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Greeklish.org Features
 The Story of Zoya and Shura full text from greeklish.org 
Bandiera Rossa by Pankrti The Idol by W.A.S.P. Ballad of the Skeletons by Ballad Of The Skeletons Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards by Billy Bragg CM Punk wins the World Heavyweight Championship (2008) Month Archive
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Wednesday, May 6
Meet me at the Natalie Merchant laser show...
by
Mike
on Wed 06 May 2009 11:11 PM EDT
I went up to Wright State a couple of weekends ago to do a bit of research. Some things never change, and one thing in particular that hasn’t changed is the amount of graffiti in the stalls of WSU’s restrooms. I was really taken with all of the writing (and carving) on the toilet paper dispenser in the men's room at the Dunbar Library. Some of it was weird and some of it was funny, but one thing I read was so unexpected that I had no choice but to take a snapshot of it with my phone so I could ponder it later.
Sunday, March 29
More proof that America doesn't get it (alternate title: Baseball in the F.D.G.)
by
Mike
on Sun 29 Mar 2009 11:35 AM EDT
Baseball season is almost here, and at Fifth Third Ballpark in Comstock, Michigan, the West Michigan Whitecaps and their ballpark owners Fifth Third Bank are rolling out a new item at the concession stand this year. The "Fifth Third Burger" boasts 1.66 pounds of beef (that's 5/3 pounds, folks) and it's topped with 5 slices of cheese, lettuce, tomato, salsa, sour cream, chili and Fritos. It takes a whole pound of dough to make the eight-inch sesame seed bun. All together, the Fifth Third Burger is around 4,800 calories, which is something like two days worth of the recommended caloric intake for a 20 year-old with an average build.
 So, is this the best time to tout our own decadence given our current situation? Before you make the drive to Comstock for your own Fifth Third Burger, here are a few things to contemplate:The global financial system is still on the brink of collapse as the world economy continues to contract. Our financial institutions are in a state of ruin. Fifth Third Bancorp (a.k.a Fifth Third Bank, if you're keeping tabs on this stuff) lost over $10 billion in the past 12 months. In early March 2009, American unemployment hit a 25-year high. According to a recent article from cnnmoney.com, more than 3.3 million jobs were lost in the past six months. Addiction and depression rates are continuing to rise as economic conditions worsen. Adults and children continue to suffer from treatable illnesses while our healthcare system remains in a seemingly perpetual state of disrepair. Well, despite all of the information above, if you're bold enough – and hungry enough – to step up to the plate and gorge yourself in the spirit of excess and gluttony, the Fifth Third Burger is your destiny. For those who are able to polish off this slop bucket on a platter all by yourself, a free t-shirt is the much-coveted prize that awaits you. And given the current course of our economy, that t-shirt will come in quite handy when all you have left are the proverbial "clothes on your back." Sunday, October 19
Mixtape Mixdown: The New Duncan Imperials
by
Mike
on Sun 19 Oct 2008 05:41 PM EDT
A few years ago, there was a show on VH1 called "When _ Ruled the World." It was a pretty good show, as every episode featured stories, interviews and footage about a band or some other pop-culture phenomenon during their respective peak years. As a longtime Kiss fan, "When Kiss Ruled the World" stands out in my mind as one of the better episodes in the series. Back in the mid to late 1990s one of my favorite bands was a Chicago-area act called The New Duncan Imperials and for a while there, NDI really ruled the world as far as I was concerned. I guess a lot of cool stuff comes out of Chicago.Around 1994 or so, NDI videos were in heavy rotation on our local cable access channel. Some of the guys at the station were big fans of NDI and at one point, NDI even played a huge, three-hour extravaganza concert that was broadcast live from the Miami Valley Cable Council studios. To this day, that show is pretty much the best thing I have ever seen on public access television.
There is really nothing like a New Duncan Imperials show. It's a high-impact act with all kinds of visual stimuli to accompany all the great music. There's all kinds of props and effects and some of them – like the mechanical "Velourabeast" head – are there to help tell a story, while other things – like the leaf blower that's been converted into a giant toilet paper streamer gun – are just part of the show because they're flat out hilarious. Plus, there's always all kinds of giveaways at the shows (the band and fans alike lovingly call this stuff "free shit") including stuff like, matches, frisbees and t-shirts. The interaction between the band and the crowd is really the cornerstone of the NDI live show experience. I have seen Pigtail play wailing guitar solos while standing on the tables at Canal Street and I remember standing under Goodtime as he bodysurfed over the crowd at the Broadripple show. Those things are really, really good memories for us. NDI has always been about much more than funny lyrics and catchy songs. There is some fantastic musicianship in their work. Pigtail Dick is fantastic with singing and all sorts of crazy on-stage theatrics and he is an accomplished guitarist as well. Truth be told, he's really one of my favorite guitarists of all time. His licks are some of the most intense and blistering pieces imaginable, effectively fusing old-school country western influences with blues and punk. And nobody plays a riff like Pigtail. Skipper is just a terrific bassist and he's extremely witty and talented on the mic as well and once in a while he breaks out a kind of unusual instrument called an "oral piano" (that's what it's called on the CD liner notes, anyway.) All the proof you need about Goodtime's drumming abilities lies in the fact that his drum kit is basically three pieces – unless you count the gigantic kettle drum, of course. The fact the GT gets such a massive, Tommy Lee/Eric Carr quality sound out of such a small kit speaks volumes about his work as a performer.
