Huntington Gardens in 3D

A short slideshow of anaglyphs that I shot in Huntington Gardens can be seen by clicking the above photo. More 3D at the archive.

My Psychomania Cover

My tribute to the movie's theme song, which required about 20 minutes to record all of the tracks. I like to keep things loose.

I've long considered doing Psychomania as a Movie-of-the-Week, but it's too good to watch on a computer. A new DVD with extras was released last year, so rent that instead.

Saturday Morning Stupid: Challenge of the Superfriends

The Lap Steel Synth

The body is painted plexiglass. Electronics are a Korg Monotron and a heavily hacked Gakken SX-150 with additional controllers. A 4" ribbon is on the left and a 18" on the right. The two synths can be played with separate outputs, or patched into each other using the 2" cable.



With the exception of the two knobs and three toggles on the lower left of the above photo, all of the controls are mounted to the circuit boards beneath. It limits my layout, but still works well.




I had this all fitted up with a transformer, but at the last minute I decided to go with rechargeable batteries instead. It's one less wall-mount transformer in my rig, and I like the additional weight to the instrument anyway.

Everything plays perfectly on the first try. I love when that happens.

SCTV's 'Fantasy Island'

SCTV's good material is bafflingly unavailable on home video; you can get a 3-disc set called The Early Years, but there's nothing in there from the first season, when Harold Ramis was in the cast as well as the head writer, and it includes only a couple of episodes from the second season, before John Candy and Catherine O'Hara split. It kept going downhill thereafter.

But thanks to Youtube, these late 70's episodes from their prime are available for our enjoyment. A standout is the episode-long parody of 'Fantasy Island', a piece of inspired, surreal idiocy from beginning to end. It's only 40 seconds in that "Patoo" starts uncontrollably fondling himself in an erotic frenzy, and it gets stranger:



Part 2

Part 3

Movie of the Week: Love at First Bite

Thee One and Only 1979 Retardo-Classic! George Hamilton! Susan St. James! Artie Lange! Richard Benjamin! Disco! Dumber than "Young Frankenstein", but not crazy-stupid like "Transylvania 6-5000". Just awful enough for the Arrested Development Gen-X Monster Kid in all of us. In one of us, at least.

Not on Netflix and barely available on DVD. Even VHS copies go for big bucks on Ebay! But you can see it here, 100% free:

Work in Progress 5-24-11

My almost-finished monstrosity: a dual-ribbon patchable analog synth, using the circuitry from two pocket synthesizers (the Gakken SX-150 and the Korg Monotron) and additional components. 18" ribbon for the right hand, 4" ribbon for the left, two independent sets of controls for oscillators, filters and envelopes, patchable with each other from an external cable. Case will be about 1" thick, and it can be set on a table or worn like a guitar. If Ace Frehley played synths, THIS is what he would play.



This panel is 3/8" plexi, routed out from the underside to accommodate the circuits. The Korg just has an additional volume knob (on the lower left, to be used as an expression controller), and the Gakken has multiple mods (added switches and pots). I also removed the Gakken's pitch envelope control, which is useless on a ribbon synth.

Some things I learned about acrylic since starting this:

- when cutting plexi, put masking tape on either side of the line you'll be cutting. It reduces buildup of flashing.

- Use a high tooth count on your cutting blade, whether it's a circular saw or a jigsaw. If you're using a jigsaw, stop every two or three inches to allow the blade to cool down. Otherwise you'll end up with melted plastic in your cut, which solidifies into something harder than the hardest acrylic.

- When routing plexi, do it in steps, about an 1/8" at a time. Don't attempt to take 5/16" out of 3/8" thick material in one pass, or else you'll shatter your work into pieces, requiring hours' worth of solvent-gluing and bondo-patching:

Saturday Morning Sacrilege: Secrets of Isis

Movie of the Week: Dracula A.D 1972

This isn't the best of the Hammer films, but the period details make it essential. Plus there's one of the best Satanic Masses committed to film, scored to experimental supergroup White Noise, with superbabe Caroline Munro on the unholy alter, no less!

The Eowave Persephone

I brought this brand new Persephone home four days ago. It was expensive, especially with the Euro-to-Dollar exchange rate being what it is, but I have no regrets.

The ribbon controller is the same size as my homemade one, but the analog oscillators are phenomenal, and the springy optical sensor key for the left hand (here I'm using it as a volume control, but you can also assign it to cutoff, mod or LFO) puts it in a whole new category. Sorta like a theremin, but the tactile factor makes it feel more like a cello. Plus it's got MIDI, CV and USB, as well as two expression pedal inputs.

I've been pronouncing this as "persefoney", but the guys at the music store were calling it a "persefone", which I prefer, so that's what I'm going with.

more here.

Soundlab 5-16-11

live recording of guitar (with loop pedal), ribbon synth, softsynth pad.

