Central Snark

Rusty: Who was it that said when in Rome do as the Romans do?
Clark: That was Rome not Paris. This is Paris and you’re drunk.

~European Vacation

STOP. We know what you’re thinking, but stop. Believe it or not, when the mood strikes, we can be sentimental as the next blog. As it happens, the mood strikes us now. Since most of you read the BLOG O’ THE DAWG, you know his well-deserved/needed extended(ish) vacation starts tomorrow. Which means he’ll be away from us, for all intents and purposes, for the next 2 weeks. We’re pretty sure we can get along fine without him, but we have to admit it won’t be the same. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be better, but we doubt it. Whatever. We just figured it might be a nice gesture to wish him bon voyage. Is that so wrong?

SO join us, won’t you, as we say “fare thee well” to Doug, as he heads out to parts unknown (to some of us). Tomorrow we’ll go back to making fun of him and/or everyone else — but for now, we’ll play nice. Ish.

ADIOS, Doug, you’ll be missed. Now A Go Go before we beg you to A Stay Stay. And you know how much we hate to beg.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

BEFORE anyone gets too misty and/or verklempt, be sure to stop over HERE and enjoy the Icelandic guest post stylings of our favorite PENGUIN. What? We can’t sit around and worry about Doug’s trip all day now, can we? Of course we can’t. And we won’t.

~snuppy

AFTER our frustrating experiences trying to pre-post a post last night* (figure that one out for yourselves, we’re spent just writing that line), we can totally relate to this FRENCH & SAUNDERS sketch in more ways than we initially care to explain. And, unless there’s something you haven’t told us, we’re guessing you will, too.

CLOSE the lid? That’s all we need to do when our computer screen freezes? Damn. That would have been very good to know a few months ago.

WHILE we’re always in the mood to encourage silliness and/or fun around here, we trust you all know how much we genuinely care for you, deep down. In that spirit, our hearts were broken when we learned of the tragic loss in DIESEL’S family. We hope everyone will take a moment to stop by his site, in order to offer a few words of comfort and support to our very dear friend. Thanks. 

*Due to a little something WordPress conveniently referred to as “maintenance”. 

~ snuppy 

OKAY, maybe not so much “throw” of the dice, as scoop. And by “scoop”, we mean some guy playing with a bunch of dice for reasons that escape us. We believe this is called “Dice Stacking”, but for the life of us we can’t figure out why anyone would want to do it.

OUR fear is that Dice Stacking the result of one kegger too many and/or some bored kid looking to do something with his hands besides jerk off for the umpteenth time constructive. Or maybe this is what kids who don’t have fancy-schmancy video game systems do for fun these days. Whatever, we’re not convinced it’s fun, but we will admit it looks pretty neat. Just not neat enough for us to try it ourselves. Afterall, we do have lives, and as soon as we finish up with this post, we plan to get out and enjoy ours.

THIS kid’s folks must be so proud. We’re sure they don’t resent the way their son spends his time, and/or all that money they paid out for his college education, one bit — especially after they saw this video. No doubt there’s a big demand for speedy “dice stackers” somewhere, and who better to fill one of those jobs than a guy armed with a college degree?

~snuppy

NO. It’s not WHO you think. Although… in a way it is. Well, sort of, though not really. Confused? Now that we mention it, we are too. Let’s retrace our steps to see where our initial train of thought became derailed, shall we?

IT ALL started with our need to conjure up a fitting companion post to the one our beloved and brilliant LAMPSHA did over the weekend. As per our usual Monday fare, we figured we’d share some clever video featuring massive amounts of hilarity, in hopes of garnering a few of those “cheap laughs” we’ve come to rely upon and adore. Normally, we lean heavily in the “opposite” direction from whatever fabulous artist she introduces us to and, as you’re about to see, this week was no exception.

ENTER AL, not WEIRD AL, but our AL; Al Anon; Call Me Al; Al, You Called?; Al Al the Blogger’s Pal… You know, that Al. Anyway, last week that Al sent us a GREAT VIDEO featuring the other Al, Weird Al; Not-our Al; That’s-right-the-”Yankovic” Al; Al with the accordian Al, and, well, it was good. Unfortunately, it also happens to be big hit right now and, as such, is getting a lot of play on TV as well as in the blogosphere. We’re lazy, but we do have standards (not high, but that’s beside the point). In other words, it would’ve been very easy for us to use that video anyway, but, because of our so-called standards, we make every effort to use stuff you might not have just seen somewhere else. That’s how weird we are.

