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Charles Phoenix has amassed a collection of 20,000-some amateur 35mm slides and 8mm home movies from thrift stores and garage sales. In God Bless Americana, he leads a theatrical version of the living-room slide show -- the current one focuses on Southern California tourism. It's playing in Hollywood and it's sold out, so I guess I won't be going. Says the LA Weekly: "Phoenix's insouciant free-associative commentary provides a loose narrative structure to the event, but it is the slides themselves -- supersaturated Technicolor glimpses of a vanished way of life created as an aspect of that way of life -- that tell the real story here." There's a forthcoming book, as you'd expect from an author of so many other volumes on retro pop-culture.

I repeat: the results are in from the Photoshop Young Turtlenecked George W. Bush Doppelganger Contest may be found here. I was surprised that nobody portrayed young George doing a line of coke! Discuss who you would have picked to win below.

The Spoilers Game: an oldie but goodie. See if you can come up with a film's title based on its spoiler.

Reviews of bars of soap: "All that was left was the field test. I wrote "MEATLOAF" on my hand with a black ink pen. I was amazed to find that it took a full 2 minutes and 23 seconds to completely remove the ink from my hand. ... I was saddened by this failure." Wait till you see him get all up in arms about the Kirk's Original Coco Hardwater Castile packaging. (Via The April Winchell Show)

Some PC users have said they get "runtime errors" when loading this page. Anyone know what that means and how to fix it? Please e-mail me or use the comments below. Thank you. I'm sorry.

Michael "Mucko" McDermott Found Guilty, Sane. No surprises there. The alliteration ... the drama ... someone should write a song.

I am currently in the market for a wedding venue. One possibility is the lovely Austin Scottish Rite Theatre. Dig it! Masons! Anyway, I arrived at noon for a tour. Nobody was around, so I stood in the lobby, looking confused and lost. Suddenly a voice booms forth, but I didn't know where it was coming from. The voice said, "THE WEIGHT WATCHERS MEETING IS DOWNSTAIRS." I walked around looking for the voice. I found a man sitting at a desk, but he wasn't the voice. I said, "I'm not here for the Weight Watchers meeting. I have an appointment with Ms. ____ for a tour. For a wedding." He offered me a cookie and coffee and said the lady was going to be a little late. I joked that I would go sit in on the Weight Watchers meeting and eat my cookie. He got a kick out of that. Criticize the Masons all you want, but this one had a fine sense of humor.

Anthrax with Dr. Ruth, both in the prime of their careers.

Some recent search requests that resulted in visits to the Excitement Machine:

pictures of ugly kids
listen to songs that have words
rhinotillexomania eating nose
"mongolian barbecues"
where can i find cheerleading
story about maniac breast sucker
i am ugly
PUT IT IN MY ASS SON
ugly kids' names
liquor clip art
clean nose machine
chicken diseases
minkey mo
your so ugly joke
reason it is a t.v. show for kids

I went to a convenience store yesterday with the dual purpose of buying a soda and procuring small bills for the laundromat. I placed a can of 7UP on the counter and handed the cashier a $20 bill. To my right was a striking display printed all over with pickles.

The cashier handed me back my change. It clanged down on the counter.

"You have holes in your hand," he said.

"OH!" I said. "I was just distracted by the Pickle Twang."

He was gleeful. A customer/friend of the cashier standing nearby chuckled. We all said it out loud. "Pickle Twang!"

The cashier said, "I've never sold even one of those things."

"Pickle Twang!" I answered.

I paused.

"OK, what the hell. How much?"

"Ehhh ... Gimme ten cents."

P.S. Twang Inc. lives on the web. And Deuce of Clubs keeps abreast of Twang news with its Unofficial Twang Page.

Count me among the sad fans of Dooce. She got so much grief just for being funny and honest, and that's ass. A while back I tried submitting a celebrity sighting for her features section, but I had to make a wild guess at her e-mail address, since she didn't publish it (probably to keep people from deluging her with celebrity sightings). Anyway, now that we may be confident it will not show up there, I share it here as a feeble tribute.

