Posted 1:39 AM by sport

Posted 8:33 PM by sport

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!
(did I spell that right? Merrie? Merrey?)

Posted 2:54 PM by sport

ABOUT ME for SPORT MURPHY



I am unpredictable and can be very dangerous. I appear slow and docile but really am quite agile and can run as fast as a horse; so don't try to out run me. My tail is often a handy warning flag. When it hangs down and is switching naturally, I’m usually unperturbed. If it extends out straight and droops at the end, I’m becoming mildly agitated. If the tail is sticking straight up, I am ready to charge and you should be somewhere else....but do not run.

I weigh about 2,000 lbs and have heavy horns and a large hump of muscle which supports my enormous head and thick skull. I have a thick mass of fur on my head and a heavy cape of fur even in summer. This enhances my size and protects me when fighting. I am especially ill-tempered and roar and battle during the breeding season from mid-July through August.

Interesting Facts: Depending on the air current, I may glide 150 feet or more from a height of 60 feet. I can turn easily at right angles while gliding and control the direction of my glide by tensing and turning my legs and body and flapping my tail. As I approach my landing, I flip my tail up and hold my body back to slow the glide down, giving me ample time to position my feet for grasping the tree trunk. I usually land face up and often run up the tree immediately after landing.

I change to red a couple of days after spawning, then I die. Since I am nearsighted I have to always use low frequency sound waves to find food in far away places. In the wild, fewer than one out of 1,000 of eggs I’ve laid live to spawning.

I can either be dry-cured or wet-cured. A dry-cured Sport Murphy has been rubbed in a mixture containing salt. This is followed by a period of drying and aging. A wet-cured Sport Murphy has been cured with a brine, either by immersion or injection. The division between wet and dry cure is not always hard-and-fast as some Sport Murphy curing methods begin wet but are followed by dry aging.

For audiences ranging from CEO’s, sales teams and line staff to families, I weave together facts, data, cartoons and stories for a unique message that enhances commitment to personal well-being, stress management, family time, positive interaction with coworkers and balance in our lives. My messages are always personal, interactive and entertaining whether they're delivered before 4000 in a convention center or 40 at a management retreat.

The demand for me suddenly increased with the advent of World War II, and continued to increase over the following decades. The only way I could keep up with the demand was to join Blogspot.

Posted 12:20 AM by sport

WACKY WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENTS!!!
I love this sort of stuff. Check out these ACTUAL wedding announcements, which are the very kind of actual wacky stuff I love. Ya gotta love actual wackiness like this; check 'em out!

Posted 12:55 AM by sport

Another year older and deeper in debt.

Posted 12:47 AM by sport

Just thought I’d raise an issue here.
State flowers… most states have specific, individualized flowers, but there are quite a few that must SHARE a flower. What’s up with that?

Pennsylvania’s Mountain Laurel must be shared with Connecticut.

North Dakota and Iowa have joint custody of the Wild Prairie Rose.

Kentucky and Nebraska? Goldenrod both.

Louisiana and Mississippi, two ADJOINING states, endure the indignity of a tandem Magnolia claim.

This predicament is also familiar to North Carolina and Virginia, who tussle over dibs on the American Dogwood.

Arkansas proudly boasts the Apple Blossom as its very own floral signet? Not so fast… so does Michigan.

New Jersey? Violet. Rhode Island? You guessed it: Violet. And get this: Wisconsin… Wood Violet. Cold comfort there, with only that slight variation preventing a troika.

Similarly, Washington has its Coast Rhododendron, whilst West Virginia must settle for a plain old Rhododendron. Still, it’s something.

Meanwhile, Johnny-come-lately Hawaii gets the “Pua Aloalo” …which is individualized as well as region (and language) specific.

This prompts a few thoughts as to state specificity or lack of same.
For example, Idaho has the Syringa or Mock Orange, which (and here’s the kicker) botanists know as “Philadelphus lewisii” …now, everyone knows Jerry is from New Jersey, not Philly, but, OK an understandable error. But why “Philadelphus” all the way out in spudland? Why? While poor Pennsylvania itself is saddled with the Moutain Laurel along with Connecticut? I wish this were a unique problem, but hark:

Observe the brash left coast symmetry: California / California Poppy / (Eschscholtzia californica)… well! La DEE da, California! Who did you BLOW for that honor?

No such tripartite harmonius latinus nomenclatus holds for other states.

Remember that American Dogwood? It’s “Cornus florida.” So why the FUCK is it doing double duty for North Carolina and Virginia? Florida has, predictably, the Orange Blossom. How Special. Citrus sinensis, if you must know.

North Dakota and Iowa: The Wild Prairie Rose, as I said. But dig this: it’s “Rosa arkansana” WHAT? WHAT?!?!? Need I remind you of Arkansas’ Apple Blossom? Why not a little Rosa arkansana THERE? Bet your ass Michigan would be OK with that.

I am getting a little worked up, so consider South Dakota’s Pasque Flower, which is “Ppulsatilla hirsutissima” …a Ppeculiar name that translates as: “a hairy Ppulsatilla.” That state’s bird is a Ring-Necked PHpheasant, which does Ppossess a fair amount of fuzzy down around its Ppulsatilla, so at least some sanity prevails in the land.

Or does it? Tennessee claims FIVE state songs! My Homeland Tennessee, When It's Iris Time In Tennessee (and yes, the Iris IS the state flower, thank God), My Tennessee, The Tennessee Waltz and Rocky Top Tennessee. Such gluttony. Such overkill.

Me, I'm a New Yorker. Plain old Rose, one song (I Love New York), that's all. No bullshit here.

Posted 3:32 AM by sport

My candidate for a valid holy book is Baum's THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ. First: it's American. Right there, I like it. I like America. Depite Americans, with their Wal-Mart stores and reality TV shows and big stupid cars and and 50 Cent cds, it's good. Every pismire on earth (here included) blames us for inventing savagery, imperialism and bigotry. We've simply used these time-honored human ideals to our own presumed benefit as did, does and will every other nation hitherto and henceforth. Now that we are declining fast, let's see what wonders will replace our decadent dynasty. Good fucking luck. Point is, the best of what we are/were is/was pretty wonderful. Most of that was cultural, not political, and that culture is DEAD. R.I.P. Incidentally, the book of Mormon and the works of L Ron Hubbard and Elijah Muhammed are also American in origin. So maybe America does suck.

Anyway, the Baum book is also "modern" (by which I mean 20th century, not "current"). What do I care for the tall tales of two-thousand-year old nomadic herdsmen and their disgusting ways? What use can I make of the provisional philosophies of ancient nobles and mystics other than adapting the few valid points and prescriptions hidden within the sillyass bulk of their yammer? I know from con men, tornadoes, scarecrows, little doggies and hot air balloons; can't relate to trading wives for cattle any more than I can grok noble space negroes battling evil mutant crackers created by a renegade mad doctor. This is what the great Malcolm X believed in.

It's funny, the Wizard of Oz is... and the story FLOWS. No jumping around from David's sweet psalms to the ludicrous book of Job to Solomon's gay porn to the flat out psychosis of Revelations. No composite hippy Jesus Christ character about whose mere existence I must convince myself through daily repetition of stilted doggerel on my poor aching knees; I damn sure KNOW there never was no literal tin woodsman actually moaning for an historically verifiable oil can. This somehow does not impede my understanding of the message he and his pals personify.
Which is:
"IT'S ALL BULLSHIT, and so what if it is?" A Great American Truth.

The Wizard is a shuck, and his grandeur is somehow enhanced by this revelation. It's all a truly humanist parable for self-realization and continual self-creation, like that of Dylan or Bobby Darin or Madonna, depending on your age and your level of musical taste. Gimme the Wizard's showbiz hoaxing over the capricious sadism of Y*w*h, who tells Abraham to kill his son and then says "Wait... just testing you!" What is the fixation with killing sons, btw? Man oh man, Baum's central protagonist is A LITTLE GIRL. Again, right there, I see divinity far more easily and truly. I'll take my wee Lily over all your Mohammeds and Zoroasters and Shivas and whoozhamacallems.

If I read it correctly, you must journey through all kinds of trials and threats to ultimately discover that all you ever need, you've had all along. This is what we pay therapists fortunes to tell us. It's real.

What could you possibly need in this world but a brain, a heart, a home and the noive? Somebody somewhere on the web must have posted a more elaborate version of this thesis, so I won't belabor it. But if you think I'm wrong, just try playing "Dark Side of the Moon" alongside some religious picture -- that Mel Gibson thing will do -- and see if it's any fun. Nah. I mean, right there. Whoo. Hey, I wonder if Zardoz would be cool to watch while listening to "Brain Salad Surgery?"



As much as I love the music of Dylan, Nick Cave, Johhny Cash and Leonard Cohen, they load all this biblical lard into their songs and it really is a damn shame. I am digging those who risk looking goofy by working with more whimsical sources. Syd fuckin Barrett, for one. Sure, he got into the I Ching and such, but that's like a Ouija board, really. Good clean fun. Now, Bill Fay's on to something more profound with his own bible-dipping, but thats another story. Lately all I listen to is Sunshine Pop and Psychedelia of the Barrett (not Jerry Garcia) brand.

From here, the great unacknowledged master of Sunshine Pop seems to be Roger Nichols. Not real big on Curt Boettcher, myself. In the realm of late 60s post-Pet Sounds popcraft, Paul Williams' partner is as supreme as was Bob Gaudio in the slightly earlier world of NY/Italian/Jewish post-doowop popcraft. This latter subcategory finds its fullest flowering, oddly enough, in the early work of Steely Dan, which is magnificent still, but will never ever be cool. They are actually as widely hated as Frank Zappa, and in both cases I can understand the prejudice to some extent, even though I reject it absolutely. Sure, these are irksome wiseasses who made too many records of boring chops-centric, self-amused crap, but they also both produced enormous amounts of great, great stuff. Incidentally, the Roger Nichols who engineered Steely Dan’s albums is not the same guy as the Sunshine Pop auteur.

