BOOKS: A fun, dark alphabet book!

http://thelandofwtf.tumblr.com/post/28100814714/another-kind-of-alphabet

MUSIC: Some things are better left in your childhood!

Heard this song earlier today! Hadn't heard it since I was a kid! Wished it had stayed that way!

http://www.last.fm/music/Bo+Donaldson+&+The+Heywoods/_/Billy,+Don't+Be+A+Hero

MUSIC and TELEVISION/VIDEOS: 'World's Oldest Teenager' Dick Clark Dead At 82

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=150899404

MUSIC and TELEVISION/VIDEOS: Dick Clark, 'Bandstand' Host, Dies At 82

http://oldermusicgeek.blogspot.com/2012/04/entertainment-dick-clark-bandstand-host.html

BOOKS: The true story of "Romeo And Juliet"

My daughter told a friend who said she wanted a Romeo and Juliet relationship that she should go find a pedophile then.

COMICS: Another One Down

This from me, NOT some reprinted material. - OlderMusicGeek


Dick Giordano died yesterday. He was an incredible inker who help Neal Adams created the look he gave Batman. He eventually became an editor and the executive editor of DC Comics. His influence on comics cannot be exaggerated.

As tribute, I present my favorite panel that he ever inked, from Superman Vs Mohammad Ali. Double click on the art to see a bigger version.

MOVIES/VIDEOS and TELEVISION/VIDEOS: Want To Smell Like Kirk?

Meant to do this for Valentine's Day - you know, cus Valentine's Day and Star Trek just go together! - OlderMusicGeek

All big movies - and some smaller ones - have a lot of promotional merchandise, but this is one of the more strange ones: they're coming out with a Star Trek cologne.

So...many...jokes.

The real Trekkie man will be wearing either Tiberius (that's Kirk's middle name), Pon Farr (Vulcan horniness), or Red Shirt (they're the guys that always, um, die when they beam down to another planet).

Why would Star Trek fans need a cologne? They don't go on dates! (Just kidding.)
TV Squad: Hey Kirk, What's That Smell

How would you like to smell like a bad ass Starfleet Captain? Or give off that musky Vulcan mating smell? Well now you can! A tie in with the new Star Trek movie coming out this May will include Star Trek themed colognes. Genki Wear is producing the scents Tiberius, Pon Farr, and Red Shirt. So if you’re looking to woo that special geeky girl you’ve been looking to, ahem, stun with your phaser, this may do the trick. There’s no guarantee that the Tiberius cologne will attract green-skinned alien women, though. And let’s certainly hope that wearing Red Shirt doesn’t mean you’ll get killed off before the end of the date.
Geek Six: Smell, The Final Frontier

Apparently, the "Tiberius," "Pon Farr" and "Red Shirt" fragrances will be available in finer stores starting the spring for an undisclosed price. Start saving guys. After all, who could resist the the enchanting musk of James Tiberius Kirk, the raging hormones of Vulcan pon far or the live-fast, die young personality of a red shirt stock character?

comments...
Dirkfart Faeclefunk: Was this tested on Klingons? "They're animals!"
Jrsy Devil's Food Cake®:Red Shirt... It's the last cologne you'll ever wear...
Gizmodo: Love, Jealousy, Passion...Star Trek Cologne For Men

Star Trek Uno, anyone? Perhaps you’d prefer a Vulcan cookie jar. Or maybe you’d like to buy your man some ... Star Trek cologne? Genki Wear is producing a trio of Star Trek inspired scents: Tiberius, Pon Farr, and Red Shirt. So, if you want your man to smell like Captain Kirk, go into a Vulcan heat, or get down like a red shirt, Star Trek cologne can make it happen. That is, if you’d date a guy who’d wear it.

comments...
Simcha: Bring on the dudes who smell like Kirk!
Chelle: WTF? They make one called “Red Shirt”? What does it smell like, death?
The Frisky: Would You Date A Guy Who … Wears Star Trek Cologne?

