Category: History

Saturday Matinee – (Hg(SCN)2) Decomposition, The Electric Prunes, The Count Five & The Seeds

Mercury(II) thiocyanate decomposition is kinda cool, but some of the U Toobage comments amused me more (posted verbatim):

Imagine a 50 tons asteroid made of this thing … it would enter the atmosphere, get in flame, expand like the whole africa and kill us

This was filmed in a North Korean secret science lab where they are trying to build their next president.
How cool would it be to pretend to be a wizard in the medieval ages, just go into a kings throne room and threaten them by summoning satans dick tentacles, pop this experiment down, and as everyone is screaming, command the dick tentacles to stop, and then they all be like. Oh you so great wizard telling satans dick tentacles to stop, and then you would be like muahahah – ill stop, and yes, there is something wrong with me.
Why is he using a little tiny golf club to put down the powder?
Why did watching this bring Hillary to mind ?
and that’s how they grow kale! now you know

i’d smoke that

poke it with a stick…

BTW, the word is spelled “Weirdest.” I before E except after W…

Okay. Enough of that, so let’s go eclectic. How ’bout some 1966 retro?

Here’s The Electric Prunes on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, circa 1966, lip-synching “I Had Too Much To Dream.”

“Psychotic Reaction” by The Count Five, circa 1966.

The Seeds‘ “Pushin’ Too Hard” circa 1966.

For me, 1966 was a great year because I got a small transistor radio for my birthday. It ate up my allowance money in batteries because I’d fall asleep listening to WSAI into the wee hours on school nights.  It was also the year Dad ordered a complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia. That was the edition that had frog dissections and human anatomy on overlapping clear celluloid layers. Very cool.

Have a great weekend, folks. Be back here tomorrow for stuff.

Amasunzu (circa 1923)

Rwandan man with Amasunzu hairstyle, 1923.
Rwandan man with Amasunzu hairstyle, 1923.

It’s like a giant brain-sucking leech. I want one.
Oh wait…

[Image, caption, and more about the hairstyle here.]

The Saturday Matinee – To All The U.S. Cubano Families Who Just Got Chumped

Yep. The American Flag now flies over the U.S. Embassy in a country dedicated to the abolishment of the one form of government that is guaranteed to bring its denizens out of poverty, i.e., capitalism.

I pity those who think that capitalism is a bad thing, for they’ve been deceived and lied to, and the people who suffered under Castro’s brutal and oppressive regime are unable to speak.

Except for a very few, and I’ve met some of them. They’re not happy about this at all because they remember what happened to themselves and their families when the communists took over.

So where do we go from here?

¡MUSICA CUBANO!

The Cuban sound is a mixture of Spanish, African and European styles, an eclectic mix that blends well. Meanwhile, here’s another great Cuban:

Steven Stills & Manassas. Stills wanted to become one of The Monkees prior to his days with CSN&Y, but he was rejected for contract conflicts. It probably had something to do with being a Cuban, like this orchestra:

In case you didn’t click the link last time around, that’s Prague’s Talichova Komorní Filharmonie in 2012 performing a classic song by the late Cuban composer Frank Zappa.

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow.

Stairway To Aleppo

[UPDATE: Some images and commentary have been deleted. They were posted long before I realized the true horror of the atrocities in Syria.]

Stairway to Aleppo Original

Residents try to find their belongings among the rubble left of their homes after what activists said was an air attack from forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad in Bab Neirab, Aleppo, on July 27, 2013.

[Caption and image from The Atlantic.]

Saturday Matinee – Rock Rock Rock, Rockabilly & R.L. Burnside

“Rock Rock Rock” was the first video tape I ever purchased. Got it for $9.99 in a sale bin, then I saved up for a VCR player so that I could watch it. Classic performances by classic rockers wrapped around an unbelievably crappy story. It’s 90 minutes of fast-fowarding awesome (but I suggest you follow the plot at least once).

Rockabilly LA. Considering that Los Angeles had just about nothing to do with the advent of Rockabilly except to lure the hayseeds into fraudulent recording contracts, we’ll post it anyway.

So where do we go from here? How ’bout some vintage country ‘lectra blues?

That’s R.L. Burnside from 1978. Let’s go one more. This one’s from 1998.

That should hold y’all for a while. Have a great weekend, folks.

Winged Monkey Large Wings Sid Dawson

Winged Monkey Large Wings

[Wizard of Oz 1939. Found here.]

Deep Sea Diving Hugs – Roberto Galeazzi’s Contribution To The World

Deep Sea Hugs 1935

Deep Sea Hugs 2 1935

[Found here.]

The Rebel Flag

Confederate Flag Military 6

Confederate Flag Military 5

Confederate Flag Military 3

Confederate Flag Military 4

Confederate Flag Military 1

Confederate Flag Military 12

Confederate Flag Military 11

Confederate Flag Military 10

Confederate Flag Military 7

Confederate Flag Military 9

Confederate Flag Military 2

Confederate Flag Military 8

The Saturday Matinee Dixie Edition – Duane Eddy, Little Feat & The Band

confederate-flag-military-0

If this flag represents slavery, racism and oppression, then every flag of every nation in existence in 1776 did so as well. So what. This country abolished slavery over a hundred years ago, yet slavery still thrives in many parts of the world, most notably Africa and the middle east. Where’s the outrage over that?

There is none because the attack on the Confederate Flag has nothing to do with slavery or racism, and everything to do with attacking fiscally conservative southern politicians.

Let’s rock.

The late racist Dick Clark brings racist Duane Eddy onto American Bandstand to perform “Rebel Rouser” wearing Confederate garb.

The racist band Little Feat performs “Dixie Chicken” featuring racist vocalists Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris.

The Band‘s classic racist song is a good wrap up for this racist edition of The Saturday Matinee. Have a great weekend, folks, and let’s STOP THE IDIOCY

 

Song O’ The South

Confederate Paint

I was born in the North, lived in the South, have ancestry in both, and this fabricated hoopla over the Rebel Flag is completely inane and without warrant. It’s a symbol of regional pride and self-sufficiency. To reinterpret the Rebel Flag as something other than that is absurd, and it IS fabricated hoopla.

The War of Secession ended, the Union was preserved, slavery was abolished by The 14th Amendment, and all at a great cost in lives and expense a century and a half ago. It was a brewing war of economic inequity and the Southern States decided they’d had just about enough of it. Then someone popped some warning lead across the bow of a ship heading to Fort Sumter.

Here’s a mind game. Since the majority of the Southern population was dirt-poor in the 1800s (few could afford a mule, let alone a slave) what would have happened had they turned to subsistence farming for a few years and stopped cotton and tobacco produce from moving to the industrial North who weren’t sharing the profits and benefits? The Union would have invaded the South to quell the protest.

What if the North had merely coughed up some bucks to reimburse slave owners to free their slaves from bondage? Much unnecessary death and destruction could have been avoided.

Of course it didn’t turn out that way, hindsight and all, but to condemn a symbol of pride to augment a specious left-wing political agenda (i.e., dividing the Nation once again) is abhorrent in my opinion.

If we don’t stop this nonsense soon, eventually we’re gonna have to ban Elvis, Duane Eddy, Billy Idol, all of CSN&Y, and most of the Democrat Party including Hillary (unless she can crank out her version of “Wedding Bell Blues.”)

[Image found here.]