15 Records & 15 More

So I got tagged on one of those Internet meme things on Facebook the other day. It was a thing where you were supposed to list 15 albums that stuck with you, which, c'mon, how am I supposed to pass that up? I've done something similar here on the blog ages ago with my Desert Island Disco series, and while both lists contain a lot of the same artists, for this one I included records that were more introductory and seminal as opposed to ones I'd listen to forever if necessary. So here's my list of 15 Albums:


1. Jonathan Richman - I, Jonathan
2. Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson
3. The Beatles - The Beatles
4. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
5. Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
6. Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
7. The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?
8. Talking Heads - Remain In Light
9. The Beach Boys - Friends
10. The Clash - The Clash
11. Yo La Tengo - Electro-Pura
12. Sebadoh - Bakesale
13. Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
14. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
15. R.E.M. - Reckoning

And of course, as soon as I hit "Submit" on the Facebook note, I thought of another 15 or so records I could include. So here's another 15:


1. Paul & Linda McCartney - Ram
2. The Dismemberment Plan - Change
3. Beck - Midnight Vultures
4. Spoon - Girls Can Tell
5. Ganglians - Monster Head Room
6. Tom Waits - Bone Machine
7. Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
8. Old 97's - Too Far To Care
9. Super Furry Animals - Rings Around the World
10. Halo Benders - God Don't Make No junk
11. Devo - Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
12. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
13. The B-52's - The B-52's
14. Neil Young - After the Gold Rush
15. They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18

What about you? What are some informative, keystone records from yr life? Ones that you heard and said to yourself, "Yeah, that's it right there."?

Day Late/Dollar Short

Hey there. I didn't get around to it yesterday, but here's the latest MST3K Drink & Draw poster. This one's for the film Night of the Blood Beast, about an astronaut who comes back from the cosmos all knocked up with alien babies. Sexiness/hilarity ensues.


Go and check out the Flickr pool for more great stuff. Oh, and next week's film is the Roger Corman, "girls on the lam in the bayou," schlockfest that is Blood Diamond, so get ready for that.

These Are the Breaks

So like a million years ago, when the world was young and Triceratops was still a dinosaur, Chris Haley and I pinged together one of our legendary collaborative mixes.

Over the course of a few days we pulled together our tracks and Chris came up with a pretty baller title (Ping, vol. 6 – Dance Fighter 2: Electric Punch-A-Yoo! Just sorta rolls off the tongue, right?) and we were like, "Yay! This is great! Now let's do the cover art!" So Chris whipped up this great illustration of a guy with a fist for a head and I was like "Yeah! This mix is gonna be huuuuuuge!" and then I started to finish it off but then I lost my job last year and my world turned upside-down and I totally forgot about this poor mix as it sat in my iTunes, coverless, unshared and unloved.

Poor fella.

Well, no more! My life is now right-side-up and Chris has reminded me enough and I got it done and now you can download and enjoy the latest in Ping Mixtapery Saga by clicking this link right here. It's also available in the Master List, along with a bunch of other mixes from the BRR Mixtape Brigade.

Oh, and why don't you just go ahead and download my monthly mix, Baby C'Mon while you're at it?

Take Me Back To Wondaland

Hey hey hey. July is here and so is the newest mix. Also, it is hot as the center of Hell in Vegas right now. But this mix, this mix is cool. You can download it here. Featuring songs from The Shins, Vampire Weekend (yeah, again), Wilco, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings (yay!), The Dutch Rhythm Steel & Show Band, Paul Simon, Jan & Dean (I've been waiting to work this track in for a while now), Elliott Smith, Graham Nash, Frank Black, Esquivel, Janelle Monáe (you should really check out her new album The ArchAndroid, it's really pretty great), Jens Lekman (of course), The Beatles, Bruce & Terry, The Ventures, Hanoi Janes, The Tammys, Gnarls Barkley and The Drums. It's Hammock Rock, basically.

There are more mixes over on the Master List. Feel free to share it with anyone and everyone. In fact, if you do share it (on Facebook, Twitter or on your blog), drop a link or comment and I will send you a very special Independence Day mix. For realsies.

Let me repeat: If you share this mix, I will send you a special mix.

That is all. Enjoy.

Stuff I Made

I promise, one of these days I'll blog about something besides stuff I made recently, but in the mean time, uh, here's some stuff I made recently.

