ANOTHER SAD-EYED STARE BEFORE YOU DISAPPEAR

I’m pleased to report that The Raveonettes have a new album out.

That may mean nothing to some of you. But I’ve always rather liked them. Granted, technically they’re not doing anything the Jesus & Mary Chain and Phil Spector hadn’t already thought of. But they do oh it well.

And there’s something appealing (to people like me, anyway) about decorating sonically gorgeous fuzzpop with lyrics about suicide, rape, break-ups and – in the case of the first single – the pitfalls of being in love with a heroin addict.

"Billy Jack in action" (Watch on YouTube)

Probably not for everyone. But it works for me.

Rave on,

This is dF

IF YOU WANT EVEL, YOU’VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE

For those of you don’t know, Coop (a.k.a. the artist responsible for the icon for this post) has relocated his blog, Positive Ape Index. Which is worth mentioning in part because he’s been reposting some older material – like this reminiscence of two great things about the 70s: (1) funny-car drag races and (2) Evel Knievel.

This is true.

I was never a gearhead or mechanically inclined in any sense, but I knew a bad-ass car when I saw one. And funny-cars were epic gut-trembling monsters of insane power and speed compressed into the most cartoonishly sexiest design possible. Like Jessica Rabbit with wheels and a killer paint job.

Which explains why I know who Ed “Big Daddy” Roth is.

Then there was Evel Knievel, whose superstardom and role-model status is hard to explain to anyone who wasn’t actually there. In 2009, jumping motorcycles over things is at best niche programming on Fox Sports. In the 70s, it was prime-time gold for ABC Sports. (And for Happy Days, of course.)

Why? Coop explains it as well as anyone. My own theory is that Knievel’s secret was partly showmanship and partly the fact that no one else at the time was willing to go to such insane lengths to put his life on the line to thrill a crowd. Nowadays, we have Jackass for that.

The difference, of course, is that no one on Jackass ever got their own pinball game.



[Click for a bigger image to read the awesome fine print]

NOTE: Pinball is, of course, the OTHER great thing about the 70s. That is fact, not opinion. Coop has a great post about THAT too.

Go ahead and jump,

This is dF

I WILL TRAIN YOU AT HOME

You say you want to be a certified electrician but don’t want to have to leave yr house to become one, cousin?

This man can help you.



Via the fascinating Mostly Forbidden Zone.

Stay where you are,

This is dF