Have you ever wanted to smell like a sweaty James Doohan? Well, then, good news! CBS is licensing three Star Trek-themed body fragrances in order to market the new movie in the series.

comment...
Gauldar said: Put a pinch of it on your Vulcan neck.
Neatorama:Star Trek-Themed Cologne Coming Out Soon

Oh yes. GenkiWear is apparently developing three Star Trek-themed fragrances to be released in the spring. For those looking to engage another carbon-based lifeform and boldly go where -- nah, forget it, I'm not going to sit here and use lame Star Trek lines as tired sexual euphemisms. I'm above that. So I'll just say that true nerds can rejoice in their complete devotion to one of the world's nerdiest creations as they spray some "Tiberius" on their wrists. I just hope nobody seriously thinks a scent called "Pon Farr" or "Red Shirt" will help them beam a chick off the bridge and into their bed (it was just too easy!).

comment...
Skyhawk: Yeah baby. What woman can't resist Klingon musk? Oh wait that's actually fanboy B.O. Nevermind.
The Huffington Post: Star Trek Cologne:The Next Generation of Nerdom

Usually I’m confused and upset by rampant movie merchandising. I don’t really need Wall-E themed kleenex, or a James Bond Omega watch. OK, scratch that. I’d like an Omega James Bond watch, but there’s no way I could afford it.

Anyways.

Despite my antipathy towards this kind of branding exercise, I find myself oddly excited over the news that the a new line of men’s cologne will be accompanying the new Star Trek film, due out in May. The three scents - “Red Shirt”, “Pon Farr” and “Tiberius” - conjure the muskiness of command, Vulcan mating rituals, and Captain Kirk respectively.

Now, you might be asking yourself “which Star Trek scent is right for me?” Well, this is a deeply personal decision, one you must come to after hours of painful introspection. For me, the choice is clear. If I wear “Red Shirt”, my odds of dying on an away mission increase exponentially. And as I understand it, “Pon Farr” can only be worn once every seven years, and will necessitate some sort of grim battle to the death.

No, “Tiberius” is the Trek cologne for Graeme. Because really, who doesn’t want to smell like Captain James T(iberius). Kirk? A galaxy full of sexy and occassionally green space-babes can’t be wrong!

Nunc Scio: WANT: Star Trek Cologne

I am not prepared to live in a world wear there is Star Trek-themed perfume, okay? Forget the "Red Shirt" one, because it assumably will smell like sweat and fear and having just pissed yourself in fear, but "Pon Farr"? The Vulcan mating time, when they basically hump anything that moves? How was this not recognized as the worst idea in the entire world immediately? Also, how can you wear a scent based on James T. Kirk, the galaxy's greatest poonhound, and not get fucked to death by hot green-skinned alien women?

Okay, "Tiberius" might be okay. But I highly disapprove of the others.

comments:
Scott said: Does Pon Farr burn you when you put it on, causing you unbearable pain until you get some tail?
Zach Oat said: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the C.K.One."
ZeroCorpse said: Other Trek scents I'm looking forward to: Tribble, Mudd, Horta, KHAAAAAAAAAN!
telezombie said: Dude....if they made Khan I would so buy that by the gallon and bathe in it daily.
Topless Robot: Who Wants to Smell Like a Rutting Vulcan?

MUSIC: How An Obscure 80s Punk Band Created A Christmas Classic - Redux

I found the following story from NPR and am adding it to this piece I've already posted. - OlderMusicGeek



I found this while surfing the net. I edited it down. You can read the whole piece here. - OlderMusicGeek

How an obscure 80s punk band created a Christmas classic
By JOHN PETRICK
Thursday December 22, 2005

Struggling band The Waitresses dragged themselves off the road and into a Manhattan studio to record - of all things - a Christmas song on a hot August day in 1981. Little did they know they were about to create a classic - a song that would well outlive the band, the 80s and, sadly, the frontwoman who sang it.

"I go back and I try to think of what the original inspiration was. I think it was just very much that for years I hated Christmas," says Chris Butler, founder of the Waitresses and writer of the bittersweet, cool but sentimental Christmas Wrapping.

The song is as much about a harried lifestyle and trying to make connections as it is about Christmas. "Everybody I knew in New York was running around like a bunch of fiends," he says of Christmases back around the time he moved from his native Ohio to New York City and formed the Waitresses. "It wasn't about joy. It was something to cope with."

As talk-sung by late lead singer Patty Donahue, Butler's song depicts a hard-working single girl who resolves to sit Christmas out one year. This, as she laments her repeated and unsuccessful attempts to reconnect with a guy she met by chance the previous winter. But just as in A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life, a twist of fate and a little magical intervention restore our heroine's belief in the Christmas spirit, after all.

Their record label had asked each of its punk bands to write a Christmas song for a holiday album. "A Christmas album? On a hipster label? Come on. Never happened," says Butler, giving the raspberry. "They were extreme individuals," he says of the label's roster.

Then again, the band itself was once a myth.

While Butler was a musician playing, he wrote songs for a make-believe side group. "I came up with the name `the Waitresses' because it just sounded kind of New Wavey," he says. "It was all a big joke."

