700,000 PLUS!

WOOHOO!

Just took a peek at the stats and noticed that we’ve surpassed 700,000 hits since Tacky Raccoons done been borned! Thanks to everyone for stopping by.

[Update 24 September: Planetross offered his excellent technical advice for blogwhoring boosting traffic in the comments below, so we added a Justin Bieber .gif from here. Gag city.]


11 September 2001 – Remember Always

“I Am Eating Candy.”

Although the book is sixty years old, Viktor Lowenfeld described the childhood stages of  perception, via drawing and painting, and included a section on the blind and deaf. Lowenfeld was very perceptive and astute in using art to measure the mental progress of young ‘uns.

“I Am Eating Candy” is the title of a clay sculpture by an 11 year old blind and deaf girl who attended the Perkins Institution for the Blind in the late 1940s. It’s from a book entitled “Creative and Mental Growth – A Textbook on Art Education,” by Viktor Lowenfeld, Pennsylvania State College, published by The Macmillan Company, New York, 1950. Here’s the full plate:

I’m tempted to scan the entire book into .pdf format… it’s that awesome.

Be A Queen Bee? I’ll Pass.

It’s a complete mystery. Nobody knows exactly what went down in the San Fernando Valley in 1983 except for one proud lady displaying her bowling balls that she grew from seeds.

But that poster… creep city. An overweight one-armed busty yellow jacket with spit curls offsets the mysterious code on the right, below which is a secret symbol, kind of an anti-yin-yang deal. I smell evil.

[Image found here.]

Saturday Matinee – Mull, Martin, Plastics, Grisman & Garcia, King & Preston &, um, Willis

Martin Mull in 1973 gets back to his roots in the Lake Erie delta.

Martin Mull’s college roommate was Steve Martin who was no slouch on banjo.

Awesome. I can play the plastic scale, too, but putting it into a high-speed vid makes the grade.

Now THIS is really annoying, so much so that I’m not going to post it here. You’re on you’re own, and I dare you to listen to the whole tutorial.  I couldn’t do it, but I can listen through this:

David Grisman & Jerry Garcia doing B.B. King’s classic “Thrill is Gone.”

To close it out, here’s B.B. King himself with Billy Preston and, um, Bruce Willis on harp. Have a great weekend folks, and remember that most of us can play harp better than Bruce Willis, who’s got no business at all in that lineup.

Hazard on the Pitch

Sure it’s a funny picture, but the story is anything but.

Spectacular project of Sebastian Errazuriz in 2006 (“Memorial of a Concentration Camp”, Santiago, Chile):

“A 10-meter magnolia tree is planted in the center of Chile’s National Stadium where dictator Pinochet in 1973 imprisoned thousands of political prisoners who were tortured and killed.

After planting the tree, the stadium doors are open to the public as a park, offering a space to stop, look again, and remember.

An impossible, cathartic soccer match played before 20,000 people, closes the project after a week of activity.”

[Story with more images can be found here.]

1,292 Posts = 3rd Year Blogoversary!

Wow. Didn’t think we’d still be around this long. Mostly, we didn’t think at all, just got up did it, starting on 3 August 2007, and we’ve since passed 671,000 views!

The year certainly had its highlights. We had our busiest day, 18 October 2009, with over 20,500 hits. I was invited to post on both AmyOops and The Blogmocracy. Amy’s site is kind of a cornocopia of oddness, and The Blogmocracy is more about current events where I provide innocuous fodder for the Overnight Open Thread. It’s all a lot of fun.

We opened up The Tacky Raccoons Store for TR paraphernalia. Our new FaceBook page was hacked and deleted, but it’ll be up again soon. Thanks to all who logged in.

This post is a retrospective of our past year, listing the Top 10 greatest hits of Tacky Raccoons from August 2009 to August 2010. Previous years’ greatest hits are here and here.

So here are the Top 10 of the past twelve months, with last year’s rankings separated by an appropriate slash. NR = no rating,  indicating that the post either didn’t make rank or wasn’t posted last year. Click on the images to see the original posts.

