AC/DC’s official exhibition Family Jewels has opened at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, where it will be on show until February 2012. The exhibition will then move on to America.
Its the first time this band approved exhibition has left Australia, and Scotland was considered the most obvious place to bring the show as there are strong links between the country and the legendary band. AC/DC’s founding members Angus and Malcolm Young were born in Glasgow, while the late, great singer, Bon Scott was born in Kirriemuir - also know for its gingerbread.
The exhibition contains over 400 items celebrating 35 years of one of the world’s greatest rock and roll bands. From photographs, programmes, tour posters, tickets plus personal memorabilia, letters, song lyrics to rare stage costumes, including one of Angus Young’s school uniforms and Bon Scott’s last leather jacket. This is all interspersed with 3 hours of live concert footage, video clips, interviews, which all details the history of AC/DC.
This is a major one-off exhibition and a must-see for AC/DC fans as well as for those interested in popular culture. Check details here and pictures here.
Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, of Buffalo, NY is the latest victim of teen bullying. He was taunted with hateful cyberbullying posts like “JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!” and “I wouldn’t care if you died. No one would. So just do it It would make everyone WAY more happier!”
If this is the kind of stuff these bullies would write, you can only guess at what they said to his face.
“I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens,” Jamey wrote online on September 9th. “What do I have to do so people will listen to me?”
Just over one week later, Jamey was found dead outside his home of an apparent suicide.
In the months prior, he routinely blogged about school bullying and thoughts of suicide in between upbeat posts about his pop star idol Lady Gaga and the ordinary types of teen rants typical for kids his age.
On Sept. 8, he wrote: “No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you’re the ones calling me [gay slur] and tearing me down.”
Redditor Golden_Dalek says: “I sent some stuff to Simon Pegg to get signed. This arrived in the post three months later along with all my (signed) memorabilia.”
...evidence has now emerged suggesting that the well-guarded Sony DADC distribution centre was deliberately targeted by a professional gang, in a carefully planned raid, using the riots as a distraction.
Sources in the security industry disclosed that intruders first arrived wielding specialist cutting equipment and spent up to two hours dismantling a high security fence before breaking in.
It is claimed that they then summoned a fleet of vans and drove inside the premises, which are set back from the main focus of rioting in the area, before beginning to load up stock.
According to one source, security guards on site were effectively overwhelmed and unable to fend off the intruders, knowing that police were already stretched as anarchy gripped the capital.
The plot thickens… it did seem a bit unusual that a warehouse removed from the main riot areas went up in flames. Fans of independent music will be relieved to know, however, that Sony have set up a new distribution HQ to help avert bankrupycy by the labels effected by the fire.
After mulling over Obama’s (surprising? uncharacteristic?) plan to raise taxes on millionaires—and his threat to veto any “Super Congress” budget cuts to entitlements—he can’t really go back on that, can he? He’d be crucified on the right and left, and justifiably so—I must say I feel greatly relieved…
At last the guy is punching back—and hard: The so-called “Buffett Tax” is a well thought out way to drive a wedge between the class alliance strange bedfellows that comprises today’s Republican party. America’s GOP blue-collar workers are about to see EXACTLY what they have in common with the rich.
Well played! (Hint: It’s not money or political influence, but you knew that)
Personally, I’d soak the rich (during the Eisenhower administration, the top tax rate was nearly 90%) and this won’t go nearly far enough for my particular Bolshie tastes, but for a President who has proven himself time and again to be a shitty negotiator, THE WORST, like a bad joke, this was still an impressive move, I thought. A veto threat is the definitive presidential line in the sand. He actually HAS decided to take on the Republicans in the class war (which frankly was his sole option anyway).
In the words of Dana Milbank, writing in the Washington Post:
At last, the president hasn’t conceded the race before the starter’s gun, hasn’t opened the bidding with his bottom line, hasn’t begun a game of strip poker in his boxer shorts.
Sums it up so far, doesn’t it? For now let’s just hope that Obama isn’t proven by events to have some sort of “bad negotiator” Tourette’s syndrome where he shoots himself in the foot again, nervously blurting out pre-compromises and ceding ground he wasn’t even asked to cede…
For the past three years, it felt like Obama had almost completely abandoned the Americans who had happily voted for him (union members, progressives, greens, African-Americans, Latinos, middle-class Democrats, etc, etc) in favor of some Quixotic effort to woo the most ideologically rigid bunch of Reich wingers to come along in several generations. He could have done so much in his first 100 days and he, I think, fucked it up royally. The Democrats controlled the White House, the House and the Senate. The held all the keys cards, but mostly folded. If there was a strategy, I was unable to discern it and I’m not alone.
It was his own damned fault, not the Republicans. They TOLD Obama that they wanted to see his presidency fail. They told him this straight up and he refused to take that boldly declared statement—as they most assuredly meant it—at face value. What was subtle about the GOP position? It can be summed up in two letters, N and O. How would it have benefited their goals in any way to do or to be seen doing anything bipartisan by their constituency? That would have only served to make Obama more popular and yet nearly every move he made was to cater to them. It’s been maddening to watch. Are his advisers so lame that they can’t parse a statement as simple as “Fuck you, asshole” and take it to its logical conclusion vis-à-vis national politics, then James Carville was most certainly right, they all should be fired. Bill Maher said that Obama could personally save Republicans from drowning and they still wouldn’t vote for him! As Maher repeatedly exhorted the President, it was high time for Obama to “flip the script.”
It was as if over the summer, Obama (finally!) had an epiphany about the Republicans, at long last realizing that they fucking hate his fucking guts. It’s as if he’s been reading Daily Kos, AlterNet and MoveOn, taking to heart what Maher, Carville, Paul Krugman and just about every lefty talking head and blogger has been shouting at him at the top of their lungs and finally decided to DO SOMETHING LIBERAL. For a change.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a great start and if Obama sticks to his guns this time, it’ll be more than that: nothing less than the return of a truly progressive President Obama, the one we voted for and thought showed up for work on Inauguration Day. That man has been curiously absent for much of Obama’s first term, it’s nice to have him back. He made that veto threat and now it’s up to progressives to make sure he lives up to his words, without compromise this time. If Obama lets the base down again, he’s fucking toast, but I think he finally realizes that.
Below, Bill O’Reilly says he might QUIT if Obama raises taxes on millionaires like him. CALL HIS BLUFF, MR. PRESIDENT!
I attended Austin City Limits this year but somehow managed to miss Terrence Malick shooting footage with Christian Bale for a new film project.
Like most Malick projects, there is much mystery surrounding this film, virtually nothing is known about it, but that’s not surprising considering how private Malick is both in his personal and professional life. Seeing Malick in public is about as rare as seeing a white rhinoceros in Times Square.
Bale and Malick share similarly high standards in what they put on film so this has the potential to be very special. Malick’s last film Tree Of Life wasn’t perfect but what it lacked in narrative coherence it made up for in pure cinematic glory. No matter what Malick shoots you know its going to be extraordinary looking and occasionally consciousness-raising. How that translates to footage at a rock festival has me intrigued.
One thing that is known for certain about the movie is it ain’t the new Batman.
On September 19th, 1973, Gram Parsons, Flying Burrito Brother co-founder, briefly member of The Byrds and one of the founders of “country rock” died in a desert motel room in the Joshua Tree Inn at the age of 26.
Below, one of the very few clips you can find of the Flying Burrito Brothers with Parsons. Even if they are just lip-synching, it’s still great to watch him in action.
David Lewis, a (primarily) Washington DC-based anti-abortion lobbyist, is challenging Speaker John Boehner in the Republican primary of Ohio’s 8th Congressional District.
“What made me want to run against Speaker Bohener, was that I found out that his words were empty rhetoric,” the evangelical Christian activist said. “I want to let the voters have an alternate choice, because it was completely in Speaker Boehner’s power to de-fund ‘Obamacare’ and Planned Parenthood.”
Lewis called Planned Parenthood “the largest killer of unborn babies in America.”
“I’m not delusional. I don’t know if I have a chance at beating the Speaker of the House,” Lewis said Friday. “But what I can do is show the Ohio voters that Boehner has a box full of empty rhetoric. He doesn’t really vote for his convictions. He’s an establishment Republican. He doesn’t believe in the tea party. He doesn’t really believe in the pro-life issues.”
He also told the Cincinnati Enquirer: “There is a saying that people will not reject abortion until people see abortion” and now RightWing Watch is reporting that Lewis is a “plant” in cahoots with Randall “Look at Me!” Terry, founder of the Operation Rescue organization. Terry, whose 15 minutes were up in 1991, is a man so desperate to have the media’s attention on him again that he’s planning to run against Obama in order to show aborted fetuses on television:
Back in 2010, anti-choice zealot Randall Terry discovered that he could get graphic anti-abortion ads to air on television by exploiting a loophole that prohibits broadcasters from refusing to run or censor campaign ads. As such, he has been recruiting other anti-choice candidates to run for office, not because they have a chance to win, but simply as a means to air graphic ads on television. In fact, Terry himself is running his own primary challenge against President Obama for the same purpose.
Lewis quit his job last year to become a full-time anti-choice activist and admits that he has no chance of actually beating Boehner ... in fact, he doesn’t even live in the correct district.
Confusing isn’t it? So far most of the reporting has focused on Lewis being a Tea party candidate, but it seems that’s not quite accurate (although who could have told the difference???). Is this an act of far Reich political cannibalism… or what? You can see one of his goofy, yet disturbing, ads below:
Since I couldn’t have a dog when I was a child, it became my ambition to become a werewolf. Vampires were dull and foolishly superstitious. Frankentstein’s monster whiney and self-pitying. Though the Invisible Man appealed, he was too cracked and not much company. So, it was the werewolf that clicked, for here was a creature driven by things that could not be so easily explained.
This fascination led me to Oliver Reed and The Curse of the Werewolf. I’d already seen Henry Hull in The Werewolf of London, which was running as favorite, putting Lon Chaney jnr’s The Wolfman into second, that was, of course, until I saw Reed possessed by the cast of a silver moon.
It was a metaphor I liked - life usurped by genetic code, oddly confirming Philip Larkin’s belief we are but dilutions of dilution. In its way it was an easy metaphor for Reed, that instinctual, soft-eyed actor possessed by a brilliant talent and a greater thirst for life.
There was great sense of joy about Reed, no matter how drunk or sober he always exhibited a relentless joy for living. It may have damaged his career, and limited his talents, but it was part of who he was - like Leon Corledo or Larry Talbot and lycanthropy. It made him always worth watching, even in his shittiest of films, for Reed was a life force, the like of which we have rarely seen since.
Here, Reed interviews himself on French TV, in a bizarre publicity package for The Return of the Musketeers in 1989. In it Reed asks himself questions other interviewers would never dared ask - that his career owed everything to Ken Russell, like Eliza Doolitlle to Henry Higgins in the play Pygmalion; and why did he drink? His answers range from the unfocussed to the honest, but underneath, there is the growl of a beast waiting to get out.
It would make everyone WAY more happier!”
