"Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go."

If you meet them at the right point in your life, certain people retain a sort of permanent cool. Reality be damned, a strong first impression can forever shade the way you think of another person.

For me, Scott Burroughs will always be one of those characters. He was, literally, my big brother’s cool friend -- a scarecrow of a teen, months away from daring the 1979-era Tacoma, Washington population to not stare at his mohawk. Scott was a triple threat: black, punk and disarmingly sweet.

Wig Out! magazine would run a tiny cartoon of “Reverend” Scott Burroughs sometime around 1984, with text reading, “often imitated, never duplicated.” They were referring to his skateboarding skills, but those words could just as easily apply to the man himself. Even with the ‘80s in full swing, daring to be different along the Seattle-Tacoma corridor still had shock value, and Scott seemed ahead of the curve in that regard.

In the mid-‘90s I saw him in person again for the first time in years. We were crowded on the floor of a now-defunct music venue watching the first “reunion” performance of The Specials. (Still no Terry Hall, but nobody was taking any chances.) With his giant dreadlocks, colorful clothes and wide grin, it made perfect sense to see Scott there. That first Specials album can’t be separated from my appraisal of Scott Burroughs and other things that remain unimpeachably hip.

His life was not without troubles, though I know little of those. To me, Scott remained a sort of superhuman presence thanks to the power of memory. Of course, he performed in numerous bands, most recently playing bass and singing in Thankless Dogs.

The last time I talked to Scott was at a wake, oddly enough. He genially tolerated my aging father’s bad jokes and loud conversation. He was nothing if not a gentleman, and I’m sure, entirely human, no matter what I think. But I still think Scott Burroughs is one of the coolest people I’ve ever met.

Good-bye, Scott.

Kris Kendall didn't know Mr. Burroughs would be going so soon, or he might have told him this in person. Well, you never know.

Funny 'Cause It's True

Rap probably has a higher incidence of novelty hits than any other pop music. The earliest rap hit, The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", is pure novelty. And some of the biggest hits of the form were comedic takes ("Parents Just Don't Understand" "The Humpty Dance" and, oh let's go with "Stronger").

We could debate whether these clowns of the mic cheapen the medium for MCs with more serious rhymes, but anyone who feels that way isn't going to be dissuaded by anything written here. And plenty of high-minded, well-intentioned rappers commit accidental comedy simply by taking their work far too seriously. [The same goes for movie stars who call acting "their craft" and rock stars who think what they do is important.]

With that, take this:
Russ Mason
"Prep Rap"

[courtesy CrewElectro]

How many DJs and hip-hop producers would be brave enough to admit that the sample of classical music in this single broadened their view of what qualifies as a break?

Uh, hey -- hi

Let's not pretend like you missed us. ("Oh, The Typing Monkey was away?") Yeah, mm-hm.


Corporate retreats. Team building. Trust falls and workshops. Six Sigma black belts were earned. And what do we have to show for it? If your answer was "the power to achieve" then there's some spreadsheets we'd like you to review.

We'll be back soon with words about things.

[Technical difficulties art courtesy of The Test Card Gallery.]

Forgot to Remember

Our brains collect pop-culture trivia. Some of it is neatly organized in our memory, some ends up in the cerebral equivalent of a junk drawer. For every poem or sit-com episode recalled in loving detail long after the fact, there are songs and films that left impressions but, due to a lack of re-exposure and the passing of time, swirl in the subconscious like torn pages from old magazines with smudged ink and yellowed pages.

These half-remembered items sometimes gain an inflated significance. The mere fact that you remember only part of a particular story or song, and not the name of the artist responsible for its creation, let alone the name of the work itself, puts a little shine on that memory.

That afternoon when you were little and your mother brought you with her to run errands -- was that song you heard on her car radio really so special? No, it was just “Fancy Pants” by Al Hirt. And though the song is plenty entertaining on its own merits, your desire to find it again, to learn if it would captivate you with the same intensity, owes more to the situation in which you first experienced it than the song itself.

Still, these things matter: the songs, books, movies, and other entertainments. They matter precisely because of our tenuous ability to hold all of them in our heads. We may not retain all the relevant data, but what little we do remember keeps the associated sensations alive, and that’s the vital part.

In our age of “all information, all the time, anytime, whenever you want it, wherever you need it” it’s easier than ever to complete any puzzle our memories present. That’s a curse, of course, because without those knots to untie we lose some of the tiny challenges that our minds crave. Novelty and discovery weaken as the work involved in the latter becomes too easy, and the frequency of the former decreases.

The next time a pop-culture phantom haunts your memory -- some half-remembered scene from a mostly forgotten movie, or the loose melody of a long-ago hit song -- let it rattle around a while before searching for an answer. It’s a tiny little mystery, but most of us need all we can get.

How to Keep the Dead from Rising and Eating the Living

National Geographic has a short piece on a recently discovered manuscript from 1679 A.D. The latin title of that text translates as: On the Chewing Dead. It's a handbook by Philip Rohr on how to prevent vampires/zombies, which seem to be roughly interchangeable based on how they behave in Rohr's text.

Paper Zombies

Our friends at Utne Reader have started a club. The Dead Magazine Club.

It's a Tumblr blog with a wiki-ethic. The goal? To help Utne Reader "gather the hidden histories of the independent press! Or just browse some amazing covers."

The Typing Monkey thinks that's a fine idea. You know what to do.

Puny Hulk

The Tiniest Hulk [title ours] is the work of British micro sculptor Willard Wigan.

[Image courtesy Wired.com artist interview]