Brick Experiment Channel: 5 Lego Walkers vs 7 Obstacles [5min].
Watched three documentaries on Kanopy which is available to you if you have a US library card or are a US student/professor. It has a strange ticketing system that combines poorly with the minimalistic UI: you get x tickets a month, some movies are 2 tickets, some are 4, etc. But the number of tickets is not on the thumbnail. What is the category of the movie, all I see is a thumbnail and a title. Sorry, you’ll have to click through to see that. Can I block the “kids"/"horror"/"general accounting principles of Thailand” category? No. Also we put all the “The” movies under “T” for “The” (I don’t want any mail about this. You’re wrong, and you’re wrong, you all get a wrong).
Given that State of Play had “junior” members of a gaming team cleaning the house and doing the dishes to develop discipline in between endless gaming sessions and Salaryman covering the work camps that have blaring announcements at 6am to get up to make your company some goddamn money, I’m guessing there’s exploitative camps for upcoming idols as well. But I had to stop Tokyo Idols because watching the delusional middle-age man/teenage idol parasocial situation wasn’t my bag, and apparently as the movie progresses ages go down to ten. The scene in which there were workers specifically assigned to move/shove fans along a hand-shaking line of idols, and the half-hearted attempts by the fans to stay shaking hands as long as they could was sort of fractally all I needed to see.
I got all excited earlier today because I thought I had found a remnant of an artist’s collective in Europe that used to build wooden collage-type structures in the disused areas betwixt scary motorway ribbons. But it was just a street artist that wrote things on bridges over and over again.
I think it was named something like Bilder 37. I dunno. Lemme rummage through my website history from 1998 [FX: sand flows through fingers while dramatic music plays].
I should probably make a list of everything I’m looking for. That’s another thing to put on my to-do list, very exciting.
I have given up on finding any online information about the candy bar I was talking about earlier today. Here it is, trying to cash in on the 1927 movie It starring Clara Bow.
The print itself is part of a 1927 display created by Shellmar Products Co., formerly of Chicago (current auction). McDonalds was the branding used by the J. G. McDonald company. You will find a large amount of information about the company on this page.
Check out the Kansas City marquee at the wikipedia link for It (the film).
I like Clara Bow because she filled one of her house’s rooms with dirt for her dog.
I am doing research on a candy bar from about 1927 for recreational reasons. I started down the path because of the name. It’s a ... strange name. Not the best name for a candy. The best name for a candy, which I’ve covered before (perhaps in upcoming materials, I can’t remember), is “I am a Lemon.” This is from a Butler Bros. 1910 catalog.
You sure are, pal. I hope the person that named “I am a Lemon” retired with full benefits immediately after. There’s no “up” from there. The early earlyings of the candy industry has a wealth of amazing labels, I’m surprised someone hasn’t made a giant coffee table book. Someone: get on that. Anyway. The research reminded me of a similar endless-dead end research jag I took trying to find any information about the security hubs on the front fork of my beloved Gazelle Populair. It was purchased in Amsterdam, then became part of a fleet of bicycles in Oakland, then sat in a Berkeley garage for four years, now it’s my weekly grocery-getter and good-weather-fun-time-mobile. The security hubs/nuts on the front, I just didn’t worry about them for months. Didn’t even have one thought about them, except “damn, those are ugly.” They were conical. Like pokey conical, to stop crimers from getting a wrench on and making off with the front wheel. There were little slots to insert a specialized tool into the hub-nuts. “I will research this,” I thought, researchingly. I never found one mention/image of the hubs. I tried translating everything to Dutch as well, tried all the searches with and without “Gazelle,” etc. The bike shoppe was also flummoxed. They ended up taking a radial saw to ’em and thus ended the reign of torment of the strange one-off security hub-nuts. Now the bike has what I call “slow release” hub-nuts, Hexlox.
Since I’m mentioning bike products. I’m not a bike product person, but I got a bike gauge recently, to check tire pressure. I have an old pump with a gauge, and a brand-new 3x more expensive model with a gauge, and I found the gaugin’ experience with both of them to be lacking. This tiny-ass gauge though, yeah. So good. Exactly what I want. No batteries, no USB charge port. A little reset button. Solid, heavy, durable, US made.
