Sunday, June 22, 2014
Jesus, what a coincidence!
Quite a few posts ago, I did a photo essay on the religious art phenomenon I call "Laughing Jesus". These are mostly tacky paintings or depictions of Jesus either laughing or looking jocular. About the only one I liked was this blow-dried look by Greg Olsen, an artist who specializes in painting Jesus in contemporary settings (i. e. sitting next to a kid with a backpack - runaway?).
Then I was waiting for a bus outside a classical record store, and saw. . . this.
I honestly wonder if this could be a coincidence.
Does Greg Olsen paint "from life", or "from CD covers"? There's no law against it, it's not really forgery, it's just using an album cover as a model for your picture.
I guess.
But I still think it's weird.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs
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OLYM-PI-AAAAAAAAAAAA!
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Nature's mistakes: oops, I did it again
Be aware that I don't choose these things. In my never-ending thirst for knowledge, they come to me, attracted, no doubt, by a mixture of curiosity and disbelief.
This thing, this, I don't know, this whatever-it-is, like a shrimp shell with fur, or a hamster trick-or-treating in a lobster suit, it scares me to think that these things are scampering around, apparently cute except for the four-inch talons that could probably rip your throat out if you looked at it wrong. It was hard for me to believe it was real, so I had to dig around for more images, sort of like turning over rocks in your back yard to see what slimy things you can find.
This looks like a sea monkey, only bigger. It looks like a sea monkey might look if it actually stayed alive and grew into something, rather than dying in the first week and turning to stinky brown scum on top of the water. Bleahhhhhh.
The larval form. Just not possible, whatever it is. Then I found one that moved. . .
These must actually exist, then, or else animatronics has been taken to a level far beyond what I imagined. This primitive, struggling, fur-clogged thing, this thing that looks like it should have died out millions of years ago with the trilobite (in fact it even looks like a trilobite) is an animal so primitive, so small-brained, so stupid, that when you lift it off the ground it keeps working its feet because it thinks it's still walking.
OK, so having proven it exists and isn't just some taxidermic nightmare, I had to Wiki it (my main source of knowledge because I am incredibly lazy), and found the following:
Pink fairy armadillo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Pink fairy armadillo[1] | |
|---|---|
| Conservation status | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Cingulata |
| Family: | Dasypodidae |
| Subfamily: | Euphractinae |
| Genus: | Chlamyphorus Harlan, 1825 |
| Species: | C. truncatus |
| Binomial name | |
| Chlamyphorus truncatus Harlan, 1825 | |
 | |
| Pink fairy armadillo range | |
The pink fairy armadillo is approximately 90–115 mm (3.5-4.5 inches) long, excluding the tail, and is pale rose or pink in color. It has the ability to bury itself completely in a matter of seconds if frightened.
It is a nocturnal animal. It burrows small holes near ant colonies in dry soil, and feeds mainly on ants and ant larvae near its burrow. Occasionally, it feeds on worms, snails, insects and larvae, or various plant and root material.
The pink fairy armadillo spends much of its time under the ground, as it is a "sand swimmer" similar to the golden mole or the marsupial mole.[citation needed] It uses large front claws to agitate the sand, allowing it to almost swim through the ground in a manner reminiscent of swimming through water. It is torpedo-shaped, and has a shielded head and back.
It took me a long time to figure this one out. This isn't a pink fairy armadillo, or any sort of armadillo. AT ALL. This is some sort of Peruvian jello mold. Take a look at those feet - they're made out of cantaloupe spears. Carmen Miranda could wear this thing on her head! Such internet hoaxes should be outlawed, as they only choke my evenings with dross.
Worse horrors awaited me. Salamanders. Giant salamanders. Giant salamanders that thrashed violently in people's arms. Salamanders that attacked. This one looks like a mammoth Chee-toh or a pizza gone terribly wrong. Except it seems to be made out of some sort of vinyl.
These things are so primitive they haven't changed in a few gazillion years, and were already sliming around (why??) when the dinosaurs roamed. One does wonder, at times, how all this stuff happens, all the different species, some of which are so damned odd, if it's really all due to natural selection or some kind of sorcery.
A giant salamander on the dinner table.
There's even a corporation looking after these guys.
When I was a kid, I always wanted a newt, a toad, whatever I could catch that crawled or slithered. I would have loved to collect a salamander, but I never saw one, just read about them. Now I realize I was saved by the grace of God, by a divine Providence that snatched me out of the path of the Behemoth. What would these things eat? Why do they exist at all? What is evolution all about, and why is ANY of it here, when we started off as nothing?
If the salamander knows, he's not telling us.
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Thursday, June 19, 2014
FOUND (Keaton Laughs!)
I have to thank Annette Lloyd for posting this on Facebook. I found this photo (taken in 1955) long ago while researching Harold Lloyd for The Glass Character, then completely lost track of it. In fact, for a long time I wondered if I had imagined it. I've never seen a picture of Buster Keaton smiling, let alone laughing. And Harold, at age 62, looks as dishy as ever. He never really lost those good looks.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Just a bunch of funny signs. . .
(This one is so gorgeous that I must transcribe it: "Do not fuck the gum, defend the false trademark,PP ,PE,PVC...etc.packing bag,Honored guest's card,the card of gold,copper,aluminum quality mark card,gift box,laser,have no the spinning cloth etc.Handbag." Got it!
