Geek News and Musings

No One Wants to Play Sega with Harrison Ford
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger. Artist Brandon Bird’s website has many pleasures, including the lovely piece above these words, “No One Wants to Play Sega with Harrison Ford.” I really wish this painting were mine. I’m so jealous of whoever owns it. A pity that all the prints are sold out, too. Maybe if enough people email him and want them, he’ll do a new edition! Are you listening Brandon? Do not miss the “Letters to Walken” section of his site documenting an art project of Bird’s that saw school children writing their annual Christmas letters to … Christopher Walken. Thanks Lenora Claire!

Off-Kilter Japanese Cult TV show “Oh! Mikey”
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger. Once a part of the wonderfully named “Vermilion Pleasure Night,” a sort of Japanese version of “Adult Swim,” “Oh! Mikey” is a bizarre comedy show cast entirely with widely grinning, frozen-faced mannequins. Each approximately two-minute episode of “Oh! Mikey” is about an American family living in Japan. It often doesn’t make a lot of sense (in that good Japanese way of not making any sense) and most episodes end with the characters laughing hysterically whether something funny is happening or not. Lately “Oh! Mikey” has been airing on the G4 network as part of their “G4 Late Night Peep Show” line-up. Oh! Mikey USA site Original Japanese clip “Oh! Mikey Fever” Thanks Lenora Claire!

Brother Theodore on David Letterman
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger I’m not sure this story is an actual anecdote or just a meandering way of introducing an amazing YouTube clip, but here goes nuthin’ : Fruitatarian, almost a raw foodist, years before this was common. What influenced my twelve year-old mind to do something like this was an obscure book I found in the local library called “The Mucusless Diet Healing System” by Dr. Arnold Ehret. I won’t go into the details of the diet, which extols the value of avoiding “mucus” and “pus” in your food –sounds like an admirable goal, right?– but suffice to say that while Dr Ehret’s work still has many followers –he’s thought of as the founder of Naturopathy — some diet experts consider him a total quack. But I am not here to debate the merits of his ideas, pro or con, merely to offer some brief context before I send you off to read this short essay, The Definitive Cure of Chronic Constipation. Okay? You got that? At the very least skim it. The language he uses is quite distinctive isn’t it? The total disgust he expresses about the digestive system is almost Nietzschean in its peculiar character. The absolutist tone must’ve contributed greatly to my pre-teen interest in the diet. Now flash-forward to the late 1990s, New York City. I had become friends with the then 91 year old Theodore Gottlieb, better-known as the infamous dark comedian Brother Theodore, a big influence on Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch and Spaulding Gray, who had been performing his totally insane one-man show at the tiny 13th Street Theater for ages and was a frequent guest on David Letterman’s show during the 1980s. No exaggeration to say that Theodore had been around forever. He was delivering lines like “The only thing that keeps me alive is the hope of dying young” long before I was born. What was a great gag when he was, say, 50 years old, and then to STILL be delivering a line like that at the age of 93, as he did on my UK television series, well that existential tension is what made his