In the fall of 1996 I joined KXLU 88.9 FM radio station, which transmitted from Loyola Marymount University, where I attended at the time.  I was a certified hip-hop kid who only knew KROQ rock as rock.  Nonetheless, I was hired and told to just go for it.  I had help in discovering new music through this mountain of bands I had never heard of, save for Sonic Youth who had “Diamond Sea” on the radio at the time.  A DJ at the station named Jimmy Tamborello had one of the best shows.  We quickly became friends and he made me a mix tape, which back then was actually on cassette!  This tape became my introduction to the rock I still love, which came to be labeled shoe gaze by the emo kids at the station.  Whatever.  I love this slow-and-somber-echo-laden-usually-female-vocal sort of stuff.  This song is a definite highlight of that tape.  I was fortunate to come across this 45 while working at Fingerprints in Long Beach.  Enjoy. 

Oh and the band!  Bernthøler is a Belgian avant garde pop band that was active from 1981 to 1985 featuring the core of Drita Kotaji (vocals), Simon Rigot (guitar, keyboard, sax) along with Manuel Poutte (keyboards, guitar), Pol Fourmois (bass) and Pierre Sorvil (drums).  My Suitor, featuring the lovely vocals of Drita, became a staple of John Peel’s BBC show and became a minor hit for them in 1983 much to their surprise.  Despite the promise, the band called it quits.  LTM recordings released their complete recordings as Merry Lines in the Sky in 2004.

In a fairly ghoulish move that’s sure to attract attention, Manchester now has a walking tour to the sites where the late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis lived.

“It is unlikely to be the most lighthearted walking tour on offer this summer. But one taking in the places that helped shape lives of Joy Division and their frontman Ian Curtis is expected to attract hundreds of fans of the influential band to Macclesfield, the singer’s home town, this year.

A key stop will be 77 Barton Street where Curtis lived with his wife, Debbie, wrote many of his songs and, at 23, killed himself exactly 30 years ago tomorrow. The walk will continue to the town crematorium where a memorial –bearing the words of the song Love Will Tear Us Apart – has become a shrine for fans around the world”

(Via Feasting on Roadkill)

 
FANTASTIC short directed by Ashleigh Nankivell using an old public domain social guidance PSA that’s been re-animated using After Effects. This is amazing!

Another high water mark in the saga of Juggalokind. YouTube Juggalo TwiztidAsh tells you about, but does not demonstrate, his many talents. Riveting.

(Via EncyclopediaDramatica)

Ginger kid reminds us that GINGERS HAVE SOULS. As YouTube user “hairybaws911” comments, “better than half the rappers now a days.”

(Previously on Dangerous Minds: M.I.A.: Gingers Don’t Have Souls)

This video reveals the ultimate nerdglee that occurs when you order a sword off the Internet.

Yep, I got my first katana, the ‘battle ready’ Practical Elite.

I ordered it from sword buyer’s guide after checking the review (below), and seeing that it has a reduced price at the SBG store (About $210 US, $235 Canadian after conversion)

I’ll hopefully be doing some tests (ones that work well anyhow) to show how sharp this thing is.

I did this once, when I was maybe 14 and thought I was the Highlander. I got my katana shipped to a friend’s house so as not to freak out my parents. I was about as excited as this guy when I got it, so excited that I immediately started trying to whack stuff with it, at which point it promptly fell apart. It was shameful, all of it, all of said proceedings, all of it.

(Hanwei Practical XL Katana Unveiling HD)

Another one-up in the deadly game of Cutest Animal Ever brinksmanship. Via New Scientist:

This tree frog has a long protuberance on its nose. It points upwards when the male is calling, but deflates and points downwards when he is less active.

The frog is thought to be a member of the Litoria genus, also known as Australasian tree frogs. It joins around 150 other known species.

(Image: Tim Laman/National Geographic)

(New Scientist: Pinocchio frog and dwarf wallaby: New species found)

This was the most insane hail storm or storm in general I have ever seen! it was may 16th 2010. Sorry about all of the oh my Gods. I was speechless.

(via Unique Daily)

In what is surely the most bizarre preservationist move ever, Los Angeles citizens are rallying to save the 110 freeway to Pasadena. Why, that’s one of my favorite freeways ever! Since it’s about as old as Los Angeles, it’s only two lanes—but still does the job, running through the Arroyo Seco (where some of the first rocketry tests were conducted).

LOS ANGELES — You don’t typically hear Southern Californians rhapsodize about a freeway.

But the 8.2-mile route between downtown Los Angeles and suburban Pasadena isn’t typical.

Opened in 1940, the oldest freeway in the West follows the meanders of the Arroyo Seco wash past parks and lush embankments, and under bridges and through tunnels built with the elegance of a bygone era.

Known variously as the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the Pasadena Freeway or simply “the 110,” it also carries motorists past some of the city’s oldest — and toughest — neighborhoods as its tight curves open and close views of mountain peaks and downtown skyscrapers.

(Preservationists: Don’t change West’s 1st freeway)

Below: Jan and Dean discuss Pasadena.

Very, very strange clip from Japanese television featuring superheroine with magical breasts. Via Ectomo:

This clip, from a new prime-time television program, features a superheroine who has magical boobies.

Let that sink in. Roll it around in your head for a second.

The laser breasts would make her more than a match for any fishperson river spirit a monster killer might encounter. But what if she’s accosted by townspeople angered at the defeat of the only being that can bring them passion/koi? She’s done for! Not to worry. Her rack’s skillset also includes hypnosis.

Sure, why not.

And then she eats chopsticks.

Let’s all thank Japan, kids.

(Ectomo: Kodai Shojou Dogu-Chan)