Sunshine Pop seems to have morphed into a few things... the superb MOR of early Manilow (Mandy is awesome… blow me), the bubblegum of the great Tony Macauley and the dippier strands of Power Pop, for example. There is a "third stream" of more ponderous amalgems of Sunshine Pop and post-doowop: your Bacharach / Webb music. We must also acknowledge the dumbass/delicious sounds of Brooklyn Bridge, Jay and the Americans et al. It all figures in.

Now, Barrett's brand of psychedelia mainly inflated into prog rock and art pop. The former has only recently begun to be permitted into the kanons of kool by the kouncil of kocksucker kritics, but the latter -- think Brian Eno when he sang tunes, or Kevin Ayers -- has always been OK to like. I say it's all swell and always was, except that which sucked then and sucks still. Van Der Graaf Generator did not suck, and neither did the Moody Blues, damn it, even with all those "cold hearted orbs which rule the night." Mellotrons were just plain great. I just cannot get with the smelly hippy jam shit. I try and try. I can't.

So here is a set of lists. I make these cdr "K-Tel" albums of unknown or lesser-known tunes in order to simulate a classic rock station of the mind, where nothing is played out beyond redemption and shit like Rod Stewart is forever banned (this douche has now apparently issued a box set of his “Great American Songbook series” of releases; him singing Porter and Arlen is a hundred times more awful than Tony Bennett singing Eleanor Rigby or anything by Shatner, but it will never be funny or good or useful in any way whatsoever).

(HERE WAS A SECTION I'VE SINCE SELF-CENSORED. I AM SLIGHTLY PARANOID THAT SOME COMMENTS POSTED HERE COULD COME BACK TO HAUNT ME. FYI: I BOUGHT ALL THESE RECORDS LEGALLY AND SO SHOULD YOU. SUPPORT ARTISTS, MAN. AND IGNORE THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN! INTERESTED IN HEARING THESE COMPS? EMAIL ME)

Anyhow, my lists.
Let's group these current faves into handy six-tunes-a-side imaginary albums, but note that there’s no order of preference here… plus, there are many others I could have selected. Both genres are packed with lost gems. So:

Sunburst! All the original artists!

1) Don't Take Your Time (Roger Nichols and the Small Circle of Friends) ...this is a corker. Great opening bull-fiddle plucking and then a frantic jazzy number in the vein of the old Grantray/Lawrence Spider Man cartoon theme or "Silicones: The Answer." Hooks build from hooks into even better hooks. Really nerdy and fantastic.

2) Ever On My Mind (Lee Raymond) ...can't find jack shit about this guy; apparently this was his only single. "Kaleidoscoping smiles of yesterday" lyrics aside, it's a relatively straight and serious midtempo tune with nice horns and mild trippiness. Pleasant and sweet and awfully catchy.

3) Happy (the Sunshine Company) ...these guys had a Mamas and Papas, Seekers, Cowsills thing going. They covered a few of Roger Nichols' great tunes, but this irresistible number has a touch of Four Seasons as well, which you know I endorse. Not especially original, obviously, but sheer pleasure.

4) Frightened Little Girl (The July Four) ...the thing with this is the groove. It has this beautiful light, swaying swing tempo against the usual minor chords, with great staccato horn accents and effective stop-time moments before each chorus. I can't help doing this inane little dance when I listen to it. I hope nobody ever catches me at it, but that’s what great pop does to you: makes you feel those wonderful, embarrassing teenage things again. Gorgeous. Ideal.

5) To Put Up With You (Paul Williams) ...yet another Nichols number performed by his famous co-writer. It's one of any number of eligible tunes from Paul's outstanding "Someday Man" album, and I picked it not only for the instant-grabber melody, but because of the great chorus conceit: "I just haven't got what it takes to put up with you!" That's telling her! It seems an idea better suited to the Stones or someone tougher, but the sweet setting makes the impact harder.

6) High Coin (Harper’s Bizarre) …this is one of those Sunshine Pop / Psych Pop cusp numbers, written by the great Van Dyke Parks. I put it here because the band was closer to the Association than to Syd. The tune is magnificent and uplifting, but what gets me is how much like Parks himself it sounds: all the dislocated strings, daft piano and that inimitable (or not so) voice singing about ambitions and hopes.

7) The End (Linda Ball) …Nichols here arranging a song by tin-pan alley scholar and novelty hitmaker Ian Whitcomb. It’s got a wacky polka tempo and heavily echoed trombone with Linda pissing and moaning about the hopelessness of her relationship. As with so much Sunshine Pop, the sun only shines in the sonics; the lyrical theme is pretty darn bleak.

8) Paper Cup (the Fifth Dimension) …nothing obscure about them, but this tune is not too well-known, though it did make top 40. It’s from their all-Jimmy Webb album, “The Magic Garden.” The song is full of that sensational wall of voices “bop-bopping” along through lyrics about insanity. The effect is like Lee Hazelwood’s hit for Nancy Sinatra “Sugar Town,” where a bouncy and carefree sound masks a sinister message of despair and druggy retreat. Yeah!!

9) Night of the Lions (Mark Eric) …this hapless kid made but one album, which the label evidently intended as a tax loss, letting it die without any support whatsoever. Drag, because it’s a great Pet Sounds homage at a time when everybody had long since abandoned Brian Wilson for the bonehead heavy rock shit that still plays interminably on classic rock radio. This tune begins with a lick like Barrett Strong's “Money” and then, with the whoop of a french horn, commences to gallop like a champ for the remainder of its exhilarating duration. Mark sings of the hollowness inside youth culture bravado, and it is out-motherfucking-standing.

10 Run Run Run (Third Rail) …a hectic evocation of the day’s pressures. I dunno… it’s good. (note: I forgot to expound on this in sequence, and by the time I get to the en d of the night's typing I was too shot to go into it. Alas)

11 October Country (October Country) …from the album “October Country” I think, but maybe I’m just melting down like HAL. It’s a little like The Cyrkle trying to do “Forever Changes.” Lotsa strings and urgency, and a certain sense of stoopidness in the singing, which is praise. It breaks into a dumb shuffle in the middle, but soon the frenetic piano arpeggiation begins again, and then a sudden Eleanor Rigby interlude and then rock, baby, and it’s over before you catch your breath enough to go, “eh… it’s OK.”

12 No One Was There (Gates of Eden) …another one that’s probably more psych than sunshine, as is their other great song “Too Much On my Mind” but it connects with me more in the sunshine spot than the sullen amygdalic vortex ruled by Lord Syd. It’s a spacy, sitarish and laden with real boss Gregorian harmonies. “Masks of cellophane” and that sort of thing… a blacklight poster for your ears.

Psychedelic Gold! 12 Fluorescent Faves!

1) Madman Running Through the Fields (Dantalion's Chariot) ...this band featured Zoot Money, a brit-rock stalwart for ages. The song is an intense, melodic, beautifully structured piece of paranoia, about as Barrett-ish as one could possibly get without being as brilliant/nuts or merely imitative. Fave lyric: "Things went OK, and then one day: Pow!" It sounds cooler than it reads, because of Zoot's rough voice and the stops-out trippiness of the production.

2) Gone is the Sad Man (Timebox) ...Mike Patto and Ollie Halsall, names which should mean something to you. Patto's subsequent group did a great, daffy thing pairing boogie woogie and boys' choir entitled "Turn Turtle" and Halsall worked a lot with Neil Innes and Vivian Stanshall (So did Zoot Money, in Grimms, Hmmm). This rips off the rhythm sound from Beatles psych-era stuff like "Baby You're a Rich Man" and "I Am the Walrus" but the tune is a great melodious meander that touches on unlikely, satisfying soul flavors amidst the paisley.

3) Diana In the Autumn Wind (The National Gallery) ...brothers Chuck and Gap Mangione (!?!) did this album based on the paintings of Paul Klee (??!!!), at least half of which is superb. The jazz impulse is certainly present, but reined in by baroque popadelia with traded male and female leads. Mournful, nicely pretentious and legitimately musical, if you get my drift. This stuff twitches on the border of Sunshine Pop and Psychedelia, and, like the Four Seasons' magnificent "Wall St Village Day," it does sound at times like proto-Fagey/Beck in all the best ways.

4) The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane (Timon) ...dunno much about this act, but the thing starts like such a piece of pussy-pop, with shrill oboe and the singer's simpering voice, that I almost missed the violence of the message and the musical balls below the tinsel. So think Kinks. It's about a kid who smashes her dolls' heads. The National Gallery explored this same theme (what the fuck??) in the tune Boy With Toys. This must say something weird about the 1960s, as if there’s anything not weird to say.

5) I Have Been Alone (Common People) ...a somewhat cult-prized album called "Of The People" features a few tunes roughly in the "Nights in a Whiter Shade of Satin" ballpark, mournful and string-laden, but there's something especially ominous and off-center about them. The orchestra is particularly well-arranged and recorded in a big, cavernous manner that suits the somewhat addled but authentic whining of the singer. It's truly arresting stuff.

6) Positively Negative (the Tingling Mother's Circus) ...my nominee for most annoying side ever cut. This guy sends his faux-operatic castrato shriek through phasers and flangers to voice incomprehensible lyrics over a carefully-arranged clutter of chamber-trippy noises. It's fascinating to listen to, and almost a sort of pleasure. I listen to it often and usually wonder why I bothered, but I go back again and again.

7) Lollipop Train (Peppermint Trolley Company) …a song by P.F. Sloan also recorded by the Grass Roots, it seems. And this sounds like them in the chorus, a pissed off driver with ballsy horns. The verses are a little like Love, with flamenco-ish rhythm, and the chorus tag goes into a circus waltz. This is more like the American “Nuggets” garage stuff than the lysergic baroque of the other tracks, but you need a little of that as well. He’s pretty much carrying on about how she blew it when she blew him off. The usual.

8) Across Your Life (Oriental Sunshine) …a Norwegian hippy act, with sitar and organ swirling like patchouli fumes ‘round a charmingly-accented female voice invoking some bum trip. Like maybe if Nico had been more into hash than heroin or something like that. Their album, “Dedicated To The Bird We Love” is a consistently fetching collection of airy-fairy things like this, so the track choice is sort of random.

