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Raw video: Robbery foiled by puppet
03.11.2011
03:13 am
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Puppet sketch by Logan Stephens.
 
Spanish TV aired this amazing footage of what appears to be an orange sock puppet foiling a robbery. The puppet’s identity is a mystery. After assaulting the would be thief with assorted grocery items and engaging the startled thug in hand to hand combat, the puppet left the scene of the crime. His/her job was done. Police are seeking the puppets identity. The store owner has offered a reward. This kind of heroism and humility you don’t see every day.

The illustration above is not a rendering of the actual puppet. As you can see in the video, the puppet crimestopper has arms and knows how to use them.
 

 
Via The High Definite

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.11.2011
03:13 am
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New Gang Of Four video: Where the funk at?
03.11.2011
12:42 am
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The new video for “It Was Never Gonna Turn Out Too Good” from Gang Of Four’s recently released album Content.

I’m a big fan of the band, but this moody song with its vocoderized spoken-word vocal is over before it begins. To hell with poetry! Where the funk at? Lift off aborted.

I’m wondering why Gang Of Four’s new stuff feels so restrained. Where’s the fire? Where’s the groove? Is the absence of original Gang members drummer Hugh Burnham and bassist Dave Allen the reason that this seems so listless?
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.11.2011
12:42 am
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‘A boy’s best friend is his mother’
03.10.2011
08:50 pm
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Previously on Dangerous Minds:
24 Second ‘Psycho’
Psycho at 50: Zizek’s Three Floors Of The Mind

(via the always delightful If we don’t, remember me.)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.10.2011
08:50 pm
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‘Heavy Metal Parking Lot’ brought to you by American Express???
03.10.2011
08:00 pm
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Jeff Krulik and John Heyn’s Heavy Metal Parking Lot documents a tailgating party prior to a Judas Priest concert in the parking lot outside of the (now gone) Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, on May 31, 1986. It is one of the most beloved and legendary relics of the 80s & 90s VHS trading scene, of which I myself was a participant. It is a low-fi masterpiece, a work of demented genius and one of the funnies things you’ll ever see.

Twenty-years after the film was made, the music rights were sorted out and Heavy Metal Parking Lot was released legitimately for the first time in 2006.

Now, hilariously, one of the most underground things you could possibly get your hands on back in the day, a true holy grail for people who had heard of it, but who had no way of seeing it, unless they knew the right person, has been licensed by the American Express corporation as part of their SnagFilms website. Of all the things to find a corporate sponsor…  I guess it shows how far pop culture has come.

In any case, this is one of the best, cleanest versions of the film that I’ve yet seen. Brought to you by American Express, it’s Heavy Metal Parking Lot:
 

 
The Prequel: Heavy Metal Picnic!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.10.2011
08:00 pm
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Eamonn Crudden’s documentary ‘Route Irish’
03.10.2011
06:46 pm
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While Ken Loach has his own film called Route Irish, which deals with “the most dangerous road in the world” (aka Baghdad Airport Road), coming out later this month in the UK, Irish film-maker, Eamonn Crudden made his own Route Irish back in 2007, but his dealt with the protest movement at Shannon Airport in Ireland. Crudden spent several years putting his documentary together, which documented:

...the emergence of the Irish antiwar movement between 2002 and 2006 and of the broad popular opposition to the US military use of Ireland’s civilian Shannon Airport in the build-up to, invasion of, and occupation of Iraq.

The documentary follows a loose network of activist groups, individuals and politicians through the story of the rise, fracturing, sudden decline and then disappearance of this movement and then retraces the way in which their combined efforts, energies and strategies served to effectively tear away the Republic of Ireland’s veneer of neutrality and non-alignment in the post September 11th era of the ‘War on Terror’.

The background to the story begins after the September 11 attacks, when the Irish government offered the use of Shannon Airport to the US government. Shannon is one of the three primary airports in Ireland, and is the country’s second busiest. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the Irish government still allowed the US military to use the airport. This was a highly controversial decision and sparked a series of demonstrations and a challenge to the High Court.

It also sparked a series of direct actions by demonstrators. In January 2003, a woman smashed a nose cone and attempted to cut fuel lines of a US Navy jet with an axe. Her trial led to her acquittal. Then in February 2003, a group called the Pitstop Ploughshares vandalized a US Navy aircraft at the airport. Members of the group were tried three time. They were eventually all acquitted.

A 2007 survey found 58% of Irish people opposed the use of Shannon for prosecuting the Iraq war.

Cult film director, Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Walker) said of Crudden’s video essay:

Route Irishis an excellent documentary. It deals very very well with the frustrations of a peace movement. It tackles some complex matters which aren’t usually discussed or even thought about.”

 

 
Bonus trailer for Ken Loach’s ‘Route Irish’, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.10.2011
06:46 pm
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Animated Chick Christian Comic: Tiny Shoes
03.10.2011
06:34 pm
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Another animated tract from Chick Christian Comics. This is one of Jack Chick’s supposed classics, “Tiny Shoes.”

