The Typing Monkey

I Believe I'll Go Back Home

2012-01-24T19:42:00.000-08:00

Celebrities die all the time, but we lost three in January that leave pretty large holes in the American musical landscape. We already waxed nostalgic on Jimmy Castor but were offline when, almost appropriately, Johnny Otis and Etta James died just days apart.

If you are alive and paying attention, you already read countless obits and rememberies of their respective contributions to rhythm & blues, soul, jazz and blues.

Instead of repeating praise into the void, we encourage you to pay your respects by getting your paws on a copy of Cold Shot! by The Johnny Otis Show.

Released in 1968, this LP boasts the leanest Otis Show line-up of them all: Johnny plays piano, vibes and drums; his son Shuggie (a grinning teen here and only a couple years from launching his brief, brilliant solo career) plays bass, guitar and harmonica while Mighty Mouth Evans handles the lead vocals.

This record will validate your puny effort to feel funky on a daily basis. Cold Shot! opens smart with the shock-and-awe enabled "The Signifyin' Monkey" replete with blue language. "Country Girl" is far filthier through pure implication. That's blues science right there bub -- stun 'em out of the gate and you can say anything you want after that.

"High Heeled Sneakers" chicken struts across the room and Otis fills the set with a fair share of classic blues sounds, all played with a smile and a wink.

Just about anything Otis recorded is worth your attention, and Cold Shot! isn't even the best entry point to his catalog. (Otis' killer r&b output from the '50s and '60s is top-shelf stuff.) But this disc cuts through the fog of whatever troubles you, a bracing gulp of potent groove juice.

Art Thiel Knows Snow in Seattle

2012-01-19T19:08:00.000-08:00

The Typing Monkey offices in Seattle are still running, but only because we're able to walk from the cot in the basement to the 23rd floor and check our inbox.

In case the news in your area doesn't care -- and why should it? -- the Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest got snow and lots of it. Not Midwest snow, but enough. And then freezing rain. And then more snow. And the hills here make it virtually impossible to navigate by car or public transit.

Yet an L.A. Times reporter, Kim Murphy, ostensibly living in Seattle, since she's the paper's Northwest beat reporter, wrote a flip piece for her paper about Seattle being wimps in snow.

We wanted to write a terse yet elegant response. Then local sports writer Art Thiel beat us to it. The man elevates sports writing into art and can make even bored "eh, sports, whatever" types pay attention to baseball statistics. So we were delighted to read his response to Ms. Murphy's ill-informed and frankly, stupid piece fluff. Fluff which seems designed to do nothing more than increase page views.

Art Thiel says: Shut The Hell Up.

Everything Man

2012-01-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

You know that James Walter Castor died Jan 16 in Henderson, Nevada, a few days short of his 72 birthday. As Jimmy Castor, he made some deliriously fun disco-fried funk and soul during his 1970s heyday as the leader of The Jimmy Castor Bunch.

The New York Times obit tells his story well.

We'll share this story from our publisher, S.L. Kreighton:

"When I was just three, one of my sisters was a teen and super-hip to whatever the cool sounds were. She and her friend Suzy would spin 45s in her room and those of us smart enough to hang around or press an ear to the door got an early childhood education in '70s dance music.

"One of the singles they played that caught my ear was "Troglodyte (Cave Man)" by The Jimmy Castor Bunch. I was three, but this man with his funny voices and groovy music spoke to me. He said the word "butt" in a song!

"Somehow, that single made it into the family collection -- otherwise populated by Mancini, Beatles, Monkees and a few other choice mid-century cuts. For years to come I played that single and delighted in a ribald tale I only half-understood. It shaped my music tastes for the better."

To this day, Kreighton uses the 2002 Castor Bunch hits collection 16 Slabs of Funk to lift his spirits and filter candidates for Typing Monkey internships.

Castor had a successful career prior to his '70s heyday, but those years as the leader of the Bunch are a great way for the man to be remembered. And we have an excuse to post these two album covers:

The cartoon on the left, sure. But dig three (3!) ~~man-purses~~ satchels in that promo pic on 16 Slabs. That's confidence!

"Nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired."

2012-01-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

A man named Lee Hardcastle makes claymation and other animated films. His series "Done in 60 Seconds" recreates iconic horror and science fiction films in about one minute. Hardcastle's latest is a retelling of John Carpenter's The Thing starring a bunch of penguins:

If you like that, go to his site and see more 60-second horrors and a whole mess of other fun stuff.

[A wink and a nod to Bleeding Cool.]

UPDATE: The video Pingu's The Thing has been removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim. (From the Pingu people, not John Carpenter. Lee Hardcastle says he'll update on Jan 24.)

A Few More Things the Intertoobs Taught Us in 2011

2012-01-01T22:41:00.000-08:00

Before 2011 drifts too far from memory, we’d like to call out a few non-musical things that made the year worthwhile.

MOVIES
The weeks never have enough hours for us to watch all the films that we want to see and every year our catch-up list grows. Here’s the scant few titles that left an impression, some of which we actually saw.

TROLLHUNTER – Released in Norway in 2010, this clever horror film reached the United States in 2011 and breathed some life into the overused and overspent faux-documentary gimmick. It’s the rare combination of horror and comedy that delivers on both.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL – We haven’t even seen this yet but we’re putting it up here because the trailer is pretty exciting. Every genre flick is looking for a fresh angle and it appears that the inventive director Nacho Vigalondo may have one by framing that tired old alien invasion story through the bleary eyes of a one-night-stand couple shaking off what may be their last questionable decision.

On that same note, we also hold hope that Attack the Block does the same trick with the same trope with a different but equally promising execution. And it was a complete surprise to us how much we enjoyed the remake of Fright Night. Against all sense, it justified its existence. Sadly, that may convince Hollywood to keep on remaking things that are better off left alone.

GAMES
WONDERPUTT -- Keep your Xbox and "Words with Friends", this free online PC game from DampGnat is the shiny, candy-like button we keep pressing. Get a Slushee and some stale tortilla chips with orange cheese sauce to make the miniature golf experience complete.

RADIO ENDURANCE TEST – Invented by our own bastard publisher, S.L. Kreighton, RET is simple: Get in the car, turn on the radio, find a song you know but normally avoid, and listen. Repeat this exercise until madness sets in, or worst of all, win by coming around and learning to enjoy a song you thought you hated. For two or more players, take turns finding a song you know one or more of the other players hates, set the dial and watch them squirm. Okay, so not a game really as much as a form of torture. It’s free though and it really happens.

COMICS
HARK! A VAGRANT – Kate Beaton has been drawing her clever comic strip for a few years now but we only just discovered it this year. The Canadian artist with a history degree squeezes laughs from literature, history (duh), pop culture and everyday weird stuff that inspires her consistently funny work.

THE DEFENDERS – We hadn’t touched a mainstream superhero comic in years, but Marvel’s revival of this late Silver Age title intrigued us enough to buy the first issue and was good enough to bring us back for the forthcoming second issue. The debut has a “getting the band back together” feel and doesn’t shy away from mild humor in the service of a Lovecraft knock-off plot.

Worth a Mention -- We missed the first few issues of DC’s Wonder Woman relaunch but word on the street is they finally figured out what to do with the Amazon warrior princess.

Similarly, we missed the start of Image’s Mudman, but from what we’ve seen, it’s one of the better takes on the tired superhero concept.

Perhaps both the new Wonder Woman and Mudman will soon be collected in a trade paperback and we can eat it all at once the same way we tackled Ultra, The Walking Dead and Great Lakes Avengers.

You Made It

2012-01-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

Congratulations. If you're reading this, you're alive and it's 2012 -- not too shabby. The Typing Monkey hopes that you reached the finish of 2011 with all the usual amenities of life intact and have few, if any, regrets.

Some believe this is the start of our final year of existence. Whether an ancient culture has correctly predicted our demise or not, this all ends for each of us in our own way eventually.

The road ends, the bridge is out up ahead, there's an exit ramp with your name on it. But the ride there is full of sights, scenery and roadside attractions that can make the getting there fun.

Look! Here's Suzi Quatro singing "48 Crash." Righteous!

[courtesy of Shadowcat05]

From the Fortean News Desk: Science Gives Middle Finger to Yeti Finger

2011-12-29T16:35:00.000-08:00

"The finger was taken from the monastery by Bigfoot researcher Peter Byrne and was smuggled out of the country, so the story goes, by beloved Hollywood actor Jimmy Stewart, who hid it amid his wife's lingerie."

Oggity-oggity-oggity! Though the finger was not a lopped-off digit from a snomwan, abominable or otherwise, the story still titilates and fascinates.

Read it all.

Things the Intertoobs Taught Us in 2011

2011-12-29T11:09:00.000-08:00

Most media outlets publish carefully cultivated best-of lists for the end of the year. Some take it very seriously and that’s fine. Journalists and other media types generally like to argue and debate so making best-of lists feeds that urge.

The Typing Monkey is not immune to such impulses but we simply don’t consume enough new material to effectively create some sort of all-knowing inventory of things we think matter in music, film, television or whatever else.

Like the average jerks we are, we just mess around on the Web and document the things we find that entertain us. Some of those things make it to the blog.

In the spirit of year-end wrap ups and the critic’s inflated sense of influence, here is the first (and possibly last) "Things the Intertoobs Taught Us"

THE MUSIC
A. Dd+ – Dallas-based MCs Paris Pershun and Slim Gravy (!) slipped passed wider recognition. Too bad that, because they’re funny and smart, willing to lob lines such as “surprising everybody, reading a damn book” (“Likeamug”) in the midst of the kind of throwback boasting that workaday schmucks can actually visualize. On their March LP When Pigs Fly the duo was backed by wonderful soul-soaked production from Picnictyme. Grab the free download of their singles-collecting EP Loosies and thank A.Dd+ by paying for a copy of Pigs Fly.

CHRISTIAN MISTRESS – Given the TMI offices are in Seattle we must apologize to this Olympia, WA quintet for not discovering their classic blues-based metal until this year. Singer Christine Davis may have started smoking in the 3rd grade in order to get that voice (tremble men, you can’t handle her). The rhythm section knows when to boogie, when to boom, and the clean, dual guitar leads muscle in right next to the Saxon patch on your denim. Get on this already, they’ve been at it since 2009.

“I’m In Your Church At Night” by ACTIVE CHILD – Pat Grossi, the man behind the name, has released plenty of good music over the past year. This single came out in November 2010 but we didn’t find it until February of 2011 so we’re including it here because nothing else he’s done moves quite like this majestic, crystalline work of weirdo pop. Dig the video and it will all make odd, wintry sense – just lovely.

BELL WITCH – A drum/bass duo from Seattle (again, where were we?) whose funeral-doom rumbles come with uncharacteristic peals of bright, cleansing light in the form of madrigal-like harmonies. The match makes perfect sense and the band gives the six-string bass guitar a home. Four dollars gets you their demo and that’s four bucks well-spent.

NYEMIAH $UPREME -- A Queens rapper whose mixtape Bad will probably draw comparisons to more mainstream/current peers but sounds more to us as if she's standing on the shoulders of MC Lyte and high-fiving Fannypack on her way up. There's a day-in-the-life narrative to Bad that actually works amid the sketches of beats, bass and police-procedural keyboards. Bad could come off as typical "because I'm worth it" aphorisms wrapped in party music. A deeper listen reveals an independent woman a little pissed off that too many men around her are there because they think they're worth it, and more, that she should agree.

“Mountaineer” by WHITE SEA – The video for this single gets the teens-being-teens aspect right but missed an opportunity to craft the John Hughes homage that the song embodies. Soaring, tragic, self-aware, Morgan Kibby sings the lyric “it’s a teen dream” as if she’s trying to reassure a teary heroine, and the whole affair has you running back to give that sensitive rich kid another chance because maybe you two can make something of this after all. “Mountaineer” is pure Kate Bush-style drama with all the synthesizers and crashing drums to realize its grand ambitions.

