Volume 1, Issue 1 April 14th, 1995 _____________________ | ------------------- | Conceived, created, and birthed by: || || Francesca Parker || UTOPIA || (flparker@midway.uchicago.edu) || || Kari Bauer || PARKWAY[tm] || (klbauer@midway.uchicago.edu) || || Kate Pickering | ------------------- | (kate@snafu.mit.edu) --------------------- | | | | Contents: | | | | | | | | o Despots' Log . . . . o The Bruce Portion of the Show: . . . . -Bruce McCulloch's _Shame-Based Man_ -Bruce LaBruce's "Dirty Little Movie": _Super 8 1/2_ o Joshua Fried: The Wizard of Analog Violators of o Uncle Androo furnishes the Copyright Laws -Sorbet- in Every Nation o Peoria, IL: Road Trip to the Center of and State the Solar System o CONTEST: What Reality Means to Me o Grotesque Easter Treats, direct from the Utopia Parkway diner *PLEASE BRING GRATUITOUS WEIRDNESS TO THE SERVICE ENTRANCE* ------UP--------------------------------------------------------------- DESPOTS' LOG: Volume 1 Issue 1 Well then. WELCOME TO UTOPIA PARKWAY[tm]!!! Just wipe the roadkill on the front mat, and come on in! Wow. At first, it was just a dream. Now it's a completely inconcrete collection of 1's and 0's that exists only as energy. Who'd'a thought we'd ever see the day? With more than twice as many subscribers as we'd let Kate estimate, with twice as many GIFs in our account as the U of C knows about, with twice as many Bruces as we ever thought would grace our virtual pages, here we are. It's gonna be a good Friday. We'd like to note that we've been, like, *totally* loving the subscription requests. Don't think cleverness isn't noticed and appreciated. And don't think we won't stoop to play favorites if push comes to shove. We've worked out a brownie point system that rivals the proof of Fermat's last theorem... Just to mention, we don't expect most issues to be this long. We just couldn't bear to cut out any more of the Joshua Fried interview. And Peoria (the adventure and the cereal), in all of its vacuous glory, swelled up and claimed more than its fair share of bandwidth. Retorts were useless, entreaties were unsuccessful. It was ugly, but the beast is dead. The city itself, on the other hand, remains, stubbornly, right where we left it. That's next month... So tell your peers, tell your parents, tell your employers and/or employees and patrons! Tell your fish, your mailman, the personalities in your head that aren't reading along! Tell your enemies, tell your friends (real and imaginary) - heck, tell your television if it's your only friend, we're not particular - _Utopia Parkway_: subscribe, or live a life of regret. POST-PUBLICATON PARTY AT WAL-THING!!! Franny, Kari & Kate ------UP--------------------------------------------------------------- *The Bruce Portion of the Show* BRUCE, part the first. Bruce McCulloch, of the Kids in the Hall, released his first album, "Shame Based Man" this past Tuesday, April 11th. It would be ludicrous of us to attempt to match the reviewing frenzy taking place AT THIS MOMENT (ohh! and this one! and that one! that one, too!..sorry.) on the alt.tv.kids-in-hall newsgroup. But let us paraphrase: GO BUY IT. Right now, before you kiss mother nighty-nights, before you finish your pudding, before you pudding your Finnish (rein it *IN*, would you!), BEFORE YOU ROLL YOUR EYES IN DISGUST AT THE LAST COMMENT ("Wow! They must really mean it!"). Well, snookums and sweetie-pies all, we *do* mean it. With great seriousness, it has been recommended most highly by everyone who's voiced an opinion. And these are not people who shy from criticizing the boys' post-Kids projects (let's just say, if SNL had emotions, they would be hurt). So we add our names to the list. To summarize: Bruce is a stud. Love him, and no one will get hurt. P.S. In a recent on-line interview session, Bruce was heard to type: "I love of course the tragicly hip, the black crowes, they might be giants and all that other stuff that you like too." The man has taste. *We're* convinced. (direct link to _UP_/KITH page, http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kmpicker/kith.html) BRUCE, twice (*and* thrice, if you get hyper-technical on us) Bruce LaBruce, that darling of the cultural world, that denizen of the screen, that boytoy of the Republican Party, has a film out. And we do mean OUT. In case you can't get to the WWW page (http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kmpicker/) to read all the peachy reviews, Super 8 1/2 is a "pseudo-docu-porno" film that contorts the roles of filmmaker and film subject, not to mention the camera angle, until it's hard to tell which end is up. Or