WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Real and Replica: Independence Day, 2013

This year, I saw two Independence Day-themed exhibits, of which it would be easy to categorize one as real and one as not, except that, technically, both are “real.” Or maybe one is just as much a figment of meaning-projection as the other. I can’t decide.

The first display was at the New York Public Library, which was showing an original draft of the Declaration of Independence, as written by Thomas Jefferson, along with one of the original 14 copies of the proposed Bill of Rights. Both these documents are extremely rare, and the Library has never exhibited them together before. Because they're so fragile, they were on display for only three days, July 1–3.

I went to see them after work on Tuesday, when the library was open late, and stood in line for 45 minutes, which was totally worth it. It’s hard to write about the experience without sounding like a Frank Capra film. The crowd was large and diverse, and noticeably respectful. Even standing in line, everybody was polite and patient, which is something I don’t recall ever experiencing in an NYC queue before. The crowd fanned out once we were admitted to the room where the documents were in three displays: Jefferson's two-sheet (front and back) Declaration, sandwiched in glass inside two separate vitrines, so you could read all four pages; and the large, printed Bill of Rights (one of only 14 original copies known to exist) laid on a slanted backing inside another, much larger display case. Even though people were allowed to crowd around the displays at will, there was no bad behavior that I saw: Everyone waited patiently for their turn and looked as long as they liked.

Summer Reading: Picture Books

Since I gave up buying books, it seems like I have more books than ever. For years, my little hoarding problem expressed itself as a compulsion to collect all kinds of paper: books, magazines (remember those?), clippings from newspapers (ditto), random health pamphlets from the dermatologist’s office, Jack Chick comics, 10-year-old bank statements…  . And by “collect,” I mean stuff into boxes and bags and make a big pile in every room in the house. But when I saw a documentary about the people who are paid to go in and clean out hoarders’ homes, I got scared straight and I have been slowly dealing with the mess.

Although I’ve stopped buying books (sort of), I haven’t stopped reading. I do go to the library, which not only is free but they make me give the books back after a few weeks, so I figure it doesn’t do any harm. A senior boss at my dayjob gave me her old Kindle, which had about a hundred books on it (many of which I deleted because I really do not need to read dozens of novels about the modern-day grandchildren of World War II survivors); I really like the Kindle, because it takes up a lot less space than seven boxes of books in the middle of the dining room. But there are still a lot of actual, physical books coming into the house, because my good friend A. sends me boxes of discarded review copies from her job.

Friend A. has a good idea of my taste in reading material, so she sends me lots of nonfiction science-y books, and books about food and cooking, and photo and art books. It’s fun to open the packages from her, because I never know what’s going to be inside and sometimes there’s something pretty amazing. The last box was the most amazing of all, because it contained both Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits, by Matthew Rolston, and Dulce Pinzon’s The Real Story of The Superheroes.

 

Sticking to Music

You know how whenever anyone brings up the topic of US sonic weapons and music torture, someone always says, “What do they do, just turn on WFMU? Hahahahaha.” No? Maybe you hang out with smarter people than I do. On the other hand, WFMU has always been a leader in the irritainment industry; some of my favorite DJs, people I’ve been listening to for decades, do shows I’ve never been able to listen to all the way through. So I got to wondering—what is on the playlist when our government wants to break the will of its enemies? (“Enemies” being defined in the broadest sense, of course, in that the term has included US citizens minding their own business in their own homes.)

Manuel Noriega vs. Van Halen: Noriega was Military Governor of Panama from 1984-89, when elections were held with results he didn’t like. Also, he refused to help Oliver North with the whole Nicaraguan Contra thing. (Noriega had been working with the CIA since the 1950s.) Meanwhile, US troops stationed around the Panama Canal were conducting a series of ludicrously named “operations,” and then a Marine Lieutenant got killed, and then the US invaded, which was condemned as a flagrant violation of international law by the UN. Noriega fled to the Vatican embassy in Panama City, where US troops laid siege in Operation Nifty Package. (I am not kidding about that name.) They stood around outside playing high-volume rock music, specifically the Van Halen song “Panama.” A week later, Noriega surrendered.

Don't Free Pussy Riot

Last night I saw Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, and now I’m convinced that Pussy Riot should be in jail, which I think was not the filmmakers’ intent.

