Boo Bah Bah

A Daily Dose of Constructive Weirdness

constructive weirdness: a kind of novelty
that is odd, strange, funny, a little peculiar --
opening up new spaces for creativity, laughter, and love.

practicing weirdness:  appreciating what is constructively weird,
taking delight in how it is a little off, a little zany, a little outlandish.
Seeing Kookiness as one of God's names.  Being a little kooky yourself.

weird-sensitive mystic: a person who sees the whole of reality,
including what seems "normal," as a little kooky, a little off,
and loves it all because it's so odd.   Sees oddness as holy ordinary.

the oddness of being: the radical contingency of things.
Nothing is just what it is.  Everything is different
from the way ​it could have been.  Everything is odd.
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You Never Know: Living with a Sense of Radical Contingency

more Bob Vido music

In Appreciation of Bob Vido

On August 4th, 1995, an 80-year old man died in his tiny, old-style Hollywood bungalow. The same place he'd been living for nearly 50 years. He had no children and he was not married. He left a checking account with a few hundred dollars, a couple small parcels of land in the desert, a rusted 1971 Toyota with 4 flat tires, and a $45 dentist bill (for a restored post and crown).
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But! While all the evidence suggested that this was just the passing of another nobody in the heart of Lipstick City, this peculiar old man in the bungalow left a buried legacy. Robert Zaprian Vidoloff, or "Bob Vido" as he called himself, was a prolific, energetic, and effusive outsider renaissance man.

I found Bob's homemade record at a flea market 2 years ago - it was covered with postcards of wild, space-age art and writing that suggested that Bob was a lecturer, a writer, a designer, an astrologer, a mathematician and philosopher. The music is deliriously off-kilter - bouncing around from goofy accordion songs to avant-garde noise and chanting with Sun-Ra piano. And Bob introduces himself before every song, just in case you forgot who the maestro was.
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In the years since, I've tried to find out more about Bob. Not surprisingly, his life story seems to be riddled with contradictions as well as outright fibs. But I've managed to find many original pieces of his odd, thrift-store artwork. The tidbits of information I've discovered show a gifted eccentric and relentless self-promoter who loved what he did, and rarely compromised.
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Jonathan Ward, http://www.bobvido.com/

Boo Bah Bah

​​There are two kinds of people in the world: those who understand the human need for a daily dose of weirdness, and those who do not.   Boo Bah Bah appeals to the first group.  They need to break on through to the other side, to let novelty enter the room, to appreciate the kooky as a source of relief from the craziness of what others call “common sense” and “matter of fact” and “the way things are.”   Indeed, on some days, the whole of the world looks a little kooky, a little off.  And some of the "off" is quite beautiful.

​Most of the kooky lovers have made their piece with everyday life, but they need a break from it, too.  They need to take a flight to outer space, for, say, five minutes, and say Boo Bah Bah.  I can’t help but wonder if they are lured by the holy in their way, and if some of the prophets of the ancient past weren’t a little kooky, too.   Indeed, we might even wonder if the holy one – the living soul of the universe – might appreciate the kooky as well. Some propose that, in the beginning, the original sound of the Holy One was OM.  I like to think this myself.  But I also wonder if, perhaps, the living Word that came before the whole of creation might not also be Boo Bah Bah.  There was the holly one, alone in a bungalow, with a dental bill as yet unpaid, and needful of making contact with something more than himself (or herself or themselves) and a sound emerged from the depths of the divine heart: a funny sound, almost baby like, crying in a manger, with a light spirit and a heart bent toward love, saying Boo Bah Bah.   It was a way of saying “Welcome” to what is strange, fickle,

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Bob Vido Artwork. Image courtesy of Jonathan Ward

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