whose. And, like most things that induce this reaction, the journey is as fun as the destination. If you're interested in seeing a super-intelligent, marvelously witty, peachy keen film, peppered with a dusting of explicit sex scenes, and with a cameo by BUDDY COLE, this is the movie for you. GO GO GO!! The one, rather large, barrier between you and fulfillment at the hands of Bruce LaBruce, is that, as a non-conventional family movie, Super 8 1/2 doesn't show all that often - or very far south. It was in New York for the first two weeks of March, and here in Chicago for a week at the beginning of April. Keep an eye out, and see it if you can, 'cause we suspect this one won't be released on video. And, if you do go, laugh a lot. (direct link to the _UP_/Super 8.5 page, http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kmpicker/super.html) "These are the Bruces we know, we know, these are the Bruces we know..." ------UP--------------------------------------------------------------- JOSHUA FRIED composes, performs, records, produces, and collaborates in video, film, dance and performance art. Fried's recording "Jimmy Because" (with guest guitarist Fred Frith) was released on Atlantic Records, and he is credited as re-mix producer on dance records by They Might Be Giants, Chaka Khan, and Ofra Haza. "Travelogue," a piece Fried recently presented at the TWEED New Works Festival in New York, is written for two synchronized audio tape tracks and one live performer. A Friedian back-up tape, heard only by the audience, accompanies the vocalist, who in turn is asked to imitate pre-recorded - and completely unfamiliar - voices played over headphones, with every word, pitch and intonation intact, and with no lag time whatever. This last requirement makes the task quite impossible, and the result produces a bizarre unknown language. Needless to say, a person can perform "Travelogue" only once. ****** up: Your music is both unusual and larger than the sound alone. Take Travelogue for example, which is a visual as well as an audient experience. Would you consider yourself a performance artist or are you more accurately defined as a musician? jf: Until recently, I called everything that I did "music", and I left it to other people to call it performance art, but then I realized that there are grants that I can only get if I call what I do "Performance Art." Well then, godammit, "I am a Performance Artist", do you know what I mean? So I finally admitted to myself that, yeah, it is sort of a hybrid. "Travelogue", because it's a one time only thing, obviously is only fully "Travelogue" when it's the live event. But I'm not about to say to you, "Oh, I discount the visual", or, "Oh, I discount...any of it." I'm not that rigid. The thing I've always said is, since I'm doing it, I don't need to label it. And it does sort of fall between the cracks, because it's much more music; I mean, it falls into the category of performance art if you want it to, but my overall work, I see as a composer, and I'm just using these performative elements because I *want* to. And I like the idea that as composers we can use these performance elements; and, you know, it's hardly new. The Fluxus people were creating pieces of music which involved bringing a bale of hay for the piano to eat. up: You're a performer, also? jf: For years I performed with tape loops, and had this sort of one-man, danceable, electronic, dub, reggae act. And I performed in clubs all over the place, especially in New York, but in other cities as well. And I did double bills with the Giants, I opened for Ministry at Irving Plaza, performed solo at places like Mudd Club and the Limelight, and Danceteria and the Pyramid Club, and essentially - I don't know if you're familiar with dub? up: Not sure. jf: Well, dub is sort of the art of remixing reggae records. And the early dub records were in a way much more imaginative than reggae remixes are now, or even dance floor remixes are now. It was really sort of a subtractive kind of remixing where background and foreground were reversed and a very artful sense of phrasing and mixing and perception and space were employed. The idea is you have these on-going, multiple tracks running, and, as a mixer, one juggles the various elements in and out according to some pattern that is not dictated by the structure of the song, but by some other thing. And what I would do is create my own grooves on these multi-channel tape loops on an old reel-to-reel, and these tape loops would run, and I would do processing and mixing of the tape loops live, in front of people, sometimes with vocals, sometimes