Jackie Gleason & Salvador Dali

The Gleason-Dali Handshake

Peter and the Wolf

Nina Simone

Rockwell King & Dave Elliott

Jonah Jones

Fun at Home

Seasme Street Fever

Disco Grover

Fever!

Lawrence Welk

Yellow Magic

Yellow Magic

Jo Harnell

Twin Pianos & Percussion

Mamas & Papas

Irving Berlin

The Drum Suite

Pousette Dart Band

Anyway, on a recent trek to the RC, I picked up a box containing some Space Age exercise equipment, the Apollo Exerciser. I picked it up because I’m a sucker for 70s stuff, space stuff, and cheesy stuff. So, there was no way in hell I could resist cheesy 70s space stuff.

The exerciser came in a kit that consisted of an 8-inch metal cylinder housing some springs that you attached ropes and pulleys to.

According to the instruction booklet, the metal cylinder (dramatically referred to only as “The Apollo”), was “a superbly engineered exercise instrument that had over two and one half years of research before its completion.”

It was also trumpeted as “the most efficient piece of equipment to carry out the total isokinetic principle of exercise in the world today!”

So efficient, in fact, you could get a great workout while wearing your white leather dress shoes. While tied to a door.

And the Apollo worked just as well for the ladies too. Keep running, sweetie. Eventually that door frame will give way.

And of course, the kids could get in on the fun too. It sure is fun, right kids? Kids?

It makes me think that in the late 60s early 70s, every American company would slap a red, white, and blue rocket on any product to help sales. I’m surprised they didn’t tie the family dog to the thing so it could walk itself.

Anyway, I’ve already tossed the Apollo itself, but the brochure was pretty hilarious, so here it is in full for your enjoyment (PDF).

ApolloExerciser

Wakkawakkawakkawakkawakka…

This lady knows how to throw a serious elbow.

I think this perfectly illustrates the true meaning of Christmas.

I love the juxtapostion of these next two. Songs for guys to sing during the long haul.

I am a huge Rockwell King fan, and was very psyched to find this LP. For those who aren’t familiar with Rock (which is probably everyone), he’s been playing mind blowing boogie woogie piano punctuated with stand up comedy bits for over 50 years at the SandBar in West Dennis, MA. Here’s a sample.

I love the caricature of Sgt. Bilko and I’m a sucker for cutout designs.

Another comedy piece from the 60s, though I have my doubts about its hilariousness.

Nobody can comb hair like the Killer.

I got a bunch of these Ed Sullivan Presents LPs. This was my favorite. Must be the Scot in me channeling my inner tartan.

Now that I am nearly recovered from major abdominal surgery for a retroperitoneal hernia, I felt the urge to compile a few observations from one of the weirdest times of my life. Went to sleep just fine one night, woke up in agony at 3AM. Then, a trip to the ER, testing, diagnosis, surgery, hospitalization, and six weeks on the road back to normal. Ready? Here goes.

Having your small bowel squeezed and twisted to the point of total blockage feels like slow motion hari kari.

One positive side effect: it is the total cure for attention deficit disorder. Your focus will be as sharp and as clear as a flawless diamond. You may wish you could think about anything else, but it is impossible.

On the other hand, context is everything. Waiting for hours in an emergency room, in excruciating pain is quite tolerable when you see in front of you 1) plane crash victims, 2) children who were in a car crash and are now waiting for a helicopter to fly them to Boston, and 3) you overhear the phrase “open sternum.” Yeah, doc, take your time, I’m good.

When you have a condition that is 100% fatal without surgery, you lose any nostalgia for living in another time period. Keep your Ancient Rome, your Renaissance, your Old West.  I’ll take a sterile operating room and anesthesia any day of the week.

Severe, inescapable pain could drive a person batshit insane in a very short amount of time. The urge to run in circles, screaming becomes almost overwhelming. I was thisclose to doing the Batusi.

If you are ever offered a “breakthrough” dose of morphine, take it. And enjoy.

If you are ever told you need a NG (nasal-gastric) tube, brace yourself for the longest 5 seconds of your life. For me, it was like having a live wire jammed through my sinuses and being yelled at repeatedly to swallow it until it reached my stomach. How the tears did flow.

However, that same NG tube will become your best friend, gently removing disturbing quantities of unspeakably nasty fluids from you so that you can go about your business without power retching.