nonagenarian performances so incredibly spell-binding. The show was in the form of a stern lecture. It was impossible to tell if this was an act you were seeing or if he was utterly batshit crazy, a berserk “genius” impervious to the laughter as long as an audience bought tickets. The props were a chair, a table, a chalk board and a stryrofoam cup. There was a single spotlight. If you were anywhere near the stage in that little theater he could totally scare the shit out of you. Of course, whenever I brought friends, I took them right down the front! It was an act, I can assure you. Theodore in real life was a mellow old bohemian guy who lived several lives in his 94 years. He’d been in Dachau and he’d also been on Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and most famously on Late Night with David Letterman. He was in “The Burbs” playing Tom Hank’s great uncle and was the voice of Gollum in “The Hobbit” cartoon. He had a cameo in Orson Welles’ “The Stranger.” Theodore was an old Beatnik, that’s the way I saw him. (He was even in a porno movie! An X-rated parody of “Jaws” called “Gums.” Theo plays the boat captain, in a thankfully non-balling role. In “Gums” he is seen, rather inexplicably, wearing a Nazi uniform for most of the film). In his nineties he was dating a woman in her mid-forties. He rode a bike around New York City until he was late in his eighties. He really wasn’t anything like his crazed monk act in real life, though. And let me tell you, when you are in your thirties and have a friend who is in their nineties… you learn things about life. Not all of them good, either. 94-years is a long time to live. Too long, if you ask me. I’m quite sure he felt that way, too. Theodore apparently had great difficulty memorizing lines, even his own material and so he only really ever did two major monologues –he’d switch off between them when he felt like it– for over 40 years. One was called “Foodism” -we’ll get to this one in a minute and the other was called “Quadrupidism” where he’d extol the virtues of human beings getting down on all fours. One day I was visiting Theodore at his apartment and I was looking at his sparse book shelf. On it sat “The Confessions of Aleister Crowley,” Baudelaire’s “Les Fleur du Mal,” an Edgar Alan Poe anthology, The Portable Nietzsche, St Augustine, and… ta da… “The Mucusless Diet Healing System” by Dr Arnold Ehret. I remarked to him that I myself was a pre-teen adherent to Arnold Ehret’s ideas about diet and he replied that it was the inspiration for his “Foodism” monologue. “I merely exaggerated his writings. Just slightly. That was all it took!” My jaw hit the ground. He’d managed to craft one of the most brilliant comic monologues of all time based on Ehret’s zany diet-sprach. I was awestruck at how amazing this revelation really was. I mean… how creative!! You read that essay about constipation, right? Promise me? Now go watch this extended excerpt from “Foodism” performed on Letterman in the mid-80s. A Secret Noodle Ring in Minnesota New York Times obituary for Theodore Gottlieb Brother Theodore is Dead by Nick Mamatas Brother Theodore by Jon Kalish (the “TV producer” referred to here is probably me) A radio tribute to Brother Theodore on WNYC’s “The No Show” Tears from a Glass Eye… with a Tongue of Madness! (Brother Theodore record) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (on the Theodore documentary) To My Great Chagrin (Brother Theodore documentary) Note that there are several torrents of Brother Theodore performances out there on the Interwebs.

