Am I the only one that missed this Sesame Street Captain Vegetable clip as a kid? This is too funny.
As if the crazed and kooky haired muppets weren’t enough, the dialog has extra snark (“what are you, some kind of weirdo?”) and the silly song gets stuck in my head when I least expect it.
Taking the cake (er, salad?) are those sad looking vegetables! Poor Andy gets his black licorice candy swapped for a plate full of dry, raggedy celery. I dare a cracked-out puppet to try and take my licorice and replace it with celery. NO.
But that’s of course beside the point. The point is to promote good nutrition and not nightmares, so the trippy hippies at Sesame Street reprised the sketch with John Leguizamo as Captain Vegetable.
Leguizamo’s Captain Vegetable comes off awkward in places and to be honest, Elmo was never my main muppet. But it’s still a funny skit and the costume reaches new heights of ridiculousness. Is that corn silk coming out of his head? At least he’s armed with more than two vegetables. Thanks, playa!
The old link was passed on by friend, web designer, music lover, LA denizen Tim Ganter, back when he was still blogging… poke, poke… Thanks for introducing me to Captain Vegetable, Tim!
Yesterday there were two serious accidents involving bicyclists on Oʻahu, both before dawn, one a fatal hit and run. With bikes sales increasing as people try to work around the laughable rise in gas prices, this is definitely a cause for concern and perhaps the start of a disturbing new trend.
Last year, I gave up my parking pass and have been biking to and from work. I live about 10 minutes away from my job so it’s not like a Herculean feat, tho I do sometimes do it in a skirt and heels. And then it starts to rain! But for the most part, I think it’s actually easier than driving. Plus it’s fun, good exercise and there is no sticker shock at the pump, cuz air is still free. But commuting by bike has given me a perspective on how bike-unfriendly the city can be.
For example, the ridiculous bike lanes that put cyclists in glass-strewn gutters alongside cars rushing on and off the freeway, like on University Ave. going up to UH. I don’t go that route. It sucks. The lower part of University is better, but even still, a line on the ground demarcating a narrow path between a row of parked cars on one side and careless drivers on the other is kinda sketchy. Luckily I don’t have to go that way too often; day to day I ride side streets instead.
The problem there is that some drivers don’t seem to think that the rules of the road apply between them and bicyclists. They often don’t bother to signal, and if it is a narrow street where two cars would have to squeeze to get by, they just stay right in the middle if I’m coming towards them on a bike. Not cool!
There are definitely more people of all ages biking around town these days. Yes, some of them are inconsiderate and stupid. But in the end, more bikes = less cars on the road. We all agree that’s a good thing, right?
I’m always down for a live performance. Regardless of event type, seeing things live always adds a new dimension to appreciate, be it a baseball game, stand-up comedy routine or concert of any genre. Last week, I experienced a Broadway style musical, Flower Drum Song on an extended run at Diamond Head Theatre. These performers are working it, singing, dancing, acting… they have my full respect. Having a live, mini-orchestra there was also unexpected and fun.
This youtube clip of a 2006 performance looks like someone snuck it in the theater. Minus the thong(!) it is very much like what we saw at DHT. (The last minute or so appears to be some… thing… else….. perhaps was under the recording?)
The dailies of course loved the show. They love everything that’s locally produced; it’s the CODB in Hawaii. (see comments) Me I’m not really a “musicals person” (and yea those are “scare quotes”). LoL. But I tried to put that aside since I was there for a class assignment to think about the performance in terms of the reading we had done the previous week in a book by Coco Fusco called English is Broken Here.
The task was to consider what Fusco would say about the Flower Drum Song performance at DHT. As concerned as she is with Latino/a issues, I do not think Fusco would speak too directly to the content of a supposedly reappropriated (re-reappropriated?) performance of Asian otherness in a United Statesian* style in the illegally occupied Kingdom of Hawaii. But that’s an admittedly presumptuous guess.
I was always kinda sick I missed this show. What you can see of the crowd in the flashes of light looks crazy. This is “Negative Creep” off their first album, Bleach.
“I just thought you might be interested in this band, if you haven’t heard of them already. They bring a brand of Finnish funk that is both joyous and soulful. It’s really easy for these new funk bands to sound cheesy but they definitely overcome that. Also look for Didier Sound Spectrum it was an older release from the 90′s that recently saw a reissue. More amazing funky Finnish music.”
