A Word With Moshammer's Ghost

hippocantus

Function: noun

Etymology: Greek hippo one of the mythical Oceanids, Latin cantus singing

Date: unknown

1: the song of an Oceanid, a mythical female patroness of a body of water, whether a siren, mermaid, or nereid: That's a mesmerizing hippocantus, Odysseus.

Hotcha! Hank

Maneuver Nu Tones Sideways

NOMO! Ann Arbor!! Nu Tones!!! Left-handed bassist!!!!

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 29 July 2008

MEAL: 1 order (10) Fried Wontons + 1 small order Pork Lo Mein = $7.15 + $1.00 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Hard Bop RIP

Johnny Griffin: A Blowin' Session: "Smoke Stack" [mp3]

Johnny Griffin died this past Friday at the age of 80, and I realize his name doesn't mean anything to those of you who don't care about Jazz, but he was one of those guys who never quite rose to the very top. As a tenor saxophonist in other people's groups, he played with plenty of the biggest and best - Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane - but he never quite rose to the prominence that those artists did.

Perhaps it was because he moved to Paris in 1960...Don't get me wrong, Europe loved Jazz back then, and still love Jazz to this day in a way that Americans really haven't since the Big Band era, really...For a Jazz player, especially one who wasn't a marquee name, Europe was definitely the place to be appreciated, and actually make a living by making music...

Anyways, perhaps it's my own perceptions, but Johnny Griffin is one of those guys who kinda fell through the cracks a bit, at least here in the states...He never became a household name, and I'm not even certain that he even deserved it, but I can't help but cheer a bit for the underdogs in this world, you know. He was known as the "fastest tenor in the west", and "Little Giant", but he could never quite escape Coltrane's shadow...

And whattya know - here's Johnny Griffin, blowin' with Coltrane, and Hank Mobley - three tenor players ripping it up, accompanied by a stellar lineup including Lee Morgan on trumpet, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Art Blakey on drums...

For the record, that's Johnny Griffin playing the first sax solo in "Smoke Stack"...

Enjoy, and RIP, Johnny Griffin.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 77

NOMO: Ghost Rock: "Three Shades" [mp3]

NOMO describe themselves as "post-Afrobeat", which I suppose is fair enough...There's certainly a distinct flavor of Fela Kuti at work in their tunes, as well as other touchstones to the dark continent, and yet, there's a progressive Jazz element that seems to run through their sound which gives them a more European sensibility, bringing to mind such modern acts as Shining and Jaga Jazzist...I guess all this Eurojazz lumpen is the "post" part of their self-description...

Anyways, I really don't have anything else to say about NOMO except that Ghost Rock is quickly becoming my favorite new release of 2008...

And they're from Ann Arbor, Michigan...

And they're playing The Annex here in Madison in a couple of weeks...Aside from a recent Hold Steady show at The Majestic, this is the only local concert I've been excited about in the past 2-3 years, that's how fucking lame Madison's music/club scene is...Or how fucking lame I am...

Hotcha! Hank

Dogs! Pffft!

Dogs are stupidly obedient animals, while cats are highly intelligent and independent creatures.

Dog owners get some sort of perverse thrill from exerting their power over their pet of choice, and I never quite understood that. I guess that's why I'll never have children either. Being master of my own domain is good enough for me...

Anyways, in relation to this picture, my only hope is that more cats start whipping the shit out of dogs. The dogs have had it too easy, for too long, and it's about time for a change.

Hotcha! Hank

Mersh Break!

A Nintendo commercial filmed in Hong Kong...The music sounds like Pizzicato 5, but I suppose it could be just about anybody...And the end of the mersh is just the slightest bit silly/stupid, and possibly creepy...

Hotcha! Hank

It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Maneuver Sideways)

We couldn't get out of this week alive without a good ol' AC/DC video, of course, and this one is both good and old. As an added superplus bonus, it's also got bagpipes for her pleasure.

Hotcha! Hank

Sweet Sideways Girlfriend Maneuver

Animated video for Matthew Sweet's breakout hit, "Girlfriend"...Man, I love Robert Quine's guitar playing on this...

