Frank Zappa

Neat Stuff

I like Norah Jones’ music a lot.

I like Frank Zappa a lot. I ordered a CD many months ago that just arrived. FZ:OZ. It’s great.

Cashflow while freelancing can be an adventure.

Sometimes not a good adventure.

I have good friends.

It’s fun to have sleepovers.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a great show, and a good movie.

I’ve not played racquetball in a week and a half, and I miss it.

I’ll be pet sitting for Jenny this weekend!

My wife is one of my best friends.

I think she will not be my wife for all time.

I think she will be my friend for all time.

I need more discipline to keep my dishes clean.

Tiger’s Milk bars are a part of a great breakfast.

My car burns a lot of oil, but it’s 13 years old, and it runs.

If I had all the money in the world, I’d buy one of those Thunderbirds. A convertible.

If I had all the money in the world, I’d want to turn myself into Alfred Stieglitz. The idea of fostering art and artists, while engaging in commerce, is a very attractive one. Perhaps there’s a way to make this happen without having all the money in the world.

I have been making mix tapes since 1984. I was 14 years old.

This year I’m starting to make mix CDs. I am 32 years old.

A mix tape can tell a story.

My mix tapes often evoke moods.

The best ones do both.

I like to tell stories and evoke moods.

I think I always have.

PMRC Too-Redux’d; Read More About It!
Last night there was a thing on VH1 about the PMRC hearings called Warning: Parental Advisory. My hopes had been low for this, but I was hopeful that at least Frank Zappa might be characterized interestingly (I am a fan). But it was pretty much awful all around. It also made Dee Snider (who played himself!) and John Denver look buffoonish, and seemed to miss the seriousness of the affair. I understand that in drama you tweak things for dramatic effect, but the film was full of mischaracterizations and nonsense.

The wonderful thing about the web is that you can find the full testimony online. Dee, Frank, and Denver all have great things to say in their testimony. So go ahead and read the transcripts, they’re really fun reading, as it happens.

Zappa Testimony: [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61]
Frank Zappa Statement: [61] [62] [63] [64]

John Denver Testimony: [64] [65] [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72]

Dee Snider Statement: [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] [82]

New Smorgasborg Item; Etc.
I’ve been putting entirely random items into the Smorgasborg since at least early 1999. I don’t add them very often, because I have this blog. My rationale for the smorgasborg was This is a bunch of stuff I have no idea what to do with. So I figured: hey! I’ll put ‘em up on the dang web!—and with that, I offer the complete lyrics to North Bronx French Marie aka Punk Rock T-Shirt Melting.

I am a huge fan of absurdist lyrics. My fandom of They Might Be Giants and Frank Zappa are evidence of that. I think what’s different about the lyrics of Stew/Negro Problem is tone and heft. I think that rather than having irony and satire as an endpoint, Stew’s work embraces irony and wordplay, but does not simultaneously reject what’s serious and emotional. Some of their work is silly, but much of it is melancholy and funny at the same time. I suppose that’s a pretty good description of me sometimes. Probably that’s what drew me to their work in the first place.

Friday’s Useless Musings
I’m listening to the song Son of Mr. Green Genes by Frank Zappa from Hot Rats and it sounds glorious. On the way home from worked I visited Jenny at work, went to the comic book store. Dark Knight Returns (DK2) #3 is still not out. I’ve been waiting for it patiently since February. I picked up something I had had on my Amazon Wish List—Part II of the Little Annie Fanny collection. Then home to the excitement of the cat and of course email and Frank Zappa. Tommorrow morning, raquetball!

Quote of the Day:
“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”
– Frank Zappa

Stray Thought:Songs featuring California Towns would make a good mix tape:
Riverside / Beat Farmers
Village of the Sun / Frank Zappa
Streets of Bakersfield / Dwight Yoakam
Screenwriter’s Blues / Soul Coughing
Surfin’ USA / The Beach Boys
San Diego Serenade / Tom Waits
Santa Monica / Everclear
San Berd’ino / Frank Zappa

New Words: I am a Frank Zappa Fan. I got this cool little FZ icon from rudy, and I had to use it somewhere.

for geeks: it’s valid xhtml and CSS

I can’t believe how therapuetic it is to listen to Frank Zappa right now. NP: Andy by Frank Zappa. Gratuitous Zappa links: zappa.com, St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Homepage

Note: I’m posting this to my blogger account of course also posting this to my livejournal. I doubt I’ll maintain my livejournal though – but LiveJournal is a very interesting community in its own right – much more of a community than blogger – but blogger seems to be more flexible in how you can use the output of the tool. I could be wrong though, I have only a superficial understanding of LJ at the moment.

Eat my eclecticism:
My rotating playlist the other day was:

He Loves U Not (Club Mix) by Dream; Crystal by New Order; God’s Child by David Byrne and Selena; Doowutchalyke by Digital Underground; Lady Marmalade (Thunderpuss Radio Mix) by Christina Aguilera, Mya, Pink, Lil’Kim, Missy Eliot; Wonderful Wino|Frank Zappa (from: The Lost Episodes); Bamboozled by Love|Frank Zappa (from: Tinseltown Rebellion).

I got a lot of work done. I think for coding, sometimes a repetitive groove works very well. I remember writing many term papers in RT School while playing They Might Be Giants “Flood” again and again.

The original culture jammer: Frank Zappa: On up & away & afar & a go-go
Escape from the weight of your corporate logo!