First off, we have two weeks' worth of words for Best Mark My Words. Here's "Gadzooks," from the week of April 26th:



And here's last week's word, "Kine," which is an old-timey way of saying "cow":



The funnest part of that last one was waiting for a reaction from the employees at Lowe's when I explained I just needed a swatch of astro-turf for an art project. Although this is Vegas, so I'm sure it's not even on the list of top 50 weirdest things done with astro-turf that these guys have heard of/participated in.

I've also been putting together a set of captioned photos for a series I have titled "Ballerz." Here's a slideshow of the set so far:



And finally, this week's MST3K Drink & Draw is almost upon us. We'll be watching Secret Agent Super Dragon, which is on Hulu this time instead of Netflix. Position your computer machines accordingly. And, like the last couple of weeks, I'll be kicking off the West Coast/Mountain session at 9pm Pacific. It's been really fun, but you don't have to take my word for it. Go check out the Flickr group pool for the goodness. Everybody is welcome. Here's the poster:



Oh, and if you want to join We Bought Comics, you're welcome to do that as well.

We Bought Comics

So myself and the Handsomest Man In Comics™, Chris Haley, have teamed up to start a new Flickr club called We Bought Comics. Here's our little badge.



And here's how it works: if you bought comics, take a picture of them, either individually or in a group. I'm gonna do both, actually. Tell us what ruled, what sucked and what was just so-so. You can take pictures of yourself reading your books or of the shop you bought them at, if you want to pimp 'em a little. Basically, we wanted a way to share what we're reading and see what others are reading. Cuz we love comic books.

For example, here's what I picked up this week:



So if you're a comics fan and are on Flickr, come join the club. As the Marquis de Sade said, "The more the merrier," right?

Satellite of Love

Another week, another Mystery Science Theater 3000 Super Friends Club poster. This time, the film is The Blood Waters of Dr. Z, featuring a disgruntled Nazi scientist who turns himself into a walking catfish. You read that right.



If you want to get in on the MST3K Drink & Draw, all you have to do is hop on the internet at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific,* pull up Netflix, watch the movie and draw whatever pops into your pretty little head as you watch the castways on the Satellite of Love heckle a terrible movie. Then you post it on the Internet. Simple.

And don't forget to post what you're drinking. Me, I think I'll be nursing a nice, cold sarsaparilla or two. Cuz I'm a gangsta.

So yeah, join in! As usual, I'll be posting my stuff on Twitter and Facebook as well as in the the Flickr group pool. Or, if you just want to see what others are drawing and/or drinking, you can follow along on Twitter using this hashtag (or follow MST3KSFC founders Jen and Chris for the highlights).

See you there.

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* If anybody else wants to do a West Coast viewing at 9 Pacific, let me know. I did that last week and it worked out pretty well.

In the Not-Too-Distant Future

So, tonight's the night. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Super Friends Club (MST3KSFC for short) is hosting their third MST3K Drink & Draw, which is pretty much what it sounds like.

At 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific, you point your Netflix machine here and draw whatever madness pops into your head as you watch the silhouettes of a dude and some robots take a part a truly terrible movie, in this case, 1997's Future War. Then you post it on the Internet. Simple.

Oh, and you're supposed to drink while you do it. I have part of a liter of Hawaiian Punch chilling in the fridge just for such an occasion. My life is like a rap video.

Anyway, so it's on like Donkey Kong tonight. I made a poster for the event based on this "cyborg" from the film:



So yeah, join in! I'll be posting my stuff on Twitter/Facebook, much to the annoyance of the three people who haven't hid my feed yet. Make sure to let me know if you'll be playing along, too. I would love to see your stuff.

If you just want to see what others are drawing and/or drinking, you can follow along on Twitter using this hashtag (or follow MST3KSFC founders Jen and Chris for the hilights) and check the Flickr group pool for goodies.

Anyway, hope to see you there. I'll be in the front row, next to Tom Servo, being a smart-A.

Betwixt A Rock & A Hard Place

So I finally got my submission for Best Mark My Words done last night before Lost. The word is "betwixt," which apparently doesn't mean when someone shares their Twix bar with you. Good to know. Here's my selection:



You can check out the other words posted over on the site.

We Are 138

My Gentlemen Broncos post was my 1,138th post on this blog. Can you believe that? Dang dude, that's a lot of posts. Thank you all for pretending to read them. You are all pretty amazingly great people. That is all.

