avast! ye evildoers ~ ~ pclef.net

RELEVANT COMMENTARY FROM THE 13TH CENTURY

the following historical quote is a fairly prescient preface to the big showdown tonight, (afghan origination irony notwithstanding)....Kerry of Orange vs. King George II....

Today's Quotation:

"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment."

Jalal ud-Din Rumi, Sufi mystic and poet (and founder of the Whirling Dervishes); he was born on this day in 1207, in present-day Afghanistan.

OF LIGHT BULBS & LEADERS

If tonight's debate manages to exceed the intellectual latitude of the following, it will be a veritable supernatural occurrence.....enjoy the show....

How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a lightbulb?

The Answer is TEN:

1. one to deny that a lightbulb needs to be changed,

2. one to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the lightbulb needs to be changed,

3. one to blame Clinton for burning out the lightbulb,

4. one to tell the nations of the world that they are either for changing the lightbulb or for darkness,

5. one to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new lightbulb,

6. one to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner "Lightbulb Change Accomplished",

7. one administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally "in the dark",

8. one to viciously smear #7,

9. one surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along,

10. and finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a lightbulb and screwing the country.

MATTE KUDASAI

not much doing these past few....stuck in an all-day meeting today.....memo to corporate conveners: if you're not going to pony up the ducats for a location, accomodations, travel, food and so forth, then you don't get to call it an "off-site".... back in olden times, this type of event is what we used to call a "meeting" ...

anyway, here's a photograph I took this summer of a woman smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk...

BOOK YOUR AIR FARE NOW...

this lineup is almost too good to be true....hopefully mould will go easy on the electronica/disco nonsense.....MPLS residents (Chad, we want a full report!) best get on the horn to ticketmaster pronto......

(note to the clueless--the following references to "paul" involve a certain mr. westerberg)

[from the 'man without ties' web site]

Good news all around: Paul will be taking part in a benefit concert for Soul Asylum bassist Karl Mueller, who has throat cancer. The details, from the Mpls Star-Tribune:

Where: The Quest, 110 North Fifth Street, MPLS
When: October 23, 2004
Who: The line-up is scheduled to include Paul, Bob Mould, the Gear Daddies, Soul Asylum and some Golden Smoggers
Tix: On sale Weds Sept. 29 thru TM, $30

Oh and Paul tied for Songwriter of the Year at the 9/22 Minnesota Music Awards ceremony.

FOUR YEARS

Happy 4th Anniversary to My Beloved....it's fruit & flowers this year.....

To Autumn
John Keats

I
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

II
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

III
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

RUSS MEYER JOINS THE CHOIR INVISIBLE

..another great one has flown the coop.....and not to be too gloomy about it, and you'll forgive the obvious joke, but Mr. Meyer, thanks for the mammaries....

From the Los Angeles Times

OBITUARIES

Russ Meyer, 82; Iconic Sexploitation Filmmaker

By Myrna Oliver
Times Staff Writer

September 22, 2004

"Russ Meyer, a master of sexploitation filmmaking who was called "king of the nudies" or "King Leer" for such soft-core pornography classics as "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" and "Vixen," has died. He was 82.

Meyer, who also directed the major studio release "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," died Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills, according to his company, RM Films International Inc. Spokeswoman Janice Cowart said Meyer had suffered from dementia and died of complications of pneumonia.

Something of a one-man studio, Meyer produced, directed, financed, wrote, edited and shot 23 tantalizing but teasing films that pioneered a genre of skinflicks with much violence and large-busted women but little sex. The titles of the X-rated fare that made him millions are descriptive - "The Immoral Mr. Teas," "Erotica," "Wild Gals of the Naked West," "Heavenly Bodies," "Mudhoney," "Mondo Topless," "Common Law Cabin," "Supervixens" and "Europe in the Raw."

"I love big-breasted women with wasp waists," he told the London Times in 1999, two decades after making his final film. "I love them with big cleavages." Little wonder that Time magazine critic Richard Corliss called Meyer's films "bosomacious melodramas" or that Meyer came to be viewed as an auteur.

But with age came grace - and admiration - as Meyer's work was
honored at film festivals around the world including at the American
Cinematheque in Hollywood and the National Film Theater in London.
His movies were discussed in classes at Yale and Harvard, and
purchased by such respectable institutions as the New York Museum of
Modern Art.

