The brave little toaster.

   “Dear boys, bad timing. This morning I received the details of your travel plans in a document sent to me from a man named Brendan. Unfortunately I cannot receive you now. A neighboring village requires our urgent assistance due to an emergency, not to mention the recent arrival of a man-eating tiger in the region. I suggest you come in the spring, when you’ll be safe with me. You must know how sad I am to experience this long separation. I hope you will eventually understand, and forgive me. God bless you and keep you, with Mary’s benevolent guidance, in the light of Christ’s enduring grace. All my love, Your Mother, Sister Patricia Whitman.”

Here’s the recording of last night’s Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show on 107.7fm KNYO-LP Fort Bragg (CA), ready for you to re-enjoy:

…

Meanwhile, thanks to Hank Sims of Lost Coast Outpost here’s a page with lots of other MOTA shows going back quite a way. And thanks to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, which often provides as much as an hour of each of these fast-paced eight-hour Friday night shows’ most locally relevant material, going back decades. And consider KNYO, the Little Lion in Fort Bragg, California. Find KNYO’s shiny red donation heart and help out if you can. Every dollar donated, whether in the jar on movie night or through the heart or by check (to KNYO, p.o. box 1651, Fort Bragg, CA 95437) goes directly to pay the station’s real-life expenses: rent, electricity, water, equipment, and music publisher and streaming fees. No-one at KNYO gets a cut of it, not even the manager.

I’d like to read your writing on the radio. Just email it to me. Or include it in a reply to this post. Or send me a link to your writing project and I’ll take it from there. But if people in your story swear in evangelical tongues I have to wait till after 10pm local time to read it, to protect other people’s children from getting their mouths washed out with soap.

As usual, here’s a fresh spread of not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items that I set aside for you, mainly thanks to the fine websites listed to your right. This is a byproduct of gathering the radio show together:

Stunt awards. Ow. Ow-ow-ow.
https://www.vulture.com/2024/01/the-second-annual-stunt-awards-are-here.html

Nature photo awards.
https://www.vulture.com/2024/01/the-second-annual-stunt-awards-are-here.html

I feel like I saw just this not too long ago, but I don’t care, it’s so great. The man travels the world, getting people on the street to teach him their dance move. Make some space around you so you don’t knock a lamp over, and try them..
https://www.neatorama.com/2024/01/18/Everyones-Favorite-Dance-Moves/

Journalism in our real-life idiocracy.
https://boingboing.net/2024/01/17/tom-the-dancing-bug-chagrin-falls-diner-journalism.html

And the subject of this cartoon reminds me, as so much injustice to creatives does, of the situation at hundreds and hundreds of public radio stations, such as KZYX, for example, where a CEO/mananger and his or her close minions are paid well to have nice lives while all the local airpeople work for nothing. Whether you personally need the money to live or you’re independently wealthy and you don’t need it, you have an obligation to workers everywhere, no matter where you work or what you do, to never work for free under owners and managers who are paid from the returns your work brings. Especially if they lie to you through their mouthful of money that there’s no money to pay you. If your work is paying the bosses, you should demand to be paid. If any charity project is important enough to require volunteer workers, and there’s truly no money, the manager will be volunteering as well.
https://catandgirl.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2024-01-09-cg4000-web.gif

The Anonymous Photo Project. (via This Isn’t Happiness)
https://www.instagram.com/p/C2CPXJQg7FO/

“We are selling our baby trebuchet…”
https://www.neatorama.com/2024/01/13/Antique-Baby-Yeeter/

…And buying this fabulous kitchen hi-fi cart. Didn’t they make beautiful things in those days. Simply as sculpture it’s lovely. All those tubes and wires, cams and sprockets. It really ties the room together. (via Fark)
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bd/e9/98/bde99853c6a80518d006636a402e8b05.jpg

Missile speed comparison. The last part of this is an exhibit of all of them lined up next to each other. It’s a kind of art.
https://theawesomer.com/missile-speed-comparison/727520/

Apparently SkyLab had something the much more expensive ISS does not, that I knew nothing about: a sizeable zero-G gym. Not as big as the playing field for space-war team practice scenes in the movie version of Ender’s Game, but pretty big. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://twitter.com/wonderofscience/status/1744351498023190574

Coke or Pepsi? A competition for liveliness when a red-hot nickel ball is dropped in. At first it’s Pepsi, then Coke comes from behind to foam up like a champ. I’m a Dr Pepper man, myself. Commander Worf would like Dr Pepper; it’s got prune juice in it. “The drink of a warrior.” (via TackyRaccoons) (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1541806153307000

Rhyme or die. Dr Who had this in, I think, 2005, where contestants were force to play a future version of /The Weakest Link/, and vaporized by a robot death ray one by one.
https://theawesomer.com/rhyme-or-die-horror-short-film/727936/

Waxahatchie – Right Back To It.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/01/music-for-sunday-morning_01007180607.html

