Invasion 1963

Did you know JFK was replaced by an alien from outerspace sometime in 1963? Part of an ill-fated exchange program with Venus, the alien-JFK impersonated our 35th President with great skill. It was this alien that suffered the murderous assassin's bullet that fateful afternoon in Dallas. With our young Catholic president seemingly deceased, the REAL John F Kennedy lives even today in exile on the sandy shores of Venus. His return to Earth would reveal the existence of extra-terrestrials. If this knowledge had been made public in '63, it would have unfortunately destroyed the Great Work that the Kennedy's and the Venutians had been building together for two decades.

Here, on this very video, you can hear the tale of the false-JFK's interstellar travel to earth and the aftermath that resulted from the assassination of the Venutian Ambassador. From the lips of alien-JFK's only living hybrid offspring, Ralph Kennedy, the tragic journey of Ralph's grandfather is told here for the first time.


I made this movie. The words and voice are mine. Any footage used here has the direct cultural purpose of subversion in that the images are meant to narrate visually an intent that is both similar yet distinct from the intent of the poem recited. That is to say, that the original intent of the footage has not been reproduced nor would the resulting montage ever have cause to replace demand for the original works that help compose my video.
Fair Use is at play.

Many thanks and credit is due to freesound.org musicians and audio adepts: james.brody for his bean belt shaker, ultratone for his circus-like mashed drum sample, suonho (thanks again) for his basscapes samples, Cyril_Laurier provided wind, jakeharries provided water sound, pryght and marvman for their bass lines, sagetyrtle and st4ngs for their laughter audio, and Andrew Duke for his roll effect.

Spoken word piece by me entitled
"In Southerly Places"

low in the tawny tendrilous grass does grow
a speckled mother of pearlescent shadow
upon the tilted dolled-up dreamcoat
on the river-worn weakened shore
where the ferrymen bedraggled and weathered
refuse to touch a clay orange hand
the shadowy man shakes a shadowy hand
if you be seeing me again
there won't be any wound to mend
and none that sparkles in the east
can lead these men across the plains
the sandy wind to catch in sails
holding mouths wide open to suck the bravado born breeze
to swiftly speed the journey dead
in southerly places,
they speak in codes


Did you know that JFK was replaced with an alien in 1963?
I did. That's why they shot him. Although the world was kept in the dark, he was an alien worth mourning. The public killing made it impossible for JFK to return to Earth, leaving him to spend the remainder of his days on the planet Venus....


A picture of Kennedy's kept woman; a Venutian/Human hybrid called "Claire"

An Introduction to Poetry

Enclosed herein: a short tutorial for aspiring poets with sample metaphors and instructional tips


I made this movie. The words and voice are mine. Any footage used here has the direct cultural purpose of subversion in that the images are meant to narrate visually an intent that is both similar yet distinct from the intent of the poem recited. That is to say, that the original intent of the footage has not been reproduced nor would the resulting montage ever have cause to replace demand for the original works that help compose my video.
Fair Use is at play.

The audio samples used were created by freesound.org users: suonho (memory moon blaster effect), sleep (weird loop), patchen (drowning 83 drum loop). Thanks for making your work available. Aspiring hip hop artists and subversion novices should check out http://www.freesound.org/ and http://creativecommons.org/

Text version of An Introduction to Poetry:

alabaster
words like alligator
connected by sound to poetic image
let's be blunt about it
it's just like mom's homemade apple pie
to an orphan, the foreign flavor it is
of never had, yet lost, pleasure
re-experienced in a deja vu first impression
long lasting taste
the most confusing memory
the longer the grasping moment of disconnect
it is just reminiscent
it is only liquid tension
held in stasis by rubber band fences
remember
remember what to forget
the remembering to forget, yes yes
how salivating, the desire to suddenly punch
i'll give you now what will be memory
hidden obscurely, traveling where i cannot see
beneath skull and between ears
that absorb and contain selectively impressed notions
push it out your mouth now
bring it back
bite it into segments with your shiny, relevant teeth
i will eat it like a baby bird
you regurgitate my intent
i consume your interpretation.