In 2002, an exhibit of his striking pinup and studio still photos
from the 1950s and 1960s was staged at the prestigious Feigen Gallery
in New York, which also handles the work of the late caricaturist Al
Hirschfeld.

When the Russ Meyer Film Festival opened at Los Angeles' Vagabond
Theater in 1992, Times film writer Kevin Thomas wrote: "No one
projects heterosexual male sex fantasies with greater gusto and
resolute dedication than Meyer, who at heart is a puritan and who has
always been a bigger tease than any burlesque queen. His world is
populated with an abundance of pneumatic women carefully photographed
to make them look as cantilevered as possible, dirty old men and
blockhead heroes plus dialogue heavy with double-entendre."

By the time Meyer made "Vixen" in 1969, Thomas wrote in the 1992
article on the festival, "Meyer pictures had begun to look like good
clean fun for adults, and with great disarming heartiness he tackles
not only adultery, homosexuality and incest but also takes a couple
of potshots at communists and racial prejudice."

Meyer's films continue to engender debate, which may explain their
popularity in film classes at USC and across the country. A San
Francisco Chronicle critic labeled the 1966 "Faster, Pussycat! Kill!
Kill!" as "the worst film ever made," but director John Waters has
called it "beyond doubt, the best movie ever made . possibly better
than any film that will ever be made in the future." (The film fared
poorly at the box office in its original release but was a hit on the
art house circuit 30 years later.)

In further homage, three rock groups have named themselves for Meyer
films - Mudhoney, Vixen and Faster Pussycat.

Because of Meyer's uncanny ability to produce visual films on a low
budget - his initial "The Immoral Mr. Teas" in 1959 returned $1
million on his $24,000 investment and the 1969 "Vixen" earned $6
million on a $76,000 investment - then-20th Century Fox president
Richard D. Zanuck hired Meyer for mainstream studio projects.

First came 1970's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," a satirical in-
name-only sequel to 1967's "Valley of the Dolls" made from the
bestselling Jacqueline Susann novel. Written by movie critic Roger
Ebert, the X-rated sequel proved popular and in many ways a better
movie than the original. As Leonard Maltin says in his 2004 Movie and
Video Guide, two "prominent critics" even selected "Beyond" as one of
the 10 best U.S. films from 1968 to 1978.

The film was Meyer's favorite. "It is by far the most important film
I ever made," he told the Toronto Star in 1995. "Roger and I embrace
that one to our bosoms, or co-bosoms."

Ebert evaluated Meyer's oeuvre in an article in Playboy in 1995, the
year "Beyond" recirculated: "Meyer uses his productions, I believe,
to recapture the joy he felt during the formative and most enjoyable
period of his life - the war. It was then that he formed lifelong
friendships, discovered his skill as a cameraman and experienced, in
a French bordello, his sexual awakening with a buxom partner who
became the archetype of the R.M. woman."

Pleased with Meyer's work on "Beyond," Zanuck handed him "The Seven
Minutes," which was based on Irving Wallace's bestselling novel about
a pornography trial. But the mainstream 1971 film, featuring such
well-known character actors as Philip Carey, Yvonne De Carlo and John
Carradine and also Meyer's onetime wife Edy Williams, failed at the
box office.

Meyer returned to his own RM Films International Inc. and made movies
that were fodder for drive-in theaters and audiences not quite ready
for the blatant sex that later became standard fare. As drive-ins
dwindled and tastes changed, Meyer wound down his filmmaking
with "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens" in 1979.

In recent years, he had discussed making another film with Ebert to
be titled "The Bra of God." But the project never materialized.

Born in Oakland on March 21, 1922, Meyer was the son of a police
officer and a nurse. With money borrowed from his mother, he bought
an 8-millimeter Univex "picture-taking machine" when he was 12 and
began making amateur films.

He was in junior college when an ad for combat photographers for the
Army Signal Corps lured him to Hollywood. Sent to France and Germany,
Meyer was credited with shooting combat films and newsreels under
some of the most dangerous conditions in World War II.

At the same time, he was honing skills for high-speed, somewhat
disjointed cinematography that would force grudging critics to admire
his art, however vulgar. Even critics who panned his movies praised
his work behind the camera.

After the war, Meyer worked as a cinematographer for Southern Pacific
Railroad and occasionally was a still photographer on studio sets,
including "Guys and Dolls" and "Giant."

He also began photographing models for nude magazines and parlayed
that expertise into photographing some of the first centerfold
layouts for Playboy magazine. He married one of the playmates, Eve
Turner, for whom he named his first company, Eve Productions.