Oh, and by the way, if they want to put something called Hurricane Spray up your nose first, I recommend you politely decline. Imagine being water-boarded with a mix of Kool-Aid and WD-40. Or snort some cherry-flavored mace. Mmm, taste the burn.

Unless you went to med school, you do not speak doctor. Doctors may sound like they’re using the same language as you, but they’re not. They may speak slowly, clearly, and even show you pictures and diagrams. But you simply lack the necessary vocabulary. So when they describe the details of a major operation, you will hear, “I repaired your [thing] by [doing a thing], then [another thing], so the [thing] that’s attached to [the thing] no longer [does the bad thing].”

If you ever have to consider your mesentery, you have a problem. Didn’t even know you had something called a “mesentery”? Good for you.

A week out from abdominal surgery, you may closely resemble a caveman who had a bad encounter with a saber-toothed cat: unshaven, unwashed, half-naked, semi-literate, with a gash in your gut.

Or maybe Alan from The Hangover, minus the beads.

I can deal with the scars (not like I have much choice) but if I’d known I was going to wake up with Frankenbelly, I would’ve taken one last look at the original equipment.

You can lose weight insanely fast on a Gatorade and Ensure diet and not feel like you’re missing out on much. In fact, after two weeks on the stuff, a trip to the grocery store may leave you feeling like solid food is creepy and not to be trusted.

Of all the flavors I was re-introduced to along with solid food, salt was the most amazing. I’ll never forget that first potato chip. The chip was like the moon and I was Neil Armstongue. One giant leap for mouthkind.

I watched a LOT of sci-fi while lying down this past month. Here’s the awards, which I call The Hernys.

Saddest: Moon

Insanest: A Boy and His Dog

Most Underrated: Dragonslayer

The “Everything Came From This” Award: Metropolis

Most Irritating: Innerspace

Treehugginest: Silent Running

Funniest (unintentional): The 4D Man

Funniest (intentional): The Fly (1986)

Most Shatneriffic: Star Trek II.

Most Spocktastic: Star Trek IV.

Finally, when I was able to resume hobbies like personal grooming, I quickly discovered that I got a closer, faster shave with the single-blade disposable razor provided by the hospital than I did with the overpriced 5-blade contraption I have at home. TV lied to me again. One. Single. Blade. That’s all you need, my friends. The rest is marketing.

Well, there you have it. Now, ‘scuse me while I go find that long lost shaker of salt.

The first of many beasties I shot that day.

Say “cheese.”

Some random local landmark. The name of which escapes me.

We wandered into a cheese festival. Awesome! This man’s parmesan won the Best Cheese in America.

Pike Place: cool hats by a local artist.

Pike Place: gorgeous flowers by the bucketful.

Pike Place: sea creatures on ice, for a price.

The Arctic Club Hotel. Guarded by an army of walruses.

The scotsman in me was almost tempted. Wonder if they carry my tartan…

The good Chief.

Denizen of Pioneer Square.

The Underground Tour. Tour guide Amy was great.

The view from under the sidewalk.

Seattle’s original water pipes (aka hollowed out logs).

Me and one of the locals.

They do love their totems, don’t they?

Me at the oasis.

The SciFi museum & monorail.

SciFi museum detail.

Mt. Whatsitsname.

The best $2.50 I ever spent: to get from Downtown to the airport in an immaculate train. Seattlites I hope you realize how good you have it.

Click on the image for a high res version. See if you can do a Blade Runner “enhance” to spot the hidden Beatles album hanging in the room.

Front cover:

Inside:

Back Cover:

Games : Go to the Head of the Class, Rack-o, Uncle Wiggly Game, Square Mile, Easy Money, Pirate and Traveler, Game of the States, Concentration, Alfred Hitchcock’s Why, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, The Game of Life, Stratego, Magic Mary, Redskin Finger Paint, Park and Shop, Battle Cry, Broadside, Summit.

First up, some real drinking music.

Let’s hope he handed over the keys to the Volkswagen.

After 60 gallons of alcohol, even accordion music sounds great.

Next up: polkas by Papa Smurf and his smurf band (complete with a fraulein smurfette).

Somebody check the dog’s pulse.

There’s nothing like a tall frosty beverage and thick medium-rare zither.

Is it me, or is there a vibe going on here?

Ah, the 70s, when the future was all laser guns and feathered bangs.