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Bubblegum Bon Scott Maneuver

Before he found himself on a highway to hell, Bon Scott was doing bubblegum in Perth, as this video will attest...Ah, the continuing glories of YouTube.

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 22 July 2008

MEAL: 2 roast pork egg rolls + 1 order (8) fried dumplings = $7.45 + $1.00 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Another Random Blast

Hotcha! Hank

Sweet Sideways Laminated Weekend Maneuver

Well, I certainly didn't plan this, or even give it a single thought, but I direct your attention to the #1 and #2 ladies on my 2008 Laminated List...

Winona Ryder and Evangeline Lilly...

I now direct your attention to tracks 5 and 6 on Matthew Sweet's 1991 album, Girlfriend...

Matthew Sweet: Girlfriend: "Winona" [mp3]

Matthew Sweet: Girlfriend: "Evangeline" [mp3]

Like I said, I didn't plan any of this, so I can only attribute this phenomenon to one of two possibilities...First, that I've listened to this album so many times over the past 17 years (sweet lord, 17 years!), that this sequence has been floating around in my subconscious for awhile now...OR secondly, that Matthew Sweet is a warlock...

Now, these two songs are fine songs, but they're definitely not the strongest cuts on this great album...However, if I wanted this to be a stronger post, there'd hafta be hot starlets named "Divine Intervention", "Thought I Knew You", or simply "Girlfriend"...

If only Dr. Girlfriend was real...

Hotcha! Hank

Almost Laminated 2008!

Rosario Dawson was #5 on last year's Laminated List, and here she is at #6 in 2008...My only real exposure to her in the past year was seeing Clerks 2 via Netflix, which may explain why she slipped a spot...A cool, sexy, gorgeous woman...Nuff said...

Christina Hendricks stars in the AMC ensemble show, Mad Men, and previously she had a recurring role in the doomed sci-fi show, Firefly...She's an insanely curvy redhead that I didn't think existed anymore, in Hollywood, or anywhere...And her face...An angel...Yeah, as far as my yearly Laminated Lists are concerned, the only place for her to go is UP...For now, here she is at #7...

I have never seen a single second of Gossip Girl on the CW, and I probably never will...Nor have I seen The Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants...Again, I probably never will...I am very aware of Blake Lively, however, and while I definitely lean towards brunettes and redheads, there's something about this blonde starlet that captivates me...I think it's the slightest of overbites, the beauty mark under her right eye (mysteriously missing from this photo), and those slightly squinty eyes themselves...Quite lovely, almost "handsome", and this year she's #8 on my laminated list...

Lily Allen is so damn cute...Adorable...She's spicy and saucy...She's a cheeky monkey, right? And as far as big pop stars go, especially those who found fame via the internet, she's got some catchy tunes...And she's so damn cute at #9 on this year's extended, almost-laminated list...

Anna Friel was a pretty popular actress in the UK, who first came to the public eye in America, and thus MY eyes, when Pushing Daisies premiered on ABC last year...Like Lily Allen, she's an adorable British lass, and wouldn't you know, her character on the show is kinda cheeky in her own right...Definitely spunky...Totally cute and absolutely #10 in this year's list of soft misogyny...But seriously, isn't this an honest celebration of the feminine? Hm...

Hotcha! Hank

A Word With Moshammer's Ghost

lotion

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English loscion, from Latin lotion-, lotio act of washing, from lavere to wash

Date: 14th century

1: a liquid preparation for cosmetic or external medicinal use

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 76

AC/DC: High Voltage: "Can I Sit Next To You Girl" [mp3]

In the summer of 1976 my family went on a three week road trip to Florida and back, packed restlessly into our '74 Plymouth Fury stationwagon, which pulled a Palomino tent camper behind it...It was a mostly glorious vacation, full of KOA campgrounds, small furry animals, large scary insects, sand in the crack, sharks, snakes, migraines, bicentennial fever and other moist, hot things...Yeah, what is Florida in July if not hotter than fuck, and wetter than that?

