(MM) meet Dear & the Headlights

Dear & the Headlights

So it’s been awhile. A month, actually. I’m sorry. How’s your mum?

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ve some awesome new tunes for your warm, slightly-overcast Monday!

Here at a Brontosaurus in a brothel, we dig words. We really dig when words are used cleverly (though that doesn’t happen much here–quantitatively or qualitatively.) Enter Dear & the Headlights.

Even the name is clever. However, if you think the wordsmithery ends there, you’re mistaken. Hailing from the oven that is Phoenix, Arizona, D&tH’s have released a few EPs and two noteworthy LPs on Equal Vision Records. One show-goer once said that Ian Metzger’s (vocals) writing prowess and vocal ability are everything that’s good about the future of indie music. I agree.

You’ll have to forgive the lame montage.

Saintly Rows (oh oh):

Talk About:

I’m Not Crying. You’re Not Crying, Are You?:

Dig it? Get it Drunk Like Bible Times in iTunes!

- Ryan “Straight FLIMPin’” Harrison

How Michael McDonald and “The Stanky Leg” are systematically destroying America and its protectorates.

So It’s been awhile…I have no explanation for you, only Nannerpuss.

Readers, we need to discuss a dire issue.  That issue is the destruction of America, a metaphorical drawing and quartering of the masses.  It all has to do with the recent rise in popularity of two things:

1. Michael McDonald

2. The Stanky Leg

We’ll start with Michael McDonald.  Michael was born to a family of lowly sharecroppers in 1943 at the height of the civil War.  At the age of twelve he joined the Doobie Brothers to support his love child with Chaka Kahn.  None of this is really important except suffice it to say, if Deja’ Vu is a glitch in the matrix then Michael McDonald is like finding a miniature new testament in the Torah.  What is important, is that, much like “the Stanky Leg,”  they have recently become popular, they are both invading Hip-Hop culture (see Michael McDonald “Motown” records, and with the purchase of a Hallmark card you can get an album of either for $8.99.

The Stanky Leg is not at all what it sounds like.  It is a dance (not a symptom of leprosy) that involves moving your leg in a circular motion (the same direction the toilets flush in Egypt).  Unlike Michael McDonald, it is not the son of share croppers but rather the bastard child of Smokey the bear and Steve from Blues Clues.  Its far reaching effects have been seen the world over, even up to the highest office in the land.  When President Obama was asked about his involvement with the Stanky Leg, he said, “We can’t let the Stanky Leg fail, That’s why it will be receiving a 36 billion dollar bailout in the new stimulus package…..change”

So why are these two tsunamis of popular culture destroying America?  Because they aren’t involved with the only good thing about “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”

The Roots

-Chris “Straight Limping” Kratzer

Lo Siento.

Brontography No.2 (pt. 2) or “Ugly Cindy and the Dinosaur Den”

Don’t forget to check out part 1 if you haven’t yet!

Next she tried costumes. One of the girls had a rickety sewing machine, and she set them to work using the spare bed sheets, old nightgowns, even the kitchen window curtains for fabric. There was no limit to Cindy’s imagination, and by the end of the week the parlor looked more like a circus than a proper brothel. Again came the farm boys and the old men, and this time even some in-betweens. It was an utter failure. One man refused to leave the parlor with the harlequin girl because he said he was scared of clowns. Another fella was Creek, and he said that the Indian princess reminded him too much of his mother. The only one that was getting any real attention was the girl dressed up like a tigress, but whenever a man went to touch her, the black and orange greasepaint came right off her skin and onto their hands. None of them wanted to risk having to explain splotches of black and orange greasepaint to their wives.

By the time I saw Ugly Cindy again next week, she looked even worse than ugly. She looked ugly and defeated. “Whatcha gonna do, Charlie?” she asked me, as if a whorehouse losing its business were the worst kind of injustice. “Whatcha gonna do?”
Sometimes I think maybe the good Lord, what with all the hundred million people on this earth He’s got to look after, might sort of lose track of some folks here and there. Might send them straight to their birth and forget to give them any single redeeming physical feature. Might give them a mean momma and a drunk daddy so that they turn to whoring. Might send a real good preacher to give a revival and forget all about the poor little whorehouse and its worried girls living on scrap meat and throw-away bread. Sometimes I think when He finally catches up with Himself and notices these folks, He likes to send them something extra special as a kind of apology. To make amends for all the just plain bad luck he’s been throwing their way. And I believe that’s just what the good Lord did for Ugly Cindy—he threw her a bone. Literally.

