From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #188 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, May 1 2007 Volume 16 : Number 188 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: January 13, 1966 ["Bill MacLehose" ] Re: Essential Robyn [kevin ] Re: Essential Robyn [2fs ] My name is "Eb", and you sank my battleship! ["Stacked Crooked" ] Re: Essential Robyn ["Michael Wells" ] RE: Essential Robyn ["Bachman, Michael" ] Re: chicks on chick flicks ["m swedene" ] re: essential Robyn ["Mark P" ] Re: movie talk plus [grutness@slingshot.co.nz] Re: essential robyn [grutness@slingshot.co.nz] Re: movie talk plus [2fs ] Re: movie talk plus ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: movie talk plus [Tom Clark ] Re: funny? you decide. ["Michael Sweeney" ] Re: Essential Robyn ["Michael Sweeney" ] Re: Essential Robyn ["Michael Sweeney" ] Re: movie talk plus [kevin ] Re: funny? you decide. [2fs ] Re: My name is "Eb", and you sank my battleship! ["Lauren Elizabeth" Subject: RE: January 13, 1966 There's a video circulating with clips (pretty chaotic, hand-held camera stuff) from this event. Absolutely worth seeing. The audience, mostly stuffy academic types, seems mystified and concerned about the band. No idea how they got the gig, but I'm sure Warhol had a hand in it. If this news refers to a higher quality copy, it would be an amazing find. Some info: http://members.aol.com/olandem3/docu.html - -Bill >From: John Irvine >Reply-To: John Irvine >To: fegmaniax@smoe.org >Subject: January 13, 1966 >Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:40:47 -0400 > >"Other rarities that "The Seven Ages Of Rock" have unearthed include a >first >broadcast of the Velvet Underground performing at the Annual Dinner of the >New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry on January 13, 1966." > >Wow - the exact day I was born. That I'd like to see. >-John _________________________________________________________________ Dont quit your job  Take Classes Online and Earn your Degree in 1 year. Start Today! http://www.classesusa.com/clickcount.cfm?id=866146&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.classesusa.com%2Ffeaturedschools%2Fonlinedegreesmp%2Fform-dyn1.html%3Fsplovr%3D866144 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 09:37:34 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: Essential Robyn >Any thoughts on improving the following would be appreciated: > >Leppo And The Jooves >Insanely Jealous >Kingdom Of Love >Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl >Uncorrected Personality Traits >I Often Dream Of Trains >The Man With The Lightbulb Head >The Yip Song >I'm Only You >I Something You >Queen Elvis >Balloon Man >Airscape >So You Think You're In Love >My Wife And My Dead Wife I have to second "Listening To the Higsons." And Briggs. In re: the insectile-squirmy quotient I'd go with "Tropical Flesh Mandala," and I personally would have to add "Human Music." And probably something from Black Snake Diamond Role - "City Of Shame," maybe. But i'd definitely keep "Uncorrected Personality Traits." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 11:38:06 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Essential Robyn On 5/1/07, Rex wrote: > > On 5/1/07, Bachman, Michael wrote: > > > > > > Somehow any list without Linctus House seems incomplete, so I would drop > > So You Think You're In Love in favor of LH. > > > We're all agreeing on the one to drop-- not surprisingly the biggest "hit" > in its own time (although I think probably "Queen of Eyes" is the most > anthologized, coverd and lionized of his tunes, followed possibly by > "Destroy You"). No love for "I Got the Hots"? - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 10:04:09 -0700 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: My name is "Eb", and you sank my battleship! and *i* first read *your* first reading as Central *Orifice* -- even though I had read it correctly the first time. by the way, does the COI pre- or post-date *Brazil*? we get sneak-preview tickets at the office all the time. don't know how a war tax resistance outfit got on hollywood's mailing list, but, no matter. what *does* matter, however, is that the movies always either look stoopid, or are way out in the 'burbs. on the very few occasions where the movie both looks pretty cool and is not way out in the burbs (*U.S. vs. John Lennon* comes to mind), the date has inevitably already passed. why does it need to be the greatest hits? and why only fifteen, considering you could possibly fit twice that many on an 80-minute disc? you should at least make it a fab-twenty, and might include: - -- Airscape - -- Underwater Moonlight (either the *Two Halves* or the *'76 - '81* version) - -- Fifty-Two Stations (i prefer the *Kershaw* version, although miles hates it) - -- Autumn Is Your Last Chance - -- You And Oblivion - -- Clint-Intro/One Long Pair Of Eyes - -- Heaven (rhino's live version) - -- Face Of Death (*Hen