Thursday Morning Video Dump

Hiya, friends.

So there's a buildup of videos I've been finding and bookmarking at YouTube that I thought I'd share wit' you and yours. As I've been doing, these are all behind cuts for those whose browsers flip out if I drop a load of video on them all at once.

So to start, say hello to The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band with three videos:

"The Intro and The Outro," a classic track from Gorilla, which someone has helpfully annotated with images (later, Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzos would perform a more serious job of introducing instruments on Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells).

"Death Cab for Cutie," as performed on the pre-Monty Python kids' show from Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Eric Idle (and others), Do Not Adjust Your Set (the Bonzos also did this song in The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour). There's another number after this featuring Idle and The Bonzos.

And the classic 1968 single, "I'm The Urban Spaceman," produced by Paul McCartney (and Gus Dudgeon) under a pseudonym -- in a strange coincidence, I was just idly thinking about maybe or maybe not posting these Bonzos videos earlier this morning, when I looked up and saw, in an entirely non-sequitur context, someone who had used Macca's fake name - "Apollo C. Vermouth" - as their own online handle, which decided me on making the post.

( And yes, that IS actually Eric Clapton on ukulele! )

And here's a collection of videos from The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (now apparently just Blues Explosion). Always liked them, don't have enough by them (Berit had more than I did when we got together, mainly some fairly-rare import-only releases that she didn't even know were such).

The videos are for "Wail," "Bellbottoms," and "Talk About The Blues" - in the last the band members are played by Winona Ryder, Giovanni Ribisi, and John C. Reilly.

This is followed by the clip that made me look for the other videos - Jon Spencer demonstrating his theremin technique on a children's show - including some behavior that you wouldn't normally see in the context of a kids' show. I think (and hope that) he may have really broadened the minds of some young viewers here . . .

( Mommy, what's that man doing to that theremin? )

And finally, for many years while we hung out in NYC, my good friend David LM Mcintyre would occasionally get into pointless arguments with other people (usually around 3am, after shows, in East Village bars) about a ridiculous, trivial little piece of pop-culture advertising ephemera from our youth (as us Gen-Xers can be so prone in doing). This was the origin and original design/characterization of The Grimace from the McDonald's commercials. How's that for Gen-X nostalgia?

David would insist to people that The Grimace was originally a villain, called The Evil Grimace, with six arms. Nobody ever agreed with him and thought he was making it up (I was the only person who would support him at all, as I remembered the multiple arms, but nothing else).

Well, thanks to the modern conveniences of Wikipedia and YouTube, David could now prove to all that he was right (except it looks like four arms, not six), if he ever needed to again. Here's two examples.

And on top of those two pieces of early-70s televisualness included to give some of us a bit of a Proustian rush, there's also an animated report from the police chief of Leonardo, NJ on what is being done about the Mutaba Virus outbreak:

( Now let's pay Sid & Marty Krofft $1 million for ripping them off . . . )

Enjoy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, That's the End of the Story . . .

Oh, and I'm "gloomy" currently (as defined in LiveJournal emotions) because The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage closes tonight, and I would have liked to do it some more.

There was originally the hope that we'd maybe get some more shows in - a small extension in July or something - which I thought was probably unlikely, but at least possible, given the difficulty in getting together all 20 members of the cast at one time. Unfortunately, the expense of renting the costumes has made it impossible - there's no way we could spend the money for them again right now.

Ambersons has wound up the most expensive show I've ever done - close to double the nearest ones in the history of GCW (Ian W. Hill's Hamlet and Temptation). There the expenses were mainly for rehearsal space, here it was for the costumes. I keep feeling odd about spending the money, but the show needed those costumes, and we had the money, and (as both Berit and Timothy Reynolds have reminded me) the money is GCW money - from our new credit line and donations - and can't be spent on anything other than our shows, so it's not like it used to be, where it was B & I's funds, and spending too much on a show meant having our phone shut off, or almost no money for food, or not having necessary dental work or car repair (which has almost always been the case anyway, even on that cheaper level - if we had any cash, it went into the show). As it is, GCW owes B & I money now that we put into the project from our own pockets rather than the company's.

Wish we got to do it more . . . Tuesday night was beautiful, just beautiful. The show was good to start with, just gets better. Maybe in another year and a half when AEA Showcase Code regs allow me to bring it back, I will. I'd like to do it more now, but this was a kinda long-standing dream project of mine, a folly that The Film Festival "allowed" me to indulge, and once this run ends, I wonder if I'll ever have the same passion and drive to get it done as I did now. I'll have other, newer shows on my plate then, I'm sure . . .

Ah well, yes, next shows. Three in August to get back to full-time now. Though I still have to wait a bit as I pick up the pieces of Ambersons - I have to return the costumes and do the books on the show (more immediately, formally, and properly than I once would) - and deal with whatever I have to do this upcoming birthday weekend (I have to take the car in for some minor repair, go to an audition for a special "movie trivia" week on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? - yes, really - and figure out whether I'm going to have to drive up to Maine or not for a few days to deal with getting my driver's license renewed and re-registering the car).

And now it's time to get going on the Ambersons part of the day - programs to print, disposable props to buy - fixes to make (even now) . . .

Back tomorrow.