The video shows three strong feminist women and their history of activism, culminating in their action in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The three who were arrested—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich— are not the only members of their political collective, although you wouldn’t know that from the film. They also are not “girls,” they are young women in their mid-20s and early 30s, they are wives and mothers, they are educated and intelligent enough to have devised an ideological basis for their political protest. Yet since their arrests, they’ve been portrayed as “girls” who “didn’t realize” that defiling a revered place of worship would offend anyone, which is complete bullshit: The whole point of the action was to offend as many people as possible. If people weren’t offended, they wouldn’t pay attention. Well, they’re paying attention now; they’re paying attention all over the world.

The women of Pussy Riot must have realized there were likely consequences for their actions. Just as Edward Snowden was prepared to accept the loss of his well-paid job, the end of his comfy life, and his possible extradition to the US to face treason charges, so Pussy Riot should have been prepared for arrest, trial, and conviction. They say they are feminists: Let them act like feminists. Their prison sentences are the proof of everything they’ve said about Russian repression. Let them take the consequence of their actions like strong feminist women, not disingenuous, apologetic little girls. In the words of Sammy Davis Jr. “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

Be punk, Pussy Riot: Be strong.

UPDATE 6/18: So what I was trying to say was unclear, and that is the fault of my writing. Mostly I was objecting to the documentary's portrayal of "girls," but also there's the rather alarming footage of the three prisoners apologizing and saying they "didn't mean to offend anyone." This is contrary to their otherwise strong statements--contrary, in fact, to their actions. The obvious injustice of two years in prison for their protest is what has called international attention to the very repression they were protesting. I have friends who participated in ACT UP's protest inside St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1989; no one went to prison, but it brought international attention to the AIDS crisis and forced the government to begin dealing with it. I hope Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer will turn out to be as influential. Also, one week on, Edward Snowden looks less like a hero. -B.

 

 

Numismaticism Update: 2013 Marathon Fundraising Edition

Congressional Republican economy terrorists have been holding the country hostage for a while now—Sequester! Fiscal Cliff! Debt Ceiling! Meet All Our Crazypants Demands or We’ll Blame Obama!—and people who don’t enjoy negotiating with terrorists have been looking for a way around dealing with them. How can we keep paying our bills if there’s no money in the bank? Well, one obvious way would be to print some more money.

Technically, the Government can’t print more money, but the Federal Reserve can. (They are not the same thing and if you don’t know this, that is because you are not a nutbucket conspiracy theorist like me. Most normal people do not know how the Fed works.) BUT: Back in 2011, a Constitutional law professor at Yale started talking about an idea to take advantage of the one way in which the Government can mint more money: commemorative coins! The Secretary of the Treasury is allowed (31 USC § 5112!) to strike platinum coins in any denomination. So all the Secretary of the Treasury has to do is to mint two one-trillion-dollar platinum coins, deposit them with the Federal Reserve, and hey presto! It’s all good. (And go to hell, Repubican economy terrorists.)

The trillion-dollar-coin idea started being talked up again a couple months ago, as the Sequester approached, and it was even endorsed by some Celebrity Economists, but in the end Jacob Lew was confirmed as the new Secretary of the Treasury and even if he tried to issue The Coin, no one can read his handwriting and the Treasury would probably just issue a couple of platinum Slinkys instead.

Still, I do believe we could apply the trillion-dollar-coin principle to raising money to support WFMU.  When Former Cohost Jay and I decided to produce our own Thunk Tank currency (the Bieb, the official currency of Iceland!) we discovered that it is illegal for anyone but the Government to issue specie (coins), but anyone can issue paper money. (So we did.) Why should we continue with the annual Marathon and the Record Fair and the Secret Off-Air October fundraiser and the Superstorm Sandy Wrecked the Station Special Appeal and Station Manager Ken in a Lawn Chair Attached to Weather Balloons, going back to the Listeners for their support again and again, just because we’re a Listener-Supported station? (And God bless the Listeners, they have been fantastic!)

All Station Manager Ken has to do is issue a 1-milion Bieb note (which trades at a rate of 1 Bieb to 1 US dollar), deposit the note in the WFMU bank account, and then pay all our bills! (Or just deposit 10,000 100-Bieb notes, because I think there are plenty of them lying around the station from Thunk Tank’s overproduced Marathon premiums.) Assuming the bank that has the WFMU bank account will accept it for deposit, which maybe they will not.

Alas, the one- trillion-dollar coin is not to be. The main problem seems to have been that it would have called attention to the fact that our entire economy is based on the fiction of fiat currency and debt. So I will never be able to add the Biden Commemorative $1 trillion dubloon to my collection, and I also still have never got a Guam quarter, either, so what’s up with that? You can still use your Federal Reserve-issued currency to support WFMU, though, so go to wfmu.org and make your pledge now.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and thanks for supporting WFMU.