I would say the vacation was split 50/50 between sitting around the camper doing the sorts of things one does when camping, and visiting all the typical glossy vacation destinations you'd expect - Disneyworld, Sea World, Cypress Garden, Cape Canaveral, Lion Country Safari, Busch Gardens, glass-bottomed boat rides, alligator farms, and of course, plenty of beaches and swimming and boogie boarding...

To bring this around to music and this week's mp3 4 the weekend, I have to tell you that when we were driving around, to and from those glossy destinations, the stationwagon only had an AM radio in the dash, and in 1976, that meant a mix of Country-Western, talk radio, Top 40, and Christian...There was little rock music of either the soft or hard variety to be heard on the AM dial, and if there were, neither of my parents were interested in hearing it...Which meant it was plenty of top 40 pop and disco for my mom, and country music for my dad...I tended to sit waaaay in the back of the stationwagon, in the third bench seat facing backwards, reading MAD and Ripley's Believe It Or Not paperbacks and seeing the Florida that we were always and forever leaving behind us as my dad sped onward towards the next parking lot of the next glossy thing...Most of the fun for me was never quite knowing where we were going...And as the speeding 18-wheelers would pass us, I'd pump my fist, and they'd blast their horns, and I was ten years old and that was the coolest fucking thing in the world to me...

Years later I'd seriously contemplate truck-driving school in Sun Prairie, but my parents had other plans...

Back at the assorted campgrounds, however, we had a sweet radio/8-track machine - a unit that might be described as a proto-boombox...It was magnificent, and I had full control over that thing...Not only did it have the AM band, but the elusive FM band, not to mention a couple of shortwave bands...I liked the FM dial, and I was tuning into rock radio for the first time, and it was a sweet, sweet sound to my tender ears, grown weary of ABBA and the Starland Vocal Band...

So, that summer, I'd lay there in a hammock outside the camper, with this proto-boombox sitting on my chest, hearing a ton of rock bands I'd never heard before, and chief among them was AC/DC...

Ah, AC/DC...Specifically, the song "TNT" was my proper introduction to the band, and I was absolutely and immediately fucking hooked...As those three weeks progressed, I also heard "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" and "The Jack", and for the next few years, AC/DC was my probably my favorite band...I'd also have to consider Ted Nugent and maybe KISS, but why bother?

For five straight albums, right up to Bon Scott's tragic death by puke and misadventure in 1980, AC/DC fucking ruled, and at school the next day, 8th grade at John Long Middle School, a whole bunch of us participated in Be Kind To Bon Scott Day™ , and there were black armbands, and AC/DC cassettes in everybody's boomboxes, blasting Bon and company...

The joke (or the criticism) became, of course, that AC/DC were a one trick pony, that when you've heard one of their songs, you've heard them all...

I did some rough calculations, and have come to the conclusion that this joke is only 53% true...

Case in point is this week's song, "Can I Sit Next To You Girl"...Sure, it has an element or two that is unmistakably AC/DC, but on the whole, it is a rather unique song for the band, which is why I chose it for this week's Something 4 The Weekend...It's leaner than most of their songs, and cops more easily and obviously from ye olde Chuck Berryish boogie and "trad-rock" in general, and those runs that Angus is rattling off in the verses are unheard anywhere else on their records, if I'm not mistaken...I've come to call AC/DC's sound "Boogie Cock", and this song has some of that, and Bon's usual tease'n'sleaze thing happening...Good stuff...Good stuff for a boy starting to come of age, starting to figure some things out..."Boogie Cock"...*snicker*

Anyways, Bon Scott died in the winter of 1980, and I was more than kind to the man, remaining staunchly loyal to the original line-up, never accepting the band when Brian Johnson joined the fray...Back In Black was released a mere 5 months after Bon's death, and I didn't want anything to fucking do with it...I still don't...I'm not even gonna BOLD the fucker's name...

LOL...

RIP, Bon Scott...

Hotcha! Hank

This Picture Deserves A "Daaaaaammmmn!"

You know, if I would have run across this picture a couple of weeks ago, Meg White might not be sitting at #5 on my 2008 Laminated List.

Helen Mirren is 63 years old, and daaaaaammmmmn does she look good. So good, that the Commodores are currently running through my mind...