This Week's Word: Cove

Here's this week's word for Best Mark My Words. The word is "cove," which in this instance is a British slang word for "dated, out of style."


I imagine this as a logo painted on a sign in a dilapidated filling station or maybe on an old package in some forgotten corner of a Tesco. Maybe on like a bar of soap or something. Anyway, go check out this week's entries. Enjoy.

A Pair of Lacks

This week's (er, last week's, I guess?) word was "parallax," which, I found out, is not what it's called when you have two lacks, lacks being the long-eared beasts of the mountains of Bulgaria. That is a double-lacks. Now I know.

Turns out that the parallax effect is, according to Dictionary.com: "the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer." So, with this in mind, I set about sketching and came up with the idea of having overlapping, differing shapes that make up a coherent word. Like so:


As always, you can check out the words over here.

Bowler Dash

So, this week's word is "balderdash." For some reason, it makes me think of a fat guy chasing his bowler hat down a street. Hence, "bowler-dash." I know, I know. I'm seeking professional help. Anyway, here it is:


Check out the other entries here. Seriously, this is fun stuff.

It's French For "Nickname"

New word up at Best Mark My Words. The word is "sobriquet." It's French for nickname. Mine's all bouncy and fun, like a nickname should be:


Also, look at those other ones! They're freaking awesome! One of these weeks I will expose myself as the talentless charlatan that I am next to guys like this.

All Gussied Up

A couple of weeks back, the indefatigable Rob Harrigan of Undercard Productions took a break from being awesome to invite me to be a contributor to his new weekly hand-lettering challenge blog, Best Mark My Words. I still can't believe he invited me to participate.

So yeah, every week we're given a word and have to hand-letter said word. The first rule of BMMW is that your word is hand-drawn. Other than that, it's pretty much open. Our first word was "gussy." Here's my entry:



To see the others for last week, go here. As you can see, it's a pretty fun thing and you'd have to be a fool not to add it to your reader. A fool, I say.

Like I said, this is all Rob. Go stop by (and follow) his blog; you won't regret it. And if you're in the market for some seriously great illustration, his wife, Stephanie Buscema, has a website and blog and a rocking Etsy shop.

Anyway, I'm out. I think there's a Curling match on tonight or something. I'm totally ga-ga for that sport right now.

Quick Question

Okay, so I started work on a Holiday mix last night and ended up with a short list.

Of about 60 songs.

And this is before I broke out my Christmas CDs to put a few tracks from those on the list, and I know I have a few tracks from those that will make the list. (I mean, I have John Denver and the Muppets' A Christmas Together in there, man!) So, unless I make a lot of cuts of a lot of really good tracks, we're looking at the possibility of up to four mixes.

Is this dumb? Would you guys want a weekly Christmas music mix for the next month? Let me know in the comments section. Please help me out here. I don't want to make these if nobody wants them.

The Inevitable

***UPDATE: The items in question have been removed. Please don't e-mail the seller. We've removed all references to her and her shop in this post but will keep it up to foster discussion. Thanks for doing the right thing.***

Hello Internet. We need your help.

Last summer we introduced some posters to our Sparkle Power shop and it's really been a blessing for our family. Our biggest seller's been the La La Love You poster. It's been featured on a ton of great blogs like ohdeedoh (Apartment Therapy's parenting blog), Babygadget, Tangled and True, Creature Comforts and c jane. We've literally sold reams of the things. Like I said, it's been a boon to our family and has gotten a lot of eyeballs directed toward our fledgling enterprise.

So I guess it was only a matter of time until we were ripped off.

We were checking the Etsy front page before bed last night and had a little déjà vu hit us in the "Recently Listed" section there. How we managed to hit the front page at the exact right time to catch it is beyond me, but we did. Seems that a seller named [redacted] has produced a series of prints that bear more than a passing resemblance to our beloved and popular posters.

But, like the man says, you don't have to take our word for it:


There's a pink one. We have a pink one.

And an aqua one. We have an aqua one.

Reeeeeally sketchy, right? I mean, imitation's the sincerest form of flattery and all, but this is just ridiculous. If you look at either of her shops her other prints aren't even close to the simple, bold and elegant design of our original. And to add insult to injury, she's got the gall to copyright her posters in their descriptions. Seriously?