EDWARD JAMES OLMOS
On our recent bus trip to Mexico, Bryan and I had seen a not very wonderful movie starring Edward James Olmos called The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. The ironic experience of being a captive audience on a long bus ride watching a Latino-themed movie in English with fellow passengers who spoke only Spanish was one of the stories we had been relating since our return. The story often involved musings about how Edward James Olmos may very well be in every Latino-themed movie ever made, no matter how bad -- perhaps he had signed some sort of contract, ha ha.

Today, my fiancŽ Bryan and I met our friend Dave at a downtown cafe to converse over a meal. We were seated outside at the table nearest to the street, precariously close to the busses whizzing by. The sandwiches were kind of dry, but there was a sense of danger and excitement in the air. Dave and Bryan were facing the sidewalk and I was facing the street. Suddenly Dave exclaims, "Shit, you know who that is?" I spun around, catching the man's profile, as well as the profile of his female companion, who was carrying a small child. "That's Edward James Olmos!"

For a brief flash I was scared he knew we had been making fun of him and was here to kick our asses. Fortunately, Edward James Olmos is surprisingly short, and he took no notice of us.

Edward James Olmos' walk had a little bounce to it -- he seemed like he was having a good old time. He and his lady crossed the street and waited at the corner, and when a bus drove up, he exchanged a few words with a bus driver, then kept walking. We thought this was a strange thing for a celebrity to do.

Another man was approaching from the opposite direction, and after he passing EJO, he did a triple-take, appearing as if he couldn't believe his good fortune. This pedestrian saw that we were also observing the celebrity, and we all exchanged huge smiles in lieu of words.

How to talk like Inspector Clouseau

Sawdust Village is where Dream Pets (Japanese stuffed animals from the 1950s-60s) live. See them in their natural setting.

Mainzer Dressed Cats postcards: "They were published from the 1940's through the 1960's by Alfred Mainzer Inc. in New York City. ... Mainzer also did a smaller series of "dressed dogs" and "dressed mice," as well as scenic postcards. We've also recently learned that there may be a "dressed hedgehog" series. The charm of the postcards is not just in the fact that the cats are in everyday "people" situations, but in the amount of detail in each picture - note the pickpocket on the train, for example, or the fact that most of the "better dressed" female cats have poodles as pets." (via Six Different Ways)

Also via SDW! The Puppet Artists make puppets based on you and your family and photograph them based on existing photographs of you and your family. In other puppets representing news: please see the new Starlight Mints video. You may also enjoy the other animations on the See Thru Broadcasting site, which are not without puppet references themselves.

Every model show rod from 1960 to 2001

Scripps-Howard News Service has pre-fab "tribute" sections ready to go when Ronald Reagan and Bob Hope kick the bucket. The Metafilter thread is interesting: someone said their news agency has rented a rooftop in Rome for years so they can have live footage when the Pope dies.

I dreamt last night that I was trying to infiltrate a beauty pageant for a journalistic exposŽ or for crime-fighting purposes (a la Miss Congeniality), but I was rejected because I was too old -- they were only accepting college freshmen and sophomores. I was sitting in the audience instead and heard the voice of Brandon's friend Jason from Home Movies [part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim] coming from a short 20-something-year old-guy with glasses. I was really excited and asked if he was really the voice of Jason from Home Movies. He said yes and was excited that someone recognized him and that I loved the show. He invited me to be an extra. Also, I was a black woman in this dream, and I'm really white.

GREAT FORGOTTEN ARCADE GAME TITLES.

