My ground meat patty don't want none unless you got buns, hun.
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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).
Mac Sabbath is your new Master of Reality
I have lots of complicated feelings when it comes to tribute bands. On one hand, people want to hear stuff they like, and that's entirely respectable. On the other, my belief in creativity and originality wavers when I see tribute bands selling out venues and going on tour just for pretending to be another band (seriously, have you seen how many professional Beatles cover bands there are out there? And that's to say nothing of Bad Fish). On the third hand, as a musician, I completely understand the impulse to get together with your friends and play some music that you enjoy and also make money while you're at it.
And then there the Weird Tribute Bands, towards whom I have absolutely no misgivings (obviously; I play in an all-male post-rock Lady Gaga tribute band, who the hell am I to judge?). Bands like Mini KISS (all members have dwarfism) and Lez Zeppelin (all female). And now, there's something even better:
Mac Sabbath, the world's first and only (so far) McDonald's-themed Black Sabbath tribute band.
You know what they say: nothing can kill the Grimace.
The 5 Stages of Inebriation (circa 1868)
More proof that Australians are crazy. From the State Library of New South Wales:
The photographs illustrate drunkenness in five stages, played by a male subject in a studio. Possibly commissioned by a local temperance group for educative purposes, the photographs may also have been used by an engraver for illustrations. The penultimate frame of the drunk in a wheelbarrow resembles S.T. Gill's watercolour 'Ease without Opulence', 1863 (PXC 284/30). The printed studio mark on reverse reads "Photographic Artist. C. Pickering, 612 George Street, near Wilshire's Buildings, Sydney"
It's also possible that these images were commissioned in response or relation to the Drunkard's Punishment Bill, introduced by New South Wales Premier James Martin in 1866.
Now that all that history's out of the way...I don't know, I think it's pretty accurate.
Glenn Beck's Grim n' Gritty Ninja Santa Claus Reboot
Obviously I talk a lot about mental health and the fair treatment of human beings on my website; as such, it would be unfair for me to make light of the "rare neurological condition" with which pundit Glenn Beck has been recently diagnosed.
...
Everyone got the giggles out now? Okay. Because he's also working on a new gritty action-adventure book/movie about an immortal warrior called Santa Claus who roams the — desert? tundra? — protecting the wee Baby Jesus, presumably from the legions of Hellish MainstreamLiberalMedia Spawn.
(but like no really why are there camels and also snow?)
Here's what Beck himself had to say about it:
My Santa, the Immortal is a very different guy. He starts out right before the birth of Christ, and he is up in the mountains. And he is a warrior. He has lost his wife, and he’s a sad individual. And he’s got a son who loves dearly, and he lives up in the mountains, and he hunts for food.
He eventually is hired by three wise men because he can negotiate, because nobody is going to rip them off, and he knows how to get the very best gifts. And so he negotiates with gold, frankincense, and myrrh and then has to go protect that gold, frankincense, and myrrh and then through a series of events is left there to protect the Christ child, never interacting, just watching.
He doesn’t know who he is, and he goes darker and darker in his whole life as he watches this boy grow, but he’s always touched by him, but he doesn’t realize it until the Sermon on the Mount. [. . .]
He makes a pact. Little does he know in that pact he has now become immortal, because as he watches the crucifixion from afar and cannot get close to it, cannot stop it, he feels he fails again. He runs off before the resurrection. A thousand years pass until he meets another little boy, a little boy that happens to grow up to be what we know as Saint Nicholas...
Beck does ultimately go on to make some salient points about mythology — how Santa Claus as we currently know him has in fact evolved over the years, an amalgamation of multiple cultural incarnations filtered through the veil of Clement Clarke Moore and years of Coca-Cola ads. As such, this badass eternal ninja warrior version of the man in red is just Beck's contribution to the ongoing memetic traditions of the Santa Claus, in the same way that Greek and Norse mythology (and, of course, comic book superheroes) has changed and been re-appropriated over time. It's a high aspiration, sure, to deem yourself The One To Revolutionize The Santa Claus Myth For Future Generations, but then, I guess he can't be blamed for trying. After all, my friend Aisha did put out that fantastic controversial piece last year about Penguin Santa Claus, which I thought was a great idea (and which Glenn Beck surprisingly didn't say anything stupid about?) — so I guess that change has got to start somewhere, right?
Then again, Glenn Beck's last attempt at a Christmas revolution featured him and — ah, you're right, I'm sorry. Rare neurological condition and all that. It's not polite to laugh.
The Forgotten 1980 Chinese STAR WARS Comic Book Adaptation That You Always Wanted But Never Had
Asian entertainment bootlegs and knock-offs are nothing new, but this Star Wars adaptation from 1980 is pretty amazing nonetheless. Maggie Greene, an assistant history professor at Montana State University, recently unearthed this gem at a market in Wen Miao. The adaptation takes the form of a lainhuanhua, which is the name given to small palm-sized collections of sequential drawings which typically featured stories and legends from Chinese history. Less manga than picture book, this still doesn't explain how or why someone came to create an unauthorized re-telling of Star Wars in this format, but it's nonetheless awesome.
The storyline is essentially accurate; if you want to read it for yourself, you can check out Nick Stember's English translation of the entire 142-page book on his blog. Now, while the plot might remain consistent with the film that we all know and love, there are some, erm, aesthetic freedoms that have been taken. Namely with everything except for Vader, Treepio, and Artoo (I particularly enjoy the weird Cold War fashion take and the...well, you'll see). Here, have a look for yourself...
Read MoreA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
It's been a busy week 'round this here parts, so no brand new post over at Five By Five Hundred. Instead, and in honor of James Joyce's body of work becoming public domain, I've shared an oldie-but-goodie that I wrote about 5 years ago, inspired by the first and last lines of Joyce's magnum opus, Finnegans Wake (no, I haven't read the whole think, but I've read some of it). It's a little avant-garde, but it's one I'm pretty proud of from back in the day.