Moon Landing Party Jam

Another track from the April 17th 2003 Hooked on a Feeling show, the Moon Landing Party Jam focuses on the 1969 communication between NASA mission control center in Houston and the Apollo 11 moon landing team of Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins. The other source audio is the "phone call" that President Nixon made to the astronauts. This presidential conversation was televised to millions around the world split-screen with footage of the moonwalk. The source recordings here represent the first inter-lunar communications ever recorded and they are far from clean. Every voice is over-modulated and the dialogue is puncuated by slightly piercing beeps. These beeps are there to let the earthlings know when the moonmen's transmission has finished and that they are ready for a response from earth.

The audio for most of this track is composed by the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, original acid house samplers from the UK in the 80s. The Ancients were forced to remove many of their initial records from stores as this was prior to the existence of sampling laws for musicians. Drummond and Cauty of the JAMs went on to form the KLF, a popular psychedelic dance group fairly similar to the Ancients. The more prominent song featured here was one of their hits as the JAMs, Doctorin' the Tardis, a song that fits the interstellar theme quite well. Later, the K Foundation burned a million UK pounds for very little reason.



Four funky fresh fellas



MOON LANDING PARTY JAM

Moon Landing Party Jam - HOAF Tapes by slim

In 1969, the America was in the depths of the Cold War, struggling to come to terms with the Civil Rights Movement while the war in Vietnam raged on without a foreseeable end. It was a tense time for most Americans as the vision of 1950s wholesomeness grew tarnished and tired in the face of nuclear armageddon.

For a brief moment, the moon landing lifted that communal depression in America. As the masses watched from their living rooms, two men conquered the dreams of star-gazing children forever. Now that travel to the moon was a possibility, the dream had died. No longer could young boys and girls speculate about the skin-color of moonmen and whether or not the surface was indeed composed of swiss cheese. Snatching these colorful fantasies from the minds of children forever, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong trampled on top of those youthful dreams of a craterous moonscape. Like conquistadors, they quickly defiled the soil and planted their flag.



*All music originally aired at non-profit station WCFM 91.9FM Massachusetts. As this material was originally broadcast with permission and the resulting audio is both transformative and unlikely to replace demand for the original artist's work, I am claiming the right to fair use.


EXTRA CREDIT ALERT
Little known fact: Nixon thought the astronauts had space cooties.

Here's an old song by me called "Equal Rights for Moonmen". It's an anti-war protest song I wrote back in the Bush administration.

Equal Rights for Moonmen - Slim Oliver

Eulogy for JFK in Two Movements: The HOAF Tapes

From October 2002 until June 2003, I hosted a weekly radio show called "Hooked on a Feeling" on WCFM 91.9FM, Williamstown, Masssachusetts. It is a tiny college radio station broadcasting from within a valley in the Berkshire mountains. The peak of Mt. Greylock and the rest of them intercepted the transmission before it could reach beyond the valley. At max, the broadcast reached about six local town centers. Of course, the internet stream was up and running and I'm sure maybe three people listened to that as well. My show was on Thursday nights starting between 11pm and midnight.

With two turntables, two cd players, and a mixer in the middle of them, I began to mix spoken word tracks onto music in order to create sound collages. The plan was to create new musical documents that illuminated the popular culture associated through juxtaposition and the accompanying dissonant and synchronous moments. By manipulating the four sources in front of me, I created many mash-ups whose musical and intellectual intent has evolved from the source material. While much of the resulting material has political overtones, others are attempts at transcendent children's music. Some tracks even make the hubristic boast of approaching the level of "art".