Beware the Skexis! This one came with a mint condition poster. Sweet.

The story goes that Gershwin was inspired to write Rhapsody in Blue on the train to Boston. I’m guessing he wasn’t riding the MBTA.

If you’re a space geek like me you know that the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing is coming up next week.

July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong steps off the ladder and into history. The whole world is watching, except me. I was probably taking a nap. Hey, what do you want, I was 7 months old.

OK, flash forward to spring 1985. I’m a junior in high school and I write a report on the moon landing for US history class. It’s a decent paper, and I still have it.

Oh, how the labored teen handwriting cracks me up. Either I didn’t have a typewriter or we weren’t allowed to use them.

Kids, do you realize how much better you have it? We were writing 12-page reports in cursive. In pen. If we made a mistake at the bottom of the page, we had to re-write the whole damn page! Wite-out was for chumps.

And you gotta love those 100% manual footnotes. Forget about InDesign’s paragraph composer, this is organic copyfitting. I can still remember trying to figure out the number of lines to leave for the footnotes and using the stupid ruler to underline stuff.

Anyway, the best part about the paper was that my teacher, Dr. William Hanna, included a surprise when he returned it to me. Neil Armstrong’s autograph. Yes, that Neil Armstrong. Click for a close-up.

[REMOVED]

Dr. Hanna gave it to me just because he thought I wrote a good paper and would like to have a memento. He was an autograph collector, and I’m sure he had an amazing number of figures from American politics and popular culture. But this was beyond generous. It was a truly amazing gesture by a remarkable teacher (and published author) who instilled a love of history in me that I will have forever. Thanks again, Dr. H.

Yup, that autograph is my favorite space geek collectible, narrowly beating out my lunar module pencil sharpener.

I bought it at a library book sale around 1996 in Weymouth, MA. I think I paid $6 for the thing. The library had a whole bunch of them for sale, that they probably tossed in a dumpster at the end of the day. Mine’s in pretty good shape. It needs a good cleaning, but it plays fine for its age. No damage anywhere, other than some marker writing on one side.

Similar ones on eBay seem to be going for $20 or so.

I am quite fond of this relic, since it is the exact kind that I grew up hearing records on at school. Back in the day, these things were as ubiquitous as they were indestructible. I heard everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Peter and the Wolf on one of these beige music tanks. In my Facebook 20 Albums post, I referenced the educational joys of listening Led Zep and AC/DC in my sixth grade art class. This was the kind of turntable that brought me the dulcid tones of Robert Plant and Bon Scott.

It’ll play anything from 16 to 78 RPM.

The turntable itself gives new meaning to the phrase “Heavy Metal.” I don’t think I could dent it with a hammer.

The inside cover sports instructions you can’t lose. I love it. But they make me jealous that I don’t have the model with a microphone jack.

It even has a swanky integrated mood light, which the manual coldy refers to as “Illuminated Pilot Lamp Post.” I call it groovy.

I lost this drive last summer, and now I know exactly when. It was when I re-seeded part of the front lawn. The drive must have been in my pocket, fallen into the dirt, and gotten buried. It was in the ground for about a year, subject to plenty of water, a harsh New England winter, bugs, and who knows what else. Still, once I wiped off the dirt, it looked pretty decent. A little rusty.

Some roots growing in the strap.

Dare I plug it in and see if it still worked? Yeah, I dare. At first it wouldn’t fit into the USB port, but I scraped some rust off with my thumbnail, and voila. The thing mounted immediately, and all my old data was still there. Amazing.

I dig the retro lettering, but Mel forgot to set his drop shadow to overprint.

I just like the word “Zugspitze.” It’s actually the tallest moutain in Germany.

Has anyone seen the keys to my Star Galleon?

The back cover is the real treat. I wonder what ever became of Boogie Bonds.

I have no idea who the Tweeds were, but apparently, they had little use for pants.

Only MISS Diana Ross gets to wear her hat at a non-goofy angle.

Sly and the Family Scallop

Honey, I spent 12 hours cleaning every inch of this house today, so hand over the martini, or I’m getting medieval on your ass.

These people dance amazingly well for having no faces. Note the great grandfather of the mullet.

Oh Ella! You deserved better. It looks like they cut your silo with a spoon.

Then again, it also looks like you just ate a raw cow.