"She's a brick...house...The lady's stacked and that's a fact, ain't holding nothing back..."

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 15 July 2008

MEAL: 1 vegetable spring roll + 1 small order of General Tso's Chicken = $5.65 + $1.35 tip

Hotcha! Hank

HANK RANKS No. 18

My 9 Predictions About The Upcoming Spin-Off From The Office

I'm 99% certain that rumors are true that NBC will be spinning off a new sitcom from The Office sometime during this upcoming TV season...Here then are my 9 predictions of exactly what that spin-off should, could, and might be...

But before I do that, let me just suggest this - what if NBC were to spin-off any number of these shows at the same time? Imagine an entire night of nothing but sitcoms centered in or around Scranton, PA, all of them tangents of that core, The Office? It would be completely unprecedented in television, and I think it would be utterly brilliant...Your opinion may vary...

HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP

09: Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration: Talk about a tangential spin-off, consider a sitcom centered around Bob Vance and his refrigeration business...Instead of an office, this would be more of a warehouse setting, which leads directly to the next prediction on this list, which is 100% more likely in reality...

08: The Warehouse: Well, this is a pretty obvious idea, since we're already quite familiar with many of the characters in the Dundler-Mifflin warehouse, and in fact, Darryl, the warehouse supervisor really came into his own last season, and has certainly become as beloved as any of the actual office workers on The Office...

07: Darryl & The Seamonster: This is really just an alternate to The Warehouse, wherein we follow the exploits of Darryl and "The Seamonster", who are roommates when not working together at the warehouse. Fans of The Office will know that "The Seamonster" is the nickname given to the big black warehouse worker by Kelly Kapour in the "Safety Day" episode...

06: Miss Beesly: It appears that Pam will be spending the beginning of season five of The Office at the Pratt School of Design in NYC, and I'm guessing that this situation might put some strain on her relationship with Jim. My prediction is, of course, that she will meet another guy at school who is every bit as great as Jim, and there will be much temptation, and perhaps even a mistaken kiss or more...Now, what if we take all of this to it's logical extreme and this causes Pam and Jim to split up? Then Pam graduates design school and begins her new life at a new job as a graphic designer in NYC...Miss Beesly would follow Pam in this new life, in a new city, without Jim...I realize that if any of this actually happened, hardcore fans of The Office would absolutely puke and cry and become enraged over such developments, and yet, it's a story arc that I think would be very interesting to see, and if anyone on The Office has spin-off potential, it's probably Jenna Fischer...

05: Whatever Happened To Toby Flenderson? : Fans know that Toby quit Dunder-Mifflin at the end of season four to move to Costa Rica and presumably become a wildlife photographer...Well, that's exactly what this show would be about...Of course, Toby tends to have pretty bad luck in life, and so he will meet with many hilarious trials and tribulations while living in a tropical paradise...

04: Serenity: Fans of The Office know that during season four Jan started up her own candlemaking business out of her and Michael Scott's condo, and it was called Serenity By Jan...Well, on this show, we follow the life of Jan Levinson as she attempts to get this business off the ground, all the while trying hard to be a single mother. In the process, we'll witness her heavy wine drinking, her attempts at dating (perhaps an ongoing situation with her former assistant, Hunter), and from time to time, Michael Scott will attempt to become a part of her life again, so there's the easy crossover appeal...

03: Prison Bitch: This spin-off will naturally follow wunderkind Ryan Howard, who was busted for securities fraud at the end of season four, as he attempts to survive prison. This may not be easy, because as Michael Scott himelf explained, as a good-looking young man, Ryan would be "da belle of da ball" if he ever landed in prison...Of course, it would make more sense if Ryan went to one of those cushy prisons since he committed a white-collar crime...If that were the case, imagine that cushy prison setting, but the tone is much like The Office, wherein Ryan is once again the new guy, and he's mentored by an older prisoner who is every bit as stupid as his old boss, Michael Scott...