When I heard NDI released a new album called End of Phase One and that they are preparing to launch a tour celebrating their twenty year anniversary, I pulled together my entire collection of NDI CDs, tapes, vinyl and video tapes and decided it would be as good of a time as any to create the ultimate NDI mix CD. It took me a really long time to pick all my favorites and pare them down to fit on one CD, but I finally settled on a decent mix of my favorites from their major releases while also including some obscure gems from EPs, singles and videos. I call my mix CD When NDI Ruled the World and I think the selections in the mix show why NDI was such a big deal to me all those years ago and why I still love to listen to them today. My cover art for the CD features the members of NDI standing in the forefront of K. Yuon's painting A New Planet. Here's the track listing, with a bit of info about the songs: 1. Motel 666 2. Pensacola 99 from the album Hanky Panky Parley Voo! Released back in 1990, Hanky Panky was NDI's first full-length album. I can't say for sure if this was the first NDI album that I ever bought, but I do know that the video for "Motel 666" was the first NDI song/video I ever encountered. The song is quirky and heavy at the same time and the video really captures that. "Pensacola 99" has all the elements of an NDI classic, including some raunchy lyrics, a memorable riff and wailing guitar. 3. Feelin' Sexy from the Feelin' Sexy EP The Feelin' Sexy EP was NDI's first actual record and it was released in 1990 before Hanky Panky. I absolutely love this tune and I picked the EP version over the Hank Panky version because of the EP version features an absolutely blistering guitar solo. 4. Rockin' Daddy from Video Trash I'm not really sure if the title of this song is really "Rockin' Daddy," but the words feature prominently in the chorus. This is a really unusual live performance NDI did for a local news station in Canada. Check out that "oral piano" I mentioned above because Skipper plays it in this song.
6. Pitch A Fit from the album Hymns of Bucksnort The 1991 album Hymns of Bucksnort is my all-time favorite NDI album. "Got Our Shit Together" is kind of like the a ridiculous anthem for overconfident people. "Pitch a Fit" is a song that NDI opened with now and then during some of the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vegas shows, but the best thing about this version is that they play a low-volume rendition of the entire theme from "What's Happening!!" (one of my favorite TV sitcoms ever) at the end of the song. It's played on either an accordion or that oral piano-thing with an "a cappella" bass line. Sweet. 7. Waste Your Time 8. The Freshman 15 from the album Sticky The 2000 double CD Sticky has a really different sound from a lot of the older NDI albums and the evolution and improvement of both their skills and their production is really evident through and through on the entire album. "Waste Your Time" is a song I would definitely want to cover if I had a band of my own. 9. Overserved (Danny Bonaduce Show) from the album Fried I think the Fried collection of B-sides and oddities was released in the late 1990s and I am guessing this track was cut in 1995 or so. It doesn't get any weirder than having NDI perform a live acoustic set with Danny Bonnaduce playing rhythm guitar while Skipper yells out the chords for him. 10. Lenkkimakkaraa! from the album The Best of Mikhael Jackson The Best of Mikhael Jackson was released in 1993 and it's a "greatest hits" of sorts that features a couple of rare and previously unreleased tracks. This song was supposedly written after NDI's huge tour of Finland (no joke!) in honor of some kind of Finnish sausage-related delicacy. 11. Good Men Are Pukin' from the album Live, Rare and Bad Live, Rare and Bad is a 1992 collection of B-tracks, commercials, live stuff and other odds and ends. "Good Men Are Pukin'" is a straight-up classic, especially because you can hear Pigtail shouting out instructions to Skipper about his effects pedals before and after the main solo. 12. Female Voodoo 13. Can't Hardly Wait from the album Fried More terrific rare tracks from Fried. The live version of "Female Voodoo" is one of my favorite Pigtail Dick solos. It's got an Ace Frehley kind of simplicity about it in that there aren't many notes, but the playing is just absolutely fierce.