But when industry people in New York expressed serious interest in I Know What Boys Like, Butler quickly cobbled together a formal Waitresses lineup. Many of the musicians Butler recruited were Midwesterners who, like himself, gravitated to New York. Meanwhile, Donahue was still in Ohio.

A free spirit who was in and out of college when she wasn't working waitress jobs, she decided to come along for the ride. "I gave her my last 50 bucks, put her on the Greyhound bus, she kissed her boyfriend goodbye, and she decided to come to New York. What the hell?"

The Waitresses officially debuted as a real, fully organized band at Little Club 57 at 57 St. Mark's Place on Jan 3, 1981. Months of playing everywhere - and I Know What Boys Like still wasn't making much of a dent.

In they came from the road in August 1981, exhausted, discouraged and not exactly in the Christmas spirit. Butler wrote Christmas Wrapping in about a week, put together from what he calls his "riff pile" - cassettes with bits and pieces of songs he wrote, for a rainy day. Some of the lyrics were written in the cab, en route to the studio. He credits his fellow musicians with adding brilliant flourishes to his basic musical arrangement. And, of course, he credits Donahue - the least experienced band member with the highest visibility.

"This is what she brought to the party: She was very smart. She was very funny. She was a very good actress. Great sense of humor, great timing. This was not the world's greatest vocalist, but she could get inside these lines and act them out, with a cigarette, and be my kind of favourite 1930s tough broad in all those Depression-era movies. She could do that kind of tough, tough, been-there, done-that, you-can't-fool-me kind of woman."

Two days of recording, and Christmas Wrapping was in the can. Back out on the road they went, forgetting all about it - until it started getting radio play come Christmas season. It was a weird way to have a hit.

"We had to play the song up until, like, June. And we had to capitalize on it - `Hi, this is our new album. We're the people who did that song back at Christmas,'" he says. "I am an official one-hit wonder. Except I have two half-hits: The Christmas song, and I Know What Boys Like, which never quite broke through but never quite went away."

Though they were seemingly gaining momentum, what happens next isn't quite the magical happy ending of Christmas tales. "We ran out of gas," he says about working on their next album. "We had a huge deadline. Huge pressure. And she (Donahue) said, `The hell with it'."

Then in the mid-90s, this Christmas tale comes to an even less happy ending.

"I found out she was sick, through a friend. I immediately called her. We kind of kissed and made up. I asked if there was anything I could do. We had a couple of phone conversations." Donahue died of lung cancer on Dec. 9, 1996, at age 40.

And as for Christmas? He has a bit of a different perspective on it, now. Especially when he's rushing around doing errands and suddenly hears his song on the radio, after all these years.

"Who'd have thunk it? Yeah. Holy cow," he says of its longevity. "Miracles do happen. It's MY Christmas miracle. And it slaps me around and says, `Lighten up. It's Christmas'."



A link to the original article

Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you're celebrating!
MY CHRISTMAS INTERNET RADIO STATIONS
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Edition
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Rock and Punk Edition
OlderMusicGeek's Christmas QuickMix

powered by PANDORA
But if you don't have Pandora, you can hear some of songs at http://www.playlist.com/oldermusicgeek

MUSIC: How An Obscure 80s Punk Band Created A Christmas Classic

I found this while surfing the net. I edited it down. You can read the whole piece here. - OlderMusicGeek

How an obscure 80s punk band created a Christmas classic
By JOHN PETRICK
Thursday December 22, 2005

Struggling band The Waitresses dragged themselves off the road and into a Manhattan studio to record - of all things - a Christmas song on a hot August day in 1981. Little did they know they were about to create a classic - a song that would well outlive the band, the 80s and, sadly, the frontwoman who sang it.

"I go back and I try to think of what the original inspiration was. I think it was just very much that for years I hated Christmas," says Chris Butler, founder of the Waitresses and writer of the bittersweet, cool but sentimental Christmas Wrapping.

The song is as much about a harried lifestyle and trying to make connections as it is about Christmas. "Everybody I knew in New York was running around like a bunch of fiends," he says of Christmases back around the time he moved from his native Ohio to New York City and formed the Waitresses. "It wasn't about joy. It was something to cope with."

As talk-sung by late lead singer Patty Donahue, Butler's song depicts a hard-working single girl who resolves to sit Christmas out one year. This, as she laments her repeated and unsuccessful attempts to reconnect with a guy she met by chance the previous winter. But just as in A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life, a twist of fate and a little magical intervention restore our heroine's belief in the Christmas spirit, after all.