FORTUNATELY, we have ADD, which means our brains are in constant motion. Sometimes this is annoying and sometimes this is good. Of course, sometimes this keeps us up at nights trying to figure out answers for the crossword puzzle in the Sunday NY Times. But that, too, is beside the point. Our point, for we swear we have one, is this: frequently, one thought will set off a chain reaction of thoughts, so the Weird Al video Not-Weird Al sent us reminded us of other Weird Al videos that Not-Weird Al did not send us — specifically the one about being fat — which we thought was perfect for today, since we feel pretty darn fat ourselves, after pigging out for the past four days. Happily, the mere term “pigging out” conveniently brought us full circle to Lampsha’s video, which featured what? That’s right. A pig.

SO, without further adieu, here’s the video Not-Weird Al didn’t send. Ham on.

THANK YOU AL for setting off the domino effect of ideas that managed to keep our poor heads spinning since… well since Lampsha’s Head Spinning Saturday this past… er… Saturday. And thank you everyone else for putting up with all this confusion. As you can tell, it’s not always easy being inside our heads. Imagine what we’d be like if we didn’t take medication.

~snuppy

In the car, out of the car.  Down the Turnpike, up the Turnpike.  Stop near Philadelphia.  Back in the car, wrong turn.  Home at last.  And how was your Thanksgiving?  Yada yada yada ate too much and here we are back for a Saturday Spin.

This week finds us in the mode of listening to Joseph Arthur.  He’s got a beautiful voice.  Writes somes really good songs, the latest of which can be found on his new album, Nuclear Daydream.  They’re haunting me - I must buy this cd.

So the story goes something like this - a Joseph Arthur tape gets slipped to Peter Gabriel (by whom is not really important, mainly because I didn’t take notes) somewhere in the neighborhood of ten years ago.  Peter Gabriel likes what he hears and Joseph Arthur is in business.  About ten albums (give or take a few ep’s) later, it seems he may just be hitting his stride on Nuclear Daydream (I mean who doesn’t need music to daydream to - even if it is nuclear!?).   

You can listen to the whole album  and read up on Joseph here:  PRESS PLAY.  Once there, click on Joseph Arthur Radio on the right side.

And for those who just like a visual to hang out with on their Saturday spin, below is a video for the song Even Tho from a couple of albums back, Our Shadows Will Remain.

Hey it’s nice to see family, but it’s good to be home.

Have a great weekend.

~ DJ LAMPSHA 

*COUGH* Uh…we can’t believe we just wrote that name in the title line of this blog. But we did. And now we can’t take it back.

WHY does the name Hasselhoff appear so prominently up there, you ask? Well, believe it or not, we have a perfectly good explanation. You see, after spending the last two days preparing for — and stuffing ourselves with — all things “Thanksgiving”, we plopped ourselves down on the couch and tried to take a nap. But something kept nagging at us, even as we wrapped ourselves in our chenille afghan and tried to sleep. Finally, it hit us: we forgot to do a proper “opposites/cheap laughs” response to the fabulous video teh PENGUIN posted on Tuesday! Shaking off our lethargy, we immediately hopped off the couch, and logged into the Snark.

INITIALLY, we feared we weren’t up to the task. Afterall, we needed to counter a video that featured the impressive pipes of a precocious 11 year old girl. Then it hit us. That little girl was the winner of a TV talent show that featured DAVID HASSELHOFF as one of its judges. “Hmmmm”, we said to ourselves, “wonder if we might not be able to find something that features David Hasselhoff’s questionable vocal stylings on YouTube.” “Hey”, we answered ourselves, “we bet we can”. So, we looked, we found, we posted. And now… we nap.

HOOGA HOOGA ooga chaka, indeed. We remember when we used to think David Hasselhoff was cute. Of course, we were much younger then, and so was he. That said, we understand he currently has quite the following in Europe — but for the life of us, we can’t figure out why.

~ snuppy

You know growing up in the New York City area all of my life (albeit in the armpit of New Jersey for the formative years), there is a Thanksgiving Tradition near and dear to us in the NYC radio market. So it just dawned on me at 5:08 am, that this is something worth sharing with my dear friends here. Perhaps a few who stop through may even have shared this tradition.

Every Thanksgiving as far back as I paid attention to these things, the radio station that was the classic of all classics in The Day, WNEW 102.7, played ARLO GUTHRIE’S, Alice’s Restaurant at 12 noon. And every Thanksgiving, wherever we were driving or sitting, we turned on the radio and listened. Idn’t that quaint? Anyway, the intervening years have not been kind to commercial radio and I have emmigrated to non-commercial turf where lo and behold, my station plays Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving.

I suppose my appreciation for Arlo started long before I listened to him as I am (did I tell you this one already) the 7th of 10 children. I was thus influenced by my elders of the tribe, who protested Vietnam and listened to Arlo Guthrie (well that’s not all they did or listened to, but for the purpose of this discussion at 5:00 am…). So I proudly pass this tradition on to my youngfolk tribes people and share it here with you today. You may either scratch your head or laugh and sing along, but I hope you will at least listen a bit before you decide to go baste the bird for the umpteenth time.