02: ...Meanwhile, Mose...: Mose is Dwight Schrute's cousin, and the two of them share an inherited beet farm in rural Lackawanna County...This show will follow Mose during the day, when Dwight is away from the farm at the office...Each episode, however, will be bookended by scenes including Dwight as he leaves for work in the morning and returns from work in the evening...Brilliant, if I may say so myself...

01: Creed Thoughts: A blog already exists at NBC.com entitled Creed Thoughts, so this spin-off of The Office makes a ton of synergistic sense...Creed Bratton is definitely one of my favorite characters on the show, and I believe that's true for alot of fans...This guy is certifiably insane, more than a little criminal, and funnier than fuck...Now, imagine that Creed is offered a job as a blogger by some bigtime blogging network, like Gawker Media, and we get to follow his life as a criminally insane 60 year old among the young and hip 20-somethings of New York City...Guaranteed hilarity...

NBC - where you at?

Hotcha! Hank

2008 Laminated List # 1

It's probably not mere coincidence that this post is #500 at HOT POOP...Winona Ryder has been #1 on the Laminated List Of My Mind™ for damn near 20 years now...The film Heathers, from 1989, was when my adoration for the actress was cemented, although I became quite smitten with her in Beetlejuice from the previous year. My point is, I've had a thing for Winona Ryder for a long time, and it only seems right and natural that she's a part of a somewhat landmark post for this blog...

Since last year's list, I Netflixed A Scanner Darkly for the first time on DVD, which convincingly displays her deceivingly ample bosom...I also saw a rerun of the Friends episode wherein she shares a pretty decent kiss with Jennifer Aniston, and that's always fun to see...Watched most of the Winona films I have in my DVD collection - Heathers, Night On Earth, Reality Bites, Edward Scissorhands...etc...

Since last year's list, the tabloid blogs have romantically linked Winona to one of the guys from Rilo Kiley, as well as Keanu Reeves...Well, Keanu's dating a semi-obscure actress named China Chow, so that story's dead, but a dude from Rilo Kiley is possible, considering Winona's historically questionable taste in second-rate musicians, of which I am one (possibly third-rate), which helps keep my dreams of laminated glory alive...

She was also accused of shoplifting again, this time in the pages of the National Inquirer and nowhere else...Just some make-up from a CVS Pharmacy in Hollywood. Nothing to worry about. A false blip on a faulty radar.

It's also been reported, and I believe confirmed, that she will play young Spock's mom in the upcoming Star Trek movie...She will probably get about 3 minutes of screen time, and will be the sole reason I actually watch a fucking Star Trek movie...Netflixed, however, cuz not even Winona will get me to pay for a ticket to one of those things...Not even with JJ Abrams at the helm...Anyways, another year, another top spot for Winona in the Laminated List Of My Mind™ and the archives of HOT POOP!

Onward...Sideways...

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 75

Virginia Astley: From Gardens Where We Feel Secure: "Hiding In The Ha Ha" [mp3]

From Gardens Where We Feel Secure might be considered a great "forgotten" album from the 1980's. At the time of it's release in 1983, it was stylistically unique from just about everything else that was happening in popular music at that time, especially in Britain, where Virginia Astley lived and worked. It stood in stark contrast to New Wave, Synth Pop, the New Romantic movement, Hair Metal, second wave Punk, and the jangle of College Rock starting to surface in the United States. Indeed, it sounded like nothing else out there at the time, and even 25 years later, still sounds fresh, unique and quite gorgeous.

The music on From Gardens Where We Feel Secure might be called "Pastoral Chamber Pop". Pastoral because the music sounds as organic as the album cover looks, and the songs themselves are about, and inspired, by nature, and to a lesser extent, rural living. Further, one only needs to look at the song titles to know that this is a "summer album", with two songs with "summer" in the title, a couple songs about sleeping outside under the stars, and a couple more about heat, among others. Aside from the outstanding music, the summer theme makes this a complete album...A conceptual album, and regular readers to HOT POOP know how I feel about albums - that the very best are always conceptual in some way...And here we are...

This is a beautiful, one-of-a-kind album, and as we approach mid-July, with the temperatures and humidity rising here in Wisco, it's the perfect time for me to share this song with you.