Worth Following – We doubled up our coverage of SP-33 and XII Boar since we discovered both their free EPs on the same day. The former is Chicagoan Ezra Funkhouse, whose Escape the Carter smeared Lil Wayne vocals onto bleak synth grime from John Carpenter's soundtrack to Escape from New York. The latter is a stoner-metal quartet from England who managed to graft some hardcore fury and pumelling doom onto their resin-stained melodies.

Since then SP-33 has put out a woozy ambient mix and an original single titled "These Moments" both of which show Funkhouse deliberately branching out. Meanwhile, XII Boar promises a new release in 2012 and continue to play around the UK and the continent.

Reference material: We wouldn't know about three of these bands without regularly visiting the essential Cosmic Hearse blog. The Typing Monkey staff also spends a fair amount of time at RCRDLBL, Ill Roots, and enjoy mining for great rewards at Cover Me.

SUPER HAPPY BONUS FUN TIME!

A Kalle Anka Kristmas

2011-12-23T15:29:00.000-08:00

December 23rd is officially Festivus, so please air your grievances and demonstrate your feats of strength safely.

In the meantime, we had planned on having a review of Roald Dahl's collection of ghost stories up in time for Christmas Eve but failed miserably when someone offered to buy us a drink and things got hazy.

To sate your hungry mind until then, please read this interesting, if a little misguided, piece from Slate about Sweden's holiday tradition of gathering the family to watch a collection of vintage Disney cartoons compiled for the old Walt Disney Presents television show.

The special, called "From All of Us To All of You" originally aired in 1958 and is a strong modern tradition for Swedes during the Christmas season. Writer Jeremy Stahl seems to think it's strange, but so is dragging a tree into your house and decorating it yet nobody questions that with any sincerity.

Holiday Jeer

2011-12-21T16:37:00.000-08:00

A Jetson Christmas Carol
(Hanna Barbera; 1985)
Subject yourself to this retelling of the already tired Dickens tale and you may root for Mr. Spacely’s Scrooge before the Christmas spirit gets the best of him.

The story barely follows the story arc of Dickens’ hoary holiday heartwarmer. George Jetson, the comic everyman of the 2062, stands in for Bob Cratchit, with his boss, Cosmo G. Spacely, president of Spacely Space Sprockets, as Scrooge.

Spacely wants Jetson to work late on Christmas Eve. The boss’ demand is supposed to be seen as a heartless act of cruelty on par with Scrooge’s abhorrent treatment of Cratchit in the source material.

If the reader is at all familiar with the upper middle-class/retro-futurism of Orbit City, the setting of The Jetsons, then the reader also knows it’s no analog to Victorian London. Please apply that same math to the Spacely::Jetson equation.

Meanwhile George’s wife Jane and the kids, Judy and Elroy, head off to the mall to finish their shopping. Again: The Jetson family wants to finish their shopping. None of the Jetsons will greet a bare floor beneath the tree come Christmas morn.

Astro, the family’s talking dog, gets into the gifts already under the tree, breaks a toy and accidentally swallows a sprocket – a sprocket manufactured by Spacely Sprockets. The dog is in a bad way and may die. And because it’s 2062, there are no 24-hour emergency veterinarians.

Spacely has his Scrooge moment, visiting a past where he is supposed to be depicted as a selfish young man. Instead, he seems like a pretty reasonable guy. He meets and falls in love with his future wife and is working hard to be a successful business owner.

Not to get all objectivist on The Jetsons, but what’s wrong with Spacely’s motives in his early life? The implication is greed and the eventual disregard for those he loves. But in A Christmas Carol, Scrooge has no one and may die unloved and unremembered. We know that Spacely is married to the same woman he met years ago as a teen and based on the Jetson family’s standard of living, Spacely pays a respectable wage to his employees.

The alternate future via Christmases Present and Yet-to-Be has Astro dying and the Jetson family suing Spacely for all he’s worth and using their litigious wealth to purchase a mansion and fancy clothing.

Pardon us if we feel that this whole setup makes George Jetson seem like a bit of a jerk. Spacely didn’t cram the sprocket down Astro’s throat, and it was an act of pure chance that nobody is home to get help when the dog is in need.

Regardless, Spacely is moved to bring his personal vet to the Jetson home, Astro is saved and Spacely gives Jetson a raise. The viewer is excused if overcome by the urge to grab Spacely by his future lapels and slap some sense into him.

The problem here isn’t that A Jetson Christmas Carol feels cheap and lacking sincerity. (It is both of those things.) A Jetson Christmas Carol comes off as if it were written by a kid who only ever watched the dozens of bad imitations of A Christmas Carol that television has churned out over the decades.

Dickens’ story is sentimental hogwash for sure – a template for too easily converted villains to come. But at least Dickens gets the tone right by keeping the Cratchit family broadly sympathetic and Ebenezer Scrooge dry and despicable till the last act. The folks behind this Jetson conversion didn’t even get that right.

Reference material: You'd be better off watching the Disney adaptation from 1983 which packs plenty of charm by comparison. However, if you must watch the Jetsons version, you can see the whole thing here. You'll need to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas twice just to get the taste out of your mouth.

[Orbit City image sourced from Cracked.com; London street scene sourced from VictorianLondon.org]

Reader Mail

2011-12-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

To the staff at The Typing Monkey:

It would appear that the recent cutbacks at your parent company have caused a deficit of good sense. Friday is trash day and the bins MUST be left in the loading dock area or the trucks can’t get down the alley and the other tenants in this building will not have their waste removed.

This is the second time in a month the bins marked “TMI Ste 23” have been left in the alley near the smoking area. Please see to it that they are not left there again on trash day. Our firm has shredded documents that can’t be left on the premises.

If your organization no longer has a maintenance staff, or any able-bodied person who can follow simple facilities instructions every tenant in the building receives as part of the lease, we can discuss a work-share program with our capable janitorial staff.

Love the site! Are you going to put up any holiday related content?
Best,
C.K. Aster-Mums
Baby & Sons LLC

Dear C.K.

We do plan on posting a couple seasonal articles.

Yours,
The Typing Monkey

Remember, you can send questions, concerns, advice or other good stuff to typingmonkey@live.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Oh You! (Pretty Thing)

2011-12-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

Just in case she's reading, this one goes out to The Amazing Mrs. Kendall.

[courtesy of EMI Music ... right?]

Sound Salvation

2011-11-27T21:35:00.000-08:00

Since we're in a linking mood -- and that's really all we have energy for at the moment -- let's all give our attention to two related articles from different sources.

Chronologically, Slate came out first, swinging for rock & roll radio with a piece by Christine Pawlak. Hers is a first-person account of life as a radio DJ during what most culture-watchers perceive as the sunset on the empire of FM rock radio.

Two days later, the AV Club's Jason Heller wondered in print as to why classic-rock stations are suddenly including 1990s rock in their rotation. When Smashing Pumpkins rub up against Creedence Clearwater Revival, strange things are afoot.

8mm, 16mm, 35mm, Go!

2011-11-25T23:36:00.000-08:00

"All the things I am attracted to are just about to disappear."

Tacita Dean said that in an interview published in the Oct 31 issue of The New Yorker this year. She's an artist who works primarily with 16mm film and recently expanded into 35mm for "FILM", an exhibition at the Tate.

We've never seen any of Dean's work firsthand, but The New Yorker interview compelled us to read more about her. [Read an excerpt here -- ed.] And should the opportunity arise, we'll be there to watch whatever she's filmed.

Here's a YouTube film about her Tate installation, narrated by the artist.

Mr. Roberts Has Something to Say

2011-11-25T23:22:00.000-08:00

Journalist Kevan Roberts has a new job writing about music, and we presume, other things for The Huffington Post.

Because The Typing Monkey was fortunate enough to have worked alongside Mr. Roberts for several years, we are super-pumped to have the opportunity to read his work again. We reserve the right to wonder how often he swore while composing his innaugural Huffington Post column, a fond recollection of grunge.

More please.

Oh Hey, the Blog

2011-11-24T10:52:00.000-08:00

... riiight.

On Friday Nov 4 Typing Monkey Int'l, the gloabal syndicate that owns Typing Monkey Industries, which in turn has among its holdings The Typing Monkey, decided to "enact cutbacks."

That's rich white guy code that translates roughly to "Odin's Beard! It's midway through the second quarter of our fiscal year and we're bleeding money. Let's fire employees and sell off anything that's not turning a profit."

To his credit, our publisher, S.L. Kreighton booked time with the TMI board of directors to make his case for preserving The Typing Monkey. There were PowerPoint decks, spreadsheets with pivot-tables, a reminder that we're the only TMI entitiy that requires our mailroom staff to become Six Sigma black belts.

We lost the helicopter -- the helipad on the roof of our Seattle office has been turned into a community p-patch which sounds eco friendly and responsible but is nothing more than a tax write-off wrapped in good PR. There were layoffs and most of the editorial staff has been bumped to freelance status so TMI can avoid paying for benefits.

We no longer enjoy free Bumble Bars in the snackateria, coffee is now 15 cents a cup and the company-subsidized Classic Cinema and Cognac Club has been disbanded.

Kreighton convinced TMI to keep him on under the title "advising editor" and we retained a small support staff and our intern Eileen.

We apologize for the break in publication and will soon be back to providing you with our usual amount of pop-culture navel gazing, links to the best content on the Web, and pictures such as this one:

It's a poster by artist Albert Gantner, crafted in 1910 to protest the ban on Absinthe in Switzerland. A Christian zealot has stabbed the Green Fairy in the heart and stands victorious over her corpse. Please note that the jaundiced murderer is male and clothed in repressive garb resembling that of the Puritan.

Traditionally artists depict the Green Fairy as an etheral woman recalling the Greek muses, or sometimes with wings like a sprite. She is the mascot of the alcoholic drink, embodying the purported hallucination-inducing properties of Absinthe.

Gantner retains her green-toned flesh here but she is not a transluscent apparition. She is nude save for stockings and shoes of the sort we imagine may have been worn by Victorian courtesans. But that's pure speculation on our part.

The order-craving male has slain the chaos-welcoming female, austerity has triumphed over a good time, the buzz has literally been killed. We are funny monkeys.

Robyn's in the Kitchen

2011-11-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

Hey. It's November already. What have you done?

We've wrapped up another Halloween Frenzy and not a single Ghost Dot consumed. The Typing Monkey is disappointed in Tootsie Roll Industries' lack of enthusiasm for Halloween this year. If you'd like to send them a formal complaint or just beg, like Gerald Levert, for another chance at Ghost Dots, please do. We have.

And in the meantime, take solace is this distraction:

[Courtesy of favoritanton]

The video came our way via Cover Me. In the short week it's been on YouTube (at the time of this writing) there are already tribute videos. Erato has a Facebook and come from Sweden.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T12:24:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend The Typing Monkey staff drank some delicious beverages and freaked out over a great set of images on the ever-wonderful Monster Brains. The covers of Tales from the Tomb magazine and the other Eerie Publications may drive the weak-willed insane.

In snooping around for more information we came across some neat video by Jason Willis, who used to post great horror records on his blog Scar Stuff, and now appears to be making killer animated shorts. Here is the Halloween film Willis made this year, set to a children's record "Halloween" by Kay Lande and Wade Denning.

Note that Willis shot most of this on an iPhone. (Ker-BOING!)

We like to keep it more or less PG-13 because you never know who is reading. So keep that in mind for the following. The short that Jason Willis made in 2010 is a nearly 8-minute piece painstakingly pieced together from the covers of Eerie magazines and set to a novelty horror record from the early '70s.

Eerie Publications polluted young brains with lurid gore, violence, absurd monsters and barely clothed women, all of them brought to life via Willis' mad science.

Now that you know what you're getting CLICK HERE and have fun.

