Fact: On this day in 1904, Fats Waller was born in a building on a city corner which would eventually become a video store.



Bonus! Sesame Street version with animation by the incredible Sally Cruikshank!

Addendum/Pudendum: I love Mia Farrow.

The best part is the end.

Good news for PRaniacs (Runway Projectors? PR People? Kluminaries?). Last night's episode was great: Chris won, Christian seemed cool for once, "and I've known some Fierce bitches," and Ricky was sent off to a waiting wading pool of his own tears. Luckily he had just the orange bathing suit for the occasion!

Those of you who don't know me really well probably don't realize that I LOVE Dolly Parton. Can't say enough about her, from "Jolene" to "The Cruel War."

Here's a little something to prove it. Her new video has Amy Sedaris, playing not one, but three parts!



Damy Parderis? Ally Sedton? Wonderful.

Also, I've started AtD (as all the cool kids are calling it). I'm on page 56, out of a giant pyramid block which sometimes hurts my chest and I think knocked all the wind out of me last night thereby putting me to sleep (not his words, mind you, the physicalitybrutality).

Also, again, I miss you.

Because it just never gets old.

Shunning such modern day heroes as Chuck Norris, Cox and Combes uncover the complex (and shocking) legend of the father of America in this little animated musical number.

I've found a lot of wonderful things on YouTube, from interviews of Jack Kerouac to old blues performances from Skip James and Howlin' Wolf, but I recently found something which clearly blows everything else out of the water--Samuel Beckett's 1965 Film, starring the one and only Buster Keaton. I've been searching for this since I first got into Beckett's work, back in highschool. And I've always been a fan of Keaton, here in his very last performance before succumbing to lung cancer.

It's one of those wonderful and bizarre moments where two great personas meet and collaborate (reminds me of the research I've done on Joyce and Eisenstein's meeting). Scuttlebutt on the set was that Beckett was almost awestruck with Keaton's presence, while the slapstick great was less than appreciative of Beckett, and quite grumpy. But the result of the pairing is marvelous, a one-reeler invoking the old silents.

One note before you watch, though. The person kind enough to upload Film in two-parts also took it upon himself to score it, with vexing and possibly hilarious results. If you watch it, you should set up your own music. My own choice was Miles Davis' Pharoah's Dance, from Bitches Brew, which added nicely to the surrealism.


Part One


Part Two

Those wacky guys in the Asylum Street Spankers ham it up in their vaudeville-style video for their parody of Tony Orlando's 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon.' This one's much funnier--and pertinent... and generally just brilliant! Give it a watch if every car you pull up behind at an intersection has a dinky little magnetic ribbon/status symbol on it.

This morning, CNN's front page carries this wonderful headline, Angered Hussein: 'We will crush your heads'.

"Congratulations! you are in a cage, Saddam," witness Ghafour Hassan Abdullah said as he stared at the ousted president. Hussein later lashed out at "agents of Iran and Zionism" in the courtroom and vowed to "crush your heads."

I know they suppposedly showed Hussein a copy of South Park, but is it possible he's been watching a lot of Kids in the Hall? Or has he, like Face Pincher before him, come up with this idea all by himself?

For the uninitiated, here, courtesy of YouTube, is the greatest of the Kids in the Hall Head Crusher sketches, his epic battle with Face Pincher:



Now I just imagine one of Saddam's guards as Mark McKinney, pushing up his thick frames and calling the former dictator an "amatoor."

The Stoneman Family pulls some serious shindigging in this way out clip from the movie, The Road to Nashville (which I must now track down at all costs, I understand it's also got Waylon, Johnny & June).

That's Donna on the surf mandolin, and Ronnie (who usually plays the banjo) with the tambourine and all the moves!

I've decided to create a sequel of sorts to my former entry of blues YouTubery, but this time focusing on the wealth of bluegrass ephemera that lives on the website. Again, here's some of my prelimenary favorites:

Clips from a very young, cleanshaven Pete Seeger's short-lived television show, "Rainbow Quest." This particular episode features Pete hangin' and playin' with June Carter and Johnny Cash. Pete plays 'Oh, Had I a Golden Thread," Johnny sings 'I am a Pilgrim,' Pete plays 'Cripple Creek' on his fretless banjo, and he gets June to sing 'I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blues Eyes' -- Clip One, Two, Three

And here, Mr. Cash returns the favor, by finally getting the controversial Seeger on his own show. A bearded Seeger again plays the fretless banjo Johnny gave him, and sings a crowd-shaking, political 'If I Had a Hammer."

Another Cash show clip, banjo-ist John Hartford talks banjo history with Cash and then the two play a bluegrass medley (a lot of Bill Monroe), and Vassar Clements shows up on fiddle, Norman Blake on mando!

Absolutely incredible vid of Roscoe Holcomb playing on his ol' porch, it's got this sort of French cinematography to it, and the great part about it is some shirtless relative starts "hittin' up a lick" Dancing Outlaw style!

Jewel of a vid--actual home video of Doug and other Dillards in a bluegrass circle. He and John McEuen work up some great banjo harmonies, and there's dancing! "Look at these fingers!"

Traipsed back to campus today to have lunch with my (former) coworkers, Diamond Jack's, which was fun--I always enjoy their company.

So I've frequently found my way to YouTube, linked to some funny or bizarre piece of video web hilarity and amazement, but today I actually took advantage of the site's search options and explored some great old blues videos and such. To see performers I definitely haven't seen perform. And there's some gems. My immediate favorites:

A grizzled Elizabeth Cotten delicately plays her guitar piece, "Jesus is Tenderly Calling Today" for Mike Seeger in '78.

From the same performance with Seeger, Cotten pickin' on the ol' banjo to the tune of "Old Georgie Buck."

The immortal Howlin' Wolf explains just what is the blues before a set at Newport, thick glasses on, he preaches of poverty and past experience.

At Newport, with Wolf lookin' on, Skip James launches into his unearthly ballads, beginning with the song that would make him a cult hit years after his death thanks to Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi, "Devil Got My Woman."

My favorite Son House in sepia, performing his "hit," "Death Letter Blues," this one's great because the camera zooms way in on his pickin' hand and the resonator of his old guitar.

Son performing the same song in another film, at the middle it cuts to Mr. House explaining the blues, with French subtitles.

But my absolute FAVORITE discovery is this man:



That's Mr. Hannes Coeztee, an "aloe tapper" from the Klein Karoo of South Africa, playing slide guitar with a teaspoon in his mouth. It's a painfully short, but incredible clip, supposedly taken from a documentary, Karoo Kitaar Blues, but it doesn't give the song title.

The song's really haunted me these past few days, and I've been trying to work it out on my banjo (without the spoon of course). Go watch it! It's amazing!