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Blague

1  noun  ˈbläg, -ȧg   plural -s
: HUMBUG, CLAPTRAP, RAILLERY
2  intransitive verb   -ed/-ing/-s
: to talk pretentiously and usually inaccurately : lie boastfully
Writer's picturePhoole

80s 7-Inch Singles Request Show!


On a stained, scratched, and scribbled-on high-school desktop surface, a 1980s-era Trapper Keeper folder holds a sheet of blue-lined notebook paper. An Air Supply 7-inch single lies on the desktop underneath the folder, protruding out from under the folder. Trapper Keepers were three-ring binders which were popular with students in the United States and parts of Latin America from the 1970s through the 1990s, featuring sliding plastic rings (instead of standard snap-closed metal binder rings), special Trapper folders with vertical pockets (instead of traditional horizontal pockets), additional pockets, and a wrap-around flap with a Velcro closure (originally a metal snap closure). Trapper Keepers sometimes had a theme, such as a cartoon, television show, or video game. Between 1988 and 1995, "Designer Series" Trapper Keepers featured abstract designs and, later, computer-generated images.

🎷 An 80s 7-inch Request Show happens tonight on Phoole & the Gang! Tonight is Friday, 27 September 2024, and we're live at 6:00 p.m. Central US time!

✨ Choose your favorites from 2R’s vast vault of 80s 7-inch singles - thank you, 2R, for letting us tour your collection!


👾 Smash Hits 📼 Deep Cuts 🎸 Classics 💾 Synthesizers 🎹 Soundtracks of a Past Future


🌆 Friday 27 Sep 2024 6pm Central US time at slipmat.io/phoole, mixcloud.com/live/phoole, and twitch.tv/phoole!


🌃 Slipmat at slipmat.io/phoole has a REQUEST MACHINE built right in!


⚠️ BUT...it only lets me display up to 1200 tunes at a time, and we have closer to 2000 tunes in this show's request library, so...


🃏 There is a COMPLETE Request Library listing all of the tunes available for this show at phoole.com/request!


🦠 This past Wednesday I managed to get the current Novavax vaccine, which is great, except that I'm feeling slightly run-down, while the vaccine does what it's supposed to do, and triggers my immune system to create antibodies, to decrease the likelihood of severe illness and disability if my other defenses [social isolation, N95-masking any time I'm outside the home] should happen to fail to protect us from COVID-19. I'm resting today to save my energy for the show tonight! We'll see how it goes!


Phooletoberfest hat Spaß gemacht!


Phooletoberfest 2024 was fun! If you missed it or you're missing it, you can watch it, watch it again, listen to it, and listen to a version of it that's just the music and show identification drop-ins, all at the links at phoole.com/rewind!


Here is a speed-through preview of some of the tunes in the show.


There will not be a show next week

Next Friday, October 4, 2024, there will not be a Phoole & the Gang show live on air, because it is Tiffany's and my 19th wedding anniversary!


"No, it isn't," some of you are saying. "I was at your wedding, and it wasn't in October, and it wasn't 19 years ago. It was TWENTY years ago, and it was in September."


ALACK. That was a public stunt wedding, at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. Our legal wedding was on 4 October 2005. But that 2004 wedding was epic!


A photo of Tiffany (living as Tom) and Phoole at their public, stunt wedding at the Bristol Renaissance Faire on September 5, 2004. Tiffany is performing as Italian troubadour Fasso Latido; Phoole is Jane the Phoole. Courtiers of Queen Elizabeth I and members of the household of the noble family hosting the Queen's Progress are in the background. Jane the Phoole's motley is bright red, green and yellow patchwork diamond shapes. Tiffany and Phoole made the clothes they are wearing in this photo, with the exception of Tiffany's hat, which was by Muscovy Trading Company, and Phoole's bag, which was from Moresca Clothing and Costume.

Tiffany was living as Tom back then, and thousands of our closest friends crowded into the Nobles' Glade on Bristol's north side to celebrate with us. Were you there? Thank you for being there! It was an intense and surreal experience, about which I really should write extensively in this blague. But first I have a lot of photos to scan for such a post.


When we got engaged to be married, Production Stage Manager Sandy Wood said, "Just get married at the show. Just do it, just have the party where everyone already is."


Many multitudes of pals echoed this sentiment. At first, the idea of getting married at the Faire seemed like getting married at work - we had both been with the show for over a decade at that point, we'd both been directors, and I was still a director.


But also: When Sandy Wood tells you to do something, you just do it. She's always, always right. So we decided to get married at the show!


Management informed us that we had to get married on the Sunday night of the closing three-day weekend of the show - the show's run typically ends on what is Labor Day Weekend in the US, the first weekend of September, and the show's final weekend has the show open all three days, including the holiday. Normally, back then, closing weekend saw high ticket sales on the closing Saturday and the closing Monday, but always had a slight decrease in sales on the Sunday; our wedding was intended to level that a little. Eh! We were fine with being exploited for this purpose back then. We were younger, so much younger than today.


The wedding ended up being the most ridiculously magical experience, and photos of it ended up in People Magazine's Weddings issue that year! I will have to continue this tale in a subsequent blague post, so visit phoole.com/blague all the time to see when it hits! It's fun to do that anyway.


Phooleoween This Way Comes


At the left, the Phoole and the Gang fuchsia flag logo has been been transformed into an orange, tattered flag for Ghoul and the Fang. It flies on a black background beside the famous Skull Trumpet image from Cathy Jarboe's legendary GIF image from the mid-1990s, in which a pixelated skull plays a trumpet. The text "Phooleoween 2024" appears in the same shade of orange as the Ghoul and the Fang flag, on the right side of the image.

Here is an Advance Sneaky Preview of the art for Phooleoween 2024! Can I get a DOOT-DOOT? The legendary skull-trumpet GIF, a/k/a Mr Skeltal, Doot Doot or Jazz Skull, was made originally by Cathy Jarboe, who is dead and maybe a ghost. Know your meme! You may click this dodgy-seeming-but-actually-OK link to thank Mr Skeltal, which is a thing that you ought to do.


I love that Phoole & the Gang becomes Ghoul & the Fang this time of year. I LOVE IT.


This section also appeared in a post for the Phoole Patreon Platoon, which you are welcome to join.

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