The last photo of Donnie and Marie, just before they were pulverized by an avalanche of giant mutant coconuts. Only their teeth remained.

Disco-fied = ruptured achilles tendon. Hope it was worth it.

The obligatory Herb Alpert. Someone ought to do a “where is she now?” thing. I imagine her as a little old lady stuck in pile of gray, dried up whipped cream.

A pair from the Cos.

Hey B.B., guess who stole your wallet and shoes?!

This is one of my favorites, because I love the design, and the cover has that awesome cutout so you can see thru to this…

50 guitars go south of the border, but only 15 live to tell the tale. I think they’re all drunk on tequila. Check out the one in the back looking for a cactus to go barf behind.

Daddy, what were the 80’s like?

Well, son, Reagan was president, and he made a law that everyone had to wear a mullet. We all did so much cocaine that we could watch little movies on our torsos, which showed our inner most secrets. Oh, and electric outlets all glowed with demonic rage.

This cosmic torso-llucination is worth a closer look. Let’s see if we can parse what’s going on here…

Blender of blood, bleeding. Check.

Aerial shot of boat loaded with cocaine, speeding from Coast Guard. Check.

Space shuttle blasting off with a fuel of liquid oxygen and cocaine. Check.

Corded telephone lying on the floor, probably after the user OD’d on cocaine. Check.

Patient undergoing anaesthesia. Yup.

Vector art of Earth…reversed! Whoa, I am ready for rehab.

On the back cover, Grace is about boot up her Commode64 with a copy of AngryMullet 1.0. Or she’s putting it in an incinerator. We can only hope.

Last but not least, the liner vinyl talking points. Please commit them to memory. And thanks for listening.

Here’s Johnny: Magic Moments from the Tonight Show – Johnny Carson
My parents had this when I was a wee lad. I had no idea what the Tonight Show was or who Johnny was, but it all seemed very interesting and grown-up, and thrillingly illicit, like I shouldn’t be listening to it. After all it was on WAY after my bedtime. This album was my introduction to George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Billie Holiday, Groucho Marx, and the Gershwin song that would become the wedding song for me and my wife.

Blackbeard’s Ghost, narrated by Peter Ustinov
Before the Dawn of Time, in the days before the Internet, cable, DVDs and VCRs, little kids sometimes listened to records of shows or movies. This was one of my Disney favorites, and I played it over and over. In hindsight, it was a pretty crappy, post-Walt cheapo flick. But Mr. Ustinov gives it his all, and makes a pretty fun pirate. Bonus points for some great artwork inside the LP, and Elsa Lanchester as one of the Daughters of the Bucanneers.


The Monkees Greatest Hits
I was about 7 when the Monkees TV show started showing in re-runs on TV after school. It was my favorite show for a while, and I alternated between wanting to be Mickey or Mike. I think I even tried wearing a snow hat around the house for a while. I’m pretty sure this was the first LP I ever bought. If I had any musical ability, I’d start a band called MonkeeNirvana and just play all Monkees songs in the style of Nirvana. Just ‘cuz.

The Joshua Tree – U2
Freshman year of college in Vermont. The RA on our hall drove 4 hours up to Montreal to buy this LP because it came out in Canada one day before it did in the US. An eight-hour round trip when he could’ve waited one day and bought it in town. And no one questioned whether it was worth it. I think some people even chipped in gas money. We gathered in his room for the first listen, and for the rest of my life, when I hear the first sounds of “Where the Streets Have No Name”, I can still see that LP turning on the turntable. No music was ever so important to me before or since.

Led Zeppelin II
6th grade art class. The teacher let kids bring in records to play while we did our projects. It’s a crime I can’t remember her name. Thank you Mrs. Whatsyourname! This was the first time I listened to Led Zep. “Back in Black,” was another class favorite. I’m going to write a book titled Everything I Needed to Know I learned in 6th Grade Art Class.

White Album – The Beatles
I’m imposing a one-album-per-artist rule, otherwise half the list would be Beatles and Zeppelin records. As the lovely Bobbi Fleckman once said, “There’s nothing on that goddam cover.” There doesn’t need to be, everything is inside. But you’ll have to have them all pulled out after the Savoy Truffle.

The Moon and Antarctica – Modest Mouse
The sound of breaking through the dirty ice of lost years, and coming back to life. Broken things made to work. Barely.

