About the hand of George Clinton:

George Clinton’s hand has been cloned by the artist Marc Sokpolie also known as Zwazi. We made polyurethane copies from the silicone mold.

All the detail is there, all the veins, skin creases, pores, in fact we had to sand down the fingerprints slightly because we don’t want to get too private!

The hand has a built-in USB flash drive in the detachable index finger. The base of the hand has an embossed ‘George Clinton’ logo and a serial number. We started at nr. 2, because nr. 1 is George’s own right hand, which he’s not going to sell! The USB flash drive comes exclusively with the documentary entitled: “The Silence in Between” by Mark Limburg of Stone Film.

Put the hand on a bookshelf, or on a shelf with all your Parliament/Funkadelic records, where it will radiate the highest FUNK potential possible… remember it’s the closest you can get to George… If you don’t have a backstage pass!

I’m not sure how I feel about this. You can purchase Dr. Funkenstein’s digits at George Clinton’s Hand for € 60.00.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

 
The latest from the American Bridge PAC (with supporting facts here). It’s a “greatest shits” compilation reminding voters in union-heavy northern Ohio who they don’t want to vote for…

The top-voted YouTube comment sums it up quite nicely:

Giving a vulture capitalist who’s (sic) greatest financial successes all came at the expense of American tax payers, the keys to the American economy is tantamount to financial suicide for the middle class.

Yeah, like the guy with the Cayman Islands bank account is gonna look out for your interests, Joe Sixpack (To be clear here: I’m not pro-Obama, I just hate Republicans).

The battleground states get all the good political advertisements. Out here in true blue California, we never see any of the good ones on tee-vee.
 

 
It’s near midnight when I make the conference call to Glenn McQuaid and Larry Fessenden. Outside I can hear early Halloween revelers making their way home - shouts, laughter, a distant scream. McQuaid is the writer and director of I Sell the Dead, which starred Indie King of Horror, Fessenden – who has been making horror films as an actor, writer, producer and director since 1985, when he set-up his company Glass Eye Pix.

The line crackles, then a faint casual tone. It’s answered, and there’s something of the séance about their voices – distant, ghostly, far off – as they come through. Eventually ‘Hello,’ Glenn’s soft Irish lilt, and we greet each other through a deafening roar. ‘Like a hurricane’ one of us says. ‘Better try again.’ This time we’re clear, and in the room.

Since 2010, McQuaid and Fessenden have been scaring the bejesus out of listeners, with their anthology radio series of top drawer horror stories called Tales from Beyond the Pale. Recorded live in front of an audience at a New York theater, Tales… brought the magnificent acting skills of Vincent D’Onofrio, Angus Scrimm, Ron Perlman, and James Le Gros, together with the writing talents of Fessenden (who also acted in certain shows), McQuaid, Graham Reznick, Ashley Thorpe, Paul Solet, J. T. Petty, Sarah Langan and Jeff Buhler. These tales of mystery and imagination varied from science fiction (“This Oracle Moon”) to fantasy and horror (“Trawler”, “Hole Digger”, “The Demon Huntsman”, “The Conformation”), and were an instant success.

The original idea for the series came to Glenn, when he and Larry were driving upstate, listening to an old Boris Karloff broadcast.

Glenn McQuaid: ‘Larry and I were driving up to the set of Jim Nichols’ movie, which Larry produced, and we were listening to an old Boris Karloff radio play. The rain started down and we found we were enrapt by this old time radio drama. And I just turned to Larry and started proposing the idea - that this was something that Glass Eye Pix could get behind, and we both talked about it.

‘A coupe of months later, we started to take the idea seriously. It came out of a desire to get a lot more of our own content out there. Initially we had treatments and outlines for projects that had been sitting around too long, and we thought this would be a good platform to get our own work out there, as well as the work of all our friends and collaborators - people like Paul Solet and Jeff Buhler. It was a desire to keep working to keep getting ideas out there, and I think it was very tempting for Larry and I to try something, which was essentially new for us at the time.

‘Basically, the project grew out of a desire to get stuff out there from ourselves, but almost more importantly from other people and step in as curators in a way, and design the anthologies. We reached out to people we’ve either worked with before, or had met and have enjoyed their work.

