Harry Smith, the artist as a young man.
Last year Patti Smith paid tribute to “filmmaker, musicologist, ethnographer, bohemian, and occultist, Harry Smith” at The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
In this simple and sweet video, Patti reads from her memoir, tells stories and sings a Hank Williams tune as well as her own.
The audio makes it sound at times like Patti has a slight speech impediment. It’s kind of endearing.
Thanks to Punk Not Profit.
Directed by Transformers star Shia LaBouef, Marilyn Manson’s self-produced video for his new song “No Reason” pays homage to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. Manson and Jodorowsky are friends (Alejandro wanted to cast Marilyn in an El Topo sequel) and I guess this is Manson’s way of honoring his master.
Other influences I detect floating through the video are from George Bataille’s “The Story Of The Eye,” Takashi Miike’s Ichi, The Killer, Joel-Peter Witkin and new wave porn flicks like Night Dreams and Cafe Flesh.
I don’t think Manson is challenging himself with this. Been there, done that. But, anything that calls attention to Jodorowsky is in my opinion a good thing.
Like many traditional collage artist, the Glasgow-based Lola Dupré makes all her work out of just paper, scissors and glue. But unlike most artists Lola goes further than relying on a simple juxtaposition of imagery to make a point. Instead she uses multiple copies of source material, employing thousands of cuts and manipulating tiny shards of paper to create a strange, amorphous, almost fractal vision. Her work is like looking at a dissolving reality reflected in a spoon.
In a recent interview on the Empty Kingdom blog, Lola says this of her modus operandi:
t came about through experiments with paper as a sculptural medium, through a chance arrangement in 3D forms I began to think about applying it in 2D. I guess the work could say a few different things about me; I think I am meticulous and multi-dimensional as a person, perhaps that comes across in my work, I’m not sure. In my opinion, I create, and it is up to the viewer to decipher things and find meaning.
You can read the rest of that interview here, and see all of Lola’s work at her website www.loladupre.com - in the meantime, click read on (below) to see more of her exceptional work.
Is “Freedom” just another word for nothing left to lose?
OR is “freedom” now some sort of ironic code word for DEATH in the fucked-up lexicon of stupidity employed by the modern Republican Madhatter’s tea party? Hard to tell with these assholes anymore, but there is a fascinating—and tragic and utterly repulsive—backstory to Congressman Ron Paul’s comments about “freedom” ‘n’ shit during the debate the other night. From Vulture:
At the fifth GOP debate this week, moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul, a doctor, whether someone who opts to not buy health insurance and then gets sick should be allowed to die. The crowd responded with startling shouts of “Yeah!” followed by applause, leaving even Rick Perry “taken aback.” Paul’s answer, while more gentle, was more or less the same. “That’s what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody ... ” said Paul, who was cut off by clapping from the audience. While you wouldn’t know it from his answer, Blizter’s hypothetical probably hit close to home for Paul, whose campaign manager Kent Snyder died young of pneumonia — without insurance — in 2008.
He was just 49 years old when he died of complications from the virus on June 26, two weeks after Paul dropped out of the race. Snyder’s mother was left with around $400,000 in medical costs. Paul supporters set up a donation fund to help with the debt.
Snyder was credited as “the driving force behind Ron Paul’s presidential bid” in the last election, having turned “his one-man operation into a national grass-roots phenomenon that now calls itself ‘The Freedom Movement.’”
That same freedom, which Paul referred to in the debate, complicated Snyder’s health problems, as a preexisting condition made insurance premiums too expensive, according to Snyder’s sister. After Snyder’s death, Paul wrote on his website: “Like so many in our movement, Kent sacrificed much for the cause of liberty. Kent poured every ounce of his being into our fight for freedom. He will always hold a place in my heart and in the hearts of my family.”
I’m quite sure that Mr. Snyder happily and patriotically died without burdening the wealthy “job creator” class of this mighty nation. Congressman Paul’s words at the debate must have been a great comfort to Snyder’s family…
Attention Tea party dummies: Look at what the Libertarian philosophy did for Kent Snyder? It killed him!
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE MINDS OF PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE SUCH THINGS?
Sadly, you can’t just snap your fingers in front of an idiot’s face and tell them to “Wise up,” because it doesn’t work that way.
Viva la muerte! Long live death!