processing my voice, mixing and processing and echoing and gating and dividing and multiplying the sounds on the tape loops in a fashion that was pretty musical and pretty danceable, and I was very dynamic up there, and moving and totally getting into it, and this I performed in all kinds of clubs for years. So most of my music has been performed by me. "Travelogue" is sort of a newer wave. up: Where did the idea for "Travelogue" come from - form as well as content? jf: Well, first of all, I make no claims that it's original - it's not. My point is, let me do a great piece using this technique. Similar things have been done - no one's quite done it this way. But the idea of responding to headphones? That's been done by various experimental people. I heard about it because there a party game that was played by Iris Rose and some other people involved with her performance group, Watchface, where they would pass around walkman headphones and listen to the Nancy Sinatra's Greatest Hits album and watch each other sing along to songs that they didn't know - singing *right* along, and forcing themselves to sing, sing, sing, so that it became, like, this crazy gibberish, and the people who were observing would just roll on the floor with laughter, and it was uproarious. And when I heard about this party game, I said, "We have to perform this." So we formed a group called Nancy. And Nancy was a threesome - we've had some membership changes, which, actually, I think makes it cooler, 'cause it makes it more like a real group! And Nancy is much more of a comedic thing than "Travelogue." In Nancy, we had the same members, obviously, so we'd make tapes for each other, and we'd get people to do medleys for us. Anyway, I, when I wanted to do sort of a longer, trumped-up piece for my own career concerns, I wanted to go back to this Nancy technique, but do a kind of serious piece, where I would carefully tailor a tape, it would have a lot of spoken word, and I would do a back-up tape to go with it. up: How did you deal with the difficulties of preparing back-up for a not-entirely-predictable voice? jf: It's a challenge. But I think people would be surprised if they understood just how exacting I am about the results that I want. It sounds crazy, because so much of it is unpredictable, but I have a very narrow notion of just how much gibberish is too much, and how much is not enough. You know, I want 94% gibberish, but if it's 98% gibberish, that's not right. But it's because it comes, very honestly, of that technique. up: Where does the name for "Travelogue" come from? jf: The piece was partially inspired by a trip to Europe and the whole idea of disorientation. I sometimes put this in program notes: "The title refers to feelings of dislocation, alienation, exhilaration and despair experience by travellers--and everyone else, for that matter, at one time or another." I think the title works. It's also a low-key "cool" way of describing something potentially very high-gear and hot, and I like that. up: You touched on working in New York, and all of the people you've worked with. You move in the same circle as a lot of the people involved with the Giants, as opening acts, Hello cd's, etc. But you're also part of a more progressive performance community. How do you feel about the various musical communities in New York right now and how you fit into them? jf: Well, there's a lot of different musical cliques. New York is huge, there's a lot going on, and yet it's a small, interconnected world. I've danced between a lot of different niches in New York. And everywhere. I'm a little bit like a fractal - no matter how finely you sub-divide the different categories, I'm always going to fall between the cracks. And I'm highly atypical of the Giant's universe, because I'm dance-oriented. And a lot of the people who have been associated with them have had no idea what to make of me. So, it's funny, I really do fly between different things. I'm known at the Knitting Factory, and the people that run the Knitting Factory, that's a certain world. My music doesn't sound like typical Knitting Factory music. There is *that* world, there is the club world where I was very entrenched in the 80's; I worked at a place called the Pyramid Club, I had a lot of gigs. That world is how I got hooked up with the Giants. The club world, and the performance art, lower east side world. I also mixed sound at the Pyramid, so I mixed sound for this young group that was changing their style, called the Beastie Boys, this young group that was up and coming called the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a