 

 

Putin Summer Retrospective

As befits the future Savior of Humanity (or at least the Savior of Blonde Russian Gymnasts in the Duma), Vladimir Putin has been extremely busy this past summer. One of his major tasks has involved recruiting new members of the Putin Pals, his protective managerie of super-powered animal agents. Thunk Tank Cohost Jay and I often wondered why it was that the Putin Pals did not have any bird members, when their primary mission will be to defeat the insect forces of MANTIS. How is it that Putin would recruit a Were-Whale before he’d got even one bird? (Anuka, the Flying Donkey, does not count as a bird, because: Legs. Hooves. Hair. Mammal.) Naturally, the Leader was just waiting until the time was ripe, and this summer he finally judged time to be squooshy and soft enough to unveil his Craneforce. Dressing in the uniform of a Crane Obergruppenfuhrer—sort of a white hazmat jumpsuit with weird black goggles—Putin jumped aboard Craneforce One and led the baby cranes on skywriting maneuvers high in the sky above Moscow, where they wrote “Surrender, Pussy Riot!” in smoke, and also in Russian, not English. And Cyrillic. Cyrillic letters are really hard to make in smoke, but of course Putin enjoys the challenge.

Print Isn't Dead!

In connection with my little hoarding problem, I also have a bookstore problem. My New Year’s Resolution this year was to stay out of bookstores, and I have done so, unless you count Posman Books in Grand Central Terminal that I have pretty much stayed out of, except for drifting in … oh, not very many times at all. Hardly ever! And also, I haven’t bought any books there, except for a couple. But not really! Mostly, I just go in to look at the latest issue of The Believer to see whether there are any more articles by WFMU DJ Dave Mandl about WFMU DJ Kenny G., and so far there have not been. 

Posman Books does not have a terribly large selection of magazines anyway, not as large as any of the actual newsstands in Grand Central, so I’ve sort of lost track of What’s Going On In Magazines Today. Having been a magazine editor for a number of years, I still have a sad, schadenfreudish interest in the genre. So that’s why, when I got caught in the rain last Thursday down by Battery Park, I felt that it was all right for me to go into the big Barnes & Noble there to, you know, get a cup of coffee and look at some magazines; it was purely for research purposes, it wasn’t about buying books. Not at all.

Once inside, I got the very worst iced caffe latte I’ve ever had anywhere and began my investigation. Barnes & Noble has several shelves of magazines: How can there still be so many titles? Niche marketing, apparently. For instance, Glutes. Yes, Glutes, a “women’s fitness magazine” about making your butt look good. It turns out it’s not even a new magazine; Glutes has been around for years, apparently with the same headline on every cover, just changing the punctuation: “Your Best Butt Ever!” vs. “Your Best Butt … Ever.” Your best butt? Whatever. Check out Pole2Pole.

 

Okay, a magazine called Pole2Pole is about, what? Amundson, Scott, Shackleton …? No, it is a magazine about “the sport of pole fitness.” Pole fitness. Back in my day, it was just a sleazy way to supplement my college scholarship, but now it’s a sport. In fact, it is so very sportsy that there are several other magazines also devoted to pole fitness, such as Pole Spin and—my favorite—Vertical. And those are just the actual print periodicals; there are several other titles online.

A few years ago, I got a promotional copy of Garden and Gun, which I thought was pretty awesome: It’s like Martha Stewart with a Mossberg. It’s won a number of magazine-industry awards, and sells tons of advertising, but now I realize it is just the older, more aspirational cousin of Gun Girl and a slew of magazines featuring photos of women in bikinis holding assault rifles.

So the good news is, Print isn’t dead! It’s just turning into a Hooters franchise.

The Love Song of Kim Jong Un (UPDATE!)

Kim Jong Un has a girlfriend! Or maybe a wife! Or maybe a girlfriend who is somebody else’s wife! No one at Thunk Tank Central (or anywhere else) is really sure. But last weekend he was seen in public with a young woman. Who was she?

Korea Joongang Daily says that South Korean intelligence has identified her as Hyon Song-wol, former lead singer for the Bochonbo Electronic Music Band. Hot gossip: KJU might have had an affair with her when he returned home from his Swiss boarding school. His father, Kim Jong Il, may have objected to the (still unconfirmed that it ever happened) relationship and separated the two. Song-wol might have married an army officer! She might have had a baby! But whose baby was it?