Out* version) - -- *Spectre*-intro/The Moon Inside - -- Idonia - -- Yodelling Hoover - -- Happy The Golden Prince - -- St. Petersburg ever notice how when robyn performs the song live, that line always draws a big laugh? i can only assume that the audience takes it the wrong way also - -- and i've always wondered why robyn doesn't take the time to correct them at the end of the song. huhn, maybe he's so intent upon the performance that he doesn't even notice the laughter? the one i can't figure out is "FTW". yeah, yeah, i know i could look it up somewhere; but i'm thinking it'll be so much the more satisfying if'/when i finally figure it out on my own. actually, this *is* NTSC (i noticed that the one lauren posted about was PAL -- so that may be where the confusion lies). ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 10:06:00 -0700 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: p.s. -- coachella marc, where's your review of the new pornos? i'm dyin' here, man! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 12:19:38 -0500 From: "Michael Wells" Subject: Re: Essential Robyn I think I did one of these about six or seven years ago, it would be interesting to compare that one vs. this quick list. If someone asked for 15 songs that roughly spanned his career (notice "roughly") and showed some of what Robyn's about, I would say: Underwater Moonlight Madonna of the Wasps I Am Not Me Winchester Trams of Old London Airscape Driving Aloud (Radio Storm) Om Uncorrected Personality Traits So You Think You're in Love Television Glass Hotel Clean Steve Acid Bird The Man with the Lightbulb Head Michael ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 13:23:13 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: Essential Robyn - -----Original Message----- From: owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org [mailto:owner-fegmaniax@smoe.org] On Behalf Of kevin Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:38 PM To: Gary Sedgwick; fegmaniax@smoe.org Subject: Re: Essential Robyn >>Any thoughts on improving the following would be appreciated: >> >>Leppo And The Jooves >>Insanely Jealous >>Kingdom Of Love >>Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl >>Uncorrected Personality Traits >>I Often Dream Of Trains >>The Man With The Lightbulb Head >>The Yip Song >>I'm Only You >>I Something You >>Queen Elvis >>Balloon Man >>Airscape >>So You Think You're In Love >>My Wife And My Dead Wife >I have to second "Listening To the Higsons." And Briggs. In re: the insectile-squirmy quotient I'd go with "Tropical Flesh Mandala," and I personally would have to add "Human Music." And probably something from Black Snake Diamond Role - "City Of Shame," maybe. But i'd definitely keep "Uncorrected Personality Traits." Secondary set of 15 songs that have not been mentioned: Guilford Bones In The Ground 1974 Anglepoise Lamp Mexican God Statue With A Walkman I Got The Hots Cynthia Mask Underwater Moonlight Heaven Sweet Ghost of Light Madonna of the Wasps Flesh #1 (Beatle Dennis) Brenda's Sledge made out of Iron Vibrating MJ Bachman ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 13:29:20 -0500 (CDT) From: David Witzany Subject: Another angle on Robyn's greatest Gary Sedgwick asketh: - ------------------------------ I imagine this must have been asked many times before, but hey... A friend asked me tonight to put together a Robyn compilation of 15 or so "essential" Robyn tracks, the ones that would "blow his mind" and show him what all the fuss is about. So it's the more distinctive tracks of the "greatest hits" I'm after... - ------------------------------ As far as I'm concerned, "greatest hits" comps are only for bad bands' music--every group/artist that I like has done at least one original album with enough quality songs (whether or not they were "hits") that I'd give it to someone as exemplifying their music. For Robyn, I'd give your friend "Underwater Moonlight" and "Fegmania!" (some days that'd be "Element of Light"). Tell him that if he wants to, he can stop listening at the end of the original album tracks. After those, depending on what songs from round one "blew him away", you can move on to "Eye", "Spooked", "Moss Elixir", and/or "Ole Tarantula". Continue as appropriate. Dave. David Witzany ...one of nature's witzany@uiuc.edu bounds checkers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 15:07:13 -0400 From: "m swedene" Subject: Re: chicks on chick flicks I wanted to type the same thing. Mike On 5/1/07, kevin wrote: > >I never liked the fact that just because your born with testicles that > >male society forces you to cut yourself off from emotions. I never > >subscribed to it and some of the core female values like empathy, > >sharing, team player, good listener, compassion, etc, are the traits > >that I think makes me a better person. > > > >MJ Bachman > > Sissy. