Thanksgiving doesn’t have enough songs to mark the occasion. We’ve decided this year that Weird Al’s “Eat It” should be officially canonized as an unofficial Thanksgiving song.
Here we have a stunning 4K scan and remaster. The audio, on the other hand, suffers from some destructive remastering. We’ll take the first press of the LP over that any day.
The owner of the video has disabled third-party embedding but you can watch it on youtube. It’s 4K so put it on full screen! The levels seem off though. You might need to adjust brightness.
That thing about “Beat It” was just a joke. It’s a reference to the Al’s new movie Weird. If you haven’t seen it, it’s free on the Roku Channel. Go see it!
This is pretty much the best we can do as a nation when it comes to writing songs for our weird Thanksgiving holiday. For some reason we just don’t have that many.
Sandler recorded this again and released it on an album but the original 1992 performance on SNL is the one everyone remembers the fondest.
Who needs kitty treats? I’ve loved cats since I was a kid and I am always on the lookout for songs about them. Here are the first nine that come to mind. Most of them have entertaining music videos. If you love kitties and music, this list is for you. For best results, find your own meow-faces and have them join you while you check out these songs.
LIFE ONE : “Cool For Cats” by Squeeze
LIFE TWO : “The Siamese Cat Song” by Peggy Lee
LIFE THREE : “The Love Cats” by The Cure
LIFE FOUR : “What’s New Pussycat” by Tom Jones
LIFE FIVE : “Pussycat Meow” by Deee-Lite
LIFE SIX : “My Cat is Afraid of The Vacuum Cleaner” by Power Salad
LIFE SEVEN : “Stray Cat Strut” by Stray Cats
LIFE EIGHT : “Josie And The Pussycats” by Juliana Hatfield & Tanya Donelly
LIFE NINE : “The Cat” by The New Christy Minstrels
If you enjoyed our list, please take a moment to share it with your friends!
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is the title of the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Its title is the message left by the dolphins when the entire species evacuated Planet Earth just before it’s scheduled demolition to make way for a “hyperspace bypass”.
A song with the same name was created for the 2005 film. Right at the beginning of the movie we hear the vocal choir version of the song as performed by Hilary Summers, Kemi Ominiyi, & RSVP Voices.
But did you know that on the Soundtrack CD there is a second version of the song? That’s right and it’s done in the style of lounge singer Richard Cheese but it’s actually Neil Hannon.
The 2005 movie was good but this author highly recommends the six-part miniseries from the BBC. It’s streaming on Hulu right now in the USA. If you want to take a really deep dive, check out the BBC Radio-Dramas based on the books. They are far-out indeed.
How cool is this? About a year ago this fanboy sent a Cameo request to Nell Campbell. She was gracious enough to accept. Then, she divinely over-delivered. We found the video she sent back to be kind and encouraging.
This is actually raw footage. We asked Nell to film herself doing a station ID for FunHouse Radio. We were able to create several with the audio from her fabulous video.
We left the footage uncut so you can see how excellent Ms Campbell is at being extemporaneous. At one point she says “cut this part out” but there is scarcely a word we couldn’t use in our audio IDs. EXCELLENT JOB.
I almost feel like I got to meet her in person. Bravo and Thank You.
Catch up with “Little Nell” with this recent write up from The Sydney Morning Herald.
Tune in to the live stream after watching this and you will likely recognize some of the audio.
Imported into the United States in 1922, the “OKeh Laughing Record”–as it has come to be known–is one of the most unusual, (in its way) influential, and surprisingly enduring novelty records ever recorded.
There is nothing overly complicated about the recording itself. A solo cornet begins a rather slow, sad performance only to be quickly interrupted by a woman’s high-pitched, unrepentant, seemingly unforced laughter. She is quickly joined by a second laugher–a deep-voiced male–who, too, seems unable to contain himself. The mystery woman and man’s continuing, building chorus of giggles and guffaws eventually come to drown out, even usurp, the musical selection.
Because it was originally released with no credits or names attached, various “histories” of the “Laughing Record” have come into existence over the years. Generally accepted however is that the original recording was made in Berlin, Germany, in 1920 for the Beka label. The recording itself was an update/remake of an earlier purposefully laugh-centric recording, “The Misfortunes of Youth,” made by Henry Klausen in 1903.
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The recording’s inexplicable, surprising success inspired a host of imitators, copy cats and pseudo sequels. The OKeh label itself issued the self-explanatory “Second Laughing Record” and “The OKeh Laughing Dance Record” as well as the equal-time-inclined “OKeh Crying Record” all before the end of the decade.
Perhaps because they were easy and quick to produce, a host of other “laughing” records also soon flooded the market, effectively creating their own bizarre subgenre. How they were ultimately used—as party background noise or for cheering up its listeners—is, of course, open to speculation.
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Even after its initial notoriety died out, the “OKeh Laughing Record” remained strangely, firmly embedded within American culture. Radio humorist Jean Shepherd (whose original short stories developed into the beloved holiday classic “A Christmas Story”) used it regularly in his broadcasts as did Chicago children’s television icon Ray Rayner. Later, the recording would become a staple of Dr. Demento’s weekly radio show.
– Cary O’Dell Courtesy of The National Registry, Abridged
Here is a small collection of memes, comics and photos. I found most of them last year so you might have seen many of them already. Most of these were posted to the Twitter and Tumbler accounts. Feel free to steal them.
Don’t forget to tune in to FunHouse Radio when the calendar says October. You’ll hear the greatest Halloween songs of all time. It gets EPIC during the last week.
In a four-page joint press release published this morning, DC Comics and Marvel Entertainment have pledged to portray their superhero characters with safety helmets on their heads. The reasoning is due to child safety concerns.
“We recognize the tremendous responsibility placed upon us to keep our young fans safe. In order to set a good example for young media consumers, from this point forward, all of our heroic characters will be seen wearing safety helmets of some kind. This includes our top-shelf properties such as Superman, Wonder Woman, Wolverine, Spiderman, and The Hulk”
“We understand that children may model their behavior after what they see in comics and in the movies.”
That is quite a public admission considering all of the litigation that has occurred in the past. As recently as July 2021 a parent successfully sued for damages in a Minnesota court after a child sustained a traumatic brain injury while imitating the action from one of the many Batman films.
Fans were immediately outraged by the news and took to social media to air their discontent. On the other hand the move was immediately applauded by the Children’s Helmet Initiative, a grass roots organization dedicated to preventing brain injury.
There are a lot of questions about the thinking behind this change and about the plans for the films that are currently in production such as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which is set to release on November 11th.
We reached out to both corporations but have not received any replies as of the time this went to press.
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