'Batcat'

Will eat you alive! Mwaaahahahaaaa!

Found-MBV.

'Children of the Revolution'-T Rex, Elton, Ringo '72

This rocks a whole hell of a lot. Three drummers, T-Rex, and Elton bang out this classic T-Rex hit. On the flip, you also see the wasted self-love which made the '70s suck. Bolan starts off by serenading EJ from within his piano. Ringo, who directed a T-Rex feature from which this is taken, walks around in a clown suit filming T-Rex in a mirrored cube. Ick!

Amount of degradation before and after this was shot- Epic!

Found- MBV.

'Stronger Than Jesus'

The band is called A Camp. The song is 'Stronger Than Jesus'. It is the first single from their next album. The album drops Feb. 2, 2009, and will be called Colonia. Very much dig the song with its mid-70s MOR feel, and a video which harkens back to the very early days of music videos.

Plus, I like hot blondes.

Found- Chromewaves.

Sesame Street Christmas 1978

With all the troubles that we're going through right now, I know we all can use a good smile. Here is 'Christmas Eve on Sesame Street' from 1978. I was for sure too young to remember this airing, being all of 11 months old. I'm sure my sister Michelle watched it. She had a Sesame Street playset that I loved when I got a couple years older. Really brings me back to plenty of wonderful Xmases on Springfield Ave. My mother would clip out the holiday listings from the Tribune's TV Guide, and my sisters and I planned our December viewing around the Grinch, Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman, and (maybe one year) this.

The cast we grew up with is all here- Bob, Maria, Gordon, Susan, Luis, David, Linda, and Mr. Hooper (!!). And Snuffalupagus!

You can watch the rest of the special right here.

Rhetorical questions- How does Oscar see where he's walking with no eye holes in his can? With no money, do I want to know how Bert and Ernie make rent each month? How come Big Bird was always getting himself lost?

- Want more retro Christmas treats? Get yourself over to BetaMaXmas right now! Awesome site that collects a bunch of our childhood Xmas specials.

'Jizz In My Pants'

The hottest viral video on the web right now is 'Jizz In My Pants', the video from Andy Samberg's the Lonely Island. Jamie Lynn-Sigler and Molly Sims provide the t & a. Andy is not allowing us to embed the video, but take my word for it-this is going to reach a 'Dick In A Box' level.

Remember, you heard about it first right here!

Odetta: 1930-2008

Odetta, one of the leading voices of the '50s folk revival, died Tuesday. Odetta coincidentally died a few weeks after Studs Terkel, who introduced her to me through his WFMT show. Odetta sounded like no one else; like a cross between Bo Diddley and Nina Simone maybe. Her guitar-playing was as spare and plain as could be, but her voice, well, her voice was like the dark side of soul music. Sam Cooke and Ray Charles brought soul to Whites by taking out the pain. Odetta reveled in the pain. It was very much heavy metal folk.

Odetta influenced many. From Odetta, we get the Staples Singers, Bob Dylan, and The Band. She played at the March on Washington in 1963, so we can also thank her for President-elect Obama. I know she will be rocking out on January 20 of next year, and Studs will be close at hand, passing a hat through that heavenly bar.

The New York Times has a great interview with her last year here.

I Asked For A Zima, Not Emphysema

Alas, one more line from my favorite Simpsons episode will need to be explained to my children. Zima, the beer (?) which came, saw, and then turned into a national punch-line, was officially put out of its misery by MillerCoors on October 10th. Slate last week published an appreciation for this amazingly bad tasting malt beverage.

Zima came into being at the beginning of my drinking. I distinctly remember the first time I drank the stuff. In a decade which brought us the iced-beverage fad (yes, I once drank Miller High Life Ice), Zima was by far the foulest brew available. It tasted like cold, flat ginger ale-except with a distinct, mediciney after taste that made you want to immediately gargle with Jager. It lasted amongst my peers for a year because the Mother McCauley girls were able to place Sweet Tarts in it to create some kind of uber-sugary concoction similar to Homer's dear Skittle-Brau.

Here's to you, Zima. May you continue to ruin young drinkers' palettes in some Latin American after-market.

Word Of The Day: Rickrolling

From Wikipedia:

Rickrolling is an Internet meme typically involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a Web link that he or she claims is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been "Rickrolled" (also spelled Rickroll'd). By extension, it can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive.