Double-Czech Sunday

2011-10-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

We're playing catch-up here by posting twice in one day. The pencil was nice and sharp so we figured, why not?

Here's another great find via Monster Brains, Czech painter and illustrator Jaroslav Panuska. We can't read his entry on Wikipedia and there's not much English language information about him available on the Web. Panuska worked in the late 19th and early 20th century and seemed to have a love of the macabre.

The above work, "Vampire", is part of a wonderful gallery on Monster Brains. Check it out.

Antonin Likes a Good Scare

2011-10-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

Czech composer Antonin Dvorak wrote four symphonic poems based on folklore from his native land. The Noon Witch is one of those tone poems and fits right into this month's theme.

Dvorak used Karel Jaromir Erben's retelling of the Noon Witch legend as the basis for his composition, Erben being a noted 19th century Czech historian and poet.

The tale is classic lesson-teaching folklore: A mother wants her child to take a nap so she tells the boy that if he doesn't go to bed, the Noon Witch will come and take him away. The child won't cooperate and to both his and his mother's surprise, the Witch actually shows up. Mom won't let the hag take her baby and that just won't do. Father arrives home for his dinner to find a nasty scene.

Enjoy!

[Courtesy of PoledniceWP]

Cauldron and Broom Optional

2011-10-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

Horror films generally ignore witches and witchcraft as a theme. For every Blair Witch, there are dozens of psychotic killers, yet more zombie apocalypses and too many vengeful ghosts. And we won’t even count the vampires.

Mix it up this year as you seek out movie entertainments for Halloween and try one of these flicks about witches and the people they terrorize. Or in some cases, witches and the people who terrorize them.

ALL OF THEM WITCHES / SOBRENATURAL
Dir. Daniel Gruener
(1996)
Young wife Dolores witnesses the brutal murder of her friend and neighbor. She does the sensible thing by completely losing her cool. Dolores discovers her deceased neighbor may have been involved in some sort of witchcraft or voodoo. Owing a big debt to Rosemary’s Baby, Witches has a protagonist so paranoid of everything going on around her she almost becomes an unreliable narrator. But then the audience starts to agree with her and things get scary. (In Spanish with subtitles.)

SUSPIRIA
Dir. Dario Argento
(1977)
Like All of Them Witches, Suspiria opens with a murder and it’s a doozy. If the viewer can gather themselves up after the truly gruesome opening to this iconic Italian horror, the remainder is a gut-wrenching treat. A dancer has just enrolled in an exclusive ballet academy and finds the curriculum less than ideal as students start showing up dead, the nightly glass of wine seems a little off and what is it about that floral wallpaper?

SEASON OF THE WITCH
Dir. George A. Romero
(1973)
We could be lazy and just repeat what our former intern Francine wrote in 2009. So let’s do that:

"This is the most openly feminist horror movie made, and an under-seen gem. Joan (Jan White) has everything a modern housewife could want: husband, kids, suburban home, and an endless string of cocktail parties to plan and attend with the other wives she calls her friends. She's bored to the point of numbness. Experimentation with witchcraft leads to real life horror. There is not subtext here, as Night of the Living Dead director George A. Romero lays it out plainly in a film released at the height of the Women's Liberation movement."

Thanks, Francine. We miss you.

WITCHFINDER GENERAL
Dir. Michael Reeves
(1968)
For a different kind of witch-themed horror – the based on real events kind – dig into this gorgeous, depraved and ultimately depressing tale of a 17th century witch hunter (Vincent Price) who used the fear of witchcraft during the English Civil War to exact violence on the populace. With his performance here, Price reminds us that he is a skilled actor and not just a camp icon. He and director Michael Reeves fought constantly during the production. Read about it after you watch the film. And avoid the sometimes chopped-up U.S. release retitled The Conqueror Worm – MGM put out the UK original on DVD years ago.

The Only Way In

2011-10-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

We turned you on to Andrew Monko's photography a while back. His preference for rural and urban decay, the ways in which nature takes back man made objects, and his penchant for experimenting with light all appeals deeply to The Typing Monkey aesthetic.

Check out the photographer's series Scary Dairy. With some solid historical framing, he takes the viewer on a brief tour of the defunct, decaying and possibly haunted remnants of an abandoned mental hospital in the vast farming valley of the northern Puget Sound region of Washington state.

We're particularly fond of "Murakami Silo" and you'll have a favorite too. Here's a detail from "In the Silence They Wait":

Holiday Cheer

2011-10-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

While we prepare more Halloween Frenzy entertainments to terrorize, delight and/or bore, take some time to enjoy two of the Web's best Halloween destinations, X-Entertainment and Countdown to Halloween.

X-Entertainment does sound like its NSFW but it's entirely safe for public viewing and usually great for sharing with family members you know will get it.

Blogger Matt has been running X-Entertainment since 2003 and has faithfully acknowledged Halloween every year via his site's trainspotter-style dedication to our disposable culture. This year his seasonal stuff (Halloween topics began Sept 8!) includes the birthday party he threw for his shrunken-head apple.

The Countdown to Halloween, while sharing a title with X-E's seasonal content, is more or less a blog roll. Which sells it short because it is a vortex of Halloween fun that will pull you in and get you fired because it's November 1 and you were supposed to have that PowerPoint done last week.

"The Other Girls"

2011-10-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

[Click on image to embiggen]

Please do yourself a huge favor and spend some time reading and laughing at Nicholas Gurewitch's comic strip The Perry Bible Fellowship.

The above strip, "The Other Girls", is particularly seasonal, but Gurewitch's humor is always black and deeply funny.

And for a double-whammy of PBF goodness, check out his spot-on tribute to Edward Gorey.

That Sly, Come-Hither Stare

2011-10-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes at Aesop Dekker's peerless music blog Cosmic Hearse it feels like Halloween all year round. Just a few days after Labor Day this year, he posted Louise Huebner's Seduction Through Witchcraft.

As pointed out on the Hearse, Huebner is the Official Witch of Los Angeles. Whatever those duties may include, that title is pretty spiffy. Perhaps other municipalities have similar positions?

Seduction is Huebner's 1969 instructional record for ladies and gents interested in er, seduction through witchcraft.

What's that? I'm sorry, we thought you just said you weren't interested in seducing anyone through witchcraft, but we must have misheard.

You need this record. Play it next time your sweetheart comes home from a tough day at work and let the sexy magic work its -- dang it. Didn't really think that one out before we typed it.

The music and sound effects were done by Louis and Bebe Barron, the way-ahead-of-their-time electronic experimental musicans who did the delightfully eerie score for Forbidden Planet.

Thanks Cosmic Hearse!

Movie Time!

2011-10-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

Mike Mignola, the illustrator and writer most famous for creating Hellboy, did a one-off comic book in 2002 called The Amazing Screw-On Head.

The titular character works as a secret agent for President Abraham Lincoln. Screw-On Head, an expert in the occult, is literally what his name implies, a mechanical wonder who attaches himself to various mechanical bodies equipped to carry out his duties.

In 2006 the Sci-Fi channel (now SyFy, boo) commissioned an animated pilot of The Amazing Screw-On Head and Mignola delivered.

Alas, it was not picked up as a series despite boasting the voices of Paul Giamatti in the lead role, Patton Oswalt as Mr. Groin, David Hyde Pierce as the villain Emperor Zombie and Molly Shannon as Patience, Screw-On's ex, now a vampire aligned with Zombie.

The show, like the comic, is wickedly creative and very funny -- a steampunk melodrama well aware of its own ridiculousness. Here's the trailer:

You like? Watch the whole thing here. It's only 22 minutes long.

True

2011-10-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

[Snapped by The Amazing Mrs. Kendall; Pacific Galleries Antique Mall; Oct 8, 2011]

Stay Off the Moor, and the West Coast Too

2011-10-15T11:13:00.000-07:00

The film An American Werewolf in London was released 30 years ago. It remains the best werewolf movie ever made. (FACT.)

Artist Olly Moss gave us all a gift for the 1981 film's birthday by making this:

Moss frequently reimagines the poster art for iconic films. He's not the only artist putting Art Deco, Axis and Communist propaganda, and Saul Bass filters on our more recent movie-art memories, but he's one of the best.

If you've never seen American Werewolf, please correct that soon. And if it's been a while since your last viewing, there's never a better time of year to watch again.

An Old Fashioned American Devil-Baby

2011-10-11T20:25:00.000-07:00

Hull House still stands in Chicago and you can read about it's origins as part of the "settlement" movement in the United States if that interests you. And it should.

But if you read far enough in most mentions of the house, you'll come across mention of it being haunted and further, the place where once a demon baby was born -- allegedly.

Jane Addams, one of the co-founders of Hull House, actually wrote about the Devil-Baby at Hull House for Atlantic Magazine in 1916. And through the miracle that is the intertoobs, you can actually read her article.

Revenge of a Witch

2011-10-08T13:01:00.000-07:00

As we've gathered material for the Halloween Frenzy, this year's harvest skews toward the realm of witchcraft and the ladies who practice it. To start things off, turn your attention to this wondefully lurid gallery of comic book covers from the ever-reliable Monster Brains.

Witches Tales magazine ran from 1951 to '54 and followed E.C. Comics' lead -- each issue an illustrated anthology of short horror and suspense stories. Being a Harvey Comics product, Witches Tales aren't nearly as gruesome as E.C.'s gonzo gore-fests, but they still deliver.

The cover story in issue No. 16 combines three subjects sure to delight: the Old West, a witch and a horde of corpses rising from their graves. Neat!

That'll learn 'em!

The witch in the story, given the exotic and not-at-all xenophobic name Delia Zarbo, is more Eastern European looking, with younger features than the old woman on the cover. (In a couple panels, she's positively vampiric.)

The Witches Tales cover art has recurring themes you'll notice: open graves, foolish men and wasp-waisted blondes with a preference for revealing red clothing.

If any of the covers looks promising, Monster Brains' proprietor Aeron Aelfry provided a link to the Digital Comic Museum, where every issue can be read online or downloaded and saved for later. That's service right there, so don't thank us, thank Monster Brains.

Free Music: The Great Tribulation

2011-10-06T18:09:00.000-07:00

The Typing Monkey is never too proud to admit terrible, awful, really unforgivable mistakes. Back in July we should have instructed you to immediately click over to CD Baby or various other online retailers and purchase a copy of The Flood Brought the Fire by The Great Tribulation.

But did we? No sir and/or madam, we did not. A grievous error we will attempt to rectify by pointing you to the band's BandCamp page where they are currently giving the 10-song LP away as a free digital download, thus saving you the hassle of ripping the CD and dropping it into the MP3 player of your choice.

We trust that you will do the right thing and buy the CD too, or even buy the MP3s from CD Baby. (Give one set to a friend!) Or just preview the album online and buy the physical CD.

What you'll get is a crackerjack bunch of tunes from the Ann Arbor "folk noir" quartet. Their particular strain of elastic Americana treads all over the 20th century without laying claim to a particular decade.

Flood unspools as a collection of short stories, evoking the same feelings as a tail lights shrinking in the dark or that weird mood you fall into when the leaves start to turn and coffee tastes a little better and dammit it's going to get cold soon.

As we discussed back in March, "Sure as the Rain" stands out among the crowd, a classic quiet storm that has likely already soundtracked the conception of a future generation of miserable registered voters. But pay close attention to the various stringed instruments circling one another at the start of "Better Left Unfound" and give yourself over to "When a Stranger Kisses Me." Lovely.

Go now.

Cycling in the Dark

2011-10-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

During Halloween Frenzies past, we've usually started the month off with a music video to prep the workspace, though not usually something seasonal.

Bat for Lashes' 2007 single "What's a Girl to Do?" doesn't tread into goth territory or have particularly gruesome lyrics. It does dissect (vivisect?) a dying love -- not the object of affection's death, rather the death of the feeling.

