We've Got To Stop Talking About TMNT on CBB

(CBBWorld) Since they put all kindsa stuff up on their new subscription service I have actually not heard any new episodes of Comedy Bang Bang because I have been binging old parallel shows I missed, including the amazing mini-series Seth Morris Radio Project, and most significantly, this magnificent Sean Diston/Scott Aukerman two hander about ninja obsessive Sprague schooling Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle virgin Scott on the history of turtles, watching and drinking in a different movie or cartoon or DTV release each week. The theme song is superb, the source material is absurd, and the chemistry is great. I have actually never watched any of these movies, and perhaps never will, but grew too understand and respect the IP, was always entertained, and learned a lot of lore. The best is when guests come in and either have true Turtles history themselves (Michael Ian Black should be heard and not spoiled) or are deep, deep fans (the Orphan Black-tress became almost aroused recalling her childhood connections with the characters and could remember every sound effect in certain scenes). So good! The follow up show has them watching iconic hit movies Scott has never seen and I am only interested if I care deeply about the movie, while this one was great even with no interest whatsoever in Donatello doing machines.

Shirts

 

(Stores) I like wearing shirts, but it's also kind of freeing to take a shirt off. So I also like no shirts.

Cookie Crisp

(General Mills) Kinda bad in certain ways (the crispness makes it seem kinda stale, for example), but definitely does taste pretty good in a bowl of milk. Cookies for breakfast indeed, respect for the cookie wolves, crooks, dogs, and cops who have kept this legacy alive.

Pom Wonderful

(www.pomwonderful.com) Unless you are riddled with crippling oxidants or are a millionaire it is hard to justify the insane price of this somewhat tasty (but not 31 cents an ounce tasty) beverage.

The Cool School (edited by Glenn O'Brien)

 

(Library of America, 2013) As the ringmaster of the greatest assemblage of freaks, geniuses, and superstars in public access television history, Glenn O'Brien knows cool, so having him assemble a collection of essays, excerpts, lyrics, jokes, and manifestos by the ultimate A-list of jazzbos, bats, comics, punks, painters, poets, and oddball outsiders was a slam dunk. I spent a year savoring this, reading Miles' impressions of Bird one day, Lenny Bruce's catalogue of drug use a week later, Henry Miller recollections of sabotaging a posh dinner party when the mood hit me, Joyce Johnson's bad boyfriend tales of Kerouac later on, and Del CLose's hipster dictionary when I got around to it. Sad to have finished this collection, as I feel way less cool without this on my nightstand.

Those Shaggs “Philosophy Of The World”

(LIGHT IN THE ATTIC, 2021)

GUEST REVIEW BY GARY PIG GOLD

 

On the driz-laden afternoon of March 9, 1969, three guitar-and-drum beating sisters from tiny Fremont, NH entered an even tinier recording studio and emerged, just a few hours later, with a dozen original rock ‘n’ roll songs on some quarter-inch tape. These twelve songs were then pressed onto one thousand long-playing records, nine hundred of which immediately vanished forever off the face of the Earth. Within a year however, no less an authority than Frank Zappa declared this album, prophetically entitled Philosophy Of The World, to be “better than the Beatles,” and a decade after that the similarly inclined visionaries in NRBQ re-pressed Philosophy briefly on their very own Red Rooster label.  

 

Now then, if you’ve already grabbed either of these scarcer-than-rare items, then you’re undoubtedly already a complete convert …or at least a collector with mighty deep connections and/or pockets. But for those thousands upon untold thousands of unfortunates out there who have not yet come face-to-foot with The Shaggs, why, Now’s Your Chance! For Philosophy Of The World, with all of its original 1969 mix, sequence and even cover art lovingly intact, has been made available once again courtesy of the fine folk over at Light In The Attic.  

 

It is, believe you me, the greatest album you may never have heard.

 

From its opening title track (so lyrically brilliant that there’s a knee-deep moral lesson packed into each and every stanza!) through its garage-brand benediction (“We Have A Savior”) thirty-one ear-boggling minutes later, Philosophy is absolutely brimming with the sort of decorum-be-dumped bash ‘n’ popping that such supposed heirs-to-the-genre as Half Japanese and even them Replacements couldn’t ever come within a million notes of emulating. And how could they …or anyone else for that matter? For The Shaggs, as their daddy-slash-producer-slash-drill sergeant Austin Wiggin, Jr. wrote at the time, “are real, pure, and unaffected by outside influences. Their music is  different; it is theirs alone.” Indeed.  

