The Internets are a wealth of information.
For you burgeoning medical students… an introduction to Gummi Bear Surgery!
“The wealthier Gummi Bears can afford to buy up spare parts from other bears down on their luck. This green bear has managed to amass an incredible collection of bodies from some of the finest athletes in the land.” – Fungus Amungus
Dear Younger Self,
How are you? I am fine. What’s the big idea… taking all the ideas before I could do some writing, too?!!
Sincerely,
Sort of Present-Day Self
Okay, so you’re never going to get something as badass as the Marty McFly’s Matel skimmer you saw in Back to the Future, but if you had access to polished hardwood floors, a large piece of plywood, vinyl, an air pump, and a small British man, you could still have a pretty good time!
From The Gadget Show…
For anyone that read write-ups in the old days of Montag, when it was a hard copy zine: you might remember reviews and a travelogue about the boys from an excellent Southern Cali band called Withdrawal. For those who haven’t, you can still get acquainted.
Brothers Jared and Ryan Rushton, and fellow bandmate Nanda, have formed a new project called Of Course, Monolith. Though only one song is currently available to sample on their MySpace page, check out former tracks from Withdrawal, and the fellas’ intervening project, Deal by Dusk, as they don’t depart too drastically, though Of Course, Monolith’s new track is more mellow. As you listen, Jared warns, “go easy on the vocals.”
Kidding… Merry Christmas y’all.
Behold! The Family Tree. Though we may be modest about most of the holiday traditions (except the feast), this is our one true excess. It takes hours to assemble and we’ve stopped trying to fit all of the ornaments on the tree after some were lost in the Great Tree Collapse of 2008, including the beloved ceramic Ginger Peg Leg and giant red “Place Your Saying Here” ornament my Grandpa got from the bank when he worked there.
An old track from Moby, “Run On.” It was later covered by Johnny Cash, an American Idol contestant, and others.
My fellow rabid music fans… are you new to the concept of the mp3 blog? Those blessed little mini-zine styled publicity machines for the various obscure performer. Recommended of late: Fingertips. Why? At long last! It’s nice bit of variety, and scores considerable bonus points for being free of nauseating degrees of coverage of bands like Grizzly Bear and Spoon. Not that they’re not good… it’s just that they’re overshadowing the loads of great music coming out these days.
And there is still stuff that can move you… you just have to know where to look. Sometimes, they’re hard to find.
From Sketchy Santas…
This is when it is okay to tell your children that Santa isn’t real so they sleep at night and quit checking under the bed.
While you may find an exhausting supply of “Best of” lists as 2009 and the “Aughts” decade comes to a close, the Pew Research Center has taken the alternative route: bleak news just in time for the holiday and impending new decade! The title of the report alone says it all: Public Looks Back at Worst Decade in 50 Years.
I suggested to The Other AC that this was perhaps an overstatement… especially considering the massive disappointments in the 80s… namely anything with Regean and Thatcher attached. He might have rightly countered this with the observation that, although there were many downsides to the decade (and we’re talking about more than the pop culture context, of course!), there were also some of the most memorably positive moments, especially with the decade-ending dismantling of the Berlin Wall (the anniversary of which was last month!). The kind of things that for a moment, makes you glad to be a part of humanity. It’s hard to search for similar bright spots in the 2009, muddled as it is in corruption, arrogance, fear, and triviality. Even the groundbreaking election of Barack Obama and shifts of political power in the United States has failed to match much of the expectations for better things.
My favorite part of the data is that, among the social and technological changes respondents were asked to rate, “More people getting tattoos” was included. Hmm….
Nonetheless, people seem optimistic about 2010. Perhaps the ticker starting on a new decade feels like wiping the slate clean.
Like most everyone else in the District this weekend, I too took pictures of the second snow fall of the year, and hopefully the worst one we get. It may be a long winter. Though parties were canceled and I was trapped indoors, it wasn’t all bad news; we still had a day off from work as the feds closed shop. Still, I can’t wait to touch down in a tropical climate this holiday season.
Lola Carolla… before the excavation.
