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Bunk Speaks

Folks,

We’ve noticed a few broken links on past posts. If any of you happen to notice videos that don’t play, images that don’t load, lettuce know, and we’ll do our best to fix ’em. YouTube is kinda notorious for pulling videos, and if they yank ’em, we won’t know unless you tell us. Leave a comment on the post with the damaged linkage and we’ll give it a bandage, because, after all, readers of TackyRaccoons visit this site for perfection, and you rock.

Bunk

P.S. TackyRacoons made it past the first cut for January at www.iblogcup.com. 2nd elimination round is going on so vote once a day, but only if you really want to. Maybe we’ll win a cupcake or something. If so, we’ll share it with you because we like to share. It’s just the way we are. Sometimes.

[UPDATE: Tacky Raccoons came in 4th place in January, but there were apparently some shenanigans going on according to the webmaster. Sorry, no cupcake.]

Saturday Matinee: PoorHamsterElPasoPleasePleasePlease

Here’s the original English version of “Poor Hamster.”

Pleasant harmonies with a good plot and a twisted father with a lot of video editing time makes this a must see. Bunk has been out of the loop on this one, but gives it 5 stars. (2 stars go to the cloying animated version.)

A related song immediately comes to mind. Here’s Marty!

I don’t know how Marty Robbins pulled this one off, but here’s the MTV clip of his hit “El Paso” from 1959. The late Imogene Coca appears in a cameo as “Bellina.”

And speaking of Ike Turner, he passed on to Rock N Roll Heaven this past week.

Ike and his Kings of Rhythm recorded what’s regarded as the first Rock N Roll hit in 1951 with “Rocket 88.” Regardless of what you think of him, Ike & Tina Turner’s Rhythm & Blues Review was also very influential, but without the Ikettes, and especially Tina, he’d have been left as a footnote in the Cobra Records archives. (Ike’s in the gray Nehru jacket in the middle, but who’s that white guy on rhythm guitar? Steve Cropper?)

This is the best version of James Brown‘s “Please Please Please” that I’ve ever heard. Tina was amazing when Janis Joplin was still taking notes.

[“Poor Hamster” English version from here. Marty Robbins’ pic from here. His video is from the UToobage. Ike & Tina from here.]

Yet Another Great Gift Idea

Just imagine… You have a holiday get together with your neighbors (the ones you actually talk to, not the one that has that strange odor coming from his house, or the ones with the 45-year-old son who never left home and lays face-down on the lawn across the street when you go to get the mail, or the one with three hearses in the driveway.)

A nice holiday gathering. A Hawai’ian theme complete with the apostrophe. Huge yellowfin and shark steaks are on the grille, and YOU bring out the salt. Not just any salt. Alaea Hawai’ian Sea Salt.

All your invited neighbors are visibly impressed with your obviously refined taste and culture.

Except for me, you dork. You bought into this? But I won’t tell it to your face. I’ll just smile and compliment you on your obviously refined taste and culture. Then I’ll make an innocuous comment about global warming and how OUR household is stopping it by changing the incandescent lightbulb outside our front door to a fluorescent lamp.

But tomorrow, I’ll have a good laugh with the 45-year-old neighbor’s son while we lay face down in the grass in front of the house with the three hearses next to the one that smells funny, and we’ll watch you get your mail and change your lightbulbs.

[Don’t creep out, it’s all in fun. “Salt-of-the-Month-Club” is available in limited quantities from The Onion. Looks like a great gift idea to me. I’d host the block party if I got it, fer shure (hint hint hint). —Bunk]

Saturday Matinee: Past Future & Present Past

Vodpod videos no longer available. from s166.photobucket.com posted with vodpod

No Way. Can’t happen. Get outta here. [Via Snopes.]

1960 precursor to Star Trek from East Germany, according to the U-to0bage description:

Here’s a look at “the world’s largest supercomputer” in the socialist utopian future predicted by a 1960 East German science fiction film

The movie is “Der Schweigende Stern,” released in the west as “First Spaceship on Venus.”

Like other Soviet-bloc films, it forecast a utopian future in which socialist scientific advancement led the world.

In this scene, the scientists are using the supercomputer to decipher an alien message recorded on a device ejected from an alien spacecraft before it crashed.

And speaking of Star Trek, one of the funniest Saturday Night Live clips, (with William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Chevy Chase as Spock, Bill Murray as Bones, on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise after the series was canceled) should have appeared below. But NBC apparently convinced uT00B and g00ggle to drop all the video links for copyright violations. It’s as if NBC wanted to erase all evidence of the years when Saturday Night Live was actually funny.

So here’s this gem [originally scheduled for a later post]: The Dap-Kings featuring Sharon Jones. Music & video uses 1960’s technology for recording and taping this modern band with the stylings of early R&B. “Almost Aretha” is a pretty good compliment.