A truly weird song from 1992. Every time I finish listening to it, I want to immediately play it again. We took a trip to Gatlinburg in 1999 and I couldn't get the song out of my head the whole time we were there. 15. Tilt-a-Whirl from the album Loserville Tilta-whirl kicks off the 1993 album Loserville, but NDI used to close shows with this song and absolutely tear the house down. I love the guitar effects for the solo -- heavy fuzz, a wha-wah pedal and maybe some kind of flanger-like effect going on there. 16. I'm Your Boogieman from the album Fried K.C. and the Sunshine Band's material sounds much better when it's NDI playing the stuff. 17. Queen Of Venus 18. Fan It And Cool It from the album Loserville "Queen of Venus" is probably what you would have gotten if H.G. Wells had written some songs for the Guess Who. "Fan It and Cool It" is a great sing-along song. 19. Power Tool from the album Sticky In one of the radio interview clips on Live, Rare and Bad, Pigtail tells a DJ, "There are worse things that you can call us besides 'riff rock'...but not many worse things." Here's one of the most tremendous NDI riffs ever. And it just keeps going and going and going... 20. I Never Got Anything Off Of You from the album End of Phase One End of Phase One is NDI's most recent album, released just this year. "I Never Got Anything Off Of You" features a driving riff that is reminiscent of another great song from Fried, "Takin Out the Trash." 21. "Oh My God We're Fucking!" from the single Oh My God We're Fucking! Not sure of the release date of this single, but I'm guessing it was 1996 or 1997. One of the funniest NDI songs ever. It's even better when it's performed live and you don't have a clue of the premise of the song until the first chorus hits. Hilarious. 22. Driving Nails In My Coffin 23. If She Wasn't On Blocks from the album The New Duncan Imperials Live One time I called into Gary Burbank's awful "Stump the Band" radio show and I stayed on hold for over half an hour hoping to get his in-studio to play "If She Wasn't On Blocks" on the air. then the show ended and they hung up before they got to me. In my book, that's compelling evidence that Burbank's show absolutely sucked. 24. It's Popular from the album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vegas "It ain't good, it ain't bad, it's popular." It's funny because it's true. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vegas was released in 1995.
One of the best ideas for a concept album ever. We're in a Band was NDI's 1994 EP that featured five cover songs and all of them had the word "band" in the title. "We're an American Band" was another of NDI's encore tunes from their live shows and I remember that they closed the first show I ever attended with this song. 26. Jägermeister performed live at the Miami Valley Cable Council Studios This is hands down my favorite NDI performance ever. It's a massive, in-your-face encore from their epic set at the MVCC studios back in 1994 or 1995. It's just a phenomenal ending to any NDI set, complete with a dazzling guitar solo and an hilarious Pigtail Dick story that goes absolutely nowhere. Burning this audio to CD from my old, grainy VHS copy was a blast. I had to get a little creative in my efforts to remove some of noise from the aging video tape, but then again, if I cleaned it up too much then it wouldn't be nearly as cool Happy 20th anniversary, NDI! Sunday, November 11
Signs and wonders
by
Mike
on Sun 11 Nov 2007 08:23 PM EST
A friend of mine recently sent me a link to a very funny blog called "Say What?!" The great signs on that site reminded me of one of my favorite pictures from our family trip to Clearwater Florida back in 2000. I snapped the picture below as we passed by the Marlin Motel one afternoon:
 I'm guessing their "vacancy" might have something to do with all that warm "poo" they have in the motel, eh?  Friday, August 18
The worst wedding toast ever
by
Mike
on Fri 18 Aug 2006 10:45 PM EDT
It’s
been a long and busy week. Although topics have come and gone
from my mind over the last few days, it’s been nearly impossible to sit
down and type any of them out. I’m sure things will slow down a bit
soon, but in the absence of a decent article about family, comics or
politics, I will instead offer a short piece featuring a very true
story. This popped into my mind the other night and I thought it
would be fun to share…
Back in the summer of 2001 (shortly after the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, which is an important point later in the story), I attended a very strange wedding. The bride and the groom were both dentists and they had recently moved to Washington D.C. (but the wedding was here in town). The best man was the father of the groom. (Now, how weird is that?) The wedding ceremony itself was unremarkable (although I did spend a fair amount of time wondering if the groom had even one single friend that he could have chosen as a best man instead of picking his old man), but the reception featured a rather awkward moment during the customary toast to the bride and groom. When it came time to offer his toast, the best man/father of the groom rose and started chattering about something or other and eventually he got around to talking about the bride and groom. Now, he was particularly proud of the fact that the married couple were both practicing dentists and that they were living in Washington D.C, so this became somewhat of the focus of this rambling “toast.” He talked about how proud he was of their work and the fact that they now lived in Washington and he then joked that while they were in D.C, his new daughter-in-law was going to be performing some kind of dental work on Hillary Clinton and that his son was “going to be doing root canals on Slobodan Milosevic!” The latter comment was particularly asinine seeing as how Milosevic was nowhere near the U.S. following his arrest and detention. Maybe he was fantasizing that his son was part of some kind of crack dentist-commando unit for the Navy. Anyway, that was basically the toast. Seriously, folks...the toast ended with a reference to Slobodan Milosevic! After it was over, a few people laughed uncomfortably, there was some scattered clapping, everyone raised their glasses and the afternoon rolled on. There is an interesting postscript to all this: Several months later, the groom was caught cheating, and the marriage ended quite abruptly. Now I am not a superstitious guy, but a toast that bad has to be some kind of a curse!  Saturday, May 6
Wasting time
by
Mike
on Sat 06 May 2006 11:09 PM EDT
Upon learning of our new iMac, our pal Corey sent me a note suggesting
I check out the new Mac application called Photo Booth. He
described it as "the most hilarious time-waster." He was
right. Here’s how I wasted my time with it...
