UNREMITTING FAILURE

No speaky your speaky

We are not good at languages.  Our English is passable, and we know a tiny smattering of French and German, but in general we're better off stomping our foot on the ground once or twice in answer to simple yes-no questions than trying to produce actual words with our mouth.

But who cares about languages anyway?  The ancient Romans thought they had it going on because they could speak Latin and Greek, but let's see how far that gets them at a McDonald's drive-thru.  Rather than accentuate our failure to comprehend the "tongues des foreignes" we prefer to emphasize our many other intellectual strengths, such as, er, the fact that we're not bald yet.  And, uh, most people can read our handwriting.  Plus we don't wear tube tops.  Nor do we blow cigarette smoke in the faces of little kids except when we're playing "Second Hand Smoke" with our nephew and niece.  They love it.  They cough and laugh and cough and cough.  It's adorable. 

In the end it's a toss up. We can't speak Swahili.  And there are people out there who can speak eight languages but are bald.  They can speak to Swahilians but guess what?  That isn't going to put a hair roof on their head.   

Our Posts Are Too Long

How do we know? Ouch the Clown told us so.

Do you want to talk to Jolty the Cattleprod?

Man Remembers Absolutely Everything

This guy can tell you what happened to him on every day of his life.  He can tell you what he ate, what he wore, which way he parted his hair, how he slept, how many times he sneezed, and what songs he heard on the radio. 

We can tell you the year we graduated from high school and the first half of our Social Security number.  Our home phone number is written on the inside collar of every shirt we own.  Our wife wears a name tag.  We go jogging and 10 minutes into the jog we forget we're jogging and think we're being pursued by the police.  We look in the mirror and scream "Honey, there's somebody looking in our window!"  But we remember all manner of rock trivia, including the subsequent career paths of the members of the band Longbranch Pennywhistle, a band we don't even like.

This is where Loggins & Messina meet Dan Fogelberg and take him to a hot tub party and Dan refuses to let go of his feather.

A Stately Pleasure Dome Decreed

1980's Xanadu is a movie greater than some other movies from 1980.  It stars the celestial Olivia Newton-John, a woman so sexy even her hyphen gives us a hard-on.  Remember when she sang Have You Never Been Mellow? Mesmerized by her stunning good looks and odd diction, the whole world said Yes like Molly Bloom at the conclusion of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Xanadu captured the excitement of a new decade.  Its throbbing disco beat and brilliant choreography made us say "The 1980s are going to be a glorious period of love culminating in a harmonic convergence that will usher in a sixth sun, universal amity and brightly colored leg warmers!" 

Xanadu's plot is both straightforward and plausible.  An artist is asked to come up with a cover for a nine-woman pop group whose members are actually the nine divine muses, come to earth by means of a local mural.  The lovely Kira (played by OJN) falls for the artist (what's he have that we don't have?) and encourages him to open a disco (Xanadu). 

On Xanadu's opening night Kira's group performs then (to quote one critic) returns "to the realm of the gods in spectacular fashion."  It's totally cosmic.  And there's roller disco!

we think this is from the musical. so fucking what.

American People Demand New Overseas Natural Disaster

Beset by a worsening economic crisis, hyperinflated gas prices and the Iraq War, the American people have welcomed as a happy distraction the natural disasters that have befallen Burma and China.  However, the freshness of both humanitarian crises has worn off, and Americans are demanding a new cataclysm fix to keep their minds off those SUVs they're never going to be to able to sell.

"I need something," says Larry Dwight of Fulbertsville Ohio.  "I'm bored with the earthquake, and Burma is so last week."  Alice Mercer of Sink River Wyoming agrees.  "I could just die of tedium every time they show the rubble of that stupid school.  I'm hoping a volcano spews lava over some densely populated South Seas island.  Or Australia sinks into the sea."  In Gilbert City, Florida, Duwayne Jenkins says he's keeping his fingers crossed.  "Is it too much to ask for a new monumental human tragedy?  I guess so.  I guess I'm going to have to go back to worrying about how I lost my house and my son's in Iraq and my other son has plates in his head he got in Iraq and I've been forced to creep out at night and siphon gas from neighbors' cars so I can drive to look for a job.  I NEED another overseas cataclysm.  And if God exists, he'll send me one." 

Gay Marriage in California: Men FORCED to Marry Men!

An editorial by Unremitting Failure columnist Beryl Zimpf.  Beryl sits on the Board of Directors of Homosexuality Watch, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to fanning the flames of "sanctified intolerance."

Well, it's happened.  The nipple-clamp-wearing "judges" who gesticulate like drooling lunatics in the bedlam of the California court system have legalized gay marriage.  It's only "fair," they say. 