9) On A Saturday (Keith West) …the singer in the band Tomorrow (hit song: My White Bicycle, guitarist was Steve Howe, later of Yes) trills a surprisingly un-dippy song about the sweet chick, the nice afternoon and all that stuff. Really nice, strong acoustic guitar lick and more Spanish style rhythms with very interesting and effective tempo change-ups. Like many of these cuts, it sounds like a hit you remember rather than an obscurity newly heard. Maybe it was a hit over in the UK… dunno.

10) My Name Is Jack (Manfred Mann) …the group is very well-known, but the tune is largely forgotten. Not by me; I used to keep the radio tuned low in my backyard tent to turn up whenever it came on. It’s a kind of childhood surrealist name check of all Jack’s (imaginary?) pals, with whistling, congas and mock-martial choruses. The hook is way catchy, and there’s something archly perverse about the lyric that keeps it from cloying.

11) I Wish I Was Five (Scrugg) …put this here not only because it’s a cool record, but because the title sums up most of the pop-psych philosophy. The main gazane here was a guy named John Kongos, a pretty accomplished all-around music biz talent for decades. The opening is classic organ and guitar mysterioso. “Sometimes it’s not so good to be alive” he sings, summing up the deep gloom that informs many of the Peter Pan yearnings of the genre. Of course, most performers in those days did not seek to drag you down into their anhedonia; it took years before everyone discovered the Velvets and decided that bumming us all out was Art’s highest calling.

12) Wings of Love (Nirvana) …thanks to latterday suicide songster Cobain’s band, one must always qualify this band as “the 60s Nirvana” which is fucked, because they should have been well-enough remembered to force the Seattle band to pick a more appropriate name, like “Gehenna.” The leaders here were the abundantly gifted Patrick Campbell-Lyons and Alex Spyropoulos, who made a slew of KILLER records, including the first “rock opera” before SF Sorrow or Tommy. This particular number has a stunner of an orchestral intro, arranged by Syd Dale, a noted library/production music composer. It’s one of those mini-suites with several brilliantly developed sections. It’s about yearning, and it connects big time from the first tymp roll to the fakeout ending rave-up. They made other outstanding songs: “Rainbow Chaser” which pits John Barry Bond-isms against the cosmos, “I Believe in Magic” which boasts a truly original melody and a deliberately elusive point, and “Melanie Blue” – a colossal, unforgettable big-chorus ballad. What a band.

So that’s a few. Maybe I’ll get into a list of great old singer-songwriter things, rock things, whatever. Tell you one thing, the stuff is exerting an influence. You’ll hear it on the next album for sure. It can only help.

Posted 1:49 PM by sport

David Garland Solo Performance
8 PM On Tuesday, November 8th at The Living Room
154 Ludlow Street (between of Stanton and
Rivington) in New York City; phone 212-533-7235

You should go. I will. IT'S FREE!!!
I've heard the set David has planned, and I strongly suggest that you check it out.
Songs from every phase of his career performed on 12-string guitar.

As with John Cale's "Fragments of a Rainy Season" there's a particular pleasure to hearing these assembled works without their recorded arrangements; they stand up and how.

For newcomers, it's an ideal introduction to his work without any of the daunting, esoteric orchestrations I love so dearly.

Other noted performers will perform notably over the course of this special evening of idiosyncratic songwrights, but don't miss Garland.

Since it's not my own show, I will not be mentally zizzing, so I can actually talk to my friends. What a joy for you!
Hope to see you.

Posted 1:03 AM by sport

R.I.P. Mugsy, beloved Uncle Floyd cast member.

Posted 11:36 PM by sport

By the way...

I think it's possible to view the profoundly stooopid video for my song BIRD IN THE HOUSE right HERE.

Tips:

Search for SPORT MURPHY there.

Click on the link to the vid.

Sit through a fucking trailer for some piece o' shit movie or ad for some piece o' shit product.

Enjoy my piece o' shit video

Note the BERRIE JIGGLER, named "Kwazy Boid"

Note the song's bridge, cleverly accompanied by location footage from ROCK CITY's "swingalong bridge."

Note the appearance by Peter Vega at the end, on loan from Valhalla.

Posted 10:59 PM by sport

About time!

Posted 10:35 PM by sport

1. My Mantra / Me
2. Villains
3. Match Point of our Love
4. Do You Like Stamos
5. Old Masturbater/You are My Mealticket
6. Explain these Fuckin' Lyrics
7. Plunderful
8. Between Song Banter for Embarrassing Everyone
9. Cousin is Plaintiff of the Lawsuit
10. Kokomo '05
11. I've Gone Bald/I Wanna Writer Credit/Workstop

"The Elements" Suite:
12. Helium (from the Baloon)
13. Californium (from the Valley)
14. Chlorine (from the Swimming Pool)
15. Potassium (from the Bananas)
16. Cubic Zirconium (from the Home Shopping Network)
17. Gold (From the Royalties)

18. Match Point of Our Love (reprise)
19. Bad Relations

Posted 10:25 PM by sport

beauty

Posted 10:23 PM by sport

true love

Posted 1:19 AM by sport

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LILY AND MILES!!!!!!
How is it possible to love this deeply, this ecstatically?
Pshaw... it's easy; just look et 'em!!

Posted 1:18 AM by sport

Lily "Ives" Murphy! 

Posted 1:17 AM by sport

Birthday boy! 

Posted 1:15 AM by sport

My favorite people. 

Posted 4:28 AM by sport

Jeep Feep Fep

Posted 9:21 PM by sport

Whoa!

Crazy, busy, good days. I am finally able to write but too spent to get too into it as yet. However, I must mention that the Knitting Factory show went very well. More on this and related phenomena soon.

Importantly, all credit for the show's success goes to my wonderful collaborators on the gig.

DAVID GARLAND, as you must know, is a composer I'm awed by and a man I'm honored to call my friend. He tickled the Wurlitzer and strummed some guitar, and brought his incomparable musical mind to bear on my stuff. If you've a taste for adventure, wit, stunning sonic color in your tunes, you should investigate his work. I guested on his most recent release THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WINDOW.


ANDRES KARU is a guy I've liked and admired for a long time and have only now worked with, with much more to come. He's worked with the brilliant Michael Ferentino in a number of bands / projects and now drums for The Wonder Stuff, my buddy Miles Hunt's well-known band. Andres and I are now preparing to begin work on the next album, and his enthusiasm and talent are true fucking boons.

STEVE ESPINOLA gets MVP on this gig for opening his home for rehearsals, taking days off work, providing the instruments and imbuing all with the always upbeat Espinola vibe. He is one of the best songwriters I've ever met, and a demon on the keys. We spent many fine hours listening to Biff Rose, Willie the Lion, Bing Crosby, ? and the Mysterians, Screamin' Jay, etc, in the post rehearsal nights I crashed on his couch. He must be seen live; a guaranteed pleasure.


I'm grateful to these gentlemen for making my return to performance so much fun; I even want to do it again now!
Thanks to Jim Allen and Jim Sclavunos for offering their talents to the show; I'm zealously holding my rainchecks on that.
Bianca Bob Miller and Meredith Yayanos would surely have been on board if life's urgencies hadn't prevented it; both were missed.

HUGE thanks also to everyone who came to see the show, for your enthusiasm and kind comments. This was real good, yup.

Posted 1:29 AM by sport

SUDDEN WIENER PULLOUT SURPRISES DEMS
(nah, not a real headline, but it oughtta be)

Posted 7:16 PM by sport

Peter Vega and his daughter Ruby. 

Posted 2:41 AM by sport

the magical Miles 

Posted 2:40 AM by sport

the lovely Lily 

Posted 2:06 AM by sport

Wow.

Yesterday, while rehearsing in Brooklyn, I stopped to check my email, and my pal Steve had written to reassure me that Allen Toussaint, a New Orleans musician I’ve damn near revered for decades, was alive, well and guesting on the Letterman Show, where Steve works as a writer. Very nice to read, as was Steve’s support and corroboration of some of my recent goofball/spiritual blog entries on syncronicitous felicities and coincidentalish numinosities.

I also received disappointing news from mon pal Baptiste that he was not able to come visit from Paris as expected. So, after another rehearsal today (which was at one point interrupted by a call from New Orleans’ own Biff Rose), I headed into NYC to see Bettye Lavette perform at Joe’s Pub. Lavette’s a “soul” singer (“whatever that means” as she laughed on the phone a few days ago while I interviewed her) who’s been at it since I was an infant and is only now getting a taste of real respect and success.

She’s incredible, and it was a damn shame Baptiste couldn’t be there as we’d planned. Nevertheless, I was inspired by the show and by Ms Lavette. Along with joining the throng to cheer Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson as their SMILE finally premiered at Carnegie Hall, Bettye’s success is another grand entry in the annals of “About Fucking Time” I was thrilled to witness, and an inspiring event in times too full of the dispiriting kind. She wailed, ruled and owned the house.

So I went backstage to say hi to Bettye, who left her dressing room to meet a spontaneous ovation from the small group of friends, fans and associates gathered to greet her. Bettye, overcome with tears, radiated the kind of joy that comes from dreams realized and hard work triumphant. Pretty good, all that, and “Dayenu” as we sing at Seder. But… wonder of wonders… who do you suppose I suddenly discover standing beside me?
ALLEN TOUSSAINT.

Yep, Allen Toussaint! Holy shit! A warm fellow, the great man is. His beautiful eyes (well, it's true... no better way to describe 'em) revealed deep sorrow and enormous heart. He cut an elegant figure even while undoubtedly reeling from the catastrophe, and all I could do was gush about how good it was to see him well and safe after his ordeal. I told him what his music meant to me, and this guy -- who has heard such well-deserved praise from countless music lovers for as long as I’ve been alive – responded with honest humility and gratitude. Just to shake his hand was an honor I'll long treasure. So then I talk a bit with another Bettye fan... get this… Elvis Costello. He said that he had “best seat in the house” because he’d sat next to Toussaint. And then we discussed our mutual pal, Baptiste, whose inability to make the trip to NY disappointed Elvis as well.