Act-Fancer Cybernetick Hyper Weapon
Appoooh
Arm Wrestling
Atomic Point
Beastie Feastie
Birdie King II
Block Gal
Bonze Adventure
Brain
Camel Try
Car Action
Cheeky Mouse
Chiki Chiki Boys
Crush Roller
Defend the Terra Attack on the Red UFO
Depthcharge
Do! Run Run
Dog Patch
Drift Out
Eggs
Electric Yo-Yo, The
Exciting Hour
Exed Exes
Fighting Golf
Flicky
Funky Bee
Funny Mouse
Gun Dealer
Get Star
Gypsy Juggler
Hangly-Man
Homo
Hot Shocker
I'm Sorry
I, Robot
Image Fight
Jump Bug
Kick Man
Kiki Kaikai
King & Balloon
King of Boxer
Kozmik Kroozr
Kram
Led Storm
Liquid Kids
Macho Mouse
Mad Planet
Magical Spot II
Maze of Flott
Midnight Resistance
Minky Monkey
Money Money
Mr. Do vs. Unicorns
Muscle Bomber - The Body Explosion
My Hero
Mysterious Stones
Narc
Naughty Boy
Nebulous Bee
Pang
Pickin'
Pig Newton
Pioneer Balloon
Pnickies
Pocket Gal
Pop Flamer
Prehistoric Isle in 1930
Psycho-Nics Oscar
Punk Shot
Quiz & Dragons
Rad Action
Rainbow Islands
Robot Bowl
RodLand
Saint Dragon
Same! Same! Same!
Savage Bees
Sky Kid
Slap Fight
Super Real Darwin
Us vs. Them
Video Hustler
Wonder Boy in Monster Land
Xenophobe

The JC Penney Fall-Winter 1980 Catalog got a link from the April Winchell Show website, and we are most honored! Miss Winchell has a show on LA's mostly conservative AM talk radio station, KFI. It's on during the weekend, the only time you'll find liberals on talk radio, because they're not funny. Except April Winchell, who is insane. I've only heard one show on a recent visit to California's inland empire, but hey look, she has an audio archive!

Goldfish Crackers Jingle Lyrics

My pal Dr. Chris Kelty can even make Houston look special.

A page chock full of El Chapulin Colorado screenshots. As you may or may not recall, he is the real-life Mexican TV insect that inspired the the Simpsons' Bumblebee Man.

Austin is doing the citywide book club thing: You have till fall to read Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya. This choice breaks the first rule of book club, however.

the HOUSE on MECCA STREET.

* Out of body experience(s)
* Notes written on huge thumb
* Black n White TV becoming color
* Birth of a rabbit on Easter.
* Dinner.
* Cut off tongue.
* Ashes in a boot.
* War and Emergency Powers Act 1933
* Dopamine Junky
* Deceptively Languid
* Lots of fetching

FIN.

by and c. Chris Weige

The Kansas City Public Library presents Autochromes by Frank Lauder. Early Thirties KC and environs in color. (Via Consumptive)

Dog bootie

Does this not photo not make you hungry to visit Galveston?

How gross is that -- a teddy bear with a "come-hither" pose. If your significant other gives this to you, this can't be too far down the line.

Free Words, another guerilla book-dropping project. (Via YayHooray)

Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age, you big loser. (Via Bad Samaritan

The Fort Worth Weekly reports on the uneasy relationship between adult ads and the alt-weeklies that publish them. I hope the cigarette and prostitution industries think their money was well-spent on my salary.

Yesterdayland talks about them in the past tense, but Yes & Know books -- those invisible ink puzzle books meant to pacify you during family road trips -- still exist. I just bought one at my local doomed K-Mart, and I am happy to report that they haven't been overhauled to meet the youth market's evolving tastes over the decades. You can buy them online at leemagicpen.com.

Speaking of K-Mart: the K is for Kresge, the family that endowed the college with which I was associated at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC is divided into 10 colleges, all with different architecture and socio-academic flavor). It was rumored that the Kresges either hated this hermaphroditic sculpture adorning one of the buildings or disliked the college's evolution into radical wacko hippiedom and withdrew funding because of it. There appears to be some truth there, according to this article, which debunks a number of other UCSC urban legends (the second part, covering the east colleges, is here). Non-alumni might find the urban legend aspect endlessly fascinating, or maybe not. You tell me.