ACCU-GAGE® by Milton® Shrader Valve Bike Tire Pressure Gauge with Bleed Valve. Fuggin’ twelve bucks and change. Cheaper than food. Fool your friends. I receive no money from anyone for this written enthusiasm.
Excerpt from Conan O’Brien’s Mark Twain Prize Acceptance Speech [4min].
Selected pages of Catalog No. 134 of Specialties for Secret Societies / Burlesque and Side Degree Rituals / Costumes & Paraphernalia / Manufactured by The M. C. Lilley & Co. Columbus, Ohio.
A NEW SAW MILL AGONIZER (“operator hidden by a curtain painted to represent a log or stump”), THE TOBOGGAN (collapsing chair on eight foot platform, featuring “swift slide without danger”), GIVING THE TOSSING DEGREE (various canvases used for tossing candidate)
THE ROUGH RIDER (fake wheeled goat); FERRIS WHEEL OR BICYCLE GOAT (fake goat attached to large circular frame); THE IMPROVED FOUNTAIN GOAT (fake goat, wheels, push handle, hidden fountain, “Patented July 10, 1894,” “nearly 300 pounds”)
THE ONLY PERFECT SPANKER EVER MADE ‒ Never Fails to Explode; THE SLIPPERY PATHWAY (“Made of slippery elm,” includes exploding cartridge), THE CLITTER-CLATTER (“Used to produce a disturbance and rattle the candidate,” mysteriously does not contain exploding cartridge; THE SELF-RIGHTING CHAIR (trick + cartridge);
camel/donkey two-person costumes w/human shoes; Crowning Chair (candidate receives crown, immediately falls out of trick seat down trick stairs); Collapsible Chair (“the legs spread apart and cartridge explodes”)
variety of masks: grotesque, human, animal
BARREL OCTAGON (“well padded for candidate to have a nice, easy roll in”) CANDIDATE TORMENTORS ETC (“Glad hand of fellowship: gauntlet, wires and battery”); Our New Wireless Telephone A POSITIVE DUPLICATE OF THE REGULAR TELEPHONE (“on lifting the RECEIVER, releases a spring that forces the door open and exposes all” [alcohol or tobacco products which is sort of the opposite of a hazing and confuses the candidate but mentally i guess])
Tweddle chicks comin’ to your town. Vintage TWEDDLE CHICKS FEED Tin Sign Original Rare Rooster Crow Double Sided WOW. I like this a lot but I don’t have any room and I’m in the process of throwing so many things out the window and also $$$$$$$$$. Perhaps you would enjoy THE TWEDDLE CHICKS.
I was looking into a rent-a-box scheme for the bay area. You take your bike to location A which could/should be near mass transit for most of your needs, you shove it in a box, press some buttons, whoosh magic box is protecting your bike from crimers who crime.
Was about to link it to my Clippy™ Card, read the fine print. Giz us your credit card, this that the other thing, photograph, bank account information, blah blah blah, bike information, we’re going to pass that info to these other businesses we’re not going to name, etc.
I’m paying you for a lock and empty space. Bank account info? Photograph? Do you think I’m going to ... make off with your empty space? Anyway, no one knows why biking isn’t working in the US, it’s a mystery to be unravelled.
Yeah I know, the bike info is so they’re sure your bike is your bike if there’s some discrepancy etc. But yeah no, the contract pretty much reads like “we’re going to do the absolute minimum to contact you if you’re suddenly AWOL, and after that we’re going to sell I mean IMPOUND OR DISPOSE (part of a larger all caps bit) yer stuff.” Meanwhile, in other countries, huge indoor facilities to park your bike. I’m sure the terms are just as onerous.
Europe: “terms?”
“Buy a personal or anonymous OV-chipkaart and travel on balance” The word anonymous on a government site, who woulda thunk. This card gets you (among many other things) into the world’s largest indoor bike parking facility in Utrecht. I looked around for any listings for public bike parking facilities in the US, I just ran into company-only ones like the one for NPR employees in Who Cares on the East coast or something. It’s just like US health care. If you’re employed, you get a thing that everyone gets everywhere else naturally. If you’re not, well how about a fuck you, would that help?
