From John Aielli’s Eklektikos on KUT:
#3: There’s a Tear in My Ear Cause I’m Crying for You, Dear (While Laying on My Back)
#2: Thank God (and Greyhound) She’s Gone, by Roy Clark
#1: Drop Kick Me, Jesus (Through the Goalposts of Life)
ACL Fest ‘06 ended, and I got to see one of my favorite bands, The Flaming Lips, put on an amazing show. Just before, at the end of Matisyahu, who was also highly energetic, I ran into some old friends.
Then Wayne Cozen, ever the perfectionist, came out to perfect the stage.
 Wayne takes stock of the stage |
The show was awesome. Hi energy music, lots of crowd interaction. Apparently, Ben Kweller had a terrible nosebleed during his set on Saturday at the festival and used a tampon to help stop the leakage. To sympathize, Wayne used his fake blood and had people throwing tampons on the stage.
 Wayne blasts the confetti guns |
And the weather was cool. But the crowds were huge. We’ll see about next year.
“Say, are those pants simonized?”
Or at least John Hodgman does:
 2006 |
 1979 |
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| The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer’s Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World Todd Pruzan, Favell Lee Mortimer Bloomsbury, 2005, 208 pages Amazon Powells |
I first heard of Mrs. Mortimer, or the author of the Peep of Day as she’s more widely known, via a Little Gray Books Lecture entitled The Countries of Europe Described. Todd Pruzan discovered one of Mrs. Mortimer’s many books for children in a garage sale in New York and thus entered Mrs. Mortimer’s dim, sad world.
For the complete on-line text of one of her works, Far Off, you can visit Project Gutenberg. For an example of her text, let’s visit Hindoostan and see what she has to say…
It is a miserable thing to be a Hindoo lady. While she is a very little girl, she is allowed to play about, but when she comes to be ten or twelve years old, she is shut up in the back rooms of the house till she is married; and when she is married she is shut up still. She may indeed walk in the garden at the back of the house, but nowhere else.
Mrs. Mortimer’s world is bleak indeed. There are very few countries or people that she doesn’t dish it out on. The Irish are dirty; the Roman Catholics are evil and worship Satan; the Jews are greedy; the Mexicans are lazy… her world speaks in harsh, strict, authoritarian tones of which she is sadly informed. (Only once did she ever leave Britain - to go to Belgium when she was young.) Her authority is questionable, yet one can’t help but laughing at the seriousness with which she displays her opinions.
In fact, it’s almost refreshing to read someone so distinctly opinionated. In this day in age, every idea is tempered and questioned. While I wouldn’t want to live in Mrs. Mortimer’s world, it is fun to travel briefly through it.
Just don’t drink the water in Scotland, Germany, Brazil.. or anywhere, really.