I happened upon Michael "Mucko" McDermott live on Court TV today taking the stand in his own defense. Dude. As he testified about his history as a role-playing gamer, his stint in the Navy where he manned a nuclear submarine, his career as a Duracell(?) battery quality assurance tester, and how he believed that when he shot up his officemates he had actually traveled back in time to kill Hitler and his Nazi sidekicks in order to obtain a soul, he had to pause a number of times to define words like "theophany" and "nadir" to the lawyers. Follow the case here, it's a doozy.

Perhaps you have just finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and aren't bummed out enough. McSpotlight is a weblog/watchdog site keeping you current on the multinational corporate antics of Mickey D's, borne from the infamous McLibel trial in the UK.

Ghost Sites: screenshots of dot-coms as they shuttled off this mortal coil. (Via Metafilter, the post there nicknamed it "electric pompeii")

I joined BookCrossing.com, the guerrilla book-drop project that's been getting some attention lately, and am about to scatter a few books around Austin. Some I loved, some I hated. You can find out which books, and where I left them and go hunting for them if you're so inclined.

60X1.COM: Sexy Bella MamaCita Come to Sugar Daddy! Keep clicking through for another take on George W. photoshopping. The contest winners will be announced soon, by the way. (Via b3ta)

They Thought You'd Say This is a collection of ridiculous sentences found in actual foreign language phrasebooks. (Via Kelegraph)

MELANCHOLY HULK.

     A. Creation
     B. De-Construction
     C. Destruction
     D. Re-Construction
     E. Re-Creation
     F. Masturbation
     G. Creation

II. SuPeRmAn tOy nAiLeD tO WaLL

     A. Fragmentation and Division of Self.

by and c. Chris Weige

The best zine ever created, Duplex Planet, is now online. (Maybe it has been online for some time, but it wasn't last time I checked.) If you're not familiar with David Greenberger's conversations with the "elderly and declining" or the comix, art, and music that has grown from them, stop first at the visitor center. An excerpt: "From the start I felt that oral history was unsuitable to my needs. When newcomers hear that I have regular conversations and interviews with elderly people, they assume I collect oral history. What that assumption implies is that when one grows old we become solely a repository of our past. This notion is so entrenched that we seem to willingly grow old, talking only of our past. From the start, my mission has been to offer a range of characters who are already old, so that we can get to know them as they are in the present, without celebrating or mourning who they were before."

The April 2002 issue of Playboy Magazine, the one with Tiffany, uses the font ITC Pioneer on the cover, same as the Excitement Machine. Now I look at the Excitement Machine logo-banner-headline and can think only of this magazine cover and of Tiffany, even though the May issue is already out and we can all begin the process of forgetting Tiffany again. Gimmicky fonts can turn on you like that, and I blame nothing except my own design choices. I think Andy Warhol said that if you have a big ugly pimple, why not draw a big circle around it with a magic marker rather than covering it up and hoping people don't notice it, but they do and that makes you uncomfortable and them uncomfortable and there's this unacknowledged pimple getting in the way of everyone's good times. So instead of covering up this scandal and hoping you never saw this particular issue on your newsstands or mailboxes or your bathroom porn holder, I am drawing a circle around this typographical zit. Isn't it beautiful?

I rely on others to do my Wired reading for me. "A Collection of Discards.com", about the proliferation of "found object" websites (via Consumptive); and "A Truly Unfortunate Development"; about exciting new MIT-developed karaoke technology that automatically adjusts the pitch of the music to match the singer's voice (via Travelers Diagram).

The Onion: New Roommate Has Elaborate Theory About How Kenny Rogers Is a Genius. "Added Haltigan: 'He also said Kenny Rogers is "long overdue for the sort of critical reappraisal that Burt Bacharach has enjoyed of late." Who says shit like that?'" (thanks Teresa!)

From Powazek's request for non-boring sites to counter this dumb NY Times article:

Findsounds.com
The Degree of Confluence Project
DPlanet
Destroy Rock City
Fat Trucker's Union.

From Fat Trucker's Union:
Blixie
Peter Hamlin.

I wish I was more bored with the web, then I wouldn't be getting the ass-spread so much.