Elvis Costello, whose album “This Years Model” received a daily, mandatory 7 listens a day back when I was a teen, was as sorry as I was that Baptiste was not with us! Isn’t it all pretty damn groovy? I sat outside later on, enjoying a smoke as Costello and wife Diana Kraal walked, 2 lovebirds, off into the Manhattan night. Despite the grim anniversary approaching again this weekend, The city still stands, still shines and still sings. Just as Bettye Lavette does, as Allen Toussaint does, and as his and Biff Rose's city will once again someday.

I listened to some of the rehearsal tapes for the Knitting Factory set, thought about my amazing wife Shelley and our perfect little Lily and Miles, finished my smoke and headed home.

Oh yeah, also among the email recieved was a note from my dear friend Jennica, who appended this, from Goethe:
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

And I say to myself, it’s wonderful, wonderful, as I go riding merrily along.

Posted 10:23 PM by sport

BACK TO SELF-PROMOTION

OK, Folks: Reminding you that the Knitting Factory show will be in the "Old Office" of the NYC KF on Leonard Street, Friday Sept 16. It will be hard to get in unless you have tix beforehand. You can get them at ticketweb.com, which offers phone sales at 1.866.468.7619 ...another advantage to this is that you save a few bucks versus same-day purchase. The steep 15 buck tariff also allows entry to all the other shows at the club that night, and there are a lot of them; the joint has 3 performance spaces, all crammed with Kill Rock Stars artists. Alternatively, you can buy an all-shows CMJ badge, which costs hundreds of simoleons and permits entry to many clubs on several nights as well as ensuring that you are a certified a-hole.

We are now attempting to find days to rehearse. If we manage to do so, it may actually sound good. Luck be a lady!

Posted 3:00 AM by sport

I just sat here while watching the telethon, typing and typing something about this past week's American Catastrophe. I've just decided to junk it.

What could I say and what would it matter?
I guess words that now fail will fill future entries, for - as we know - an America "changed forever" after the terrorists hit New York has not really changed one fucking bit. Why would this time be different, and why would I be?

Well, it's hard to argue with Kanye West, actually. And I don't think I'd have said anything like that a week ago.

Since I cannot comprehend the tears, corpses, thuggery, heartbreak, betrayal and fear, I'll simply consider the great Allen Toussaint reduced to a wandering refugee while the treasures of Sea-Saint Studio lie lost below an ocean of sewage... that's bad enough for now.

Wrong word, "reduced" ...it's not the refugees who've been "reduced" here.

Posted 2:51 PM by sport

MORE HOT AIR

A friend made a wisecrack about my “solipsistic” ways, and he was entitled and justified to do so. However, it gets one to thinking. Specifically, what was I on about in the last entry? Was I proposing that the deity had arranged events so that I could commune with Seamus during an idle viewing of some Hollywood picture? Well, no. It’s true that I felt my Dad’s presence during the events described, as I often have these recent times. But if there is a point to be made, it’s not about mysticism, it’s about tuning into a frequency. There are certain mindsets, over which we have a fair degree of control, that determine how we perceive and interact with our surroundings. For example, I’ve occasionally enjoyed a kind of “blank” mindset, where I view the world around me objectively. I am not “present” in it at these times; it’s all just going and going and I am only seeing, hearing and smelling it. This is refreshing.

One such moment was on New Year’s 2000. At midnight, after all the kisses and well-wishing with Shelley and my folks, I stepped outside the house. It was a clean, cold night and my folks’ neighborhood was oddly quiet, as if everybody was off at a party somewhere else. The ruckus of celebration surrounded me, as if the world was a vast doughnut of “whoop-de-doo” and this block was the hole. There were several discernible layers of sound: the quiet of our block, the distant cacaphony, and local noises from inside the house and nearby. I was able to separate them and tune in and out of each at will. None of it involved me at that moment, and any emotion or thought was supplanted by the odd pleasure of disassociation. It’s a very nice, calm feeling, like the deep quiet after a passing storm has caused a blackout. There is a very rare counterpart to this, which is a sublime state of connection with everything. In a spiel about an Ives concert, I described that kind of rushing sound and fury signifying who-knows-what. I guess some religious types often have these experiences through meditation or peyote or something. More often though, that ol’ devil solipsism intrudes, and then there are dark portents and grim signifiers everywhichway. The usual response to things is “yeah… figures.” Every cocksucking thing is more proof of the conspiracy.

What I described in the Mo Cuisle spiel was the counterpart to this. Ordinary things and events take on a numinous quality. In the incomprehensible web of things real, unreal, lost, invented, known, unknown, a-bornin’, ad infinitum, all these states of perception are correct. If there is a line between sanity and insanity, it is probably smack dab at the point where one is able to draw from them without attempting to influence them, become unduly influenced by them or imposing them upon others. Brian Wilson, making the music of Smile, tapped into the ecstatic state and put it on tape. This is called “artistic genius.” When he then concluded that his piece “Mrs O’Leary’s Cow” caused actual fires, he crossed over the line. (Being benign, he only harmed himself through this hallucinatory blip; had be been a bad guy he might have bypassed making the music and gone out lighting fires) Too commonly, we learn of people hearing the voice of god and perpetrating horrible acts. Even more commonly we learn of people obeying the voice of their own little Ids, calling it religious duty or political necessity or something else, and fucking over someone else’s life.

Everyone lives in a more or less pragmatically determined delusion. Wrong means your delusion led you to fuck up someone else’s shit and Right means it did not. Gradations of Wrong scale down to gradations of Evil and gradations of Right scale up to gradations of Good. More pragmatically determined gradations of Good/Right lead folks to acts of selflessness and heroism, and less “pragmatic” gradations lead to Art. Upwards awaits Genius or Sainthood, depending. Most of us, I hope, are down in the neighborhood of “talent” or “decent person.” Pragmatic Wrong/Evil examples are everywhere, but let’s agree that your Hitler/Grice/Ceausescu extreme is uncommon compared to your everyday prick driver/rock critic/phone solicitor standard. (Pragmatic Evil: taking from others for one’s own gain, as opposed to a pointlessly destructive “wings off flies” motivation). This is all sorta slapdash and semi-serious, but there is a point I’m making, I think.

I left AA many years ago after witnessing a room full of fellow recovering drunks, all going gaga over one woman’s photo of her kitchen, where she claimed to have captured the image of Jesus in a reflection over the sink. I couldn’t believe it: they all agreed this was Christ, rather than a coincidence of light and schmutz creating a vague likeness of Kenny Loggins. Then and now, I reckoned they’d all be better off getting a damn drink and arguing over the Mets than deciding that the King of Kings dropped by to inspect Betty M’s dirty dishes. So what’s the difference between that and me claiming that a bad lightbulb and a Clint Eastwood DVD got together to forward me a candygram from the dearly departed? Well, you figure it out. If that gal thought she saw Jesus, and this affected her in some positive way, hell, yeah. But when she hightailed it to Town Square to share the glad tidings and everyone there said “BEHOLD! IT IS TRULY HE WHO AM WHAT AM!” …well, that’s when the line got crossed. So I’d prefer anyone smiling about my tale and thinking me a crackpot over anyone saying “Whoah! That’s heavy!” But I’d REALLY welcome someone reading it and glimpsing the fact that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophies. As there had fucking better be; our philosophies are pretty weak tea.

Every philosophy I’ve ever “studied” (a kind work for the dilettante browsage that amounts to all I can stand of such dead-end labor) is wrong. Every religion I’ve ever examined is silly. People who embrace them are not necessarily silly, though, because usually people pick and choose. People decide for themselves what part is metaphor, what part is sound and what part is p-tuie. And that’s where my solipsism comes in. To use Judeo-Christianity as an example (because it’s familiar; not because the “eastern faiths” are any less ridiculous): Joan of Arc. Noah. God speaks, they act. Everyone says they’re nuts. But we know, via hindsight via dogma, that God DID speak to them. So they are Saints or Patriarchs or something. Real or invented, these people were fuckin’ nuts, and YOU would number among the nameless scoffers in their tales. Of course you would. Or maybe you and I would not figure in at all… we’d ignore them. We would be like the characters inhabiting unseen parts of films. Who dat?

The crowd hanging out at Martini’s bar the night BEFORE George Bailey stumbles in and begins his ordeal. Ordinary people living in Sweden during the events Cervantes covers in Don Quixote. Another deer in another wood far from Bambi. We have selected the particular story in that book/movie - or it has been selected for us – from an infinite number of possible others, and an infinite number of permutations of that choice of cast and setting. (This all gets very stoned-sophomore, and is not especially original or profound, I know. So eat shit: this is my blog, not fucking Spinoza. The pursuit of some mathematically precise ideology is the exact opposite of my… uh… belief) Joan of Arc and those who love her (as literal patron saint, as poetic metaphor, as sex fetish, as illustration of religious principles, as political figurehead) are choosing their story, its meaning, and all that. The more dogmatic one is, the further from that differentiation and the possibility of “god.” I personally view the “gift of faith” as a corral that comforts because it contains… swaddles. For that, it’s perfectly acceptable. But if your Mohammed or Jesus says “go tell it on the mountain” so others “know” the “truth” I’m not interested in listening (naturally, if you want me to die because I reject it, I want you dead first; zealotry is another whole story). People who are into this are OK, as are those who have no faith or need for any. But when they announce their specific convictions about God or Nothing they bore me as truly as all those insufferable political partisans who yell at one another on cable TV. I don’t believe in God and I don’t believe in Nothing.

That stuff is a roaring ocean I don’t belong in. I have a swimmin’ hole that suits me. I read old TV guides. I listen to airchecks of long-ago radio broadcasts. I live in a past of my own choice, to create a present of my own preference. I may be accused of retreat, avoidance, solipsism, etc. However, I make my music and art as a gesture of connection to the world and faith in the future; it’s how I impose meaning on this life. As badly as I’ve wanted to commune with my dead brother Bob or my dead nephew Pete, I could not contrive any self-persuasion that such contact ever happened. My Dad is another story, and I think that has something to do with the parental bond and the nature of our relationship in life. My Dad is literally with me. In and around me. And for all the “I, me” filling these entries, it is YOU I’m speaking to. These are travel snapshots… yours are just as interesting, I’m sure. I can only talk about the view from here. It changes all the time, and it never does, but with the seismic intensity of life and death around here these recent years, it’s (I hope) understandable that talk turns to this stuff. Such ponderations may or may not have any interest or value, but these matters matter to me. And answers, thank heaven, are few. I tell you all this because I love you in sickness and in health. Of course I'm full of shit. You're not? I only know I’m healthy when I can laugh, and alive when I can sing. So la-de-da-de-har-har-har.