solo performance by this woman named Nico. It has changed a lot. It isn't what it was. And it's too bad. But, on the other hand, the pieces, the work itself, is less clubby. My work is less clubby. Because, basically, the people who graduated from the "Pyramid School of Performance Art" are now at P.S. 122, or BAM, or working a day job, or moved to Darien, CT, and I've gone where they've gone: you know, the one step to performance - I'm sort of in that world now. And the Giants have gotten into an established rock and roll thing. And they *don't* have the club scene that they had. Of course, they couldn't, because they're so popular. It is too bad - I'm sure you've heard about the good old days, and it's totally true. You could go to a Giants' show, and it would be dominated by those hard core people that are now on the Hello recording club. Like Dewan. I've been to [more recent] shows in New York where it was just mayhem. It makes sense. I mean, it does, considering what their music is like. It kind of makes sense. That they have a lot of really smart, really young fans. up: You're clearly involved with the Internet; but how do you feel about it, does it excite you, or make you want to incorporate it into your work? jf: It totally excites me. And I'm one of the people that doesn't just use it for practical reasons, but I get off on it for something. It's kind of a guy thing. I'm subscribed to Wired magazine, I'm into that, although my music is still kind of low tech - you might have noticed. Tech, but low tech. up: Is that intentional? jf: Well, not exactly; I basically got a state-of-the-art home studio in 1979, and haven't changed it since. I never intended to become "The Wizard of Analog". When I started composing, no one was saying "Oh! It's *Analog*!". No, I started doing tape loops and "sampling" before there were drum machines and samplers. For a long time, when samplers came out, I would just look at them and I'd look at my tape loops and think "What've they got that I ain't got?" I did switch over, a few years ago. But I'm still roughly low tech. I think it's curious that I have gone to electronic art conferences and symposia, and people have really enjoyed my stuff. It obviously is saying something about technology and yet, it's old technology. I think what it says is that technology is evolving faster than people can really understand it. People are still trying to understand sort of the McLuhan-esque implications of each new medium as it comes out. There's this compulsion to jump on the new techology, and that's fine, and yet we haven't really fully understood the impact of the old. We don't really fully understand the impact of television. I have that sort of thrill [regarding the Internet], and I do think about it in relationship to my art. So far, the only thing that I've come up with that I do want to do, when I can, is, well, when I'm working with found sound, I do some performances where I tape things off a radio live, and I would like to expand that, and download things that are coming across the various media channels, or actually, five years from now, if I'm performing, and using found material, if the "info highway" is something separate from what the Internet becomes, then I would do that. Even though I'm intrigued by the decentralized nature of the Internet, for my own pieces, I'm interested in this notion of taking on-going commercial spew and truncating it and making it into pieces. It's interesting, for me, to take a consumer radio, and tune it into a station that anyone could tune into, because it's local to wherever I'm doing my performance, and take little snippets and make a piece out of it. At this point, I'd be more interested in doing that with cable feed and radio than I would with the Internet, because the Internet is still something obscure. up: The information we have says that you are "now working on a multi-performer work that builds on the style of "Travelogue", and a major collaboration with choreographer Douglas Dunn." What's that all about? jf: Future plans? Well - I got an NEA grant! So that's to help me do this multi-performer thing. And I'm going to try to have it mostly sketched out by the fall, and do some things with the piece then. And that will be as described. You know, it'll have a tape, and possibly hired musicians, in addition to the tape - some sort of brass and percussion thing. And then, the Douglas Dunn thing - it's sort of similar, in a way. Dunn is a well known choreographer, who is sort of post-Merce Cunningham, and was in the Cunningham company. And we're going to do a piece