Thanks to Superbad, the Excitement Machine is big in Japan! See the translation, if you dare.

Retrocrush's 100 Coolest Actors of All Time. Joe Don Baker beating out Elvis almost makes Brandon Lee beating out Bill Murray forgivable, but not quite. (Via Fark)

I'm been sort of peripherally aware of this John Edward phenomenon, but only since they've been running Crossing Over after Kilborn has it graced the boob toob in my home. Even then it was only background noise to accompany my bedtime reading ... until a couple weeks ago, when the ballroom dance instructor-turned-psychic did a reading for Adrienne Barbeau! It was not John Edward's trademark rapid-fire reading, either. In this one, Ms. Barbeau sat with her back to Mr. John, and, bathed in white light, they spoke sweetly of Barbeau's loved ones who had crossed over. Now, that caught my attention. There goes the valuable bedtime reading time! Oh well!

So I wonder how many Excitement Machine readers have seen this guy at work. He's clearly a total charlatan, the question is whether he himself believes in his own "powers" or not. Naturally, there is plenty of Edwardsiana on the web, which I've spent a good part day reading:

• The New York Times Magazine's interview with Edward.

• On the site Generation sXeptic: "Talking to Heaven Through Television: How the Mass Media Package and Sell Psychic Medium John Edward" is a scholarly analysis of Edward's appearance, along with a panel of skeptics and fellow psychics, on Larry King Live, to discuss the topic "Are Psychics for Real?". (Here's a transcript of that program).

• On Skeptic.com: "Deconstructing The Dead: Cross Over One Last Time To Expose Medium John Edward". An excerpt: "The advantage Edward has over [James] Van Praagh is his verbal alacrity. Van Praagh is Ferrari fast, but Edward is driving an Indy-500 racer. In the opening minute of the first reading captured on film by the ABC camera, I counted over one statement per second [...] Think about that--in one minute Edward riffles through 60 names, dates, colors, diseases, conditions, situations, relatives, and the like. It goes so fast that you have to stop tape, rewind, and go back to catch them all. When he does come up for air the studio audience members to whom he is speaking look like deer in the headlights."

But I do believe in Adrienne Barbeau, and how!

The lists page has a batch of new list-poems by Chris Weige, new links and archives sections, and has been CSS-ified. Check it, mammajammas.

EN TERRu (Pt.1)

How an isolated altercation exploded into an hour and a half melee:

Their heavy hands dispersed droves of revelers

A student says he was asking where he could hail a cab-police

Officer shocked him with a stun gun.

Others were beaten with batons like an L.A. nightcap

Police dressed in riot gear Neches 3a.m. hit in the face pepper spray

Chad's friend Chucky happened 'and this cop just came out BILLY CLUB POW'

Val says the officer swung round again/ Val says the officer swung round again

And that's when things really /

Repeatedly with batons shocked to the head lines and lines of thunder

Ears and believes he suffered a concussion

Another officer struck her in the chest yelled at the cop to stop hitting her

A baton at him/

Meanwhile, the officer continued knocking her to the ground rubber bullets

Traffic cameras on streetlights heat strokes boiling frogs nazis.

(2002 ChrisWeigeInCahoots.
Saltwound.austin.tx.1.30.02.)

Thanks to a program on the Travel Channel called Strange Travels, I discovered that my hairdresser either sympathizes with or is himself a MODERN-DAY VAMPIRE! No foolin', either. Following a segment on people into erotic blood orgies and a commercial break, they moved to Austin, TX, home of Wet Salon ... an innocent beauty shop by day (shot of my hairdresser giving a normal haircut), freaky blood fetish parlor by night! Apparently a group of female employees get their kicks by tying people up in local caves and drawing blood from them, then retiring back to the salon for blood massages and blood facials. "We're not into science, the head blood freak said, "we're into magic." Just as I say to myself, "I hope my dude isn't a blood freak too," they flash onto him applying a blood-goop mixture into somebody's hair! EWWWW! I knew, I just knew, that a guy could not be straight and a hairdresser without something else funny going on.