Cindy’s handyman first found the thing when he was digging a level foundation for a tool shed he wanted to build. He had to call three of the girls out there just to help him unearth the thing. Chipped and cracked in many places, but still in one piece, it was a bone that looked like what a human leg bone might look like if it were about ten times its normal size.

“What in the hell do you think that belonged to?” asked one of the girls.

“Something big,” answered the handyman. He wasn’t much of a talker.

“Like an elephant?”

“Bigger.”

Ugly Cindy may have had some bad marketing ideas in the past, but she knew a good one when she saw it. She directed the girls and the handyman to scrub the bone clean and prop it up right on top of the seat cushions in the bay window. Then she lost no time in getting the word out. The tigress was relieved to be able to wash off all that grease paint, which had started to make her break out in hives.

That night, the parlor was packed with every man in town who could make the excuse to come. They stood with their brandy and their whisky in a ring around the bay window, where one of the more enterprising girls had the foresight to prop up a little mailing envelope on the seat cushion. It read: “A Scientific Wonder! On display only at Cindy’s”. To tell the truth, it wasn’t that the bone worked so well in promoting business. Barely any couples made their way down the hallway that night, with almost everyone preferring to stay in the crowded parlor, drinking and theorizing about the origins of the handyman’s discovery. But Ugly Cindy’s attitude about the whole thing had sorta changed, you see. She saw her girls—tough, world-weary women without a whole lot of hopeful thoughts left in their heads—she saw those girls’ faces take on the expression of a child looking up at a Christmas tree. And the rough farmer hands and aging railroad workers? They looked like schoolboys again. She looked good and hard at all that and suddenly she didn’t mind anything so much. It was enough right then just to join in the gazing, to look up at that bay window and wonder, really wonder, just what the hell kind of thing could be big enough to have a leg bone like that.

Nikki Gordy, ladies and gents. Photographer: C. P. Mac Photography http://www.cpmacphotography.com

Nikki Gordy is an MFA student at the University of New Orleans, learning to write fiction and nonfiction that doesn’t suck quite so much as it used to. She also moonlights as the graduate assistant extraordinaire for the Tennesse Williams Literary Festival and is a part-time intern for Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship. Things Nikki enjoys include pet rats, zombie movies, Bruce Willis, and the smell of screen doors. She realizes the amount of historical anachronisms that appear in this story, and would like you to know that they are actually intentional, as is common in a sub-genre of steampunk called “lazy fact-checker.”

“The Historic Teabagging of America”

Springsteeeeen!

(HT: The Stranger)

- Ryan

Brontography No. 2 (pt. 1) or “Ugly Cindy and the Dinosaur Den”

What’s crackalackin’ interwebs? Today, we here at a Brontosaurus in a Brothel would like to deploy our 2nd installment of Brontography. If you remember, Brontography (proper) is: “…in essence, the study of what in the blue hell (”heck” for the kiddies) our name means.” Our blog has been graced today by another literoscientist from the South. Her name is Nikki Gordy. Her blog is here. A full bio is at the bottom.

So without further adieu, “Ugly Cindy and the Dinosaur Den,” part 1 of 2. Check back on Friday for part deux! Enjoi!

Ugly Cindy and the Dinosaur Den

The Dinosaur Den. People say it’s a funny name for a whorehouse. Those people didn’t know Ugly Cindy, and definitely don’t know the story behind how the Dinosaur Den got its name. If you knew Cindy, then you’re about twice as likely to believe the story. It goes like this:

Ugly Cindy had just about the worst luck of any madam who ever lived. Not that she didn’t have bad luck in her personal life, too. I mean, the name alone says volumes. Ugly Cindy was a fat peroxide blonde with gap teeth and wide-set eyes. It was like her whole face was trying to fly apart at the seams. Smiling only made her look worse, which she did the first time I stopped at her house on my new milk delivery route.

“What’s you name, young fella?” she asked. Her purple silk robe was bunched up under one armpit, and her red lipstick was smudged in both corners.

“Charlie, ma’am,” I replied.

