Junk Thief TV - Season 4, Episode 4: Will Success Spoil Alton V. Yowells, VII...or...Valley of the Yowells
What an exciting but cruel place is this business called show. Alton V. Yowells, VII gets a taste of the big time, but will he pay a price for this sudden whirlwind of recognition?
After Friday's groovy shoot out at Hearse Castle in the rain, I returned Saturday with "Friendatella" who loves dark and dreary things but hates cold weather. Appropriately or not, it was a blazing blue skied day all over the city yesterday with possibly the most glorious view I've ever seen in the distance of Mount Diablo on the eastern horizon.
This afternoon, I reunited with Bryce Digdug to go seeFantastic Mr. Fox, perhaps the only "mainstream" holiday movie I have the slightest interest in seeing. (They had a preview for Tim Burton'sAlice in Wonderland that was originally slated for a Christmas release and is now pushed back to March with the hope that people will be too pre-occupied with MardiGras hangovers to bother with it. Even Meryl Streep managed to not ruin the movie. As with any Wes Anderson movie, the music selection was half the fun of the film. Even in disappointments like The Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Express, there were great soundtracks. Could you really have stop-motion without Burl Ives? Fox has three Ives tunes -- "FoobaWooba John", "The Grey Eyed Goose" and "Buck Eye Jim". Now before you start dismissing Ives as all sentimental Jolly Holly Christmas schmaltz, remember that he played Big Daddy and posed for the above Karl Van Vechten portrait, so he clearly was more than that happy snowman in his orbit.
After the film, Bryce and I had lunch at Sunflower were I was ogled and groped by our server and then down the street to the ever reliable Community Thrift Store. Never mind that Tower Records and Virgin Megastore are gone, Community Thrift never fails to deliver unexpected gems. They can also be political and downright subversive. I found a copy of "Anita Bryant Sings Her Favorite Hymns" wedge in between a sloth of albums by Judy Garland and Michael Feinstein. Right there in their racks was Burl Ives: The Best of Burls for Boys and Girls. No "FoobaWooba John" but it has "Aunt Rhody", "The Fox" (why wasnt' that one in the movie?) "Shoo Fly", "Polly Wolly Doodle" and "Woolie Boogie Bee". Was there ever a more evocative name than Burl Ives? Can't you just think of a burl sculpture of a bear covered in ivy? I don't like bears of the human kind (they make go "Ooof" not "Woof"), but I do like Burl. Just the thought of him makes me think of cinnamon in the oven and frost on the windows. Oh, and another song on that album is "What Kind of an Animal Are You?" I heard that was his opening line when he ran into Sebastian Cabot unexpectedly in an undisclosed watering hole south of 14th Street in 1957. But that's another story.
Bryce Digdug dropped by today, and he made a return appearance for an upcoming Junk Thief TV episode (the one after the next one). After a breezy studio shoot, we headed out to Ingleside for a location shoot. We planned to solve one mystery (which we accomplished) but had a surprise extra dividend of discovering Hearse Castle above. It was a perfect mix of the Addams Family and Edgar Winter.
I'd love to tell you more about the feature mystery, but if I did I'd have to kill you. Just stay tuned for episode five coming soon.
Rodents riding trains, great street art, attitude. It's all on New York Shitty. This blog is a reminder of why we should all abandon our Facebook accounts and get back to blogging. Mafia Wars? Sorority Life? What State Are You From? Need I list the ways that Facebook is almost as bad as MySpace? Need I also add how much I prefer New York to San Francisco?
UPDATE: Be aware that the photo above is of Miss Edie who is a hamster not a rat and be sure to check out her guardian Victoria's blog: http://victoriabelanger.wordpress.com
We're still not sure if Alton and Dalton Yowells are twins or just brothers. Do you have a thought?
In the meantime we visited Twinish.comwhere even if you don't have a biological twin you can find your doppleganger. Now, they do qualify their matches by percentages, and I have yet to find a 100% or even 90% match, but the following are intriguing.
So I just couldn't resist running a couple of my mug shots through to see who turned up and thought you'd enjoy the results. The resemblance is uncanny, no?
Now tell me, if you saw Mr. 78.44% and me walking down the street side-by-side, could you tell us apart?
Following their unexpected reunion last week on the moon's surface after 20 years apart, Alton and Dalton Yowells probe deeper into the stars as they introduce a new segment: Astro...Grooves
Pretty groovy... Mighty funky... Makes me wanna.... Shake it like a monkey!
There were a lot of Coreys and Corys and Cories and bad hair and bad jeans (acid wash, stone wash) in the 1980s. But I would like to say a few words of praise for the Quebec sensation Corey Hart. Schmaltz, oui, but I had the same exact haircut in 1985, as did just about every boy I chased. And Corey really exemplifies why blue jeans were made for the male body. Just Saying. Enjoy.
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
JunkThief is your typical Gallic Jew boy born on the Great Plains, went to Gotham and Ouagadougou and Kathmandu before settling in San Francisco's Mission District. Now he searches the dark alleys of that city to find good conversation, Weimar culture and (but of course) the perfect door knob.