Affectionately called the HOAF (hoof, or ho-af) Tapes, these tracks have languished for the past six years confined in their plastic prisons of magnetic tape. That ends now. Some of these tracks suffer from overmodulation on the source recording-I just consider it an artifact of the old machines available for use in the radio station. While I have made noble attempts at re-mastering, some of these artifacts will still be present.


Jack on the yacht; note his posture that shows his physical deformity and the illness he hid throughout most of his short life

Eulogy for JFK in 2 Movements - HOAF tapes by slim
THE EULOGY OF JFK IN TWO MOVEMENTS
This track is a fairly simple composition featuring the words of JFK and Moms Mabley and the music of the Sandpipers and John Williams, as well as other bits and bobs of audio. This track attempts to evoke the accessibility of the charismatic Kennedy and the chaos and confusion in this nation following his assassination.

*All music originally aired at non-profit station WCFM 91.9FM Massachusetts. As this material was originally broadcast with permission and the resulting audio is both transformative and unlikely to replace demand for the original artist's work, I am claiming the right to fair use.

EXTRA CREDIT ALERT



The potently mystical Shroud of Brookline

Also, this guy:

He is the Solomon Islander that saved JFK's life in WWII.
You can read about that over here:
When Jack Fell Off the Boat

Aphorism Thursday

When participating in an orgy, it is best to know whose fingers are pushing what buttons--like in the cold war.

Apocalypse Parade miniature toys

Hippo-Rider as painted by Leecifer. find more of his painting here: Lee's flickr


Originally, the Apocalypse Parade figures were meant to look like degraded sculptures of antiquity that were cast in the form of those cheap plastic toys that most of us have played with at one time or another. You are probably familiar with the type: cheap PVC or rubber animals sold as sets in drug store toy aisles. As opposed to purchasing the "farm" set or the "jungle" set or the "random assortment of dinosaurs that didn't live in the same geologic time period" set, my collection offers the option of playing with the end of the world. The Apocalypse Parade figures hope to intellectualize these ubiquitous toys of our youth as having a pseudo-religious and faux-archaeological value.



Wing'd Rhino & Bombardier Gorilla from the Black Gold Set

The Hippo-Rider, Wing'd Rhino, and Bombardier Gorilla were the first three figures in the set, and I think best exemplify the look of time-worn sculptures of centuries past. As I continued to make more figures to go with these first three, the themes inherent to the figures began to mutate as did the figures themselves. To me, the figures began to tell a story. The next two figures, Snailion and Conch-Elk, evolved from that story.


Hippo-Rider from the Black Gold Set

In my head, these resin miniatures became reproductions of "real" statues belonging to a lost culture that prophesied their end of days, wherein the Almighty would send an army of animals, angels, and mutants to retake the Earth from the tainted hands of humans. The ancient culture that created these "original" statues is largely undefined and the murkiness of this faux-history aids in the transformation of these toys from dollar-store-fodder to fictional lost artwork. The next set of Apocalypse Parade miniatures, when finished, should further expose this fictional lost culture and its doomsday prophesy.


Snailion and Conch-Elk from the Black Gold Set

The first set offered for public consumption is called the "Black Gold" Apocalypse Parade. It is cast in black plastic resin with gold paint accents and a lovely gloss. There are six sets of five figures each, with five of those sets being publicly available and one set remaining in my personal collection. Cost per set of five figures is $35 + $6 shipping in the US (international shipping is $10) payable by PayPal at noblemonkey@gmail.com. Feel free to contact me at this address if you are interested in a custom set.

All photos from the Black Gold Set were expertly taken by toy photographer extraordinaire, Kirkland Jue of Toybotstudios Blog
Check out his blog for amazing photos and news of Japanese toy culture and beyond. He's also a wizard behind the airbrush, so check out some of his custom toy painting too.

blueberry: a one act play

characters:
Bert- thin, slightly balding male
Erny- plump male; Bert's roommate

Two men are sitting opposite each other at a small table. Upon the table sits a solitary slice of blueberry pie. The scene begins with both men staring at the slice of pie as if frozen in time. Behind them is a framed watercolor painting of a smiling woolly mammoth hanging next to a window that admits a faint amount of street light. The flowered wallpaper gives evidence of domesticity, recalling a 1950s kitchen.

