quite beautiful and really nicely complements what Dee and Zappa have to say. Also, right after his testimony, John Denver dashed off to NASA to interview to be the first musician in space. What a day.)
🕸️ A Nice Quote: Eudora Welty on Charlotte's Web
“What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time,” she wrote.
“As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done.”
🎶 Another Playlist: Detroit Jazz for My Day Job
They did a thing for Black History Month at my day job and part of my contribution is this playlist I compiled featuring music from all but one of the eight incredible albums Tribe Records released in the ‘70s, interspersed with songs from other Black jazz greats from Detroit. I ended up spending more time crafting this than I anticipated and now I’m actually quite fond of it and think some of you might be too.
🚀 One Last Thing: Mars Sounds
Where: NASA’s Soundcloud, who I imagine to be run by this person
“This set of sounds from the surface of Mars were recorded by the microphone on the side of NASA’s Perseverance Rover on February 20, 2021, marking the first time a Mars rover has been equipped with a microphone. In the first set, sounds from the rover itself dominate. In the second set, the sound was filtered to make sounds from Mars more audible. You can hear a little wind in the second set.”