Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Thirteen female vocalists
Last week’s YouTube Thirteen was so much fun (for me, anyway) that I decided to do another. This one will be musical.
I’ve always preferred women’s voices to men’s, and unusual voices at that. You’ll find some boring old standards here, but I hope a few of these will be new to you.
Are we having fun jetzt?
Historian Richard Westwood-Brooks is auctioning a collection of Nazi era children’s board games:
The games include Bombers Over England, a form of bagatelle or primitive pinball where players score points for “bombing” British cities, shipping or lighthouses.
Another, based on Snakes and Ladders, sees players take their U-boats from a German port to the Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow, sink British warships and try to make it back home.
Another is a game where players drop weighted paratroopers onto a representation of the English countryside.
You can view a short slide show of pictures of the games here.
Reading these stories, what tickles me is the implication that Nazis were somehow unique, indoctrinating their children so early. Yet there are no shortage of “shooters” out there (games in which the goal is to shoot as many of the enemy as possible), including games targeting, excuse the pun, “Middle East terrorists.” Oh, and don’t forget my #1 Abomination, Left Behind, the Game (in which you target the faithless), currently being enjoyed by our troops in Iraq.
Funny thing, though: Nazis are among the most common human villains in video games nowadays. Guess there’s no question of political incorrectness shootin’ up a bunch of brown shirts. But the Nazis are fighting back . . .
While anti-gaming critics are busy worrying about a mod that sees two fictional characters engaging in consensual sex, a neo-Nazi organisation has released a game designed to promote racial divisions and encourage violent acts against members of ethnic minorities.
The PC first-person shooter is titled Ethnic Cleansing and is published by Resistance Records, which also distributes racist ‘White Power’ music. Resistance Records is owned by the National Alliance, the biggest and most active neo-Nazi group in the US.
Players take on the role of either a skinhead or a Ku Klux Klan member – dressed in full KKK robes and carrying a noose – and explore a city that’s clearly based on New York. The object of the game is to kill black and Latino people, described as “predatory sub-humans”, and their “Jewish masters”.
Read the rest of that article to discover some truly special moments from the game.
This is worrisome: when I read this out loud to my son, his response was, “Yes, but is the game any good?” Oy vey.
D.
The Talk
I figure if my eleven-year-old son wants his sheets changed, he can damn well strip his own bed and bring everything to the washing machine. However, once a year or so, his sheets achieve sentience and cry out to me in their filthy anguish.
“I suppose we might start finding crumpled Kleenexes under his bed soon,” I said to Karen last night before we went to sleep.
“Kleenexes? Is that what you used?”
“I think so.”
I remember stuffing them between the bed and the wall, where no one would be any the wiser. Like me, my mother never made my bed or washed my sheets, not that I ever noticed.
“How old were you?” Karen said.
“Twelve, I think. I woke up one morning with a mess in my shorts and figured the plumbing was working. Some time after that, I checked.”
And I thought my parents were overprotective.
In yesterday’s post, my sis asked if I’d ever given my father a heart attack — you know, me doing dangerous things, the way Jake climbed to hair-raising heights on those damn slippery rocks.
I’ve thought about her question, and, um, NO.
Of Billy Goats and Heart Attacks,
Of cabbages and kings.
Good thing Jake and I went to the beach yesterday, because today, it looks like this:
It rained last night. Rained! If we’d gone out today rather than yesterday, I wouldn’t have this farmer tan, and undoubtedly Jake would have had any number of streams to dam up. Still, I can’t complain about yesterday’s weather — a true summer’s day, without the heat the rest of y’all have had to endure.
Pix below the cut . . .
Rude fruit
Don’t make me explain this.
Live Blogging starts sometime between 7 and 8 PM PST tonight. See ya soon!
D.
Friday Flickr Babes: What else? Hot.
You know those false color maps where the hottest areas of the country are in red, middlin’ hot in yellow, and so forth? We’re well into the cooler colors, but we’re still toastier than we would like to be. Perhaps we’d be happier in Fairbanks.
79F? WTF? No wonder the glaciers are all melting.
Downstairs, I’m baking a ham. Not a smart move — I should have made gazpacho. But I can imagine Jake’s horror.
COLD SOUP?
D.
Thirteen comedy duos
Hope you’re ready to burn up the next two hours of your life with YouTube videos (each one personally screened by yours truly).
Edited to add . . .
I guess I’ll finish this later tonight, but I thought I’d give you something to chew on in the meantime. Here we go.
Shamelessly thieving from Donahue
This Donahue.
I have a new Major League Crush (sorry, Cintra — but check Nina out. You’ll love her, too):
Nina Conti, ventriloquist and BRILLIANT stand-up comic. Here’s a YouTube sample from her website.
Maybe some of you are familiar with her work, but she was news to me. In Jim’s post, he emphasizes her naturalness, the way she responds to Monk as if he were an independent entity. I agree; she does this better than any ventriloquist I’ve seen. But I’m impressed with her ability to turn ventriloquism on its head, reversing conventions left and right. While ventriloquism is traditionally family entertainment (think Shari Lewis), Nina Conti can be filthy; and while most ventriloquists do their best to sustain the illusion of the dummy’s reality, Nina Conti revels in trashing that illusion.
Yes, she’s a sort of meta-ventriloquist. That YouTube clip demonstrates this well: she toggles between convincing actress and renegade deconstructionist. Wow. You try walking a tightrope like that.
That’s it for tonight . . . I’d like to get started on my Thirteen, and it ain’t writing itself!
D.
Klondike
Yesterday, Dean wrote about his dad splitting wood, and I was sorely tempted to hijack his comment thread. Because it’s a funny thing, the actions we associate with our parents. Memory’s a fickle beast.
Right now, my dad is likely doing the same thing he’s doing in this photo from forty years ago: playing Klondike. I can hear him shuffle, spread, and turn cards as clearly as I can hear myself tapping the keyboard keys. When I think of my dad, he’s shuffling, spreading, turning cards. Dean thinks of his dad chopping wood; I think of mine playing solitaire.
Back then, my father could have chopped wood. He’s short, like me (though not as short as me), and used to be muscular, powerfully built. I don’t know how he kept in shape — he shunned exercise. But when I was a kid, those biceps scared the crap out of me.
I’d rather remember him chopping wood, but there he is, shuffling again. “You pay fifty-two dollars for the deck,” he says. “Aces go up, and you build upward in suit. For every card up here, you get five dollars back.” He keeps score on the back of an envelope, and he never finishes in the red.
If you asked me to give you a second memory, a second common association, it would be of the man sitting in his chair, reading a paperback or working a crossword puzzle. Yup, real dynamic. He taught high school math for many years, and by all accounts was a superb teacher. I’m sure he’d prefer to be thought of that way, but I never saw him teach. He came home tired, like all us fathers do, and to unwind, he read books, worked a crossword puzzle, or played Klondike.
I wonder what memory Jake will associate with me? I’d prefer if he remembered me scrambling around in the kitchen, fixing dinner, but he doesn’t often watch me. Maybe he’ll remember me climbing rocks with him at the beach — that would be nice, maybe even as nice as splitting wood. You know, I might even like being remembered as a doctor.
But I have a bad feeling he’ll remember me as I am right now, sitting in this chair, my legs tucked under me, futzing at my blog.
D.