Sunday Shemp: The Brideless Groom

Saturday Morning Dogville: Dogway Melody

Happy Electro-Funk Friday the 13th

Get Off the Grass: Edith Massey's Awful Punk Record

Youtube knows me so well. This video showed up in my "recommended for you" homepage :



When I first heard the "Get Off the Grass" single a few years ago, I assumed Edith wrote those lyrics herself, and it turns out she did. They're awful, and the band is equally awful. Enjoy!



I should admit that the B-side is an improvement, a cover of "Big Girls Don't Cry". Someone else must've thought so, because these two songs were flipped for a later 45rpm release.



Actually, I think I'd rather hear Edith Massey's music over anything Divine recorded. There's nothing more dated, or more abrasive, than 80's techno-rave.

R.I.P. Dolores Fuller

March 10, 1923 – May 9, 2011

Dolores was best known as the long-suffering girlfriend of Ed Wood Jr., as well as his co-star in Glen or Glenda, best movie ever. But she also wrote "Rock-a-Hula Baby","Do the Clam" and several other songs for Elvis Presley, which he sang in his films.

The unforgettable freakout sequence from Glen or Glenda:

Slithis 4

As always, all tracks are live improvisational recordings. This is the first Slithis session to use Clark S. Nova's brand new Eurorack Modular System, which approximates a Buchla for a fraction of the cost. Still waiting for another oscillator module, but up and running:


















And I'm playing the usual things: Moog, Absynth software, homemade electronics (Frankensynth modular, Ribbonsynth, circuit-bent devices).

Movie of the Week: Trick or Treat (1986)

Metal Superstar makes a pact with Satan, then returns from the grave to party on forever! Rock's Chosen Warriors Will Rule the Apocalypse!

Original score by the nearly-forgotten 80's shredders Fastway, and correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the star of this movie a peripheral character on Family Ties named "Boner"? I'm not even going to bother looking that shit up myself.

Not available on home video. A note from the youtube uploader: "this is the opening scene of the movie. The credits have been removed to appease YouTube's administration and, more importantly, allow the upload."

The Worst of Starcrash

The Korg Monotron

I bought this for $56 online. It's quite a wonder; the closest thing to compare it to is the Gakken SX-150, which has been an important piece of my music for a couple years now. But this blows the Gakken out of the water in terms of its sound. The LFO and filters are very rich for an all-analog instrument that's about as big as a credit card.

I spent several hours trying to splice my full-size ribbon controller into this thing, but it's like putting a leash on a flea; the surface-mount components are almost microscopic, and even with a magnifying glass I was unable to get the ribbon's wires soldered onto the circuit board without crossing them. So I'm stuck with this little 2.5" ribbon on the monotron.

I did, however, remove the thumbwheel volume knob (like those cheapo kinds on old pocket transistor radios) and replaced it with a proper pot, which I clumsily taped onto the side. But it works, and makes the instrument more playable and expressive.


The most exciting thing about the monotron is that it's patchable with other instruments, no soldering required. A standard audio cable is now running from my ribbon synth to the input jack, so I can use the big ribbon and the Gakken's oscillator, but take advantage of the Korg's superior filter. I'll probably combine the two into a single instrument soon, because it sounds incredible. And of course, you can also use this filter with anything else: a keyboard, guitar or theremin. For under $60, I highly recommend it.

Saturday Matinee Featurette: The Bishop of Battle

This half-hour short is one of four segments of a 1983 anthology film Nightmares, which was shot for a television series called Darkroom, then given a theatrical release when Creepshow made a lot of money. The other three stories are forgettable, but this one has a retro-technology appeal to it.

Emelio Estevez is a pre-Repo Man punk, striving to achieve the top level of "Bishop of Battle", a game at his neighborhood arcade. When he finally does, the Bishop (who seems to have stepped out of a Kraftwerk video), comes to collect. (yawn).

It's a lame and predictable story, but the real draw here is the vintage arcade locations in downtown LA and the Fox Hills Mall, the Tron-era computer graphics/optical printing effects and the music by Fear, Black Flag and Negative Trend, recording new versions of their songs specifically for this film.







Extra Bonus Arcade Movie Mashup!

Sure, Emelio can defeat the Bishop of Battle, but is he man enough to take on King Vidiot for a round of Satan's Hollow?

Saturday Morning Sleestaks: Land of the Lost (1973)

Bonus Brain-Teaser: Has anyone ever seen Paul Williams and Cha-Ka in the same place at the same time?

47 Seconds from "One Million AC/DC"

Langue D' Amour

Laurie Anderson's 1984 concert film Home of the Brave generally suffers from the same problem as the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense, from the same era; it's an overproduced spectacle, ill-fitting for an artist founded on minimalism and nuance, with too many musicians and backup singers, and an act that seems desperate to graduate from avant-garde to pop star status.

But this rendition of Langue D' Amour, my favorite cut from the Mister Heartbreak album, is done nicely, with little more than minimoog, fairlight and oberheim keyboards accompanying Anderson's take on the creation myth. Nice stuff.

