I swear this website is not becoming just an Open Mike Eagle fansite. But He just keeps on a-doin’ amazing things, so I’m gonna just keep on a-postin’ about them.
Case in point: Rolling Stone recently came out with their Best 50 Albums of 2017 list. Guess what came in at #34, right above a Bob Dylan album?
Tha’s right. Open Mike Em-Effing Eagle’s new album, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream. This was, of course, my “Album of the Month” in November, so I’d like to think that I was ahead of Rolling Stone on this one. BBKSD is a really remarkable album. Voila:
*Ring-Ring* Hey, Mike! It’s the Congratumaphone. It’s for you!
You might not have noticed it, but included in the long, long list of TV shows and movies that are returning for another go at it (a list that also includes The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Gilmore Girls, Samurai Jack, Pee-Wee Herman, and probably several others I just don’t want to take time to remember right now) is the wondrous PowerPuff Girls!
That’s right, a new season of The PowerPuff Girls has just started airing, and with some minor tweaks here and there it looks to be doing a bang-up job of continuing in the spirit of the original. One of the tweaks is a brand-new theme song, recorded by none other than Seattle band TACOCAT! It’s called, “Who’s Got the Power?” Take a look and a listen:
There are a few really cool things going on here. First, Tacocat is the heir to the 1990s Riot Grrrl phenomenon; they’re an unabashedly feminist, girl-power-filled, and bright-punk group, and their brightly-colored aesthetic is an ungodly good match to the brightly-colored PowerPuff Girls.
Sadly, neither Tacos nor Cats in RL.
Continuing in that theme, the visuals in this new introduction include a lot of the low-fi, DIY, photocopied aesthetic of the 90s zine culture (see the screenshot at the top of this post) that was extraordinarily popular in the Puget Sound area in the 90s, and was a huge part of Riot Grrrl. As a Puget Sound native, these are all things that I greatly appreciate.
Plus, the song is just catchy and fun, much like The PowerPuff Girls.
So, yes, *Ring-Ring* goes the Congratumaphone. Well done, Tacocat.
Also in honor of the return of The PowerPuff Girls, I “Powerpuffed” myself (which you, too, can do here). What do you think?
Whelp, things rarely get more awexome than this. Fools Play Improv’s own Ginger Fool, Jamie Pederson, had a guest-starring role in last Friday’s episode of SyFy’s zombie TV Show, Z Nation.
And it wasn’t just some background zombie part or extra. It’s a featured speaking role; in fact, the first non-main character you see in the episode! And his character is kind of a badass, drinkin’ beers and getting frisky with the ladies…
Jamie likes his beers… almost as much as he likes his womens.
Ginger action!
Plus he get’s a full-fledged fight scene while shirtless! Come on!
Jamie likes his beers… broken on your skull!
Just lookit our Ginger Fool bein’ badass:
Don’t make the Ginger Fool angry… you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry…
The unfortunate thing is that Z Nation is of course a zombie show, and Jamie is only guest-starring on one episode… and when someone only appears in one episode of a zombie show it’s a pretty good bet they don’t do so well in it. So I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that things don’t go very well for Jamie. In fact, they go a bit like this:
That don’t look so good.
Y’know what I’d love? I’d love it if that image became a meme! Here, I’ll do the first one:
Make it a meme!
But still, the congratumaphone is ringing off the hook, and it’s for the Ginger Fool. Great job! You can watch the entire episode (and you should) entitled “Philly Feast” on SyFy’s website. Strangely, you have to login to your cable provider before they’ll let you watch it. You all remember your cable provider’s website login, right? Right!?
At any rate, Jamie is official now: he has his own IMDB page and everything!
Credit where credit is due (arrow added by me for emphasis).
This weekend I skipped Fools Play (gasp! I know) because Carrie & I were invited to go to the wedding of Seattle’s powerhouse musicians Julia Massey & Jared Cortese.
It was a nice outdoor ceremony at Golden Gardens park. Luckily it cleared up shortly before the ceremony (it was very cloudy all day) but it still wasn’t too hot, especially for the last half of July.
Photo from KSUB
Julia had a very lovely dress, but I had seen it before—last Tuesday, when Carrie & I went up to her place so she could try on the jewelry that Carrie had designed for her. That’s right, Carrie did the wedding jewelry! She made a bunch of different pieces (two necklaces and five pairs of earrings) for Julia to try, but she couldn’t decide and so made us basically choose for her.
Look at that pretty jewelry!
And, yes, that is me photobombing in the background. But I totally didn’t mean to! I saw Jason & Julia looking at Jason’s camera, and it looked like they were taking a photo of something in front of them, not of themselves. So I leaned over to look at the screen to see what they were trying to photograph right as Jason took the picture. I immediately realized that I had accidentally photobombed them and apologized profusely and we all laughed quite a lot.
Julia got her revenge pretty quickly, though:
Revenge Photobomb!
And then she enjoyed that so much she decided to photobomb some more!
Photobombing Jason & Jason (or JJAASSOONN as I like to call them)
The reception was great fun and much enjoyment. Instead of having a cake they had gobs and gobs of donuts on a multi-tier cake stand! What a brilliant idea! There was much dancing to a really excellently-danceable selection of music. I didn’t take very many photos because my cell phone camera is really crappy. But I did snap one picture that took advantage of my camera to create a very nice effect:
She’s glowing!
The setting at Golden Gardens Park was quite excellent. I’d never been there before. It actually has a really nice, sandy beach, which is really difficult to find in the Seattle area. People were sunbathing and everything! I know!
Big congratulations to Julia and Jared! Good job, guys.
*Ring Ring* It’s the Congratumaphone! It’s for you!