The video Bat for Lashes (aka Natasha Khan) made for the song does unleash some cartoon creepiness. It plays out like a dream, with a nighttime bike ride down the middle of a backwoods road, the forest hemming her in, and some surprises along the way.

If you've never seen it before, have fun. And if it's a rerun, it's not like you're doing anything more important right now.

[If the embed isn't rendering watch it here.]

Of Donuts and Mushrooms

2011-10-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today is October 1, 2011. Have you eaten a donut yet?

Once again, The Typing Monkey performs our civic duty by reminding our readers that October is national donut month.

We shall observe the commencement of this sacred time by enjoying a couple selections from Seattle's premiere vegan donut shop, Mighty-O Donuts. Vegan donuts, we said it. And we're proud. They're free of dairy, eggs and lard, but they'll still kill you if you eat too many -- a tasty death.

Before things get all spooky up in here with the commencement of the 4th Annual Typing Monkey Halloween Frenzy, we wanted to draw your attention to a recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in Baltimore.

Researchers at the school gave human subjects psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in so-called magic mushrooms.

The study found that even a small dose increased the subjects' level of "openness" -- a personality trait that's crucial to creativity and curiosity.

Further, a single dose increased those tendencies for nearly a year. The test group was small, but continues to bolster previous positive research by the school on the hallucinogen's affect on the human mind.

This is not an endorsement of the drug. However we found it interesting that academics in the United States are conducting this sort of research. Read the report here.

[Image culled from Chris A.'s deviantART gallery]

Beats, Intl.

2011-09-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

All around the Web, blather about a recording called Kinshasa One Two is bubbling up like yeast proofing in warm sugar-water. Let's not be left out, because it's very much worth blathering about.

Damon Albarn (Blur; Gorillaz; The Good, The Bad, The Queen; experimental opera composer and performer) travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo with a few choice music makers this past July. In just five days, they recorded as much music as they could. They collaborated, sampled, performed and mixed on the fly, and then put together an album sponsored by, and benefitting, Oxfam.

Say what you want about Albarn and the Britpop culture from which he sprang. But while his peers have muddled around doing the same old thing or simply breaking up, (hi, Oasis!) Albarn has proven his appetite for creative stimulation and willingness to act on his convictions with numerous projects far beyond recycling Bowie and The Kinks.

Since some of the Soundcloud embeds on various sites seem to have trouble loading, here's a link to the DRC Music page where you can hear the entirity of Kinshasa One Two and a couple BBC interview with Albarn and a couple of his collaborators. And do listen to the BBC interviews, as it makes Albarn's motiviations clear.

If the music pleases you, pay for it and feel better about yourself. Here's a few quick impressions of what we heard:

"We Come from the Forest" -- Two kalimba loops gallivant in the sun, then race to see who gets to the alien disco rhythm first.

"Ah Congo" -- Whooshing voices pan across the speakers while a man speaks the title (and more) in a basso profundo, outdone only by the molten bass wobble that soon joins in.

"Respect of the Rules" -- Drops a flute onto some Moog-y squish, a melting Alan Hawkshaw theme for off-duty customs officials having grilled cheese sandwiches and soup.

"K-Town" -- Bears the unmistakable stamp of Dan the Automator. Seriously, if that beat isn't his ...

"The Departure" -- More of that dubstep sub-bass rumble lurks below an near-ambient treble. Don't fall asleep!

***

Reference material: If you liked Albarn's Mali Music or went (justifiably) bonkers over Congotronics, this is for you.

Don't Touch That Dial

2011-09-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

No really, don't.

Now that the autumnal equinox has happened, it was just a matter of time before Typing Monkey publisher S.L. Kreighton made us all get into his rental car -- this year a minivan, which was actually quite comfortable -- and go for a drive.

Kreighton's goal was two-part and devious to the core. We all expected him to make us partake in his annual ritual of tooling around aimlessly while listening to the entirety of Bauhaus' "hits" disc 1979 - 1983 Vol. 1. The boss does that every year on the first dark, blustery morning after the first calendar day of fall. There's a free coffee in it for anybody who wants to tag along and at least it gets us out of the office for a good hour.

We had a fine time, and everyone agreed that Peter Murphy’s mad-monkey vocal at the end of “St. Vitus Dance” is a rock & roll freak-out par excellence.

Kreighton sprung his ulterior motive on us as soon as the last twinkles of guitar faded from the CD. After casually reminding us of a past car-radio game, he introduced a new one: Radio Endurance Test.

The objective is also the rule: Scan up and down the FM dial (or AM if your area actually has music stations on AM) and find any station you might normally listen to. Then wait until they play something that might normally make you tune in something else. It won’t take long. Now listen to the entire song, no matter what it is.

In less than 15 minutes we came across the opening verse of The Eagles’ “Witchy Woman.” Since it was decided at a staff meeting in 2009 that nobody at the TMI offices likes The Eagles, we knew the game had begun.

That was quickly followed by a fidgety tip-toe through “Behind Closed Doors” by Charlie Rich. When we all began to sing along to that, we realized that we actually kind of like that song. Spin again …

It all went sour when the new intern Eileen opened the side door of the minivan at a stop light and ran into a cornfield. What spooked her? Don McClean’s “American Pie” had begun. We were all so scared and all Kreighton did was guffaw in the driver’s seat. He nearly choked on his cigar. [It’s true. Kreighton is a horrible man. – ed.]

Strike up a game of Radio Endurance Test next time you’re out and about. Your flesh will crawl in no time.

Happiness Is a Killer Shark

2011-09-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

Charles Forsman draws and write comics and does illustrations. In October 2010, he published a series of strips that retold key scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Except he drew them as if they were "Popeye" strips from the 1930s.

This past August, he topped himself by doing the same with Jaws in the style of "Peanuts."

Please enjoy them and then dig around the rest of Forsman's site to learn more about him and see more of his work.

[Tip of the fedora to Comics Alliance]

Waking Up to the Apocalypse

2011-09-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

Hollywood's really bad at making horror movies and has been for some time now. It's safe to add science fiction to that statement too. We've discussed it all before and maybe someday we'll get all Yahoo News-y and make a list or some crap.

In the meantime, check out the trailer for Extraterrestrial, the new film by Spanish wrtier/director Nacho Vigalondo:

It may be absolute crap. Nobody sent us a screener, but dag if it doesn't look promising, especially based on the quality of his mind-bending sci-fi-by-way-of-Hitchcock 2007 feature Timecrimes.

If you've not seen Timecrimes, do have a look. It's The Typing Monkey's favorite "Man Witnesses Murder, Hides in Time Machine and Then Really Screws Things Up" feature film of all time.

Remnants of Revenants

2011-09-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

An archaeological dig in Kilteasheen, Ireland unearthed two bodies buried in a ritualistic manner that suggests the locals were worried the two men might rise from their graves.

What's remarkable about the find is that the circa 700 A.D. preparation of the bodies predates records of when Europeans started documenting how to keep a questionable corpse in the ground. Read all the details about it here.

The Monkey Reads: Puritanical Ass-Kickery

2011-09-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane
By Robert E. Howard
(Del Rey)
Howard’s kinetic prose elevates the adventures of his “Puritan swordsman” Solomon Kane beyond what a reader should reasonably expect from early 20th century vintage supernatural/action pulp.

Kane doesn’t emerge from his trials a winner, and in fact seems more doomed by his own thoughts than by any of the beasts, schemes or weapons that threaten him throughout the collection. The hero defeats his enemies, but he doesn’t win.

Yes, Kane is essentially undefeated in hand-to-hand combat and villains across the oceans know he’s a badass without equal – the kind of man who would travel from the safe confines of Devonshire to the pirate harbors of the Mediterranean and finally deep into the jungles, plains and mountains of central Africa just to find the kidnapped daughter of a family friend, as Kane does in “Moon of Skulls.”

But the more actively Solomon Kane pursues some unknowable, unreachable destiny, the less attainable it becomes. Unlike many action heroes, who are found by fate and reach greatness as they struggle to claim their rightful place at the top, Kane chases a calling he can’t really answer or satisfy.

Howard’s tales of the curious but introspective adventurer trace the journey of a man who is losing his faith.

The writer even acknowledges in the narrative that Solomon Kane wears the drab Puritan garb only out of habit. By the time Kane finally returns to Devonshire [“Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” one of the tales told in verse], his clothes are ragged, he wears a bright green sash and carries a tribal staff, accoutrements more befitting a pre-Christian shaman than an austere Protestant.

As Kane loosens his grip on his white, Christian (ahem, colonial) perspective on the world, he gains humanitarian enlightenment and accepts that the world is a weird, wonderful and sometimes terrifying place.

Though Solomon Kane exists in a 16th century land of Western expansion, he could stand in for the 20th century academic or expatriate who has seen the world and has begun to question his Western European place in it.

Above all this subtext philosophy rages crackling action and fantasy writing, some of the best of the genre. Kane travels Europe, Africa and briefly lands in the New World, clashing, colliding and cooperating with supernatural beings and profane men who live and die by the blade.

Howard balances compact writing with descriptive flair to make fight sequences and fast-paced action pop with four-color contrast against detailed observances of these alien worlds. As with his horror writing, Howard makes the unreal seem plausible, such as when Kane’s unlikely ally, an aged African shaman called N’Longa, reanimates a corpse to terrify a tribe under the sway of an old enemy of Kane. [“Red Shadows”]

A repeated warning for the casual reader: Like Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft and other fantasy writers of their era, Howard’s work does include language and “truths” about ethnicity that are simply wrong.

Oddly enough, Kane (and perhaps Howard) changes so much through the course of this short story collection, that the hero not only acts as a challenge to the “rightness” of colonialism, but may also be a barometer of changing attitudes in the early 20th century.

Howard lived and wrote in Texas and witnessed his share of ethnic and class injustice. And Solomon Kane is nothing if not a man out of step with his time, finding himself closer aligned with both the ways of a distant past and a possible future his countrymen simply haven’t caught up with.

Reference material: Fans of Dashiel Hammet's Red Harvest might be pleasantly surprised by Howard's similarly gruesome, testosterone-filled pulp. If Sergio Leone's Westerns own some space in your cinematic library, Clint Eastwood's pancho-wearing (anti-)hero bears more than a passing resemblance to Solomon Kane, though Kane doesn't share his carnal appetites. And if you read comics, mom will be delighted to see you reading a "real" book. She doesn't have to know the truth.

Why So Quiet?

2011-08-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

We've pissed away the days playing Wonderputt. It is evil and ruins marriages and we envy you if you are about to enjoy it for the first time. Horrible stuff. Really.

Now then:

[courtesy of mddawson1]

"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean?"

We'll be back soon.

[Emergency Broadcast System Test]

2011-08-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

Happy National Clown Day

2011-08-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

The first week of August is National Clown Week. Says who? Richard Milhaus Nixon, that's who. He made it so on August 2, 1971 via Presidential Proclamation 4071. We like to think his clown name was Tricky Dick.

Traditionally, the Saturday of Clown Week is Clown Day. So if you know any clowns, thank them for their work and just enjoy the show.

The NCW site acknowledges the uptick in coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, which seems to have flourished mostly since the 1980s and really gained momentum via the Internet and Web.

The Typing Monkey's official position on people claiming to be afraid of clowns: knock it off, no you aren't.

We are sure there are a number of legitimate cases of diagnosable clown phobia. But just because circuses aren't as popular as they once were and a few horror movies have stained your memory, don't dismiss all clowns. A skilled clown is preserving a centuries-old tradition and slapstick is one of the puresest forms of comedy that translates across borders.

Hooray! Clowns!

[Illustration by Louis Slobodkin, from his book Millions and Millions and Millions!; Vanguard, 1955. Courtesy of his Website.]

Deez Nutz Are Actually Legumes

2011-07-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

The Typing Monkey hasn't reviewed or recommended food before. But after purchasing a bag of Uncle Bud's Deep Fried Penuts (regular salted) we felt it was worth sharing with readers that Uncle Bud's product is delicious.

