thinglets: Bimbo the Freakshow Birthday Clown

I grew up with this demented, surrealistic freakshow called The Uncle Bobby Show every day as a kid. I don't think it ever extended outside of Canada. You know that creepy, perv uncle in everyone's family... this is him.

If you want to subject yourself to a WTF? moment or two as you watch the daily Birthday celebration from a host I'm sure was polluted beyond belief and a guest "Birthday Picker" who looks like she rolled out of his dressing room two minutes earlier, you gotta check this out.

Bimbo the clown looks like a hobo on a ripple bender and the crazy marionettes that fall from the ceiling are the icing on the demented cake - enjoy!

thinglets: Frank the Wrabbit

In an effort to promote some of the incredible work by the National Film Board of Canada over the past century, I offer the following parable of Frank the Wrabbit. A touch subversive and wholly satirical, the short examines several themes and does include... yes, you heard it here, rabbit zombies... well, maybe wrabbit zombies. Give yourself a ten minute surreal break and enjoy Frank the Wrabbit.

DyscultureD Podcast Thirty Eight: The Double Down

This week's episode!

My other web outlet is at DyscultureD where we do a weekly podcast on all things right and wrong with pop culture. Follow the link above to this week's episode... show notes below.

Full Dysclosure

  • The scratch ticket affair that is the MJ memorial
  • Bell buys Virgin Mobile and The Source
  • BNN buckles on IP and copyright video clips
  • Pirate Bay sells short
  • Alternate Bit Torrent options
  • Browser Wars Part @?$#%
  • Canadian made TV hitting US Big 3
  • Cheap Trick’s not-so-cheap trick in music promotion

Websites of the Week

  • Mike - bookseer.com - a simple recommendation engine for your NEXT read
  • Anth - theusermanualsite.com - ever lost a user manual for a gadget or appliance? Find it here.

Music

Laura Smith - I Spy a Monster - www.laurasmithmusic.com

thinglets: Ken Carter - The Mad Canadian

This short film from the National Film Board of Canada gives me such a 70's retro feel. Remember daredevils at the local fair or track. This 10 minute account of one man, one car, one jump is very nicely-paced. Shows the crazy life of someone trying to make a career from dangerous entertainment. Certainly not a feelgood film by any means. If you've got 10 minutes, and feel nostalgic for the Dukes of Hazzard, give it a watch.

lovehate: Top 12 Reasons I Love Canada

  1. The flag kicks serious ass. You know how the most effective logos and branding can be done with two simple contrasting colours, well the Canadian flag is it. For those of you who don't know the left and right red fields on the flag represent the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans while the eleven point Maple Leaf has one point for each of the ten provinces and the remaining for the northern territories. As cool as it is, it still comes a close second to the awesomeness that was the logo of the NHL's Hartford Whalers.
  2. Hockey. Okay all you haters, I know you may find the game boring or hard to follow, but in as much as 80% of the world mythologizes soccer and 19 of the remaining 20% worships football, baseball and basketball... or even Nascar, in Canada we bleed hockey. I love to watch it, but if I can't watch it, I'm just happy to know it's being played. It's part of the national identity and if you don't get, we don't care.
  3. We don't care. Yeah sure, we care about some things, but for the most part we're a laid back people. Foreigners often call us polite, but really we're just making fun of you behind your backs so we don't hurt your feelings... I suppose that's more tactful than polite. Let's call it diplomatic because it's not smart to piss people off when we don't have disproportionally huge armed forces.
  4. We don't have disproportionately huge armed forces. I've never been a "fan" of any army... especially not a fan in a way that would entail putting on a replica jersey and getting in the game, but I respect that the prime role of the Canadian soldiers have generally been peacekeepers in recent years and that those in the service generally get thrown into a shitstorm without proper backup, funding, and respect. While we have a proud military tradition in this country, our government really needs to reconsider risking young lives just to satisfy global expectations.
  5. Global expectations aren't too high. Sure you may think that's a bad thing, but it allows us to self-pace and largely concern ourselves with internal matters, like the national hockey and curling programs, exporting stand-up comedians, making Hinterland nature shorts, and advancing the latest R&D techniques to develop the most cost effective coffee and donut combo in world.
  6. The best coffee/donut combo in the world. Tim Horton's and it's competitors serve the most cost-effective, value for money, coffee and donut combos in the world. Most of this is due to the fact that the small coffee is small and the large coffee is large and even though Southern Ontario has the largest Italian population outside of Italy we still haven't allowed the elitist Starbucks to overrun our homegrown donut houses with crazy sizes like Grande and Venti. What's up Starbucks, do you think you're in a Puccini opera or something?
  7. Multiculturalism. You can have your melting pot for your chicken soup/nacho cheese/fondue gruel. I'll take them on separate plates and bowls forming a great mosaic across the dinner table that spans from Newfoundland to British Columbia, with lobster from the Maritimes, poutine from Quebec, maple syrup from Ontario, bread from the prarie wheat fields, beef from Alberta and smoked salmon from BC. Sure, it sounds like a crazy mix, but at least I can pick and choose instead of melting it up.
  8. Crazy mixes. This one deserves its very own reason. I quote from the source of all things - Wikipedia: "A Bloody Caesar, after the similar Bloody Mary, is a cocktail popular mainly in Canada. It typically contains vodka, clamato (a blend of tomato juice and clam broth), Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, and is served on the rocks in a large,celery salt-rimmed glass, and typically garnished with a stalk of celery and wedge of lime." I did warn you.
  9. We warn people when we're coming. Why do you think we wear the Canadian flag on everything we wear while travelling? We want you to know our laid-backedness is on its way to charming your country's existence. Sure we may wear tuques and flop on your chesterfield for a bit and drop in "eh" a whole bunch of times for your amusement, but that's just so you'll feel at ease with us and give us your beer while watching Meatballs and Strange Brew.
  10. Strange Brews. We'll drink you under the table. Set up a mickey, a twenty-sixer, a forty pounder, and a palette of two-fours and we're ready to go to town... well, take a cab to town anyway. After all, no use hitting a poor defenseless moose while drinking and driving.
  11. Driving. Although getting around Southern Ontario can be agonizing at times, driving across Canada is awesome and I would do every year if I could. From Pacific to rivers to Rockies to foothills to prairies to forests to Great Lakes to plateaus to bays to Atlantic and up to the Great White North, you will never see greater diversity or meet nicer people.
  12. People. In 2004, the people of Canda voted Tommy Douglas as the Greatest Canadian ever. You may ask who Tommy Douglas was. He "was a Scottish-born Baptist minister who became a prominent Canadian social democratic politician. As leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1942 and the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, he led the first socialist government in North America and..." still waiting for the greatest part? He introduced universal public healthcare to Canada.

 

Happy Canada Day to all Canadians, wherever you are!

thinglets: Polka Dot Door - Polkaroo In Space

Okay, if you weren't from Canada (and specifically Ontario) you may have never seen the Polka Dot Door while growing up. And, if you never saw the Polka Dot Door, you never saw Polkaroo. Polkaroo was one of the best legal trips one could have as a kid. Always a bit surreal and bit insane, the Polkaroo could express a million thoughts with any number of well-placed instances of the ubiquitous "Polkaroo".

Take the three minute trip of this video clip, or, to translate: "Polkaroo? Polkaroo!"

thinglets: 10 Minute Stream of Consciousness Trip to the Cucumber Club

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?

cucumber club