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 15:30:46 -0400 From: "Mark P" Subject: re: essential Robyn Wicked props out to Eye ...gotta slot in "The Executioner"! "Japanese Captain" for recent Soft Boys. VERY subjective but anyway. ... got a pal who now resides in Hawaii, lived in Tokyo for a bit a few years before. Stiggy lived in a building named after a Japanese captain. Dude was real excited when he got his hands on Nextdoorland and saw that title. Forget the fellow's/building's name now. Always wondered about that though. m ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 10:56:00 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: movie talk plus > >>Rex says: > >>>I saw both "Insomnias" (both "Insomniae"?) but barely remember the > >>>remake, other than that it wasn't bad, but not singular enough to linger > >>>in my mind like the orginal. Was Robin Williams evil in that one, or am I > >>>thinking of some other Northern-climes thriller? > >Our Lauren [MS - luv that!] came back with: > >>yes, robin williams was evil in that one. he tends to irritate me unless > >>he's playing a somewhat disturbed person. there's also "one hour photo" > >>which i loved him in as well, but in that one i'd have to say he was more > >>deeply misguided than evil. > >> > >I really liked Robin in some of his earlier movies, like "The World > >According to > >Garp" and "Mosow on The Hudson". The whole cast was great in "Garp" though. > >Not to mention "The Fisher King," where I think Robin's manic dissonance and >riffing was put to best use as an actual mentally disturbed person. Liked >that one very much... I know I'm probably in a minority here, but I'm a big fan of "Death to Smoochy". Good to see Ed Norton play against type, too, even if the movie did have an oddly old-fashioned feel (I can imagine Jimmy Stewart and Jack Benny in the lead male roles, for instance). >Just had a little Spooked thing going here. "Flanagan's Song" is >one of the finest tunes I know. Works especially well after >midnight, which of course right now it isn't. Yes it it - just a lot of hours after midnight. And it's always just after midnight somewhere. > >4. Men can't stand movies about women, or movies that focus on > >relationships - they only want guns and fast cars. > >And explosions. Explosions are very key. Was it "Not the nine o'clock news" that featured a hilarious trailer for the forthcoming film "Things exploding"? I'm always reminded of that if I ever accidentally see a Meatloaf music vid. >I agree with everything you say above. > >Apparently, I'm not really a man. > >The testicles are in the mail. Well that's OK - I'm apparently not human. I know this because, well... you know those "human interest" stories they have on the news sometimes? Well, they don't interest me at all. >Some nitwit comment-er on Amazon misinterpreted that line exactly >the same way. Ignorance is strength, as Eric Blair once said... Ohhh - that was *Eric* Blair, was it? For some reason, I associate it more with Tony... James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 10:52:45 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: essential robyn >Gary Sedgwick wrote: > >> > >> Any thoughts on improving the following would be appreciated: > >> > >> Leppo And The Jooves > >> Insanely Jealous > >what, no "Old Pervert"? > > >> Kingdom Of Love > >> Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl > >> Uncorrected Personality Traits > >drop and replace with 'The Speed of Things' > > >> I Often Dream Of Trains > >> The Man With The Lightbulb Head > >> The Yip Song > >> I'm Only You > >> I Something You > >> Queen Elvis > >> Balloon Man > >> Airscape > >> So You Think You're In Love > >> My Wife And My Dead Wife some good choices, but my own would be a little different: Jealous, Kingdom, IODOT, Lightbulb, Yip, I'm only you, Queen Elvis, Airscape, SYTYIL, My wife, yes. Leppo... possibly But not Sometimes I wish, I something you, Balloon man, or UPT Instead, I'd add Queen of Eyes, Heliotrope, Adventure Rocket Ship, and Driving Aloud The last spot would be taken by one of Leppo, Madonna of the Wasps, and Birdshead. James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 18:12:08 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: movie talk plus On 5/1/07, grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: > > > > > >4. Men can't stand movies about women, or movies that focus on > > >relationships - they only want guns and fast cars. > > > >And explosions. Explosions are very key. > > Was it "Not the nine o'clock news" that featured a hilarious trailer > for the forthcoming film "Things exploding"? I've always wanted to make an avant-garde blockbuster film (yes, I know - stay with me here...). I figured I'd stitch together hundreds of car chases and explosions, interspersed with occasional long shots of deserts, cliffs, sunrises, and the like (for maybe 30 seconds). Then back to the car chases and explosions. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 May 2007 19:36:58 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: movie talk plus 2fs wrote: > > I figured I'd stitch together hundreds of car chases > and explosions, interspersed with occasional long shots of deserts, cliffs, > sunrises, and the like (for maybe 30 seconds). Then back to the car chases > and explosions. So it's either: * the opposite of the end of Cinema Paradiso, or * an art-house flick from "Idiocracy". Stewart (Go. And. See. Hot. Fuzz. Now.) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 16:46:59 -0700 From: Tom Clark Subject: Re: movie talk plus On May 1, 2007, at 4:12 PM, 2fs wrote: > I've always wanted to make an avant-garde blockbuster film (yes, I > know - > stay with me here...). I figured I'd stitch together hundreds of > car chases > and explosions, interspersed with occasional long shots of deserts, > cliffs, > sunrises, and the like (for maybe 30 seconds). Then back to the car > chases > and explosions. Wasn't that "Two Lane Blacktop"? - -tc ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 00:11:16 +0000 From: "Michael Sweeney" Subject: Re: funny? you decide. Rex sayeth: >On 4/30/07, 2fs wrote: >> >>Yeah, well, Sturgeon's Law is 90% bullshit. >But the 10% that's accurate is really accurate. Like 9 times out of 10 , >even. ...Wouldn't that make it 91% BS? Michael Sweeney Not even taking off my shoes to "cipher" that one, Jethro... _________________________________________________________________ Mortgage rates near historic lows. Refinance $200,000 loan for as low as $771/month* https://www2.nextag.com/goto.jsp?product=100000035&url=%2fst.jsp&tm=y&search=mortgage_text_links_88_h27f8&disc=y&vers=689&s=4056&p=5117 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 00:12:49 +0000 From: "Michael Sweeney" Subject: Re: Essential Robyn Gary inquired: >A friend asked me tonight to put together a Robyn compilation of 15 or so >"essential" Robyn tracks, the ones that would "blow his mind" and show him >what all the fuss is about. So it's the more distinctive tracks of the >"greatest hits" I'm after... >Any thoughts on improving the following would be appreciated: >Leppo And The Jooves >Insanely Jealous >Kingdom Of Love >Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl >Uncorrected Personality Traits >I Often Dream Of Trains >The Man With The Lightbulb Head >The Yip Song >I'm Only You >I Something You >Queen Elvis >Balloon Man >Airscape >So You Think You're In Love >My Wife And My Dead Wife IMHO, a pretty OK list, if not exactly what I would pick. However, staying general and not devolving solely into favorites (trying to stick with a "representational" theme), I'd lose "UPT" (too novelty-ish), "ISY" (to me, doesn't really add anything to the rest of the list), and either "BM" or "SYTYIL" (which I assume are both on as trying to represent Robyn's semi-colleg-radio-ish "hits;" one of them would likely suffice...prob. "So You Think..."). With the 3 open spots I would add (let's see...) perhaps "Driving Aloud" or "Freeze" (for the jittery uptempo side only otherwise conveyed post-SBs by "Yip"), "This Could be the Day" or "Cynthia Mask" (for another brooding, but not quiet acoustic number), and...either (getting up to date) "Authority Box" for the gee-tars and "fuck me, baby -- I'm a trolleybus!" or "Museum of Sex" for the redemption of mellow saxophones and "Oh, let's hear that riff again!" ...Or, what about just copying "Luxor" and sending that -- I'M ONLY KEEDING!!! (I, who luv "IODOT" and "Eye" beyond most other things, has never been able to get below the surface o' the non-Egyptians Egyptian record...) ...Just my pair o' copper Lincolns' worth... Michael Sweeney Ooh -- or maybe "The Leopard," for the bassline and the overall feel...or "...Ventilator" for the shear speed...or...I could go on all night... _________________________________________________________________ Interest Rates NEAR 39yr LOWS! $430,000 Mortgage for $1,299/mo - Calculate new payment http://www.lowermybills.com/lre/index.jsp?sourceid=lmb-9632-19132&moid=14888 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 02 May 2007 01:37:00 +0000 From: "Michael Sweeney" Subject: Re: Essential Robyn ...Wait -- I referred to the "shear speed" of "Wading Through a Ventilator," in the addendum to my last post, didn't I? Sigh... I must've been imagining Robyn quickly trimming Kimberly's mop-top as they played that one at top speed... Michael "Me write pretty someday" Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ MSN is giving away a trip to Vegas to see Elton John. Enter to win today. http://msnconcertcontest.com?icid-nceltontagline ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 18:43:02 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: movie talk plus >> I've always wanted to make an avant-garde blockbuster film (yes, I >> know - >> stay with me here...). I figured I'd stitch together hundreds of >> car chases >> and explosions, interspersed with occasional long shots of deserts, >> cliffs, >> sunrises, and the like (for maybe 30 seconds). Then back to the car >> chases >> and explosions. > >Wasn't that "Two Lane Blacktop"? > >-tc Two Lane Blacktop had too much of the godlike Warren Oates in it to be totally non-human. 