In 1992, Meyer published his three-volume autobiography, "A Clean
Breast: The Life and Loves of Russ Meyer" with such chapter titles
as "Mammaries Are Made of This."

Meyer married and divorced and lived with a series of models,
playmates, strippers and actresses. His studio said he left no
survivors.

Services will be private."

Copyright © 2004, The Los Angeles Times

TX-1

The Agonizer SPECIAL EDITION.

I'm not familiar with the good folks over at Metasonix, but thought this was a hoot.

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

Now. It sucks even harder.

Well, we put out a horrific noise-box. It had an insulting press release. It had sadomasochistic cartoons right on the front panel.

And in spite of all this, AND repeated warnings NOT TO BUY IT, the original Metasonix TX-1 Agonizer became the fastest-selling product in our company's history.

The entire limited run was gone in 2 months. Flew out the door, they did. And even after they were gone, people were screaming for more.

Dude, like, Jeeezus Aitch Christ! What's it take to get your attention? Ahhh, we now see the light. Genital-chewing gets your attention. Giant doobies.

So dude, like, how do we follow up such an ATROCITY? With MORE ATROCITY, of course, d00d....presenting the Special UNACCEPTABLE EDITION of the Agonizer. It chews genitals even harder. It's a CELEBRITY genital chewer. Word.

So, like, what makes it more awful? We've changed some of the circuit components to add just that little extra smidge of massive, atonal distortion effecto thingy. It's now fully OPTIMIZED for bad tone and crappy sound. Now the family dog has deeply clamped his teeth into your scrotal sac, and he's starting to really get into the chewy goodness of your tender manhood. He's wiggling around, it feels good. Tastes sort of like fried chicken with mashed potatoes, apparently. (Hey, all I do is repeat what the dog tells me to repeat.) Woof woof, feel the love.

Plus, you get the teeth-marks to show off to your new pop-star girlfriend. They even match her groooovy acne scars.

The Agonizer SPECIAL EDITION has a SUCKBASS switch, d00d. It's called SUCKBASS, because it SUCKS the BASS out of your beautiful musical tone. It's a highpass filter. Makes it sound real constipated and boogery. Sounds like ass? Well, sonny, smoke that blunt, and just pretend this is an IKEA catalog.

And the new edition of the Agonizer still bears cartoons of naked women torturing animals. Even the Fleetwood Mac fans out there (you can recognize them by the many small dogs clamped onto their nether regions) should be able to figure out the meaning. The cartoons are courtesy of noted comic artist Sarah Combs. (Yes, that's right, a woman drew them. And I bet her dominatrix would be PROUD to abuse your genitals. At no extra charge.) Larger photo here

An Explanation, d00d: The TX-1 SPECIAL EDITION still uses a nasty, junky tube. It was used as the audio FM demodulator in TV sets. It was NOT meant for high-fidelity applications, it was meant for "budget" TV sets. Cheap-ass black-and-white sets, for po'folks. For some reason, Zenith had a real fondness for it. It was the white-trash portable TV sound system.

Our circuit uses it in a most ingenious way, if we do say so ourselves. The Agonizer SE hooks up the tube in an incorrect fashion. Because Eric (our designer) has a brilliant yet devious turn of mind, he thought of doing something with this "beam-deflection demodulator hexode" that the tube manfacturers never dreamed of doing.

In our circuit, this tube has ungodly amounts of distortion. And of course, Eric just had to make it worse, by putting a positive feedback loop around it. A neon lamp in the feedback loop plus clever use of the tube's very odd electrical behavior causes all kinds of non-stability, plus loads of grinding squegging nausea. We aren't gonna say it MIGHT BE unstable anymore--it's GUARANTEED UNSTABLE, Neo. And it sometimes oscillates at ultrasonic frequencies, and it puts out such a "hot" signal that there is a real danger of the Agonizer damaging some types of solid-state equipment. Woof woof, Ha ha ha.

Go ask your mommy or your drug dealer what that means. Or just smoke another blunt, take that blue pill, and forget the whole thing. Let the giant computer crap you out its ass, you laptop monkey.

There's still a pentode-tube preamp in the front end, so nosepicking METALLICA fans can plug their cheap-ass Asian-made guitars into it and get something similar to the sound of a giant amp stack belching smoke and going up in flames. Bitchin, d00d. It's just too much of a bad thing. It's bad for your homeowner's insurance. And your dog has already commented on the flavor of your scrotum.