Posted 12:26 AM by sport

“Macushla, Macushla your sweet voice is calling
calling me softly again and again
Macushla Macushla I hear its dear pleading
my blue eyed Macushla I hear it in vain”

That’s an old lyric, not one of mine.
A lyric you may never hear, one of many in progress from a song I’ve been working on:

Floated off alone along the slow green hours
Searching through a song to find my fathers’ face
Idle while I traced a fingertip
Along a long ellipse of tiny stitches
holding his stars in place

This “eh” lyric concerns frequent nights in the recent, distant past when I’d sip glasses of absinthe alone at the junction of solitude and isolation. On the wall of that room where I’d partake, the flag from my Father’s coffin holds pride of place. It is folded, as per military custom, into a tidy triangle. The dark blue field and the stars… a wedge of blank infinity. It suggests to me the dignity of such formal traditions – so deeply appreciated by Dad - as well as an implication of continuity. I’d hold it and weep, listening to “Farewell! But Whenever You Welcome The Hour” by Thomas Moore. The song reduces me to sobs when I’m sober; on absinthe it would physically possess me, wrenching my soul with a power so absolute that there was a kind of convulsive satisfaction to it. This is not hyperbole, though it might sound nonsensical to anyone who’s never come up through black depths of sorrow toward the light of a song: light, ocean, velocity, the bends. And you want it all, it’s intolerable, and you want it never to end. The dull ache of ordinary grief, the banality of daily routine, the numbness resulting from tamping down a life’s yearnings and losses all replaced by an ecstasy of sorrow. It is very, very close to the holy abandon of hysterical laughter.

This is why I don’t dismiss the sentimental, but I abhor every version and variation of “cool.” And I don’t give a flying fuck if it all makes me sound insane or dorky.

“Farewell, but whenever you welcome the hour
That awakens the night-song of mirth in your bower,
Then think of the friend who once welcom'd it too,
And forgot his own griefs to be happy with you.”

That was my Dad.

“Let Fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy,
Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care,
And bring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories fill'd,
Like the vase in which roses have once been distill'd.
You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang 'round it still.”

The scent of the roses briefly filled the air those nights, but this little ceremony was also an act of selfish brinksmanship; it DID make me insane. And I can’t be insane. I have two tiny children. I see Dad in them, and they show me the part of Dad that’s in me. They deserve better than Syd Barrett for a Pappy. Their Mom deserves a healthy, full partner. In attempting to get past the losses I’ve so long been mired in (wallowing in the tar pit is SO Pleistocene Epoch… I mean, really…) and become for them something like the Dad I was so blessed to have, I’ve corked the bottle and petitioned Seamus to help me.

So I’m watching this mediocre movie “Million Dollar Baby” with Mom and Brother Brian one night a while ago, at the beginning of a period of genuine healing, which continues. I used to think that “healing” was a joke doctors told each other over piles of money, but I believe it more now. A few days prior, after many entreaties to Dad, I found, happenstance, an old picture of us at Greenwood Lake, a place the folks took me for a lovely little getaway when I was a kid. There we were on a diving board, me looking just like my boy Miles will look in a few years, Dad smiling with his arm around me then, waving to ME. Now.
Hi, Dad. I’m good… me and Shelley and the babies are good.

So I am feeling Dad’s presence all over the place lately, and not in that depths-of-sorrow way the absinthe and Moore engendered, but in a “the sun is shining and the fence is fixed” way. There's a story for that reference, but not tonight. But dig...

Miles used to stare at the space above Mom’s chair, which was where Dad would sit and watch the tube in his final years here with us. Miles’d act happy and excited, staring at that same spot in mid-air above Mom’s head. Hi, Grandpa. He stopped doing it some months back, when he shed much of his otherworldly baby aloofness and became the laughing, kissing, chattering little boy he is. But one day recently he looked back up there and pointed. “Poppop!” Fucking amazing. The kid was one month old when the old man died (and there is an incredible moment, starring Lily, from that awful day, but that's a whole 'nother glory trance for a whole 'nother time). I don’t care how it sounds… I reject hoodoo of all sorts and aim to explain nothing, nor look for explanations, but there are things you know, and I knew what Miles was seeing.

So anyway, we’re watching “Million Dollar Baby,” a film about which I knew nothing except that Morgan Freeman is always worth watching. The pic was a well-made, pat tale of no consequence, but I thought to myself at one point “Dad would like this. Well, Dad probably does like it.” It concerns boxing, and Dad did some of that – Golden Gloves – and used to take me to some local bouts when I was the squirt in that photo. Just as I thought the thought, Clint Eastwood’s character whispers to the female boxer he’s managing: “Mo Cuisle.” Whoah! I said out loud: “Dad!” My Mom said “What do you mean?” in an eerie, aware voice. This heartbroken woman felt it too, but held her thought, unsure that I had that same ZOT. The light in the middle room suddenly went out. The light Dad would always get up out of bed to turn off in the middle of the night. This wasn’t a “chills” moment, this was all-pervasive warmth. I fucking knew and I still know. Mo Cuisle! The song (title anglicized… which means you phonetically announce the pronunciation of an Irish Gaelic word to facilitate contemporary understanding, since the goddamn brits pretty much did in the language except for the efforts of cultural preservationists like my Dad… “Macushla”) that John MacCormack recorded when Dad was a little boy, a record I’d heard all my life, and love for the tear it brought to Dad’s eye:

Macushla, Macushla your white arms are reaching
I feel them enfolding, caressing me still
fling them out from the darkness my lost love Macushla
let them find me, and bind me again if they will

Macushla, Macushla your red lips are saying
that death is a dream and love is for aye
then awaken Macushla, awake from your dreaming
my blue eyed Macushla awaken to stay.

Dad sang in a poorboy choir that accompanied MacCormack on stage, years and years ago (“Fado, fado” as Dad used to say)when he was a Dublin kid who looked like me in that photo where I looked like little blue-eyed Miles is gonna look. His voice remained strong and beautiful, and he sang Macushla all through his life. He sang it that night as the light went out and Clint Eastwood became the vehicle for Dad telling us all he was here, and I heard you Dad. This is how he says he heard me and all my pleading. When we wish to tell those we love that we hear them, we let them hear us. We move through an impossibly complex universe, and we adopt a cheap cynicism to cover the ignorance and hurt that often defines our experience of the “tangible” portion thereof. Some of us, Griced beyond all redemption, hear only the dull buzz of our own idiot obsessions and desires, and make only the screech of feedback as our call. Some of us hear something of the infinite, and that’s a lucky thing worth bleeding to keep hold of.

Let us view the duality in terms of my own religion:
Some of us glimpse the sublime, and know it when we do. This is the Brian Wilson beatification.
Some fall to the side of all things small, cheap and ugly… arrogance and stupidity… allowing the Mike Love leviathan to overtake all.
Are we destiny-bound to go either way? Do the little beGriced children ever see Grandpa hovering in mid-air or only those enMurphyed chosen?
Must little Wilsons suffer and strive while little Loves reap and laugh? Grim questions with no answers, but anyhoo, which life is worth living? Your answer will reveal whether your soul’s song spirals heavenward in sweet clear falsetto, or plods farting through the swamp, like that smirking lord of darkness who, for all his meditation, couldn’t transcend his odiosity for even the one second stop-time that kept “The Little Girl I once Knew” off the charts.
What the fuck is Mike "Sport" Murphy talking about?

Ah, whatever. Shelley and I took Lily and Miles to a play center today, and at some point “I Get Around” sounded forth from a hitherto silent jukebox. Still my favorite record of all time, hands-down. Still futuristic, fresh, thrilling and PERFECT. So Brian is on my mind. So is Van Dyke Parks, and SMILE and SONG CYCLE and all of it again.
Music, boyoboy.
My portal to Great All-Unknown, and my direct line to everything that means something more than the loud fuck-it-all that otherwise surrounds. The type-A void, pounding like the wretched, hateful, stupid hip hop that blasts from the automobiles of a billion little American twats with goatees and baseball hats. Today, while Shelley and I... in love... watched our little children gamboling, that Brian Wilson song thrilled me the same way it did when my Mom and Dad... in love... gamboled with me at Greenwood Lake. Fado, fado.

I felt obliged to mention these high things and low things, if only in a confusing little sketch like this entry. Absinthe and agony, for all the trouble they caused, opened a door. Now the absinthe’s gone, the doorway may be entered. I’m in. I see Dad smiling in mid-air, above that chair where he read the French reviews of Uncle, beaming with pride as I stood amazed, never even knowing the old man could read French, let alone ever suspecting my work would give him cause for pride. Well, Dad, thanks. I’m making music again. Mo Cuisle! My heart!

We will attempt to reflect some sense of all the above and more at Knitting Factory. If you’re there, you can tell me afterwards if we succeeded.

Posted 9:04 PM by sport

KNITTING FACTORY SHOW TICKET UPDATE
Our man in the Great Midwest, Michael Castelle, kindly informs me that tix can be gotten right now, right here.

There are several very popular KRS acts on the bill, so this WILL sell out. Knitting Factory is not allowing "guest lists," so schnorrers take heed!
Get your tix now and come see us. Make me feel all tingly inside.
Buy tix for a poor kid who's never seen been to a real farm.
Do it for the soldiers.
Do it in the name of all that's right and decent.
Think different.
Just do it.
I'm lovin' it.
Don't tread on me.
In space, no one can hear you scream.
Chock Full O' Nuts is the heavenly coffee; better coffee a millionaire's money can't buy.
Ol' Man River... he just keeps rollin' along.

Posted 7:27 PM by sport

Further poop on my show:
KNITTING FACTORY
74 LEONARD ST. NYC
FRIDAY SEPT 16
11 PM

It is Kill Rock Stars Night for the CMJ marathon, and consequently most of the audience will be collegiate ciphers / lower-echelon- music-biz dicks with badges. I could use some familiar faces in the house. It will be an all-new band with an all-new sound. We will play in the “Old Office” space.