Plus, she's asking more than double what we're asking for a letter-sized print. (Hers are $22 for a letter-sized print. Ours are $8 for letter-sized, $10 for tabloid ... buy yours today!)

Last night we sent a friendly but firm e-mail asking that she remove the listings. As of this evening, the listings still stand. We ask that if you believe these posters to be knock-offs of our posters that you take the few minutes it will take to set up a free Etsy account (if you don't already have one) and send an e-mail to the operator of the shop, letting her know that stuff like this just isn't cool. And if you'd like to go further, you can link to this on your blog, Twitter, Facebook or Flickr. Solidarity, people.

We really hate to do this, but at the same time, these posters represent a lot of hard work and to see them blatantly plagiarized is really heartbreaking, insulting and infuriating.

We love Etsy. We believe in Etsy. It's a culture made up of people - like us - who love to create beautiful, original things. We have made a lot of friends through our work there. Please do what you can to make sure that this kind of stuff is not tolerated.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Team Sparkle Power

Mother Boxx/The Love Below

The indomitable Chris Haley (of Let's Be Friends Again fame) and myself made another Ping mix. This one's entitled Fourth World Blues, and features the New God Orion pledging to destroy his dad, the totally evil Darkseid. Chris provided the illustration, I colored it and added the yell bubble and dialogue.

It started with me mentioning to Chris that after reading Kirby's Fourth World omnibuses (which are awesome), I really wanted to write some FW fan fiction and maybe I could work that into the cover somehow? Chris, of course did not do the right thing and condemn this behavior. He, in fact, enabled it.

So I wrote this imaginary panel from a comic that exists only in my mind. For now. I imagined that Darkseid, during a skirmish with his estranged son, Omega Sanction-ed him to some weird prison world where Orion's continually confronted with false realities that serve to remind him that at his core, he's a bloodthirsty beast whose ultimate destiny is to rule Apokalips in his fathers' stead. Sort of like The Prisoner with Orion as Number 6 and Darkseid's sadistic lackey Desaad as Number 2. Only instead of outsmarting his opposition at every turn, Number 6 just tears the Island to shreds, leaving a bloody, burning wake of destruction behind him.

Good times.

We originally wanted the mix to drop on Friday in honor of what would have been Jack Kirby's 92nd birthday, but real life got in the way of that, so you're getting it today. I dropped the ball. Anyway, here's the cover:


As usual for our Ping Pong mixes, we traded songs back and forth, trying to link these songs together with some sort of logic. Hopefully it's as fun to listen to as it was to make. But if not, well, it's free, right, so why are you complaining?

Download it here.

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And if you're interested you can download the rest here:
Ping 1: Ping Of Pong
Ping 2: Return Of the Ping
Ping 3: The Man Who Would Be Ping
Ping 4: & Away We Go

And check back tomorrow for September's mix, 10000 Year Increments.

Echidna On Wire

Cassidy, a friend of mine from school, has a shirt in the running over on Threadless and it's really very cool. See for yourself:


Cassidy describes it thusly: "Everyone's favorite monotreme Ernie the Echidna proves once again that he will do anything for a sandwich. This shirt hearkens back to the day when I was a wee little boy and I knew that all animals perform, just like in the circus even if we don't see them, all of them being manipulated with sandwiches."

So click here and go vote on it. I'm told by reliable sources that there may be a giveaway involved if this shirt gets enough votes to be printed. No promises, but that's the word on the street.

And while you're at it, check out Cass' blog and Flickr stream, where he's been posting his great daily character doodles and some equally great mini canvasses. And lastly, but certainly not least, become a fan of his work over on Facebook by clicking here.

Keep an eye on this kid. He's going places.

A Proposition

Hey, blog readers. As you're aware, I've been posting a mixtape every month for the last couple of years. I'm proud of these babies and love sharing them with all y'all. The hope is that you'll enjoy them and spread the word, pass the mixes around, etc.

So I have a proposition. Ready? Here goes: Anyone who blogs/Tweets/Facebooks about this month's mix, and include a link to that mix as well as the Mixtape Master List will get to download a special edition mix titled SMRJMZ, a mix of slammin' tracks from 2009 perfect for cruising around in the heat of the summer sun. Yr gonna want this one. Here's the cover:


To claim your mix, post a link to your post in the comments section. The first 7 people to do so will receive an e-mail with the link to SMRJMZ contained.

So get typing, Internetterz.