Specifications: HA HA HA HA. Even after you got teeth marks all over your johnson, you STILL wanna see "specifications"?? Now we understand what happened to Paris Hilton's little dog Tinkerbell. They couldn't find Tinkerbell because she was trying to gnaw your dope-addled weiner off. Isn't that right? I bet she gave up and went home, because your sausage tasted more like METALLICA than like yummy boy-meat. Ugh.

What we loved most of all about the original Agonizer: the whining that appeared on Internet music bulletin boards after our Agonizer press release ran. They bitched about the sound, they bitched about the price, they bitched that it "uses a two-cent IC", as one German wanker put it. Hah. And yet, it sold like a giant black dildo on Castro Street on a nice Sunday morning. Explain that away, you monkeyboys-who've-never-seen-the-damn-thing.

Click to see some of the pathetic whining

The Agonizer's overall gain is more than 100. You can't tell anyway, because of the GROSS distortion imposed in most control settings. Plate voltage is approx. 120v. The LEVEL knob is the input level control. The POUND knob varies the voltage on the deflection grid in the tube--which changes the gain and the distortion character. The CV input allows you to insert a control voltage in the grid, so you can modulate the distortion OR add another audio signal modulation to the noise. The STRANGLE knob brings the neon lamp into play. The overload effect increases further when the lamp conducts. And the GRIND knob controls the feedback loop. More GRIND, more horrible intermodulation distortion. Finally, "SUCK HARDER" is the bypass switch. Don't taste the rainbow, taste the smegma.

Jeez, I forgot to say something about Britney. Well, if Britney buys a pile of Agonizers, we'll give her some advertising space. We'd be happy to rave about her super power, a skull-crushing vaginal power grip. But not till then.

No, the Agonizer STILL doesn't run on a nine-volt battery, dinkface. It still sucks power like a mofo: 12 volts AC at 1.5 amps maximum. It's a BIG box, too: about 8" x 4.5" x 2.5", and weighing 4 pounds. Yes, roughly four times bigger than a typical cheapass fuzz pedal. It gets quite hot when powered for extended periods. Best of all, it's painted the most bilious shade of UV-reactive yellow-green our powdercoating shop could find. We told them, "The old one was too cute! We want people to VOMIT!" And somehow, Rob and his maniacs managed to cause vomitude. Nice work, fellas.

The AGONIZER SPECIAL EDITION is HAND-MADE in the USA by your momma. AND IT IS A LIMITED EDITION OF 100. Now will you please stop smoking that stinkweed and remove the tiny dog from your crotch? The neighbors are starting to talk.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY, 9/21/38

http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=leadstory

THE GREAT NEW ENGLAND HURRICANE:
September 21, 1938

Without warning, a powerful Category 3 hurricane slams into Long Island and southern New England, causing 600 deaths and devastating coastal cities and towns. Also called the Long Island Express, the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 was the most destructive storm to strike the region in the 20th century.

The officially unnamed hurricane was born out a tropical cyclone that developed in the eastern Atlantic on September 10, 1938, near the Cape Verde Islands. Six days later, the captain of a Brazilian freighter sighted the storm northeast of Puerto Rico and radioed a warning to the U.S. Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service). It was expected that the storm would make landfall in south Florida, and hurricane-experienced coastal citizens stocked up on supplies and boarded up their homes. On September 19, however, the storm suddenly changed direction and began moving north, parallel to the eastern seaboard.

Charlie Pierce, a junior forecaster in the U.S. Weather Bureau, was sure that the hurricane was heading for the Northeast, but the chief forecaster overruled him. It had been well over a century since New England had been hit by a substantial hurricane, and few believed it could happen again. Hurricanes rarely persist after encountering the cold waters of the North Atlantic. However, this hurricane was moving north at an unusually rapid pace--more than 60 mph--and was following a track over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.

With Europe on the brink of war over the worsening Sudetenland crisis, little media attention was given to the powerful hurricane at sea. There was no advanced meteorological technology, such as radar, radio buoys, or satellite imagery, to warn of the hurricane's approach. By the time the U.S. Weather Bureau learned that the Category 3 storm was on a collision course with Long Island on the afternoon of September 21, it was too late for a warning.

