if you have a big bag (or box)(or small bag) of GI JOEs, where the legs all fell off because the rubber band broke, please consider donating them to HBML so we can make cool “candy crust” tribal necklaces out of them. we have some (pictured), need more. come on, what are you doing with them? also will trade broken (yours) for non-broken (ours) (4 to 1) while supplies last.
this rules! and there’s a beach boys cover (”don’t worry baby”). blue shift is scraping violins and close-mic’ed vocals, RT is greymarket mysticism and arcane ramblings, with drums. this is noise with no rock. letter pressed covers, green vinyl, awesome zine insert with lots of drawings of smoke. whatever, this rules. on RARE YOUTH.
maybe this is crazy, but were the California Raisins invented to counteract a grape boycott?
over the years california grapes suffered 3 boycotts: The first ran from 1967 to 1970, and ended when growers signed their first contracts with the United Farm Workers. The second grape boycott began in 1973 and received more widespread support than the recent one (with a 1975 Harris poll indicating that 17 million Americans were boycotting grapes). This boycott ended two years later, after the Agricultural Labor Relations Act was passed, allowing farmworkers to organize and bargain for contracts. in 1984 UFW co-founder Cesar Chavez called for a third boycott, as a way of focusing on the spraying of dangerous pesticides, and although UFW called the boycott successful, it lasted for 16 years (!) until november 2000, far less wham bam than previous efforts.
So the California Raisins were unleashed on the world in 1987, 3 years after the start of the last boycott, and were, duh, super successful, spawning a cartoon show, toys, live shows, all kinds of bullshit. even as a kid i always wondered why they even existed– i never saw an ad for bananas, for example. so is this why they made the ads? are the California Raisins like, scabs? i mean, outside of the fact that they look like huge scabs? does anyone have the numbers on california table grapes sold from 1984 - 1987? this coul dbe a good term paper for someone (someone that would subsequently owe me something for the idea, possibly fair trade organic chocolate bars, possibly lots of them).
also, buddy miles was the voice of one of the raisins, you may know him as the annoying guy on that band of gypsy record. what’s up with that?
anyway, we have this historical statue, it’s, i don’t know, $4.
oh, and sorry about all the capitalization weirdness, i obviously copied the statistics from another webpage (here).
hey EAB, what time is it?
summer time!
also:
full text of walden on project gutenberg
free walden audiobook from librivox
john cage reads from “mureau”, an “i ching determined mix of letters, syllables, words, phrases and sentences from the journals of thoreau” concerning music.
every week or so i paint everything on this shelf a different color, trying to figure out which is the color that sells the best. so far it isn’t lavender, bright green, sky blue, or mint. the shoes look pretty sweet though– right after i painted these i painted my own:
that’s tite, rite?
i just got back from seeing erick “scam” lyle and cindy “doris” crabb read from their awesome new books, and i brought back a big stack of printed matter to totally change a bunch of people’s lives. scam and doris are two of the best zines ever, really inspiring personal / universal stuff about living in a city, living in the country, being a person, being young, being old, everything. highly recommended. i got a few copies of some of the more recent zines, plus a few copies of nicely printed book collections from both of them. so good!
the deadline is september 1st for the second annual HBML shoebox diorama competition. last year ruled, and in an effort to up the ante, this year the winner gets a $200 cash prize. as the gif above clearly states, “no joke”.
as in last year’s competition, the dioramas will be stacked one on top of another in our windows, in a brick wall fashion. bearing this in mind, remember that all dioramas must be in a box the size of a shoebox, they should be side- and not top-view, they must be totally contained within the box (nothing on the sides or top, or jutting out in front, or dripping underneath). heavier entries will be stacked towards the bottom so please try to make them structurally sound. batteries are ok, wall plugs are not. there will be glass between the viewer (on the street) and the diorama (inside, in the window), so nothing interactive in a button-pushing way. also, i cannot be expected to turn things on and off every day. also, really glue everything down solid- if something falls we won’t know how to put it back together- we are idiots.
we will be collecting dioramas from now until september first, which is a serious deadline. in addition to the grand prize, there will be silver and bronze prizes, and lesser (or “booby”) prizes, including famousest entrant and best bribe. if you are shipping us your diorama please realize that we probably can’t ship them back, but we will try to hold them for pickup until well after the competition ends. or you can authorize us to sell them and keep the money.
any other questions leave a comment or email jacob at fujichia dot crom
this is a really beautiful documentary about hobo graffitti, and the search for the legendary character bozo texino. it was filmed in beautiful black and white (and real film), as the filmmaker hopped trains all across america, super gorgeous. highly recommended, especially to all folk punk / old grimey types (hi!).
also, this movie has lots of great rugged old dudes.
here’s the movie website, here’s a youtube.
just a reminder that HBML does accept donations of clean clothing, toys, books, music (in all storage formats), and, uh, miscellanea. i already forgot this guy’s name, but he brought in a bunch of shirts in my favorite color: plaid. and you know this guy’s player because he kept the gold stickers on his hat. stay fresh worcester!
this saturday from 2 - 5, HBML is doing another awesome silk screening day. what this means is that you bring in a garment and we silkscreen a special image directly onto it WHILE-U-WAIT for the lo lo price of $5 per garm. the last time we did this it was massive, and tons of people left satisfied with snarling tigers emblazoned on their frocks, tunics, brazilian-cut jeans, skorts, kaftans, bomber jackets, aprons, union suits, sleeveless turtlenecks, ball gowns, muumuus, princess shirts, etc.. this week we have two designs, one of which will be printed in white ink, one of which will be printed in black. the designs are the CRASS logo, and the PUBLIC ENEMY logo. both of these circular logos will be sized for t-shirts, so between 8 and 12 inches in diameter– what i’m saying is, if you want to print onto a bikini or underpant, the design will be cut off, which maybe is fine, or maybe you have a big butt, which is a blessing unto the earth and heaven.
even though you really want to print one on top of the other, i think that actually might not actually totally work out great. the ink takes about a half hour to dry, so plan on doing some shopping around, or take a jaunt to the comic book store down the street (still new england’s best), or go browse the totally incredible fabrics at the african clothing shop a block away, or just sit on the bench out front eating tabouli LIKE A CHAMP.
from now until the singularity 10% off all purchases for anyone wearing short sleeves, gloves, knickerbockers, high socks, a sideways baseball hat, carrying a cane and eating a carrot.
