The clown joke.
“Good enough, you’re hired, son, and you start right now. Here’s your cap and your name-tag. Keys are there. Everybody signs in, no exceptions except for cops and Mister Jimmy’s boys. If there’s trouble, the bat is clipped under here– see? You pull it down and toward you. Try it. Yeah, yeah, good. Good grip. And remember, don’t sweat it: what we lose on the rooms we make on the sandwiches. I’ll be at Taka’s, here’s the number; don’t call me unless the whole place is on fire. Got it? Great. Bye.”
Here’s the recording of last night’s (2021-11-19) Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA), ready to re-enjoy.
Thanks heaps to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost here’s a page with not only the above MOTA show but also other ones going back quite a way.
And thanks to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which provided almost an hour of the above eight-hour show’s material, as usual, without asking for anything in return.
Email me your writing on any subject and I’ll read it on the radio next week. That’s what I’m here for.
This show has poetry by Notty Bumbo, Naty Osa, Suzi Long and others; the first draft of the first chapter of a new book-in-progress by David Herstle Jones; part two of Scott M. Peterson’s /Mendocino Art Bust/; and so on, until it closes with the latest episode (Ep. 38) of Doug Nunn’s Snap Sessions podcast, which includes a wide-ranging conversation between Doug and tech-savvy musician/repairperson/carpenter/teacher Francis Rutherford. Not to mention, writer Kent Wallace called early in the show from the next future calendar date in Viet Nam, via the magic of the International Date Line that has confused more than one $400,000,000 F-35’s flight computer into requiring a frantic emergency reboot rather than crash into the sea; and various personal historical items between us, Kent and me, previously muddled in my understanding, were made clear over the course of about half an hour, as you’ll hear (see above). Sebastian Iturralde read his story /Stone Creature/. Also Dave Frishberg died, so the break music is mostly a smattering of his piano tunes and, for some reason, the French-whisper-sung music of Nataly Dawn (Pomplamoose). Nataly is continuing to record while battling cancer, and I hope to Christ she wins. I hope she and her doctor kick its ass all the way to Tibet.
BESIDES ALL THAT, here’s a fresh batch of not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items that I set aside for you while gathering the show together, found mostly thanks to the fine websites listed to your right:
The actual dictionary definition of happiness. Put this on repeat and stare at it. If there’s a clog in the pipes of your own happiness, maybe this will jog it loose.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2021/11/13/9-year-old-bassist-ellen-alaverdyan/
The Boswell Sisters.
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/crazy_people
Ow.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2021/11/13/you-had-one-job-10/
Introducing the Icelandverse.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2021/11/introducing-icelandverse.html
Surface tension. (via Clifford Pickover)
https://t.co/c0BfCAV31d?amp=1
Colored rice. (via Clifford Pickover)
https://t.co/Cr4InRBt5g?amp=1
This is like that song in /Oklahoma/ about Kansas City, where they gone about as fur as they c’n go. I love it that the performer had the thoughtful courtesy to remind her fan to take the camera off his head to not ruin it with the performance urine, though cameras are really okay with that anymore because they have to be.
https://boingboing.net/2021/11/13/band-apologizes-for-singer-after-she-pees-on-fans-face-during-concert.html
Speaking of performance art: “Gira didavavav! Craagh!”
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/11/14/guthrie-audience-member-racist-preshow-rant-viral-video-christmas-carol/
And our sun, the heating system. They used to worship this thing, and cut people’s hearts out to please it. Imagine if they could have seen it like this. They’d plotz, but in a good way.
https://laughingsquid.com/one-month-of-sun/
Brrr, Yakutia!
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2021/11/growing-up-in-coldest-town-on-earth.html
Photographs of people saying goodbye to their dogs. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://petapixel.com/2021/11/09/photos-of-people-saying-goodbye-to-their-dogs
Ten levels of sleight of hand.
https://theawesomer.com/10-levels-of-sleight-of-hand/647197/
Yo.
https://laughingsquid.com/mark-proksch-yo-yo-expert-prank/
The Dutch angle. Those of us with non-perfectly-symmetrical faces know all about this. It’s normal.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-dutch-angle.html
Neural network generated zoom cityscape.
https://t.co/FGtmEpluDB?amp=1
Restored, smoothed, interpolated and colorized 1896 film of the pope of cocaine and alcohol, and also of Rome.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-really-vintage-film.html
Jack Black and a Blue Bear band. Say that a few times fast.
https://laughingsquid.com/jack-black-blue-bear-school-of-music-50th-anniversary/
Lester Hubble and the Planets. All the hits. All the great times.
https://newatlas.com/space/hubble-opal-jupiter-saturn-uranus-neptune/
My mother had a friend who watched teevee all day and half the night and I’d see it when I went over there to visit them, so I recall the moment when the History Channel went from all Hitler and WW2 all the time to all ancient UFO crap all the time. His favorite shows were Matlock, JAG, Walker Texas Ranger, and Bill O’Reilly. I think a supernatural moose, a monster in a toilet, the Thousand-Pound Sisters and Bat Boy’s grandson are kind of an improvement.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/11/16/2064562/-Cartoon-Ghost-channels
This Modern World.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/11/15/2063929/-Cartoon-Let-s-get-mad-about-something-dumb
Fox news, as you see, is much cuter and more relevant with real foxes.
