See change
What up, gang? The job hunt is going about as well as can be expected in this economy, which is to say it's mighty frustrating. I know I have marketable skills. Employers in the area just don't seem interested in someone who can communicate effectively right now. Oh, if only I had 7 to 10 years of experience in coding SQXMLGBT, predicting growth sector revenue potential option shares, telling other people how to run their business or some other vague-sounding shit! I'd be lighting Cohibas with $100 bills right now. Instead, I'm hopping in the same leaky boat as nearly 5 million other Americans. I guess I should feel better because I'm not alone? Well, as long as COBRA keeps covering this recurring lung infection (the doc suspects it may be COPD!), I can't complain.
Meanwhile, changes are afoot here. Most obviously, I have a snappy new logo that incorporates my love of woodland fauna, old-timey fonts and insular hipster sarcasm. The other major difference is that I've overhauled the links, breaking them down into Entartete Kunst's main areas of interest: news/culture, music and film/TV. You might notice that I've canned the list of friends' pages. IN NO WAY does this mean that I don't love each of you who were previously there. It's just that it's tough to keep up with who's actually maintaining their blog or other site, and that while attempting to revamp my professional life, I've made the decision to keep this blog as outwardly focused as possible, and my first step is to minimize the "personal" links found on it.
Don't worry, the content should remain identical. I'll still include tedious navel-gazing paragraphs like the one that started this post, and, when inspired, I'll even return to documenting my kitchen adventures. This is a hobby site, after all, and it will still only reflect its creator's interests. It's simply about appearances. Next, I intend to delete my dusty MySpace profile, since I'm sick of avoiding it. No, I do not expect to move to Facebook, which, as far as I can tell, is just a boring combination of MySpace and Twitter "for adults" that won't let you block undesirables. Y'all have fun, though.
To herald the fresh-ish outlook, let me introduce a few of the new ways to leave Entartete Kunst.
SCRAMBLED FACE: A fledgling music blog initiated by yours truly. The simple goal is to highlight "music worth hearing," be it brand new or decades old, focusing on the unique, interesting, odd or just plain good. I'll try to include a variety of genres for all you silly metal haters. I'm not sure how often I'll post, but as long as time and interest allow, expect something every day, since it's not very labor-intensive. Along with my brilliant comments, like any music blog, each post will include a link to download the recording at hand so that visitors might sample its sounds and decide whether they should buy the damn thing, provided it's available for purchase. Like any responsible music blogger, I don't intend to illegally upload any copyrighted material myself, but merely to point folks at files that are already out there. (This may change... I'm considering posting compilations to coincide with Entartete Kunst's mp3 playlists, for those who don't want to be shackled to the trusty streaming player. A comp download would function like a podcast without my annoying voice mucking up the goods, and you could take it with you while you're power walking or riding the bus or begging for change or doing whatever people who use iPods do with them. Any interest in this?)
Something Awful: I'm not introducing you to anything new here, as I extolled this immensely popular site's pleasures years ago. In case you've missed that, or haven't visited in a while, SA is still good for a laugh when you're feeling miserable. Sure, a lot of it appeals only to Internet losers who have nothing better to do than harass other Internet losers in masturbatory lolspeak forums, and most of its content would confuse the hell out of your parents. However, despite my lack of interest in today's video games, I can't help but love perpetual cynics. Infrequently maintained features such as Your Band Sucks and The Horrors of Pornography, as well as regular columns like Garbage Day and Reviews [Movies] (note the lack of a snarky title), provide all the evidence one needs that pop culture is a festering cesspool in need of immediate torching. In the tradition of loveable American cranks like Ambrose Bierce, Flannery O'Connor and Anton LaVey, the folks responsible for SA's content generally don't have anything positive to say about modern life, which can really help you feel better about yours.