The age of irony now reigns supreme over the internet. At first, this is a genuine funny prank. But then it gets co-opted into something much worse- an appreciation for an awful song which forgets why it was even started. By the time it hits network TV, it becomes such a Russian doll of a joke that you get exhausted trying to figure out why you're supposed to laugh.

As a cultural commentator, I'm left feeling cheated. What is important? That Rick Astley is alive and well? That a nagging buzzterm can infiltrate the mainstream to erupt on the float for a children's show on a traditional holiday platform?

I guess I just can't believe that the folks from the Today show are more on the pulse of the moment than I am. If this is hip, though, I'm ready for Florida.

Again, harrumph.

Today's Big Dumb Idea

Ever want to go for a jog, but stopped because you really hate pavement? Or maybe you're just looking for another way to make that broken-wing hop you do even more ridiculous? Shambollocks presents the Treadmobile!

Wow. I'll just let that video speak for itself.

Kal-El Lands In Canada

Last night, a giant meteorite smashed into an area near the Alberta/ Saskatchewan border. The reunited Alpha Flight was believed to be on their way to inspect the extraterrestrial debris.

It's The Economy, Charlie Brown!

Poor George W. Bush. Watch as his peers in the developed world refuse to shake his hand. We can learn something from this. First, nobody loves you internationally when you're down and out, especially when, as leader of the Capitalist Cult, they blame you for much of the current world financial mess. Reputations change overnight. One moment you're leading a 'Coalition of the Willing', which includes Poland and Great Britain. The next you're being snubbed by the cool kids in the International Club.

Second, we would be foolish to believe that leaders this churlish will bend over backwards for the incoming Obama administration. Diplomacy is always hard work, and when you're surrounded by people who are Number 1s in their own land it is difficult to engender deference. I believe they will immediately embrace Obama, but rhetoric and action are often strange bedfellows.

Secretary of State Hillary (maybe?) will need to work on her very best Avon push.

Merril Lynch? Anyone? Merril Lynch?

"My boyfriend's brother's cousin's sister saw Merril Lynch overextend themselves on junk bonds made up of packaged bad mortgages a few months ago on Wall Street."

Hilarious! Peter Schiff, the President of Euro Pacific Capital, Inc., is a talking head on a number of business channels. This video is made up of a series of his cable appearances where he consistently does his best Chicken Little while the smarmy Wall Street mouth pieces laugh him off the screen. The first four minutes are not great, but wait, wait, until the six minute mark when, on FoxNews no less, none other than Ben Stein himself advises us last year to buy Merril Lynch stock. And then the the blonde with the fish lips says to buy Goldman Sachs (HA!). The capper comes in a minute when Charles tells us to buy Washington Mutual (HA! HA!).

I remember when people would say someone worked at Merril Lynch with such reverence, like the bank was run by MacArthur genius grant winners. I would look at them cross-eyed, because I knew that person growing up, and knew they were throwing around a plumber's savings about on Bosnian internet firms while firing off forwards from collegehumor.com. Brokers are gamblers, even if we give them an illusion of non-Las Vegas legitimacy. The only differences between the Golden Girl feeding her Social Security quarters into a slot in Joliet and the 25-year old handling your savings at an investment bank is that at least the Golden Girl knows she can't game the system and doesn't get paid out for losing.

Do not let these hacks get government money. After this recession, do not let these hacks control our pension funds and savings. Wall Street has been the high-class arena for hucksters and modern-day carpetbaggers for too long. Before you take financial advice from anyone, ANYONE, in the future, make sure you know where they make their money. And never buy stock from someone on TV.

Not even if he stole a John Hughes film.

Sidelight-Schiff was an economic adviser to Ron Paul, so to all my PaulHead readers, cheers! Who looks crazy now?

The Back Up

It's approaching holiday spending time, and we at Shambollocks are always on the look out for what to buy that armed-to-the-teeth, friendly, neighborhood paranoid who has everything. I present to you the Back-Up, a metal mount for your shotgun that easily slides into place between your mattress and bed-spring. I know what you're thinking. "Gee Mike, that's great and all, but what about the M-16 I have in case it's not just a burgler but a personal visit by al-Queda?" Shambollocks recommends that you buy TWO Back-Ups, placing the automatic on the other side of the bed in easy reach of your wife or mistress.

It goes without saying that to get the full protection from these ingenius devices you must keep the safeties and your brain off. Shoot first, and apologize to your family later.

