Podcast 8, We've moved to Alaska

Podcast 8

We're back.
- Ralph's dead uncle, Langston
- Cybertronic Septic System
- Abigail's Diary

Songs:

- You wake up with no arms
- Abigail's Song
- "The lump goes at midnight"

www.incurable-allure.com

We're back

After a long, long break, we're back in the blogosphere.

Much has happened since my last post in late June.
First off, I left Chicago, Moved to Kansas for a short while, and now I'm living in Alaska.

More on that later.

We're making music and film once again, though. Check out the IAC's latest project:

Frigid Waters, with Andre LeBleu
Episode 1, Alaska's Turnagain Arm

Dropping the Ball

I've been a huge fan of Mediocrefilms.com for a while now, and I've got to say, Greg Benson, you're pretty much the greatest man who's ever lived.
Dropping the ball is my favorite of the Mediocre Films library.
Because, honestly, poop can be very funny.



Check them out
Mediocrefilms.com

A roof with a view

the view from my roof on May 28, 2007

The Winds

The Winds

It was in the early morn of my demented days
We took walks in the park
We hung from buildings

We watched the blades of the fan spin in endless circles of computed elation and bliss and hatred and mediocrity

But the sun never rose outside my bedroom door
Or my window
Or under my bed, filled with sleepy rats

And here, the day is half passed
And we always feel like we should give a damn
But never seem to do


We walked along the corridors of greatness
Smelling smells that went in one ear and out the other
We stopped for barbecue with the clowns of Nineveh
We wanted to be nice
Never told them we were vegetarians
And starved instead

Day 22 brought us closer to freedom
Bellies rumbling from spoilt milk and the cheese of the damned
We filled up on chili-lime pistachios
And everybody saw we were nuts

Regret became a commodity
Instead, we swam in gold
Never did we ever look away, not once
Until Trish went under
We had to dive down deep, so that she might live

The winds of change dropped their G-forces, and instead looked to the sea
The winds of chance took us home again
Where we didn’t want to be
Having left in the first place
We left again
And looked to the sea, ourselves

Graphics

Henopause

This cartoon is by Dan Reynolds.
It came from a wonderful little blog I like to frequent, called "Keeping Chickens in your back yard"
Or http://successwithpoultry.blogspot.com/

It's great if you've got a poultry related problem, or just want some friendly tips on how to keep your feathered friends happy.
For instance, yesterday, my White Crested Polish chickens' eggs hatched, and I wanted to find out how to tell the sex of the newborn chicks.
KCIYBY was just the ticket. So, if you have Chicken related questions, just like I do, check them out

I once punched a baby

I like this. Possibly because it's 1:13am, but also because it's funny.

Samuel's Manual

When Samuel read the manual he noticed something quite peculiar.

Said Samuel to the manual, I’ve the brains to read you not
For you’re nasty and confusing and a lot of nerve you’ve got.
Only the most of learned scholars understand you when they see

Your instructions are so many that your languages number three.

Podcast 7A

The Incurable Allure of Carrots
Podcast 7A

-Down Wilson
-The Sparrow, The Sun, and The Moon
-Allegretto Kluge in Green
-The House of Nine Dragons
-Invasive storms

Send us questions. We have answers.
Aaron@incurable-allure.com

Incurable Allure Vidcast 1

It's IAC Vidcast 1. Yay.

So, you may have wondered where we went. Or maybe you didn't and you just forgot about us.
Perhaps you thought we'd been eaten? Or maybe we fell in?
Either way, Hinky Binky is here to set the record straight.



Send us questions, we never tire of answering them.
Aaron@incurable-allure.com

The inner life of a cell

This is friggin' awesome.
Not just for the computer animation, which is pretty great, and a work of art in and of itself, but also because it does a bang up job of telling you how a cell functions.
Because learning is, um, cool.

And no, it's not a coincidence that I'm posting this the same day as Ze Frank. I'm just sharing the love, that's all.

Alright, fine. I stole it.
There. You happy?

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck? (List #3)

LIST #3

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

10. 550 board feet

9. None. Woodchucks are just Groundhogs in disguise, furry bastards.

8. None. Chuck Norris killed him with a roundhouse kick

7. How does one "chuck"?

6. All of Sherwood Forest

5. Ulysses S. Grant

4. "it is decidedly so"

3. More than Sweden could, even if they tried really hard

2. It doesn't really matter, because each time he chucks a tree, the EPA says he's required to plant another one.

1. 30 arbitrary units of generic wood, provided by local lumberyards at cost. Because, gosh darn it, we stand behind our local woodchucks.


