Archive for December 2005
Protected: “‘Cuz five bucks is five bucks…”
December 29, 2005, 3:02 am—castewar | Enter your password to view comments
(posted in the General category)
HA!
December 20, 2005, 12:14 pmAll it takes is a simple, polite, grammatically sound email, and you can find out anything.
—castewar | no comments
(posted in the General category)
Sweet Baby Jesus (2005)
December 18, 2005, 6:26 pm
Last year I provided a sample of my favorite Xmas music - it’s still there, if you’d like to download it this year. Help yourself.
This year I’m not offering music, but radio… ok, one, no, two songs, but the rest are radio… ok, and a children’s album I own on LP. The rest are radio plays, old and new. Christmas themed, one and all.
Sherlock Holmes - The Blue Carbuncle. A carbuncle is a coloured diamond. In this case, it’s blue (which is really rare) and one has been stolen and an innocent man blamed. This story shows some of Holmes’ best deduction and in chiding Watson about being too timid in his interpretation of what he sees, we get a good look at how Holmes works. Plus, we see that Holmes is about Justice, not rules.
Abbott and Costello - Christmas Shopping. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello used to have a radio program sponsored by Camel cigarettes, during the war. It’s an odd piece of entertainment history listening to those two joke around between ads pushing smokes on the soldiers abroad.
A Jack Benny Christmas - Also recorded during the second world war, Jack Benny does his Jack Benny schtick. I found this one through a podcast, so I left the guy’s lead-ins intact (as much as I dislike them.) Rochester is a unique character - Eddie Anderson was as funny as all get out, but it’s tough to avoid the stench caused by Amos and Andy. While it’s true he played Benny’s valet, I always thought he represented the beginnings of progress. He was definitely a major star of the show and in many ways the comedy equal to Benny. I won’t pretend I’ve got it all figured out, but I’ve always enjoyed their work.
Nero Wolfe - The Slaughtered Santas. The radio plays weren’t based on the Stout books, so they’re not as strong, but this one is as close as they come, I think. Christmas Noir! Awesome!
The Mercury Theatre - A Christmas Carol. Orson Welles and company does the Dicken’s classic. Nuff said.
The Goon Show - Operation Christmas Duff. This will make little sense to most everyone, myself included. Their comedy is completely over the top, but if nothing else, the Max Geldry musical interludes are incredible. Easily the best ever.
Exciting Christmas Stories with Scooby Doo and Friends. I’ve had this album for a number of years now and this year I thought I’d digitize it for all to hear. I worked hard to minimize the hum (mine is not a fancy recording rig), but the album was obviously well loved by some child and there was only so much I could do about the hiss and pops. I know some of the voices are low - that’s the way it was recorded, with the actor obviously standing away from what seems like the only mic in the studio.
MC Chris - Fuckin’ Up My Christmas / Evergreen. The undisputed king of nerd rap in my books. Distinctive voice, a DJ with a funky sound, and no apologies for being a nerd. Straight out of Capcom (man, that’s awesome. I need to do an album now, just so I can use that title.) Fuckin’ Up My Christmas, as it explains, isn’t about Christmas - but with Steve Martin samples and a jaunty, rolling piano / bass loop, it’s an Xmas mainstay for me. And Evergreen, well, it’s a classic.
—castewar | Comments Off
(posted in the xmas category)
Ebay fraud warning
December 16, 2005, 12:56 pmJust a heads up, as I know a number of you out there have eBay accounts - there’s a really slick phishing email going around, looking to tricking you into revealing your account information. It looks like an eBay message from another account holder, asking you why you haven’t paid them for that auction. The account holder is a real one, but I doubt that this guy is behind it - the whole thing is designed to appear legit and knock you off-balance, by betting that statistically a lot of us with accounts have won auctions for the holiday season and will quickly click their links to go make sure the payments went through, at which point they’ve got your info.
If you can’t fight the urge to check, at least leave the email and sign into eBay yourself, directly.
Here’s the average blurb;
“Hello Merry Christmas.
Are you going to buy the item from the auction that you won, why dont you answer to my emails, if you dont Respond Now I will contact ebay safeharbor and report you ! Lett me know, I am not a fool !
Thank you !”
See what I mean, it’s just enough to make you worried. It’s a very different tact from the usual crop, that claims to be eBay and that for security reasons you should log-in through the email to secure your account.
It’s still a big scam though.
—castewar | no comments
(posted in the General category)
Ernie slams once more
December 15, 2005, 5:23 pm
I thought Ultraman is Airwolf was the comprehensive alpha to omega of Ernie Cline’s spoken word rants on all things of interest to normal people. But I was wrong.
Ernie and pal Shappy have performed a couple of awesome video game related pieces for the Gametap Network, which isn’t on TV (as I’d first thought), but rather it’s on the internet - some clever monkey’s are selling our childhood games back to us via the infornets.
—castewar | no comments
(posted in the General category)
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