BTW - if anyone can identify a more recent song that rips off the main melody of "Hiding In The Ha Ha", please let me know...I've been familiar with this song for a very long time, but dammit if I can put my finger on who "borrowed" from it...Any help/suggestions would really put my mind at ease, and isn't that what these hazy, lazy days of summer are all about?

Hotcha! Hank

Watch Roger Do His Sideways Maneuver

Main Source: Watch Roger Do His Thing

Kind of a boring music video, like so many are, but it's kinda fun to see the hairstyles, clothing and attitudes of a bygone era - NYC circa 1990...

Hotcha! Hank

A Blast From The Past

Original MUCKO! circa 2003...

Hotcha! Hank

Covering Covers # 5

Nobody really loves clowns. Most of us don't even like 'em. Not really.

For plenty of people, clowns are unnerving...They're slippery, and little bit creepy, and let's face it - there's little joy in their buzzery palms...We never know what a clown might do next, and that makes 'em just the slightest bit dangerous. Some of us like the excitement, but just as many of us aren't really into surprises...

Mainly, we don't like clowns because they are us. Garish, exaggerated reflections of who and what we are, and what we are is fear, confusion, lust, greed, violence, foolish thoughts and all sorts of sin...Struggling to make sense of a world we don't understand, and trying to act accordingly...Mostly failing, but when we succeed, it's usually in spite of ourselves, witless in the face of chaos...Fools running errands, running around in circles outside the center ring. And when our part of the show is over, then what? Are we nothing more than silly distractions between the trapeze act and the lion tamers?

Small victories over the mundane, perhaps, but no everlasting triumphs...Just a neverending handkerchief to blot away the endless tears of living...

Same existential crisis, different day.

Except clowns got deep pockets full of trickery, and a whole lotta nonsense up their sleeves...When life hands them lemons, they make balloon animals and reek of whiskey sours, and when they exit the spotlight, they've gained nothing but a few bruises and some nervous laughter from the rest of us cuz none of it makes any fucking sense, and that nonsense hits just a little too close to home for plenty of us.

(((The one and only time I rode the Seattle monorail, a dude in full clown regalia sat down in the seat in front of me, and paged lazily through a Hustler Barely Legal magazine while drinking from a paper bag.)))

And there but for the grace of God go I...Or you... Or that guy over there, or yr uncle Rollie...

Clowns are just trying to get by like the rest of us...Mostly scared of death, the great unknown, if the truth be known...But rather than retreat, rather than play victim, they react against nothing in the silliest ways imaginable...They don't know any better.

Some balance feathers and small dogs on various body parts, and others form rock bands and hire a stripper for the drumkit who sometimes (or at least one time) sipped urine from a teaspoon, and another time time pissed into a pot of chili before scarfing it down.

When life hands you a pot of chili, you gotta season it to yr own tastes, babycakes!

That's what the clowns are saying to us - That since life if a great big ball of confusion, and since God's got the biggest, most ridiculous shoes of all, and he's always kicking glittery uncertainty in our faces, well, maybe we gotta kick back a little bit ourselves...Go crazy right back...Squirt fire outta our flowery lapels and shoot confetti outta our asses...

The clowns are doing it, every day, with big britches and shit-eating grins, and we laugh our little nervous laughs at 'em, cuz we can't laugh with 'em. If we did that, well, we'd be laughing at ourselves, and that's that's an uncomfortable pie to the face for alot of us...

Not enough of us have the courage to be clowns, daring to defy our fears, willing to laugh at ourselves , to put on flowery dresses and wrestle bears from time to time...To drink embarrassing amounts of Irish Creme and sing Butthole Surfers tunes at karaoke night...To fart unabashedly in church...To tell the girl four cubicles away that we love her...That we lust for her...That we want to get a great big bucket of chicken and a Twister mat and see what kinda greasy fun might be had...

Alot of us have too much pride and not enough guts...Too much shame and not enough nuts...