You can hear "The Woodchuck Song" on my myspace
AaroneousTruths

Podcast 5D

Podcast 5D
Travels in Time

What's in it?

-time travel
-lots of questions
-Irving and Mailbox
-What's ever become of Julie?
-Piano that Irving Filled

My Coffee Table #1

The first in a series.

Podcast 5C

Podcast 5C
Chucks wood

-The Woodchuck song
-We're sleep deprived
-The Homicidal computer
-Chariots of Fire

As always, send your weird questions to us at
Aaron@incurable-allure.com

Podcast 5B

It's Friday the 13th, and Podcast 5B is out and about taking a shout out loud.

Check it out at
www.incurable-allure.com
This podcast features "The Allegory of Dan"
(as requested by Patrick, of St. Louis, Missouri)

Rest in Peace Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut
November 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007
Rest in Peace

The Window

My view of the window from my couch, as I have been habitating it for the past 5 days while sick.
These were taken this morning, just after I woke up, and before I ralphed on the floor.

-A

West town

Represent.

Podcast 5A

We're back from hiatus...

Check it, yo.

Podcast 5A

Send us your quandaries, queries, and questions at
Aaron@incurable-allure.com

Subscribe in iTunes...

Happy Passover

Happy Passover. Here's wishing you syrupy wine and a constipation-free holiday.

Recent Addictions #1

1. The Show with zefrank
Especially the scrabble episode. And I'm quite upset that I didn't find out about this a year ago. Thanks a lot, Ze.

2. Lions

(yes, that's my face on the lion)


3. The Lascivious Biddies

I heard these guys for the first time two weeks ago, and since then I've probably listened to their album "Get Lucky" about twenty three times. These women rock with some serious class. Not only are they amazing musicians, but the lyrics are great, and the tunes are about as catchy
as...

...I don't know, something that's really catchy.

Plus they've got hot voices. Score.
Check out their website. They've got a podcast. Double score.

4. Scrubs.
I'm sad to say, it's true. A friend lent me the first season and I indulged.

But hey, there are worse things to be addicted to, right? Like, say, heroine, or masturbation.
y'know, just hypothetically, that's all I'm sayin.

...what?

5. Direct sunlight.


It makes me happy.


Ahh.






6. Bread.
(this is the last day I can eat any before Passover starts)

And finally...

7. The Weekly WikiWorld Comic, drawn by Greg Williams
Well, that's it for today. Keep rockin' in the free world.

-A

Harry the Door

A door is a door is a door.
Or so they say.

But not this door.
This door was different.

This door’s name was Harry, which was already uncommon, as doors rarely have names.
Occasionally you will meet a door named Archibald, or Woodrow, perhaps even an Edward, but not a Harry.

Harry liked his name though. It kept him content, and as we all know, there is nothing more important to a door than being content.

Well, almost nothing.

Harry was ajar. He was open. Quite wide, in fact, and had been so for about eight years now, which in door days, is quite a long time.

Harry was a very important door, or would be if he’d been shut for eight years. But an open door… an open door was a direct contradiction to Harry’s very purpose in doordom.

For you see, a door is meant to close, otherwise it’s merely a doorway, and the door, or rather, Harry, hangs on his hinges unused.

Harry’s mind rarely strayed from his predicament, for its cause lay directly in front of him for the past eight years.

That cause was Professor Cummings.

In the past, the Professor had always been a friend of Harry’s. Opening, shutting, opening, shutting. Every day it was the same routine. The Professor would climb the eight hundred and sixty two and a half stairs up to Harry, swing Harry open with a push of his flappy hand, grasp the tree trunk of a rope that hung from the ceiling, and with a mighty tug from his tusklike shoulders, he would ring the bell and call the students to class.

And so it went, every day, and Harry enjoyed this thoroughly. He enjoyed the affectionate pat from Professor Cummings’ weathered palm, he enjoyed the vibrations in his hinges as the mammoth bell would gong, he enjoyed watching the Professor clasp his hands over his ears immediately after releasing the rope and cursing loudly, only to be offended once more by the groaning sentinel that was never on the lookout, for it’s eyes had long since been silenced by the very ringing it produced.

And by the fifth or sixth ring, the Professor would stop cursing, grab hold of the large bell, and attempt to slow it by heaving his weight against its swing, which always ended in his being shoved backwards onto the stone floor, grunting.