where it's people running around with headphones, but also dancers receiving instuctions in various ways. up: When you finish remixing someone else's stuff, do you feel that it's yours? jf: My style is to do a lot of arranging from scratch. "Larger Than Life" is not a remix, it's a remake. That's what they even called it. Because I used *none* of the original track, I sampled very few things off the original track, the original tracks are not running; it's completely new rhythm tracks from scratch with everything programmed by me, all the samples done by me. But it's still their song. So it's not only an arrangement of their song, but a radical arrangement. It's not like Linnell doing the horn parts for a Flansburgh song. It's a completely new arrangement, a new concept, building up from scratch, for one of their songs. So it *is* very me, and yet it's not a total Fried work. ****** Joshua Fried has offered to sell copies of the out-of-print 12inch vinyl maxi-single "Jimmy Because"(what few remain), and to dub a tape of his more recent work for $20 apiece. Please email us (kmpicker@midway.uchicago.edu) if you're interested. "If that was my only cause, do you think I'd be having people jumping up on stage and spouting gibberish?" --Joshua Fried A full transcript of the interview will be available at the _UP_ WWW page (http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kmpicker/), or by email, in a few days. We did cut this down quite a bit for space considerations, so if something caught your interest, check it out. ------UP--------------------------------------------------------------- "Ode To Delores O'Riordan's Family's Prickly Pear, Potsi" Oh prickly pear in yonder bowl why dost thou look so glum? I treasure thy attributes though they are few, but at least it's some I dream of thee day and night and think of thee some more you're rotting it's true it is your plight I admit I ate a s'more Uncle Androo ------UP--------------------------------------------------------------- Destination: Peoria - Women on a Mission. On an unusually warm day in mid-March, Franny, Kari, and Kate (and a friend who shall remain nameless in an attempt - perhaps futile - of reserving some pride) left Earth as they knew it, on a road trip to The Universe. As some of you may already be aware, The Universe is located in Peoria, Illinois. Okay, okay, so it's only the solar system, and it's only the world's largest model - we're doing our best, here. Sorry. Back to the story. As it happened, and it sometimes does, They Might Be Giants were playing Peoria that day, and thus the temptation proved too overwhelming to resist: we loaded up the car, slapped on our homemade "The Info Club Hasn't Sent My They Might Be Giants Bumber Sticker Yet" bumper sticker, and headed for Big Sky Country. Or was that Big Flat Desolate Land That No One In Their Right Mind Would Choose To Live On? I-57, I-80, I-55, and Route 116 later... 2:30 - Flansburgh! What's a Giant like you doing in a place like this? Or was it a town called Flansville? Flanstown? Flansborough? Flansberg (we weren't far off)? Flanagan? Ah, yes. That was it. A name you can never say the same way twice (local voo-doo, which we, ourselves, do not choose to question). 2:30 to 2:40 Exploration begins. Creative-yet-understated photographs of ourselves in front of the "Welcome to Flanagan" sign. ..Right in front of the "Flanagan Memorial P L" building! We're relieved to finally have the opportunity to properly pay our respects to the unassuming-yet-matchless Mr. P L. "St. Johns Evangelical Church"! (we hurried in, and shuffled dejectedly back out - 'twasn't quite what we expected). ..Conveniently located near Bart's Mart, where Franny had the pleasure of sliding irrevocably into the Flanaganian mud. Flanagan also boasts an alluring, discreet, yet indelibly pungent aroma... We also observe that we appear to have passed an inordinate number of cememteries. Inveterate New Yorker, Francesca, posits that this is because "a lot of people must die in the midwest." (or was that, "a lot of people in the midwest must die"?....nah.). 2:55 Roanoke - pop. 2000 Enter Roanoke; the Neptune search team swings into action. "You'd think it would stand out - Neptune's a pretty big planet..." Quietly, unobtrusively, blue. Neptune is spotted in the car dealership. Thwarted attempt to purchase Roanoke depot postcards - the platonic image of Roanoke is unavailable at this time. Which is to say, *all* Roanoke postcards are unavailable at this time. Do we have time to go bowling? 3:15 Exit Roanoke (attempted) "Freak alert cancelled. You can leave your storm cellars now." On to the next small town.... 3:16 - We don't make it to the border. 