We Recommend: Your Friday Freebies
Junkee-endorsed bits and bobs, to make your weekend better. Featuring a book excerpt, an EP, a photo gallery, a prank call, Warwick Capper's CV, and dogs. Lots of dogs.
Each Friday, our contributors send in a bunch of (legally) free stuff that’s come out this week, to help you waste your weekend. You’re welcome.
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Excerpt: Martha Stewart And The Cannibal Polar Bears — A True Story, by Jon Mooallem
Recommended by: Matt Roden (‘Mad Men 6.9: It’s All Fun And Games Until Someone Gets Stabbed In The Guts‘)
This Atlantic article is an excerpt from Mooallem’s book, Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking At People Looking At Animals In America. I haven’t explored the rest of the book too much, but its sociological take on what we’re doing as we ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at David Attenborough docos while leaving all the lights on in the house is fascinating and damning, but written in a totally approachable tone. The polar bear now lives precariously on the intersection of environmentalism and marketing, and its survival is of interest to everyone from Al Gore and Martha Stewart to Coca-Cola and Big Oil. Oh, and the scientists who actually work hard to look after it. And probably the other polar bears too? A brief essay that, as it describes so many failures to assist these animals, succeeds as a call to action.
If that wasn’t enough to inspire you, Chris Funk of The Decemberists and Black Prairie has written some accompanying music for many of the animals and their stories contained in the book.
Mooallem describes the collaboration in a recent post at Slate: “As the band members read the book … they started sending me ideas for songs based on characters and scenes, and I was amazed at how the music actually recreated some of the moods and emotions I felt while reporting the book — living through those scenes, and hanging out with these people.” He accompanies a few of the songs with some story context, too.
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Gallery: 20 Timeless Photos That Made Our Week
Recommended by: Nicholas Fonseca (‘Which American Political TV Show Is The American Political TV Show For You?‘)
No brain strain here, just a happy-making collection of photographs you should click through at some point today when everyone around you is being annoying and your blood pressure is rising.
Looking for some new laptop wallpaper? You’ll find something that works here.
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Prank Calling: Longmont Potion Castle, to Alex Trebek
Recommended by: Alexander Tulett
“Longmont Potion Castle is the pseudonym of an anonymous prank caller” is the kind of description that would make any self-respecting, entertainment-seeking individual’s scrollbar activate independently, through the latent power of their disinterest alone. Luckily he’s so much more than that.
Described as “absurdist phone work”, Longmont Potion Castle uses digital sound effects, clever turns of phrase and decades of perfecting his improvisational skills to anger and confuse his victims. It’s nothing like your Guido Hatzis’, Crank Yankers or slumber-party prank sessions — just listen to one of his more recent calls to Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek above, wherein he claims he’s attempting to deliver 4200 pounds of sod (from Siam, no less) to Trebek’s house. It’s beautiful and, more importantly, genuinely hilarious. Hit the ‘Related Videos’ immediately afterwards to hear some of his weirder earlier work.
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Gallery: Warp Dogs
Recommended by: Steph Harmon (‘Luhrmann’s Gatsby Is Drowning In Extravagance. But That’s Not The Problem With Luhrmann’s Gatsby‘)
If you, like me, were a fan Carli Davidson’s Shake – an image collection-cum-coffee table book of dogs mid-shake, which if you haven’t heard of it is about to make your day — may I introduce to you Warp Dogs.
The images come from Benjamin Grelle, a corgi-loving Photoshop guru/comedy blogger also known as The Frogman, who’s found photos of dumb idiot dogs putting their dumb idiot heads out of fast-moving car windows like idiots, and turned them into time-travelling light-speed space magic.
This isn’t his first content series. The Frogman is responsible for such brilliance as Babies With Laser Eyes (also a Tumblr), Benedict Cabbagepatch (nuff said), Longcat Is Long — and in fact just scroll through his entire series of Frogman Originals.
Ugh. Idiots.
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EP: The Brass Tactics EP, by David Byrne and St Vincent
Recommended by: Caitlin Welsh (‘Exactly Why I Came Here: On Daft Punk, Wee Waa And The Aftermath‘)
The Love This Giant tour — a collaboration between Annie Clark (St Vincent), David Byrne (Talking Heads) and a buttload of horns — has produced some incredible moments. The show I saw at the State Theatre in Sydney at the beginning of this year put a smile on my face that lasted for days, and it wasn’t just because I finally got to hear Byrne sing ‘This Must Be The Place’ right there in front of me.
The Brass Tactics EP, which appeared on the Love This Giant website at the beginning of this week, and will cost you nothing but your email address, features a non-album track, ‘Cissus’, remixes from Kent Rockafeller and M. Stine, and stellar live versions of ‘Marrow’ and Talking Heads’ ‘Road to Nowhere’. The latter closed the State show and had everyone dancing in the aisles; the former is just an incredibly warm, BIG version of a standout track from St Vincent’s brilliant 2009 album, Actor.
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Online CV: Warwick Capper
Recommended by: Luke Ryan (‘Old Man Calls Rap Music ‘Deafening, Staccato Speech About Vomit; Doesn’t Know The First Thing About Rap Music‘)
- Made TIGHT SHORTS and WHITE BOOTS an art form
- Appeared on every TV show in the past 20 years.
- 2008 released a home made Porno XXX Capper
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Movie information database: Does The Dog Die?
Recommended by: Rob Moran
Hello everyone. I totally ran out of time to add anything particularly entertaining into this slot this week, so instead, here’s a potentially useful movie database called ‘Does The Dog Die?‘, which helpfully informs you, well, whether the dog dies or not. Sheesh, I do not remember so many dead dogs in the National Lampoon movies.