‘For instance, I met Paul Solet while I was showing I Sell the Dead and he was showing Grace at Fright Fest Presents… in Glasgow, and we just got on well together. When we started shifting gears with Tales from Beyond the Pale, I started reaching out to Paul Solet, Jeff Buhler - he’s another film-maker that I like, and similarly Larry reached out to a few folks he was intrigued by.’

Larry Fessenden: ‘Yeah, we hooked up with Simon Lumley, who I’d never met, I think you met him. Simon Barrett as well, who Glenn and I have both worked with, I was in Simon’s film You’re Next, and Glenn worked with him on V/H/S.

‘It’s really expanding the community, which is the other agenda, something I’ve always tried to do. It’s my theory that if there is enough of us in the same boat, then maybe we can all rise up together and take over Tinsel Town.’
 

 
More tales from Glenn McQuaid and Larry Fessenden, after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Trump by David McCue

“The only difference between you and Michael Douglas from the movie Wall Street is that no one is going to be sad when you get cancer”
—Anthony Jeselnik speaks the unvarnished truth at the Comedy Central “roast” of Donald Trump.

Have you seen the new documentary You’ve Been Trumped? It will make your blood boil. It’s been three days since Tara and I watched it, and we’ve not stopped talking about it and how much we both hate Donald Trump’s guts.

Writing at The Arts Desk, Graeme Thomson puts it better than I could:

It has never been easier to get sucked into a warm, simplistic sensibility which portrays every rich capitalist businessman as corrupt and amoral, but you spend 90 minutes watching Donald Trump in action and you start to wonder. If Trump didn’t exist you suspect Martin Amis would invent him. He would probably call his caricature of a dastardly US business tycoon Donald Shit.

As a resident of Manhattan for the majority of the 1980s, I had a head-start on most people hating Trump, the overconfident, born-rich dickhead once so delightfully described during that decade as a “thick-fingered vulgarian” by SPY magazine.

I’ve actually had several occasions over the years when I’ve been around The Donald at parties and movie openings and stuff like that, but the only time that really rises to the level of an actual anecdote was sometime in the late 80s, I was leaving the opening of a new nightclub (I think it was called “The Apartment”) on Canal Street and bounding down the staircase as Trump and his bodyguards were making their way up. I would have chest-thumped Trump except for this totally boss move he made that was so arrogant—and yet so perfectly “Trumpian”—whereby he simply took one arm—almost like he was swimming—and pushed me aside with an oh-so-graceful movement (one he’d perfected). He didn’t even think about, that’s how ingrained it is in his worldview that he comes first. Not a grunt of apology, nothing. My friend and I just looked at each other and laughed out loud. It was too funny to take offense at.

Me, I’ve always hated Donald Trump to begin with, but after seeing this film, I’d imagine that even the most mild-mannered folk would be braying for his head on the end of a stick. You can’t help but wish daggers on him as you watch You’ve Been Trumped. He’s a horrible, loathsome, mythical shit of a man. I don’t think any other reaction is even humanly possible. Gandhi would have wanted to spit in Trump’s face, at the very least, if he was alive to see this film. Mother Theresa herself would want to throttle the motherfucker. Trump’s an appalling human being, I think most people would agree, but this film… WOW. It’s a must see. One of the most essential documentaries made in the past few years.

Released in a limited run in August, Anthony Baxter’s film, a festival favorite for obvious reasons, was screened on BBC2 last week and has been widely seen the world over in subsequent days via torrent trackers. You’ve Been Trumped is a riveting film, lauded by the likes of Michael Moore, Bill Moyers and unsurprisingly, Rosie O’Donnell. The word of mouth about the film is strong, so strong that a VOD distributor should pick it up for US release and get it out there pronto. There’s money being left on the table.

Here’s how the film is described in the press materials:

In this David and Goliath story for the 21st century, a group of proud Scottish homeowners take on a celebrity tycoon. At stake is one of Britain’s very last stretches of wilderness.  

American billionaire Donald Trump has bought up hundreds of acres on the northeast coast of Scotland, best known to movie-lovers as the setting for the 1983 classic film Local Hero. And like the American oil tycoon played by Burt Lancaster, he needs to buy out a few more locals to make the deal come true.  In a land swimming with golf courses, Trump is going to build two more – alongside a 450-room hotel and 1,500 luxury homes. The trouble is, the land he has purchased occupies one of Europe’s most environmentally sensitive stretches of coast, described by one leading scientist as Scotland’s Amazon rain forest. And the handful of local residents don’t want it destroyed. 