Their record label had asked each of its punk bands to write a Christmas song for a holiday album. "A Christmas album? On a hipster label? Come on. Never happened," says Butler, giving the raspberry. "They were extreme individuals," he says of the label's roster.

Then again, the band itself was once a myth.

While Butler was a musician playing, he wrote songs for a make-believe side group. "I came up with the name `the Waitresses' because it just sounded kind of New Wavey," he says. "It was all a big joke."

But when industry people in New York expressed serious interest in I Know What Boys Like, Butler quickly cobbled together a formal Waitresses lineup. Many of the musicians Butler recruited were Midwesterners who, like himself, gravitated to New York. Meanwhile, Donahue was still in Ohio.

A free spirit who was in and out of college when she wasn't working waitress jobs, she decided to come along for the ride. "I gave her my last 50 bucks, put her on the Greyhound bus, she kissed her boyfriend goodbye, and she decided to come to New York. What the hell?"

The Waitresses officially debuted as a real, fully organized band at Little Club 57 at 57 St. Mark's Place on Jan 3, 1981. Months of playing everywhere - and I Know What Boys Like still wasn't making much of a dent.

In they came from the road in August 1981, exhausted, discouraged and not exactly in the Christmas spirit. Butler wrote Christmas Wrapping in about a week, put together from what he calls his "riff pile" - cassettes with bits and pieces of songs he wrote, for a rainy day. Some of the lyrics were written in the cab, en route to the studio. He credits his fellow musicians with adding brilliant flourishes to his basic musical arrangement. And, of course, he credits Donahue - the least experienced band member with the highest visibility.

"This is what she brought to the party: She was very smart. She was very funny. She was a very good actress. Great sense of humor, great timing. This was not the world's greatest vocalist, but she could get inside these lines and act them out, with a cigarette, and be my kind of favourite 1930s tough broad in all those Depression-era movies. She could do that kind of tough, tough, been-there, done-that, you-can't-fool-me kind of woman."

Two days of recording, and Christmas Wrapping was in the can. Back out on the road they went, forgetting all about it - until it started getting radio play come Christmas season. It was a weird way to have a hit.

"We had to play the song up until, like, June. And we had to capitalize on it - `Hi, this is our new album. We're the people who did that song back at Christmas,'" he says. "I am an official one-hit wonder. Except I have two half-hits: The Christmas song, and I Know What Boys Like, which never quite broke through but never quite went away."

Though they were seemingly gaining momentum, what happens next isn't quite the magical happy ending of Christmas tales. "We ran out of gas," he says about working on their next album. "We had a huge deadline. Huge pressure. And she (Donahue) said, `The hell with it'."

Then in the mid-90s, this Christmas tale comes to an even less happy ending.

"I found out she was sick, through a friend. I immediately called her. We kind of kissed and made up. I asked if there was anything I could do. We had a couple of phone conversations." Donahue died of lung cancer on Dec. 9, 1996, at age 40.

And as for Christmas? He has a bit of a different perspective on it, now. Especially when he's rushing around doing errands and suddenly hears his song on the radio, after all these years.

"Who'd have thunk it? Yeah. Holy cow," he says of its longevity. "Miracles do happen. It's MY Christmas miracle. And it slaps me around and says, `Lighten up. It's Christmas'."



A link to the original article

Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you're celebrating!
MY CHRISTMAS INTERNET RADIO STATIONS
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Edition
OlderMusicGeek Radio - Christmas Rock and Punk Edition
OlderMusicGeek's Christmas QuickMix

powered by PANDORA
But if you don't have Pandora, you can hear some of songs at http://www.playlist.com/oldermusicgeek

MOVIES/VIDEOS: Actresses - Dead Or Alive?

Your Score 82%
9 out of 11 correct
0 minutes, 44 seconds
Average Score: 79%

Take the quiz

TELEVISION/VIDEOS and MOVIES/VIDEOS: "Songs" Of The Day - Halloween Edition (Oct 23): "Bring Out Your Dead", "Death", and "Undertaker" By Monty Python

These are just 3 Monty Pythons bits about death - "Bring Out Your Dead", an excerpt of "Death" from "Meaning Of Life", and "Undertaker". But don't worry, they're not very naughty bits!

MUSIC: Song Of The Day - Halloween Edition (Oct 17): "Country Death Song" By The Violent Femmes

I know that a good number of people claim that this - "Country Death Song" by The Violent Femmes - is a sick and creepy song. All I can say is - Yes, it IS a sick and creepy song. It's about a father killing his daughter! How can it not be creepy?

