Usually when you think of silhouettes, the images conjured up consist of rabbit heads on the wall or the quaint illustrations in old historical novels. That’s not the case with this exhibition at the Whitney:
“…a danse infernal of sex, slavery and chitlin-circuit comedy.”
Too down home for words, Jimmie Rodgers sings “Waiting On A Train”:
via some velvet blog.
 From the WaPo:
“Behold the Toyota Yaris. It’s moderately priced, gets good mileage, and has a gun turret capable of destroying toasters and bike-riding sumo wrestlers as it cruises down a track.
Not every Yaris shopper gets the turret option; that’s a feature reserved for Xbox 360 owners who download a free promotional video game Toyota is releasing today to build awareness of the Yaris among 20-somethings.
We wouldn’t do a Toyota Sienna game, for example,” [a spokesperson] said of a minivan model. “That wouldn’t be appropriate for this audience.”
 Hey, man! I drive an AWD Sienna. With its robo-doors and super expensive run-flat tires it is the perfect stealth combat vehicle…think the GMC motorhome in Stripes.
Robert Hormats, a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, has a new book out – The Price of Liberty – on the history of America’s war financing. From the time of Alexander Hamilton, this country has always financed its wars when they occurred – until the current war in Iraq. “One central, constant theme emerges: sound national finances have proved to be indispensable to the country’s military strength” (and long-term national security). Obviously, our finances have never been more unsound. So where are we headed this time?
Prez GW Bush (Will Farrell) on Global Warming:
On October 3 1957, San Francisco Municipal Court Judge Clayton Horn ruled Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” was NOT obscene, despite lines like “who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy.” A full fifty years later WBAI still feels it legally risky to broadcast the poem, so instead offers it in an online-only special at Pacifica.org. “Howl Against Censorship” includes intervus w/ poets Lawrence Ferlingetti and Bob Holman (1:32:08 mp3):
The Pinky Show, “Ant- Light Pollution:”
Talk about oldies radio, this signal left the station three billion years ago, and it’s just arriving: from SPACE.com “Astronomers Find Mysterious Radio Burst.” Tune in if you’re roadtripping thru the small Magellanic Cloud (a couple small galaxies, about 200K LY away, in orbit around our Milky Way Galaxy) — that’s the direction in the Southern sky the signal was detected.
More at National Radio Astronomy Observatory, “Powerful Radio Burst Indicates New Astronomical Phenomenon.” The burst lasted less than five milliseconds. Journalists say the scientists say, “it may signal a cosmic car crash of two neutron stars, the death throes of a black hole—or something else.” Aka, dunno what ’tis. Maybe they can use it to fill the “Enormous Hole in the Universe” astronomers also recently found (“nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies, and gas, and the mysterious, unseen ‘dark matter'”).
This week’s HV cast is from the NEA book project, Operation Homecoming, writings of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Part 4 in our series: Sergeant John McCary writes a frustrated email home after attending two multiple funerals in a single day. Music: Jess Atkins. A story by Barrett Golding, “To the Fallen” (3:36 mp3):
Military crackdown on protestors in Rangoon, journalist shot:
Keegan-Michael Key asks his doctor is Levitol is right for him, from MADtv, Season 12 Episode 5:
Even if mashups are so tres 20C, I still like some of ’em. In HV posts past we’ve streamed a few from Go Home Productions. Now, for a limited time, GPH, aka, Mark Vidler, has his whole collection of mashups and remixes as free downloads, 13 CDs worth. At KGLT our current fave has samples from every rock record ever recorded; well, lotsa ’em anyway, Outcast vs. ACDC vs. Queen vs. Crowded House vs. Led Zep vs. Beatles vs. a few more; from GPH’s This Was Pop, “Rock in Black” (3:58 mp3):
This week’s HV cast is from the NEA book project, Operation Homecoming, writings of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Part 3 in our series: Sergeant Helen Gerhardt recounts her first few days in Iraq, in an email to family and friends. Music: Jess Atkins. A story by Barrett Golding, “Among These Ruins” (3:36 mp3):
Akamai has a Real-time Web Monitor tracking “global Internet conditions around the clock.” Areas w/ highest traffic are brightest. You can also color the map by areas with the slowest connections (latency) or the most recent “network attacks.”
“Pumpkins and all that bullshit…”
Check David Greenberger’s Duplex Planet blog-post “Why Do We Celebrate Halloween?.” Here’s some excepted answers from his conversations with residents of the Duplex Nursing Home, Jamaica Plain, MA, 1980:
WALTER KIERAN: Christ! Nobody knows that! I don’t even know myself! I bet you can’t tell me where Halloween originated. It started up in Salem, with the witches. The kids go around and knock on the doors and they have to give ’em something to get rid of ’em.
GEORGE MacWILLIAMS: Damn if I know. I’m not interested in that stuff. It’s a kids holiday, they enjoy it.
WILLIAM “FERGIE” FERGUSON: On account of the clowns.
KEN EGLIN: I don’t know, honest-to-god. You can ask me all about Halloween and I don’t know, I swear to God I don’t know. It has something to do with Salem. What do you call ’em — witches, spooks? I guess we celebrate it for the spirits, witches, scarin’ people. I used to put a sheet on and cover my head and stand behind a big tree. Now this is gonna sound silly to you, but I’m serious. I used to scare the shit out of all the girls. I didn’t have anything on them, they were smarter than I was. I used to ask them things, and I couldn’t stand them. I’d scare them and they’d run home screamin’ to their mothers! Pumpkins and all that bullshit.
“The Duplex Planet is an ongoing work designed to portray a wide variety of real characters who are old or in decline.” Much more “Why Hallowen?” at the DP Blog.
TV criticisms by rabbits; Buns and Chou Chou, Rabbitbites:
PRX Announces Winners of Public Radio Talent Quest. Rebecca, Al, and (my fave) Glynn got selected as the hosts with the mosts (20K+ voters, 1.4K+ entrants). I attended the announcement this Wed. nite, and all three proved pretty damn Hosty in front of tough crowd of top pubradio execs.
Now, they each make a series pilot. We’ll see.
CPB conceived & funded this talent search. I was skeptical of this top-down institutional instigation of aesthetics engineering, but you can’t argue w/ the results: 3 (actually 6) people w/ plenty of pubradio potential.
Sidenote: CPB head Pat Harrison was there. This is second time I’ve heard her talk about the role of public broadcasting as a community builder, and the second time I’ve been impressed with her visions and comm skills.
Hey, travelers, if you’re doin’ time at Chicago O’Hare, there’s a bunch of free AC power plugs, plus USB power, in comfortable seats down a very quiet, little-used hallway. It’s in Terminal 2 and runs between the E and F gates (around E4, F4). I’m bloggin from there now. Just video-Skyped the wife and collected the dozens of emails that’ve piled up since last connectivity. Maybe most of ya think I’m easily amused and this ain’t nada to rave about, but a little peace, power solitude, and sanctuary in an otherwise congested noisy airport, well, I’m diggin’ it. To the right is a photo-booth snap of these AC/USB-ed seats I and a few others are enjoying. Oh yeh, one more vital piece of info: current security advisory threat level: Orange. I believe that’s just below Pineapple.
Photos by Scott Carrier, music by Burmese band Iron Cross:
Two apps that record radio for later listening, progammable by station and time: Rogue Amoeba – Radioshift (Mac $32) and RadioTime.com (Win $29). Both capture the station’s online audio stream then save it as an mp3 soundfile. Haven’t used either but I frequently resort to Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro, and can vouch for that co. heartily.