 Sunday, February 12
Got salvation?
by
Mike
on Sun 12 Feb 2006 09:29 PM EST
 I
snapped this picture on Saturday while I was driving on I-70 West
(between Columbus and Dayton). I am not really sure of the answer
to this question, but if Dante’s description of Hell is accurate, then
there’s some kind of "ironic punishment" that surely awaits all of us
sinners...and my ironic punishment would probably be to read stupid
religious billboards erected by pompous fools with too much money and
time on their hands.If you're looking for a glimpse of how you might spend eternity, check out Dante's Inferno Test and take the survey there. I landed in the Fifth Circle of Hell. Whoo hoo! See you on the other side! Further Reading The Divine Comedy full text at gutenberg.org Thursday, December 1
The devil, you say?
by
Mike
on Thu 01 Dec 2005 07:34 PM EST
 I
went to a local cafeteria-style place for lunch yesterday. The lady at
the checkout counter rang up my lunch and the total came to $6.66. She
refused to read the total out loud, saying, "You can figure it out for
yourself. That number isn't coming out of my mouth." Now at this point,
I considered going back and purchasing an additional $1.11 in food,
figuring that a lunch tab of $7.77 might land me eternal
salvation. But in the end, I thought it would be best to just pay
the bill and go on about my business. Maybe next week I’ll go back and purchase 13 slices of Devil’s Food cake and see what kind of reaction I get. Saturday, October 22
Greeker than thou
by
Mike
on Sat 22 Oct 2005 09:11 PM EDT
We
snapped this picture earlier today. We came upon this rather
unexpected sight while driving around town and we raced home to grab
our camera because we didn’t think anyone would believe us if we didn’t
have some evidence.
Now, you may think that you’re a Greek. You might be Greek-American or you might even be a first-generation, full-blooded Greek with citizenship papers and all that. But if this isn’t your car....Well then, you’re just not Greek enough, my friend!   Click on the picture to see a larger version Sunday, October 16
The population bomb explodes in Arkansas
by
Mike
on Sun 16 Oct 2005 10:24 PM EDT
Last week, American media types of all sorts swooned over the tale of an Arkansas couple who had just given birth to their 16th child.
Mr. and Mrs. Duggar—Jim Bob and Michelle to their friends—told
reporters that they were looking forward to having a 17th child someday.
Now I will keep my comments brief on this because I certainly don’t want to come across as being...mean-spirited. But was I the only guy to read this story and suspect a hint of religious zealotry going on? I found their family website via a quick Google search (you’ll have to Google it yourselves, dear friends. I sure as hell ain’t linking to this one...) and my suspicions were confirmed pretty quickly. Go ahead and have a look. Weird, wild stuff... You can learn a lot about somebody by checking out what they link to from their site. The Duggar family's site includes links to cornerstones of the religious right, such as “Focus on the Family” and “Family Research Council,” as well as a site called “Creation Science Evangelism” (Incidentally, if you visit the “Creation Science Evangelism” site, you’ll find that they are promoting something called “Defeat Darwin Month.” I didn’t read the specifics about this, but I am willing to bet that it involves digging up Darwin’s corpse and stoning it or something like that.) All in all, my favorite link on the Duggar Family’s site is for something called “WholesomeWear Modest Swimwear.” According to the folks at WholesomeWear, “(t)he need for modesty in swimwear is greatest and the supply is almost non-existant (sic).” You have to admit that it is more than a little ironic that the Duggars include this link on their site, isn’t it? I mean, if Mrs. D. actually wore WholesomeWear clothing in the first place, then chances are that she wouldn’t have ended up with 16 kids! |
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