Along the south shore of Long Island, the sky began to darken and the wind picked up. Fishermen and boaters were at sea, and summer residents enjoying the end of the season were in their beachfront homes. Around 2:30 p.m., the full force of the hurricane made landfall, unfortunately around high tide. Surges of ocean water and waves 40 feet tall swallowed up coastal homes. At Westhampton, which lay directly in the path of the storm, 150 beach homes were destroyed, about a third of which were pulled into the swelling ocean. Winds exceeded 100 mph. Inland, people were drowned in flooding, killed by uprooted trees and falling debris, and electrocuted by downed electrical lines.

[on a personal note, I grew up in westhampton beach, and aside from being raised around old-timers' stories of main street under 3 feet of water, there are lots of geographical reminders of the storm of '38--for instance I was once a greenskeeper on a 9-hole golf course...meaning that the other 9-holes--half a golf course--was swept out to sea...to this day, all sports teams of westhampton beach high school are called "the hurricanes"...]

At 4 p.m., the center of the hurricane crossed the Long Island Sound and reached Connecticut. Rivers swollen by a week of steady rain spilled over and washed away roadways. In New London, a short circuit in a flooded building started a fire that was fanned by the 100 mph winds into an inferno. Much of the business district was consumed.

The hurricane gained intensity as it passed into Rhode Island. Winds in excess of 120 mph caused a storm surge of 12 to 15 feet in Narragansett Bay, destroying coastal homes and entire fleets of boats at yacht clubs and marinas. The waters of the bay surged into Providence harbor around 5 p.m., rapidly submerging the downtown area of Rhode Island's capital under more than 13 feet of water. Many people were swept away.

The hurricane then raced northward across Massachusetts, gaining speed again and causing great flooding. In Milton, south of Boston, the Blue Hill Observatory recorded one of the highest wind gusts in history, an astounding 186 mph. Boston was hit hard, and "Old Ironsides"--the historic ship U.S. Constitution--was torn from its moorings in Boston Navy Yard and suffered slight damage. Hundreds of other ships were not so lucky.

The hurricane lost intensity as it passed over northern New England, but by the time the storm reached Canada around 11 p.m. it was still powerful enough to cause widespread damage. The Great New England Hurricane finally dissipated over Canada that night.

All told, 700 people were killed by the hurricane, 600 of them in Long Island and southern New England. Some 700 people were injured. Nearly 9,000 homes and buildings were destroyed, and 15,000 damaged. Nearly 3,000 ships were sunk or wrecked. Power lines were downed across the region, causing widespread blackouts. Innumerable trees were felled, and 12 new inlets were created on Long Island. Railroads were destroyed and farms were obliterated. Total damages were $306 million, which equals $18 billion in today's dollars, making the Great New England Hurricane the sixth costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

FRANKENSTRAT, THE SAGA CONTINUES...

about a month ago, the family stratcat made a trip to the livingston mall here in suburban NJ. after some perfunctory visits to old navy and baby gap, I took some of my latte-fueled energy into Sears. Now, I was raised in a Sears family, raised by Sears customers, and always thought highly of their approach to customer service and so forth. My experience that day was inconsistent with these expectations. Too many pre-retirement coffee swillers walking about--"can you tell me where to find.....?" I was told to go find some guy named so-and-so, a green-haired dwarf with a cranial catalog of allen wrench bits at the ready for recitation to customers such as myself, in both U.S. and metric versions. Yes, this because old shlubby guy doesn't work in "this department" (so why are you hanging around the tools hotshot?)...and so apparently the bob vila bridge troll was on coffee break, because I eventually just had to make my way into the miasma of hardware and power tools on my own steam, with what little knowledge of this area that I possessed (thereby reinforcing my love of purchasing goods online)....the problem came when I found two versions of what I wanted, but with no price tag and no indication of which was the newer/better deal....a price indicator would have helped for starters.....long story short, I got some help at the cash register from an eager young man (who clearly did not work in the hardware dept), made my (hopefully the correct) choice, and procured my dremel tool.

ah yes, the legendary Dremel, shopmate and third hand to the legions of dan erlewine-influenced home DIYer guitar fixer-uppers.....once I'd reviewed its abilities (and informed mrs. stratcat of its round-the-house applications as well), I initiated my first project -- to re-shape a tele pickguard I had for use with the frankenstrat.

it's now a total strat-tele hybrid. tele neck, pickguard (sorta), neck pickup...strat body, middle pickup, 5-way switch...and the big stanky JB humbucker & whammy bar in the middle....the floating bridge is blocked off with a toolbox fossil--a vintage can opener/paint brush cleaner (engraved with the Sears logo)... hey, it works. the outcome on the pickguard ain't perfect, but I learned a lot, and if I ever do one of these again, it'll look even better. not bad for now, though....and certainly better than it was....

