Canned Hamm "Father and Son"

Let's take a moment to salute the end of an era. At the end of this month my Father will be retiring, leaving my brother, his Son, alone at the helm of the Howell Sears store.

Okay, done.

Rye Playland

The Whip at Rye Playland has a surprising violence. I have always considered the Whip to be a quintessential date ride. Tucked into a rolling love seat, the fairer sex is gently nudged into the protective underarm and side of the gentleman. Centrifical force is employed as an aid to increasing affection. Next stop, Tunnel of Love. The Whip at Knoebel's Grove and at Kennywood are prime examples of the amorous Whip.

The Whip at Rye Playland has other intentions. It attempts to destroy you. It attempts to use your body as a Kudgel to break your date into smaller pieces. It is the antithesis of love.

Pre-war amusement rides use a series of body blows to rough you up. More modern fare aims higher, causing severe head aches and sore necks.

Other violent older rides of note:
The Wild Mouse at Blackpool Pleasure Beach
The Hi Speed Thrill Coaster at Knoebel's Grove

Great Falls Paterson NJ

Have now visited a couple waterfalls around New Jersey. In Michigan, we didn't have waterfalls. Just "rapids." Nothing you couldn't guide a canoe through. Which reminds me that on my many visits to "Grand Rapids" Michigan, I never saw any such thing. Just saw a lot of disaffected white kids hanging around some crappy hotdog stand. In Philadelphia, I lived in "East Falls." No falls. Snuffed out long ago.

So, behold! The power of nature! Man's insignificance! The ever changing world! All that! Paterson uses abandoned industry as a place setting for its Falls. The American side of Niagara Falls without the Canadian side. A number of people sleeping, mid weekday, by the banks of the river.

Even I am not that lazy.

Seven Second Delay House Party

WFMU's Uncle Andy and Uncle Ken threw a house party. Above the door buzzer: "Lonely Hippie Party." This was not false advertising.

Irving is interviewed about 5 minutes in. I just missed: they went by age, and at 39, I was next in line when the show ended. Irving also scored the pinata and ate his own weight in cookies.

I love WFMU but this may have broken a standing rule against fraternizing with the enemy, or in my case fraternizing with the same side I am on. Fraternizing with my fraternity? The rule, when summarized, goes like this: Don't make friends with people based on their likes and dislikes. This rule has kept me from: donning the embroidered satin jacket of the American (Roller) Coaster Enthusiast club, attending Cheap Trick's Trickfest conventions, meeting any other Stay At Home Dads and in general prevented me from having any worthwhile conversations for the past seven years. And good riddance! What do I want with meeting a bunch of (like minded) comedy geeks (friends)!

Listen here. Or in the pop up player.

Chris Burden "What My Dad Gave Me"

Chris Burden may be well known for:

1. Having someone shoot him for a performance piece called "Shoot".

2. Creating the single greatest ever work of art, a dangling ton of rock and model train track called "Medusa's Head". This fact was confirmed by the independent critical analysis by myself and my brother Tim. Both analyses included the exclamation "Dude!"


Chris Burden pays homage to his engineer father with the title of his six story high erector set skyscraper. It stands near and echoes the shape of Rockefeller Center. I took young Irving way out of the way to see it, carrying him on my back across Midtown like a Silverback Ape. I got a little choked up telling him what the sculpture was called. We thought it was really cool and he asked if he could get build a smaller version of it with his own Erector set.



Thank you again, Chris Burden.

Mike Schmidt: The 40 year Old Boy Podcast

Mike Schmidt, unnecessarily angry comedian

We are undergoing what I would like to call the Third Golden Age of Comedy without defining the first two Golden Ages (maybe the "sick comedians of the 1960's- Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, etc and the everywhere a brick wall and a microphone boom of the 1980's) Please try to enjoy this Comedy Renaissance festival. The shear volume of great stand-up comedy going on right now may be unequaled. Todd Barry, Maria Bamford, Brian Regan, Patton Oswalt, The Sklar Brothers, an on and on.

The podcast format would seem to be perfect for comedy. Most ventures into it seem to be doing radio imitations or are poorly produced panel discussions. Of those to leap above the fray, Jimmy Pardo's Never Not Funny, which is kept on the rails by Pardo's unrelenting focus on comedic quality, and Mike Schmidt's The 40 Year Old Boy.

Schmidt approaches his podcast as a roughly 45 minute monologue- no guests, no music bed, just mano on microphono. He is a motormouth, spitting more words in a podcast than I utter in a week. He is unflinching honest, disturbingly so. Many of his topics can be boiled down to "Am I a good guy?" and frequently the answer is, not so much. He is your asshole friend, tons of fun but embarrassing in equal amounts.

David Byrne "Playing The Building"

Dropped in on David Byrne's Playing The Building installation in the old Battery Maritime Building in NYC on Saturday. There was plenty of stroller parking. It was free and we slogged over despite 100 degree heat that kept no one away. What this David Byrne fellow up to? Something ironic yet genuine? Arty but not alienating?

Intriguing concept- rigging up a building to an old organ to make it "play". Pipes become FLUTES. Radiators become CLANKY THINGS. Columns become metal things. Something somewhere becomes a LOUD ENGINE SOUND.

Listened to a endless line of hipsters play the same song on the building. All sounds from homemade instruments fall into three catagories: "tweet!", "thud!" and "crash!" also "ping!"

American Hamburger Club

"Drunk on the kind of applause / That gets louder the lower you sink"
Mark Eitzel with American Music Club from "Gratitude Walks"

The new Neil Hamburger ...Sings Country Greats mixes comedic country songs with a few covers, John Entwistle's suicidal "Thinkin' It Over" and American Music Club's "The Hula Maiden". While I could see Hamburger having a few solo Who 8 tracks piled up by his console stereo, his selection of "The Hula Maiden" shows a certain amount of self awareness. He admits he is not actually a just a struggling comedian doing a country album in a jokey "I can't sing" sing-song style but that he is a guy who could and would select and sing an obscure indie rock number from a very obscure release from quite a number of years back. This may be the first instance of Hamburger winking at the audience. We now know that he is also "in on the joke."

Neil Hamburger's lifetime of misery illuminates the song from the inside, it also submarines the Mark Eitzel sad clown image in a way that all the funny lyrics Eitzel has written couldn't do. But do we want Eitzel to remain a person and Hamburger a character? Can Neil Hamburger be taken solely as a humorous creation? I think a certain amount of empathy has to be formed. Aren't we rooting for him to pull it together and become a successful comedian? Because he can't sink any lower than he has.

Neil Hamburger also sounds a lot like Doc Dart throughout this disc and the more melodic leanings of the Crucifuck's Wisconsin album- a masterpiece. Doc Dart (nie 26) sings country greats is a concept I could get behind.

Neil Hamburger - The Hula Maiden mp3