You need this if you are old enough to remember Fraggle Rock. Either way it’s great. PLUS it’s METAL! YEAH!
We’ve been following Leo Moracchioli and his Frog Leap Studios YouTube Channel for years now. This guy is the best. We play a few tracks on our station. This is his latest effort.
The first time I ever heard of ball of twine was in a song by Weird Al Yankovic. It appears on his soundtrack album for the movie UHF. The film bombed at the box office, has since become a cult classic.
I always assumed it was a fictional story. I had no idea that the ball of twine was a real thing that anyone can see for themselves. It’s really located in Minnesota. The name of city is Darwin, which seems ironically appropriate.
Francis A. Johnson began constructing a ball out of leftover twine from his family’s farm when he was 45 years old. A reporter from the Minneapolis Tribune asked why it had gotten so large.
Johnson replied, “My mother taught me not to waste anything.”
Francis was a thrifty man, but he was also a collector. He once had 7,000 pencils. The ball of twine was just one of his many, though it became the most important.
Francis pulled in leftover twine from nearby farms, square-knotted the pieces, and added them to the enormous sphere in his yard. To spin the ball and maintain the roundness, he used a railroad jack. For a while he hung the ball from a tree.
From 1950 until 1979, Francis wrapped his twine ball strand by strand. He only stopped because he developed emphysema. He then died in 1989. His family believes that because he didn’t smoke, his ailment was caused by twine ball dust.
After his passing in 1989, the ball was trucked into Darwin’s downtown, where it is still located today. Now it’s a major tourist attraction. The nearly two-ton twine ball averages 150 visitors a day during the summer months. It now lives inside a glass-walled gazebo in a museum. If you ask nicely, they’ll unlock the gazebo to let you get within sniffing distance of Francis’s creation.
Maybe it’s time to plan a trip! It’s not that far from the Twin Cities Metro.
source: RoadsideAmerica
July 10 is National Kitten Day. Ogden Nash famously said, “The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually becomes a cat.
Two years ago we were all shut in watching Tiger King. Even I was sucked into a binge watch. at some point we were treated to this song and music video. I’m presenting it here ironically. It’s so bad that it’s good. It’s so wrong that it’s right.
Joe Exotic appears in the video but he is not the real singer. The Clinton Johnson Band were the true music performers. Exotic hired them. I find the whole thing rather amusing. Look at her feeding the tigers. Why is he dressed like a Spanish mission priest?
The idea that Carol Baskin killed her husband and fed him to tigers is preposterous to this writer. Obviously the husband took money that he hid from the IRS and went to Costa Rica to hump young women and live tax free. Carol may or may not be in on it. Somebody should send investigators to Costa Rica.
I am sorry to learn about the animal abuse and murder that occurred. This was NOT OK. Anyone that abused animals should be brought to justice. Just sayin’
I can’t think of a better track to celebrate National Video Game Day. The story behind this track is pretty interesting.
It’s hard to track down the original recording of this song because it’s been redone a number of times and the original was released only in Japan.
In 1986, a Japanese talk show called All Night Nippon held a contest that asked fans to mail-in their own lyrics written to the tune of the Super Mario theme song. A winner was selected and singer Hiroko Taniyama is thought to have recorded the vocals but the performance was credited to Princess Peach, a character in the game.
The single was then produced and released on 7inch vinyl and cassette. The original title was “Mario No Daibouken: or “Mario’s Big Adventure”.
The single made it to the top 40 in Japan and was re-recorded in other languages as well but it never quite made it to the English-speaking world.
In his own words, “It’s a song I wrote for my 67 songs in less than 67 Minutes which is a song about a restaurant that everything taste like Chicken”.
Today is National Fried Chicken Day! So if you are allowed to eat fried chicken, have a great time! We’re going to eat some nuggets from the air fryer.
You might have heard us playing this goofy little ditty on the air.
Today is American Redneck Day. Y’all ready to get busy? I’m crazy therefore this was the first song that came to mind for the occasion.
Sir Mix-A-Lot had an album and singles out on the scene long before “Baby Got Back”. His album Swass came out in 1988 on the strength of their single “Posse on Broadway” which was not a a comedy track like this one. I had the album on cassette.
“Square Dance Rap” was actually released as a single. I first heard the song on the radio but was a different mix. The version that appeared on the album had some editing done to it that makes it a little more goofy.
My fifth grade teacher managed to get our class to square dance back in 1985. Square dancing was really a thing in American culture, even as recently as the 1980s. The photo above was found on this great article about the square dancing fad. It’s from 1986 and shows an Ohio square dance club enjoying one of their twice monthly dances.
Have you ever learned to Square Dance? Let us know in the comments.
-Wacky Alex
This was supposed to be the song of the day for yesterday. July 1 is Canada Day and this time it’s actually Canada’s fault that we are a day late posting this blog.
Blame Canada. Yesterday several fans from Canada decided to send up compliments on Discord. They kept distracting me with all the nice things they kept saying about the station. I was supposed to be getting my work done but Canada decided to interrupt me. I can’t help it. It’s Canada’s fault!
The video on this page looks like it came from a VHS tape of the live program. I have never seen a professional release of this. I hope they don’t take it down. I’ve been a Robbin Williams fan for most of my life. I was very sad to learn of his death.
The photo above is by Bruce Reeve/CBC. You can blame Canada for that too, although I added Robin’s face.
How do you like to celebrate Canada Day? Do you play certain songs? Let us know in the comments.
-Wacky Alex
I asked people to name a funny techno song. This is one of the first suggestions to slide in. I loved it right away. Salesmen are often pretty slimy. Con artists are even worse. I love it when market mania is mocked. I love satire. The video is great too. More please.
The Stupendium is a musician, animator and content creator, creating weird, wonderful and usually incredibly nerdy songs and animations.
This song is part of a Video series, Toby Fox’s Deltarune. The song is rapped/narrated by a character from the series called Spamton G. Spamton. The character has become a popular subject of memes.
Thank you Stupendium. I can feel the cash vibes flowing through me. I just know FunHouse Radio will soon receive a windfall of investments in the near future!
-Wacky Alex
FunHouse Radio 