After the Scottish Government overturns its own environmental laws to give Trump the green light, the stage is set for an extraordinary summer of discontent, as the bulldozers spring into action. Water and power is cut off, land disputes erupt, and some residents have thousands of tonnes of earth piled up next to their homes. Complaints go ignored by the police, who instead arrest the film’s director, Anthony Baxter.  Local exasperation comes to a surreal head as the now “Dr”  Trump scoops up an honorary doctorate from a local university, even as his tractors turn wild, untouched dunes into fairways.  

Told entirely without narration, You’ve Been Trumped captures the cultural chasm between the glamorous, jet-setting and media savvy Donald Trump and a deeply rooted Scottish community.  What begins as an often amusing clash of world views grows increasingly bitter and disturbing.  For the tycoon, the golf course is just another deal, with a possible billion dollar payoff.  For the residents, it represents the destruction of a globally unique landscape that has been the backdrop for their lives.  

Funny, inspiring and heartbreaking in turns, You’ve Been Trumped  is both an entertaining, can’t-believe-it’s-true tale and an environmental parable for our celebrity driven times.  A moving score features music from jónsi, the internationally acclaimed musician and frontman of Sigur Ros.  The film also offers a rare and revealing glimpse of the unfiltered Donald Trump, as he considers standing as a candidate for President of the United States.

But it’s not just Donald Trump’s piggish behavior in the film that is so off-the scale-sickening, it’s also the way the obsequious Scottish politicians lick his arrogant ass clean that will turn your stomach. HOW can these pols survive politically after this film exposes them for the fucking fools they are? You’ll wish death on Trump—trust me, you will—but these Caledonian shite-heads deserve to have their asses handed back to them on plates by an ENRAGED population. How many people living in Scotland haven’t seen this film yet? Two or three?

No, really, it’s that mind-boggling. You can get a copy of the You’ve Been Trumped on DVD directly from the filmmaker and You’ve Been Trumped is showing up sporadically in screenings around the country. I guarantee that once you’ve seen it, you’ll be insisting to all of your friends that they see it, too.

Donald Trump proves the film’s point in this characteristic tweet to its director, Anthony Baxter:
 

.@antbaxterYour documentary died many deaths. You have, in my opinion, zero talent.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2012

 
One has to wonder how many of the multitude of drug scare films produced in the 1960s and early 70s actually managed to propagate the bad trips they were warning us about. Almost every depiction of the LSD experience committed to film has been negative, including movies made by so-called “heads.” Check out The Trip, Easy Rider and Psche-Out to see how Hollywood hipsters, who should have known better, demonized psychedelics. Easy Rider comes close to replicating an LSD trip but man is it spooky in that graveyard.

I am still waiting for the movie that reveals the truth about LSD and how it triggered one of the greatest leaps in consciousness since the invention of film itself. But that’s a whole other article for another time.

Right now, let’s peer into the dark side of psychedelia according to people who know jackshit about the subject at hand. Go Ask Alice was a 1973 TV movie based on a book of the same name. The book, like the movie, is a bunch of reactionary hokum that more than likely created more bummers than it prevented. Back in the day, teenagers were constantly bombarded with anti-drug propaganda and as a result went into the acid experience expecting the worst. And in many cases, the negative programming became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea of “set and setting” (be in the right mindset and in the right environment) as emphasized by Timothy Leary was basically ignored while TV and movies continued freaking kids out. I would venture to say that most bad trips were the result of bad pre-programming. But instead of teaching people how to take drugs responsibly, society chose the alternative of keeping people in the dark. I had the good fortune of reading Leary’s “The Psychedelic Experience” and various other texts on LSD before taking my first trip and knew that even the worst acid trips could simply be ridden out by breathing deeply and staying calm in the face of the cosmic storm.

It’s easy to laugh at Go Ask Alice now, but at the time it was broadcast on the American airwaves the movie probably did a significant amount of damage by promoting misinformation and outright lies. Unlike the fabricated Alices of the media world, when I was 16 years old and peaking on 250 mics of Sandoz I didn’t flip out when the telephone starting melting in my hand - a sensual, pulsating blob of red plastic. I kept talking, telling my mother how much I wanted her to share the lovely experience I was having in that moment. Yes, my first trip was transformative, profound, ecstatic. Go ask Marc. I’ll tell you all about it.