As the package says "Shell-N-All" is the only way to go. It's thoroughly satisfying to our simian ways to just push the whole peanut into our eager maw and feel the primitive crunch of the shell, tenderized and crispified by hot oil.

We're going back soon for the Hot flavor and maybe even Cajun. You heard us. Hot. Nuts.

From the Fortean News Desk

2011-07-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

Maybe not so much Fortean as much as the "Possible Con Artist, Tax Dodger or Guy Who Owes the Mob a Bunch of Money Desk" but no matter. The point is, there's a man in jail in Utah who doesn't really exist. Which is to say, he has no traditional identification, won't identify himself, and no one else has come forward to claim him.

Read all about it.

Summertime is Dub Time

2011-07-22T19:19:00.000-07:00

Friends, it's a scientific fact that dub reggae makes summer more fun. Heck it makes winter more fun.

Because The Typing Monkey is spiritually, morally and contractually bound to mention dub producer, musician and sound-manipulator Scientist whenever possible, we would like to clue you in, or remind you as the case may be, of the existence of Max Tannone's mash-up album Mos Dub.

You may have heard it, or heard of it, when Mr. Tannone made it available as a free download in April 2010. If not, or if you made a note and forgot to follow up, now is your chance to correct that error.

What you'll get are Mos Def vocals pasted onto various dub cuts, many of which were culled from Scientist's sublime Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires. It's fun and sounds great when the sky is blue, the air is humid and the temperature demands that you sit back and relax with a beverage.

And if you want, dig around Max Tannone's Website to see what else he's got cooking, because he's cooking plenty ... as in, his just-released Ghostfunk mash-up. See?

Look!

2011-07-19T20:22:00.000-07:00

Andrew Monko has a camera. He uses it to take pictures of people, places and things. Some of these photographs are pure documentary, some are staged, others get experimental. See what he does with his camera on Flickr.

"Tombstone Row" by Andrew Monko, from the series Airstream Junkyard; Jun 2011.

A Monkey Love Round-Up

2011-07-10T21:52:00.000-07:00

That Monkey Love column to the right of this text leads the reader to a world of wonder. And from time to time we like to call out of few of those links for showing us what's what around the intertoobs.

A person who goes by the handle Zen Tiger runs the blog Beware of the Crosseyed Cyclops!, formerly Beware, There's a Crosseyed Cyclops in My Basement!!! Apparently this wonky-eyed cyclops has broken out of the dank basement and ditched a couple exclamation marks along the way.

The site offers more digitized, downloadable vintage comics than you have time to read. So pick a few that fit your mood and dig in. We were especially pleased by the recent batch of Marvel Tales, including this winner:

The cover kinda spoils the ending, but admit it, you totally want to read that. She's trying to be a good neighbor, but so is he. Lady, don't say the gentleman didn't warn you.

Secondly, The Typing Monkey draws your attention to the truly weird comic Tales from Greenfuzz. We found it via the always incredible Monster Brains. The issue of Greenfuzz, by artist and animator Will Sweeney is titled "Kebabylon!" and tells the a fairly traditional story of boy-loves-girl, villain-kidnaps-girl, boy-goes-heroic. Except the boy is a sandwich, as is his girlfriend, and the villain is a hot dog who wants to rule the world and make everyone wear leiderhosen.

And there's a cat with a beard:

You aren't doing anything so important that you can't spend a little time enjoying Greenfuzz or a selection from the Cyclops library.

If you need some music to accompany your read, Cosmic Hearse has taken a turn recently toward jazz. Host Aesop Dekker still posts the metal, punk and the variations on heavy rock and roll he's always dealt. But he's expanded into deep catalog Blue Note bop and killer early 20th century blues. Some of the bop proves so hard The Typing Monkey can't really get on board, but at the very least we get educated. That's the real service he provides, and it's damned entertaining too.

We'll be right back after these messages.

2011-07-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a Top of the Pops performance by The Equals, playing their hit "Baby Come Back." And yes, that's a young Eddy Grant on lead vocal and guitar.

[Courtesy of vinylsolution]

From the Vice Desk: Pop Open an Old One

2011-06-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

The August issue of Smithsonian contains an interesting article about "experimental archaeologists" who work with local breweries in an attempt to recreate ancient alcohol recipes. The efforst are at least interesting, if not always appealing to our modern/Western sensibilities.

[A tipple to Arts & Letters Daily, once again.]

Not Just Clean, '80s Retro Clean

2011-06-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

Look!

TMI VIP The Amazing Mrs. Kendall sent us this photo and claims she found the soap that way one afternoon. Lies, damnned lies and soap art.

Midsummer

2011-06-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

Those of us in the Northern hemisphere enjoyed the summer solstice, aka Midsummer, today at 17:16 UTC, when the Earth leaned in and gave the Sun a little smooch. A cynic would point out here, that the days only grow shorter from now unitl December.

We will not dwell on such things today. Instead let's take a look at this .jpg of John William Waterhouse's wonderfully textured oil painting "Magic Circle" ...

Waterhouse frequently turned to mythology, folklore and literature for inspiration. Here's a Wikipedia gallery of some of his work.

Not Too Dear

2011-06-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

On June 18, 2011 Paul McCartney turned 69. And based on recent news that he's getting married again, The Cute One isn't at all worried that somebody will still need him, still feed him, well beyond 64.

Say what you want about Macca. The songs he wrote with The Beatles, even some of the post-Beatles compositions, are solid enough to be molded and reformed by other performers and work just as well. Surely that's the mark of good songwriting.

8-Bit Operators, a collective of musicians who use the sound chips from the Nintendo Entertainment System, Speak & Spell and other similarly low-tech electronic devices, to make music. Two years ago they made a compilation of Beatles covers called I Want to Hld Yr Handheld, Vol. 1.

Like their previous tribute to Kraftwerk, it's a wildly uneven mix but then somebody such as poke-1,170 (aka Julian van Aalderen) puts it all together and knocks out a version of "When I'm 64" that makes perfect sense delivered in the cutesy bleeps and bloops of an old home video game console:

If that embed isn't showing up, here's a link. You might as well also lend an ear to Sloopygoop's take on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and Bubblyfish's reading of "Piggies" that gives the Walter/Wendy Carlos treatment to a song that was already tonally close to A Clockwork Orange.

Shrunken Heads Are For Real

2011-06-15T17:54:00.000-07:00

May got off to such a promising start. Traveling off the grid put us in strange states where the ghost of Howard Hughes danced on the wing of The Spruce Goose to a lopsided Mexican shuffle played by a laughing band of weirdos. And on a hot Saturday morning, Typing Monkey publisher S.L. Kreighton left a bit of himself in a hotel parking lot. We were all so frightened and entertained.

Never mind. We merge back onto the information superhighway's increasingly neglected backroads in order to bring you this piece about scientists analyzing the DNA of an alleged shrunken head, proving that said noggin is no longer alleged. It's an actual human head that's been shrunk.

As if we ever doubted it. For the time-strapped, here's a quotation from Gila Kahila Bar-Gal, one of the scientists who conducted the DNA examination:

"'During spiritual ceremonies, enemies' heads were carefully reduced through boiling and heating, in the attempt to lock the enemy's spirit and protect the killers from spiritual revenge.'"

[Photo is not the head they tested, but one kept in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Photo by Narayan k28, via WikiCommons.]

Grim Lands, Great Tales

2011-05-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

Writer and editor Howard Andrew Jones wrote a piece for NPR on three collections of pulp fantasy writing worth your time. Naturally, he calls out Robert E. Howard.

Jones also reminds The Typing Monkey that we've been meaning to read some Leigh Brackett and introduced us to the work of Manly Wade Wellman. That's right, an action/sci-fi/fantasy writer named Manly.

In a bit of serendipity, the day before we stumbled across Jones' recommendations, we heard super-librarian and astute critic Nancy Pearl discussing genre fiction. We'll paraphrase her wise words here: It's a shame that literature is judged by its best work while genre fiction is judged by its worst.

True. True.

That reminded us that we owe you a review of The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane. We read it in spring so that you might read it during the summer.

Open The Good Stuff, Drink and Remember

2011-05-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

Norma Zimmer, aka The Champagne Lady from The Lawrence Welk Show, is dead.

If your first reaction is "who?" then you are either too young, or grew up in a household that didn't tune in regularly to the Welk Show. Zimmer was a singer and dancer who joined the show in 1960, thus spending more than 20 years with a show that ran nationally for nearly 28 years.

Her singing style recalled the Hit Parade era of Doris Day and similar pure, unaffected delivery of pop tunes that sound schmaltzy to the modern ear. Let go of irony and your rock & roll ways and Zimmer's buttery vibrato feels like a hug -- possibly a hug from grandma, but who couldn't use one of those from time to time?

[Image courtesy of WelkGirls.com]

Zimmer's death falls into place after a string of deaths we should have noted here. Yvette Vickers' passing was certainly the most tragic. Gone as well are Arthur Larents, John Walker, Body Snatcher rebel Dana Wynter and Dolores Fuller.

We probably should have given a nod to Wynter's passing, for if you need a smart woman by your side as alien invaders gradually infest your sleepy coastly burg, she was the lady for the job. And Vickers -- what could we say that hadn't been said already?

Norma Zimmer died on May 10, 2011. She was 88. There are other Welk Women still dancing, singing and playing, but only one got the title The Champagne Lady.

A Squirrel on Water Skis, and the Squirrel Has a Machine Gun

2011-05-09T17:34:00.000-07:00

First we must wish Kermit the Frog a happy 56th birthday. That Muppet is an inspiration for life.

And in the spirit of juxtaposition that often fueled Kermit's comedy we bring you this slightly stale news item that's worth seeing if you haven't already:

[Courtesy of our news partner KING 5]

In case that video renders weird, here's a link. Despite our usual distaste for animals-as-weapons and/or espionage agents, it would have been pretty badass to have a spy network of crows. It could go so horribly, biblically wrong.

Put Some Clothes On (Again)

2011-05-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

Some true believers also have a sense of humor about reading superhero comics because, well, muscular men in tights and capes. Also most comic book consumers are grown-ass men. Therefore:

That's right, bunkie, it's a t-shirt.

Mighty Fine does other pop-culture tees too but we've a particular affinity for their Marvel line, which has some serious and some silly depictions, but digs fairly deep into the character well too. Where's the company credit card ...

[Post script: Does Daniel Dumile know about this?]

Tyler the Creator

2011-04-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

... or Who Says There's No Room for Junk-Food Movies in Black Cinema?

By Kris Kendall, special contributor to The Typing Monkey

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m a 41-year-old white male, born and raised in a pale corner of the United States. I’ve never seen a Tyler Perry movie. I also stopped watching Spike Lee’s movies when, about halfway through Summer of Sam, I got bored and frustrated with the dull pace and stopped the DVD. Yes, I’m probably missing out on some worthwhile Spike Lee joints, but there’s plenty of time to get to 25th Hour, Bamboozled and Clockers.

I was in high school when She’s Gotta Have It came out and though I skipped School Daze, I watched Do the Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues with enthusiasm. The former was tense and thought-provoking, the latter was too long by at least 15 minutes, with a coda that indicated Mr. Lee was suffering from a filmmaker problem I call “writer/director syndrome.” I know I saw Jungle Fever but it didn’t stick with me.

I have seen a few minutes of both Meet the Browns and House of Payne, the TBS sitcoms Tyler Perry produces. Neither show says anything to me about my life. Even though the broad comedy triggered a few chuckles, there was little there to keep me engaged.

Likewise, I’ve seen a few minutes of one of Perry’s Medea films and it fared worse for my attention span.

So what qualifies me to pontificate on Tyler Perry’s “worthiness” as a filmmaker? Nothing. In fact, you’re free to go read something else if you like. But on April 21, 2011 the NPR news program All Things Considered aired a short piece in which co-host Michelle Norris mediated a debate about Perry’s output and influence, between journalist Goldie Taylor and cultural critic Toure.

