Nirvana Unplugged--One of my favorite things

 

On this day in 1994 Nirvana released “MTV Unplugged in New York”

It is considered the greatest Unplugged ever made pic.twitter.com/iA6pymphBM

— 🎸 Rock History 🎸 (@historyrock_) November 1, 2024

I don't know if there is a single CD I got from Columbia Music House that I played more. I mean, I played Hole's "Live Through This" and NIN's "Pretty Hate Machine" a lot and some Tool also, but this one was special to me because it was issued so close to Cobain's unaliving and displayed Cobain's untapped range and what this whole band was capable of. 

I love the covers. To me, Nirvana's cover of "Man Who Sold the World" hits me better than Bowie's does in roughly the same way Guns'n'Roses' cover of "Live and Let Die" (and, to be honest, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door") give me more than the originals. The sheer haunting that is "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"!

This was that band. 

It was a mood in a way I don't think anything I ever heard before was. The songs were cultivated mood. The performance was an entire mood. 

I implore the children to hear it in the way I was cultivated to listen to the Doors and the Beatles. It is the good shit. You hear the good shit in your life one time, and it breaks you down and you can't accept the music that doesn't reach you that way ever again. You go and search "where is that good shit music"? 

You go and search your own Nirvanas, you beautiful rainbow children. But if your mom and dad came up on NKOTB and Britney Spears I do not know how to introduce so much funk into your life. 

I can point you to Black Sabbath, Genesis, the Commodores ("Night Shift" is CHURCH) and Lionel Richie. And Billy Joel. Mike McDonald. The good shit is out there. Billy Ocean. Sade. Public Emeny, The Clash and The Police. 

Metallica. Bonnie Raitt. The son of a bitchin' Rolling Stones.

The real-ass play from your heart vistas. I want you all to get it, experience it, know it. Blisters on the fingers. Blood on the stage. 

It even explains the life we are in. I am not making this up. It does. 

Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood"

I believe in better living through pop music and science fiction. Taylor Swift has a nice little song, but a big freaking video. You can mull over all the sf tropes, but also see where this pop song is working out how to detonate an ass-kicking musically.

I think Taylor Swift will be among the pioneers of pop weaponization. God if there is one have mercy on all our souls.

The Teeth of the Crocodile

So, I've been hearing about this krokodil drug that has now apparently hit the US--it rots people's flesh from the inside-out. This, right here, is how I know that I have no understanding of the addicted mindset. Because rotting from the inside out (or even the outside-in!) just seems like something that should be a sufficient deterrent to use. ("Hi, my name is Ivan and I'm going to be your pusher today. Can I interest you in some Krokodil? It has a high a lot like heroin but it's dirt cheap. Oh, and it could give you gangrenous abcesses that expose tendon and bone." "Um, gee, Ivan, I think I'm going to have to spend some more time with the menu. Do have anything good in meth?") I myself, I could never use something that gives you basically leprosy.

But that's just me. I remember those old anti-drug commercials where they used eggs as a demonstration:


That was dumb. You don't eat raw eggs, but fried eggs are delicious. It would make way more sense to say "This is a crackhead. This is a crackhead, on crack." And just show people how it really is. But today, we have "faces of meth" websites and people still use meth. And really, who do people get these drugs from? It's not like people never see people who been physically chewed up by the substances they use; it's like they just refuse to accept it personally. It can't happen to them, or, they feel like chasing the high is somehow worth the risk. But this particular drug? A flesh-eating drug? That's not a bad complexion day. That this is catching on is something of a horror to me, even beyond the Cannibal Bath Salt craze.

You might note I've opted to post a picture of actual crocodile teeth. You can look up pictures related to krokodil, the drug, if you like. I did. I'm kind of sorry about looking at them, though.

Do You Like Vampires and Movies? Kim Newman has Somethin' for ya.

I'm going to preface this by saying it does help a little if you are already a reader of Kim Newman's awesome takes on the supernatural, vampires, and alternate history through his other "Anno Dracula" tales and maybe his Diogenes Club stories as well (You guys! What I'm technically saying is you might like everything he writes!) But if you like movies and tv, and genre fiction--if you like subtle name-dropping and pastiche, if you like fast-paced stories and a developed fictional alternate history--and if you reaaaalllly dig vampires?

Oh, baby--this is for you. Because Newman covers the last quarter of the 20th century Hollywood style with some fangs for the memories, looking back through a cinematic lens while developing a story that will entertain as it chills. In it, the young get of Dracula slogs his way from the slums of Transylvania to the Hollywood stars, and there's no stopping him--or is there?

