Bernie und Ert

As long as we've been talking about German humor....

First the original, with superior voice-acting, then an English dub, for comprehension.

Wild Gals of the Naked West

Could Russ Meyer be considered the grandfather of the popular Deadwood TV show? Check out this trailer for his WILD GALS OF THE NAKED WEST, and decide for yourself.

Utterly (or is that "udderly"?) NSFW.

PS: bonus clip after the jump!

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Dance of Desire

Yesterday we watched amateur Sheree. Today, we get her professional "sister." Get read for some vintage, gingerly-NSFW erotic dancing.

Sheree and her Tiger Dance

Why do I suddenly feel as if I'm watching an outtake from a David Lynch film?

Donation Meters

How to solve the problem of unruly panhandlers?

The donation meter!

The picture here portrays one in Denver, which I found on the Flickr page of msitarzewski.

Read all about Atlanta's recent experiment with donation meters here.

Polish Film Posters

Well Medicated has posted a collection of 50 Polish film posters. I picked out three at random: The Empire Strikes Back, Rosemary's Baby, and The Getaway. Compare them to the American versions below. I like the Polish ones better.

George Putnam, RIP

TV newscaster George Putnam has died. Read his LOS ANGELES TIMES obituary here.

Putnam was frequently cited as the inspiration for the Ted Baxter character on THE MARY TYLER MOORE show.

Make your own judgment based on the videos below.

George Clinton’s Art

Are the paintings created by musician George Clinton especially weird, or just arty weird? They're probably no weirder than the man himself. But only you can decide, by visiting his gallery.

Smoke on the Water

I was supposed to attend a family BBQ today, but it was canceled because of rain.

I should have known it would be. I had already read this news about how weekends attract bad weather.

WEEKEND WEATHER REALLY IS WORSE

The most comprehensive weather study ever has confirmed what we all suspected - the weather really is worse at weekends.

Meteorologists at the University of Karlsruhe evaluated 6.3 million pieces of climate data from across Europe between 1991 and 2005.

Their conclusion: On weekends the weather is worse than on weekdays.

But even if the weather had been good, we would have suffered from this campfire phenomenon. As we are told in The Complete Book of Fire by Buck Tilton:

Q: Why does the smoke from a campfire seem to blow into your face no matter where you sit or how many times you change position around the fire?

A: Your body blocks the flow of fresh air drawn to the flames. You are then creating a low air pressure area with your body and the warm smoke moves toward the lowest air pressure. With no wind, no matter where you sit in relation to the fire, the smoke will be drawn toward you.

Sometimes you just can't win....

Contortionists

I started thinking about contortionists again when I happened upon a feature on them in an old issue of Life. In my novel Spondulix I had a character who was an "enter-ologist," a great term I found in Ricky Jay's wonderful history of sideshows and freaks, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women. Enter-ologists get into impossible places, rather than escape from impossible places.

In any case, a short search of the web turned up lots of online contortionist info, including the Contortion Home Page, which is where I found this pic of April Tatro. That's her in the video below as well.

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.