Babylon By Bus – Bob Marley and the Wailers
Sophomore year of college. Too many kids had been admitted and there weren’t enough dorm rooms. My roommate and I lived in a converted lounge off the stairway. Literally the 2 1/2th floor. Many people came at all times of the day or night to hang out. Many chemicals were consumed. Much great music was played. None brought such hazy joy as the sound of “Greetings!!! In the name of I…'”

Organ Concertos – Handel
The cure for attention deficit disorder is not Ritalin, it’s Handel. Sublime, soothing beauty that I self-medicated with whenever I had to focus on a difficult subject, long book, or project. It soaks up the noise of the modern world like a sponge, revealing there are truer things.

Nevermind – Nirvana
In 1991, the first time I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” I was at work. Halfway through the song, the only question was how long until I could get to the record store and buy it.

Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd
“Ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” This freaked me out at age 18. Imagine what it does to me now at 40!

The Woods – Sleater Kinney
These three ladies from the Northwest put everything I love in this disc. Hendrix and Led Zep, the Cure and the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, and on and on. Mind-melting.

Automatic for the People – R.E.M.
When my wife was my girlfriend, this was the sound of us getting “Lost in our little lives.” This is sacred music to us.

Jimi Hendrix – Concerts
Listen to this and you realize that Hendrix was put on earth by aliens, simply to mess with our heads. Like you’d give your cats catnip. Thank you, aliens!

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – Gil Scott Heron
The lyrics on this album were like a bucket of cold water in the face of my comfortable youth. Raw, honest, angry, but always grounded in love and humanity. “We deal in too many externals, brother.”

OK Computer – Radiohead
In 1997, I fell so deeply into this album that for a year, it seemed like there was no other music. “Phew, for a minute there, I lost myself.”

Regatta de Blanc – Police
E-Yo E-YAY E-Yay Yo. The other ones are complete bullshit. Seriously, this cassette never left my walkman for a month. I was the king of auto-reverse.

Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea – PJ Harvey
I love New York and I don’t get to go there as often as I’d like. Polly Jean takes me there.

Morrsion Hotel – The Doors
“How many of you people really know you’re alive?” Morrison was a drunk, and dead at age 27, but I think he knew he was alive. Occasionally he lets me know I’m alive. This one would make the list if it contained only “Peace Frog” and 30 minutes of silence.

The Story of the Clash
20 years ago I was 20…living away from home for the first time…on Cape Cod for the summer…driving around with an anarchic (and now long lost) buddy Matt…in his shitty Chevy Nova…and in love with a girl living in Japan…reading Tom Robbins. Anything was possible. This was the soundtrack.

Honorable mentions
(deep breath)
everything the Beatles did from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road, everything Zeppelin did, period (well, maybe not In Through the Out Door), everything U2 did from Boy to Zooropa, The Doors, Mellow Gold, Back in Black, Dirt, Blind Melon, Ten, Bleach, In Utero, Blonde on Blonde, Catch A Fire, Moon Pix, everything Sleater-Kinney did, Grace, August & Everything After, The Trinity Session, Pyromania, Apostrophe, Garbage, On & On, Late For The Sky, Ritual De Lo Habitual, everything Hendrix did, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Disintegration, Wish, everything Liz Phair did until that ridiculous album, everything Modest mouse has done, everything Morphine did, Graceland, Legalize It, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, Animals, Surfer Rosa & Come On Pilgrim, Doolittle, 1999, Purple Rain, Sign O’ The Times, everything REM did with Bill Berry, everything Radiohead has done, Rage Against The Machine, Let it Bleed, Tattoo You, Sticky Fingers, King of Rock, Moving Pictures, Never Mind The Bollocks, Superunknown, Life’s Too Good, Suicidal Tendencies, Solitude Standing, Electric Warrior, Temple Of The Dog, Tenacious D, Last Splash, Wild Planet, thickfreakness, everything the Police did, Oh Inverted World, Is This It, everything the White Stripes have done, everything Tool has done, everything Van Halen did WITH DAVE, Astral Weeks, Moondance, Violent Femmes, The Mollusk.

The only problems are:

a) utter implausibility and ridiculousness

b) one slip-up in the last paragraph where the author misuses the word “accent” instead of “assent”

c) the use of the phrase “Like I said,” which sounds nothing like what a British solicitor would use, and more like an American hoodlum

d) The law firm mentioned has no website.

e) At the address of said law firm is actually a dry cleaner.

