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Totally groovy video of Debbie Harry on ‘Kids Are People Too’ in 1980
07.21.2011
04:25 am
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While musician and rock archivist Jim Laspesa is putting together his own website, which will feature music and pop culture related clips from the past 30+ years, he’s been uploading a few gems to Youtube. Here’s a little something that is new to the Interweb: a 1980 appearance by Debbie Harry on ABC’s Sunday morning children’s show Kids Are People Too. Sassy.
 

 
Thanks Jim.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.21.2011
04:25 am
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Never-before-seen photos of The Beatles
07.20.2011
11:44 pm
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For a teenager, Mike Mitchell had a great eye and skill with a camera. His secret stash of stunning black and white photos of The Beatles hit the auction floor tonight at Christie’s and sold for $360,000, considerably more than what was expected.

On July 20, Christie’s is pleased to present The Beatles Illuminated: The Discovered Works of Mike Mitchell, a sale comprised of nearly 50 lots of unpublished and never-before-seen photographs of the Beatles’ first hysteria-inducing visits to America in 1964. Shot in black and white by photographer Mike Mitchell when he was just 18 years old, the images have been filed away for nearly fifty years. The complete rediscovered collection is expected to realize in the region of $100,000.’

More photos are on view at Christie’s website.
 

 

 
An inspiring interview with Mike Mitchell who is now 60 years old:

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.20.2011
11:44 pm
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Before they made SJ Perelman, they broke the mold
07.20.2011
09:01 pm
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Yesterday, when I posted that great Jonathan Winters interview, I found another episode from the archives of the Day for Night public television series that made me want to jump for joy: A 30-minute interview with the great American humorist S.J. Perelman from 1974. I’ve already watched it twice.

Although he is by now, some thirty-odd years after his death, almost completely forgotten, S.J. Perelman was once considered a very big deal man of letters, up there with greats like George S. Kaufman, James Thurber and E.B. White. Today he is best remembered for something that pained him to be associated with during his lifetime: his screenwriting for the Marx Brothers. (Perelman co-wrote two of their greatest comedies, Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, but famously said of his tenure with the Marx Brothers: “I did two films with them, which in its way is perhaps my greatest distinction in life, because anybody who ever worked on any picture for the Marx Brothers said he would rather be chained to a galley oar and lashed at ten-minute intervals until the blood spurted from his frame than ever work for those sons of bitches again.”)

An admirer of both Ring Lardner and James Joyce, Perelman’s deliriously complicated prose—written mostly for The New Yorker from 1934 until the end of his life—was densely constructed with puns, literary and historical allusions, ridiculous names, foreign phrases and double and triple entendres. For an American, Perelman was a particularly well-traveled and erudite man. He went to the Far East several times in his life and many of his most famous essays are travelogues. Perelman usually wrote in the first person, portraying himself as a snobby ur-sophisticate beset by his own (unobserved) comic ineptitude. He was a master of the English language with a massive vocabulary that would send readers to their dictionaries several times per page. All of the various idiosyncrasies and uniquely Perelman-esque tropes and over-excessive wordsmithery combined to form a literary style no less distinctive than Shakespeare’s.

It’s next to impossible to accurately describe the S. J. Perelman gestalt, so here are a few choice quotes and passages:

“And you were cruel,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” added Quigley.

“Why did you add Quigley?” I begged him. He apologized and subtracted Quigley, then divided Hogan. We hastily dipped the slices of Hogan into Karo, poured sugar over them, and ate them with relish.

—- From “The Love Decoy”

“Have a bit of the wing, darling?” queried Diana solicitously, indicating the roast Long Island airplane with applesauce. I tried to turn our conversation from the personal note, but Diana would have none of it. Soon we were exchanging gay banter over the mellow Vouvray, laughing as we dipped fastidious fingers into the Crisco parfait for which Diana was famous. Our meal finished, we sauntered into the play-room and Diana turned on the radio. With a savage snarl the radio turned on her and we slid over the waxed floor in the intricate maze of the jackdaw strut.

—- From “Strictly from Hunger”

Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin, it’s the triumphant twang of a bedspring.

Woody Allen absolutely revered Perelman and Allen’s early New Yorker pieces often read like he was trying to ape the humorist’s distinctive prose style. Through the rediscovery of the Marx Brothers that occurred in the late1960s on college campuses and Allen’s constant championing of Perelman’s work, his star rose again towards the end of his life. When I was a kid, his books were readily stocked in every library and bookstore. His name and fame were widely known. Today there is but a single book of his in print, the anthology The Most of S.J. Perelman (with an introduction by Steve Martin) although all of his books can be easily found used online.

This interview with S.J. Perelman is a gem. It’s always fascinating to hear a writer’s voice you admire for the first time and I must admit that Perelman’s heavy New York accent is not what I expected (I suppose I always heard his voice as having a British accent in my mind’s ear.)
 

 
Below the famous passport scene from Monkey Business:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.20.2011
09:01 pm
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‘Zardoz’ imagined as an 8bit game
07.20.2011
07:00 pm
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I’ve always been a fan of John Boorman’s Zardoz, no matter how camp, cheesy, or even ridiculous it may seem. Therefore, I do wish this brief 8-bit animation by nickcriscuolo was a real game.