Brother Theodore on David Letterman
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger I’m not sure this story is an actual anecdote or just a meandering way of introducing an amazing YouTube clip, but here goes nuthin’ : As a lad growing up in Wheeling, WV in the 1970s, at approximately the age of twelve, I decided that I was NOT going to eat the food I was being served by my parents any more. In a home where greasy pan-fried hamburgers (or “Steakums”) and Kraft macaroni and cheese were the normal dinner fare, I simply wanted to eat healthier. My parents were not very happy about this this demand –for that is what it was– but what could they do? However, the severity of my new diet must have really taken them by surprise. I became, pretty much a Fruitatarian, almost a raw foodist, years before this was common. What influenced my twelve year-old mind to do something like this was an obscure book I found in the local library called “The Mucusless Diet Healing System” by Dr. Arnold Ehret. I won’t go into the details of the diet, which extols the value of avoiding “mucus” and “pus” in your food –sounds like an admirable goal, right?– but suffice to say that while Dr Ehret’s work still has many followers –he’s thought of as the founder of Naturopathy — some diet experts consider him a total quack. But I am not here to debate the merits of his ideas, pro or con, merely to offer some brief context before I send you off to read this short essay, The Definitive Cure of Chronic Constipation. Okay? You got that? At the very least skim it. The language he uses is quite distinctive isn’t it? The total disgust he expresses about the digestive system is almost Nietzschean in its peculiar character. The absolutist tone must’ve contributed greatly to my pre-teen interest in the diet. Now flash-forward to the late 1990s, New York City. I had become friends with the then 91 year old Theodore Gottlieb, better-known as the infamous dark comedian Brother Theodore, a big influence on Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch and Spaulding Gray, who had been performing his totally insane one-man show at the tiny 13th Street Theater for ages and was a frequent guest on David Letterman’s show during the 1980s. No exaggeration to say that Theodore had been around forever. He was delivering lines like “The only hope I have is of dying young” long before I was born. What was a great gag when he was, say, 50 years old, and then to STILL be delivering a line like that at the age of 93, as he did on my UK television series, well that existential tension is what made his nonagenarian performances so incredibly spell-binding. The show was in the form of a stern lecture. It was impossible to tell if this was an act you were seeing or if he was utterly batshit crazy, a berserk “genius” impervious to the laughter as long as an audience bought tickets. The props were a chair, a table, a chalk board and a stryrofoam cup. There was a single spotlight. If you were anywhere near the stage in that little theater he could totally scare the shit out of you. Of course, whenever I brought friends, I took them right down the front! It was an act, I can assure you. Theodore in real life was a mellow old bohemian guy who lived several lives in his 94 years. He’d been in Dauchau and he’d also been on Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and most famously on Late Night with David Letterman. He was in “The Burbs” playing Tom Hank’s great uncle and was the voice of Gollum in “The Hobbit” cartoon. He had a cameo in Orson Welles’ “The Stranger.” Theodore was an old Beatnik, that’s the way I saw him. (He was even in a porno movie! An X-rated parody of “Jaws” called “Gums.” Theo plays the boat captain, in a thankfully non-balling role. In “Gums” he is seen, rather inexplicably, wearing a Nazi uniform for most of the film). In his nineties he was dating a woman in her mid-forties. He rode a bike around New York City until he was late in his eighties. He really wasn’t anything like his crazed monk act in real life, though. And let me tell you, when you are in your thirties and have a friend who is in their nineties… you learn things about life. Not all of them good, either. 94-years is a long time to live. Too long, if you ask me. I’m quite sure he felt that way, too. Theodore apparently had great difficulty memorizing lines, even his own material and so he only really ever did two major monologues –he’d switch off between them when he felt like it– for over 40 years. One was called “Foodism” -we’ll get to this one in a minute and the other was called “Quadrupidism” where he’d extol the virtues of human beings getting down on all fours. One day I was visiting Theodore at his apartment and I was looking at his sparse book shelf. On it sat “The Confessions of Aleister Crowley,” Baudelaire’s “Les Fleur du Mal,” an Edgar Alan Poe anthology, The Portable Nietzsche, St Augustine, and… ta da… “The Mucusless Diet Healing System” by Dr Arnold Ehret. I remarked to him that I myself was a pre-teen adherent to Arnold Ehret’s ideas about diet and he replied that it was the inspiration for his “Foodism” monologue. “I merely exaggerated his writings. Just slightly. That was all it took!” My jaw hit the ground. He’d managed to craft one of the most brilliant comic monologues of all time based on Ehret’s zany diet-sprach. I was awestruck at how amazing this revelation really was. I mean… how creative!! You read that essay about constipation, right? Promise me? Now go watch this extended excerpt from “Foodism” performed on Letterman in the mid-80s. A Secret Noodle Ring in Minnesota New York Times obituary for Theodore Gottlieb Brother Theodore is Dead by Nick Mamatas Brother Theodore by Jon Kalish (the “TV producer” referred to here is probably me) A radio tribute to Brother Theodore on WNYC’s “The No Show” Tears from a Glass Eye… with a Tongue of Madness! (Brother Theodore record) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (on the Theodore documentary) To My Great Chagrin (Brother Theodore documentary) Note that there are several torrents of Brother Theodore performances out there on the Interwebs.