The Book of Enos: Astro-Chimp, Alleged Onanist

We all know of Ham, First Chimp in Space, but what of Enos, his successor? Ham barely got out of the atmosphere, but Enos was the first chimp to go into true Earth orbit, after all. Why the secrecy? Just what is NASA trying to hide?

I'm shamelessly excerpting the following text from Mary Roach's Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void.

Newspaper databases typically have about five times as many Ham stories as Enos stories. "Enos didn't have the charisma, and he wasn't first", says Fineg. Enos was as unpopular as Ham was beloved. In news accounts, you could tell Fineg had applied himself to the task of finding positive ways to describe Enos. "He was a mean one", Fineg recalled. "Staff nicknamed him 'Enos the Penis', because he was a son of a gun'"
"Meaning he was a dick."
"Yeah."

The nickname Enos the Penis is mentioned in the book 'Animals in Space', but the authors have an altogether different account of its genesis. They write that "Enos the Penis" derived from the chimp's fondness for masturbating, and that NASA had inserted a balloon catheter in his penis during his orbit, in part to discourage the habit. When the lever system malfunctioned, delivering shocks rather than banana pellets for correct responses, a frustrated Enos yanked out the catheter and "began fondling himself in front of the camera".

I spent a few breathless days searching government archives for the X-rated Enos footage (Both Ham and Enos were filmed during their flights). I found footage of Ham in flight and Enos being readied, but none of Enos inside the capsule.



Thrilling, right? Wondering if that footage is out there somewhere? But wait… let us give them a chance to clear Enos the Penis' good name:

"I don't know where that came from", (Fineg) said. I worked with Enos for a number of years, and never saw him do anything like that. His name was the result of his demeanor."

The catheter, it turns out, was in the chimp's femoral artery (to monitor blood pressure), not the urethra. Still not convinced, I contacted Bill Britz, a vet who worked with Enos.

"Naw", said Britz. I mean, most male chimps play with themselves, but he couldn't even get to it. ". Britz explained that the couch inside the capsule was designed with a barrier to keep the chimp from reaching down below the waist and pulling out the (arterial) catheter during flight. Britz agreed with Fineg: Enos had no such reputation.

The story, as stories will, grew and mutated with each retelling, until Enos was having the world's first orbital orgasm and then coming down and brazenly masturbating in front of a sea of clicking cameras and exploding flashbulbs.

(hat tip to J. Furmanski)

Work in Progress 5-1

Time to pick up this project I started several months ago…. The aquarium has been finished for a while, so now I'm building a light-proof box to contain it. The wood is some 1x4's, leftover from the fence my wife and I built last summer, with some scrap 2x4's to make the base.

Knocking at it with a demolition blade on a sawz-all and the claw end of a hammer, then going in with a rasp to smooth it out so it looks like driftwood.

The shelf that will hold the aquarium is a spare piece of MDF, and I patch the spots where I don't want light to leak out with celluclay, which is surprisingly strong for a paper mache product. And it adheres to the wood really well, so I end up using it as spackle to cover all the screw holes, and it sands away nicely.

Darkened with oil-based stain and left to dry 24 hours, then brighter colors of acrylic paint are scumbled onto the surface, and water stains are dripped down from the top. At this point I drill in the AC power switch for the whole case.

the algae in-between the planks was done in UV-reactive paint, so if a blacklight is in the room, the crevices glow, just like the car in "Repo Man".

The aquarium inside the cabinet. Interior walls are heavy watercolor paper that I airbrushed with UV paints. On top are the blacklight, air pump and pressure regulators for the five motion features inside the aquarium.

With those things moved out of the way, better showing the layout. The scuba diver is on an electric motor, outside the aquarium. This is a battery-powered turntable that I converted to an AC transformer. I also stepped up the voltage to make him swim a little faster.

The whole landscape is on a sheet of plexi, which I'm tacking down to the glass floor with silicon (I wanted it to be removable, in case of design changes, air leaks in the pneumatics, or if the aquarium needs to be replaced). The landscape is styrofoam that I painted in UV acrylics, then did a cover or marine-grade epoxy resin.

The first landscaping material I used was paper mache. You're probably smarter than I, so I don't have to tell you what happened when I submerged that in water, even after I'd used 59-cent black paint from Michael's that said 'cleans up with water' on the label, and brushed it with water-based acrylic medium as a sealant (slaps own head).

The styrofoam works, but it wants to float, so when it's underwater, it repeatedly breaks the baseplate away from the silicon glue, bringing the whole display up to the surface. If I could do it over again, I'd use rocks, which would have the same look anyway, and don't have to be sculpted. Plus they stay underwater, which is what I'm looking for here. Anyway...

...there you go; a big blocky monolith. It's fantastic if you're looking through the viewer, but the exterior doesn't work as a sculpture, or even as a decorative element in a room. Ideally, I'd mount the viewmaster viewer onto a false wall, hiding the aquarium and electronics behind it, and ditch the wooden box. But I had all the material in my garage already, and it only took a couple of days to build, and I needed to finish it and move onto some more challenging sculptures.