Happy Cinco de Guyo

Congratulations Kevyn & Dennis, on five years of love, laughter, fun, and just being completely fabulous.....

A SLINKY, A SLINKY, FOR FUN IT'S A WONDERFUL TOY...

I learned how to play guitar on super slinkies. good thing, too, because the action on my first guitar was high enough to strain pasta....so rest in peace Mr. Ball, and thanks a lot for the strings.....

www.ErnieBall.com

Ernie Ball Passes Away
September 11, 2004

A legend in the musical instrument industry and founder of the Ernie Ball Company in 1962, Ernie Ball passed away on Thursday, September 9 after a lengthy illness. A resident of San Luis Obispo, CA, he was 74 years old. A graveside service will be held Monday, September 13 at 10 a.m. at the San Luis Cemetery, 2890 S. Higuera in San Luis Obispo. Wheeler-Smith Mortuary is handling the arrangements.

Ernie grew up in Santa Monica, California. At 19, he successfully auditioned for the pedal guitar slot in the Tommy Duncan band, (former lead singer for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys) and toured with the band for a year prior to a three-year stint as an Air Force bandsman.

After leaving the service, Ernie returned to Los Angeles, where he played professionally and taught guitar. He also played on the staff band for KTLA TV's popular weekly show, "Western Varieties."

In 1958, Ernie opened a small guitar shop in Tarzana, a few miles from Hollywood, which was the first store in the country to sell only guitars. In the early 1960's Ernie developed the first ever rock & roll strings, called "Slinkys," and offered guitarists custom-gauge single strings.

The demand for Ernie Ball's Slinky strings continued to grow and in 1967 he sold the retail store and moved the string business to Newport Beach. During the 1970's, along with his son Sterling, Ernie set up distributors in Europe, Japan and Australia.

Ernie Ball purchased Music Man (electric guitar company) in the fall of 1984. He designed and built a new facility in San Luis Obispo, California, and all Ernie Ball and Music Man operations were moved to the new plant in 1985. In 2003, the Ernie Ball Company moved its string operations to Indio, California, and continues to operate Music Man manufacturing from its San Luis Obispo plant.
Always a player, even to the end, Ernie continued to play an integral role in the company he founded 42 years ago. Numerous family members also work for the company in various capacities.

RIP: downstroke motherfucker

never was quite right after that bat attack...

always thought he'd be the first to go... what's left? drummers?

OSCILLATE NO MORE...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/nyregion/12leslie.html

Donald J. Leslie, 93, Inventor of Popular Speaker for Organs, Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: September 12, 2004

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 11 (AP) - Donald James Leslie, who created and manufactured a speaker that refined the sound of the Hammond organ and helped popularize electronic music, died on Sept. 2 at his home here. He was 93.

He died of natural causes, according to Wendell Cabot, owner of Cabot & Sons Mortuary in Pasadena.

Mr. Leslie was captivated with the sound of the Hammond organ at the furniture store in downtown Los Angeles where he repaired radios. In the store's large showroom, the organ, introduced in 1935, sounded much like a theater or church pipe organ.

But Mr. Leslie was unimpressed with the organ's sound in the confined space of his home.

He began tinkering with devices to make the instrument sound more like labyrinthine pipe organs, using mechanics and electronics experience from a series of jobs, including one at the Naval Research Laboratories in Washington, D.C., during World War II.

When Mr. Leslie presented Hammond with an organ speaker that he had built by hand, the company rejected it - and turned him down for a job.

He later founded Electro Music in Pasadena to manufacture his speaker, which he called a Leslie speaker. It made electronic music more popular during the 1940's by improving the sound of organs and keyboards.

It was not until the 1980's that Hammond bought Mr. Leslie's speaker, which is now built by Hammond Suzuki USA.

Mr. Leslie and Laurens Hammond, who engineered the Hammond organ, were inducted into the American Music Conference Hall of Fame in 2003.

He is survived by his wife, Carolyn; a daughter, Jeanine; two sons, Scott and James; a sister, Mary Elizabeth Grime; and six grandchildren.