3:17 - We spy Rollie's Kountry Kitchen. Flee the false users of 'K'!! 3:18 - Kiddie Korner. The sociologist in each of us kicks in, and adds "hmm." 3:19 - Bechtel's Family Dining, est. June 1961 by Marilyn and Jack. We are inspired by their zest for the Irish holiday: a round of Shamrock Shakes, some Flanagan mud down the Bechtel Family Drain, and we're free and alive once more. 3:32 - We discover we can read our "bumper sticker" from inside the restaurant. 4:17 - The blooming (or was it just blue?) metropolis of Peoria looms into view. -altitude change- Ascension Lutheran Church meets us at the *bottom* of the hill. 4:22 - Missed exit. Our only hope: take entire cloverleaf (attempted). 4:23 - Lose second half of cloverleaf. 4:25 - Realize that we were attempting to visit the one planet of the Peoria system temporarily removed for repairs. (Gee, we'd like *that* job) Pause to ponder the weird and wonderful world of fate. 4:34 - Pass "Gutters & More, Inc." 4:36 - "Turn Around" hits the speakers. We act on the suggestion (and we don't mean the title): in an irresponsible fashion, etc. Industrial spur (Where?!). 4:40 - Enter Peoria: lost. Helpful "to Father Sweeney" sign (fate? We'd like to think not.). 5:00 - Visitor's center closes. 5:02 - We arrive at the visitors center. 5:17 - Camera shop - closed. (before the night is out, we will encounter 5 camera shops - three on one block - none of them open. We begin to wonder at the marvel that is Peorian business acumen). "What kind of a god...?!" 5:40 - We sit innocently on a wall (which could be any wall, in any town, really); Kate nonchalantly writes postcards, Franny diligently studies the Peoria tourist information, Kari just is. 5:42 - John Linnell, Brian Doherty and Jim O'Connor (of They Might Be Giants fame) walk within 71428.57143 feet of us (calculated in proportion to the Peoria solar system). 6:00 - Franny remembers Clever Celebrity Greeting(tm). Two days ahead of our time, two minutes ahead, now 8 behind -- we're slipping! 6:15-6:45 - We "do" the mall. Aren't really too surprised to find nothing but the manicurist open. Shopping options available during regular business hours (11:59am-12:01pm): "Polites for Men Only" "Protecting the Injured" "Unruh and Morse" "What kind of a freak mall is this??" 6:46-6:47 - We "do" the town. (It isn't hard, as everything's closed - we don't mean to imply that Peoria's a small town; "Central Peoria itself has over 100,000 residents, Greater Peoria over 300,000. That's just less than half the populations of San Francisco and Boston", quips Franny. It's just...all...closed. The parking was great...). Highlights: Action Medical -- wheel chairs, oxygen, beds, and supplies ("You're in a wheel chair? You need oxygen? Come to Action Medical....") (As long as you need it between 11:59 and 12:01...). Sam's Diner -- open breakfast, lunch (Uh-huh. What were we saying?). 8:00-11:00 Really great concert. 11:01 - We thrust aside the crowd gaping at our bumper sticker. Why were they calling us Greek? (oh, sorry. "freak, freak, freak." (or was it "pleh, pleh, pleh"?). Nos culpae.) 11:20 - Shell Service Station ("Serving Central Illinois" - but not too enthusiastically. S'pose after those cushy Peorian hours, the night shift at a gas-mart's gotta be rough). Kwik Kakes. Thanks, but we've been trying to cut down. (direct link to the _UP_/Peoria trip page: http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kmpicker/peoria.html) (check out also the _UP_/Signs page, which has GIFs of a number of the signs mentioned above. The "To Father Sweeney" sign alone makes the trip worthwhile: http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kmpicker/signs.html) ------UP--------------------------------------------------------------- For those among you who couldn't join us for the actual event, it's probably only fair to let you know that the Universe exploded some time ago. On 20 February, 1995, to be precise. Left utterly alone, we were forced to pick up the pieces and start anew. Unfortunately, they didn't fit together quite like we remembered....In time, we came to love our new, disfigured universe and the reality that went along with it. Which is why we'd like to invite you to share with us "What Reality Means to Me." This contest is absolutely open-ended. It's multi-media. Finger-paint a picture. Construct an actual model. Bake us a cake, and attach a note that says "This is my universe, okay?" Write an essay. Write a sonnet. Write your congressman. Write on your brother's scalp and send him to us in a box (oh, god - I took your idea, didn't I? Sorry 'bout that). But please send feeding instructions. The address to send all entries to is: Utopia Parkway 1005 E. 60th St. #639D Chicago, IL 60637 Or, if it's emailable, you can email your entry to kmpicker@midway.uchicago.edu [hey, isn't that the subscription address, too?]