Go Ask Alice features William Shatner, Andy Griffith and future coke-fiend MacKenzie Phillips in an outrageously alarmist but entertaining exercise in ignorance. The shitty version of The Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” sets the tone for what’s to come.
 

 
Manchester, England mix-master Ben Pearce has broken out big time with the delicious and deeply funky house track “What I Might Do.”

The video directed by You Ness is all sleek surfaces at the service of Pearce’s beats and the ultra-groovy vocal sample from “Cornbread, Fish & Collard Greens” by Anthony Hamilton.
 

 
If you’re anywhere near the path of Hurricane Sandy and you’re still considering voting for a Republican, peer into the crystal ball of President Mitt Romney telling you to go fuck yourself in case of a catastrophe. According to the Mittster, when CNN’s John King asked him about FEMA, Federal funding for disaster relief is “immoral,” and is best left to the states or, “even better,” to the private sector.

Of course, unlike most of the residents of the Eastern seaboard all the way through to Michigan, when disaster strikes for Mitt Romney, he and Ann just pick up stakes, jump into their private jet and head off to another one of their palatial homes. Not his fault you don’t work hard enough. He sent you a bus, didn’t he, moocher?

I just read that Obama says that he doesn’t expect the hurricane to have much of an effect on the election, but I’d say this is a net gain for him, not Romney, but especially with videotape like this around to haunt the GOP nominee. Federal emergency aid? IMMORAL! Tax cuts for millionaire “job creators”? Bring it on!

You’d have to have your head examined to vote for Romney in the face of an act of God like this one. Would Romney really give the cold shoulder to red states caught up in devastation? He says he would, let’s take him at his word.
 

 
Via Daily Kos

This photo was taken in 1979. I have no idea what the hell is going on here, but I’d thought share it anyway.
 
A few weeks ago I blogged about Giorgio Moroder uploading his 70s and early-80s remixed and rare electro tunes to Soundcloud. This week brings an all new Moroder set, showcasing his tunes from the 60s to the early-70s with his versions of songs like “Yummy Yummy Yummy” and “Mah Nà Mah Nà.”

Oh, there’s a song named “Sandy” in the mix there that’s pretty good, too.
 

 
This little bird was photographed by Nicola Giacomelli earlier this afternoon, apparently advertising cat food, at the local Co-operative store in Brodick.
 
Photo copyright Nicola Giacomelli, with thanks to Colin Gilbert.
 

 
Goldfrapp’s first single, 2000’s “Lovely Head,” taken from their debut album Felt Mountain (it’s also the lead-off number), is one of my favorite, favorite songs. The whole Shirley Bassey/John Barry meets Ennio Morricone vibe, the catchy forlorn whistling melody—and the lyrics, those haunting, disturbing lyrics…

It starts in my belly
Then up to my heart
Into my mouth I can’t keep it shut
Do you recognize the smell
Is that how you tell
Us apart

...well, it’s pretty much the perfect pop song in my book. I can’t think of a stronger, more deliriously delicious way for Goldfrapp’s vision to have been unleashed on the world than with “Lovely Head.” Will Gregory’s impeccable arrangement is topped off with the black cherry of Alison Goldfrapp’s absolutely otherworldly dripping-with-weltschmerz mega-diva vocal performance. It’s genius stuff. (Here’s a link to the original Wolfgang Tillmans-directed music video).

But here’s the thing: I’ve listened to this song hundreds upon hundreds of times—many of them in the past week, just ask my long suffering wife!—but it wasn’t until I got the live Wonderful Electric DVD that I realized what I have long thought was a deftly executed Theremin solo, was, in fact, Alison Goldfrapp’s voice being manipulated by a vintage monophonic analog synthesizer, the Korg MS-20.

In the stunning live rendition of “Lovely Head”—shot at Somerset House in London in 2004—that starts below at 9:42, watch what happens when Alison Goldrapp grabs the second microphone. It’s a real showstopper and yet it’s only the third song in the set. The entire concert is an absolute knock out from start to finish. Highly recommended.