Lulu's Back in Town

Mere Innocents? ... Clowns of the Apocalypse?
You be the judge as Lemmy and Figgy perform "Lulu's Back in Town"

What The Dog Ate

My son's dinner.
(Mac -n- Cheese and a turkey burger.)

Help Save The Lorraine Hansberry

The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in downtown San Francisco is at risk of being evicted from its home of 25 years. The property has been acquired by the Academy of Art College and has given the company a deadline to leave. The Lorraine Hansberry is the only African American theater in the City's theater district and the only African American Equity house on the West Coast. It has hosted 120 productions, including its annual holiday classic Black Nativity and has an ongoing partnership with Cultural Odyssey and the Medea Projects Theatre for Incarcerated Women. Read more here. Go here to see how you can help the company.

The Voice of the Lobster

The Voice of the Lobster
By Lewis Carroll

''Tis the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare
'You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.'
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.'



'I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by [eating the owl.]

Buns and Chou Chou - Pop Culture Critics

More here. Rabbit Bites Blog and more bunnies.

Looking for Answers?

Consult the Spam Oracle.

What the Dog Ate

One Dora Band-aid (used).

Priorities

Yesterday morning my daughter came up stairs from her bedroom calling:

O: Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!
M: Honey, what do you need?
O: I want my Daddy!
M: Would you like to call him at work?
O: I want to watch TV!

The One You Don't Hear-

Bob Harris breaks down the last 5 minutes of the Sopranos Finale.

Long Live Rock

from Rock -n- Roll Hall of Lame

Once upon a time, I worked in one of those “High Fidelity”-ish record shops. In fact, I worked in three of them over the course of about 12 years. If you ever bought something from me or my co-workers, you can be assured that we said horrible things about your choices the second you walked out the door. (Except for that one guy named Sean who had impeccable taste in everything and who later became a heroin addict and then stopped buying records, overdosed and disappeared into a Christian rehab. We thought he was awesome.) But when you work in a place like that for long enough, you realize something very important about popular music. And here it is: everything sucks. (the rest here)

BANKSY

Social and political commentary. With a sense of humor. Banksy gets it. Check out his website here.
My personal favorite is the Disneyland film. Take that "America's Funniest Home Videos" !

Excerpts from Rumspringa: The Musical

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Roman Signer's Suitcase found via Tim Etchells
See also: Action with Sheets of Paper

If you wanted to make a list of major contemporary artists who, for whatever reason, are comparatively little known in the U.S., Roman Signer should be right near the top. During the past few years there has been a surge of interest in his work in Europe, but he has exhibited rarely in the U.S., and his work has been written about even less. This neglect is unfortunate, because since the early 1970s, Signer, now 62 years old, has been developing an extraordinary body of work, consisting of brief, transitory pieces and durable sculptures that are evidence of a process as well as an event, along with drawings and endless documentation. Many of his projects mix an air of quasi-scientific research (although of a decidedly homemade variety) with an impish, pranksterish humor. Sometimes this "research," this desire to see what happens if a brief chain of events is set into motion, can be wildly funny, with slapstick mishaps, moments when things break down or veer off unexpectedly into mini-disasters. For Sink (1986), a table, each of its legs in a metal pail, sailed forth on a precarious voyage into a river, only to tilt and sink two minutes later in a kind of tragicomic denouement--certainly among the most short-lived, fragile and awkward outdoor sculptures that you are ever likely to see. At other times, Signer's events-as-sculptures yield images so beguiling that it's easy to forget that they were more or less instantaneous and not painstakingly made over weeks or months. For Falling Barrel (1996), a metal barrel filled with water was dropped from the ceiling to the floor. As the barrel plummeted, silvery water flew up in a ragged column, and at the point of impact more water jetted from the barrel's punctured side. The whole ensemble, including a rising and falling spray of droplets and the thudding impact that contorted the barrel, is heartbreakingly beautiful--and it also took about one second to execute, tops. That's Signer at his best: a sculptor whose works embody pure transformation. Using a variety of means, he constantly seeks out the exact volatile moment when one body or form abruptly changes into another, in the process fusing creation and destruction. (the rest)

Open the Door

Don't Stop-

I don't know about you, but lately I've been thinking of A.J. Soprano and George W. Bush. They're kinda alike except A.J. reads.

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

Bob Dylan

The Aliens Are Coming

"That looks like alien intestines!" My son, upon seeing me eat linguine with pesto sauce.

My Little Olive

Dear Olive:

This morning was chaos what with trying to feed your brother who as we know is picky, picky, picky. He likes his eggs flat and dry and not slimy and he wants an omelette with cheese and folded just so. But I've always been able to count on you to eat your eggs however I make them, so imagine my surprise/disappointment when you decided you wanted your egg flat too. It was more than I could take on three hours of uninterrupted sleep. I came up with some clever response that went something like this:

Mom: You know what? This isn't a restaurant. At a restaurant you get to order your food and get it just the way you like it. This is home and at home you get your food the way I make it.
You: Let's go to a restaurant!

Kicked to the curb by a three year old. It reminds me of that time in high school when the director (English teacher) of our Spring play got so upset with us that she yelled "If you guys think I'm stupid then don't say anything!" There was not a peep from anyone. Not a peep.

Tomorrow we're going to see the Vivienne Westwood exhibit at the De Young. You're going to fit right in there with your red, yellow, and blue striped pants, your yellow socks, your red glittery shoes, your blue and white handkerchief print dress, and the Dora party hat you've been wearing for the past two weeks. Ta!

Album Covers from Hell

Hey kids. Next time some pesky adult starts telling you how much classier things were back in the old days, ask them to explain these.

Dreams That Money Can Buy

A film by Hans Richter. This is Duchamp's fragment with music by John Cage.

A Very Stylish Girl

Opening of the Vivienne Westwood Exhibit at the De Young in San Francisco

Wendell Berry Interview

How can a family ‘live at the center of its own attention?’
Wendell Berry’s thoughts on the good life

BY HOLLY M. BROCKMAN

If you profess to embrace family values and you shop at Wal-Mart, think again. The global economy, powered by big corporations such as Wal-Mart, destroys families with low prices made possible by low wages.

Such are the teachings of Wendell Berry, 71, a lifelong advocate of family values, sustainable agriculture and environmental stewardship. Berry’s writings promote local economies as a healthier, more eco-friendly way of life. He has authored more than 40 books and is among 35 Kentucky writers whose work is featured in a new anthology on the devastation that mountaintop removal mining has wrought in Southern Appalachia.

Berry lives, writes and farms at Lane’s Landing near Port Royal, Ky.

I Promise

To stop shooting food with my cellphone camera. I realize it looks flat and unappetizing.

From an Angry Soldier

Found this on the Best of Craigslist:

Fuck you, war supporters, George W. Bush, and all the god damn mother fuckers who made the war possible. I hope you burn in hell.
(read the rest here)