Preposterous AIG TV Commercials Found!
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Try this shit on for size: Next, the inevitable remix! Thanks Russ Gooberman!

Fake Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Have you ever been walking around a 99 Cents store and seen a bottle of cheap cologne with a sticker on the box that reads: “If you like “Calvin” you’ll love “Kevin!”? Apparently the same sort of thing applied to crooner/goofball double acts in the 1950s. Ladies and gentlemen, meet ersatz Martin and Lewis, Sammy Petrillo and ‘Duke’ Mitchell. There is not very much information about these guys online, but these four links, to the Wikipedia entries for Sammy Petrillo, Duke Mitchell, an interview with Sammy Petrillo, and an interview with “Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla” director Herman Cohen are probably all you’ll need. Thanks Tara McGinley!

Kenneth Anger’s “Mouse Heaven”
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Kenneth Anger’s creepy/funny homage to Mickey Mouse:

Darkly Surreal UK Comedy Masterpiece “Jam”
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Reclusive British comedy genius Chris Morris came out with his darkly surreal masterpiece of weirdness, “Jam” (based on his “Blue Jam” radio show) in 2000, but sadly because of expensive music rights issues, “Jam” has seldom been seen outside of the UK. This is a shame, because “Jam” is a uniquely…um… well… ah…hmmm… I hesitate to call it “comedy” because it’s so odd and disturbing, but if I called it “David Lynchian” comedy, we’d be in the right ball park at least. “Jam” is like a bad –make that very bad– acid trip played for laughs. Take a look at one of the show opens:

Not exactly “funny ha ha” stuff. In fact, there’s nary a traditional “joke” in the entire series. There are six episodes of “Jam” and although I’d classify myself as a huge fan of the show, six episodes of something like this is plenty!! The style would’ve become a creative dead end. But a great talent like Chris Morris wasn’t to repeat himself anyway –his next project, the wonderfully vicious satire of dotcom dickheads, “Nathan Barley” was quite a shift away from the brooding psychopathy of “Jam.” I eagerly await his feature comedy debut, rumored to be about Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers.

This is one of my favorite “Jam” moments, “Mister Lizard” featuring the always brilliant actor, Mark Heap –he’s in tons of stuff– as a creepy television repairman.

Here’s another great “Jam” clip with another UK comedy auteur, Julia Davis, creator of the “wheelchair Gothic” classic, “Nighty Night” as a particularly stupid woman:

Darkly Surreal UK Comedy Masterpiece “Jam”
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger

Reclusive British comedy genius Chris Morris came out with his darkly surreal masterpiece of weirdness, “Jam” (based on his “Blue Jam” radio show) in 2000, but sadly because of expensive music rights issues, “Jam” has seldom been seen outside of the UK. This is a shame, because “Jam” is a uniquely…um… well… ah…hmmm… I hesitate to call it “comedy” because it’s so odd and disturbing, but if I called it “David Lynchian” comedy, we’d be in the right ball park at least. “Jam” is like a bad –make that very bad– acid trip played for laughs. Take a look at one of the show opens:

Not exactly “funny ha ha” stuff. In fact, there’s nary a traditional “joke” in the entire series. There are six episodes of “Jam” and although I’d classify myself as a huge fan of the show, six episodes of something like this is plenty!! The style would’ve become a creative dead end. But a great talent like Chris Morris wasn’t to repeat himself anyway –his next project, the wonderfully vicious satire of dotcom dickheads, “Nathan Barley” was quite a shift away from the brooding psychopathy of “Jam.” I eagerly await his feature comedy debut, rumored to be about Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers.

This is one of my favorite “Jam” moments, “Mister Lizard” featuring the always brilliant actor, Mark Heap –he’s in tons of stuff– as a creepy television repairman.

Here’s another great “Jam” clip with another UK comedy auteur, Julia Davis, creator of the “wheelchair Gothic” classic, “Nighty Night” as a particularly stupid woman:

Charles Hugh Smith: “Survival+” e-book serialized at Of Two Minds
Richard Metzger is Boing Boing’s current guest blogger Soon, I’ll be taping an interview with Charles Hugh Smith and posting it here at Boing Boing. In the meantime, Charles has posted Chapter 2 of his new (free) e-book, “Survival+” at his Of Two Minds blog, which I encourage you all to visit daily. Many of you reading this are starting to wonder what society will look like: in a few months, a year from now, five years from now and Charles Hugh Smith is an indispensable thinker and tour guide for what we should be preparing for. I believe that he’s one of the sharpest, smartest –and sanest– writers around today, and I enjoy batting ideas around with him corresponding over email, some of which makes it into his more informal columns. I’m pleased and grateful to have a forum here at Boing Boing where I can help promote his work. Some recent Charles Hugh Smith essays: Survival+ Chapter 1 The Dematerialization of America The Return of Big Government and the (de facto) Welfare State Has Capitalism Failed? The Road to National Insolvency What’s Obvious III: Some Transformations Will Be Positive End of An Era: What’s Not Coming Back Of Two Minds: An Interview with Charles Hugh Smith

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