And I might add that Mr. Leslie's invention was a big part of many guitarists' studio toolboxes, including The Beatles (esp. George Harrison songs), Jimi Hendrix (All Along the Watchtower, others), The Rolling Stones (Let It Loose, others), etc. etc. etc.

THIS WEEK'S ART REVIEWS

GOOD:

Our old friend Paul Westerberg returns with another cycle of songs that continue his elegiac backward glancing....from "good day" (bob stinson) through "let the bad times roll" (name-checking joey & dee dee ramone on jay leno), Sir Paul has been pondering mortality these past few years, and this new set get even more personal, dealing with the recent death of his dear old dad. After a few listens, the hooks sink in--this weekend I found myself quietly & unconsciously singing "looking up in heaven" and "as far as I know" to myself. Nothing new under the westerberg sun, but still better than 99% of what passes for songwriting these days.....now if only he could get his production values up to the snuff of "suicaine" or the like...it seems to be his running paradox that with diminished production values come better songs...

GREAT:

I was surprised to learn that this was (is?) #1 at the box office, as most of what I enjoy doesn't appeal to the mass audience very often, but this film is truly amazing. Go for the cinematography, stay for the martial arts. or vice versa. If you dig 'crouching tiger'...you'll love this too. Only this one is more epic, tensely coiled, and the special effects are pure visual poetry. I had already dispensed with a large popcorn/large pepsi by the time the third act began. worth your $10.....

The farewell album from Guided By Voices (though with the lineup changes that have already taken place with nary an effect on output or style, I expect the first Robert Pollard album to take up where this left off)...begs the question--which band had a better debut album this year? & the best song titles this side of dillinger four...."everybody thinks I'm a raincloud," "girls of wild strawberries," "sing for your meat," "tour guide at the winston churchill memorial".... GBV is the best thing to come out of ohio since chryssie hynde & air pollution....

MASTERPIECE:

The big box record store is something I generally avoid, for a number of reasons. The people, the prices, and the pablum which passes for popular music that is generally rammed into your ear sockets, MTV-style, just for walking in the store. But when I find that I can replace my worn-out 70s vinyl of an all-time great for $8.99? Sheesh, I'll be back for "Leave Home" straightaway...it had been quite a few years since I'd listened to this as an LP, front-to-back, in sequence. These guys were the Beatles in leather MC jackets and nobody ever figured it out. Why not? Probably because no one was used to having this much fun...I'll take "rockaway beach" over "here, there and everywhere" any day of the week.....

DECISIONS DECISIONS...

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
--Dick Cheney

All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
-John Arbuthnot, writer and physician (1667-1735)

THE RETURN OF FRANKENSTRAT (SLIGHT RETURN)

if you are denied access to a chubby slob playing a bass with a jack daniels logo, a coke skeleton sibling doing the so-cal double kick and a bleached out cactus fritter with the boardwalk junkie baggie shorts get-up and phalanx of dental implants....well, there's only so much time one can devote to playing eddie van halen licks before one get's crashing bored....

so, in keeping with my new components budget of $0, I dug up an old tele neck pickup and one of the single coils this guitar actually had originally, and stuffed them back into the slots. refreshing to have a standard 5-way strat switch, and all pickup combinations sound good...

as sammy would say: I Can't Drive........

[no, really. I can't drive...]

HOME

When your TV has been showing nothing but a hideous green & red pinwheel creeping in slo-mo toward the direction of your loved ones, and you're a thousand miles away, and you've turned your home office into a 24-hr meteorogical data station, and you arrive at the point when the 2pm flight departs from Jacksonville just about an hour or two before the hurricane arrives to fuck shit up (but you don't know this yet), then this little cartoon computer picture is about as pretty as it gets. mrs. stratcat & stratkitty are home safe and sound....

Happy Labor Day.

RABBITS!!!

TINY TONE COLOSSUS

this works amazingly...if you're like me, you've never much liked the sound of a POD running into a guitar amp. what you need is an amp that is designed for this solid state modeling sort of business (e.g. tech21), with a nice flat colorless speaker that will translate the signal and not alter it very much. use something with stereo outs--like this delay unit--run it into an A/B box, and you've got a two-channel amplification system that sounds incredible...and you can carry across town on your back without breaking a sweat....

happy guitars...late afternoon, first day of September...

the bachanal of swine endeth on the morn....we could've done with a visit from St. Patrick this week.....

Sound & Fury Signifying Nada

here's a shot of thud NOT protesting...

upper right in blue shirt with hand covering face...