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Frankie Valli and the 3:14 conundrum
I wish I could find a video with a better cover image than the Jersey Boys, a pale imitation of the original who seem nonetheless to be seducing the public all over the place (including in a soon-to-be-released feature film). But them's the breaks: this is the version with the best sound, and that is what matters.
When I was a kid, the Four Seasons were just sort of "around". They had hit after hit, and I thought they were sort of annoying, this guy singing in a really high voice, but at the same time sort of tough, a greaser. Every time I turned around, there was another one. What bored or annoyed me then impresses the hell out of me now: Big Girls Don't Cry, Walk Like a Man, Rag Doll, Dawn, My Eyes Adored You, Let's Hang On, Ronnie, Sherry (those two being current favorites of mine, as I love it when Valli addresses a wayward or unattainable girl personally), Can't Take my Eyes Off of You, and the irresistible Working my Way Back to You Babe (with a burnin' love inside!). And that is not by any means a comprehensive list.
Today I re-listened to a couple of the "straight" songs Valli recorded (meaning, in normal tenor range rather than falsetto). Blow the dust of the years away, and you've got a great singer with impeccable phrasing, deep understanding of a lyric, and a tremendous knowledge of how to use his voice. These Jersey Boy impersonators are completely incapable of cat-leaping from lyric crooner range straight up into countertenor range without a break.
Yes, I thought Valli was a greaser back then (when I thought about him at all), but today I found a clip of him singing live on TV in 1975 that blew me away. I don't know how old he was then, but he was very good-looking, not tough-looking at all. Almost dreamy. At one point he does what I call a "BAM" - very few people know how to do it - and makes eye contact with the audience in a way that is so seductive, it takes your breath away. I have no idea if this is true or not, but there's something about Valli's persona that suggests heartbreak, being bashed around, having to keep his fists up. How this can mesh with singing Walk Like a Man in high descant range is anybody's guess.
Anyway, today, mucking around in all this, and listening to the breathtaking arrangement of Under my Skin that blows Sinatra out of the water, I suddenly found myself sobbing. Just breaking into real tears, and I didn't know why. Being ten years old, or whatever I was then, and Caitlin being ten years old now, and all that I have not accomplished and never will, and my ever-expanding hunger for musical treasure that can be found in the strangest places, such as right under my nose - ? Or is it none of this?
There's something completely outrageous about the setting for this dark jewel. Violins soar to the heavens, chimes ring, and percussion beats almost urgently - there's a lot of drive in this, for a romantic song. And several times, eerily, it comes to a full stop, before Valli's lullabye voice swoops back in to revive it. You don't do that to a song, make it die like that, then bring it back, but somehow it works.
One of the greatest mysteries of this recording is the "3:14" conundrum. In every version I have ever heard, at exactly 3:14, under all the lavish strings and powerful brasses and that incredible tight-crunched choir of male voices, somebody says something. Only a couple of words. Indecipherable, though it could very well be in Valli's voice. It sounds almost like German. Oh, God, I hope it isn't something backwards, though I guess that's a possibility. I suppose someone could have just dropped this in, for in the land of YouTube, anything is possible, no matter how illegal. Or it could be a code, or a message for a specific person. I don't know. The thing is, these songs were recorded for a.m. radio and for the 45 r. p. m. record with the little plastic thing in the centre. You wouldn't even hear nuances like this. I think that's why the best pop songs were those that soared above sound limitations: the artists knew on some level that they had to hit the sweet spot, above distortion and below static. They had to surmount that loose-wires sound, and hit exact frequencies that forced people to pay attention.
It was said that Phil Spector's infamous Wall of Sound was just a way to make mono recordings sound more like stereo, to densify and fatten them out. Spector was (and is) a crazy sonic science fiction wizard with demonic tendencies, and what he did to sound was almost criminal: it may never recover. People are still trying to figure out what exactly he did, trying in vain to replicate it. Today I listened to some Ronettes and some Chiffons and some Crystals and some Shangri-Las, and some of it was good and some of it was great, but there was also a lot of dreck, stuff so bad I had to click it off. Not many people remember You Can't Take My Boy Friend's Woody by the Powder Puffs, Chicken Chicken Cranny Crow by the Jaynettes, Waddle Waddle by the Bracelets, or Frankie's Out on Parole by the La Dell Sisters (though I was very disappointed not to find that one on YouTube).
The really wizard stuff sparkled on top of the water, evanescent. And when you re-listen to it now with completely different sensibilities (i. e. as a kid, I had no idea what "under my skin" could possibly mean, completely missing the sexual connotations of it), you still get it, the sparkle. It dazzles your eyes. It's a sort of auditory "BAM".
But I'd still like to know what he says at 3:14.
(The last gif is a live performance in the most primitive setting, with ONE microphone, a tiny stage, and a camera distance that never varies: it's all in long-shot. And they KILL it. Frankie Valli sings Big Girls Don't Cry (my least favorite back then, or was it Walk Like a Man) in a snarly kick-ass voice that far exceeds the studio version. The poor guys have to stand close as sardines to be heard, however - I mean, this wasn't 1930, so couldn't they set up more than one mike? But there it is. Too bad there's no sound to this - go look it up yourself.)
The boys in slo-mo, resplendent in after-dinner-mint colors.
"But why should I try to resist, when darling, I know so well. . . "
Order The Glass Character from:
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