The girl in the café.

   “Year by year the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey.” -Basho

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 approximately 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. Also the first hour of each MOTA show now is also on KAKX Mendocino, thanks to Marshall Brown.

The coming week’s show can feature your story or dream or poem or kvetch, too. 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 and read it on the air. That’s what I’m here for.

Besides all that, here’s a smattering of not-necessarily-radio-useful but worthwhile items that I set out for you, probably found in the fine websites listed to your right:

The Iron Giant. This was Brad Bird’s first film. Of course he was inspired by Gigantor, one of my favorite teevee shows when I was four or five, as I recall, but Wikipedia says it came to the U.S. in 1966, when I was seven or eight. Gigantor was about a little boy who had a fifty-foot-tall robot that could fly carrying him in its hand or on its head. What puzzled me as a child about Gigantor was, the boy controlled him with a metal shoebox with a single button or lever on it. Whatever he needed Gigantor to do –rescue a sabotaged jet, walk three steps and turn right, save a car from a precipice– one motion on the control would make the robot do whatever complicated operation was desired, like magical telepathy. The little boy in The Iron Giant has no control box; the robot came from outer space and is clearly a person you can make friends with, no mere machine. (Hand animation and early CGI, 86 minutes. Voices: Vin Diesel, Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick, Jr. Cloris Leachman.)
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-iron-giant.html

Mechas by size.
https://theawesomer.com/mechas-from-a-human-perspective/729667/

Yes, who is to say?
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/536

Around the moon. (via PerfectForRoquefortCheese) (And scroll down.)
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/emile-antoine-bayard-s-illustrations-for-around-the-moon-by-jules-verne-1870/ (And scroll down.)

Images and explanatory video of a recent discovery in the real-life sky regarding moon of Saturn, Mimas (say MY-mus).
https://newatlas.com/space/mimas-ocean/

A trick. Mentalists at work are always a bit frantic, which might be because of trying to line up current reality with their last who-knows-how-many Groundhog Day runs-through in alternate universes of that kind of time travel, displacing and discarding their doppels, settling on the time where the details finally match the intent and it works. It’s a lot to hold in your head at once, especially on stage, observed, and you’re troubled with guilt at, in one interpretation, leaving hundreds of alternate versions of yourself behind  in those other worlds, humiliated, as well as anticipation of becoming one of them, to serve a future-present loop-through of yourself, who technically isn’t any more the original you than a Star Trek matter-transported person is the one the transporter disintegrated for a model to construct a copy at the destination down on the planet. Think of it this way, moment-to-moment reality is the result of all possible realities collapsing into it.  They were real, but they’re not anymore. It’s also a little like the Ship of Theseus problem in reverse, in Hilbert’s Hotel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_QfEpA2ag

Mask.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=3360426620671109&set=wow-tonight-gdt-announced-this-photograph-as-the-overall-winner-of-the-gdt-europ

Lips. (via NagOnTheLake)
https://www.bookofjoe.com/2024/02/paige-thompsons-lip-art.html

How we get fire.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/02/burning-match-macrofied.html

Medieval dog names. (via PerfectForRoquefortCheese)
https://www.perfectforroquefortcheese.org/2022/09/nosewise-10-127.html

Producer pronounces proposed script socko, he really loves it, kid, you really got somethin’ there, but suggests intolerable changes that you have to weigh on the scale: Do you want the money or not? I guess I want the money. Okay, then, thanks for playing our little game. (via Cliff Pickover)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlemagne_and_Alcuin_scriptor.jpg

Three blind ladies, one of them a gifted accordionist, go bowling every Friday night. (13 min.)
https://laughingsquid.com/friday-night-blind-bowling/

Rerun: The Girl in the Cafe. I’d like everyone to see this film. Unfortunately it will always be relevant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_in_the_Caf%C3%A9

Architecture.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/02/green-over-grey-building-in-harmony.html

Office furniture. (via PerfectForRoquefortCheese)
https://www.presentandcorrect.com/blogs/blog/steelmaster-1966

Comedienne Jessa Reed’s true meth story, which I played the sound of on last night’s show. This is very like several of the stories Flynn Washburne, also a meth addict, wrote from prison to the Anderson Valley Advertiser about his adventures under and over the influence, and under again. I think he’s out of prison now. I don’t know. He’s stopped writing. I hope he’s okay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcMIeyjggbM

24 pages of titles and links to stories* Flynn Washburne wrote from prison to the Anderson Valley Advertiser over the years.
https://theava.com/archives/author/flynn-washburne

*Here’s the one I read on KNYO and KAKX last night. It occurs to me to hope that these aren’t behind the paywall. But if they are, a year’s full subscription to the AVA on the web is just $25, and well worth it.
https://theava.com/archives/42620

Further in the series of collections of photographs of women I’d like to watch swallow an egg.
https://www.vintag.es/2024/02/brian-duffy.html

