Friday, June 30, 2017

Hopefully we made it to the beach by now



I'll be telecommuting for the next several days from a secret location; Mr Teeny will be holding down the fort.  Try to avoid direct eye contact - he always gets cranky when we don't bring him along with us.



Demand Euphoria!

Monday, June 26, 2017

Sunday, June 25, 2017

telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

... Who controls the past controls the future.

Eric Arthur Blair was born on this day in 1903, in the Indian village of Motihari near the Nepalese border. His British father was an agent in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service (why is this job no longer available - I checked.) The family returned to England in 1907 so that young Eric could struggle and drop out of school. By 1921 he had returned to the subcontinent and joined the police in Burma (now known as Myanmar but for our purposes and to annoy the generals there, we'll continue to refer to it as Burma.) He spent five years with the Burmese police before returning to England to quit and struggle. He stayed in England for a year, then went to France to be poor.

Finally he returned to England and wrote a book about being poor in Paris but no one wanted to publish it. He told his mother to burn the book (she did not), then wrote a new one about being a policeman in Burma. It too was rejected by several publishers. Meanwhile, however, his mother had been sneaking around with the book she hadn't burned and had found a publisher for her son.



Upon submitting the final manuscript to the publisher, Blair decided that a book about being poor in Paris written by a middle-class servant of the British Empire might not look good, so he decided to write under a pen-name. The name he chose was George Orwell.



Later he wrote a book about the poor voting habits of farm animals and another one about a future involving apple computer that sucked (he later acknowledged that it would have been a cheerier book if he hadn't been dying of tuberculosis).



Finally he became a Famous Author and even a Great Writer, but by then he was dead, whatever his name was.



Demand Euphoria!

Saturday, June 24, 2017

The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour (21)

Another page from the ACME Catalog -


Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with the 1952 Porky Pig and Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoon, Thumb Fun:



This short was one of the last cartoons in which Daffy was cast as a good natured screwball instead of a vindictive egomaniac.


Today on the ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour, we are commemorating the cancellation of a show on June 24, 1995. Pearl Jam had been on tour both promoting their new album Vitalogy and boycotting Ticketmaster for their business practices. By June of 1995, Pearl Jam had just started a tour of the Midwest and the West Coast. On the date in question (June 24) the band was set to play at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Eddie Vedder had come down with a bad case of food poisoning and was hospitalized.

Vedder believed he was well enough to perform but had to leave the stage shortly after he began playing. Neil Young was at the concert and stepped in for the ailing Vedder. Pearl Jam had to cancel the next few weeks until Eddie completely recovered. Today we are watching a taping of the tour at Red Rocks Amphitheater: Morrison, CO. on June 20, 1995.



You will notice that Pearl Jam performs their first six songs seated, experiencing some of the effects of the high altitude



Demand Euphoria!

Monday, June 19, 2017

Saturday, June 17, 2017

The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour (20)


Another page from the ACME Catalog -


Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with the 1958 Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner Looney Tunes cartoon, Hip Hip Hurry:



Due to a musicians' strike, this is one of six Warner Brothers cartoons featuring a non-thematic stock soundtrack, scored by John Seely of Capitol Records using stock music from the Hi-Q sound library.


Today on the ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour, we are commemorating the start of Roger Waters' first solo tour in support of his album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking at the Isstadion in Stockholm, Sweden on June 9, 1984. Among the stars featured in the tour was Eric Clapton as Waters’ guitarist . Today we are listening to the album he was supporting, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking.



Roger Waters began work on the concept and songs for the album in the late 1970's and it was only after Pink Floyd disbanded that he refined the lyrics and music. Pros and Cons became his first "Solo" album without the other Pink Floyd members as backup studio musicians.



Demand Euphoria!

Friday, June 16, 2017

These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here.

Happy Bloomsday!

June 16, 1904  -
If you notice English majors greeting one another joyously saying, "Yes - yes - yes!" They'll titter. It will all be terrific fun for them. And here's the reason why -



Today is the date on which all the events depicted in James Joyce's famous novel Ulysses takes place, even though the book itself was published in 1922 and therefore cannot celebrate a real centennial until my daughters have graduated college. There is probably also a lot of excitement in all sorts of intellectual circles.

And now, you can truly impress your friends by telling them the plot -

Leopold Bloom, the main character of Ulysses, does not have much work to do, so he spends most of his day wandering around Dublin doing some errands. He leaves his house on Eccles Street, walks south across the River Liffey, picks up a letter, buys a bar of soap, and goes to the funeral of a man he didn't know very well.



In the afternoon, he has a cheese sandwich, he feeds the gulls in the river, helps a blind man cross the street, and visits a couple of pubs. He thinks about his job, his wife, his daughter, his stillborn son. He muses about life and death and reincarnation. He knows that his wife is going to cheat on him that afternoon at his house.



In the evening, he wanders around the red light district of Dublin and meets up with a young writer named Stephen Dedalus, who is drunk. Leopold Bloom takes him home with him and offers to let him spend the night. And they stand outside, looking at the stars for a while. And then Bloom goes inside and climbs into bed with his wife.



They'll feel smart and proud and better than the rest of us (and you again can feel morally superior for knowing it), and now you know why.



(...yes I said yes I will Yes.)




Saturday, June 10, 2017

The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour (19)

Another page from the ACME Catalog -


Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with the 1952 Foghorn Leghorn Looney Tunes cartoon, The Eggcited Rooster:



Mel Blanc did all of the voices in this cartoon.


Today on the ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour, we are commemorating the U.S. Postal Service debut of its Legends of American Music, Rock and Roll-Rhythm and Blues stamp collection on June 9, 1993. Among the stars featured was Dinah Washington, born Ruth Lee Jones, the Queen of the Blues. Today we are listening to one of her greatest recordings, What a Diff'ernce a Day Makes!



The seemingly heavy-handed orchestration of the album lost Washington many of her jazz-purists fans. The title track did go on to win Washington the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording at the Grammy Awards of 1960.




Thursday, June 8, 2017

What were you expecting?


Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde premiered at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on June 10, 1865.



(Yes smartypants, I know that the music is actually from the Overture from Wagner's Tannhäuser.)




Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Y'all gon' make me lose my cool


And now a mash-up of DMX and He-Man



You may all continue on with your lives



Demand Euphoria!

Saturday, June 3, 2017

The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour (18)


Another page from the ACME Catalog -



Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with the 1956 Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote Looney Tunes cartoon, Gee Whiz-z-z:



The scene with the canvas of a broken bridge reverses the series' usual gag - this time, the Road Runner cannot "jump into the painting", but Wile E. Coyote can.


Today on the ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour, we are listening to a live recording of the beginning of the Exile On Main Street tour by the Rolling Stones on June 3rd 1972 in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the Pacific Coliseum. This was the first Rolling Stones show in North America since the infamous Altamont concert in December of 1969.



As the tour progressed, Mick Jagger was apparently introduced to the drink, the Tequila Sunrise. In his 2010 autobiography, Life, Keith Richards said the 1972 road show was known as “the cocaine and Tequila Sunrise tour.



Demand Euphoria!

(I wouldn't hold it against you if you sort out your local PBS station and watched the BBC Sgt Pepper Special on tonight.)