Whoa. Super late posting today. I totally lost track of time today working on a booth game for the camp's carnival on Tuesday. It's like Plinko, only the board is a 40x60 1/8" black foam core sheet with neon painted popsicle sticks on the sides, neon colored golf tees acting as bumpers, and a sign identifying the game as "The Asteroid Belt", complete with Milky Way fabric and lots of glitter. Foam golf balls (sadly not neon) complete the design. Over the top? Wouldn't have it any other way.

Midnight Rec: Second Star to the Right - an album by Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Arkestra God bless Rhapsody. Sure, the songs sometimes skip when loaded onto an mp3 player if they are just from a To Go subscription, but it means I can listen to wacky stuff like Second Star to the Right without immediately committing to a purchase.

If you haven't experienced the unique jazz stylings of Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Arkestra, this is as good an introduction as any. There's no real easy way to sink into a musician who truly believes he is an alien named Sun Ra. Using the Disney catalog as a jumping off point, Sun Ra slices, chews, swallows, digests, throws up, cleans up, and tosses away the familiar songs to bring a brand new vision to the beloved classics.

The first instance of the gargly vocals of the Arkestra and Ra himself is startling. Disney is usually sung with clean voices that don't intimidate in the least. Not on this album. He might as well be shooting nails at your head and threatening to cauterize any wounds with a heat seeking missile.

Mixed with the traditional jazz instruments played loose and furious yields a mind altering mix reminiscent of childhood trips to the cinema viewed through the lens of...well...another species. Pardon the pun: The album is out of this world. I mean, they do a 10 minute version of I'm Wishing from Snow White and turn it into a slow groove that seems like a cut track from the Aristocats. Try it out if you get the chance.