Lessons of the internet: If you’re looking for something, put up a webpage asking for it. Eventually someone who can help you will stumble across it and get in touch. That’s what happened with this particular song. I posted the following early last year:

     “I’m on another ridiculous quest.

     In 2001, I heard that there was a tribute to the Who’s ‘The Who Sell Out’ in the works, featuring the likes of Zumpano, The Flashing Lights, The Young Fresh Fellows, Swag, and members of the Blake Babies, Cheap Trick, the Smithereens.

     Towards the end of 2001 a 30 second clip of Zumpano’s track surfaced on Audiogalaxy, and that was the last I ever heard of the project.

     A little poking around this week has revealed that the project was being put together by a label called Futureman records – apparently a Detroit based project run by someone called Keith Klingensmith. There used to be a website at www.futuremanrecords.com but it’s gone now. I’m hoping someone loosely connected to me by friendster might know something about it.

     It sounds like a fun project – “The original album, we are doing every word, every chunk, in order. The Radio London stuff, and the ads between the songs, are all going to be covered.” Does anyone know what happened to this release?”

     A few weeks ago, Jeff T. contacted me with the whole track. It probably won’t hold the same appeal unless you’ve also been looking for it for four years, but here it is either way. I’ve also added it to the Zumpano Rarities Page.

Zumpano – ‘Silas Stingy’
From: The never-released “New Sell Out” album
(A tribute to ‘The Who Sell Out‘)

[audio:Zumpano – Silas Stingy.mp3]

     Hoping for similar success, here are two more obscure bits of media I am (passively) searching for:

     Apparently there was an episode of Darkwing Duck that was a parody of Twin Peaks. It was titled ‘Twin Beaks.’ I’d like to see this.

     I’m also looking for a specific clip of the November 7th, 2002 episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Guests on this episode included both David Cross and Amy Poehler. During her chat with Conan, Amy told an anecdote that was lifted from the ‘Customs’ skit on Mr. Show. The crazy part was that David Cross (Co-creator of Mr. Show) was sitting right next to her when this happened. If my memory is operating correctly, Cross looked bemused, and I couldn’t figure out if it was a bizarre ‘fake plagiarism’ gag, or if Poehler had just committed the comedy equivalent of submitting a plagiarized paper to its original author.

     Update: Yupislyr provided a link to a transcript in the comments. It’s not as similar as I had remembered it. Here’s the transcript of the Poehler bit, and the transcript of the Mr. Show sketch is here (Near the bottom, it’s called “Shampoo”).

CONAN: I’m told you were just traveling? You were…where were you? You were in Canada pretty recently.

AMY: Yeah, I just went to Toronto for the day and, um, we had to go through immigration, you know? And, uh, because of the heightened security, I get really nervous now even though I’m not doing anything wrong.

CONAN: Right.

AMY: And I’m always afraid that for some reason they’re not going to let me back into the country. Like, that they’re gonna be, “No, we’re full.” You know? “You can’t come back in.”

CONAN: Right. (laughs)

AMY: So I got to immigration and I just started babbling like for no…and I don’t have anything to hide, and, uh — well…. Um, but, and the guy was like, uh, you know, “Why’d you go to Toronto?” and I was like, “Oh, I was here for a confirmation. I mean, a christening. I mean, I mean, I was here for a day and, uh, you know…I know how to make a bong out of an apple!”

CONAN: (laughs) It just comes out, yeah!

AMY: It just comes out!

CONAN: How do you make a bong out of an apple? (Amy laughs) We’ll talk later.

AMY: Very slowly!