By all means, please continue to watch the video below so that you know how to properly behave at your family’s table today. Or at least understand why people drank socially (heavily) and took a lot of pills quietly during the 50’s.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

~DJ Lampsha

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.  ~George Burns

DESPITE widespread belief that Thanksgiving is the consummate “family bonding” holiday, our own experiences tell us the opposite is also true. Then again, it’s possible our own “experiences” have been tainted by our lack in all skills necessary to properly enjoy and/or conduct ourselves at the family dinner table. Damn our lack in skills! If only we’d had someone over the years to help guide us through the nuances of family dining etiquette, things might have turned out so different. Alas, we did not. You, on the other hand, do.

YES, dear friends, in order to prevent you from falling into the same awkward Thanksgiving “experience” abyss we did,  and/or to maximize everyone’s “holiday family bonding time”, we proudly present “A Date With Your Family” – a refresher course in manners, if you will. We think you’ll find it as useful as it is informative, and hopefully more than a little entertaining, since this particular video is served up with its own tasty running commentary.*

NOW, this is a family that really knows how to behave. Unfortunately, this is also a family that doesn’t exist anymore, as we hearkened back to the halcyon days of the 50’s once again for this one. It’s a good bet these folks ended up in therapy and crashed and burned within the following decade. Still, we’re convinced they were polite to each right up to the bitter end.

HEY, we like our family as a friend, too. Which means we’ll be willing to sit down and fake a few moments of graciousness and ceremony with ‘em, if they’ll be willing to help with the dishes. That way we can all look back with much happiness, ensuring our family dinner will be something to remember all our days and/or until the next time Uncle Dick tries to pinch us on the ass.

*à la  MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER – 3000.

~A Lampsha/Snuppy Joint Production

I give you Bianca Ryan:

(In case the link does not work, just give it a second until snuppy wakes up and fixes it for me.)

Ok…many things about X-Factor freak me out. The fact that it has arrived to Iceland is bad enough, but David Hasselhoff as one of the judges? I mean, seriously! Admitting that I am one of many Germans that jumped along to his “I´ve been Looking for freedom” sounds, but that was 15 years ago…can we move on, please?!

Now when I heard that little girl´s  voice it gave me goose-bumbs. She is 11, for crying out loud!

Which made me think of myself at 11 and laughter escaped me. I was such a tomboy. The best of my talents at that age was probably going out into the woods and building tree houses with my brother. I also used to be the leader of our gang in the village. All 4 of us! Yeah, good times. Once, I made everybody that wanted to belong to my gang, go into the next supermarket and steal a lock with three keys. I really had a thing for locks, what can I say?  I didn´t say I am proud of it…anymore!

So … in general I was wondering what the rest of you were up to around the ages of 11. Those lovely pre-teenage years. Did you already know what to do when you grow up, did you play outside, or inside? Was your daddy or mommy more of your connect-to person.

Come on you guys, spill!

ONCE AGAIN, our offering is not so much an “opposites/cheap laughs” counter to the wonderful music provided over the weekend by the delicious and clever LAMPSHA, as it is an odd, energetic, and – what we hope will be — fan-freakin’-tastic way to kick-start a new week. A week, we might add, that ends in Thanksgiving. Which means what? That’s right, we’re all gonna need to feel the Love in order to get through to the other side. Mmmmm. Think about those tasty “leftovers”, maybe that’ll help.

AT FIRST glance, this video seems like the result of a very strange artistic collaboration. At second glance, it seems like a musical collaboration between a couple of strange and amazingly talented groups. At third glance, it seems strangely artistic and freakingly awesome. Fans of BLUE MAN GROUP, you ask? You bet your sweet asses we are. Fans of VENUS HUM*? We are now, and then some. Can you feel the Love, yet? You will, baby, you will…

*Venus Hum is the name of a band, their vocalist is Annette Strean (in case you were wondering — and we know you were). We could watch this woman sing all day, and, depending on how things go on Thursday, we just might.

HAPPY HAPPY, JOY JOY! While you’re listening to this great song, and, of course, “feeling the Love”, we’d like to suggest you take a moment to dance over and say congratulations to BIG RED JOY, who will no longer be “big”, but will continue (as far as anyone can tell) to be “red” and ever so full of ”joy”. According to her hilarious hubbs, Not-So-Red Frank, turns out the “big” was a 10 (yes, 10!) pound baby boy. Golly, and all this time we just thought Joy had a “healthy” appetite. Silly us.

~snuppy