Soup bowl prediction. (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2024/02/09/soup-bowl-prediction/

Pong wars. (via Kottke)
https://pong-wars.vercel.app/

Boing!
https://neal.fun/wonders-of-street-view/?v=b2wMrU

I’d be pretty good at this kind of racing for a drive short enough to not get a crick in my neck. When I taught at the Albion Whale School, which was two miles down a twisting dirt and gravel driveway through the forest, I’d ferry kids there in the morning and back at night, and often, on the way home, go backward down driveway at safe forward speed with all the kids small enough to stand on the bench seats facing the direction of travel, laughing and screaming and hopping up and down. My easy competence at driving backward hasn’t translated to backing a utility trailer into a garage or alley, however. I have never got the knack for that, and it still bugs me, like it bugs me that, no matter how I tried over many years, I could never learn to make that Mexican or Scottish rolling-R sound with my mouth, though I can sing all the tongue twisters at remarkable speed, no problem. I did develop a trick, The Technique, to fake a rolling R sound by violently shaking my head and cheek-chops while speaking, but it looks ridiculous and gives me a headache.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2024/02/08/found-a-sport-we-can-get-behind/

A little perspective.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/02/tweet-of-day_01028427358.html

Something else along those lines. This is also how the Haunted Mansion hallway-niche singing ghosts work.
https://laughingsquid.com/roy-lichtenstein-optical-illusion-house/

VW bus mods. (via Tacky Raccoons)
https://bustednuckles.net/vw-buses-not-for-the-faint-hearted/

Doodle people.
https://myonebeautifulthing.com/2024/02/08/deville-design/

A words and phrases referring to dogs.
https://www.metaphordogs.org/index.html

50 meters in 5.8 seconds is 23 mph, on six-inch-long legs, fur flying backward in the wind.
https://laughingsquid.com/fluffy-cat-races-human/

The chicken dance.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-chicken-dance.html

A cheese cave. (Extra points for finding the parking lot.)
https://neal.fun/wonders-of-street-view/?v=e5wGuZ

Getting in. (via Tacky Raccoons) (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://twitter.com/Itsfletchisback/status/1752802431824474501

Here the game is to Mafia-name this guy. I’ll throw a couple on the table to get yez started: Vinny “Hydrox” Ghilotti. Dino “Ten-High” Munro. Chooch “Flat-top” Oreona.
https://amagicalmess.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/10-stack-1000×714.jpg

Some useful carpentry and wiring and fabrication tricks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6V2Zp5q6_g

Animated evolution of New York, 1524 to 2023.
https://theawesomer.com/an-animated-evolution-of-new-york-city/729911/

Street dance. (via BitsAndPieces) (You might have to click the sound on.)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2vTq6_OJKS/

Public safety dance. (via Tacky Raccoons)
https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1751646276247081061

Miracles from molecules. (via Perfect For Roquefort Cheese)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjJ7G8iSJmI

Six-axis rack, it says. I count three, with two rods on each axis, but I only skimmed this with the sound off, so maybe the narrative accounts for this.
https://theawesomer.com/six-axis-rack-mechanism/729979/

Sleepy sailors. Click on the image to full-size it. Explore the rest of Shorpy.com; it’s collection reminds a little of the British three-episode series, Shooting The Past.
https://www.shorpy.com/node/27335

Spooky. Nice. Quiet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDQrPf7MXc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fola80rQop4

Regrets.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/02/people-share-their-biggest-regrets-in.html

Rerun: “Everything within roughly a mile of the park is leveled and a firestorm engulfs the surrounding city.”
https://theawesomer.com/if-you-could-throw-a-baseball-near-light-speed/730141/meter

The Surfrajettes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXRBQGG_acs

Burl Ives and Johnny Cash.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/02/goober-peas.html

The oldest person in the U.S. lives in Willits, just thirty or forty miles away from KNYO, as the crow flies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/us/edith-ceccarelli-116-years-willits-california.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

Goose-steppin’ with a big black bat, y’all. Black bat trussed up like a chicken. Mm-hm.
https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2024/02/05/USAT/72478215007-gty-1986519359.jpg

A heavy metal exorcism.
https://theawesomer.com/heavy-metal-exorcism/729978/

Harp twins at a steam engine exhibit. Iron Man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UV-2E8kEqg

A couple more notable covers of I’ve Still Got The Blues. The accents. The hands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X8Iy4H25aI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcfv7zUQw_s

Lana Turner. She seems small, here. The movies made her look taller and less like Drew Barrymore about the face. Not that anything’s wrong with that.
https://www.vintag.es/2024/02/lana-turner-at-home.html

All the thought experiments. Left out: several hundred more of them by Steven Wright.
https://laughingsquid.com/every-thought-experiment-explained/

A fine cover of CSN&Y’s Wooden Ships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV_HFzPaqVE

/Comfortably Numb/ guitar solo on harmonica, by Will Wilde. (via The Awesomer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d87BQLUcqw4