 

Sure, a cursory half-listen suggests only a trio of inept-at-best gals trying to differentiate their fingers from their toes, musically speaking that is. Yet a closer examination reveals some fiercely detailed and all-the-way-downright ingenious compositional skills beneath all of the Neanderthal strum und drumming (for example, one should hear how flawlessly Dorothy Wiggin’s lead guitar ghosts her melody lines during most every song, in true Muddy-Waters-by-way-of-Peter-Tork fashion). Dorothy’s lyrics too run raging gamuts between nervous nursery rhyming (“My Pal Foot Foot”) on the one hand hand, to blazing teen-fiery pontificating on the other (“Who Are Parents” makes J. Lennon’s post-primal Plastic Ono natterings appear pretty darn Romper Room by comparison, while “Things I Wonder” and “Why Do I Feel?” actually reel towards near B. Wilson realms of agoraphobic self-analysis). And “Sweet Thing,” with its more than touching timelessness vis-a-vis that ol’ love-gone-wrong thang, makes one wonder if the Wiggin sisters didn’t have a battered copy of Another Side Of Bob Dylan hidden under their bedroom dresser all along.  

 

But this / that being the Swinging Sixties – and The Shaggs playing House Band at the prestigious Fremont Town Hall for roughly the entire Nixon Presidency – there’s lotsa slap-happy, good olden rock ‘n’ roll littering Philosophy Of The World as well:  “That Little Sports Car” (the only Shaggsong, by the way, to feature the mysterious fourth Shagg, Rachel, on bass) is wholly, happily, ham-fistedly frug-worthy …despite drummist Helen Wiggin’s never-less-than Beefheartian way with a tempo lurch. Plus “What Should I Do?” would not sound one bar out of place upon your favorite Lesley Gore or even, dare I say it, Shangri-La’s platter (dig Dorothy’s put-down of some Fremont stud-about-town: “He’s a two-face, he’s a disgrace, he never wins a race” …yeah, you go grrl!).

 

So, while it may be all too easy to file this album alongside your Wild Man Fischer or even Smoking Catapillar rekkids (personally, I place The Shaggs somewhere between Sun Ra and Dino, Desi & Billy), it simply cannot be denied that Philosophy Of The World is one of the greatest musical, uh, curiosities to ever be created by man or even beast. And I for one am glad that this true, off-blue cultural treasure is FINALLY getting the chance it’s so long deserved to make a lasting and loving imprint upon what remains of our socio-musical consciousness.  

 

So God Bless those Wiggins then, and Please grab at least two copies of their album immediately, won’t you?

Only Murders in the Building

(Hulu, 2021) When I saw the trailer for this, with its New York as the 4th character, pseudo dry, not quite funny vibe, I thought this was going to be bad. But Steve Martin was in The Jerk and plays banjo well and writes funny jokes and had that white suit, and Martin Short was Ed Grimley and Clifford, and I didn't not watch Wizards of Waverly Place, so you know, I was still going to give this a chance.  And it turned out to be very, very good. So to summarize. Thought it bad. It good. There were a lot of genuinely impressive things (the deaf character's perspective, Nathan Lane's emergence as a non-annoying, impressive actor, Short going from over the top caricature to genuine human), but bottom line is, show good, avoid spoilers, enjoy.

Willie Nelson "Spirit"

(Universal, 1996) Nelson established himself as one of the greatest songwriters in American history with a suite of songs with the perfect country/countrypolitan/pop balance of sincerity and emotion with of cleverness, wordplay, and fun gimmickry. He has been able to draw upon that skillset often, and has alternately carved out a niche as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook and the work of other songwriters. But to put out an album in the mid-90s of thirteen moving, low key, gimmick free, beautiful songs was truly a singular achievement, while also adding to the tens of thousands of brushstrokes on the masterpiece of his career. Certainly as a whole this is one of his best albums, and he likely has over a hundred albums, so that ain't small taters.

PigOut Pigless Pork RInds Nacho Cheese

 

(outstandingfoods.com) DEFINITELY better than Trader Joe's fake pork rinds, but I'm not sure why you have to add Nacho  Cheese flavor to pork flavor. For centuries pork has been enough, and that should apply even when the pork is made out of high-oleic expeller pressed sunflower oil, pea grits, and rice.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch

 (General Mills) Of canonized cereals (not considering short-lived atrocities like Drumstick ice cream cereal) this is the worst one. The combination of the right angles and the borderline obscene amount of sugar and "cinnamon" coating these health hazards makes these seem not only jagged and gritty, but also equally awful in taste. And though their mascot can never surpass Apple Jacks ill conceived Rastafarian cinnamon stick Cinna Mon in the bad idea category, Cin-emoji is a godawful mistake that was greenlit by someone trying to get fired.