'Sides, I don't remember anything actually blowing up in it - just James Taylor trying to look intense, or maybe he was just trying to stay awake. I just read an e-mail from the Dmeocratic Party and according to them we're on "a road to nowhere." I can practically hear Chris Frantz now... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 21:22:20 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: funny? you decide. On 5/1/07, Michael Sweeney wrote: > > Rex sayeth: > > >On 4/30/07, 2fs wrote: > >> > >>Yeah, well, Sturgeon's Law is 90% bullshit. > > >But the 10% that's accurate is really accurate. Like 9 times out of 10 , > >even. > > ...Wouldn't that make it 91% BS? Give or take ten percent, yes. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 22:26:19 -0400 From: "Lauren Elizabeth" Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and you sank my battleship! Stacked Crooked says: > the one i can't figure out is "FTW". yeah, yeah, i know i could look it up > somewhere; but i'm thinking it'll be so much the more satisfying if'/when i > finally figure it out on my own. oh, i thought of a possibility for that one (i like guessing acronyms as well.) if i'm right, it's one that kara from BSG might use, if she were inclined to use acronyms. xo - -- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "People with opinions just go around bothering one another." - The Buddha ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 21:40:44 -0500 From: "Miles Goosens" Subject: Re: My name is "Eb", and you sank my battleship! On 5/1/07, Lauren Elizabeth wrote: > Stacked Crooked says: > > the one i can't figure out is "FTW". yeah, yeah, i know i could look it up > > somewhere; but i'm thinking it'll be so much the more satisfying if'/when i > > finally figure it out on my own. > > oh, i thought of a possibility for that one (i like guessing acronyms > as well.) if i'm right, it's one that kara from BSG might use, if she > were inclined to use acronyms. I like Lauren's idea a lot, but... this is what I know it as... with spoiler space so Eddie can still guess: i t h i n k i t r e a l l y m e a n s t h i s : "For the win." I know it from computer gaming. "gatorbite axe ftw!!" [insert five random l33tspeak terms and disparaging other players as "gay" here]" later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 1 May 2007 13:45:53 -0400 (EDT) From: djini@voicenet.com Subject: chick ducks I don't know about you all, but when I see a headline like "Solving the Mystery of Duck Genitalia" I must know more. Apparently there's more sex and violence in the life of the average duck than you would suspect. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/science/01duck.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all - ------------------------------- LITCHFIELD, Conn.  This guys the champion, said Patricia Brennan, a behavioral ecologist, leaning over the nether regions of a duck  a Mellers duck from Madagascar, to be specific  and carefully coaxing out his phallus. The duck was quietly resting upside-down against the stomach of Ian Gereg, an aviculturist here at the Livingston Ripley Waterfowl Sanctuary. Dr. Brennan, a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University and the University of Sheffield, visits the sanctuary every two weeks to measure the phalluses of six species of ducks. When she first visited in January, the phalluses were the size of rice grains. Now many of them are growing rapidly. The champion phallus from this Mellers duck is a long, spiraling tentacle. Some ducks grow phalluses as long as their entire body. In the fall, the genitalia will disappear, only to reappear next spring. The anatomy of ducks is especially bizarre considering that 97 percent of all bird species have no phallus at all. Most male birds just deliver their sperm through an opening. Dr. Brennan is investigating how this sexual wonder of the world came to be. Part of the answer, she has discovered, has gone overlooked for decades. Male ducks may have such extreme genitals because the females do too. The birds are locked in an evolutionary struggle for reproductive success. Dr. Brennan was oblivious to bird phalluses until 1999. While working in a Costa Rican forest, she observed a pair of birds called tinamous mating. They became unattached, and I saw this huge thing hanging off of him, she said. I could not believe it. It became one of those questions I wrote down: why do these males have this huge phallus? A bird phallus is similar  but not identical  to a mammalian penis. Most of the time it remains invisible, curled up inside a birds body. During mating, however, it fills with lymphatic fluid and expands into a long, corkscrew shape. The birds sperm travels on the outside of the phallus, along a spiral-shaped groove, into the female bird. To learn about this peculiar organ, Dr. Brennan decided she would have to make