The message here is incredibly messed up, isn’t it? You’re “wicked,” so God will kill your kid. That’s hardly fair! The kid didn’t do anything.

What a weird “ministry”: Devoting your life to scaring the shit out of gullible, superstitious people, for their own good!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.10.2011
06:34 pm
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All Tiny Creatures - Harbors
03.10.2011
06:26 pm
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Yes I often promote the products of the label I call er, home: Hometapes. But that’s because they do truly amazing things ! Just look at the art work and packaging for the brand new album Harbors by Wisconsin’s own All Tiny Creatures whilst checking out their pulsating maximalist sound.  Lead Creature Thomas Wincek also does creative time in Volcano Choir with Wisconsin’s favorite son Justin Vernon, he of Bon Iver greatness.  And indeed Vernon is the guest vocalist on An Iris. Ryan Olcott of the late, great Minneapolis band 12 Rods is the guest vocalist on current Pitchfork featured song Glass Bubbles.
 
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Glass Bubbles

 
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An Iris

 
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Pre-order Harbors by All Tiny Creatures here

Posted by Brad Laner
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03.10.2011
06:26 pm
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Stephen King takes a stand against the class war in America
03.10.2011
04:27 pm
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Millionaire author Stephen King (who came from humble beginnings) on the Tea party, union-busting Republican weenies and why rich people like him should pay at least half of their income in taxes. Taped on March 8th at the “Awake the State” rally in Sarasota, Florida.

“And remember, when these people talk to you about it, if you like your weekend, thank a union guy. If you like a 40-hour week, thank a union guy. If you like a day’s honest pay for a day’s honest work, thank a union guy!”

Good on Stephen King. He’s a stand-up guy and a good American.
 

 
Via Cynical-C

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.10.2011
04:27 pm
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Deerhoof’s ‘The Merry Barracks’ video is a trip to dreamsville
03.10.2011
03:37 pm
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Beautiful black and white cinematography and dreamlike J-horror imagery converge to stunning effect in this video for Deerhoof’s “The Merry Barracks” from their album Deerhoof Vs. Evil.

Directed and edited by Akiko McQuerrey & Jason Drakeford.

Inspired by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s Hausu?

 

 
Via Timothy Buckwalter

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.10.2011
03:37 pm
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Should there be a General Strike?
03.10.2011
02:57 pm
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There’s been a lot of talk today of how there should be a general strike to support the public unions of Wisconsin. I was raised in a union family, my father worked at the telephone company and was a member of the C.W.A. (Communications Workers of America). I’ve been a member of two unions myself, first the UFCW (I worked in a grocery store as a teen) and later I was briefly a member of IATSE in my early twenties.  None of this, of course, qualifies me to be able to offer meaningful advice on what the unions should do next, and I wouldn’t deign to try, but last night as I watched the live feed from the Wisconsin capitol building (which I was glued to for hours last night, I couldn’t take my eyes off it) I listened to the words a gentleman who did have some sage advice to offer.

I don’t know who he was, but when the interviewer asked him if he had plans to sleep in the capital that night, he said that he was thinking about it, but that he had to get up really early to do TV and radio interviews. He was super articulate and knew the history of the labor movement in America, cold. He could cite facts, figures, dates, court cases, going back over 100 years. He was an expert’s expert on the topic. Again, I have no idea who he was, but his intelligence was very impressive to me, his calm was comforting, and his logic compelling. He was probably a spokesperson for one of the unions, but until I see his face again, that’s all I can say. He had brown hair and a mustache and was in his mid-50s.

The gist of what he said, though, was that a general strike NOW was probably a very bad strategic move, at least at this still beginning stage of the game. His reasoning was as follows:

1) It was too early to be threatening a general strike because once it had occurred, if the Republicans didn’t budge—and since Walker sees himself as Reagan Jr. that seems likely as shit—the unions will have played their big card. General strikes have been historically difficult to maintain in America. He said he didn’t expect that the fight had dug in hard enough to keep it going. Yet.

He felt it was better to ratchet it up slowly, keep applying the same sorts of pressure that the crowds had been applying throughout the conflict with Republicans, begin the recall efforts targeting the weakest GOP members of the state assembly immediately and to not let anger cause any unpleasant media images that would be to the Republican advantage in a propaganda war.

2) His second reason was that the endgame of this entire episode is much more likely to be decided in a courtroom than via any other method.

Food for thought. I’m not saying he’s right, but before I heard the man speak I’d have been hellbent on seeing a general strike. And he didn’t say it was a bad idea or that a general strike wouldn’t wouldn’t ultimately be necessary, but that it wasn’t necessary YET. 

Above all he advocated keeping cool heads and he’s absolutely right about that.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.10.2011
02:57 pm
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