Saturday Matinee – Sand Castle, Whistling and Harpo Marx

The Sand Castle, 1977, Co Hoedeman [via].

Loud, piercing and sharp… a whistle is hard to ignore. But whistling languages are in danger of dying out. But residents of Kusköy on the Black Sea coast still communicate by whistling.An ee sounds higher than an ah. Consonants are distinguished by changes in pitch over different intervals of time. Eskimos communicate with whistles; so do indigenous people in the Amazon, and in Europe shepherds keep boredom at bay and communicate by whistling to each other. But the world’s 70 whistling languages are slowly becoming extinct. Kusköy in Turkey is defending the tradition.

[Found here.]

And because last night was a full moon, with a partial penumbral eclipse that no one noticed, we have these:

Dub Side Of The Moon

Jazz Side Of The Moon

David Gilmore’s acoustic version of “Breathe”

Nat King Cole’s version of “Blue Moon,” and this:

I’m not sure if Harpo was self-taught, but I know that some items in his Wikipedia entry are contradicted by Groucho’s Autobiography. The story I recall (that means “I seem to remember but I’m too lazy to research it”): there was a dispute with a theater owner where the brothers were perfoming. Harpo was pissed, said he hoped the place burned down. It did, and Harpo vowed never to speak on stage again. I don’t know if it’s true, but I recall (again, that means “I seem to remember but I’m too lazy to research it”) that’s what Groucho claimed.

Have a great weekend, folks.

Bunk

Hot Links Seeping From The Basement Floor

Robyn Anderson

Bizarre illustrations by Gustave Doré from The Mythology Of The Rhine And The Stories Of The Grandmother, 1863.

Grammar Crackers.

On 6 September 2013, NASA unintentionally launched a frog. True.

Kiwis replumb a friend’s house with beer. Pure awesome prank, even though it was promoted by these guys.
(Tip of teh tarboosh to SH.)

Tiny Cupcakes and Pies is very cool [via].

Some folks on Reddit liked our 2009 post on the timeless brilliance of Milton Friedman.

The Grimm Brothers. Nasty stories.

This Lady looks familiar.

Interview with Robyn Adele Anderson, vocalist for Post Modern Jukebox, and featured in the .gif animation above. Pure awesome.

Saturday Matinee – Post Modern Jukebox, Jason D. Williams, and a WTF

Awesome Retro Cover of Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” and it beats the hell out of the original. Post Modern Jukebox is amazing, and that song is dedicated to Calo who’s having some tough times. Get well, Suki.

Jason D. Williams cranks boogiewoogie piano and feeds the ghost of Jerry Lee Lewis.

It can almost outrun a human, but humans get tired. This thing doesn’t.

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow for more of the usual awesome.

Saturday Matinee – Serious Beer Taps, JesiErin, Santana & Benson,

Pure brilliance. Watch the vid first, because there’s more info about it below. Cheers!

JesiErin is a one-girl a capella doo-wop group from Huntington Beach, California, and the dubbing, both audio and video are top notch. Here’s her take on The Cascades1962 hit.


George Benson & Carlos Santana on “The Midnight Special” in 1976 playing Benson’s “Breezin’.”

The beer-plumbing prank video was filmed in NZ and sponsored by Tui Beer as stealth advertising, yet it was a genuine prank by a bunch of friends of the “victim.” Some folks on Reddit busted it as an advert (the comments are funny) and it’s still an awesome prank.

Word on the street is that Aussies and Kiwis don’t bother with Foster’s (it’s for tourists and export) but there are unwritten rules about which beer you order, and it varies by region. They have beer allegiances (like rabid sports fans do with teams in the US) so if you order the wrong one in the wrong place, you may be headed for trouble. A credible source told me that if you go to Oz, order Toohey’s and you may avoid a situation like this.

Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Pink Cadillac Babe Magnet

Pink Cadillac

What’s in the trunk? Pure rock and roll.

Rock and Roll

Note that they’re not just grabbing necks and posing. They’re playing chords with awesome electric axes. If anyone knows who they are, lemme know and give us a iink. We’ll give you credit in an update.

[Found here.]

Learn To Fly On Two Wheels

Learn To Fly Here

Image found here, along with insane videos of the rocket bike. Pure Darwin Award material, and perhaps a message to a certain Fledgeling Commander In Chief.

Saturday Matinee – Retro Ads, Stray Cats & The Sadies

Classic car commercial clips [via].

How can we possibly top that?

Yep. There’s more Rockabilly in the first 02:30 than you can shake a dead rockin’ cat at. The Stray Cats were awesome. Where do we go from here? Oh wait. I got it.

The Sadies give tribute to Big Daddy Roth and the classic “Live Fast, Die Young, Leave A Good Looking Corpse” nihilistic absurdity.

Have a great weekend, folks. We’ll be back tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Lovin’ Spoonful, Temptations & WSS

Kinda hot here the past few days, and with some unusual humidity for Bunkville, I had to turn off the a/c occasionally on a 2-hour commute just to let it de-ice. While we’re waiting for Dear President to start pushing the Affordable Air Conditioning Act, let’s spin some tunes that are too hot to handle and too cold to hold on The Saturday Matinee.

The Lovin’ Spoonful in September 1966. A few years after that song came out I discovered that John Sebastian wasn’t black, yet he had soul.

The Temptations were great, and this is one of their greatest: “I Wish It Would Rain.” According to Wiki, it was originally released as a B side to a Melvin Franklin song on Motown Records in 1967 and made it to No. 4 on Billboard’s Top 100 the following year. [The songwriter, Roger Penzabene, was distraught after finding that his wife had been cheating on him and offed himself a week after the song’s release.]

Let’s cool off with this classic. It’s got subtitles, too.

Yep, real cool, except for the pirouettes. Have a great 3-day weekend, folks.

The .Gif Friday Post No.295 – Disgruntled FAIL, 4WD Roll WIN & Steampunk Surveillance

Disgruntled

Jeep Roll WIN

Steampunk Surveillance

[Found here, here and here.]

Retro Green Beer Delivery

1958 Chevy Apache

Steam Whistle, arguably Canada’s greenest brewery, has added a custom-built, eco-friendly vintage ride to its delivery fleet. Called Retro Electro, this green machine started life as a 1958 Chevy Apache truck. Steam Whistle retrofitted it with an AC motor capable of cranking out 465 pound-feet of torque, which is on par with the power output of gas-guzzling muscle cars, yet the Retro Electro is emissions-free as it’s Bullfrogpowered with electricity generated by wind turbines. [via]

I’ll refrain from cranking on the insults to “gas-guzzling muscle cars” but that photo is awesome. [Found here.]