Oh really? What's so fair about men being forced to marry men?  Or men being forced to marry manatees?  Or women being forced to marry women who look like men and wear lumberjack shirts?

Forced, you say?  Yes.  Forced.  Before the gay propagandists began their frenzied agitating, there were exactly 9 gay people in California.  You can look it up (Invert Peril Newsletter, June 1976). In order to inflate their meager numbers, the inverts of San Francisco's Castro District set about systematically disco-brainwashing normal people to turn their backs on God's City on the Hill in favor of the blasphemous suburbs of Sodomville and Gemorrahtown.  Suddenly, abomination became the new "San Francisco Treat."

Now a court dominated by the Secret Santas of Sodomites everywhere has placed its filth-loving imprimatur on the ghastly profanities of homosexual intercourse, and equated the squalor of man-on-man butt action with holy matrimony. 

It won't end there.  Already gay men and women have seized control of California's legislature and introduced a law requiring all TV outlets to run "The L Word" round-the-clock.  Bette Midler will soon become California's state bird.  Heterosexual married couples will be hassled by that gay cop from the Village People.  A sodomy tsunami will roar across the United States, submerging innocent communities in S&M and copies of Blueboy. 

Tom of Finland will be our next president.  He'll wear assless chaps on the White House lawn.

More Rock SAT Questions

1. His death spared the world years of tedious and self-aggrandizing new age bullshit: a) John Lennon. 

2. Foghat was named after a) a hat made of fog b) a hat that fog might wear in inclement weather c) Fogwhat? d) the band's roadie, Bob "Foghat" Fogerty e) Slow Ride is like the coolest fucking song in the whole world.

3. David Bowie's original name for his "band" Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a) The Larry Dawson Experience b) Scamperpants c) Foppy Mincedust and the Milksops from Mars d) Spooky Quiff e) Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

4. Electric Light Orchestra was a) an exciting and playful fusion of rock and classical elements, sort of like ELP but with a brain b) anethema to any right-thinking human c) a group of very talented mimes d) implicated in the Xanadu debacle of 1980 e) all of the above.

5. Tiny Tim recorded music with a) Bob Dylan b) the Bonzo Doo Dah Dog Band c) CSN&Y&TT d) Ornette Coleman e) Phil and Ronnie Spector.

Hans Rottenhammer

Hans Rottenhammer: enigma, scalawag, simpering art poodle.  What can we say about this consummate painter?  His familiarity with the Bambociatti and command of both the Italinate and Germanic styles won him the title "Tom Selleck of the German Renaissance."  A mysterious figure, Rottenhammer is believed to abandoned art in 1613 to run a discotheque in Majorca.  He is best remembered for his painting, "I've Got a Bright Idea, Let's Follow the Creepy Flying Chubby Baby."  He is also credited with inventing the Speedo. 

 

In Memory of Robert Rauschenberg (thanks (S)wine)

We were not a close friend of the artist Robert Rauschenberg, who died Monday at age 82.  But we would like to have been.  We could have gone over to his house every day to play quoits.  We could  have called him Bob, as in "Bob, we think you should create a sculpture of a goat with a tire around his waist."  We could have borrowed money from him and not paid him back.  We could have stolen erasers from his studio when he wasn't looking.  We could have thrown darts at  his turtle.

We can't say we liked Rauschenberg's work that much.  It lacked what we art critics call "a relationship with the unseen."  Occasionally we would look at one of his paintings and think "Roy G. Biv."  Or "Get John F. Kennedy outta there!"  That said, we respect Rauschenberg's commitment to expressing his vision in a way that leaves us totally confused.  Because that's what great art is.  Confusion on the wall.

There goes another one of public sculpture's nine lives

SAT Questions

1. The drummer in the Archies was a) Popbelly Pete b) Jughead Jones c) Lithium Larry Beamer d) Hot Dog the dog.

2. Which of these did John Denver want to take him home_______________ a) a jet plane b) his singing packhorse Mr. Quiver c) Sebastian Cabot d) a country road.

3. Pamela des Barres once sold this as cocaine: a) Johnson's baby powder b) Jim Morrison's dandruff c) Jose Feliciano's toenail clippings d) Johnny Winter's pubic hair.

4. John Denver's real name was a) Richard Merkel b) Anthony Thomas Bleer c) Henry Deutschendorf d) Adolf Schickelgruber e) James Newell Osterberg.

5. The band with the highest rate of suicide in the history of rock is a) Stone the Crows b) Black Sabbath c) Badfinger d) The Wiggles.

6. Midnight Oil a) gave me polio b) led me to become involved in the issue of the indigenous peoples of Austalia c) blew like a volcano of hot molten suck d) made my room smell bad.

Art Expert Unremitting Failure Squints at: Mark Rothko!

It is a great truism that the defining characteristic of modern art is that it looks just as good upside down.  Or sideways for that matter.  Or with the painted surface facing the wall.  Like the Divine Ms. Ross once sang,

Upside down
Boy, you turn me
Inside out
And round and round

Mark Rothko was probably the greatest practitioner of the "I don't give a fuck which end is up" school of painting.  Influenced by Nietzsche, the massive "multiforms" of Rothko's "signature period" are designed to intimidate the viewer into emptying his pockets, a trait that led critic Harold Rosenberg to dub them "wall muggings." 

In 1968 serious health problems led Rothko's physician to recommend that he limit himself to paintings no more than a yard in height.  Unfortunately, Rothko thought he was referring to the yard behind his house.  In 1970 he committed suicide but continued to paint until 1975.  In our opinion reading about the philosophical concerns and deep thinking that went into Rothko's paintings is very annoying.  All we see are fields of color big enough to hunt pink elephants in.

 

Hitler's Other Dog

When you hear the name Adolf Hitler, what's the first thing that comes to mind? That's right.  Blondi, Hitler's German shepherd.  The 100 percent Aryan pooch appears in many photos with his demented master, and perished in the bunker with him, poisoned with cyanide lest he be captured by the Russians and tortured into divulging state secrets. 

But Hitler had another dog, a dog shadowed in secrecy, legend, gossip, and innuendo.  This dog was Burli the Scotch terrier.  Given to Hitler by Martin Bormann, Burli stayed well away from the Albert Speer-designed spotlights of celebrity fascism.  In fact, the only reference to him we've ever run across is in The Hitler Book, which distills the details of the interrogations of two of Hitler's underlings conducted by the Soviets following the war.

Why the miasma of mystery surrounding Burli?  Was it because he was not German but Scottish?  Was his diminutive size seen as unsuitable to the supersized image of Hitler presented by the Nazis?  Was it because Hitler was running around behind Blondi's back?  Or could it have been because Burli was actually a tiny military genius in a dog suit?  We know that Wehrmacht HQ personnel referred to the terrier as "the Greater German Imperial Hound."  Perhaps this was more than an ironic reference to his stubby profile.

Unfortunately, we may never know.  We  have searched in vain all of the great archives of Nazi materials for a photo of Hitler's furry sidekick.  It's as if he never lived.  But he did.  Who knows.  Maybe after the war he told his children hair-raising stories. 

composite sketch of Burli by Soviet artists

Putting Your Hand in the Garbage Disposal of Life

I

You want terrible, take a look in your window.  There it is, sitting in your chair.  You.

II

We would have liked to live back in the day when murderous "anarchists" still hurled "infernal machines."  And people still said "mustaches" referring to one person as if they considered each half of his mustache a complete mustache.   And "the flanks of the old horse, the steed of apocalyptic misery, smoked upwards in the light of the charitable gas-lamp."   

III

They're shutting down Coney Island!

IV

The AMC Gremlin, subcompact of apocalyptic misery, crosses the center line.   Can you believe The Charlatan UK is still around?  Perservere and you will be resentfully endured.  We always thought that fucking song about snuffing the rooster was by Stone Temple Pilots but here it turns out it was Alice in Chains, huh.  As if anybody cares.  People do care.  The AMC Gremlin, with its side tape stripes of apcalyptic sportiness, crashes into the Future.  Everybody in the Future dies.  The guy in the Gremlin escapes without a scratch. 

V

There you are, in the window.  Well what do you know. 

Meanwhile, On the "Jesus people, get your ass out of your mouth front"

This CNN report about movies "mocking" the events of 9/11 includes some real howlers, including a Hollywood hack critic type saying, "It will never be okay to mock the troops in Iraq."  Even the most cursory glance at this "story" reveals the fact that its smoke and mirrors.  They wax horrified over an "objectionable" scene in Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay that is an obvious snipe at racism and has nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, and similarly jump on a Tracy Ullman skit that occurs not in a film but on her TV show.  Turns out what there really talking about is not "movies" but a movie ("Postal") that may or may not really be about the 9/11 tragedy and is almost certainly is not "mocking" 9/11 but rather offending the tender sensibilities of hardcore patriot types who wouldn't be caught dead at the movie in the first place.  Keep your eyes on this story: it could be bigger than Watergate.

Meanwhile, also on CNN, Hillary Clinton "choked up" during an interview with "Howlin' Wolf" Blitzer.  Call us cynical, but we doubt Hillary Clinton has had an uncalculated emotion since she caught her first intoxicating whiff of the public trough.  This goes for politicians in general, including Barack Obama, who's willing to stand before the old rugged cross if that's what Kentuckians want.  But Hillary is a master, and anybody who believes her getting teary with pride over her daughter isn't a ploy to get votes wouldn't know a turd from a hot dog. Let's face facts.  Hillary'd push poor Chelsea down a flight of stairs if it would win her the Oregon Primary. 

Photo We Like to Trot Out Once in a While

When it comes to piss-poor band images, this photo of Rush takes the proverbial urinal cake.  Look at these pussies.  Who's bright idea was it to pose in white man kimonos?  Seriously where are they, a slumber party at the mansion of Hugh Hefner's gay chinese cousin?  Check out Neil Peart.  He's the guy with the mustache and the mullet and the golden amulet to ward off good hair sense.  But he's nothing compared to Alex Lifeson on the left.  Dude looks like Karen Carpenter trying to do the uptown strut.  Jesus, you're probably wondering, is that a cameltoe?  Oh yes it is.  Alex Lifeson has a mangina and he isn't afraid to point it at the camera.  And look, he also has a black belt in stupid!  At least Geddy Lee has the good sense to try to fade into the background.  Fool knows he looks like a buzzard in Gucci.  If he really wanted to be invisible, he'd have worn black.  Hey Geddy!  Get  your hands off your pecker! And do something about that shrieking deathbird voice! 

charlie's angels

Album Sought in Killings

The FBI is seeking a 1971 "prog-rock" album in connection with the so-called "boredom killings" that have terrified the entire country.  FBI agents say citizens should be on the lookout for Emerson Lake & Palmer's Tarkus LP, which is suspected of killing at least 18 unsuspecting young people who found the album in their parent's record collection and put it on. 

Says Special Agent Colt Ransom, "Look at the album cover below and engrave it in your memory.  Because this album is a killer.  And I'm not talking about thrill killings.  These are the exact opposite of thrill killings.  They're death by mind-crushing tedium."  Prog-rock scientist Neil Earthshoe explains why kids are dying: "Their parents are immune to these albums, having slowly developed what we scientists call a "tedium tolerance" from listening to the extended "boogies" and "jams" that were so popular at that time. Today's kids, on the other hand, have been reared on songs that go 5,000 beats per minute and last about 80 seconds.  They don't stand a chance against the pompous and interminable keyboard noodlings of Keith Emerson.  They're dead in less than fifteen minutes."

Blochouse

Blochouse was feeling like life was terrible and not worth living so he went to the art theater to see Yoko Ono's Fly, which made him feel like life was even more terrible and less worth living than he had thought beforehand.  So Birko headed over to the hardware store and that Dylan line "The one-eyed undertaker blows a futile horn" ran through his head. Blochouse loved Dylan but suspected he was so full of shit he had to wear a commode hat. 

City hardware stores are just like small town hardware stores except the friendly guy who helps you find stuff has tattoos on his neck. 

Blochouse went into the hardware store to see his friend Don who worked there.  The first thing Don said to Blochouse was "Stiltskin's Inside was the number one single in the UK in this day in 1994!"  Don who was like this half-autistic memory genius could tell you every #1 single in America and the UK on every single day dating back to 1961.  This was a cool superpower to have so long as you only used on arch-enemies.  Unfortunately, Don used it on everyone, which is why Don had no friends except Blochouse, who was wondering whether killing himself with a nail gun was a good idea or debacle-strength dumb.

On Eating Art

In response to our recent post on proto-surfer/painter Paul Gauguin, our sister-in-law Karoline writes: That monkey looks like food to me today. I don't usually think of monkeys like that, but today, yes.  To this we would reply that eating painting monkeys just isn't done.  In the case of the Gauguin painting Heart Attack in Blue Chair, replacing the red monkey with a pile of bones and a tail would completely screw up the painting's composition.  As a result, we're giving Karoline--a wonderful and talented painter in her own right--the same advice we'd give anyone--go find a still life and eat the pickle.

Art Expert Unremitting Failure Squints at: Benjamín Mendoza y Amor Flores

Some artists are best remembered for their work outside their chosen medium.  Such was the case with John Wilkes Booth, and such is the case of Benjamin Mendoza, an obscure bolivian surrealist who attempted to stab Pope Paul VI to death in Manila in 1970.  Mendoza told authorities he acted in order to save humanity from superstition.  We would almost be inclined to declare Mendoza's assassination attempt a piece of surrealist performance art.  Pity he used a dagger.  Had he used a chicken, he'd be in the Artist Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.