Well, you just have to read to see, and maybe you, too, will be aware of "the horror". I don't want to give away too much of the episodic doings that bring together characters from Anno Dracula novels past and some of the fixtures of moviedom's firmament, but it's good old fashioned disturbing social satire and art crit fun.

Truly Dumb-ass Story of the Week: London 2012 Olympics Logo Spells...Zion?

This is one of those "LOL--whut?" sort of stories. I just recently came across this news item, and what the, I don't even....oh just look here:

Iran claims London 2012 Olympics logo spells the word 'Zion

'Almost four years after the logo's launch, Tehran threatens to boycott the Games unless the design is changed



Iran has threatened to boycott the London Olympics unless the organisers replace the official logo, which Tehran claims spells out the word "Zion".

The logo, a jagged representation of the year 2012, has been said by its critics to resemble many things, from a swastika to a sexual act, but the Iranian government argues it represents a veiled pro-Israeli conspiracy.

In a formal complaint to the International Olympic Committee, Tehran has called for the graphic to be replaced and its designers "confronted", warning that Iranian athletes might otherwise be ordered to stay away from the London Games.

Well, sure, because: Iran. But seriously--why would London go out of their way to promote Zionism in their Olympics Logo? Because, duh, if there was conspiracy afoot, you wouldn't want to broadcast it in code in a commercial logo. C'mon. You'd keep it on the downlow. But the real surprise is people who saw the logo as depicting a sex act--which I totally didn't see until reading that some people were interpreting it a depicting a sex act.

But now? I can't not see it. Thanks, dirty-minded people.

Anyway, if we're playing "logo-Rorschach", I see it as resembling one of those doodles of a sample band-logo that a tween paints  in White-out on the front of her binder, colored in with highlighter pen. Sort of like this:

So actually--um, no. The UK isn't secretly being run by the Elders of Zion or whatever. It is being run by 13-year old girls from the '80's. So there.

More miserable earworm t.v. themes--

Seems I must have mentally blocked-out a few!



Did you know that you can sing the lyrics to Gilligans Island to the song "Ghost Riders in the Sky"? Go ahead, try it. Now that you know that, your brain won't ever stop trying to do that. You're welcome. Also, almost all Emily Dickinson poems fit "The Yellow Rose of Texas". (You know you want to--"I like to see it lap the miles and lick the valleys up...." I learned that from the post-WKRP Howard Hesseman show Head of the Class.)

Oh--here's a song I had in my head like, a couple weeks ago:



Someone brought up the show Small Wonder in conversation at work because we have a co-worker named Vicki. The theme is so weirdly retro and Lawrence-Welk-ish to be matched with a show whose premise was basically that artificial intelligence in the form of a small girl could eventually pass a Turing test. I don't think the show ever really acknowledged that the idea of a very life-like small child was kind of creepy in an "uncanny valley" kind of way. Also, the idea of a super-strong child-like intelligence was usually used to accentuate the ironic physical strength of a robotic construct diguised as a child for comedic purposes, while more fascinating questions regarding what really is a sentient being were left unsatisfactorally answered--also, Vicky usually wore the same dress all the time. That's very like a robot, especially if she never had BO. A dead giveaway, if you ask me.



What is worse than having the TMNT theme in your head?

I'll tell you what--you could have Oshikuru in your head. "Oh oh oh oh--Oshikuru!" Yeah. You can't unhear that. That isn't even a real theme song to a real show. Damn you, Two and a Half Men! Damn your stupid souls to hell!


Oh, this video leads to a whole jukebox--


I Dream of Jeannie is not a rerun I often watch--but I've had it stuck in my head after watching "Ferris Bueller" (which is the first movie in which I ever saw Charlie Sheen, who is in Two and A Half Men--he's at the end, as a juvenile delinquent who the Jennifer Grey character meets in the police station. Everything flows. Everything.) I like this link because it leads to some eighties-ishness.

Okay--next thing I post is retro, and well, this is the words to the Andy Griffith Show:



You can't unhear that, either. Again, you're welcome. Isn't that better than just whistling? And won't that be stuck in your head, too?



A lot of my generation drifted aimlessly through life, taking drugs, binge-drinking, never really fitting in anywhere. It's because of Saturday morning programming, and stuff like this in our heads. Will Ferrell is a very talented comedian who nonetheless felt compelled to do movies based on Bewitched and Land of the Lost. Both movies sucked--I blame the brainwashing from the evil movie themes.

For what it's worth, I'm glad I don't have access to the Star Trek Theme with words. That would probably wreck me.