Ocelopotamus

News, culture, and politics. Not necessarily in that order.

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Entries Tagged as 'New Wave'

Music Break: The Bongos, “The Bulrushes”

March 4th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Culture, Music, New Wave, Video

I still love this song to death after all these years — Richard Barone and the Bongos are definitely one of the most underappreciated bands of their era. Such a great, distinctive sound. Play this song three times and it will be stuck in your head for weeks. Richard Barone on the video above: The […]

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New Music from Dan: I Was a Cub Scout, Alphabeat, and The Helio Sequence

June 24th, 2008 · Comments Off on New Music from Dan: I Was a Cub Scout, Alphabeat, and The Helio Sequence · Culture, Music, New Wave, TV, Video

My old college pal Dan (well, actually we got to be friends after college, but that’s a long story), who was the master of the new-music mix tape back in the middle-eighties, turned up on Facebook recently and has been freshening up my iTunes with all sorts of fun new stuff. So here are a […]

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Saturday, May 24: The Relaunch of Planet Earth Chicago at Subterranean

May 15th, 2008 · Comments Off on Saturday, May 24: The Relaunch of Planet Earth Chicago at Subterranean · Chicago, Culture, Music, New Wave, News, Nightclubs, Planet Earth Chicago

Here’s another very fun event on the horizon: What are you doing next Saturday night? Feel like going New Wave dancing with some of the most flamboyant and fabulous Earthlings in Chicago, at a groovy new location? Here’s what I’m talking about: Some of you know that over the last eight years I’ve been heavily […]

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Wild Puppet: Kate Pierson Plays “Speed Quiz” on Pancake Mountain

May 8th, 2008 · Comments Off on Wild Puppet: Kate Pierson Plays “Speed Quiz” on Pancake Mountain · Comedy, Culture, Music, New Wave, TV, Video

Via the Planet X mailing list, here’s Ocelopotamus’s moment of video bliss for this week. I’m not familiar with Pancake Mountain, but all you really need to know is it’s Kate from The B-52’s and a goat puppet named Rufus Leaking.   And here’s the 411 on Pancake Mountain from Wikipedia. Sounds like a very […]

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With Six You Get Blogroll

April 22nd, 2008 · 3 Comments · Blogroll, Blogs, Books, Chicago, Culture, Internet, Journal, Meta, Music, Neo-Futurists, New Wave, Politics, Vegetarian & Vegan

So yesterdoodle, as part of my ongoing efforts to get the Ocelopotamus back to full health and vitality, I finally got around to overhauling the blogroll (that’s that tall snaky thing over to the right that looks like a list of nonsensical words and phrases!) with some links that I’ve been accumulonimbusing for a stoat’s […]

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B-52’s Funplex Roundup

April 9th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Chicago, Culture, Film, LGBT, Music, New Wave, News, TV, Video

So the new B-52’s album Funplex has been out for a couple of weeks now and is getting hot-pink rave reviews everywhere. Of course all during the recent period when I was busy not blogging I was wanting to post all sorts of breathless updates and links about it. But the truth is Astralwerks seems […]

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Blue Angel, Red Hot

April 8th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Blogs, Culture, LGBT, Music, New Wave

The folks over at Popdose have a nice feature up about Cyndi Lauper’s early rockabilly band, Blue Angel, including a few songs from the sole Blue Angel album in Mavis Pickles the Third format. I love almost everything Ms. Lauper has done, but I have to say: the Blue Angel album is just transcendent and […]

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The ABC’s of Early 80’s Mo-Romance

February 15th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Culture, Fiction, Film, LGBT, Lit, Music, New Wave, TV, Video

And now for something a little on the lighter side — and a nice follow-up to Valentine’s Day. ABC’s “All of My Heart” + Brideshead Revisited = high school drama club heaven, circa 1982. Possibly the best combination since peanut butter and chocolate … the British horror of peanut butter notwithstanding. (Note: This may not […]

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Mid-January Frosted Mini-Roundup

January 17th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Adobe, Blogs, Cats, Comedy, Comics, Culture, Internet, Journal, LGBT, Meta, Mr. Blue, Music, New Wave, News, Online Communities, Politics, Roundup, Social Media/Social Networking, Tech, The Economy, Stupid, Theater, Video

I’m starting to worry that Ocelopotamus has become like that stock old-man character from sitcoms and things, who falls asleep for a while and then wakes up sputtering and tries to pick the conversation up wherever it was five minutes ago, as if no time has passed. On the other hand, it’s heartening that I […]

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Music: The Swingers, “Counting the Beat”

January 3rd, 2008 · 3 Comments · Blogs, Culture, Music, New Wave, Video

Crazy busy with work this week, but here’s a little video fun to keep the Ocelopotamus happy — Phil Judd’s post-Split Enz group the Swingers, doing “Counting the Beat”! Good heavens, I love this song. It was one of my weekly staples back when I was spinning at Club Foot (Sunday nights, “New Toys for […]

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Roundup: Flight of the Humpback Edition

November 19th, 2007 · Comments Off on Roundup: Flight of the Humpback Edition · Apple, Blogs, Books, Climate Change, Comics, Culture, Feminism, Fiction, Film, History, HIV/AIDS, Human Rights, Journalism, LGBT, Lit, Macintosh, Media, Music, Nature, New Wave, Politics, Religion, Software, Tech, The Economy, Stupid, Torture

Markos from Daily Kos has a new gig writing opinion pieces for Newsweek, and he’s been in rare form with his first couple of efforts. From this week’s column: “In his first Inaugural Address, Ronald Reagan remarked that ‘government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.’ While the quip has provided […]

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Roundup: Monkey in the Bathroom Edition

November 6th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Activism, Apple, Blogs, Comics, Culture, Essays, Food, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Journalism, Labor, LGBT, Macintosh, Music, Nature, New Wave, News, Politics, Religion, Roundup, Science Fiction, Spirituality, Tech, Terrorism, Torture, TV, Vegetarian & Vegan

I can’t scrape together enough time at the moment to do OcPot’s usual painstakingly well-rounded roundup — I’m seeing The Waterboys at the Park West tonight, woo-hoo! — but I wanted to get some of these links up before they fossilized. So here’s a charmingly slapdash, quick-and-dirty roundup. In ripped fishnet and high heels. The […]

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B-52’s Sign with Astralwerks; New Album Funplex Slated for Release Feb. 26, 2008

November 5th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Culture, Music, New Wave, News

Get your wig on, girl! According to the official B-52’s site, the 2’s have finally inked a deal to release their much anticipated new album Funplex — the first full studio album from the band since Good Stuff in 1992. Produced by Steve Osborne, Funplex will be released by the very groovy Astralwerks label, home […]

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Roundup: Where All the Corn Cobs Are Edition

October 29th, 2007 · Comments Off on Roundup: Where All the Corn Cobs Are Edition · Advertising, Books, Climate Change, Comics, Culture, Death Penalty, Fantasy, Fiction, Film, Food, Health, Healthcare Crisis, HIV/AIDS, Human Rights, Internet, Labor, Law, LGBT, Music, Nature, New Wave, News, Organic Food, Pets, Politics, Roundup, Science, Tech

In order to keep these roundups fresh as a spring daisy, I usually discard any links I’ve been keeping around that are more than a week old. But since this is OcPot’s first roundup in more than six weeks, I’m extending the freshness window slightly to include a few things that were just too good […]

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