Okay, it’s only an opening sequence, but just think of the potential Boorman’s and Bill Stair’s original story offers: as the Exterminator Zed (Sean Connery) crosses from the land of the Brutals (where “the gun is good and the penis is evil”), to a world of the Eternals, Apathetics, Renegades and the lovely Charlotte Rampling, where Zed finds himself the subject of the Eternals’ experiments and games, and uncovers the dark secret at the heart of their Vortex and its Tabernacle. O, yes this could work.

And of course, Connery and Rampling would voice it, and there’d be optional thigh-length boots. How bloody marvelous.
 

 
Bonus clip of original ‘Zardoz’ film trailer, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.20.2011
07:00 pm
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Harold Pinter at the 92nd Street Y, November 1964
07.20.2011
05:41 pm
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Harold Pinter wrote poetry throughout his life, not just the “big sweary outburst about how crap the war in iraq is” which saw him win the Wilfred Owen Prize in 2004, but poetry of mood, nuance and subtle observation.

In November 1964, Pinter appeared at the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center, New York, where he read a selection of his poetry and short stories. This audio recording is the full program of Pinter’s reading and includes:

“Tea Party”
“New Year in the Midlands”
“A Glass at Midnight”
“You in the Night”
“The Drama in April”
“The Anesthetist’s Pen”
“Jig”
“Episode”
“Afternoon”
“The Error of Alarm”
“The Table”
“The Black and White Selection”
“The Examination”

This is followed by a Q&A where Pinter:

...talks about literary influences, point of view, his opinion of Edward Albee’s Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the classic Beatles vs. Rolling Stones debate.

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The Everyday Genius of Harold Pinter


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.20.2011
05:41 pm
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Mashup of 80 YouTube covers of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Black Dog’
07.20.2011
04:45 pm
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Israeli mashup artist Kutiman has taken bits of 80 YouTube clips of amateur musicians covering Led Zeppelins ‘Black Dog” and put them together into one seamless version of the song. Imagine the work that went into this project and the amount of sonic shit Kutiman had to endure to make it happen. The result is simply amazing.
 

 
Via Open Culture.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.20.2011
04:45 pm
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Stuffed dogs big draw at Czech castle
07.20.2011
03:59 pm
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51 stuffed dogs is the big draw at Castle Bitov in the Czech Republic. Canine lover Baron Georg Haas preserved his pets for eternity and now tourists from all over the planet can enjoy his bizarre collection of dead doggies.

Read more about the K9 crazy Baron at the The Daily Mail’s website
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.20.2011
03:59 pm
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The Eazy-E skirt
07.20.2011
03:27 pm
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Yep, there’s an Eazy-E skirt available for ladies who strut down the street singin’ “Gimmie That Nutt.” This utterly inexplicable skirt is by Manhattan-based clothing label IdilVice and retails for $89.00. Order it here

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Steve Buscemi dress

(via Cherrybombed)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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07.20.2011
03:27 pm
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1960 Plymouth Fury with dashboard record player
07.20.2011
03:26 pm
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The 1960 Plymouth Fury had the option of a dashboard record player: the RCA Victor “Highway Hi-Fi”. It could play up to fourteen “45” records consecutively.

To avoid records skipping this set of wheels had to have been a very smooth ride.
 

 
Via Afflictor

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.20.2011
03:26 pm
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The homo forces of darkness are out to git redneck ‘preacher’ Damon Thompson


 
Idiot redneck “preacher” Damon Thompson is ignorant, bigoted and proud of it. He makes his living spewing mono-syllabic hatred towards a group of people (gays) who he personally, has probably never had any direct experience with (unless, of course, what they say about the most vocal homophobes is true. I hadn’t considered that).

Thompson’s “flock” are the people for whom the Tea Party movement—or the Ku Klux Klan—is a step beyond them intellectually. As one YouTube commenter quipped “This is Christianity for meth-heads!”

Well put. If advanced beings from the future ever arrive on Earth, you can bet Damon Thompson would be the first one to want to burn them at the stake. What this hillbilly ignoramous doesn’t realize is that when “the queers” are re-broadcasting his message to hundreds of thousands of people across the Internet, the people watching are just laughing at him. Pointing and laughing at the dumb hick.

To the average person watching his YouTube clips, Damon Thompson just appears to be a brainless hillbilly moron. No more, no less. He’s as compelling as a drunk racist and possessing half the charisma. There is nothing, not one thing, that is even remotely interesting about him. His “message” is trite and inconsequential. People are just laughing at him. Eventually we’ll never hear his name again and no one will even remember him. He doesn’t even distinguish himself as a decent enough gay-basher to achieve any real prominence in the field. Not with the likes of Bryan Fischer around. Thompson is an inarticulate dud by comparison.

(A note to Damon: You look like a smelly hobo, dude. I could have sworn I saw flies buzzing around your head in the video clip. Have you ever considered going on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? I think they could really help you. I know they could. Your personal grooming and hygiene is deplorable, m’fren…)
 

 
Via Jesus Needs New P.R.

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.20.2011
02:38 pm
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