Half Puff Daddy, Half Thomas Edison

By all means, check out the new Friends Of Tom website, the only web page for the ‘fun club’ of The Best Show On WFMU with Tom Scharpling. The show itself is keeping up the level of quality reestablished last week by bringing back Cory from Mother 13 AND Radio Hut in this past Tuesday’s episode. Later on in the episode, Tom ‘brings it’ by becoming Doc Shock, WFMU’s first shock jock. Of course, this is just another version of The Best Show EXTREME, but I don’t mind – I’d rather that the show be funny recycling older characters and schticks than limp along nearly devoid of humor as it had for the past few months.

More From The Book Of Changes

Here’s some more interesting quotes taken from interviews conducted by Kristine McKenna.

“My big disappointment in life was realizing there aren’t that many gifted, brilliant people. When I first came to New York and went to screenings, I’d see these well dressed, handsome people, and I’d think, “My god, they must know so much.” Then, when I’d attach names to those people I’d repeatedly find myself thinking “That’s the schmuck who writes that awful stuff!” When I was a kid I thought there were lots of brilliant people who wrote dull stuff because they were corrupt, and it took me a long time to realize that most of them just couldn’t write much better. God knows there are a lot of them who are corrupt and write what editors and advertisers want them to write, but there are also a great many who can’t do better.”

– Pauline Kael, 1982

“A message is a load of crap. I don’t know what I want to say to people. I get ideas and I want to put them on film because they thrill me. You may say that people look for meaning in everything, but they don’t. They’ve got life going on around them and they don’t look for meaning there, yet they expect to find meaning when they go to a movie. I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.”

– David Lynch, 1986 (on the set of ‘Blue Velvet’)

What was the biggest obstacle you’ve overcome in your life?

“But I haven’t trusted that. And in overcoming that disbelief and realizing that I am attractive, I’ve also come to sympathize with people who are born physically beautiful and must struggle to achieve a sense of “inner beauty”, to use an extremely hackneyed phrase. When I finally accepted that I had to work, entertain, be a goon, draw blood, and bare my soul to get people’s attention, I suddenly became aware of an ability to judge other people’s true worth. It was as if I’d been using the wrong terms of reference for myself, and thereby, for everyone else as well. I am truly able to say with my hand on my heart that I am now able to look at beautiful women without being confused about their value. That makes me happy, because my wife happens to be beautiful, and I’ve finally realized that that’s just a lucky break for her. What’s lucky for me is that I’m now able to look past that and see the great person that she is. My illusion about physical beauty was a huge obstacle and it was almost Freudian in character, because it was locked in the way I idealized my mother when I was a child. I’ve been able to overcome it with the help of therapy.”

-Pete Townshend, 1986