No I hadn’t heard of them, thank you for the recommendation, girl!
Here goes the video for “If this ain’t love (don’t know what is).” Yea it’s a few years old, but this can bump all summer long.
Turns out Nicole Willis is originally from Brooklyn (with a solid musical resume), but has apparently studied in Lahti, Finland and blogged about her schoolwork, including philosophy essays and paintings she’s done?! I’m listing to the songs on their myspace and it is enticing me to order their album for real… oh look, here’s a link!
Saw this Icelandic group at Hawaii Theatre and have been respectful ever since. I’m only seven minutes in but wholly impressed with ‘Heima’ by Sigur Rós. Visiting Iceland was something like this, I wish.
[youtube video no longer available]
UPDATE 3/18/08: Boooooooooooooooooooo @ them removing the video after it was splashed across the youtube front page for DAYS. >:-[ And their myspace is all bragging about being the first artists to have a full-length doc on youtube. I guess one could actually buy the damn thing, but I really don’t like this bait and switch. If it is an officially sanctioned release on the interweb, it should not go away. IMHO.
Coppé of Mango and Sweet Rice records played in January at The Next Movement at Next Door in Honolulu. It was wonderful to catch her live again, only the second time I’ve seen her in Honolulu. A former island resident, Coppé passes through on occasion, though clearly(?!) not nearly often enough.
To my ears, much of what Coppé does has a trippy underwater electronic hallucinatory feel to it, but she’s prolific and collaborates often, so no single description (no matter how packed with adjectives) does her music justice. That night at Next Door, for example, it was her glitchy, part-Japanese take on the jazz-pop standard “Fly Me to the Moon” that had me swooning.
In this clip she talks about her performance, new album, influences and being well-received in Europe. The video (and the interviewer!* ugh) are not the greatest but… well, whatever… Coppe’s spark still shines.
As I’m loading this on youtube, I see that Dark has uploaded some videos he did for her songs and I’m reminded that he was supposed to do visuals for her show. For whatever reason, his work didn’t make it on to the screen that night. It’s too bad, they would have added a lot.
Dark’s videos to two of Coppé’s song are included below.
Why are there so many ways to make a simple, hard-boiled egg? Ice baths and timers, are they really necessary? Then when I find the perfect recipe, why do I tell it to my sis wrong, when she’s just trying to eat?
And why did my guestbook, attract so much comment spam? Every day a dozen messages about sex fetishes and drugs, when all I wanted was a place for fam to show me love. (I had to kill it.)
I’m not sure if singing about these minor irritations would really make me feel better, but apparently some folks in Finland feel it does.
Another clever Finnish invention: complaints choirs. Anyone who wants to can join the choir and submit complaints. Then the gripes are set to music and performed for fellow citizens and videotaped to post on the internet. [Source]
Here is the Helsinki Complaints Choir in action.
Apparently the concept is catching on in some other parts of the world, but the complaints of the Finns are just hilarious to me, especially the ones about public saunas and why our ancestors didn’t chose a sunnier part of the world in which to settle.
Thanks to my wonderful sister for listening to all my complaints, and not being mad even tho I made her mess up half a dozen eggs. :~j
One of the first real interviews I did after graduating from journalism school was in 1998 with Del tha Funkee Homosapien, a solo emcee and official or unofficial head of the Hieroglyphics crew. Their whole collective came to Honolulu to film a video for the song “You Never Know.” The song and the video don’t even really go together, but the week or two they spent here confirmed that Hawaii and hiphop did.
As an eager, wanna-be, hiphop journalist, I finagled a bunch of interviews for RE:ACT magazine, which was actually more of a zine, but I would never call it that. I spent hours talking with Del, A-Plus, Tajai, Casual, Pep-Love and the video director, whose name escapes me, as did his interview, due to an amateurish technical error on my part. The Del interview was the most in depth and exists online on a very early version of the quadmag site.
Unlike iTunes, the Amazon mp3 downloads are DRM-free, so you can burn, copy and save to your heart’s content. You do need to install a small bit of software, but it’s a painless, 1-minute process. Then the program manages and organizes your downloads and imports them into iTunes or Windows Media Player, automatically. Very slick.
I don’t think the library is that huge yet, but I will shop there again. Besides the ease, I am really pleased to support Manu Chao.
This was the first video off the album, “Rainin’ in Paradize.”
