Back in the sepia-toned, bell-bottomed days of the Seventies when this documentary was shot, Langley was a lovely village surrounded by stables and farms, three-quarters of an hour’s leisurely drive outside of Vancouver. Now it is a strip-mall-encircled bedroom community an hour’s infuriatingly tense drive outside of Vancouver with, improbably, stables and farms still interspersed between SUV dealerships.

And this is the Langley School Music Project, a public school initiative by Hans Fenger, a teacher in the system. Just another public school teacher.

In the early 70s, Vancouver musician Hans Fenger decided to get a real job. His girlfriend was pregnant, and he couldn’t raise a family on earnings from club gigs and guitar lessons. He got a teaching certificate and a job in the Langley school district.

Here is some great analysis from The Delete Bin:

The recordings were literally a school project, headed up by music teacher Hans Fenger based in Langely B.C (just up the road from where I’m writing this), and incorporating 60 students who sang and played percussion instruments on songs which included David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Band on the Run”, the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”, and the Eagles’ “Desperado”. The record polarized opinion. Some said that the takes on the songs create a sort of ghostly, otherworldly effect, while others denounced it as sounding amateurish and very “school assembly” in delivery. Perhaps it’s their origin which makes these recordings so compelling. Fenger had this to say about the project and the kids who created it:

“I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education, and didn’t know how to teach singing. Above all, I knew nothing of what children’s music was supposed to be. But the kids had a grasp of what they liked: emotion, drama, and making music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal — they had élan. This was not the way music was traditionally taught. But then I never liked conventional ‘children’s music,’ which is condescending and ignores the reality of children’s lives, which can be dark and scary. These children hated ‘cute.’ They cherished songs that evoked loneliness and sadness.”

And now, click on to see (and hear) the kids:
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My dear friends, you’ve no idea how brutal this world can be to an artistic soul. One by one, it eats them alive. Raymond Chandler. Dashiell Hammett. Dorothy Parker. Damon Runyan. Anita Loos. Ernest Hemingway.Mother Goose.

Yes, for is there any soul as fragile and artistic as that of a child’s storyteller? And yet as each tender Easy Reader, picture book, or pop-up manuscript is born, it is ruthlessly wrenched from its creator’s loving embrace and cast upon the heaving black waters of the heartless book market, there to sink or swim as its now-helpless progenitor can only clutch pearls or fedora and gape, wreathed in cigarette smoke and sheer terror (and then write about it on the Oprah forums). Oh! The Humanity!

Here, thanks to Kids in the Hall, perhaps the greatest sketch comedy troupe in history, is archival footage of one such writer’s brutal struggle through the long, dark, teddy bear’s picnic of the soul.

I was going to use their Teddy Bear’s Picnic skit, but that’s too dark even for me.

That rapier wit, that irresistible malevolence, that roguish smile, the manly tan, the arm/chest pelt, those perfect teeth, those suspiciously buff pecs, the himbo pinup calendar: is it any wonder that Simon Cowell, evil overlord of American Idol, has won the hearts of so many? But there’s one more reason:

The hair.

We at TeenyManolo, as dwellers in the Manolosphere and survivors of the Eighties, are uniquely placed to reveal to the world the secret of Simon Cowell’s mane muse. Where, in a world dominated by variations of the Trent Reznor and the George Clooney does a man get the inspiration for such a vividly gravity-defying, yet carefree and jungle-lush look?

From just one place, my friends:

Yes, it’s the comeback of the hottest look of the Eighties: The Monchhichi. Via toybender.com. Sex-AY! Is it any wonder they’re also the inspiration for a line of condoms?

via WanderingCoyote

Okay, so it’s not Beethoven. You think Beethoven’s Fifth would calm a crying baby? Behold the power of the greatest pacifier known to humanity, the ever-reliable Rickroll. I wonder what would happen if they played Rick Astley in Helmand; the entire region would break into a soporific version of the Hustle, shake hands, and declare peace. You doubt? You watch!

via Defamer.

Remember Tang? It’s what we had before we had SunnyD. Old people remember Tang, and the thing we remember best about it is that the astronauts had Tang in their space ships, and so we wanted it. We wanted it with all the blind zealotry that preschoolers can muster. We wanted to be astronauts, too, and we knew we had the right stuff, and we figured we might as well get a head start by acclimating to the menu as early as possible. But we refused to eat the dehydrated peas, and so we grew up to be bloggers instead.

Where was I?

Ah, yes. The astronaut menu was all about the dehydrated, the freeze-dried, the vacuum-packed, the foil-lined, and the otherwise meddled-with. If you were off to the Moon you wouldn’t think to pack an apple until it had been reduced to something resembling the stuff you scatter on your driveway when it’s icy. THAT is real down-home astronaut cooking. Unappealing, impractical, expensive, and synthetic.

Until now.

my head almost exploded when I recently found PB2. PB2 is my newest peanut butter obsession. Basically, it’s just powdered peanut butter... a fine, insanely delicious-smelling, peanut butterlicious powder that is EXTREMELY versatile.

According to Bill Keith, head of sales and marketing for Bell Plantation, the company that sells this delightfully bizarre foodstuff, it’s better for you than regular peanut butter.

Here are the nutritional facts : Reg PB has between 190-200 calories per serving, PB2 has 54. Reg PB has between 140-150 fat calories per serving, PB2 has 25. PB2 is all natural. There are no additives.

But wait, there’s more! Sure, it’s self-evidently astro-fabulous, but it is also delightfully reminiscent of some of the shall we say less orthodox archetypes of the Sixties.

As HungryGirl says:

I literally spent an entire Saturday night experimenting with this stuff and had the BEST time (it was not nearly as pathetic as it sounds, I promise).

No word on if she put it in brownies. And from Bill’s recommendations on the RandomThoughts blog:

You mix 2TBS of PB2 w/ 1 TBS of the liquid of your choice. Water will reconstitute it to the consistency of regular PB. You adjust the formula to your taste. JC’s granddaughter likes it w/ grape juice. Try it with your favorite liquid. I know someone that mixes it w/jalapeno juice. Talk about a kick.

Hmmmm. Who would do a thing like that?