 If, you know, there even was a baby. Or if the woman in the photos with Kim Jong Un isn’t just his sister, which it might be. Whatever! Here’s the video for Hyon Song-wol’s #1 super hit from 2005, Excellent Horse-Like Woman!

 

 

Are You A Badass?

As regular listeners know, we here at Thunk Tank are committed to saluting the badasses and feats of badassery that make this world a more interesting place to live. Some listeners may be confused, however, as to what exactly makes an individual or a particular accomplishment badass. In order to clarify the criteria by which we evaluate candidates for This Week in Badassery, and to help listeners determine whether they themselves are badass, we’ve created this simple quiz. Just answers these six questions and total your score at the end to determine whether or not you are a badass.

 

SEE YOU IN HEALTH: The Thunk Tank guide to the 5 most likely things that will kill you to death

Half of Thunk Tank almost died last week, which made us realize that we owe it to you, the WFMU Listener, to alert you to the Five Most Likely Things That Will Kill You (this week). Consider it a public service. (You’re welcome.)

1. All-Drug-Resistant TB. Okay, it’s not bad enough that you keep taking antibiotics for your headcold (Das viral!) and using antibiotic soap to wash your crusty dishes, which caused multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis even in a young female ginger who is also a lawyer and lives in London (much to the surprise of the BBC). No, now your stupid antibiotic lip gloss has caused ALL-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, which is just in India now, but will be killing you sometime next month.

The Good Stuff: A Bill of Rights for Today's Busy Citizen

Hey there folks! I’m Morty the Mouse, and I’m here to introduce you to the brand new Bill of Rights! Your friends here in Washington realized that our Founding Fathers, as smart as they were, wrote the Constitution with some funny words that can be hard for regular folks like you and me to understand. So, in the spirit of projects like The Message—a version of the Bible written for hip youth—we decided to rewrite the Bill of Rights in language we can all enjoy. Now, just so you know, we didn’t change any of the meaning—no sir, this is exactly what the Founders meant to say—we just made it a little clearer. We hope you enjoy!

 

 

The Good Stuff: A Bill of Rights for Today’s Busy Citizen

1^st Amendment

Confusing Old Stuff:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Good Stuff:

Congress won’t make any religion the official religion of the US, but we all know that unofficially, Christianity is the official religion and political rhetoric and public celebrations will all reflect this. Everyone has the right to speak in non-terroristy, ways as long as the government can listen in, receive information from center-left and center-right news outlets, and gather in shopping plazas for commerce, or in free speech cages during brief state-approved and scheduled demonstrations. 

Robo-Clones Replace DJ's at NJ Radio Station

Just like Santa Claus, Thunk Tank cannot be everywhere at once, and so we do what Santa does—we hire some homeless men to dress up like Jay. But not anymore! Now Scientists and Experts in Japan have found a new answer to this age-old problem: the Robo-Clone.

We are not talking about 3-D–print dolls from the Clone Factory—Clone Factory dolls are so pre-tsunami! Plus, they’re small! They are not life-sized, unless you are only about a foot tall. Here, this video explains everything:

 

(You may want to fast-forward to see the Fat Guy’s tween harem get creeped out by the doll.)

There's nothing I can write that a man riding a flying aligator can't express better

 Seriously, I was trying to think of what I wanted to say this week, but this animated gif is more eloquent than I could ever be. We're halfway through the WFMU marathon now and I felt I should take this opportunity to talk about how great FMU is, and how lucky I feel to play my small role in this cultural pirate utopia, but, you know...this guy is flying through the air riding a goddamn alligator. An alligator of all things!

Update: Banda Banditos

After our post on Banda Music, Thunk Tank received an email from Listener Reeshard, directing us to a news story about the growing problem of California tuba raids. Banda relies on the tuba, and tubas cost, like, $2,000–$7,000 each. So thieves are breaking into high schools and stealing all the tubas and sousaphones from the band rooms, but leaving all the other brass instruments, the computers, electronics—they only want the tubas, because playing the tuba is cool. If, you know, you’re into banda.

Thunk Tank supports the music, but not the thievery. Look! You can make a perfectly serviceable tuba out of an empty plastic jug and some pvc piping and some other stuff I don’t really understand the Spanish words for:

 

 

All Your Holiday Belong to Us

As ThunkTank continues to inject itself into all pop culture like a prion from outer space, it was inevitable that we would begin to take over holidays. This Tuesday happens to be a holiday, a holiday in which you puny humans express your affections with heart-shaped pieces of flavored chalk imprinted with slogans—everything from PITCH WOO to FAX ME* And so we have created Thunk Tank Conversation Hearts; but, being Thunk Tank, ours are enormous: Eating one is like putting your entire fist into your mouth.