Virtual Airbus

Lookee here for some cool 360 degree pans of the interior of an A380 Airbus. Click on the left hand thumbnails for the interior views, then spin around and up and down. The only things missing are stewardesses in 1967 hot pants and boots, or 1967 day-glo miniskirts and boots:

Women as objects? Naw. Women in boots. They’d hit on you if you asked them for peanuts, spill coffee in your lap if you thought they were hitting on you. (Bunky was too young to understand it but old enough to appreciate it.)

[Panorama link from Growabrain, images via Dark Roasted Blend.]

Easy Home Cooking

This works, as long as the shovels weren’t first used for latrine duty.

Reminds me of hubcap grilles, clothes hanger toast, fish poached in a dishwasher, grilled cheese sandwiches ala steam iron, foil-wrapped stew on the exhaust manifold, BeanieWeenies-in-the-can on a hot plate, electric dryer bacon. (Okay, I made up the last one.)

I’ll have our crack team of webminers find links for the above concoctions asap (unless any of you wanna beat me to it in the comments section).

Saturday Matinee: Ken Nordine’s Word Jazz

Ken Nordine… the voice, the guy you’ve heard, but never knew it…

Best of Word Jazz is available on cd via Rhino Records. Ken Nordine’s late 1950’s and early ’60’s work is bizarre. Here’s Bunk’s review [from Amazon] a few years ago:

“Late at night, toss this into your cd player, press pause.

“Turn off the lights.

“Turn on the TV. Turn off the sound. Flip to channel 3…

“Static…

“Hit play attention…

“Ken Nordine is the comforting yet oddly disturbing voice in your head that you try to ignore, but can’t; he’s the Twilight Zone for your ears.”

But don’t take my word for it. The liner notes include this gem of a description:

“Ken Nordine, yea I know that guy. I heard his voice 1000 times, he’s the guy in the bus station that says “go ahead I’ll keep an eye on your stuff for you,” and you see him the next day walking around town wearing your clothes. He broadcasts from the boiler room of the Wilmont Hotel with 50,000 watts of power. I know that voice, he’s the guy with the pitchfork in your head saying go ahead and jump, and he’s the ambulance driver who tells you you’re going to pull thru. He’s the guy in the control tower who talked you down in a storm with a hole in your fuselage and both engines on fire. I heard him barking thru the Rose Alley Carnival strobe as samurai firemen were pulling hose. Yea he’s the dispatcher with the heart of gold, the only guy up this late on the suicide hotline. Ken Nordine is the real angel sitting on the wire in the tangled matrix of cobwebs that holds the whole attic together. Yea Ken Nordine, he’s the switchboard operator at the Taft Hotel, the only place in town you can get a drink at this hour. You know Ken Nordine, he’s the lite in the icebox, he’s the blacksmith on the anvil in your ear.” –Tom Waits, 1990

For some reason, I have this subtle urge to buy 501 Jeans…

Another One Bites the Ducks: Daily Awesome

Yeah, I know those are geese, not ducks. That’s not the point.
It appears that one of my favorite websites, Your Daily Awesome, has turned off its lights for good as of last Tuesday. In respectful memory, here are a handful of my favorite YDA posts, in shout-out fashion, and not in any particular order:

Animaris Rinoceros
Model Railroad Slums
Three Songs by Ledbelly
The Andy Kaufman YouTube Motherlode
The Picture of Everything
Koalas Aren’t Hard They Some Little Bitches
Hidden Messages in Leave It To Beaver
Mingering Mike
Ricky Jay & His Amazing Cards

Many others can be found in the archives. Thanks for all the awesome daily entertainment, Chas. Although I never met you, it still feels the same as if I never had. Here’s to last Wednesday’s yesterday, and we wish you well on your long road ahead.

Kiwis Rock: Largest Ball of Tape

“Two young Kiwis have put New Zealand on the world map by gaining a Guinness World Record for the world’s largest tape ball. The record tape ball weighs a staggering 53kgs and has a circumference of more than 2.5 metres.”

Even though “Mr. Tape Ball” weighs about 117 pounds, he won’t sit in a car seat and won’t “buckle-up.” Mr. TB has an attitude that I don’t like. Mr. TB doesn’t rock. He rolls, and if I had to stop suddenly, I wouldn’t want his 117 pounds of attitude jamming my temporal, parietal and occipital lobes out through my nose. In other words, don’t expect a ride from me, Mr. TB. I’ll give you a push in a downhill direction, but that’s it.

[Good God. I’ve lost it. I’m talking to a ball of Kiwi tape that I met on the internet, in the back seat of a car that I don’t own.]

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The only American entry, from Kent State University, weighed a mere 28 kegs, but was captured on camera as well: