Elvis Costello and The Attractions appeared on Saturday Night Live on December 17, 1977 as a last minute replacement for The Sex Pistols, who had run into problems getting into the USA because of some prior legal hassles in the UK. Costello’s performance on SNLwould become the stuff of rock and roll legend.

Costello’s record label, Columbia, wanted him to perform “Less Than Zero”, the first single from his as yet unreleased (in the U.S.) debut album My Aim Is True. Elvis wanted to perform “Radio Radio,” his attack on corporate control of the airwaves - a punk move that would have been in the spirit of The Pistols. Columbia disapproved and SNL producer Lorne Michaels allegedly also did not want the song performed as per orders from his employer NBC. Costello was told in no uncertain terms not to play the song.

Come showtime, the band started playing “Less Than Zero” and then abruptly stopped and shifted into “Radio Radio.” At the end of the tune, they defiantly walked off the set.

Michaels was furious. According to first hand accounts, he was flipping Costello the bird through the entire performance. Michaels ended up banning Costello from ever performing again on SNL. The ban lasted 12 years, which in TV years is an eternity. SNL was an essential promotional venue for jacking up a band’s record sales. Costello bit the hand that was supposed to feed him even before he even got a nibble of commercial success. In the long run, it didn’t stop him from becoming one of rock’s enduring forces.
 

 
Elvis and The Attractions do a killer version of “Radio Radio” in Detroit six months after SNL banning. Check it out after the jump…

“If Newt Gingrich can betray a woman who swore her loyalty to him for the rest of her life—not once but TWICE—what makes you think he won’t betray you, the faceless voter in a sea of faceless voters?”

That question is asked at the conclusion of a blistering viral video critique of Gingrich that an Iowa pastor named Cary Gordon is making sure gets around. From the LA Times:

Gordon is sending the video via text message to every registered Republican or non-aligned Iowa voter with a cellphone on record. He says it is necessary because Gingrich’s favorability rating among Iowa Christians “keeps going up and up.”

Gordon, who leads the 1,000-member Cornerstone Church in Sioux City, Iowa, says he feels he must speak out against Gingrich because “he terrifies me” as a potential leader without a strong moral compass.

You an’ me, both, Rev, but don’t get me wrong, I think Molotov Mitchell, the homophobic birther who made this video (and plenty of others) for WorldNetDaily, is a complete fuckwit and his presence here on DM is in no way an endorsement of his lame reactionary shtick, still I must admit to, uh, agreeing with a lot of this one.

As surprising as it is that I concur with something (in bold strokes) that Molotov Mitchell came up with, I guess one thing about Newton Leroy Gingrich that that can be said with absolute certitude is that he brings Americans of EVERY DEMOGRAPHIC together!

It occurred to me watching this that Gingrich is actually a lot closer to being “THE JOHN EDWARDS OF THE GOP” than its Kim Kardashian, although that one’s pretty on target, too, of course. Ponder for a second what sort of damage it would do to Gingrich’s campaign if a meme comparing him to the universally loathed two-time Democratic presidential candidate and former senator gained traction in Iowa?

I mean on an axis of adultery, cancer and extreme narcissism, Gingrich and John Edwards are two peas in the same morally bankrupt pod, aren’t they?

Odd that none of Newt’s GOP opponents have decided to run with an Edwards/Gingrich comparison. But, hey, if any of them want it, they can have it for free!
 

 
German TV. Man hums “O sole mio”, well, holds a note, but you couldn’t ask for more, as 15 cars drive over him. Don’t try this at home.

Taken from Wetten, dass…?, the longest-running and most successful Saturday night TV show in Europe, which was until recently presented by Thomas Gottschalk, who finds contestants willing to carry out impossible feats for a bet.
 

 
Via b3ta
 

 
Patrick Meighan is “a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom Family Guy, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.” He also was arrested by the LAPD at the Occupy Los Angele encampment at City Hall. He’s posted the story of what happened when the camp was upended and of his experiences in jail.

His conclusions about the experience are not to be missed:

Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Occupy LA protestors who couldn’t afford the bail. The LAPD chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent protesters in prison for two full days… the absolute legal maximum that the LAPD is allowed to detain someone on misdemeanor charges.

As a reminder, Antonio Villaraigosa has referred to all of this as “the LAPD’s finest hour.”

So that’s what happened to the 292 women and men were arrested last Wednesday. Now let’s talk about a man who was not arrested last Wednesday. He is former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince. Under Charles Prince, Citigroup was guilty of massive, coordinated securities fraud.

Citigroup spent years intentionally buying up every bad mortgage loan it could find, creating bad securities out of those bad loans and then selling shares in those bad securities to duped investors. And then they sometimes secretly bet *against* their *own* bad securities to make even more money. For one such bad Citigroup security, Citigroup executives were internally calling it, quote, “a collection of dogshit”. To investors, however, they called it, quote, “an attractive investment rigorously selected by an independent investment adviser”.

This is fraud, and it’s a felony, and the Charles Princes of the world spent several years doing it again and again: knowingly writing bad mortgages, and then packaging them into fraudulent securities which they then sold to suckers and then repeating the process. This is a big part of why your property values went up so fast. But then the bubble burst, and that’s why our economy is now shattered for a generation, and it’s also why your home is now underwater. Or at least mine is.

Anyway, if your retirement fund lost a decade’s-worth of gains overnight, this is why.

If your son’s middle school has added furlough days because the school district can’t afford to keep its doors open for a full school year, this is why.

If your daughter has come out of college with a degree only to discover that there are no jobs for her, this is why.

But back to Charles Prince. For his four years of in charge of massive, repeated fraud at Citigroup, he received fifty-three million dollars in salary and also received another ninety-four million dollars in stock holdings. What Charles Prince has *not* received is a pair of zipcuffs. The nerves in his thumb are fine. No cop has thrown Charles Prince into the pavement, face-first. Each and every peaceful, nonviolent Occupy LA protester arrested last week has has spent more time sleeping on a jail floor than every single Charles Prince on Wall Street, combined.

The more I think about that, the madder I get. What does it say about our country that nonviolent protesters are given the bottom of a police boot while those who steal hundreds of billions, do trillions worth of damage to our economy and shatter our social fabric for a generation are not only spared the zipcuffs but showered with rewards?

In any event, believe it or not, I’m really not angry that I got arrested. I chose to get arrested. And I’m not even angry that the mayor and the LAPD decided to give non-violent protestors like me a little extra shiv in jail (although I’m not especially grateful for it either).

I’m just really angry that every single Charles Prince wasn’t in jail with me.

My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan
 

 

 
Via Crooks and Liars

 
The über-hipsters over at Bitchfork (er, I mean Pitchfork) have put together a list of the 20 worst album covers of 2011 and here’s two that got a chuckle out of me. Shit and Shat.

To see the rest go to Pitchfork’s website.
 

 

 
James Fallows posts some excerpts at The Atlantic from an essay, recently published in China, that takes issue with the way that much of the initial Chinese media coverage of Occupy Wall Street depicted the protest as, in Fallows words, “...yet another sign of America’s decadence and imminent collapse.”

Democracy clearly has its flaws, but OWS shows not the defects of democracy but its advantages. That protestors do not “go missing” [as they have this year in China] is thanks to the benefits of democracy, and the lack of violent conflict or loss of social order is an example of its accomplishments. The US government has not condemned nor suppressed, but rather sympathised* with the movement, nor have the crowds challenged the legitimacy of the government or the democratic system itself. Rather, OWS is happening precisely within that democratic framework.

In other words: we must change our perspective and see this demonstration as a rational expression of democracy, and the normal activity of a healthy society rather than the upheaval of it.

A Fascinating Chinese View of the Occupy Movement (The Atlantic)

 
This is apparently British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Christmas card, which looks more like a wedding invitation from the English Defense League. The image was shared by @VictoriaPeckham, who notes:

There are signs of British isolationism even in the PM’s official Xmas card pic.

This might explain today’s events in Brussels.
 
With thanks to Suzanne Moore and Charles Shaar Murray
 

 
 
Peter Cushing liked to read - as can be seen from this rather strange sequence from The Skull (1965).
 

 
When the Gentleman of Horror wasn’t reading, Peter liked to play with his toy soldiers at his home in Kensington, London, as this British Pathe News reel footage from 1956 shows. This was Mr Cushing before his career defining performances as Baron Victor in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and as Coctor Van Helsing in Dracula (1958).
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Peter Cushing’s death wish

“I have breast cancer. A week ago, I had breast cancer, and the week before that, and the week before that. Maybe five, eight, even ten years ago, the first bad cell split inside me, secretly. But I didn’t know. This is how I arrived at knowing.”

If you haven’t read Xeni Jardin’s very personal account of what it was like to receive a diagnosis she really didn’t want to get, I suggest you click over to Boing Boing now and do so. Last week, in solidarity and friendship with two friends of hers who were recently diagnosed with breast cancer, Xeni made an appointment to have a breast exam, and she took photos during the exam which she tweeted. The idea was to show what happens during a breast exam and to demystify the process, but that was it.

I’m not sure that she would have chosen to go through all of this in public if she knew in advance what the results might be, but I deeply admire the fact that she has.

I do not know all of what’s ahead. I know a little. I know that there is a new kind of life on the other side of this thing. A changed mind and body. A new appreciation of time, and breath, and health, and life, and loved ones.

The gravity in this place is different. I’ve spoken to others who’ve traveled out here, too, and returned home safely. When you become one of them, you learn quickly that you share a language others can’t understand.

The trick, these fellow travelers tell me, is to accept the not knowing and find your equilibrium in that new gravity. Calm the mind. Find your balance out on the cold planet, whether or not you know the next step, or the date of the next appointment, or what good or bad news the Technetium-99 isotopes floating around in your blood during the last scan reveal.

You must be at peace with not knowing, they tell me. That is how you get through outer space, and find your way back home.

The thing about this thing, or, at least, this first week of this thing, is how it takes you out there to the cold planet again and again and again, when you aren’t expecting it. Long, undulating waves of fear pull you out to where you are alone and unreachable, even by words sent from the strongest satellite.

The thing that brings you back is love.

As many of DM’s readers probably know, Xeni Jardin is one of my and Tara’s closest friends and favorite people in the world. As a mutual friend once said of her, “Xeni is like a being from an advanced planet or the future who has come to Earth to help us all evolve faster.” If there’s anyone who can beat this, it is, for sure, our Xenorita, and she is in really good hands, which is a real comfort to all of us who care about her. Send some good vibes—and love—her way in the Boing Boing comments, won’t you?

 
‘Tis the season for endless nauseating and ubiquitous holiday songs. And here’s some more ! Only thing is, these are all actually really good, interesting music and in fine, self-promoting tradition, I have something on this as well. Happy Crimble !