Bert: Hey, Erny, you gonna eat that pie?

Erny: The thought had entered my mind. Yes, I am planning to partake in this sugary compote goodness wedged between two pieces of bread-like crust.

Bert: Well now, I am glad to see that you have an adequate ability in the description of all things pastry. You show much improvement from the days when I picked your soiled flesh up out of the gutter in Greenwich Village and landed you in a respectable area code. Now I ask you again, were you planning to devour that entire piece of scrumptious purple pleasure by yourself?

Erny: You see, dear Bert, that it is absolutely necessary for my person to ingest that piece of pie by myself. The doctor told me just the other day that it is essential to my health that I consume more starch, fruit, and sugary foods. So, obviously, this single item fulfills all three of his demands. I would gladly share a bit of it with you but the insurance company requires that I comply with all of the doctor's requests or they will no longer carry me.

Bert: They'll no longer carry you! I've been carrying your bulky weight around with my wallet for the past seventeen years. Who does your laundry? Pays your bills? Lies to your mother about your honest Baptist lifestyle? As far as your doctor's wishes, I think you consumed enough sugar last night with that layabout by the garbage cans outside of the deli. What was it? Six wine coolers and four whisky sours, I believe.

Erny: Wow, I think you might be right. That's exactly what I had. You must be pretty good at research, you know, being a stalker and all.

Bert (somewhat surprised): What are you talking about?

Erny: You think I don't know about the shrine you've built to Kirk Cameron up in the attic? Don't you think the police would like to know who's been making those obscene calls to Kirk's house sounding strangely like a Muppet?

Bert: But how did you know? I've never told anyone. I'm rather ashamed about the whole thing, actually.

Erny: While you were at work, I joined the neighborhood watch. They know everything.

Bert: How would they know anything?

Erny: Don't you think it's odd for a forty-five year old man to buy old back issues of Teen Beat and Tiger Beat at garage sales? And not just asking to buy them, but asking specifically for issues with Kirk Cameron and 21 Jump Street-era Johnny Depp on pages opposite each other. People remember these things.

Bert: I'm so ashamed.

Erny: Hey, it's all right. We've all got something twisted in our closets. Remember when I joined that cult that killed Jayne Mansfield? The next day I woke up strung out on goofballs with a bloody knife in my pocket. And do you know where I woke up? In Don Knott's guest room next to a certain drunk young blonde from Charlie's Angels.

Bert: Get out! You and Farrah?!

Erny: Yeah, you know, you just got to look back on these things and laugh.

Bert: I guess you're right. But anyway, about that piece of pie....

Erny: I already told you that my doctor says I need to consume more...

Bert: Would you please shut up? You orange-faced balloon, still buying your clothes in the Husky department aren't you? What happened to that miracle diet you'd been ranting about? I thought you said just one little pill and you would magically lose those extra pounds.

Erny: Well, I'd rather not talk about that particular remedy. Rather painful in the pocket book if you know what I mean.

Bert: Actually, I do not.

Erny: Well it turned out to be a tapeworm in that pill. Cost me a hefty price to have them pull that thing out of my intestines. Painful, too. You realize where they've got to pull it out from, don't you?

Bert: Disgusting.

Erny: Quite.

Bert: Well, let's say I go down to the corner store and pick up some vanilla ice cream. That way we can make pie a la mode. With each of us contributing to the whole, we can share equally.

Erny: Sounds fair.

Bert: All right then. I'm off.

Bert exits stage left to go to the store. Erny is left sitting alone, staring off into space as if daydreaming. Still looking off into space, he picks up the fork and takes a bite of the pie.

Erny: Mmmm, blueberry.....