Food Star: Amazing unmanned bento shop! The staff leaves the store after finishing making [11min; website].
this is a piece i call The Big Car Piece That Really Makes You Think
bought a car today
there was a problem with the order
and it was way too big
had to use a ladder to get in
tires crushed other cars
had to hit the gas a little to get over the 7-11
parking garage, 50 spots adds up
Tracklib: Sample Breakdown ‒ The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990-2024) [31min].
Contrapoints: Conspiracy [2hr 40min].
Family Mart’s Famima’s Dreaming Receipt Pillow contest (2024). Two winners. The pillows are out there.
This of course reminds me of the artist at ひとり店【ノワール】 Hitori Shop [Noir]:
Promotional ruler, Sucher Packing Company, Dayton Ohio. “TRY SOMETHING NEW!” “HAMSATION (IN ITS NEW FORM)” “A GOOD RULE FOR SCHOOL ‒ WAKE UP AND EAT Sucher’s yummy HAMS ‒ BACON ‒ SAUSAGE ‒ WIENERS” “THE DIFFERENCE IS DELICIOUS”
hamsation
Not Just Bikes: How is a Bike Tunnel this Freak’n Great!?
It’s fun to watch these as a USA American. “Huh, there are tunnels ... for bikes? Huh.” And “They’ll never do that here. Maybe in 100 years.” And “Well, that was depressing.” [FX: crawls back into USA hole]
Rode up to the closest grocery store today, to run in and get some quick survival snacks. There was another bike on the rack, and a woman standing nearby, looking around. She moved a bit away to let me roll closer. “I wouldn’t lock up here, there was a tweaker here trying to get this bike, trying to cut through the cable. We told him off. I’d lock up your bike on the other side.” She was waiting for the bicyclist. I thanked her and rode over to the other side of the store. They don’t have bike racks there, just some railings, so I locked up there. Went inside, got my snacks. The lines were long enough that I wasn’t going to wait around with this known crimer roaming about. I’m using a chain and a cable, going to ditch the cable but have been putting it off for reasons. Cables are honestly for locking up your bike to balloons, for example, or papier-mâché creations. They’re butter to crimers, you can fall off twenty-seven turnip trucks and still know how to get through any cable relatively quickly with easily-acquired tools.
Where do crimers get the confidence to start sawing through a bike cable in broad daylight? From the store’s designers. They happily shunt bike racks off to a corner, off to the side, around the back, whatever. Wherever there aren’t eyeballs, there aren’t people milling about, that’s where the bike racks go. Thanks, thanks a million guys, brilliant planning. Take one of the parking spots for cars immediately next to the front door, and make that a bike rack. This is not rocket surgery. This store, they put the bike rack at the corner of the store. So if, as happened today, a big USA American truck parks in the spot next to the bike rack, that’s a nice wall that keeps people from noticing you hacking away. They actually have a greeter at the store, and as I was prematurely leaving, I noticed he had taken up a position right at the corner. So that will work for awhile, until everything resets tomorrow. The other store I go to, the bike rack is both on the side of the store, and far enough back that you can’t roll the carts next to the rack, the radio signal cuts out and the brakes engage (that’s how that tech works, right? Surprise, I don’t care). It’s around thirty feet away. I have to get bags every time, because I’m not going to walk back and forth ten times to empty the cart into my saddle bags. They’re really beefy bike racks, but they’re hidden from view.
I didn’t buy the snacks. They’re leaving money on the table alla time. Not like I’m pro-capitalist, just, seems to be the only thing that motivates anyone in the US with a business. It sure ain’t making people feel safe/secure. If I had a store, I’d make room inside the store for bicycles, because it would be worth more than whatever merchandise I could put in the same space. Wait ... I have it. Enclose the parking area, and the whole place becomes one giant store that everyone can drive/bike into. Brills. #BRILLS
Excerpt from Deceptive Pratices: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay (2012; 6min).
Unrelated: Wooster Collective is posting again.
The Secrets and Mystic Lore of the Ancients Purported to Be Revealed through the Research of these World’s Great MASTERS Standard O and B Supply Co. Chicago Illinois. Catalog No. MCMXLIV (1944).
Every page a revelation. What a corker. Fool your friends, Know and overcome your enemies. How to Grow Gold. We make no such claims for Divine Ecstacy Brand Candles but only Guarantee them to burn continously with much bright radiance for 14 hours.