As the United States sinks further and further into its death spiral, all you can do is watch and wonder in astonishment. We’re doomed!
The Hollywood film producer John Calley died September 13, at his home in Los Angeles, after a long illness.
Calley was responsible for The Loved One, The Americanization of Emily, Catch-22, and more recently The Remains of the Day, and the popcorn fodder Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code.
But it will be for his work at Warner Brothers that Calley will be best remembered, as the Los Angeles Times reports:
In 1969, [Calley] became executive vice president in charge of production at Warner Bros.; he became president in 1975.
“Under Calley, Warners became the class act in town,” Peter Biskind wrote in his 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock ‘N’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood.
“Urbane and witty, he gave the impression that he was somehow above it all, slumming in the Hollywood cesspool,” Biskind wrote. “As one wag put it, he was the blue in the toilet bowl.”
At Warner Bros., Calley created what Biskind called “an atmosphere congenial to ‘60s-going-on ‘70s filmmakers” and was known for relying heavily on his own taste in picking films.
Among Warner’s Calley-era bill of fare: Woodstock, A Clockwork Orange, Mean Streets, The Towering Inferno, “McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Exorcist, Dog Day Afternoon, Deliverance, Dirty Harry, All the President’s Men, Blazing Saddles, Superman and Chariots of Fire.
As a salute, here’s a brief video resume of that golden era of film-making.
Read John Calley’s obituary here.
Mean Streets (1973)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Clips of other classic films, including ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Mean Streets’, after the jump…
The juiciest bits from Joe McGinniss’s soon-to-be published Sarah Palin expose are starting to leak out. I totally hope this is all true. Via The Atlantic:
One-Night Stand with Basketball Player Glen Rice
Palin allegedly slept with future NBA star Rice when he was a University of Michigan student playing at the Great Alaska Shootout. The one-night stand supposedly happend in Palin’s sister Molly’s dorm room at the University of Alaska. Palin was a TV sports reporter at the time. And married. “I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she’d been with a black basketball star,” a source told the National Enquirer, according to The Daily Mail. (The supermarket tabloid often limits its online content.)
The National Enquirer reports that Rice confirmed the affair to McGinniss. And The Washington Post’s Cindy Boren helpfully notes, “because keeping score is important, Michigan lost, 79-64, to Arizona in the semifinals. The Wolverines finished third, beating Alabama-Birmingham. Rice was named to the all-tournament team.”
Cocaine
McGinniss says Palin snorted coke off a 55-gallon oil drum while she and Todd were on a snowmobiling trip with their friends. He says Palin’s husband Todd was a frequent cocaine user.
Marijuana
Palin allegedly smoked weed with her professor at Mat-Su College when she was an undergrad.
Love Triangle
The Daily Mail says Palin had an affair with Todd’s snowmobile dealership business partner, Brad Hanson, for six months, according to the book. Both Palin and Hanson have denied the claim.
Update: Sarah Palin [née Heath], sports reporter for KTUU-TV, covers Glen Rice’s Wolverines.
Thanks to Michael Baker for steering us to the video.
“Joe Simmons used to be your average teenager…”
The less said about this before you watch it, the better, probably…
This clip is from a video entitled “How to be a Real Man,” found at a flea market in Berea, Ohio. Why does he punch his friend in the face for no reason at all?
Joey Ramone and Eric Boucher (aka Jello Biafra) in Denver, Colo. 1977
Here’s a clip of the always witty, acerbic and insightful Jello Biafra on Canadian TV show The Hour.
I’ve known Jello since he was an 18-year-old hippie in Boulder, Colorado. He was one of the smartest kids I’d ever met with an incredible knowledge of rock and roll and a radical, edgy sensibility. At a time when most longhairs where luxuriating in the Rocky Mountain High vibe, Jello was busy inhaling vinyl and sniffing grooves. We first met in a used record store. I think he was buying some Roxy Music and T. Rex.
He was one of a handful of Boulder teenagers who supported my punk band in 1976. He’d help carry my group’s equipment at gigs so he’d get into clubs that had a 21-years and older door policy. I’m not sure but that might have gotten him into his first Ramones’ show when I opened for them in 1977 in Denver.
I’ve literally watched Jello grow from a brilliant kid into a brilliant adult. I love the fucker. He has stayed true to his core beliefs while many aging punks have sold out and played it safe.
Photo: Don Fleming