I think the problem is that Gordon Gano captured the mindset of a person who would kill his own daughter very well, and we begin to sympathize somewhat with this guy. And that's what's creepy. And that's what makes this a perfect Halloween song!

And this video is perfect for the song!

MUSIC: Song Of The Day - Halloween Edition (Oct 15): "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" By Blue Oyster Cult

Well, to finish the first half of the collection, I'd thought another must for any Halloween playlist - "Don't Fear The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult. Besides, I just posted their "Godzilla". :)

TELEVISION/VIDEOS and COMICS: The Hulk Out List

I came across a list of "EVERY reason that Dr. David Banner was driven to Hulk out" on the 70s Hulk tv show using StumbleUpon. Below are ten of my faves. - OlderMusicGeek

10. Being fed poisoned sushi
9. Being rear-ended fifteen times in a row by a mean bully with a bigger car than his
8. Being stuck in a cabin that the police are turning into swiss cheese with their shotguns, even though he and the pregnant woman have no guns and have waved the white flag, only to have the police bullets start a fire in the cabin, etc.
7. Having two mean football players snap wet towels at him and shove him into the steam room which they have turned on to full blast
6. Being hit with a blast of steam in the face while trying to turn off the nuclear reactor that is melting down
5. Being beaten up by the thieves and thrown in the store vault, having the vault door closed on his foot, and then having the air supply cut off by the giggling thieves
4. Having several clay pots broken over his head in the middle of the now-burning room (why is the room always burning?), and then knocking an entire case of same clay pots onto same head, and then, while lying very still and struggling not to get angry, having his pants catch fire
3. Receiving a lethal injection, and then having the person say, "Oh. I just gave you a lethal injection. Sorry, David."
2. Dealing with a pesky operator in a phone booth ("I DON'T HAVE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS!!!")
1. Being trampled by a crowd AND having the hot coffee spilled on his hand while trying to get to the sniper

A link to the complete Hulk out list

ENTERTAINMENT, TELEVISION and BOOKS: George Carlin Died

This is from me, NOT some reprinted from somewhere else. - OlderMusicGeek

Some people have said George Carlin has passed on or that we lost him. Well, neither are true. He's dead, maybe even screaming up at us.


I have to admit I haven't listen or watched George Carlin much in the last 20 years.

And that's unfortunate, because from what I have seen and read, he was still putting out some very good and funny material.


I guess in some ways, I had felt I had outgrown George Carlin. George said, "I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately." And that was great in my teens and 20's.

But as you get older, you find rebelling for it's own sake doesn't seem that fun. I remember an interview with Jon Waters, a director who did many gross films in his youth. The interviewer asked him about how his movies weren't the same now that he is older. I don't remember his exact words, but he said something along the lines of making wild films that are gross in your 20's is fun - doing it in your 40's is pathetic.

That's kind the way I felt about listening to George Carlin. I thought I'm willing to stand up for what I believe in and take the heat, but I'm not interested in just shocking people.

And that's what my friends and I used George for, shocking people. "Hey, listen to this." "Listen to this comedian rattle off these cuss words." George Carlin and Cheech and Chong were our mild, white, midwestern way of rebelling! We loved it because we knew our parents and teachers didn't!

Well, when I didn't need to shock anybody anymore, I thought there was no need for George. Unfortunately, what I didn't realize - was that George wasn't shocking people just for shock's sake either. George was also standing up for what he believed in and taking whatever heat came with it.

So then after a few interviews and a couple of HBO specials, I finally realized that. But I still never watched him much. "Ehh, I catch it later. I don't have the time now." Unfortunately, now that there will be no new material, I might be able to catch up on his stuff.

George Carlin didn't believe in an afterlife. Hopefully, he's wrong, because he deserves a good place in it.

George Carlin’s Secret News from ‘When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops’
Announcer: Good Evening ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the secret news.
Ssshhh.
Here’s the secret news:
All people are afraid.
No one knows what they’re doing.
Everything is getting worse.
Some people deserve to die.
Your money is worthless.
No one is properly dressed.
At least one of your children will disappoint you.
The system is rigged.
Your house will never be completely clean.
All teachers are incompetent.
There are people who really dislike you.
Nothing is as good as it seems.
Things don’t last.
No one is paying attention.
The country is dying.
God doesn’t care.
Ssshhh.

A link to George Carlin's home page
An interview with George Carlin from NPR's Fresh Air