“You may be big!” the Professor would shout, “but I’m bigger!”

Which wasn’t quite true, thought Harry, for the bell surely equaled, if not surpassed, the weight of Professor Cummings, who would then stand and rest his leathery hands on the stone, looking out over the campus for a moment.

“Yes, Harry”, He would say, through thatched lips, “Looks to be another day.”

Then he would turn, grasp Harry’s knob, and shut him as he left.
That was Harry’s favorite part. For as we all know, doors love being shut.

But all that was quite a long time ago. The ancient ringing of the mammoth bell hadn’t called the students to class for many months. Professor Cummings hadn’t shut Harry in quite a while. And now Professor Cummings was getting quite old, laying on the stone before Harry. So old, that he was, in fact, dead.

First had come the birds, eager to pick away at the fresh skin of the deceased. Then the rats, gnawing at bones, lashing out at one another in vicious quarrels for rotting organs.
Then the flies, sucking away the blood and laying their maggots to tunnel through the flesh till all that was left was the bone of Professor Cummings.
...And a tiny indentation in the great bell, where the Professor had unintentionally struck it with his head after shouting to the departing ship that never turned back.

One by one, the bats came, no longer blackballed from their roost by the ringing of the great bell, now silent as Harry lay open.
The bats dropped their guano, and picked at the last of the solid bones, and carried every last bit of Professor Cummings away, except, that is, for the skull.

The skull had been too heavy for the bats, and now it rest gazing up at Harry through vacant eye sockets.

And now the wind blew, and even the bats were gone, chased away by the mist from the waters, slowly rising to the tower beneath Harry, just months after the Professor’s unfortunate accident.

And no more students traversed the green lawns, below, for the Atlantic had crawled inland and swallowed up all but the bell tower, and Harry, and Professor Cummings’ skull.

And Harry was open. Eight years now. A disgrace to his doordom.

Harry’s hinges shook, but it was not the timber of the great bell, it was the Atlantic crashing her mighty arms against his tower. But this time, as his rusty hinges shook, Atlanta finally ripped them loose, after nibbling for eight long years.

And Harry ceased to even be an open door.

And Atlanta took a great swell, and with one foul crash, she invaded the tower and carried Harry away from Professor Cummings forever.

Chicago Avenue

So, In an effort to get back to the good old days, where I was posting new stories and poetry and things like that, here's a vignette I wrote today.
-A

Chicago Avenue

It is Sunday, March 11, 2007

First day of daylight savings

First thaw of the year

The sun is out at 5:30 as I leave the theatre building with Brea, my director for Machinal, the show I’m composing music for. We’ve just seen “The workroom”, in the new studio.

We part. I make my way down printers row, through the deserted, vacant downtown on this Sunday afternoon in early march.

I enter the LaSalle st. subway to make my way north on the blue line, back home before I have to go tile a bathroom.

On go the headphones, on goes the iPod Shuffle as I hunker into the station and await the coming train.

I hear the clarinet of joyous klezmer celebration, clapping, wailing trumpets, fiddle,

I shuffle and sway slightly, my true feelings betraying my façade to the station.

Rumbling, on comes the train, round the bend and right to me. I board the front car and notice its vacancy. This is a day of vacancies. A vacancy of cold, a vacancy of crowd, yet today is more full of life than all the winter’s been.

I sit facing front and realize than I can see through the front window and view the oncoming tunnel.

I wait, I move closer as we descend down through the tubular depths, gliding past lights and signs briefly illuminated by our headbeams in the darkness.

A light approaches, we glide into Jackson

Glide into Monroe

Glide to Washington

Glide glide glide through the dark world of the underground

Then suddenly, the CURVE TOWARDS CLARK APPROACHES

We’re not going to make it, are we? It’s so steep, so tight! And just as the windshield and headlights prepare to kiss the curvature of concrete, it slides on past for moment after moment as we spin our tangent, a thing made of straight lines turning in a seemingly effortless cheat of option.

Glide into clark, glide down the ramp, deep into the belly, towards the long stretch to grand, past lines of staggered bulbs, illuminating a rat

A crawler

A cord

A sign

Up and down, an invisible roller coaster of secret joy, spinning and twisting, wheels nonexisting

Glide into grand, on a cushion of air.

The Grand Station

That which is wonderful

And though the Voice of CTA now says “This is grand… and Milwaukee”

We still know it’s grand.