Enjoy.

Ludwin & Associates.
Rowan House
274 Banbury Road,
Oxford OX1 4JD.

Tel:+44 xxx xxx xxxx
+44 xxx xxx xxxx
Fax: +44 xxx xxx xxxx

Good day: Mike Rankin,

This is a personal E-mail directed to you and I request that it be treated as such.
I am Barrister thomas anthony, a solicitor at law.
I am the personal attorney/sole executor to the late Mr Gerald Rankin, hereinafter referred to as ‘my client’ who worked as an independent oil magnate in my country and who died in a plane crash with his immediate family in February 1998.

Since the death of my client in 1998, I have written several letters to the embassy with an intent to locate any of his extended relatives whom shall be claimants/beneficiaries of his abandoned personal estate and all such efforts have been to no avail.
More-so,I have received official letters in the last few weeks suggesting a likely proceeding for confiscation of his abandoned personal assets in line with existing laws by the bank in which my client deposited a notably high amount of money.
On this note i decided to search for a credible person and finding that you bear a similar last name, I was urged to contact you, that I may,with your consent, present you to the “trustee” bank as my late client’s surviving family member so as to enable you put up a claim to the bank in that capacity as a next of kin of my client.
I find this possible for the fuller reasons that you bear a similar last name with my client making it a lot easier for you to put up a claim in that capacity.
I propose that 35% of the net sum will accrue to you at the conclusion of this deal in so far as I do not incure further expenses.

Therefore, to facilitate the immediate transfer of this funds, you need, first to contact me via my private email:barrister_thomas288@

Satchmo Claus. I could do without the cringe-worthy reading of ‘Twas the Night Before, and the tacked-on Wonderful World. But the rest is pure joy, especially Zat You Santy Claus?

No commercial dog is going to ruin my Christmas.

We got this in a one of those listening stations at a gift store on the Cape. Usually those things seem like cheesy ripoffs, but not this time.  Really pretty instrumental stuff. Transports you a million miles from stuff like “Black Friday.”

These are a little overexposed, but hey, my last name is Rankin. Paul Frees as the Burgermeister used to terrify me (along with the Bumble) now I’m trying not to turn into him. Quick, somebody give me a yo-yo!

Comfort food on a CD. Put this (or I assume any of the previous 7 volumes) and the room immediately warms up. People smile, and it smells like something delicious is cooking. I get the urge to whittle. I don’t know how this happens, but it does.

Unbelievably weird and poetic cautionary tale about the consequences of actually getting what you wish for. Voodoo, a baby named Almond Joy, a rooster turned into a 1965 Thunderbird, the Blue Dwarf of the Clear-cut Forest, the Androgyny of the Rusted Industrial Belt, everything you need for a perfect holiday.

Awesome surfstrumental Xmas album. Holy ’60s Santa Claus, Batman. Before you know it, you’ll be Twisting to “Frosty the Snowman” and Frugging to “Jingle Bells.” The highlight for me is the insanely cheery quote of The Beatles’ “I Feel Fine” blended into “Rudolph.” It’s the only time I’ve ever heard anyone play the Beatles played better than they played themselves. Blasphemy, I know.

Ella is and always will be The Voice to my ears. I’d listen to her reading a grocery list. Songs you’ve heard a trillion times are renewed, and she owns them. Playing this disc is makes me jealous of my parents, who grew up with this music.

Put a little JD in your egg nog and put on this slide of Rat Perfection. As someone who would give his right arm to have been at one of their shows at the Sands, this is a must own for me. I’ve never heard Frank so relaxed and happy as he is on I Believe, with just the right touch of snap and swagger. Even the schmaltz of Marshmallow World goes down easy. And Dino crooning in fake German, and generally drunkifying “Rudolph”? Cannot be topped. Except for…

The King of Christmas CDs in our house. We discovered this about 15 years ago, and instantly fell in love with it. Put it on when you’re wrapping gifts at 2 AM. 18 perfect cuts from the likes of Louis Jordan, Canned Heat, John Lee Hooker, Lightening Hopkins, and Sonny Boy Williamson, who gets busted for peeking at “what did she bought me for Santy-claw?” This is the first, and last Xmas music we listen to each year.