Take On Me: Literal Video Version

My favorite one hit wonder of the '80s is A-Ha's Take On Me. The song contains so many cliches of the '80s-synth riff, elliptical romantic lyrics, and a singer who tears up some falsetto. The state-of-the-art video which accompanied the song also helped with its success. The video is wildly entertaining, but it sure doesn't make alot of sense. In fact, it should be spoofed.



Everybody wants to come to the pipe wrench fight, but nobody wants to clean up.

Sarah Palin Scares Diddy. Fo' Rizzle.

P Diddy has a vlog on YouTube I was unaware of until today. I guess you could watch them all and there would be other priceless nuggets, but I have an automatic five minute Diddy threshold until my gag reflex starts. It appears Diddy supports Obama because, well, Sarah Palin makes him do a Blair Witch spoof. Hilarious.



As I've said, celebrity endorsements do nothing for me. But creative people bringing serious situations to light is something with which I can agree. Just don't make me buy a Diddy product.

Damnit, I just puked.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation

OK, everybody needs a lift today. Too much serious news! Combine the economic mess with the Metrodome massacre my White Sox just endured in Minneapolis, and I, in particular, need a solid smile-maker.

Four or five years ago, I read where Quentin Tarantino planned on showing a fan film of Raiders Of The Lost Ark at his theater in Austin. The film was created by teenagers at the time of the film's release, and it took them eight years to complete their shot-for-shot remake. What a story! I thought to myself. Raiders Of The Lost Ark is one of a small number of works of art that have, no doubt about it, changed my life. It is my favorite film of all time. I selected the location of my honeymoon-Egypt-in part because of the film. For a nerd, the character of a heroic scholar was absolutely intoxicating. I still want to be Indiana Jones.

Well, I've shared the story about the fan film with my fellow Raiders geeks. No one had ever heard of a copy that they could get. It seemed to me like the Ark itself.

Until yesterday. RetroThing found a clip of the film on YouTube and tells more of the behind-the-scenes story. Without further ado, fans. Your guaranteed weekend smile-maker- Raiders Of The Lost Ark- The Adaptation.



I know, only the beginning. I will try to find the whole thing yet, and then we will have a Shambollocks viewing party. Promise.

YouTube, Soulja Boy, and Anthropology

The head of Kansas State's Digital Ethnography project gave a speech at the Library of Congress last month. The project devotes its time to the study of YouTube and how it is used. But the speaker, Michael Wesch, does a whole lot more. He provides a very thorough discussion of what can be expected on the frontier of Web 2.0. I take these thoughts seriously, because I think the Web still has a lot to revolutionize. Even if you think vlogs are aberrant navel-gazing, this video will provide a feast of food for thought.

R.I.P. Bernie Mac

One of the best things about spending so much of my adolescence hauling body shop supplies around the South Side was the hilarious stories I heard from the black body shops. These guys could tell stories. They took care not to leave out any detail, and once you were there for the beginning you had to stick around for the end-no matter if you were in the worst part of the ghetto or not. Those guys could shoot the bull like nobody I've known since. And they could swear. They truly wove tapestries of profanity so wondrous they left me speechless.

Bernie Mac was one of those guys who hit the big time. I loved him because the rhythm of his speech was home to me. Bernie was a lyrical comedian. It wasn't the content (hell, most of it was shtick even whites have heard done ad nausea), it was how he said it. The man could rap. Here's a great clip from his career-making performance in the Kings of Comedy film. NOT OKAY FOR WORK.



Bernie, you were one hard-core, funny motherfucker.

Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting

Slate has a great piece on the history of fights in cinema. Here are a couple of which I happen to be a huge fan.

First. Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris. When Bruce Lee says jump, Chuck Norris looks for a soft landing. Bruce Lee's breakfast is juice, bacon, Chuck Norris, bacon. See for yourself.



Bruce Willis has had a bad day. First, his wife wants a divorce. Then, a bunch of thugs take a high-rise hostage and bust up his romantic attempt to get back together. His feet are cut up. And how he's gotta fight Aryan Eric.



Do not do this at home. Except if it's with your wife.

Jack Nicholson's 1970s HydroChevy

Jack Nicholson, my second favorite actor of all time (Mr. Bogart bests him), has always been cooler than tomorrow's headlines. In 1978, he and a group of investors brought to market a hydrogen Chevy. Sure, now we know this is bunk, but still a sweet flashback.



OK, I can't help myself. I know this this technology is unattainable, but I want to buy this car!