careful dissections of male tinamous. In 2005 she traveled to the University of Sheffield to learn the art of bird dissection from Tim Birkhead, an evolutionary biologist. Dr. Birkhead had her practice on some male ducks from a local farm. Gazing at the enormous organs, she asked herself a question that apparently no one had asked before. So what does the female look like? she said. Obviously you cant have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car. The lower oviduct (the equivalent of the vagina in birds) is typically a simple tube. But when Dr. Brennan dissected some female ducks, she discovered they had a radically different anatomy. There were all these weird structures, these pockets and spirals, she said. Somehow, generations of biologists had never noticed this anatomy before. Pondering it, Dr. Brennan came to doubt the conventional explanation for how duck phalluses evolved. In some species of ducks, a female bonds for a season with a male. But she is also harassed by other males that force her to mate. Its nasty business. Females are often killed or injured, Dr. Brennan said. Species with more forced mating tend to have longer phalluses. That link led some scientists to argue that the duck phallus was the result of males competing with one another to fertilize eggs. Basically, you get a bigger phallus to put your sperm in farther than the other males, Dr. Brennan said. Dr. Brennan realized that scientists had made this argument without looking at the female birds. Perhaps, she wondered, the two sexes were coevolving, with elaborate lower oviducts driving the evolution of long phalluses. To test this idea, Dr. Brennan traveled to Alaska. Many species of waterfowl breed there, with a wide range of mating systems. Working with Kevin McCracken of the University of Alaska and his colleagues, she caught and dissected 16 species of ducks and geese, comparing the male and female anatomy. If a male bird had a long phallus, the female tended to have a more elaborate lower oviduct. And if the male had a small phallus, the female tended to have a simple oviduct. The correlation was incredibly tight, Dr. Brennan said. When you dissected one of the birds, it was really easy to predict what the other sex was going to look like. Dr. Brennan and her colleagues are publishing their study today in the journal PLOS One. Dr. McCracken, who discovered the longest known bird phallus on an Argentine duck in 2001, is struck by the fact that it was a woman who discovered the complexity of female birds. Maybe its the male bias we all have, he said. Its just been out there, waiting to be discovered. Dr. Brennan argues that elaborate female duck anatomy evolves as a countermeasure against aggressive males. Once they choose a male, theyre making the best possible choice, and thats the male they want siring their offspring, she said. They dont want the guy flying in from who knows where. It makes sense that they would develop a defense. Female ducks seem to be equipped to block the sperm of unwanted males. Their lower oviduct is spiraled like the male phallus, for example, but it turns in the opposite direction. Dr. Brennan suspects that the female ducks can force sperm into one of the pockets and then expel it. It only makes sense as a barrier, she said. To support her argument, Dr. Brennan notes studies on some species that have found that forced matings make up about a third of all matings. Yet only 3 percent of the offspring are the result of forced matings. To me, it means these females are successful with this strategy, she said. Dr. Brennan suspects that when the females of a species evolved better defenses, they drove the evolution of male phalluses. The males have to step up to produce a longer or more flexible phallus, she said. Other scientists have documented a similar coevolution of genitals in flies and other invertebrates. But Dr. Brennans study is the clearest example of this arms race in vertebrates. Its rare to find something so blatantly obvious in the female anatomy, Dr. Brennan said. Im sure its going on in other vertebrates, but its probably going in ways that are more subtle and harder to figure out. To test her hypothesis, Dr. Brennan plans to team up with a biomechanics expert to build a transparent model of a female duck. She wants to see exactly what a duck phallus does during mating. Dr. Brennan also hopes to find more clues by studying phalluses on living ducks. At the waterfowl sanctuary in Litchfield, she is spending the year tracking the growth and disappearance of phalluses in ducks and geese. Hardly anything is known about how the phallus waxes and wanes  not to mention why. It may be easier to regrow it than to keep it healthy, Dr. Brennan said. But those are some of the things I may be able to find out. When youre doing something that so little is known about, you cant really predict whats going to happen. ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #188 ********************************