“Well Charlie, how’d you like a go with one of my girls? We’ve got a lunchtime special running this week.”

Ugly Cindy was desperate. The grand opening of her house had coincided with the grand opening of a revival tent on the outskirts of town. The preacher was a particularly good one, with a particularly apt way of describing the burning fires of damnation in a particularly commanding voice. Ugly Cindy had barely seen a single customer for a solid week, and she was getting nervous. The rent needed to be paid and some of the more uppity girls were threatening to leave for Memphis—to make it to the big time in the world of whoring, you might say.

A couple days later, when I stopped by again, Cindy confided in me that she was about to launch a campaign. “A marketing campaign,” she clarified.

What Cindy’s marketing campaign amounted to was a string of outlandish tricks and gimmicks designed to distract men to the point where they could forget about the preacher’s particularly commanding voice and start paying attention to the velvety whisper in their ears. First, she tried opium. She made a deal with the head of one of the Chinese railroad gangs—drugs for discounts—and had her handyman fashion an elaborate smoking device out of a few wine decanters and some corncob pipes.

Ugly Cindy saw quickly that the opium wasn’t working. It brought in young farmer’s sons and old men, mostly, and they weren’t the big spenders. They were attracted to the exotic, the one having never seen much of anything and the other having seen it all. They were content to sit in the parlor and smoke huge quantities of the stuff through the corncobs pipes, and pretty soon they were too high and loose for the girls to do much of anything with them. When one of the farm boys vaulted straight through the bay window because he thought a seven-headed rattlesnake was after him, Ugly Cindy decided to scrap the drug trade and went back to the drawing board.

Nikki Gordy, ladies and gents. Photographer: C. P. Mac Photography http://www.cpmacphotography.com

 

 

Nikki Gordy is an MFA student at the University of New Orleans, learning to write fiction and nonfiction that doesn’t suck quite so much as it used to. She also moonlights as the graduate assistant extraordinaire for the Tennesse Williams Literary Festival and is a part-time intern for Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship. Things Nikki enjoys include pet rats, zombie movies, Bruce Willis, and the smell of screen doors. She realizes the amount of historical anachronisms that appear in this story, and would like you to know that they are actually intentional, as is common in a sub-genre of steampunk called “lazy fact-checker.”

How now brown cow?

Hello Interwebs.

Last week I had the pleasure of competing in my first college bowl.  For those of you not in the know, college bowl is a little like Jeopardy minus Alex Trebek and with a lot less showering.  I have to be honest, their really isn’t anything like looking around and seeing nothing but empty seats and people’s parents cheering you on. So all of this electricity in the air made me think, “How can I share the excitement of college bowl with you, the reader?”  That is why I now bring you a live blog of The Tostitos College Bowl “Rumble in the Jungle” (or some room in the University of Georgia business building.)

Getting ready to start!

Some really crappy literature question that no one cares about.

Something about Heimlich Himmeler.

Do you Brown Shirt?

How now brown cow?

The question is over…people look pissed.

Helen Keller is what?
A.  retarded
B.  Fat
C.  diabetic
D.  overrated

Why aren’t there any questions about the Ninja Turtles?

5min left in first half.

We are getting lambasted.

Rutherford B Hayes is the answer to the economic crisis

The other team has a girl that looks like a fish.

What is transcendentalism?  ………..exactly.

First half is over. 130-30….take a guess which one we are.

Turns out Florence Nightingale was not the actress who played George Jefferson’s wife.

Is phenomocological even a word?

Name a secretary of transportation?….anybody?….didn’t think so.

::real answer::  “Sherlocka Holmes”

Its over….295-40

Well, there’s that.  Below is a composite drawing of what the fish girl may, or may not, have looked like (try turning the picture sideways).  Brontography coming tomorrow as well as more exciting action when brontosaurus in a brothel returns after these messages!

-Chris

Composite drawing of fish girl.

(MM) meet Sigur Rós

Sigur Rós

None of you guys speak Icelandic, do ya? I didn’t think so. It really doesn’t matter, I was just curious.

Actually, Sigur Rós is a band of Icelandic origins.  They enjoy long walks on beach, pineapple smoothies, and making epic, moving, ethereal, music with both moments of delicacy and god-sized musical crescendos that Andrew Lloyd-Webber would be like, “Eh, a bit much guys. A bit much.” I have a few brief reasons why I think you, the reader, should not only check out, but dig Sigur Rós:

1. Good study music.
2. You’ve never heard rock music like this.
3. You’d seem so much cooler if you could say you were into “this one band from Iceland.”