J. Mascis – Old Friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ds7REMJR2c

The goat remixes.
https://boingboing.net/2024/02/07/the-taylor-swift-screaming-goats-mashup-turns-eleven-this-week-to-celebrate-here-are-some-of-my-favorite-versions.html

AAAAAAAAAAAA.
https://tackyraccoons.com/2024/02/06/collectors-item/

Chicken Lady.
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1kBn8C.img

Vegetable people. “I have my eyes on you.”
https://www.vintag.es/2024/02/bernhardt-wall-cards.html

Chvrches (sic) in the Moog lab. (via Cliff Pickover)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjxsabBjmfI

Rick Moranis sings. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_eEx3XPuj0

Fungus art.
https://i0.wp.com/theava.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/ViaDAnneWallace.jpg

“With her last ounce of energy she covers her eggs.”
https://boingboing.net/2024/02/05/chameleons-psychedelic-color-change-before-death.html

Sigh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d51diKTSi2M

Ice. There was an episode of Amanda Tapping’s /Sanctuary/ that had the cold, remote, bleak feel of these pictures. It was the one where they were icebound in a frozen ship in the far north with creatures who could mimic them down to the tiniest detail. Like in The Thing.
https://thisisnthappiness.com/post/708626946479767552/ice-station-zebra-charles-xelot

Wing – Dancing queen. (via b3ta)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqBWvmhS-AY

It’s a mystery.
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2024/02/06/what-sorcery-is-this-2/

The voice is distracting but the skills are amazing. (48 min.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz5yARK2gQk

Ah, youth. (You might have to click the sound on.)/
https://www.bitsandpieces.us/2024/02/08/ready-for-figure-skating/

She is lost and gone forever.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2015/02/my-darling-clementine.html

There is in fact an I in team. And it’s hidden exactly where you’d expect.
https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/02/team.html

Too late now.
https://theawesomer.com/chinese-man-too-late-stop-motion-music-video/730030/

How we get Legos.
https://nagonthelake.blogspot.com/2024/02/footage-of-lego-factory.html

https://misscellania.blogspot.com/2024/02/our-modern-world.html
Re: that Simpsons clip. Back in 1983 I recorded a series of short radio shows at the old Mendocino Community School where in one scene a character on the bus had a /video helmet/ on, a “Sony HeadMan” (like a WalkMan of the time but for your whole head; the idea was, you’d be out in public but able to watch teevee at the same time), and the other bus riders were making fun of him. I imagined the device would be your computer monitor and radio-phone and other tools, and forty years later here it is, but it should be as light and compact as regular eyeglasses. It will be soon. You can get a fair-quality cell phone for $50 now, where just a few years ago they were thousands of dollars, when a thousand dollars was worth five thousand now, ramen was ten cents a brick. A can of sardines was a quarter in the dented-can store. I think the cans might all still have had poison solder in their joints, back then, though.

This week I saw a heavy-set Italian-looking twenty-something guy in the grocery store gesticulating just like the Cybertruck guy, and he didn’t have anything at all stuck on his face. I saw him first in the meat section; a few minutes later in the beans aisle he skipped happily past me like a cartoon of a big skipping schoolgirl, and when I’d paid and was leaving he was by the video rental box and the toy/claw machine, waving and pointing and goosestepping around, big smile on his face, nose in the air, and I went from poor kid, he’s nuts or drugged to realizing that he must be dancing to something playing in his earbuds. This is what /dance like nobody’s looking/ means. There’s no shame in it, nor should there be, just be careful not to whack your wrist on a shelf.

Glasses-phones are a logical next step after bluetooth earpieces that already make every user of them for phoning seem schizophrenic, arguing with invisible faeries. Of course no-one will be allowed to drive a non-self-driving car with glasses-phones on– until they’re as cheap as Zenni eyeglasses and replace them too, because they’ll correct vision and also give you real-time real-world HDR options and glare-free night vision, rangefinding, and A.I. warnings of traffic and even walking hazards. And they’ll diagnose you by smell and eye movements and pulse. If you’re driving and you’ve had alcohol or you’re exhausted or angry or otherwise impaired, they can warn other similarly equipped drivers (and self-driving cars) away and direct you off the road or set a helpful cop on you. One time years before anybody had anything more complicated in their car than a radio, I was on the freeway and somebody in a pickup truck came the wrong way, parting all the cars going the right way like the prow of a pixilated-speed ocean liner. Maybe it was a song on the radio that influenced the driver to do it. Maybe they let Jesus take the wheel and they were driving in tongues. I’m saying, mechanical and computer technology improves as the years roll by, human brains don’t.

And the objection to headset computer/phones that they’re creepy and might be recording everyone around you has never made sense to me. Everyone already has a phone now, and any phone you can see might be recording you. What’s the big deal? Just don’t pick your nose or be racist nor kick an animal nor injure yourself trying a stupid stunt on a skateboard and you’re in the clear.