https://laughingsquid.com/foxes-yelling-at-each-other/
Dorothy Parker once said, “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” You’ll notice all these homes have a sex altar, it’s spelled wrong every time (alter), and it looks like River Tam’s cryo box in the pilot episode of /Firefly/. Which is extra creepy for a sex altar because she was not only technically temporarily dead but cold enough for her flesh to condense water vapor out of nearby air, as well as her being only 15 years old. “You rich people. What’d you do, kill your folks for the family fortune?” Somebody else’s folks, too. Lots of somebody elses and their folks; that’s where the fortune came from in the first place. Behind every fortune is a great crime, or several. (Speaking of which the Skunk Train-ride company just won its court case and is poised to eminent-domain-winkle a few gazillion dollars of prime real estate out of Fort Bragg CA. More about that next week.)
https://mcmansionhell.com/
You who are about to die.
https://laughingsquid.com/character-is-about-to-die-in-space-movie/
This robot from Laputa, Castle in the Sky is a sugar cookie, a sugar cookie who can fly and cut an aerial battleship in half with a beam of energy from its eye.
https://popculturista.com/p/laputian-robot-from-ghiblis-castle-in-the-sky-made-out-of-sugar
I’d like to hear Max Forsetter play this on the piano.
https://theawesomer.com/friend-like-me-on-electronic-organ/647199/
Paper, cut. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://designcollector.net/likes/paper-cut-corals-by-rogan-brown
Preparing the breadfish.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2021/11/tweet-of-day_02121862170.html
Attractively posed ersatz disemboweled cadavers made of wood and clay, just waiting for ancient Hebrew runes on a strip of paper to be placed under their tongue, animating them to rise up and push wheelbarrows of bricks and earth back and forth to build up a tower to Heaven (or destroy the town, depending on the thoroughness of the practical lexical magic experimenter’s grasp of the form). Life is risk. You can’t live, and science can’t progress, in fear.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/06/the-strangely-seductive-victorian-era.html
Stop resisting!
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2009/01/cat-vs-toothbrush.html
The brick dance.
https://theawesomer.com/the-sound-of-brick-dominoes/647198/
Le mirroire. In French.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2013/11/cats-and-mirrors.html
Record player. (via Clifford Pickover)
https://t.co/D4xqOx0iAM?amp=1
“Michael Landon’s hair looks swell, it’s Christmastime in Hell.”
https://www.vintag.es/2021/11/michael-landon.html
Stained glass. Click through the whole gallery. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://www.pinkiemaclure.net/
Sigh. Oy.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2016/06/the-drive-through-trees-of-california.html
Art. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://www.margarethe-illustration.com/michael-sowa.html
Prom.
https://www.vintag.es/2021/11/1950s-prom-couples.html
Postcards of nursing homes. “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.” (via NagOnTheLake)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/94207108@N02/albums/72157649690231887
Does this sign make my neighborhood look Hasidic? Apparently yes.
https://laughingsquid.com/how-film-set-decorators-turn-back-time-in-cities/
London at night. “The wind makes your hair billow blue in the moon.” But that was windy Venice, this is airless-seeming London. Same moon. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/11/05/burdekins-london-nights-x/
Fearless metal riot grrlz of Iran.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-59294328
Mister Churchill in Moscow, 1942.
https://www.theava.com/archives/169586
Wes Anderson unraveled.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2021/11/what-is-that-wes-anderson-style.html
And the winners.
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2021/11/18/1056851585/comedy-wildlife-photography-award-winners-2021
When you wake up in the middle of the afternoon and remember a terrible, embarrassing thing you still wish you hadn’t said years ago, but it occurs to you that probably nobody who heard it even cared at the time and they might even be dead now, so you settle down and go back to sleep.
https://laughingsquid.com/fox-sings/
Highrise.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-short-history-of-highrise.html
Hydraulic press spaghettification. That’s the industry word for this. Interestingly it’s also the word for what happens to you when you fall into a black hole, because of tidal forces, which does the same thing but for the opposite reason.
https://t.co/QYlzEaDByS?amp=1
Hover text: “Could be worse. In some towns north of here, it’s already December, and the 21st will last for nearly a week.”
https://xkcd.com/2542/
The greatest good for the greatest number, in Dog.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/420
What a doll. When she says, “Oh, c’mon! Is it?” The crayon eyebrows squick me out, but I don’t care. She’s terrific.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGb_jzaUWOg
Using this method, all of them go much faster than any caterpillar by himself. They probably think they’re racing, in a competition, but it works. I think there might be applications for this in economics, as well as in fleeing up and over a wall from zombies or a poison cloud.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/mni8l7/its_a_group_of_caterpillars_moving_in_a_formation/
He’s got the clap.
https://boingboing.net/2021/11/15/advanced-clapping-technique-caught-on-film.html
.sCBA
https://laughingsquid.com/man-sings-abc-song-backwards/
To kill a mockingbird.
https://boingboing.net/2021/11/17/some-light-book-burning-in-chagrin-falls-usa.html
Wire.
https://theawesomer.com/electric-piano-wire-instrument/647255/
Plankton, an assortment. So many different kinds of them.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2021/11/planktonium.html
If you’re happy and you know it.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2021/11/18/if-youre-happy-and-you-know-it-13/
And I recommend Gondry’s /The Science of Sleep/, because if you like this, you’ll like that.
https://theawesomer.com/a-dozen-eggs/647690/
Memo Of The Air 