Hey Ho! Let’s go!


No 10/NR: Steampunk Rabbit Hunt


No. 9/NR: The .Gif Friday Post No. 129 – Compound Pendulum, Nematode, Cat Slide


No. 8/6: Southern California Fires –  October 2007


No. 7/NR: Bloody Mushrooms With Teeth


No. 6/NR: How to REALLY piss off a golden retriever


No. 5/9: Lesbian Amputee Dwarf Porn
[The title of this one was pure blogwhoring at its best, and it’s still paying off.]


No. 4/1: Lol Ferret Episode 1
[This was the 2nd most popular post since this blog done be borned, with over 30,6oo hits since 8 November 2007.]


No. 3/3: Giant Woolly Bear Caterpillar Discovered Near Las Cruces, NM, Predicts Global Warming for Decades to Come
[Don’t miss the comments on this one.]


No. 2/NR: Amy’s Motivational Poster Collection

AND THE NUMBER ONE POST OF THE YEAR IS:

No. 1/NR: An Expensive Ignosecond
This post got close to 21,000 hits before we realized that the pictures didn’t show an accident. Those guys knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it with precision.

Thanks gobs to all of you who joined up and stayed with us these past years, keep on clicking on. Let’s hope and pray that the results of this year’s November elections bring us all back to prosperity.  –Bunk

[Tip o’ the tarboosh to this site that produced the top image.]

Saturday Matinee – World’s Strongest Redneck, Derek, Bob, Gatemouth & Johnny, and Buddy Guy

Redneck washing machine. When Steve McGranahan‘s not bending cast iron skillits for charity, this funny guy makes videos.

“Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad?” was one of Derek & The Dominos’ greatest hits.

One of my favorite Wailers songs.

Here’s a 44 year old Clarence Gatemouth Brown with a 32 yearold Johnny Jones playing  “Chicken Fat” in 1968. [via]

Happy 74th Birthday to Buddy Guy, one of the last original bluesplayers.  Here’s a guy who left the south for Chicago and played for sandwiches to keep from starving.

Have a great weekend, folks. See y’all back here tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Cows & Cycles, Kim Wilson, W.C. Clark, Angela Strehli, Jimmy Vaughan, Little Walter, Coco Taylor, Howlin’ Wolf, Leon Redbone, and a link to Marion Harris


Cows & Cows & Cows. (Tip o’ the tarboosh to Bunkarina.)


If that wasn’t odd enough, try Cycles. (Thanx, Possum.)


Whoa. Whatta lineup. Kim Wilson, backed by Jimmy Vaughan and W.C.Clark with Angela Strehli. Might have posted the vid before, but so what.


Little Walter was an excellent harp player. Here he is with Coco Taylor in 1967, playing Howlin’ Wolf’s “Wang Dang Doodle.”


What was truly pitiful in the 60s was that the Brits were the ones to reintroduce American blues to Americans. (Look who introduces the great Howlin’ Wolf on this clip.)


Let’s wrap up with a healthy dose of Leon Redbone. Poor video, but a nice version of this song from 1916.

Have a great weekend, but be back here tomorrow for more fun.

Saturday Matinee – FAIL fail, Original Star Trek, Robert Klein, Friends of Distinction, Cornelius Brothers, War

FAIL fail = WIN
Reminds me of the 2nd .gif  here.

The original Star Trek was the best. Check out how young Kirk and McCoy look [via].

I might have posted this before, but Robert Klein was truly funny occasionally. If anyone has a clip of his classic “I Can’t Stop My Leg,” lemme know.

Classic summer song by The Friends of Distinction.

Here’s The Cornelius Brothers in Ft. Lauderdale in 1983, reprising their hit from 1972. (The video link above jumps to other stuff; couldn’t find a solitary link of a live show.)

Also from 1972, here’s War‘s live version of “Slipping Into Darkness.” Early 70s funk was awesome. Have a great weekend, folks, and be back here tomorrow for more funk and games.