When culture gets overinflated, yet refuses to pop, I want to be there with the needle. Enlightened cynics of the world unite! Express your love or hatred of things from the sacred to the mundane.
It never fails that a couple of times of year I'm stunned that I turned out so well.
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I watched Sesame Street a couple of hours a day while I was a kid, and if this stuff didn't mess me up, I'm sure it left some rewired synapses.
Dr. Suess' only live action film - The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. I didn't see this film until my 20s, but wow did it amaze me even then. The sets are design marvels. The musical numbers and acting are certainly of a time and place, but fine for a kid's film. And that said, most young kids would not appreciate what trip this film is. It's surreal.
Hans Conreid (known for dozens of cartoon voices, and dozens of appearances on 70's sitcoms) plays Dr. Terwilliker who's goal is to open a piano academy with 500 captive boys playing his uber piano. He locks all other musicians in his dungeon.
The above scene has the Dr. and the Handyman (who's decided to assist our young protagonist) in a Hypnotic Duel.
If you like musicals, Dr. Suess, or just need a good film to trip to this summer, see if you can find a copy of the 5000 Fingers of Dr. T.
For those of you who've seen this before, you know of its immensely trippy factor. For those of you who haven't, here's the lowdown. Stare at the center of any wheel and that one doesn't move, but the rest of them spiral wildly. Good after consuming vast quantities of nutmeg.
(download)
Considering the new face (or non-face) of the modern orator, how to piss people off at bars, and my "trip" phollowing phish to Wisconsin via the Mars Cheese Castle.
Not much to say here other than I just got back from following Phish around for four shows and thought my mind wasn't impacted too much until I saw this pic. I then realized I could see music and time and that my eyes were smiling. Does everyone get the same motion trip from this image as I do? Very cool.
Sometimes stream of consciousness is the order of the day tripper from the heights of sanity to the bend around the Credence Clearwater Revival churchgoing folk never thought well of the young buck from Arkansas but soon found with a little bit of grooming he could become the astronaut we always thought he could be.
Signs pointed west, but signs will often do that when black is orange and orange is grape and there aren’t enough hostess potato chip bags in the world that could be simultaneously crinkled to quash the din of the baby crying in the booth across the restaurant.
Maybe if there was a time and a place the place could be venus and the time could be swiss and we’d chat gaily of the wandering secret agent who lost her memory amidst the culmination of a black box mission set down by the powers that be for the defence of the people by the people for the people made of people – soylent green.
So I ask you young psychotic blithering tattletale of the night – are you up to the call of the man in the pink suspenders and crying behind curtain number two the 86 year-old Monty Hall fan who sits in Beckett-like fashion waiting for a deal to be made and an appearance to be imminent and an autograph book to be signed somewhere between Bob Eubanks and Chuck Woollery.
I remember the days of wine and hosers when men were men and women were lite brite illusions on the battlefield of playtime when the vast ocean of meandering opened up its arms and said “Give it to me straight Doctor. I can take it,” without a second glance or thought or premonition about the forces at work or the elements at play.
Surely there must be semblance. Surely there must be coercion. Surely there must be a recipe that includes semi-sweet chocolate chips, because the semi-sweet chocolate chip lobby has been doing their work and putting out their 365 day tear-off calendars for the world to see and without their efforts the civilization would have faltered long ago and without their efforts the typhoons would have raged eternal and without their efforts the ghost of TS Eliot would have risen in April and decried the he was a pair of ragged claws on some beach-like region.
Oh sure, you may weep for the downtrodden with your tears made of copper and your heart made of glass and your Debbie Harry affections with consummate incredulity. You may weep for the death of the bison and the culmination of the cataclysm of the crisis of the caucus of the collapse of the cacophony of the Cucumber Club.
Oh Moose.
Oh Beaver.
Why have you forsaken us?
If you really want to get a sense of how trippy kids' shows can get, check out this intro from the classic HR Puffnstuff. Oh, I know that Japan has done its best to create some very surreal and bizarre anime for the past 30 years that have become even more crazy when adapted for the US, but Puffnstuff was just "Woah man, is that Mayor McCheese and a talking flute" kinda trippy.
This art installation is very cool. Kind of the more esoteric, less tacky version of the Fremont Street Experience in Vegas. Set up at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. I somehow wish that the process includes the Dr. Who theme song and a Starchild. Click the psfk.com link above for more details.