So, this painting is just about the perfect distillation of the whole Butthole Surfers aesthetic, not just this particular album...They're nothing more or less than Rock'n'roll clowns with alot of guts and super-huge nuts...A bunch of freaks with no pride or shame, exaggerating not only the circus that is rock'n'roll for humorous and dramatic affect, but holding up a mirror to life and humanity itself, and showing us all exactly just how weird and ugly we are as a species...

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 8 July 2008

MEAL: 1 small order of Chicken Chow Mein + 1 Fried Sweet Bun = $7.25 + $1.00 tip

Hotcha! Hank

2008 Laminated List # 2

Whenever I see Evangeline Lilly, Outkast's "So Fresh, So Clean" starts spinning on the turntable in my mind...A turntable that looks remarkably similar to the one found down in the Swan Station on LOST, but I digress...

Yes, "fresh" and "clean" are the two best words I can think of to describe Evangeline Lilly's appeal. There's nothing complicated about her beauty, nothing exotic about her face - she's just sublimely good-looking from top to bottom. Her beauty is so pure that it's nearly impossibly to "ugly her up", try as the writers and producers of LOST might...I mean, covered in dried mud, knife wounds and whatnot, her character, Kate, still manages to radiate...

I think it's fair to say that Evangeline Lilly is a bit of a tomboy, although the term "tomboy" itself might not be fair in this post-feminist world of ours. On LOST, her character Kate is a tough-as-nails, take-no-bullshit kinda woman, and as her backstory tells us, she certainly doesn't take any shit of men, doesn't believe that any woman should take any shit from any man. Part of this characterization includes the fact that Kate, as a woman, can do anything that a man can do, or at least believes this to be so, and typically she's involved in actions that have long been relegated to the masculine - she tracks and hunts animals, she tracks humans, she fights, she's handy with knives and guns and isn't afraid to use them...On a mysterious island teeming with alpha-males, there's Kate, always in the thick of it.

And yet, as much blood and dirt as they cake on her, as many sweaty man-things as they have her character do, she still looks like she ought to be doing those things, under those circumstances. She doesn't look like some sort of dainty princess flung into the muck. Her beauty transcends all.

And so it happens that Evangeline Lilly lands at #2 on this year's Laminated List, which is probably as high as any woman can climb as long as you-know-who lives and breathes. Of course, her profile has been extremely high in my mind lately as Season 4 of LOST was absolutely stellar, and LOST has easily been my favorite drama on television since about episode four of Season 1 to begin with...

Finally, freckles are always hot.

Hotcha! Hank

Culture! Morality! Patriotism! Weirdos!

Have a great 4th of July...This evening I'm going to celebrate in my own small way by grilling some Polish sausages, drinking some French wine, reading through parts of Thomas Paine's Rights Of Man, and then playing some Freedom Fighters on the PS2...

In the city of Madison, it is legal to sell fireworks, but it is illegal to discharge them...My boss and I talked about this the other day, and the only items we could think of that are still legal to use in Madison are sparklers, ash snakes, and those little paper snap dragon things, and we weren't 100% sure about those either...

Let freedom ring, as long as nobody gets an ouchy!!!!!

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 74

Main Source: Breaking Atoms: "Just A Friendly Game Of Baseball" [mp3]

It's a shame about Main Source. They were a highly innovative (moving away from turntables towards samplers) and skilled Hip Hop group based outta NYC in the late '80's and early '90's who could have been huge stars if their luck would have been just a bit better, or perhaps their egos better in check. Instead of eventually taking their rightful place in the East Coast Hip Hop pantheon alongside the likes of Run-DMC, Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, Erik B & Rakim, Jungle Brothers, Gang Starr, Stetsasonic and EPMD, the three main members of Main Source (Sir Scratch, K-Cut, and Large Professor) squabbled over money and rights, and Large Professor was gone not long after their debut album, Breaking Atoms, hit the shelves.