The topic was inspired by Spike Lee’s continued criticism of Tyler Perry’s films, prompting Perry to break his silence and finally respond. Lee and many other people – mostly black, but critics of various ethnicities have weighed in – think black film audiences deserve better.

And more to the point: The presumption that white viewers may see Perry’s alleged stereotypes of black characters and think this is representative of all black people. Why would I think that?

I’m not here to talk about Perry’s films because I haven’t seen any of them. I’m not even prepared to discuss Spike Lee’s films since I checked out on his output a good 15 years ago. And no, I won’t speak about the pros and cons of Perry’s hugely successful production company as it relates to representations of black culture in mass media. Not because I don’t have an opinion, but because others have done it and will continue to do it better than I can.

But in listening to Taylor and Toure’s point-counterpoint, especially the descriptions of the archetypally “black” characters (caricatures?) that appear in Perry’s movies, and his even more controversial musings on black women, I kept thinking: They’re describing the same kind of wide-appeal drivel that white filmmakers make about white people.

The Meet the Parents franchise, starring a you-can-do-better Ben Stiller is generally ignored or hated by plenty of people, but the first film made enough money to inspire two sequels. Somebody was watching it, and it wasn't me.

Likewise offensive fluff such as Wild Hogs will top the box office during opening weekend despite reviews that are less than favorable. That movie reflects nothing about my life experience either. I'm not part of its intended demographic any more than I am for Madea's Big Happy Family.

I could ramble on for twice my current word count regarding romantic comedies. Katherine Heigl, Kate Hudson, Jennifer Aniston and various other stars knock out dull romantic fantasies every year, sometimes two or three a year per star. Critics do ask if the rom-com lead is how (white) women want to be portrayed. Yet these rote relationship fairytales, while inspiring their share of vitriol, don’t engender the same kind of wide cultural debate.

Spike Lee, I get it. However, I don’t think Perry is perpetuating stereotypes any more than similar fare aimed at white audiences.

The problem seems to be more along these lines: I can count the number of mainstream black directors on one hand. It’s a small clubhouse and Perry’s detractors want every film to count.

That’s understandable, but it's also joining two very different debates and the dearth of black directors won't be alleviated by Spike Lee targeting Tyler Perry. If Perry's guilty of anything, it's of being successful using a formula older than Hollywood. [And of being a union buster? -- ed.]

There should be room for escapist fare that paints a simplistic or idealized version of life. Cinema doesn’t have to be provocative or contemplative. There’s enough room for Buster Keaton and The Three Stooges, room enough for Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Get on the Bus.

It’s okay to enjoy both the opera and Looney Tunes. It's also okay to like one and not the other, but neither side is allowed to dismiss the other simply because they think it is below (or above) them. There's enough audience to go around.

Spike Lee seems to want Perry to make meaningful films, whatever those might be. Perry put his money behind the Oscar-winning Precious, and in 2010 adapted and directed from a play the debate-stirring For Colored Girls. Both of these films arguably say more to black women -- a vastly underserved movie audience -- than any of Lee's movies. What exactly does Lee want from Perry?

To cannibalize a more eloquently asserted, parallel idea from Tina Fey: Lee might think Perry's success comes at the expense of other black filmmakers. If he does think along those lines, that misconception is a bigger problem than the quality of Perry's movies.

Kris Kendall has never seen a Michael Bay movie either but he's pretty sure Transformers is terrible. His writing has appeared on various public restroom walls and in letters to his mom.

Trolls!

2011-04-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

How come nobody tells us about these things?

[courtesy of horrornymphs]
Scandahoovia beats the Hollywood movie machine again with another horror/fantasy film that looks like loads of fun. You got your Dead Snow (Norway), your Let the Right One In (Sweden) and your Rare Exports (Finland) and now Norway comes back with The Troll Hunter.

No, we haven't seen it, a mistake we plan to correct as soon as possible.

From the Math & Science Desk

2011-04-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

Twenty days without a peep from anyone at The Typing Monkey and now this, two links to the hard work of others. But oh! What links!

First up is a piece from The Economist, discussing a mathematical rules of war. The formula: (T_n = T₁n^-b) results in what mathemiticians call a "progressive curve." Basically, we get better at killing each other as conflicts between tribes/nations/neighbors escalate. And like most math we learn, nobody's quite sure what to do with the knowledge. It's a predictor of aggression, but we aren't very good at using it to stop war.

Now go to The Boston Globe for Leon Neyfakh's article about famed social biologist/ant researcher E.O. Wilson's enthusiasm for a new theory on the nature of altruism. Yes, it bugs us that they keep insisting altruism is a "human" trait because, since when? However, "group selection" as Wilson calls it, knocks the accepted "kin theory" of altruism over because he's found little to support kin selection and that group selection simply makes more sense.

Wilson's always been an interesting scientist to read and read about. He's nearly alone in his confidence about group selection. Perhaps, as the article says, in a few decades we'll look back at his assertions and realize how right he was.

[Thank you Arts & Letters Daily]

We'll be right back after these messages ...

2011-04-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

The last week of March pummelled us into a coarse paste reconstituted only by carefully measured doses of Hennessey and prosecco. Original content, reviews, and all the other ramblings nobody reads will appear here eventually. Until then, whip out your lighter and shout with us: "Freberg!"

[courtesy of liviuarh]

The animation is by Paul Glickman, the voices by Stan Freberg. Happy April. Sooner or later it's going to stop raining.

More Good Grief

2011-03-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

This image may be a screen-capture from a new Peanuts cartoon called Happiness Is a Warm Blanket. We didn't bother to research that anymore than we bothered to figure out how to embed an animated .gif onto the page. That's right, this picture moves if you click here.

There's a similarly stark image of Linus, probably from the same 'toon, that is also an animated loop. And the second picture contains even more hopelessness than the first. Perhaps it's the sunset (or sunrise?) that keeps the above image from turning into an Andrew Wyeth painting. We lift both of these images to the same level as Wyeth's "Christina's World."

[Hat tip to FuckYeahAnimation]

They Got Our Letter!

2011-03-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

From the Sports Desk: March Silliness

2011-03-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

Not one Typing Monkey staffer pays attention to NCAA basketball. None of us could even be considered casual sports fans. Sure we know who's playing the Super Bowl each year and we like to watch a boxing match from time to time, but professional sports, let alone college-level, are not on our radar.

It's just not a thing here.

Holly Allen and Josh Levin's "Let's Go Blue Team!" article from Slate, and the accompanying 2011 NCAA Tournament brackets, are for those of us who have no idea what teams matter on the road to the Final Four.

In a nutshell, they've created NCAA brackets but instead of listing it by the school names, they've provided one based purely on mascots/logos and another even more abstract bracket based on team colors.

Here's an example of some of the face-offs:

Let's not mince words -- that bear is going to destroy the Trojan warrior. The bear is smiling at the thought of tasty man-flesh. And I'm sorry Hamburglar, but that alligator will munch you like regular-size fries. Maybe after that the bear and alligator can just be friends and maybe open a detective agency.

Hurry and fill yours out so we can compare notes and then forget to pay attention to the actual outcomes of the games.

"No point in running'"

2011-03-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

... or Look What Dr. Fred Did

We are obligated to like things that our friends and family create. Knowing the artist behind a work of art makes us more likely to say "yes" to something we wouldn't normally seek out or pay close attention to.

Reader you have been there: A friend gets a gallery opening, publishes some writing, the band they're in plays a show, a dance recital. Love and pride and sometimes a desire not to wound makes us embrace the the effort if not the result and sometimes that's more important.

And then there are those rare instances when the result is good and worth sharing and talking about, not because you know the creator but because you know the creation.

The Typing Monkey enjoys a fair amount of kismet when it comes to talented family, friends and associates. We knew Dr. Fred Beldenstein's songwriting stirred at smoldering coals of heart-damaged music, and his previous efforts climbed closer and closer to that glow.

With his new-ish band The Great Tribulation, Dr. Fred has reached the light via his song "Sure As the Rain." It's a comforting bit of musical reassurance and understanding that these are, to crib a line from Jon Stewart, hard times, not end times. [How ya like that, Fred? -- ed.]

Singer Jeni Lee Richey doesn't sell the lyric so much as offer it because she understands that we need it. The voice, the words, the syrup of the slide guitar all reach out and pull you into an oddly personal shelter before Dr. Fred's quiet-storm guitar opens up and gushes. They call it "folk noir" and "dark country" -- sure. American to the core and as honest as a pair of dirty hands.

Go to the band's Facebook page and scroll down to the entries for Feb 23 to hear "Sure as the Rain" and visit their Reverb Nation page to hear more from The Great Tribulation.

Oh, Joe

2011-03-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

Too many just-below-the-radar entertainers who shaped mid- and late-20th century art and media have been dying. [No Tura Satana obit? -- ed.] The Typing Monkey could fill this blog weekly with sad farewells to the dearly departed. Nobody wants that.

But we can't not acknowledge the passing of drummer Joe Morello, the man who kept time for The Dave Brubeck Quartet. And to say he "played drums" ... oh hell just look, around 2:30 the madness begins:

[courtesy of Cheeseford]

Devotees of more avant garde jazz frequently dismiss Dave Brubeck's band for reasons beyond our comprehension. Shakespeare was a pop artist too, friends. Fact is, DBQ were four top-shelf players and Morello was, arguably, the best of the four.

He was 82 when he died on March 12,2011.

Free Music: Keepaway

2011-03-05T13:20:00.000-08:00

As of this writing, the Brooklyn-based trio Keepaway is putting the finishing touches on a debut LP. In 2009 they self-released an EP, Baby Style, announcing their presence with joyous pop bursting with bright synthesizers, sampled voices and noises and perucssion -- lots of percussion that clatters and falls into place just so.

This past November they released a second EP, Kompetitor on Lefse records. The second EP stacks even more summer-drunk fun onto the pile. Opener "100", with it's reggae-guitar and beats that sound like they escaped from a drum circle, could be a stew of urban-bohemian bullshit, especially with the line "I just hope you think of me when you get high" repeated a few times throughout.

However, there's real longing in the just-out-range vocal and the warble of the canned strings. The echo effects makes it feel a bit like a memory. Don't get us wrong, it's still playful and feels almost improvised. And though there are probably plenty of more current references, for some reason "100" makes us think of the "hey, we just fell into this song" attitude of The Tremeloes' "Here Comes My Baby."

The other three cuts are just as good and with two remixes of "100" included (DJ Seashell's ambient take being a total deconstruction) Kompetitor makes for a good springtime pick-me-up. Grab the EP at Keepaway's Bandcamp site for the low price of your e-mail address and then fork over some cash for the forthcoming LP. Thanks, Keepaway!

Movie Time!

2011-02-26T11:44:00.000-08:00

February 26 is Frederick Bean "Tex" Avery's birthday. Avery virtually invented the physics-defying sight gags that the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes writers, artists and animators would exploit so well for a good three decades. He's also responsible for the sort of Sarte-esque cosmic (in)justice that informs so many of his and his imitators works. (Think of Chuck Jones' Coyote vs. Roadrunner 'toons.)

A true envelope pusher of 20th century cinema, Avery could elevate the simplest plot, even a single gag, into pure gut-punch comedy worthy of post-graduate study. Alright, shut up and let's watch his 1949 short for MGM, Bad Luck Blackie:

[courtesy of gobearsnfl]

Thank you Tex.

Written In Blood

2011-02-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

Perhaps there's a collective case of cabin fever settling over North America and we're all subconsciously gravitating toward entertainments depicting unseemly things. We were going to post a link to Monster Brains' wholly satisfying gallery of Bernard Baily Terror Tales covers.