With its euphoric blue lights at its stairways, a cool pleasing mother I will never touch, save for sight

And as soon as we see her, grand is gone, and a fat lady with skin both black and white sits in front of me to the side, so I can still see our path

With lights swooping past, gliding me home to Chicago, and up jumps the station and out jumps me

Double take, for now that I’ve seen the way here, is here really here?

Turning left up the stairs past the wet red floor that is always wet and red

and a floor

Out of the cage turnstile

Up into the clear and onto Chicago avenue

Joel rubin still playing his clarinet in my ears, more joyous than winter’s been

And I take a breath and smell the same smells I always smell upon exiting

The sewage, highway, wastewater, pizza, distant bakery

The birds are chirping past me, past the fire station, walking west, a young man

Clarinet clarinet clarinet

Army surplus on the left “Don’t Tread On Me!” says the snake

Over the Dan Ryan, slipping smoothly beneath

Clarinet, yada da,

The wind through my clean hair I washed this morning

The wind through my clothes and my eyes

My bag swinging at my left

My laptop hanging at my right

An old man smoking cigarettes, taking the first few puffs turns the same way I do

Clarinet, saxophone, joyous occasions call for dancing and shaking and hopping

Birds chirping

Hand on my iPod,

Pause

The Baptist church is having evening service and rocking down the walls

Clapping stomping sweating praising!

A little boy has the door propped open with his leg, looks at me

HA HA HA HALLELUJA!

Unpause

Clarinet up down up down screaming for what we know but can’t see

On the right, the park, children running with sticks clacking the metal fence, old woman sitting on the steps of the Ida Crown natatorium

Young couple walking past me as I near Ada, the smile and the laugh with the breeze and the early rays of the first sunlit afternoon of the love

Bubble bubble

Turning left on Ada, walking south, past the school for kids who aren’t smart

Guy sitting on steps with cigarette and cell phone

Looks at me

Fire escape

Parked cars

Fire escape

My parked car

Is still there, I have to check

Fire escape

Key in knob, door slam sticky, I shut it

Turning left up the stairs, second floor, the sun illuminating every shade of brown possible,

Door is unlocked

Roommate is home

I am home

Windows open

I sit.

Itzhak Perlman is damn cool

So, recently, while listening to "Together" a Duet album with Itzhak Perlman and Placido Domingo, it dawned on me just how much Itzhak Perlman kicks ass.
Now, don't get me wrong, Placido is pretty great too, his performance as Figaro in The Barber of Seville is by far my favorite of any I've heard. But in terms of sheer amazing musicianship, Mr. Perlman takes the cake.

I enjoy this video particularly. For obvious reasons.


Honestly, this guy is amazing. He contracted Polio at the age of four, and still walks around on crutches, so someone always carries his violin out on stage for him.

He's won 9 Grammys, and performed all over the world.


Oh, and the coolest thing of all, He's signed the toilet at the Lied Center at the University of Kansas, where I went to band camp.

Podcast 3A

Podcast 3A

Songs
-It's only Love on the Tuba
-The Mariner and The Leviathan
-Dinosaurs... Twice!

Stories
-"Aphrodite", w/ the first official lieutenant

Synopsis
The guys take a trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin,
and get snowed in, the heater breaks, the
pipes freeze, and they make a cave of warmth
under the bed. There is also a request for
money made by a wealthy African Banker.

Check out the new website,
www.incurable-allure.com
for updates and music

I like apples

see?

Ok, the new website be up

Yes, Incurable-Allure.com is up and running.

Don't believe me?
Go and have a look-see for yourself.
www.incurable-allure.com

Dirt Ripened and Freshly Squeezed.

Oh, and new podcast coming out in the next few hours/days/moments/theatrical beats

This podcast's theme is "Water of all shapes and sizes"
It's not yet finished, so please send suggestions to incurableallure@yahoo.com

-A

Podcast 2B is... yes, still up

Podcast 2B is still up. Workin on podcast 3A, which should be a doozie. Send suggestions/comments/solicitations for money to incurableallure@yahoo.com

Mr. Tangerine @ Around the Coyote 2007 Winter Arts Festival, Chicago IL

Mr. Tangerine
(A play about a Goldfish)
@ The 2007 Around The Coyote Winter Arts Festival, Wicker Park, Chicago, IL

Written and Directed by
Aaron Philips

Starring
Alex Balestrieri as Mr. Tangerine
Sean Neely as Dave
and
Arin Mulvaney as Lola