Charley Says

In this dangerous world, God help all kids who don't have a child-sized cat friend with feline Tourette's Syndrome.

So popular, they have been collected on DVD.



Not to be confused with this other "Charlie says!"

Posted By: Paul - Wed Feb 27, 2013 - Comments (10)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Death, Disasters, PSA’s, Advertising, Candy, Cats, Europe

Eurovision Winner:  1967

The annual Eurovision contest is chugging along, and we haven't made fun of a past winner in a while.

Here's the best Europe could offer in 1967, a year when everyone else was listening to revolutionary work by the Doors, the Stones, the Beatles, et al.

Sandie Shaw on Wikipedia.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Feb 24, 2013 - Comments (9)
Category: Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Music, 1960s, Europe

One of My Xmas Gifts

Vintage paperbacks are the best!

Posted By: Paul - Wed Dec 26, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Holidays, Books, 1950s, Europe

Tales of Dark:  Of Grandiose Fevers and Passion Arcane

If H. P. Lovecraft were alive today, sixteen years old and a Goth, this is the song he would have written. The only things missing are the word "eldritch" and some tentacles.

More on the band here.

Reach the ancient heart of the stygian obscurity
Wherein all the names of mine are written
In pits profound,where festered dreams sigh
And longings scorched seek reason to return.
Admire the flame flowered mansions arcane
The sulfurous secrets gowned in rapture profane
Fear not the fire of all-knowing wisdom
Furiously burning with such ravishing splendour.

On the wings of my most fervent passion
Which the fools dare name blasfemia
To thee I have returned from the heart-dead sunworms domain
A coffin-shaped lair they have woven around me
For I've pledged no allegiance
To their fabulous sacred theories
Those spurious servants of a crownless king
Who holds their cross in vain.

No Phoenix phenomenon shall their fall contain!
Leave their carcasses scattered and slain!

And now I'm visualised
To blind-faithed eyes
Lofty and proud, to be recognized.
As the mourning-scented bloodstorm winds
Of their final downfall blow
Like a nightclad werewolf upon the moonlit glade
I shall hunt them down in the snow.

...and the frostbitten ground
now consumes their wretched gore
My victorious hiss fulfills the oceans ethereal
And the stars gleam nameless above
As shadows call forth the seas of Cthulhu
Be wide awake my dearest
Of my fiery necromantic kiss!

Thine arms soothing around me enfold
To cease my yearning cursed
The sweetest witchcraft thy lips do hold
Can only quench my thirst.

'Neath the enchantingly blazing corona of night
drown thy desire into mine!
With all the senses cast to a feverous grandeur
In the sins of the flesh we entwine.

Eternally...We entwine...

Posted By: Paul - Sun Dec 23, 2012 - Comments (6)
Category: Armageddon and Apocalypses, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Dreams and Nightmares, Evil, Goths, Music, Noises and Other Public Disturbances of the Peace, Europe, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults

Kabbadi

New sports are always being invented. But will they become universal? I am in doubt about Kabbadi. Although, as this BBC article tells us, there's a UK women's team. What do you think? USA Kabbadi leagues with primetime ESPN coverage?

I am a little unclear how any ref could enforce this rule during the melee: "Then the raider tries to return to his own half, holding his breath and chanting the word "Kabaddi" during the whole raid."

I think the announcers though will rival the Latino ones who shout "GOOOOAAAL!" in soccer matches.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 22, 2012 - Comments (2)
Category: Sports, Asia, Europe, India

On Space Time Foam

This is an art installation in Milan, where you crawl with other museum patrons over a plastic surface. Lot of weird pics at the link.

But is that plastic suspended over a high well of emptiness, an atrium or courtyard, as it seems in the video? And guaranteed not to break?

Posted By: Paul - Mon Dec 10, 2012 - Comments (4)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Performance Art, Science, Europe

Mercedes Benz Commercials

Maybe it's just me, but I find these commercials remarkably creepy, inauthentic, unappealing, ineffective and misguided, given my perceptions anyhow of who buys a Mercedes.

What do you all think?

Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 08, 2012 - Comments (8)
Category: Business, Advertising, Humor, Stereotypes and Cliches, Europe, Cars

Documenta

I'm sorry I learned about the Documenta Art Festival only just now. The thirteenth one occured this past September, and there won't be another for five more years.

We'll have to content ourselves with these videos till then.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Dec 06, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Performance Art, Bombast, Bloviation and Pretentiousness, 1950s, Europe, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults

Queen Elizabeth, Teenybopper

[Original article here.]

Courier Mail Wednesday 19 September 1956

The Queen sees Rock 'n' roll Film

London. September 18. (AAP)- Queen Elizabeth has asked to see the film “Rock Around the Clock” which has led to rock 'n' roll disturbances in several British towns.

A copy of the film was sent from London yesterday to Balmoral, where the Queen is on holiday, the Daily Mirror said today.

The Daily Express reported that showings of “Rock Around the Clock” has been banned by country councils in Stockport, Cheshire, and Gloucestershire yesterday.

But at Burt St. Edmunds in Suffolk, no objections were raised by members of a watch committee after a private showing of the film.

Sir Malcolm Sargeant, conductor of the BBC symphony orchestra, said to day that rock 'n' roll music was “nothing more than an exhibition of primitive tom tom thumping, and was ‘centuries old’. It was not ‘new and wonderful’ as many young people thought. It had been played in the jungles for centuries.”

At age 86, Queen Elizabeth reminds no one of a rocker--although she does hand out a lot of knighthoods to musicians. But in 1956, at age 30, she could really groove.



She was obviously remembering those days in 1979, when she and Bill Haley reconnected for the first time in nearly 25 years.




[Original text here.]

Posted By: Paul - Tue Dec 04, 2012 - Comments (3)
Category: Music, Royalty, 1950s, Europe