NOTE:
Last time I did this event, the venue sold out (rather, was overwhelmed by badge-toting schnorrers) and several friends were unable to enter. I advise getting tix beforehand. Check the club's site for particulars:
http://www.knitmedia.com/kfny/index.cfm

Posted 6:20 PM by sport

clip and post on your bulletin board! 

Posted 10:28 PM by sport

Howzabout a stupid trippy one? 

Posted 10:26 PM by sport

Here's a "moody singer-songwriter" version! 

Posted 6:33 PM by sport

I'm just gonna plug the show incessantly from now on, maybe.  

Posted 1:33 AM by sport

SPORT MURPHY-RELATED INTERNET SHIT ROUNDUP!

ITEM: It's said that "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," and here's one li'l hellion who also "hath" no shortage of sound musical taste! On a "revenge site" concerning her allegedly errant hubby, this gal saw fit to post my tune "You Lousy Stinking Scumbag!" Nope, I don't know her, but she's MY KIND O' GREEN-EYED MONSTER! You go, girl!


ITEM: Now, far be it from me to say the folks at ROLLING STONE DOT COM are a bunch of complete douchesacks in the glorious tradition of Jann "thar she blows" Wenner itself, but WHOAH NELLY was I surprised to discover that I had made 2 ALBUMS I've never heard of! Boy am I looking forward to checkin' out my recording of "Tap That!" Hope Warner's sends the royalty checks here by mistake too! Whoo-ee!

ITEM: After all my snide remarks about CMJ some entries back, IMAGINE MY SURPRISE to indeed be playing the big big event after all! And I'm even on the official "Scheduled to appear" list! HOT DAWG! Look under "S" for "Sport!" I was hoping JETHRO TULL would play a reunion date, but I don't see him under "T" !!!


ITEM: Somehow it turns out that an increasing number of HOT YOUNG CHICKS... complete strangers... from far and near... with vaginas... are mentioning my name on their blogs and MYSPACE pages! No, I won't give URLS, since that would be sort of rude and then they might find out and not like my music anymore! Sort of like if they ever saw what I fucking LOOK LIKE in person! And how INCREDIBLY FUCKING OLD I am! YEEEEEE-fucking-HAAWWWW!

Everything's coming up SPORT MURPHY, that's for sure! So make sure you come to KNITTING FACTORY on September 16 and SEE FOR YOURSELF!

Posted 9:15 PM by sport

Mark it on your calendars, kids! 

Posted 2:25 PM by sport

I'm finding TV more and more offensive...

9 PM EST, LOCAL LISTINGS

CBS - PIMP MY QUEER
Attractive young male homosexuals are “made over” into female prostitutes, then compete for the mercurial affections of hosts Ice T and George Hamilton.

NBC - TRADING ROCK STARS
Former members of once-popular bands are shuffled around and forced to play unfamiliar songs for the amusement of an audience of attractive young people.

ABC - DANCING WITH THE SURREAL
Jocelyn Wildenstein and Mickey Rourke teach injured animals to tango.

FOX - THIS OLD BABY
Infants are “made over” from gurgling, squirming baldies into elegant inanimate objects and auctioned off to decadent billionaires.

MTV - CROCODIL’D
Attractive young celebrities sic carnivorous reptiles on their famous friends. Hosted by lovable Aussie Nick Cave.

WB - ANIMAL APPRENTICE
Attractive young people compete to become the favored house pet of decadent billionaires.

UPN - AMERICA’S FUNNIEST FIRINGS
Ambitious losers are caught on hidden cameras being humiliated by their celebrity employers for arbitrary “offenses.”

CRTV - COPZILLAS
Police officers on the brink of complete personal meltdown are driven over the edge through traumatic pranks; the last one to attempt suicide gets to marry an attractive young homosexual billionaire.

GSN - FAT FACTOR
Attractive young people are goaded to eat themselves to obesity and are then humiliated by celebrities and their pets.

PBS - THE PEOPLE’S ROADSHOW
Attractive young people parade their unattractive old relatives before celebrity judges for on-the-spot estimates of personal worth.

A/E - DOCTOR BRAT
Attractive child billionaires practice rudimentary surgery on desperate losers competing for a 1,000 dollar cash prize.

IO - BLIND FAMILY
Night vision cameras capture the frustration of “campy” minor celebrities forced to live together for 5 months in absolute, round-the-clock darkness.

U - FORENSIC MAKEOVER
Messy crime scenes are redesigned by attractive young homosexual men.

(sometimes) Y - SISTER DOG
A charming nun eloquently analyzes the tattoos of celebrity pets.

EEK - THE PLANET’S MOST OUTRAGEOUS VAGINAS
Hidden camera cuntery.

VH1 - MAKING THE CHOPPER
Sean “P ‘Puff (Puffy) Daddy’ Diddy" Combs oversees the construction of a custom motorcycle by attractive homosexual celebrity children.

MTV2 – MONSTER FILES
Islamic fundamentalists perform random acts of unspeakable horror; host Noam Chomsky explains why.

FNC - UNSOLVED LISTS
Sean “Puff” Hannity and Alan “Diddy” Colmes argue over the validity of lists of “100 Celebrity OOPS Moments” before a jury of attractive young pets. Features humorous “break-in” commentary by stand-up comics.

VH2 -VIVA LA BOUNTY!
Duane “Dog” Chapman and Bam Margera host as attractive young compete to see which paper towel is indeed the “quicker picker upper.”

BRV - SURVIVOR’S STUDIO
Show biz legends are forced to eat disgusting things.

WTF - PSYCHIC NANNY
Matronly British women explain to anxious billionaire couples exactly how and when their children will die.

BET - OLD SCHOOL HOUSE
Young Hiphop artists perform “home invasions” on white homes of different historical eras. Hosted by Al Pacino.

CNN – MEET THE CHEF
Comical Asian culinary experts (redubbed by Adam Carolla and Gilbert Gottfried) must somehow concoct savory dishes from parts of Ann Coulter’s body.

Posted 2:46 AM by sport

Willie "The Lion" Smith 

Posted 2:42 AM by sport

``Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig alive again!''

There's this Chrysler campaign... I've seen 2 different ads so far... where a older gentleman sits, face conspicuously obscured by a newspaper. In one, Jason Alexander (as George Costanza) comes into his office, doing the usual bluff-n-bullshit routine he did so memorably on "Seinfeld." In the other, a little girl talks to the old guy, and in both ads the big moment comes when the newspaper is put down to reveal that the old guy is... Lee Iacocca! Whoo-eee! What fun! What MAGIC! Before we see the face, we know there's someone special there... but who? Why it's blesed ol' Lee, that's who! Returning like an old friend! Dear Old Iacocca! Keeping the Chrys in Chrysler!

B.B.D. and O. really hit the jackpot here; these ads for the "Employee Pricing Plus" sales incentive tap into that special sense of childlike wonder we associate only with Iacocca. Why, when that little girl is talking to the mysterious man, and he is suddenly revealed as Mr. Lee Iacocca, all one can think is: “yes, Virginia, there is a former CEO.” I get chills just thinking about it, and now I am going to buy a Chrysler just because of the nostalgic rush these ads provide. I don't drive, of course, but every time I look out to the driveway and see that gleaming car, I will relive the gleeful moment when Lee Iacocca first revealed his face. Sigh.

In other TV news, I was watching the TV news. After all the reports on muslim-related miseries worldwide, the anchor introduced a piece on a Westchester region protected from development, due to its importance as a source of drinking water for the NY metro area. When they went to the report, the audio went farkuckt, so all my TV presented was a series of lovely shots of this verdant lakeside, with no audio whatsoever. The anchor apologized and quickly moved on to something else. “No…” I thought “…go with it! It’s the most useful thing you’ve shown me so far!”

What a relief! I'm thinking there ought to be a channel where we are shown nothing but nature. Someplace to turn when the electrosluice torrent becomes too depressingly human-beshitted. A window to the idyllic, with nary a mosquito, nor any other of actual nature’s multitudinous annoyances. We may gaze thereupon, belching our sodee pop, tongue-ing a Slim Jim skin lodged between the teeth, groaning: “mmm, tha’s nize” as our damned world wobbles its idiotic course through the cold cosmos.

Before I leave the TV (rather, return to it), mention must be made of a program I just caught on PBS. WILLIE “THE LION” SMITH. A documentary on a giant of American music. Friends, this guy was the SHIT. I was frustrated that every time they showed a clip of the man playing his piano, some narrator would intrude, but that’s how it goes. At least someone finally saw fit to spread the word about a giant who still gets nothing close to his just due. Idolized by the likes of Ellington and my beloved Thelonious Monk… whew, Willie! That’s like being idolized by Vermeer and Van Gogh. I recall when I first lucked upon a film clip of the Lion playing his sublime “Echoes of Spring.” It was one of those unforgettable musical moments of discovery where you just stop the fuck cold and GAPE. Like Howard Carter first peering into Tut’s tomb:
“I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful things.'”

There have been many moments like this: my first listen to a SMILE bootleg in 1985… watching some baritone (Sherrill Milnes?) sing Ives’ “The Things Our Fathers Loved” in the mid-70s… Allen Toussaint playing at Professor Longhair’s funeral, seen in yet another PBS documentary in the ‘80s (an experience so moving that I tracked down the filmmaker, Stevenson J. Palfi, and persuaded him to dupe me a copy of his film). “Echoes of Spring” is a light piano solo in the Beiderbecke vein that somehow melds Stride, Debussy, Cowboy Americana, and that ineffable vout one only recognizes in the work of a real inventor. Played with a feathery touch by an old cat in a bowler hat with a stogie clamped in his teeth, swinging like all get-out even while imparting a diaphanous Maxfield Parrish glow as fine as the most subtle nancyboy etude, the thing slew me. William Demarest opening his mouth and ad-libbing John Donne: how? Wha?