... and so we did. While drooling all over these insane pics, we received an electronic mail from longtime Typing Monkey associate Mr. Monko, who is Facebook friends with legendary artist/graphic designer Art Chantry. Chantry (as well as A. Monko) knows good design when he sees it. Unsurprisingly, Chantry has a fondness for pre-code horror comics:

"[T]here were dozens of manufacturers cranking out this stuff by the truckloads ... just the titles alone are worth listing here. Here's a very incomplete list of comic book titles to just give you a taste of what this turf was like: The Beyond, Dark Mysteries, The Unseen ..."

Chantry goes on to list at least two dozen more titles and even though he doesn't land on Terror Tales, chances are he owns a few issues. Since The Typing Monkey does not belong to the social ~~experiment~~ network Facebook, we are grateful to Mr. Monko for sending us Chantry's words. Go friend Chantry yourself and see what he has to say.

The Monkey Reads: Miss Israel Regrets (Maybe)

2011-02-23T15:48:00.000-08:00

Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Memoirs of a Literary Forger
By Lee Israel
(Simon & Schuster)
The snakes-and-ladders path from obscurity to stardom to poverty rarely surprises. We know the story arc well yet still tune in. A once-celebrated biographer, Lee Israel bucked expectations by skipping the drugs and rehab nonsense – really what’s interesting about that? Instead, she opted for something daring and far more fun: forgery.

In Forgive Me, Israel carefully lays out how she ends up tossing multiple typewriters into dumpsters around Manhattan, the FBI hot on her trail. It reads like a true-crime confessional because it is.

Early success with biographies of Tallulah Bankhead and Dorothy Kilgallen led to spending advances before Israel could produce the work. She lived beyond her means, and produced a biography of Estee Lauder that bombed with both reviewers and retailers. From there it was short ride to finding out she hated “real work”; then welfare and a sick cat pushes Israel to make some poor choices.

Israel’s bad judgment makes for some compelling reading. She’s a classic anti-hero who admits to being over-confident, elitist and coarse to many people to whom she should have been kind, even if she’d had to fake it.

One thing she didn’t fake was her first celebrity letter. Israel simply stole three Fanny Brice letters and sold them to a collector.

When asked if she had any others, the reader can practically hear the lightbulb spark to life above Israel’s head and she sets to work on imitation Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward and others. Her Parker letters are a delight to fans of that writer, perhaps because they both drank too much and pissed off friends.

Israel’s outlaw charm makes Forgive Me sing. She can’t believe she’s getting away with it any more than her audience can but neither can she stop herself. The con is too delicious and too profitable. Root for Lee Israel all the way to the end because, unlike bloated rockstars who do the drugs-and-rehab routine and end up recording flaccid comeback music, her post-reform output is outstanding.

Here You Go Sweethearts ...

2011-02-14T16:59:00.000-08:00

This well-conceived and well-edited video comes from RubyTuesday717, aka Serena Bramble. The people who organize the Noir City Film Festival like it so much they sometimes play it before screenings. If you want to know all the films she uses in the clip, click here. The song is "Angel" by Massive Attack.

Bramble already has a new homage/mash-up/mash-note to crime cinema, this time focusing on Tony Bennett's city by the bay: San Francisco is the Scene of a Perfect Crime.

Free Music: XII Boar and SP-33

2011-02-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

Music distribution has changed, just in case anybody here hasn't been paying attention. Giving away singles, EPs and sometimes full albums is often the method emerging artists use to get attention in a crowded marketplace.

The viability of that model is and has been discussed ad naseum -- it's all speculation and only time and failure will reveal the best path. By then we'll have already reached a destination.

Meanwhile, three dudes from the U.K., with a deep and abiding love of Motorhead, doom/stoner metal and other heavy sounds, decided to form a band last year. They're called XII Boar and they're giving away a four-song EP titled XII.

XII Boar spew high-density sludge with moody curls of smoke filling up the spaces in between the blasts. They have a good feel for dynamics and at least one of them digs hardcore ("Train Wreck").

The EP's closer, "Skol" follows a sparse percussion break with a tonal shift in which the band does a quick variation on Blue Cheer's "Summertime Blues" trick by letting each member of the trio take two quick measures to hammer down a short solo and step back to make room for the next guy in line.

Find multiple download links for XII here. [And an enthusiastic goat's head to Angry Chairs.]

***

The Typing Monkey knows nothing of the DJ/producer/musician known as SP-33. Statistics favor a dude in his mid-to-late 20s behind the moniker but for all anyone knows SP-33 is two teenage girls. What we do know is that we've been playing SP-33's Escape from Tha Carter a couple times a day since we downloaded the free LP a week ago.

SP-33 chopped up John Carpenter's soundtrack from Escape from New York and spliced it with equally shredded vocals from Lil Wayne's Tha Carter discs. (Mostly from Tha Carter III.) It's standing on the shoulders of Dangermouse's Grey Album in order to reach past mash-up status and into collage territory.

Escape retains the desolate tone of Carpenter's compositions and often grinds up Weezy's vocals -- already treading into drain-cleaner territory -- into a coarse paste that blends well with the music's zombie-Vangelis sound.

Get the download here or if you want to save bandwidth play it on Soundcloud. [Wink & a nod to XLR8R.]

Steadman?

2011-02-12T09:05:00.000-08:00

"Though Oprah herself will not remain vegan, her long time partner, Stedman Graham, has expressed interest in sticking with it."

That's an exerpt from an article about Oprah and the staff of her show attempting to follow a vegan diet for a week. We could grouse about the lazy substitution of the word "vegan" when writers actually mean a "vegan diet" (the latter is a way of eating, the former is a way of living) but instead we'll just enjoy the fact that the world's most powerful woman gave it a shot.

Even more interesting is that her husband, the Ringo Starr of non-famous spouses of famous people, may take it further.

The Lie of Diminishing Returns

2011-02-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

We can't accuse Slate of biting our style because there are only a few original thoughts left in the ether, and "Forgot to Remember" wasn't necessarily one of them.

But Matthew J.X. Malady's "Eureka Lost" does explore similar territory regarding technology's ability to deliver even obscure information with alarming speed, and thus, reduces the thrill of the hunt and the allure of a mystery to solve.

Even if the chewing only lasts for the duration of Malady's article, it's worth a read.

Fancy Lightly Turns

2011-02-02T21:30:00.000-08:00

Spring has sprung sweethearts. At least it has if you observe Celtic, Druidic or general pagan rites -- Wicca counts too.

The day known to the modern world as Groundhog Day used to be Imbolc, Candlemas and various other holy days that acknowledged this date, or hereabouts, as the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

In other words, it's time to think of all things spring. We're rooting for The Green Man. Jack Frost can suck it.

Fire-bearers circle figures of The Green Man fighting Jack Frost. Imbolc celebration in Marsden, West Yorkshre, February 2007.
Photo: Steven Earnshaw

Read more about it here.

Bonus woo-woo: Feb 3 is Lunar New Year (bye tiger, hello rabbit) and a new moon.

[Turn toward camera with gun drawn & cue brass section]

2011-01-31T17:34:00.000-08:00

It's not breaking news that composer John Barry is dead. Most know him from his work writing theme music and scores for the James Bond films. And no, he didn't write the Bond theme, but it was his arrangement that everybody knows.

The Typing Monkey encourages readers to celebrate Barry's music by watching the 1960 film Beat Girl, aka Wild for Kicks. Barry wrote or co-wrote nearly every song in this tale of teen delinquency and his agility with various genres -- sugary Your Hit Parade pop, beach-nik (sic) rockabilly, greasy rhythm & blues and noir-ish jazz, among others -- always impresses us no matter how often we see the film.

If you buy the soundtrack reissue from él Records it won't disappoint and you'll be able to stage your own (implied) cannabis-fueled teenage layabout shindig as you dance to the incomparable "It's Legal" as sung by Shirley Anne Field.

In a film dominated by Adam Faith and Gillian Hills vocals -- neither of them too shabby -- it's Field's syncopated ode to all the things teens can do without breaking the law that steals the show. Something tells us she's in danger of ignoring her own message.

There's a full stream of Beat Girl on Youtube, or you can watch it in nine installments, which unfortunately breaks Field's one vocal number right in half. ["It's Legal" begins around the 9:15 mark in this link. It picks up again here.]

Adieu, John Barry, and thanks for all the music.

Tangent obituary: Esoteric electronic music composer Milton Babbitt also died. The AV Club has an educational and compelling summary of his career and influence.

Yippee! Hooray!

2011-01-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

On January 21, The Typing Monkey turned three. There were snacks and drinks and everything and in the excitement we didn't even put anything up here.

So treat yourself, as we did, and take a little click on over to Cosmic Hearse, which continues to entertain, educate and expand our musical horizons. In this case, it's The Ben Webster Quartet's Soulville album. Don't ignore Hearse driver Aesop Dekker's fun copy either. The man can put a sentence together.

We thought it was serendipitous that Ben Webster showed up on Cosmic Hearse since we just bought a copy of Ben and "Sweets" (Ben Webster and Harry "Sweets" Edison) a few weeks ago for the office. Mr. Webster's tenor sax sounds the way a well-made Manhattan tastes.

Do it. Come on. Do it.

We Pause Now to Bring You This Important Message:

2011-01-06T12:57:00.000-08:00

"Lulu's Back in Town"

[Courtesy of NantoVision1]

Reader Mail

2011-01-06T12:50:00.000-08:00

Hi Sweetie,
I found it funny that in "Death and the the Mouse" you started the second paragraph with "that's all there is to say about that," but went on to post two updates to the story.

Clearly that wasn't all there was to say about that.

Sincerely,
The Amazing Mrs. Kendall

Dear The Amazing Mrs. Kendall
Yes, you're right. Is that what you want to hear?!

Hello Typing Monkey,
I'm still reading this stuff, but you should probably write something interesting instead of just posting a bunch of links to news stories and YouTube. Wasn't the whole point of this site to talk about music or something? I'm bored and may have to seek other free content on the Web. Did you fire the good writers?
Looking Out for You

Dear LOfY,
Ouch. However brusque, your comments have caused us to pause and reflect on what The Typing Monkey has been, is and could be. [It also caused us to have several staff meetings and a serious round of negotiations with the board of trustees.] And you're right, we should be posting pointless cultural theories, comparison/contrast essays that speak only to those who share our interests, and fake letters to the editor.

So stay tuned for actual content. But in the meantime, we're going to leave you with something created by others that is meant to be enjoyed as purely as entertainment can be. Sit back and relax. There's more to come. Thank you for reading.

Dammit Gerry

2011-01-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

As if if that line from "Baker Street" about giving up "the booze and the one-night stands" needed to have any more poignancy.

Farewell, Gerry Rafferty.

Goodbye, Anne Francis

2011-01-03T12:50:00.000-08:00

The AV Club wrote a good obituary for the New York-born film and television actress who in 1965 starred as the title character in Honey West, the first TV show to feature a female private detective in the lead role.

Francis was 80 years old when she died Jan 2, 2011.

Her comic-book girlfriend looks likely helped her land the role of Altaira, the romantic lead in the classic 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet. Loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, Francis and Leslie Nielsen played Miranda and Ferdinand to Walter Pidgeon's Prospero. (Nielsen's character is called Cmdr. J . J. Adams, Pidgeon is Dr. Morbius and one of the most iconic robots in all cinema, Robby the Robot, stands in for Caliban.)

Kids, if you have to read The Tempest for school, and think you'll take the shortcut by watching that dreadful looking Julie Taymor film, watch Forbidden Plaent instead and you'll do better on the quiz. It has Anne Francis plus bettter sets and effects.

From the Fortean News Desk: In the Dead of Night

2011-01-03T12:29:00.000-08:00

Sometime before midnight on Dec 31, 2010, thousands of dead blackbirds fell from the sky above Beebe, Arkansas. As of Jan 3, 2011 workers were still collecting bodies to send for testing. Though preliminary tests show no signs of poisoning, and it appears the birds suffered some sort of physical trauma, it's easy to let the mind wander into conspiracy territory.