 

*actual examples

Thunk Tank's Monopoly Zodiac

As part of Thunk Tank’s bid to expand our global media empire, this week we’re moving into the lucrative world of daily horoscope readings. Every newspaper prints these things, people go online to read them, the Zodiac Killer is beloved by millions, it seems only natural that Thunk Tank should provide horoscope readings in order to attract more listeners. Thunk Tank being Thunk Tank, however, we have decided to forgo the traditional horoscopes provided by either Western or Eastern traditions, and instead provide our own system based on a person’s date of birth and a corresponding Monopoly game piece. And so, without further ado, we present:

The Thunk Tank Monopoly Zodiac 

The Music We Would Be Playing, if We Were Playing Music

Besides being WFMU’s first callerless call-in show, Thunk Tank rarely features music. Every week we go through the new CDs that have come into the station, and find a few we like, and bring them into the studio, and then don’t play them. If we were playing music, though, right now we would be playing a lot of banda, a style of brass-heavy oompah music from the Mexican state of Sinaloa—also home of the pointy boots!

 

But that's tribal music, not banda. Banda instrumentation includes accordions, tubas, sousaphones, slide trombones, clarinets, and a drum with no kick pedal and a manual hi-hat. Diligent viewing of Mun2 TV has convinced Bronwyn that banda songs are mostly about fat pizza delivery guys who get beautiful girls, and young busboys who get beautiful girls, and school janitors with beautiful janitress girlfriends who can’t stop looking at the high school girls.

more videos beneath the fold...

Pickle backs and saddle sores part 2: bucking strap glory

I had no idea how to ride a bull. None. I’m just a simple sandwich suit-wearing radio DJ from the small town of Brooklyn, and the big country ways of rodeo folk confuse me. But the bull rope was being adjusted around Viagra Thunder’s ribs and I had a job to do. I looked over at Applebuck, standing outside the bucking chute nervously chewing her hoof. She knew that her brazen behavior had gotten us into this mess, and the only way for us to get out of it was for me to…

Suddenly, I was up in the air, floating gently for an instant before falling towards the earth and crashing with only the foam padding of my chicken and Brie sandwich suit to cushion the violent impact. Viagra Thunder, that rotten bovine, had bucked me off to put a scare into me before we left the chute. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him laughing and then my head cracked against the hard arena floor, and everything went black.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in a rodeo arena, but instead of bleachers surrounding the fence, rolling towards the horizon was an infinite prairie of billowing white clouds. “Bet you’re feeling a might confused, eh there buckaroo?” I turned towards the source of that gravy-smooth voice, and there, standing before me was rodeo legend Smokey Snyder dressed in the finest cowboy splendor and glowing faintly.

Entr’acte: The Rodeo Clown

 

So: Bullriding. You get on the bull in a chute, and the gate opens, and the bull comes out and bucks, and you stay on as long as you can, and then you fall off. Or, if you manage to stay on for eight (8!) seconds, then they blow a horn and you can jump off. And then what happens? You’re on the ground, in an enclosed area, with a pissed-off 2200-pound animal with big testicles, big horns, and also possibly ’roid rage. (There was a bull-doping steroids scandal in 2007.)  For your protection, they bring in the clowns.

Pickle backs and saddle sores

Applejack was drunk. Not hammered, but enough to be getting surly. We were sitting in some forgettable Irish pub near Penn Station and she was going on about how hard life in Equestria could be. In town for BroNYCon, the tough girl of the My Little Pony world had grown tired of signing autographs and had snuck away from her adoring fans to enjoy a drink. I had been sitting at the bar when she walked in, sat down next to me, and started chewing my ear off.

Empty shot glasses littered the bar in front of us, and Applejack’s breath reeked of brine from the dozen pickle backs she’d put away. “You ever seen Applebuck Season?” she asked me, her mane making a faint swishing noise as her head bobbed back and forth. “You think Stutterfly helped with that harvest? Always playing with her forest friends. You think that bitch Rarity is doing anything but combing her tail all day?”

She gulped down another shot of house whiskey and pointed her hoof at me for emphasis. “You think climbers are tough?” She gestured over to Madison Square Garden where the Professional Bull Riders event was going on. “You think those stupid cowboys over there are tough? Horseshit. Ponies are tough. Ponies are tougher than anyone,” and then she burped, vomiting a little bit in her mouth, and swallowing it back down.