Vasakange – Robot Story. (via Everlasting Blort)
https://twitter.com/scott_kerr/status/1744839400704418100

Art. This includes a half-hour do-it-yourself lesson. Scroll down.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2024/01/14/repost-dirty-girl/

“It’s like they always said: The only way to stop a bad me with a gun is a good me with a gun.”
https://www.theonion.com/gun-owner-explains-why-he-needs-weapon-to-protect-self-1851172345

Loony Tunes backgrounds. With a little cropping, you get excellent desktop images. (via ThisIsntHappiness)
https://www.instagram.com/looneytunes_backgrounds/

That time Winston Churchill popped out of his own pants in the pool.
https://www.vintag.es/2024/01/winston-churchill-losing-swimming-trunks.html

Trailer for /Zappa/. (via TackyRaccoons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4F0rT0F6OQ

Rerun: A six-minute stop-o-mation biker film. (via TackyRaccoons)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeXls4zY2Q8

Musée des Plans-Reliefs.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2024/01/musee-des-plans-reliefs.html

Rerun: A very old but still spry Groucho Marx tells stories and sings /Lydia the Tattooed Lady/ on the Dick Cavett show in 1969. Dick Cavett, now, he was a fellow who’d have trouble catching on in the present day. Calm, bright, thoughtful, well-informed, brave, a sense of humor about himself, not a mean bone in his body.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE3_KnJiXaw

Gramma’s clever trick. (via VintagePhotoBooth)
https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/419770053_3060072170791626_4769967023979755238_n.jpg

“Jess’s iconic pet is captured in all his glory, wearing a bright pink thong stuffed with dollar bills as he hustles for money, clinging onto a stripper pole.” That is one svelte hamster.
https://metro.co.uk/2024/01/16/woman-beloved-pet-hamster-hammington-stuffed-a-pole-dancer-20125161/

Another in the long history of days the Earth stood still. It’s standing still all the time somewhere, anywhere people hitch up their floods and turn to watch the skies with wonder.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10228391901534236&set=gm.3717945118420341&idorvanity=1427425394139003

A short smooth Star Wars fanfilm.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2016/01/kara.html

Dan O’Neill and the Air Pirates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXRLam5kfUU

Music store employees on a slow day. (via TheAwesomer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF3PnzmFZzE

“Please, President Trump, please, please save us from the devil!” (via BoingBoing)
https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeVideo/comments/196wk1h/crying_maga_karen_begs_trump_the_messiah_to_save/?share_id=kZSINEf6ImB9funjcWZ_S

Their heads look inflated because they’re so tiny. They’re barely four feet tall. I like the one with Owen Wilson eyes. (In any group photo or photo spread I always immediately pick the one I like most. Do you do this too? And it doesn’t have to be people; it can be dogs, furniture, whatever.)
https://www.vintag.es/2024/01/geisha-1890s.html

“Please, President Trump, please, please save us from the devil!” (via BoingBoing)
https://www.reddit.com/r/CringeVideo/comments/196wk1h/crying_maga_karen_begs_trump_the_messiah_to_save/?share_id=kZSINEf6ImB9funjcWZ_S

Are manners important?
https://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/are_manners_important

“Camp one, mentally disturbed, camp two, mentally challenged.” Warning: R-word, both C-words, other words that begin with letters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyUMFbWrz2c

Tokio Jokio. Oh, no. Hmm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy9rGAO-qfc

Vertigo.
https://theawesomer.com/red-bull-rampage-pov-ride/727554/

Busby Berkeley in the broken washing machine that is /our/ time. Impressive, jerky, a little scary. Definitely modern.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2024/01/university-of-minnesota-dance-team-jazz.html

Math. (via MissCellania)
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/01/etienne-jacob-gifs/

Depth-illusion signs. (via TheAwesomer) (Don’t bother clicking the sound on.)
https://theawesomer.com/infinite-neon-sign-effect/727668/

There are no nails, there’s no metal in this structure. It’s all pegged and glued together, to prove a point.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/11/atlas-i-cold-war-era-facility-that.html

Building and flying a giant rubber band airplane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgwkA-hLvf4

To add to the folder of collections of pictures of women who, in an adjacent timeline, have celebrated careers based on swallowing an egg.
https://www.vintag.es/2024/01/gretchen-harris.html

“Come kick it with the robot man.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBL7IoQ8ePQ

Rerun: Flight of the Conchords – The Humans Are Dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY

Costuming across time and space. I don’t care about clothes very much, but I like this. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_pj0UC29Kc

Soho in 1956, footage enhanced. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bExnm7MZ53M

Documentary about the band Kansas. The full film. It’s a pretty good story of a very good band who came out of nearly literally nowhere.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/01/kansas-miracles-out-of-nowhere.html

With a modern motor and in any of the pastel gumdrop colors, a perfect, cute little car. Just think if they made these now and kept the price down to, say, $3000 new.
https://www.vintag.es/2024/01/1957-fiat-nuova-500.html