Especially because early in the week, some 125 miles north of the site of the blackbird deaths, thousands of dead drum fish washed ashore for a 20-mile stretch along the banks of the Arkansas River. Surely Charles Fort would have loved these news stories.

These people probably have a theory too.

Ooh! My Head

2010-12-31T14:46:00.000-08:00

The Typing Monkey would like to wish you a happy new year.

And if you plan on greeting the later hours of January 1, 2011 with a hangover, understand that no matter how bad you feel, you'll never have the same kind of headaches Kazuyuki Fujita had. From Cracked.com comes the story of this mixed martial arts fighter whose greatest gift (and ultimate downfall) was his skull.

[A tip of the party hat to lifelong TMI operative, No. 5, who sent us this year-old link when it was still fresh.]

From the Science & Technology Desk

2010-12-30T12:13:00.000-08:00

The first item is mainly for the amazing picture from National Geographic, an x-ray image of a bolt of lightning. You can read about how it was done and some speculation on what it means, but shouldn't you have clicked by now in order to see an x-ray image of lightning?

Second comes a report with editorial (new journalism is nearly the only journalism now) from Slate. The article heralds a piece of audio hardware that allegedly makes those compressed, tinny MP3 files you downloaded sound all analog warm.

The USB-DAC could be the gold-coated CD of the 2000-teens or it could be the next stereo component you actually need.

Go science!

R.I.P. Lady T

2010-12-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

Teena Marie died on Sunday, Dec 26. She was 54 and as of this report, died of natural causes while asleep.

The Ivory Queen of Soul was a songwriter, Rick James collaborator (and longtime friend/former lover of Mr. Superfreak) and one of the best voices of the post-disco funk era. She gave herself the "Ivory Queen" title, but Motown, the first label she signed to, nicknamed her "Lady T."

Any kid who listened to Top 40 radio in the mid-'80s heard her crossover hit "Lovergirl." The circular irony of that song's success was that two of Marie's contemporaries, Rick James and Prince, helped open the pop market for slick, race-be-damned r&b ladies via their respective girl-group creations, The Mary Jane Girls and Vanity 6/Apallonia 6. Yet those groups couldn't have happened without Teena Marie first blasting through via her late '70s and early '80s Motown recordings.

We shall now go listen (again) to Teena Marie's joyful 1981 single "Square Biz."

We'll be right back after these messages ...

2010-12-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band
"Canyons of Your Mind"

[courtesy of vinylsolution]

Hat tip to a law enforcement offical.

Trampled Underfoot or Be Cool, Svjatogor Has a Hammer

2010-12-22T16:05:00.000-08:00

Petar Meseldžija, a Serbian-born visual artist, lives in the Netherlands. He paints and does wonderful color illustrations, many of which depict characters and scenes from Russian folklore. Here is his painting of a mountain giant named Svjatogor:

The Typing Monkey knows only a tidbit of Russian folklore, thanks to a childhood spent wringing the public library for all it was worth. We will be looking into this Svjatogor character, as he seems to have a tragic story arc that ends with him accidentally crawling into his own coffin. [Translated via Google.]

"Alla prima" is the technique Meseldžija used to do the painting, which the artist explains in detail on his blog, without ever getting too lofty for us plebes.

He has many other amazing works you can see online and some you can even buy.

[Another tip of the winter hat to Monster Brains.]

Dark and Then Some

2010-12-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

The wee hours of Dec 21, 2010 will mark the first time since 1638 that a total lunar eclipse will coincide with the winter soltice. That's right, the night before the longest night of the year will be darker than expected as the full moon is blotted from the sky in most of the northern hemisphere.

Here's a handy chart from NASA's Space.com Website that displays which parts of the globe will experience the total eclipse. (Sorry Eastern Africa, Middle East and India.)

What does it all mean? Probably nothing, except that those of us in the Northern section of the Western hemisphere must endure two nights that are, as Nebraskan moms say, darker than a well-digger's ass. However, any unexplained phenomena experienced during the solstice eclipse should be reported immediately to typingmonkey@live.com.

And please let's remember: The winter solstice marks the mid-point of winter, not the start.

Death and the Mouse -- Finale & Epilogue

2010-12-14T21:49:00.000-08:00

Yes, we're late in sharing the nearly cliched conclusion of the ongoing saga of the first murder and first suicide in Celebration, FL.

On Dec 6, police arrested a homeless man and charged him with first-degree murder. The suspect knew the victim. In the realm of criminology, the mechanics of this crime are mundane.

More compelling about the sudden pall cast over this Disney-built town designed to emulate an Eisenhower-era idyll is the likely cause: money.

Death and the Mouse -- Part II

2010-12-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday The Typing Monkey joined the crowd of horrified/mesmerized/guiltily titillated onlookers and shared the story of the very first homicide in Celebration, FL.

Today brings more fascinating Lynchian news from the no longer quiet village.

We could blurt out some collegiate nonsense and dig into the sociological, philosophical and cultural implications of these stories. But TMI is confident that our readers can and will do that on their own. So stop reading this and go talk to somebody about murder and suicide in the town that Disney built, as it's very much worth conversation.

But keep it civilized please. Two people are dead, afterall.

Death and the Mouse

2010-12-02T17:14:00.000-08:00

In Florida is a town called Celebration. Disney built the planned community in the late 1990s. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, somebody murdered on of the residents of Celebration. It's the first murder in a town designed to shelter its residents from the harsh realities of the outside world.

That's all there is to say about that, though you should read this if you'd like to know what little else there is to know. Speculate, because you know we are.

Water, Food, Fuel, Weapons, Chocolate

2010-11-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

The Typing Monkey warned you once already. The cocoa deficit grows. When they come for your chocolate, how you gonna go?

Read more about it here.

It's a Good Year for Halloween

2010-11-10T21:15:00.000-08:00

Get in the mood by taking a digital stroll through the gallery section of David Hartman's art Website Sideshow Monkey. Hartman's illustrations hit all the horror essentials: implied violence, gore, sex, actual violence and a marvelously dark color pallate. And no, they're not entirely safe for every workplace.

If you like the art, check out his excellent t-shirts. Hartman's tees would totally get The Beaver and his friends kicked out of school.

Something Worse Than a Vampire?

2010-11-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

The French singer Stella got her start during the ye-ye craze of the 1960s despite her persona at the time hinging on her being a satire of the ye-ye girls.

She wasn't quite the Parisian Weird Al Yankovic. Stella simply impersonated a pop starlet by becoming one, all in an effort to gently mock a genre of music that openly embraced looks over talent and ability. [As opposed to all other pop music? -- ed.] However Stella's approximation of the ye-ye style was so skillful, the songs became hits.

Stella's "Le Vampire" isn't about blood-sucking freaks, but the much more terrifying bad boyfriend. Ready Steady Girls sums it up like so: "Though given the ridiculous title 'Si Vous Connaissez Quelque Chose de Pire qu’un Vampire, Parlez m’en Toujours, ça Pourra Peut-être me Faire Sourire' (sometimes shortened to 'Le Vampire'), the song was a successful mix of sound effects and a catchy tune. It gave the singer another hit, in the autumn of 1966."

Now that we've established all that we can move on to this kooky Scopitone of "Le Vampire."

[courtesy of spikepriggen]

Giant hands, a skull mask and an old-fashioned foot sawing -- creepsville man. So in closing: Scopitones are awesome and Stella is worth spending a bit of your valuable time investigating. Let's go pound some brewskis.

Haunted Disco

2010-10-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this stretches the thematic content idea a little thin, but music label Ghostly International gives out free songs often enough that it's like Halloween there all the time. Just drop by their Website and chances are they'll have some forward-thinking electronic musical delight to sweeten your ears and make your life better.

Though it's more than a month old, the nine-song Ghostly Essentials: Rarities Vol. 2 may have slipped past your senses. Rectify that as soon as you reach the end of this post, and in no time you'll be looking out the window at the changing leaves and graying skies while Locsil's cold, cosmic "Umbra" worms its ambient digital textures into your brain.

The Typing Monkey also digs the game of musical tag played between analog bleeps and something that sounds an awful lot like an acoustic guitar in "Between Rooms" by Myers Briggs. And the instrumental version of JDSY's "All Shapes" bounces with a flabby square-wave bass melody -- like The Great Pumpkin walking home all self-satisfied as the light of November 1st begins to bleach the sky.

Did we mention that it's free?

He Paints Too?

2010-10-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

The painting below is by Ray Bradbury, for his novel The Halloween Tree.

[Image courtesy of Every Picture Tells a Story]

He painted a cover for his own book. If you have $350 burning a hole in your pocket, you can have a print of your own. Reading the book is more or less free and very much worth the investment.

Atypical Girl

2010-10-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

The news is old already, but The Typing Monkey would be fools to not acknowledge the death of Ari Up, especially given this.

So many lesser musicians owe a major debt to Up's methodical envelope pushing. Is there a better way to dismantle expectations than to just get inside the machine without asking permission? No there isn't. No manifestos or drawing attention to the fact that she was a woman making post-punk weirdo reggae/dub/pop. Up just did it.

The AV Club's obit sums her up well. We shall now retire to the lounge and listen to The Slits magnificent version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."

[As longtime Typing Monkey associate Kevan says: This news bums me the fuck out. -- ed.]

The Great Ghost Dots Crisis of 2010

2010-10-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

Fact: Ghost Dots are delicious.

In 2007 the Tootsie Roll company debuted this Halloween-themed version of their gumdrop candy, Dots, to much acclaim. Well, the staff at The Typing Monkey offices really enjoys them. The packaging [see below] promises G-rated candy fun.

The individual Ghost Dots do not have smiley faces or arms, nor do they glow in the dark. But they do retain an air of mystery by being all the same color despite boasting different flavors, all in the original Dots taste array of green, yellow, orange, light red, dark red.

Each year since the debut of Ghost Dots, we've sent our intern out to buy a couple bags. This year's sucker, Maire, came back empty handed. After scouring the greater metropolitain area, the sad truth is that this year, you can buy only the movie-theater style boxes of Ghost Dots. This also applies to the recently introduced Bat Dots (blood orange flavored) and Candy Corn Dots (the handsome scarecrow mascot makes up for the fact that they're candy corn flavored).

That's right. Try as you might dear reader, you won't find a bag of "fun-size" Ghost Dots this year to ~~gorge on~~ hand out to trick-or-treaters. We realize the crass nature of our plight, but our grief persists.

Please contact your local candy representatives and lodge a stern but well-worded complaint, and tell 'em The Typing Monkey sent you.

"... when someone whistles"

2010-10-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

The Tin Pan Alley/hot-jazz tune "Mysterious Mose" spins the ballad of a ghost who haunts the bandstand. Mose hangs around graveyards and deserted houses too -- he's pretty much responsible for that shiver you get when you're alone at night and have that strange feeling that you're. being. watched.

But it's all in the name of fun and er, doing the Charleston. Oh! And puppets and animation:

[courtesy of turbannedruffian]
That version uses the Radio All-Star Novelty Orchestra's recording from 1930, sometimes billed with bandleader Harry Reser's name above the orchestra.

Max Fleisher used "Mysterious Mose" as both a soundtrack and a basis for the "plot" of a Betty Boop cartoon, with Boop's sidekick Bimbo taking the role of Mose. [And yes, Ms. Boop has dog ears. This was 1930 when she was transitioning from her original canine self to the flapper temptress we all know.] Watch all six minutes of the cartoon here.

And if you're not tired of hearing the song yet, a marionette performer and "soft yard haunter" named Larry Schmidt did a puppet routine to another version of "Mysterious Mose."

Big Bag of Treats

2010-10-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

The Typing Monkey didn't register for this year's Countdown to Halloween blog roll, but we would never stop you from taking a swing at their pinata full of links to seasonally themed sites around the Web.