The first song: Inní mér syngur vitleysingur (Within me a lunatic sings). The weather here in southcentral Alabama has been absolutely gorgeous the last few days and it would be a shame to not drop some feelgoods on your ear!

The second song: Glósóli. This is quintessential Sigur Rós–epic.

Prepare to feel.

Get their newest stuff on itunes!

(MM) meet Animal Collective

Animal Collective

This week, I’d like to introduce you to a recent favorite of mine: Animal Collective.

I’ve got to warn you, Animal Collective is not for the faint of heart. With 9 albums under their belt, AC is a formidable opponent for the casual music enthusiast. To be completely honest, I only have 2 of their records. The first one I got from a friend (Sung Tongs (2004)) and at the time I thought it was absolute crap. Noise was all I heard. Bad electronica. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I actually gave it a shot. I don’t think I’ve even made it all the way through the 4th song.

You can understand my skepticism when I heard that AC was coming out with a new album. Merriweather Post Pavillion was supposed to be the greatest album of 2009—and this was in 2008! Fastforward to January 2009. I bought the album reluctantly and have since listened to it over 20 times. Seriously.

Some have called their sound freak folk, electronica, noise pop, and a few other ridiculous genre names. In my own opinion, I don’t know what they are. An anomaly.

There’s been a recent trend in indie music where kids who used to stand around at shows and look bored have found their grandparents’ blue-suede shoes, so to speak. It’s cool to dance now. Not that it hasn’t always been cool to dance, but kids who liked indie music were thought to be strange if they weren’t bored and brooding. Thank God for change, right? You’ve never heard electronica move like this.

Animal Collective is:

• Avey Tare (David Portner; vocals, guitar, samples, keys, percussion) – Name comes from “tearing” apart the name Davey, hence Avey Tare.

• Deakin (Josh Dibb; guitar, vocals) – Name comes from letters he used to write to other members under the name Conrad Deacon.

• Geologist (Brian Weitz; electronics, samples, vocals) – Name comes from the headlamp he wears in order to see the electronics during live shows. Also, people mistakenly thought Brian was in geology, rather than marine biology in college.

• Panda Bear (Noah Lennox; vocals, percussion, samples, guitar) – Name comes from the panda he drew on the first set of songs he ever wrote.

The songs I’d like to share today are both off of Merriweather Post Pavilion. The first is My Girls, what i thought was an ode to polygamy turned out to be a lovely song about the simple life with a daughter and a spouse. Wonderful. The video is rad too. The second is Summertime Clothes as recorded at the 2008 Coachella festival. Summertime Clothes is a diddy that hearkens back to the goodtime 60s and is just what the doctor ordered for a rainy winter day like today.

Crank it up, close your eyes, and move your tail. Like it? Get it on iTunes!

Things I Digg “Gumptown”

Where art thou Gumptown

Your Forums touch my very soul

Will You Rock Lobster?

I would like to announce that I digg gumptown and I think you should too. Gumptown is a site with a fresh perspective on life in Montgomery, Alabama; A user powered community helping to power their community. Local Music, Food, and Culture make this the place to go for your Gumptown needs, but lets digg a little deeper.

I digg Gumptown because it’s the breath of fresh air this town desperately needs.  Montgomery has a wonderful charm and unique culture and Sutherland Boswell, the sites creator and adminsistrator, captures it perfectly.  From the minimalistic modern layout to an informative forum where you can connect with other locals, this place has it all.  Users truly do power this experience with the ability to write articles, post in the forums, or create events going on around town.  You can even check the weather or see some local tweets from Montgomery Twitter users.

So you might ask your self, “Chris, I really enjoyed this article.  I have all this built up excitement and emotion and I don’t know what to do with myself.  What should I do? Should I seek a medical professional?”  Well you have several options (the first two being all are as mandatory as you can make instructions on a website from a guy you don’t know).

1. Go to Gumptown.com, sign up and get involved.
2. Go to this link on Digg and help Ryan and I launch Gumptown into the stratosphere of the internets.
3. Numa Numa (also not optional)

-Chris