Here’s another cheesy piece of C’s history, the Celtics Phone from 1982, same year as Celtic Pride and “Beat LA.” Click the picture for a larger view.

Recounts the offseason and some of the regular season. Interesting that Red and Jan Volk re-signed the entire Big Three, and traded for DJ in the same off-season. Quite an accomplishment.

As promised, here is Part 1 (7 minutes, 7.1 MB mp3) of the LP commemorating the Celtics 1984 Championship season, Not To Be Denied.

Click the front and back covers for larger views. If I were designing the cover it would’ve just been a broken pair of Rambis glasses and an oxygen mask.

The record is composed of highlights and interviews, narrated by none other the the Big O himself, Glenn Ordway, who while only half as tall as Larry Legend, clearly dominated Bird in the ‘stache category.

Check out the price. Of course, we didn’t pay that. We paid the astronomical price of $40 a ticket.

Game F was Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals vs. the Sixers, my first Celtics game at the Garden. The REAL Garden. Game G was the “Beat LA” game.

May 23, 1982. I went with my dad, who had bore firsthand witness to the ’60s dynasty. Dad had connections with a ticket agency down the street from the Garden so we could (almost) always get seats to big games. They weren’t always great seats, but at least we were in the building.

For this game (and Game 5, which was a joyous time), we had obstructed view seats, under the balcony. While it felt like we were close to the action, we couldn’t even see the rims, only the bottom half of the nets. Kind of like this.

So there was the incredibly weird experience of seeing a guy launch a shot, having the ball disappear for two seconds, then seeing it come through the net. Or if the guy missed all we saw was the players jump up out of sight to where we thought the rebound must have gone. This is a pretty agonizing way to watch a Game 7, with the season on the line. A Sixer would launch a shot and I’d hold my breath hoping not to see the net swish. In the end, way too many Sixer swishes led to a 120-106 Celtics’ loss, ending the season.

Here’s the box.

The things that stand out in my memory are

1. A leather-lunged woman to our right screaming “DE-FENSE!” so loud it scared me. Her rooting rage was such that I think she actually wanted to attack the Sixers physically. The Garden in a game like this was where you FELT noise more than heard it. The effect of all those human beings crowded on top of each other, screaming their lungs out was incredible. The air vibrated all around. It made your skin tingle. You could scream until you lost your voice and you would never hear yourself. Don’t think I’ll ever have that experience again.

2. Sixer guard Andrew Toney hitting shot after shot after shot. It felt like he never missed. How I hated him with every fiber of my 13 year old being. He seemed so fast, so perfect, like he wasn’t human. 34 points. He broke my heart that day.

3. The “Beat LA” chant starting up. When it was clear the Celts were done for, there was that first sadness. Your mind races, trying to think of a way out of defeat: “We make three half court shots, immediately foul them, they miss all the free throws…” And then the denial breaks apart, and you fall back into your seat (for the first time since half time). My dad said something to put it in perspective, like we had all the banners, and the Sixers played better and deserved to win.

And then there was the sound of the chant. Somebody in that room took the pain of 15,320 people, and turned it inside out with two words. Defeat turned into pride. Sadness turned to smiles. All the energy that we wanted to pour into a victory celebration had no outlet until that chant started.

And when it did start, it went like lightning through the room. It was exhilarating. EVERYONE “got it” instantly. This was badass sportsmanship. We knew the Sixers deserved to win, and gave them credit.

We also all respected and identified way more with Philadelphia and their team, than those sissies on the west coast. Boston, New York, Philly, we all hate each other in sports, but it’s a brotherly hate. LA might as well be a different country. And we now wanted to see the Sixers crush the Lakers and legitimize our defeat.

So I joined in with every last bit of my hoarse throat. I don’t know if any sound came out, but I tried as hard as I could. I don’t remember if my dad chanted or if he just smiled.

It has to be the most satisfying feeling following a loss ever. Better than 99% of all the victories I’ve ever witnessed. Not happy, but cathartic. That chant cleansed us of all the bad vibes. It kept coming back as we all filed down the ramps and out of the Garden. Yes, it sucked to lose, we wanted back-to-back championships. We were sure that the Celts were going to come back from being down 3-1, just like the year before. It wasn’t to be. But if we had to lose, being part of that unique moment in sports history, being one of the voices in that first “Beat LA,” is still pretty damn cool.