I used the motif from Willie’s left hand as the basis of a recurring theme throughout my album Magic Beans, only to suggest the depths and heights of music… how it defeats cruel time, binds distant and disparate hearts and reveals infinity. With humor, yet. Much of Smith’s work of that period carries the same incredible spirit. Not all of it is that Beleek-delicate; many pieces are rollicking and as ripe as Willie’s stogie, but no less glorious for that. You’ll hear Scott Joplin in it. Gottschalk. Leroy Shields. Phineas Newborn. Chopin. Satie. God, in other words. There’s a great cd comp (assembled by Frenchmen, unsurprisingly) collecting the cream of this work. Find that thing and listen. I fear that anyone catching this docu will leave it with no idea of the Lion’s brilliance: “hmmmm… One of those influential musical Negroes; note the name for the file of unheard notables, to mention if needed.” Bah! Find the thing and LISTEN.

Posted 7:50 PM by sport

Fresh from the Surrealist Slogan Generator:

Two Hours of Vout in Just Two Calories.
Step Into The Potrzebie.
Ribbed For Her Notary Sojac.
You've Got Questions. We've Got Cock.
Avez-Vous Un Vag?
Be Young, Have Fun, Drink Sport Murphy.
Fresh from the Captain's Axolotyl.

Have your own inane, puerile fun with this at:
http://www.thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi

Posted 8:47 PM by sport

IIWA (Innovations In Webchat Abbreviations)
IAMN/CC - "I am mastubating now; can't chat"
TFTPZL - "thanks for the pic, zit lord"
LOTIBNFTRYI! - "laughing on the inside, but not for the reason you intended!"
OMAA - "Oh my aching ass"
KTWIPATST - "Keep typing while I patiently await the sex talk"
WHB! - "Wow... How boring!"


NuMoticons
:$ ("Your twisted words betray you")
!o ("Where'd you get the shiner?")
†me ("Is this a dagger I see before me?")
<@ ("I'm in a tent right now.")
*3 ("YES! my anus IS located right behind my balls!")
..) ( "I like Picasso")
:I~ (“hold on; I'm eating spaghetti”)
¿( ("I suspect treachery")

Posted 7:00 PM by sport

Is it just on my computer or are the lines on these posts running long, so that you have to scroll left (see what I mean?) to right in order to read them?
I dislike this so much I could just shit.

Posted 6:26 PM by sport

Copyright Warning:
The following automobile brand names are reserved by Sport Murphy Motors, and may not be used without a squatter buyout tariff:
Bravante, Procura, Accelerando, Gaius, Miazma, Eterno, Factotum, GuzlarX, Aggrolera, Iliad.

The following pharmaceutical trade names are likewise the sole property of Sport Murphy Health Solutions, and must be cleared financially with the copyright holder:
Volitiaphen, Bicuriacin, Diapason, Phenoxoprotek, Phingoprin, Providabuz, Trisumovet, Barbidol, Vomidor, Attadog.

Additionally, the following countries are the interllectual property of Sport Murphy World Reordering Enterprises, and may not be printed on currency unless some of same is deposited with the despot in charge:
Islamisbad, Tupopülis, Ollyenstan, Peengland, Phukaulia, United Democratic Peoples Republic of Grdzwlgn, Guanoguay, Poundasalaam, Blakkei, Sumodis and Sumodat

Thank You
Sport Murphy © ®

Posted 7:27 PM by sport

In London, uninjured singer seeks prayers

Jul 8, 11:24 AM (ET)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - London was the scene of carnage on Thursday after a series of deadly blasts but American R&B crooner Omarion, who suffered no injury or inconvenience, wants people to pray for him.

"Omarion was in London during the tragic bombings that struck this morning," a statement by the singer's publicist AR PR Marketing, released hours after the bombings, said.

Making no mention of the fatalities or casualties of the blasts, the singer's statement concluded, "He would like his fans to pray that he has a safe trip and a safe return home. He appreciates your support."

He was in London for Saturday's Live 8 show, his publicist Shana Gilmore told Reuters from Los Angeles. Asked why anyone should pray for him, Gilmore said, "He wasn't hurt or anything, but just the fact that he was there and all that."

Omarion was the teenaged lead singer of the chart-topping band B2K before going solo. The 20-year-old's first solo album "O" debuted at No. 1 of Billboard charts earlier this year.
http://reuters.excite.com//article/20050708/2005-07-08T152426Z_01_N07332103_RTRIDST_0_ODD-BRITAIN-SINGER-DC.html

(Now that's for real! And the followup, from my email to Liz...)
Since 9/11 I've been worried sick about Omarion.
Here's something I posted on the Sony discussion board for fans of Omarion:

Damn - when I heard that they bombed London's public transportation I said "please, oh please, if Omarion is in London, don't let Omarion be injured!"
And Omarion made it out OK. All my prayers and the prayers of all those who love Omarion are with you today, boo. I hope Omarion's trauma isn't too severe.
Maybe they can do another concert like Live 8, to show Omarion that we all support Omarion and hope that terrorists never get near him.
If we don't all stand behind Omarion, then the terrorists win.

(Got these replies:)
"Omarisgurlie103" writes: "are you foreal?this happen? if so THANK GOD"
"Omarionsluver" writes: "yea gurl they was gonna have the Olympics there but they cant now"
"#1mz.boog" writes: "omg r u serious??????????"
"klown dancer" writes: "GURL I DONT THINK THAT OMARION WAS IN LONDON I THINK THAT WAS A LIE."

http://forums1.sonymusic.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/665106676/m/8501085093

Posted 11:25 PM by sport

SINCE 9/11 I'VE BEEN WONDERING...
what y'all been up to? So I did a search on "Since 9/11 I've..."
Below, the pastings of my cuttings, as they appear on the search results.

Since 9/11 I've started looking more toward religion...
Since 9/11 I've attended many conferences on clash of civilisations...
Since 9/11 I've found a braver part of myself...
Since 9/11 I've progessively abandoned the Left on foreign policy...
Since 9/11 I've felt increased pressure to conform...
Since 9//11 I've had the opportunity to share with at least three pilots, to really explain the gospel in a personal way to them...
Since 9/11 I've ditched a lot of yarns I had planned...
Since 9/11 I've been eating ice cream and drinking alchol like it was going out of style...
Since 9/11, I've had high blood pressure...
Since 9/11 I've written two books...
Since 9/11 I've been working on a book...
Since 9/11 I've exposed the systematic abuse of these subsides by professors of area studies...
Since 9/11 I've really seen a dropoff in attendance at shows. This phenomenon is not limited to my band and seems to be affecting just about everyone I know...
Since 9/11 I've been reluctant to take pictures of the things that excite me because of what they are (refineries, factories, etc...
Since 9/11 I've done countless interviews...
Since 9-11 I've had a hard time sitting in front of my sewing machine...
Since 9/11 I've been increasing the maximum distance I was willing to drive...
Since 9/11 I've been acting. I've been in 14 off off Broadway plays in three years...
Since 9/11 I've especially come to appreciate the good old-fashioned Western starring legendary actors like Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne and Alan Ladd...
Since 9-11 I've waffled a little, I think, at least inwardly...
Since 9/11 I've been carrying a lot of stuff around on me...
Since 9/11 I've been certain I'm going to die in a plane, and so each time I fly I write a short tale about the plane going down and record it in a ...
Since 9/11 I've been interested in how we adjust as artists...
Since 9/11 I've done singles workshops all over the country...
Since 9/11 I've managed to milk three separate airfares out of my parents...
Since 9/11 I've felt that we're up to our eyeballs in hypocrisy...
Since 9/11 I've been socked with a $5 fee...
Since 9/11 I've considered myself to be a Spiritual Warrior engaged in mortal combat with the enemy...
since 9/11, I've been wondering if we really can defeat God...
Since 9/11 I've changed...
Since 9/11 I've been getting a lot of questions about selling slow moving houses...
Since 9/11 I've seen no less than 13 new zombie films...
since 9/11 I've been much more interested in documentaries...
Since 9/11 I've again found comfort in audio books...
Since 9/11 I've found it necessary to develop a new set of friends...
Since 9/11 I've wondered: how many abortionists are muslim...
since 9/11 I've developed an almost pathological fear of being out on a balcony...
]Since 9/11 I've been disturbed by vigilante superheroes...
Since 9/11 I've adopted a more negative view: Americans are stupid, ignorant racist fucks...
Since 9/11 I've also been ruminating on the question of trivialization...
since 9/11 I've been using the Koran for toilet paper...

Posted 8:46 PM by sport

A schtick is a terrible thing to waste...

(Here are some postings, originally sent as emails to Irwin Chusid and Don Brockway. The first was sent some months back, in reply to Chusid's emailed query: "who the f_ck is Puddy the Pup?" Irwin had seen several Castle Films reels featuring "Puddy" on eBay, but had never heard of the character.

The subsequent entries are more recent; Irwin and Don sent messages regarding the deaths of Thurl Ravenscroft (Tony the Tiger's voice as well as many Disney cartoon and ride voices) and the great Paul Winchell. We in the amateur comedy writing racket refer to the followup entries as "callbacks." Write that down.

There are all manner of contemporary references, the significance of which will surely fade with time, but we at Sport Spiel feel that this should not detract from their inestimable value as humorous documents of our era. The impact of these hilarious satires is blunted by their "anthology" presentation here, intended as they were to be read as a series of email messages in the context of related news items. However, this is part of the price you, reader, must pay for not being Irwin Chusid or Don Brockway. The entire sequence is, nonetheless, proudly presented below, immortalized forever in this noble amd justly famed web log.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(found on www.obscurotoons.org ...odd how your subject line turns out to be spot-on:)

PUDDY THE PUP

Feisty sidekick to Disso / Nance Studio's largely forgotten "Pity the Fool" character, Puddy also frolicked through two of his own shorts. Puddy was a unique - if bizarre - creation: a mutt with one front leg, one hind leg and an ever-tumescent "puddy." The central gag was Puddy's recurring shock and alarm whenever confronted with the fact that he was, in fact, a pup. Puddy, it seems, wanted to be a businessman but could never get his cockamamie schemes off the ground due to the revulsion he'd inspire in prospective clients. Each pitch Puddy offered would be met with the stock response: "You're a PUP! A no-good, two-legged HORNY ALBINO PUP! YECCH!" With this, Puddy would stammer "Me? A P--p-pup?" and freeze in terror, bringing the cartoon to an uncomfortable, abrupt and unsatisfying end.

