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Bad Ass or Just Crazy?

It’s Rosh Hashanah! Happy Jewish New Year!!! To all the members o’ the tribe, Happy 5770! In honor of this high holiday, we have the 1984 track “The Shofar That Almost Missed Rosh Hashanah” as read by a pixie on helium.  Listen and delight as plucky Jewish schoolkid Barbara goes up against a sticky-fingered goy with a case of shofar envy! Show and tell was never so full of intrigue.

From a set of 45 rpm records by Graded Press; Bible Festivals: Today and Long Ago.

Download (6:09 / 10.9 MB)

The fine print: All downloads are provided for entertainment purposes only. VGG.COM not responsible for any religious epiphanies from listening to mp3s.

As Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black, “Damn, I guess I’ll have to buy the White Album again.” 09-09-09 is the big welcome to the future for the Beatles. Beatles Rock Band is coming out. New Beatle CDs with better sound quality.( I can hardly wait to buy them and rip them to MP3 and listen to them through tiny ear buds.) Well if you find yourself not getting enough of the Fab Four this week, then try out the Food on the Grill. The world’s only Beatle themed restaurant (that I know of). Get EAT-lemania!

Travel back in time with us from 2009 to 1999 with the hot new reality show The 1999 House, which follows an real-life modern family living in a house painstakingly restored to late-’90s conditions. Watch them struggle with decade-old technology as they learn to cope,  learn to care, and learn a little something about… themselves.

The Moon Landings Were Faked!

Confirming what for years had been only a persistent rumor, undercover VGG.com reporters have determined that the July 1969 Apollo-program moon landings were indeed an elaborate government deception. Forty years of lies ends today!

We have the EVIDENCE!

Today’s post is to help celebrate Bastille Day, the day of the French Revolution when the French triumphantly stormed the hated prison, and proudly emptied it of its forgers, lunatics, and the Marquis deSade. And what Frenchman speaks to us so loudly across history but that famous French mime, the Ur-mime Marcel Marceau (1923-2007). And yet mime was only one of his many talents. You know, like how David Hasselhoff thinks he can sing, or have a non-Knight Rider-related career. Welp, Marceau also saw himself as a visual artist. Below is a bizarre, epic, apocalyptic drawing he did that appeared in a program for one of his shows in 1973. Despite a certain “I am 12 years old” quality to the drawing, it appears to have been done in 1961, when Marceau was about 38. Hmm.

Also, sorry ’bout the rusty staples in the center.

click to embiggen

Here’s the left and right pages in extry-huge format so you can really appreciate the fine detail.

(click pix to embiggen)

Allow us to try to narrate Marceau’s dark vision, his “Marceaucalypse,” if you will: As a massive earthquake causes mighty skyscrapers to lean and teeter dangerously and a tornado and fires ravage the city, and a large ocean liner sinks in the background, the terrified populace plunge to their certain deaths from the buildings or rush into the streets where they are attacked by bats and escaped zoo, or quite possibly circus, animals. Under a sky filled with strange planets, angry and helpless soldiers futilely throng the streets colliding with impromptu religious parades of every stripe, where citizens turn to a nonexistent God to save them, moments before they stumble into a river of hungry crocodiles. While silent movie star Charlie Chaplin cavorts in the crowd, the twin angels of comedian Harpo Marx and Bip (Marcel’s everyman mime character) begin their happy ascension to heaven under the gaze of several large, floating, disembodied eyes with great lashes. Also, there’s an owl.

Enjoy!

I got you this book about how you’re dooomed. Hope ya like it!

Love,
Yer citizens!

from:    Lindsey <warrantyhq@gmail.com>
to:    thevggs(at)vgg.com
date:    Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 7:50 PM
subject:    Link Exchange

Dear Webmaster,

I visited your site http://www.vgg.com and liked it a lot. I have a related website and I would like to know if you would be interested in exchanging links with my site. This will help both your site and mine to gain search engine popularity…Would you be interested? If so, please consider listing us here: http://www.vgg.com/links/ Our text link details are:

Title: Extended Warranties
Description: Protect your car with a comprehensive extended warranty from Warranty Headquarters.
URL: http://www.warrantyheadquarters.com

Then let me know where our link is located on your site and send me your information if you would like a link back.

Thanks,
Lindsey
WarrantyHeadquarters.com
16443 N. 91st St. C103
Scottsdale, AZ 85260

Note: If you would like not to receive any further communications from me, please paste this link into your browser: ?id=c9QAnVrQq2a
Or simply respond to this email with Remove as the subject.