. Hey - we *promised* prizes, right? Please include your name, email address, snail-mail (i.e. U.S. mail) address, and your entry. If you'll be wanting your reality back, please include return postage. Your reality must arrive by Friday, May 5, 1995, according to traditional calendrical reckoning (aww, you won't miss it much; we promise to take good care of it). We claim no responsibility for the annihilation of realities that are so at odds with ours that they spontaneously combust on arrival. ------UP--------------------------------------------------------------- *The Great Jell-O Egg Caper* Alright - first thing: Write to the Jello company and ask, no, *demand* that they send you their all rights reserved JIGGLERS Egg Mold. Wait! You don't have time. Go buy pantyhose. Buy as much pantyhose as you can find. (The *egg* kind, doug.) You're going to have to make your own molds, and you're going to have to be creative about it. We'll share the recipies, you buy the pantyhose. >From the "Create a New Tradition for Easter with Jello Egg Jigglers" handbook: 1) Oil the mold (muhahahahaha....-ed.) 2) Close Egg Mold Securely (evil laughter q.v.) 3) Prepare Basic Egg Jigglers Recipe (id.) 4) UNMOLD EGG JIGGLERS (a la "It's Aliivee!!") We hear that Jello Eggs are an old favorite in the Creepy Girl household. The recipe is, well, jigglers. The jello company has been kind enough to include suggestions on spicing up your otherwise inoccuous jello elliptoids. Which is great, 'cause we'll just let you know that they're no conversation piece on their own. 1. Kaleidoscope Egg Jigglers: Allow us to summarize. You make enough viscous gelatin to fill *half* of each egg, let that harden (!), fill in the vacuous egg-half with another batch of that molten jell. USE ANOTHER FLAVOR JELLO FOR THE SECOND ROUND. This is important. 2. Creamy Egg Jigglers: This gets a little bit more complicated. Pudding, you see, is less than apt to bond of its own accord. It needs a little nudging (and who doesn't, now and again?), and that's where the jello comes in. The booklet's recipe specifies *vanilla* pudding, and we assumed this was so you could color it. We were wrong. We now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were politely trying to indicate that *chocolate* pudding is a poor choice when creating food of this ilk. We'll leave it at that. Lesson #2: we assumed that capital 'J' Jello was called for to a)color the vanilla pudding and b)boost sales at Kraft. cf.previous consequences of trying to tred our own path, beat our own drum, fly our own kite. We used Knox. We wanted to color the pudding ourselves, damnit. We wanted the chocolate eggs to be chocolate, unsullied by fruity gelatin. Unless you're fond of watered down chocolate milk, we don't recommend this. Unless you're fond of your throat clenching up in an unrestrainable gag, we don't recommend this. The vanilla, self-colored eggs were somewhat better (apparently vanilla doesn't dilute to the grotesque extreme that chocolate does. Why is that?). Conclusions? Trust the people at Jello, and don't be an individual. 3. Dinosaur Egg Jigglers: Add ground cinnamon, cocoa or nutmeg to the Creamy Egg Jiggler recipe. The point is to give the not-a-solid-not-a-liquid balls of fun that mottled shell look, so popular on the Paris runways this spring. No comment. Okay, we now offer ourselves up to visual ridicule. To see the spectacle *in* *technicolor*, race to the Utopia Parkway Diner, located just off the main _UP_ URL, at http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kmpicker/diner.html (if, perchance, you're genuinely intrigued - and they *are* a lot of fun to make, and even more fun to watch people eat, half horrified, half delighted - the address is JELLO JIGGLERS Egg Mold Offer P.O. Box 3327 Maple Plain, MN 55593 and the deal is two proofs of purchase from any "large size", or four POP's from any "small size" Jello packages, the receipt, with price(s) circled, and $1.50 for each 6-egg mold. Oh, and you should probably send them your name and address. There's always next year... Not that jello eggs won't fit *any* seasonal celebration...) "Wait - what's that, what?" --Joshua Fried (viz. "jigglers." Or was it _Utopia Parkway_?) ------UP-----------------------------Y'all drive safe now, ya hear?------