In CIRCUS CAPERS Puddy attempts to sell jars of pickled capers outside a three-ring roadshow, but is repeatedly humiliated and mauled by goons in the employ of the circus. Eventually a "sympathetic" clown buys out his entire stock for pennies on the dollar, and Puddy watches helplessly as the briny treats become a huge hit with tots and parents alike. He realizes he is but a pup, and freezes in terror.

In FOOLISH FABLES, our hero tries to "one-up" Aesop by submitting his own "hep" morality tales to various publishers, all of whom send form rejection letters, leaving Puddy no option except the vanity press. As luck would have it, Puddy is successfully sued for plagiarism by the very same clown who'd double-crossed him in CIRCUS CAPERS. An embittered Puddy, realizing he is a mere pup, feezes in terror.

Upon the theatrical failure of these shorts, the character was retired until a surprise revival on late 50's children's TV. "Garbageman Gus" Pinzarrone hosted "Puddy the Pup Playhouse" for 2 seasons on local Philadelphia station WYOY. Never popular, the show endlessly rotated the same two shorts day after dreary day, with live intros by the charmless and belligerent Pinzarrone amid constant advertising for the host's own hardware store. In every respect, the venture was as ill-considered and futile as any cooked up by Puddy himself. Irony not being Gus Pinzarrone's longsuit, he spent long stretches of the show's final episodes weeping silently on air.

Despite all the gloom (obviously) implicit in "Puddy the Pup Playhouse", it was the only program broadcast locally at 5:30 am, so many young "early risers" who endured the show in their formative years can still ruefully recall, word for word, the Puddy The Pup theme...


WHO THE FUCK IS PUDDY THE PUP?
HARD-SELLIN' FOUL-SMELLIN' PUDDY THE PUP?
JUST WHO THE FUCK IS PUDDY THE PUP?
THIS TWO LEGGED,
UNPIGMENTED,
EMBONERED,
ENTREPRE..
NEUR...IAL...
PUDDY... THE PUUUUUP...
WHO THE FUCK?!?!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Desmond “Hap” Blodgett, 92, Cartoon Voice Artist

On Monday, June 27, Veteran voice actor / marketer Hap Blodgett, professed bit performer in RKO comedy shorts and self-described occasional talk show guest evidently held a press conference in which he claimed to be “very much alive” and well. According to an alleged transcript of the obscure press conference, Blodgett feels that the recent deaths of Thurl Ravenscroft and Paul Winchell have left a void he's eager to fill. Blodgett: “These guys were a bunch of damn homos, all of them. Whiners. Pussyboys. Good riddance to ‘em. I’m here, and randy as a he-goat. It’s these vegetable shakes what do the trick. I can do at least 4 voices. Let me at ‘em! I’m entitled to make a living too, I guess!”

Although a check with Imdb.com turns up no mentions for Mr. Blodgett, the mysteriously forwarded transcript cites his as the voice of “Puddy the Pup,” the star of an apparently short-lived series of animated shorts from the 1930s. “I WAS Puddy the freakin’ Pup, don’t let anyone bullshit ya” Blodgett avers. “Good Ol’ Hap” - as he refers to himself in the frequently incoherent transcript - supposedly left the entertainment business after an unpleasant on-air fracas (he is unspecific as to the date or nature of the so-called incident) with “that scummer” Arthur Godfrey. “The best years of my life, and that fat drunk ruined me! RUINED me”

Thereafter, he insists, he eked out a living selling “Huge Mouth Sammy Sturgeon,” a novelty wooden fish with a series of detachable “word balloons” imprinted with parody lyrics of popular tunes. “It was a million dollar idea,” he purports, “we just didn’t have the bugs worked out, and then these two-bit son-of-a-bitches did the same thing, only with sound.” A footnote on this transcript offers a sketch of Blodgett's original, rejected patent, to be faxed to any interested parties upon request. When asked about the transcript, noted entertainment writer Leonard Maltin replied “I have to admit I’m stymied; neither Mr. Blodgett nor his cartoon character have ever come to my attention, but I’m glad to hear he is hale and hearty, and uh… I wish him well.”

Blodgett continues his “press conference” with a succession of mysteriously lecherous, obviously fantasy-based references to 50s star Dagmar, and concludes with a challenge to Casey Kasem, whom he refers to as a “snake in the goddamn grass.” After goading the famed radio and television personality to “put up or shut up” Blodgett ends the transcript with an abrupt “Ah, what’s the use… piss on you all.” Kasem, contacted by telephone for comment, simply sighed and said, “The world is full of troubled people. Whoever this ‘Happy Whatshisname’ is, he must have me confused with someone else. Good day.” Repeated attempts to contact the source of the transcript for further information were considered, but rejected in favor of watching a little television before bed.

http://www.convincingparodicemaillinksimulation.org
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SHARK WOES CONTINUE IN FLA

Sally Goodin, correspondent
Hernando, Florida, June 28

It’s been a tough summer so far on the Florida panhandle, and things took a turn for the worse yesterday with a multiple shark attack that left 3 dead and 1 wounded. The incident occurred during an outing of the “Cartoon Voiceover League, ” a fraternal organization of retirees from the animation industry. The 4-member “league” met here to enjoy the sun and surf at Foley Park, where, in the words of survivor Agnes Trubell (68), “An awful sound came up from the beach. I was at the concession stand ordering lunch while the others decided to take a little dip… I heard what sounded like 30 or 40 people screaming, but you must understand, these were very gifted artists with a wide repertoire of voices.”

The “30 or 40” voices Ms. Trubell heard actually belonged to Sam DeBucca (73), Jennifer Armbruster (81), and Desmond Blodgett (92), her three companions and fellow voiceover artists. “We picked Foley Park because nobody ever goes there anymore and we like our privacy.” A fatal decision, as the beach had recently been closed due to shark activity. “You’d think the guy at the hot dog truck would’ve said something” kvetched Ms. Trubell. Hector Attilio, the concession vendor, claims “I was happy for the business. I never know nothing about no sharks, but it has been a slow couple weeks since they put them chains up.”

DeBucca and Armbruster sustained major injuries to the remaining parts of their bodies, and later died at Shriner’s Memorial Hospital, babbling very convincing animal sounds and foreign dialects as death overtook them. Mr. Blodgett’s remains were never recovered, and there is in fact some doubt as to his existence. “I only see 2 people go in the water,” said Attilio, “but what do I know? Sounded like many more. Very impressive.”

Ms. Trubell suffered minor injuries when, running to the shore in an attempt to save her companions, she fell, poking her good eye with the stick of a corn dog intended for Mr. DeBucca. “I’ll be fine,” she bravely confided, “I only wish Sammy could have tasted that corn dog. He loved corn dogs. Like a man possessed, he was, when he saw a corn dog…” she rambled, “…never did you see a happier man than Sammy DeBucca with a corn dog in his mitt!” The stick, still partially embedded in the victim’s eye, stood as a poignant reminder of a nostalgic weekend gone horribly wrong.

Detective Tony Rexroth of the Hernando Police Department told reporters: “These people were playing with fire, so to speak, even though it was water, not fire, really…” the officer metaphorized “…as far as the alleged 3rd fatality, we are mounting a full investigation as to the whereabouts of his remains, if any.” According to the officer, only Ms. Trubell claims any knowledge of his existence, and she has alerted the HPD to look for a “Dutch father and son team” who, while accosting a teenage vacationer, had earlier given the CVL group directions to the beach. “A bum steer they gave us,” complained Trubell, “But they spoke to 'Hap.' They can back me up.” Neither the Dutchmen nor the accosted female teen have been located at this time. “These others, like Mr. Blodgett, may or may not exist,” offered Detective Rexroth “…this old gal has one hell of an imagination to go with her spectacular repertoire of character voices, and with the recent rash of teenager abductions connected with visiting Netherlanders, we get a lot of these shaggy dog tales… not that there is any actual canine involvement in this incident… it’s a figure of speech.”

A memorial service will be held at the Hernando “Olive Garden” restaurant upon the first Wednesday following Ms. Trubell’s release from the hospital. “We would all often eat… all of us” she said, rather obviously, “Especially Sammy… he’d eat and eat. Corn dogs, especially.” Mourners will be advised to arrive before 3 pm: “Wednesdays is ‘senior lunchtime special’ over there…” confirms Mr. Attilio “…they load the old folks up with pasta and these huge salads for like half price. How can I compete?”

“He can’t; none of the independent food service people can, really. They have a lock on the old-timers, that’s for sure.” stated a grim Officer Rexroth.

http://www.sharksapoppin.com
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A Tsunami, graded as 5.3 on the Tsorinsen Tscale, pummeled the coastal city of Okidoki Japan in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to news agency Boshnet. Fatalities were limited in this largely abandoned industrial area, but damage to real estate was extensive. Eyewitness accounts describe a heartbreaking scene of utter devastation:
“Many large building
Consumed by raging water
Property all gone”
Said local resident Omei Akinbaku when interviewed by local television reporters. Confirmed deaths at this time appear limited to approximately 23 “voice artists” employed at the Joto animation studio, who were holding a memorial sunrise vigil for several U.S. colleagues who died in an appalling shark attack earlier in the week.

The Japanese government has decreed a nationwide moment of silence at the discretion and convenience of each individual citizen:
“In your own way, friends,
Consider the lost voices,
So loved through cartoons.”
The loss of these performers adds “insult to injury” in an already devastating scenario of destroyed buildings and equipment; studio heads wept openly as they trudged through soggy former soundstages, furiously punching at calculators and conferring with insurance agents on their cell phones.

Tragic as the property loss is, there is also a personal dimension to the 23 human fatalities, particularly within the ranks of their profession, already rocked by so many recent losses. Sosei Allovus, the half-American daughter of lost voice artist Wishei Hadawatamelon, choked back tears as she offered a touching comment:
“Bad time for children.
Anime mute now, as if
Pre-Steamboat Willie.”
Ms. Allovus, it may be recalled, recently made news when she narrowly escaped abduction by a yet to be apprehended father and son team from Vootoreijnie, Holland.

(Reported by J. Blair for Boshnet News Service)