Fuzzy Memories: Did you grow up on Chicago-area TV? While the Museum of Broadcast Communications has sadly been without a physical facility for nearly six years, FM's searchable archives contains the stuff you'll want to see. At least, it's got what I want. I'm talking Son of Svengoolie's 3-D broadcast of "Revenge of the Creature," Waffelos commercials and the animated Captain America "conserve energy" PSA. Thanks to FM, I finally learned the name of guys who did voiceovers for Channel 32 (Jim Barton!) and ABC (Ernie Anderson!) when I was a kid, and the name of the trippy early morning live action/puppet show I had for years thought was "Gigglesnort Hotel" (it was "Hot Fudge Show"!). I revisited the opening of 32's "Monstrous Movie" (it used to make me piss my pants!), their "Snipets" segments and those low-budget nightly "Newscene" programs that aired shortly before they signed off and scrolled those cheesy Nite-Owl graphics until morning. I especially enjoyed the infamous 1987 incident starring the "Max Headroom" pirate who broke into Channel 11's "Dr. Who" broadcast. If you miss the days when Venture and Zayre fulfilled all your shopping needs, when any ride was a quarter at Dispensa's Kiddie Kingdom, when Harry Schmerler sang for your Ford dollars and Arthur Treacher's served up fish n' chips, when Starbeat presented what's happening, when ON TV and Spectrum were your pay TV options, when WFLD and the Chicago Sun-Times were owned by Field Communications, when Channel 44 showed "Speed Racer" and Channel 60 showed the "King Kong" cartoon, when Channel 66 wasn't in Spanish, etc., you will spend hours trolling these archives. Too bad all the vintage WGN clips are down... I blame Sam Zell for my inability to see the "Family Classics" intro.
More content to come, including reviews of recent film viewings. On a related note, TV ads claim this coming weekend offers your final chance to see "Coraline" at theaters in 3-D. If you haven't, I highly suggest doing so... it was written and directed by Henry Selick of "The Nightmare Before Christmas"/"James and the Giant Peach" fame, based on a book by Neil Gaiman, and is the creepiest children's movie released in recent memory. If that's not enough of a recommendation, I quote a post-viewing conversation that happened right behind me:
LITTLE BOY: "Grandma, that was a weird movie."
ANNOYED GRANDMA (who had guffawed straight through the lengthy "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" ad): "Yeah, it was!"
Meanwhile, changes are afoot here. Most obviously, I have a snappy new logo that incorporates my love of woodland fauna, old-timey fonts and insular hipster sarcasm. The other major difference is that I've overhauled the links, breaking them down into Entartete Kunst's main areas of interest: news/culture, music and film/TV. You might notice that I've canned the list of friends' pages. IN NO WAY does this mean that I don't love each of you who were previously there. It's just that it's tough to keep up with who's actually maintaining their blog or other site, and that while attempting to revamp my professional life, I've made the decision to keep this blog as outwardly focused as possible, and my first step is to minimize the "personal" links found on it.
Don't worry, the content should remain identical. I'll still include tedious navel-gazing paragraphs like the one that started this post, and, when inspired, I'll even return to documenting my kitchen adventures. This is a hobby site, after all, and it will still only reflect its creator's interests. It's simply about appearances. Next, I intend to delete my dusty MySpace profile, since I'm sick of avoiding it. No, I do not expect to move to Facebook, which, as far as I can tell, is just a boring combination of MySpace and Twitter "for adults" that won't let you block undesirables. Y'all have fun, though.
To herald the fresh-ish outlook, let me introduce a few of the new ways to leave Entartete Kunst.