Large Professor was not only the MC of the group, but the producer of their debut, and when he left, Sir Scratch and K-Cut attempted to soldier on with a second Main Source record featuring a newly recruited MC, Mikey D. Record label woes kept this second Main Source record from ever finding an official release, and eventually all three original group members went on to have fairly illustrious careers as producers behind the scenes of other Hip Hop stars, many of whom became part of that pantheon I mentioned above. Their individual successes (critically and commercially) suggest that if these three guys could have kept their own shit together, we might not have waited until 2008 for Wild Pitch Records to finally re-release Breaking Atoms on CD...I'm certainly glad they did, because my cassette copy of this album got eaten by the tapedeck of my old Chevy Celebrity while on a road trip to Minneapolis circa 1995, and it's been a blast hearing this whole album for the first time since then...

Main Source: Breaking Atoms: "Live At The Barbeque" [mp3]

This particular track, "Live At The Barbeque", is a standout because it features the first recorded appearance of Nas, who was about 16 or 17 years old when this song was recorded...That's him on the first verse rapping about going to hell at age 12 for "snuffin' Jesus" and verbally being "iller than an AIDS patient"...

Anyways, this 4th Of July weekend, what's more appropriate than two tunes that reference baseball and barbeque in their titles, nevermind that the songs themselves aren't really about baseball or BBQ...Ahh, metaphors...

Hotcha! Hank

EVERYTHINGATHON! July 2008!

So, a couple of weeks ago I drove the WBST Party Van out to Rabbit Ridge, a secret place I like to go that no one knows about, to do a remote broadcast one night...Mostly I just wanted a change of pace, because the vibe around the WBST studios has been toxic lately, but I also had a small garden to tend...

http://www.everythingathon.com/home.htm

That night felt like a Country-Western kinda night, so the highlight is obviously the 20 country tunes featured in this hour-long podcast...Hope you enjoy...Available until August 1st...

Hotcha! Hank

A Word With Moshammer's Ghost

tutelage

Function: noun

Etymology: Latin tutela protection, guardian (from tutari to protect, frequentative of tueri to look at, guard) + English -age

Date: 1605

1a: an act or process of serving as guardian or protector

1b: hegemony over a foreign territory, trusteeship

2: the state of being under guardian or tutor

3a: instruction especially of an individual

3b: a guiding influence, a business under the tutelage of a new director

Hotcha! Hank

Maneuver Mister Jung Sideways

Stop-motion animation goodness for Man Man's song, "Mister Jung Stuffed" from their new album, Rabbit Habits...100% Hot Poop...

Hotcha! Hank

Blue Hair Aside...

My immediate and first thought when I initially saw this picture was "Marge and Patty and Selma", the Bouvier sisters from The Simpsons. After having looked at it in a folder on my hard drive for the past few months, I still can't see anything except Marge and her sisters....

Marge is about as hot as I always imagined her.

Hotcha! Hank

2008 Laminated List # 3

Oh my! Tina Fey dropped from #2 to #3 on this year's Laminated List, and there's absolutely no other reason than the woman who jumped up to #2 simply got me in a lather more than she usually does, and in the end, this whole sordid endeavor is about sex with famous, unattainable women, right?

Once upon a time, Tina Fey was an attainable woman. Nowadays she's married with a daughter, but she still seems like an attainable woman, which is certainly a huge part of her appeal. She was self-admittedly a band geek/drama nerd all through her formative years, and if I learned anything in high school, it's the fact that The Speaks were 100% freaks. I ain't saying Tina Fey was easy, but she was undoubtedly fun.

This third picture with the big pencil almost singlehandedly kept Tina Fey at #2. I want to take it behind the the middle school and get it pregnant.

Tina Fey is on my Laminated List for most of the same basic reasons Amy Sedaris is - she's funny, cute, smart and seemingly real in an entertainment industry that isn't known for reality. Hell, The Hills isn't even real. Not really.

What is real is the scene from a recent episode of 30 Rock wherein Fey's character, Liz Lemon, scarfs down a huge deli sandwich in one take, in about 20 seconds, while stuck in airport security. An impressive feat, a funny scene, proof of her dedication, and yeah, pretty damn sexy.

Hotcha! Hank

Tuesday's Fortune: 01 July 2008

MEAL: 2 Vegetable Spring Rolls + 1 small Chicken Lo Mein = $7.85 + $1.15 tip

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Piglet

Amy Sedaris on Late Nite with Conan O'Brien.

Hotcha! Hank