Jason Torchinsky <jason(at)vgg.com>
to    Lindsey <warrantyhq(at)gmail.com>
cc    thevggs(at)vgg.com
date    Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 8:01 PM
subject    Re: Link Exchange

ABSOLUTELY.

We can’t think of a better synergy than our comedy website and your borderline-scam auto extended warranty site! This is truly a match made in heaven, and I for one am thankful, profoundly, that the fates and technology conspired to bring us together. The mind races with the possibilities of what we can achieve together– our site providing mild entertainment, a brief, furtive distraction from the day, while your endeavor swoops in and gives them that nearly useless extended warranty to all the shut-ins and half-wits that don’t know any better and comprise our readership.

It’s really amazing. Is there any way I could get you guys to call my cellphone more? I have 30+ year old cars I think the factory warranties may just have run out, so I’d love to know about it more, and possibly constantly. Do you offer a program where, instead of the constant phone calls, you can send someone to sleep on my lawn and remind me about your extended warranties?

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to seek us out and partner with us. To complete this, please send your link on acid-free archival paper along with an link-exchange fee payment of $1500.

Thanks again!

Gus Levy
VGG Web Outreach and Synergy Admin

MP3 Monday! Every “Monday,” (that we feel like it) there will be a new MP3 file from our large, large collection of deservedly obscure vinyl, lovingly hand-ripped to the convenient MP3 format by our hardworking staff of Chinese prisoners! Our grandkids told us that the MP3 is “the shizzle” all the schoolies are giddy for and that’s good enough for us!

This week starts us off with a bang- literally! The title track of the 1966 album The Crazy Horse Saloon of Paris by Albert Van Dam & Orchestra kicks off with a champagne cork a-popping! The back cover helpfully informs us The Crazy Horse Saloon is “the most sophisticated strip-tease club in the world.” However, the album cover leads one more to believe it’s the most batshit loony strip-tease club in the world. So does the galloping pace and the circus – freak – meets – speed – freak instrumentation of the title track. Try to listen to it and imagine women stripping to it. It’s extremely difficult.

Another reason they’re off their rocker is exemplified by another liner note quote: “…the audience is unfailingly captivated by the ‘plot’ as well as the girl.” Um, sure. That’s why guys go to strip clubs: the overpowering hunger for narrative!

Enjoy the whole album- courtesy of… um… us!

The Crazy Horse Saloon of Paris – Albert Van Dam & Orchestra (25Mb)

This has been a long time coming, folks. I’m sorry  to say, but as of April first, 2009, the Van Gogh-Goghs  are no more. We’re calling it quits and breaking up. We’ve milked this cow for all she’s worth, and all our yanking won’t squeeze another drop out. We don’t perform, we don’t write, and we don’t update our site (as you may have noticed). We’ve drifted apart as colleagues, collaborators, and even friends. We have newer, bigger, more important things on our plates these days. Adult things: raising our new babies, attending graduate school, running businesses- where are we supposed to find the time for this nonsense anymore? It used to be fun, and now it’s a chore: and that is a sign to stop we can no longer ignore. All good things come to an end, that’s just how  it goes. It was fun, we loved ya, now beat it, amscray.

Don’t weep, my friends, we’ll always have Paris. Also, it makes you look like a total wuss.

Jason is joining another sketch comedy group, Actual Size, under the excellent direction of Corey, a former star on the Buffy spinoff Angel. He’s hoping to introduce them to the joys of the Second-City/Del Close brand of Improv comedy. He will also be playing trombone with Ronnie James Dio on his comeback album and forthcoming tour.  Charles is going on a long overdue speaking tour for Toastmasters International and will release his long awaited nonfiction books: Double Down: Power Poker for Profit, Double Down II: Perfect Pai-Gow for Playaz, Building the Perfect Resume, and E-xtra E-ffective E-mails.

Deeply concerned about the dangers of cyberspace and the corrosive effect of modern technology on family life, Rob and his family will be moving to Intercourse, Pennsylvania to join the Amish community where Rob will make wooden cabinets for kerosene space heaters. Alan is opening a drug counseling clinic whose profits will go to the Homes for Feral, Ugly Kittens foundation (HFUK).  T. Mike is running for state senate under the new Conservative Christian Coalition Party (CCCP) on a platform of eliminating burdensome child safety regulations. Galen is splitting his time between Kill Your Television and the Euthanize Feral, Ugly Kittens foundation (EFUK).

Also,

April Fool.