SCRAMBLED FACE: A fledgling music blog initiated by yours truly. The simple goal is to highlight "music worth hearing," be it brand new or decades old, focusing on the unique, interesting, odd or just plain good. I'll try to include a variety of genres for all you silly metal haters. I'm not sure how often I'll post, but as long as time and interest allow, expect something every day, since it's not very labor-intensive. Along with my brilliant comments, like any music blog, each post will include a link to download the recording at hand so that visitors might sample its sounds and decide whether they should buy the damn thing, provided it's available for purchase. Like any responsible music blogger, I don't intend to illegally upload any copyrighted material myself, but merely to point folks at files that are already out there. (This may change... I'm considering posting compilations to coincide with Entartete Kunst's mp3 playlists, for those who don't want to be shackled to the trusty streaming player. A comp download would function like a podcast without my annoying voice mucking up the goods, and you could take it with you while you're power walking or riding the bus or begging for change or doing whatever people who use iPods do with them. Any interest in this?)
Something Awful: I'm not introducing you to anything new here, as I extolled this immensely popular site's pleasures years ago. In case you've missed that, or haven't visited in a while, SA is still good for a laugh when you're feeling miserable. Sure, a lot of it appeals only to Internet losers who have nothing better to do than harass other Internet losers in masturbatory lolspeak forums, and most of its content would confuse the hell out of your parents. However, despite my lack of interest in today's video games, I can't help but love perpetual cynics. Infrequently maintained features such as Your Band Sucks and The Horrors of Pornography, as well as regular columns like Garbage Day and Reviews [Movies] (note the lack of a snarky title), provide all the evidence one needs that pop culture is a festering cesspool in need of immediate torching. In the tradition of loveable American cranks like Ambrose Bierce, Flannery O'Connor and Anton LaVey, the folks responsible for SA's content generally don't have anything positive to say about modern life, which can really help you feel better about yours.
Fuzzy Memories: Did you grow up on Chicago-area TV? While the Museum of Broadcast Communications has sadly been without a physical facility for nearly six years, FM's searchable archives contains the stuff you'll want to see. At least, it's got what I want. I'm talking Son of Svengoolie's 3-D broadcast of "Revenge of the Creature," Waffelos commercials and the animated Captain America "conserve energy" PSA. Thanks to FM, I finally learned the name of guys who did voiceovers for Channel 32 (Jim Barton!) and ABC (Ernie Anderson!) when I was a kid, and the name of the trippy early morning live action/puppet show I had for years thought was "Gigglesnort Hotel" (it was "Hot Fudge Show"!). I revisited the opening of 32's "Monstrous Movie" (it used to make me piss my pants!), their "Snipets" segments and those low-budget nightly "Newscene" programs that aired shortly before they signed off and scrolled those cheesy Nite-Owl graphics until morning. I especially enjoyed the infamous 1987 incident starring the "Max Headroom" pirate who broke into Channel 11's "Dr. Who" broadcast. If you miss the days when Venture and Zayre fulfilled all your shopping needs, when any ride was a quarter at Dispensa's Kiddie Kingdom, when Harry Schmerler sang for your Ford dollars and Arthur Treacher's served up fish n' chips, when Starbeat presented what's happening, when ON TV and Spectrum were your pay TV options, when WFLD and the Chicago Sun-Times were owned by Field Communications, when Channel 44 showed "Speed Racer" and Channel 60 showed the "King Kong" cartoon, when Channel 66 wasn't in Spanish, etc., you will spend hours trolling these archives. Too bad all the vintage WGN clips are down... I blame Sam Zell for my inability to see the "Family Classics" intro.
More content to come, including reviews of recent film viewings. On a related note, TV ads claim this coming weekend offers your final chance to see "Coraline" at theaters in 3-D. If you haven't, I highly suggest doing so... it was written and directed by Henry Selick of "The Nightmare Before Christmas"/"James and the Giant Peach" fame, based on a book by Neil Gaiman, and is the creepiest children's movie released in recent memory. If that's not enough of a recommendation, I quote a post-viewing conversation that happened right behind me:
LITTLE BOY: "Grandma, that was a weird movie."
ANNOYED GRANDMA (who had guffawed straight through the lengthy "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" ad): "Yeah, it was!"
posted by SoulReaper at 3:14 PM
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