Best of all, I could only find one double entendre in the advertising copy. That makes it even funnier for me. Pure class!. Order your bottle of Ron de Jeremy here.

Thank you Soren McCarthy of New York City!

 
Ain’t sure how long this will last on Youtube so I had to share it right now. I’ve haven’t seen this promo video of The Ramones’ 1978 release “I Wanna Be Sedated” looking and sounding this fucking good anywhere on the airwaves/Internet since it was last in heavy rotation on MTV back in 1988.

Remastered? Definitely. Must be on a DVD compilation, but I can’t find it.
 

 
John Samson’s 1975 documentary Tattoo explores its subject with a detached visual sensuality. At times reminiscent of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, Tattoo dances between the flesh, the fantasy, the mundane and the marvelous.

Tattoo can be seen as a statement against conventional beauty. Influenced by the imagery of painter, sculptor and print-maker Allen Jones, it examines the art of tattooing and its role in the rise of alternative culture. Featuring interviews with tattoo artists and their clients and exploring the fascination with and reasons behind ‘body art’, for over 15 years it remained virtually the only documentary on this subject.

Tattoo contains nudity.

 
Previously on DM: Dressing For Pleasure.

 
As some of you reading this well know, and others will not, Keith Levene, later of Public Image Ltd., was an early member of The Clash. So why did he leave “the only band that matters”?

Taken from an Interview with Keith Levene on the Punk77 website:

“Anyway, my heart wasn’t in The Clash sound at all—I remember going to rehearsals and just being so depressed about their sound. They got it so wrong man, they thought I was depressed because I was having a bad amphetamine come down. So it happened like this :one day, I get to the rehearsal room which is this dark, damp room—the band are sitting around, playing tunes from The Stooges and The MC5 and King Tubby’s Hi Fi on their little cassette machine, waiting for me to arrive cos I’m late as usual. We plug in and start playing, and I remember Joe Strummer poking me in the arm and going, “Look Keith, just what is wrong with you man, are you into this or not”. I’m not into it, so I just leave my guitar up against the amp, feedback howling back like mad, like white noise, and I just walk out. I can still hear that feedback whine as I leave the studio and walk onto the street. Fuck them. And they thought it was a bad speed come down. You wanna know the truth? The truth is I hated their sound. Even though I wrote some of their first album, I can’t listen to it. That’s the truth. There is the printed version of what happened, and then there is the real version of what happened. It didn’t bother me when I left The Clash, not at all. I mean, how could I be in a band which played songs like ‘White Riot’! Fuck off! What did we have to riot about? Then there were the fucking stupid lyrics like “No Elvis, no Beatles and the Rolling Stones.” Fuck off! I didn’t want anything to do with it. Then there was some bullshit like Mick Jones told me he predicted the death of Elvis. Bullshit.”

Tell us how you really feel, Keith!

Below, Levene with PiL performing “Chant” on a TV show called Check It Out before the group storms out of the interview.
 

 
Commentator Keith Olbermann signed off his MSNBC cable television show Friday night after nearly eight years.

I didn’t see this coming. Talk about abrupt. Does this have anything to do with the Comcast deal? Comcast officially takes over MSNBC on Monday.

I hope he lands at another network where he can continue to have an impact on the national scene. We need this guy in the mix.

“MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended our contract,” Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, said Friday.

Update: It looks like Olbermann was shown the door. He was told by MSNBC “This is going to be the last edition of your show.” It’s no secret that incoming Comcast execs disliked him and his politics. Who’s next?

Update 12:48 a.m.: This was sent to me a few hours ago from my friend Kevin Campbell (no relation):

Hi Marc, Well, I worked video projection for the NBC News “upfront” in NYC yesterday. This is the meeting where the network schmoozes the advert guys from Madison Ave. I noticed that Keith Olbermann was not there. I had placed myself in a location near Rachel Maddow’s table because I’m such a fan of hers. Turns out Phil Griffin (MSNBC prez) was also at the same table. Anyway, before the meeting starts Lawrence O’Donnell gets up from his table and walks over to Rachel’s table. He talks to Rachel and Griffin. I could tell he was upset, at one point he says, “We are all fucked now.” Rachel seems upset and shakes her head “no” a few times. Griffin just kind of sits there. Rachel leaves before the meeting is over. Something she did not do at last year’s meeting.

All very strange. I’m certain this has something to do with the Comcast deal.

So, there you have it. From a fly on the wall.
Kev

Thanks Kevin, Marc
 

Illustration by Nathan Ota
 
Bradley Beesley’s nitty gritty documentary Hill Stomp Hollar is a captivating look into the world of Mississippi bluesman R.L. Burnside, his friends, family and record label.

Featuring Burnside collaborator Jon Spencer and fellow musicians Cedell Davis, Junior Kimbrough and T-Model Ford, Beesley’s style is unobtrusive, leaving it to the musicians to tell their hard-bitten tales.

While Hill Stomp Hollar focuses much of its attention on Burnside’s record label Fat Possum, who’ve been in and out of all kinds of financial and legal hassles, the thrill is in watching the blues legends talk about their lives and play their music. And the studio footage with the Jon Spencer Explosion is dynamite.

T. model Ford, a convicted killer, didn’t pick up a guitar until he was 50 and it wasn’t until he was 77 that he released his first album. Proof you’re never too old to rock and roll.

“My Momma told me if I messed around and played the blues, I was gonna go to Hell.” Cedell Davis
 

 
Watch the rest of the whole damn thing after the jump…

 
This is a guest editorial from Dangerous Minds reader Em, expanding on some pointed commentary he’s made elsewhere on this blog. Em—who’ll keep his last name to himself, thank you very much—works in the financial industry:

Although I’ve never been a big believer in conspiracy theories, a well-constructed one creates a narrative that pulls in a lot of facts previously viewed as having no connection. The best conspiracy theories don’t even need to be true in order for them to shine a light on what’s actually going on or, better yet, aren’t technically even conspiracies because the activity is going on in the open, even if unrecognized by many.

Consider how perfect the Tea party is on one level: They have the perfect combination of pro-big-business ideologies combined with a cynical distrust of scientific expertise to the point of even regarding mere “facts” as mind-controlling tools of the ‘liberal elite’ (whatever that is). Add to that, convictions that are built upon what are often regarded as fundamental religious principles, and you have the perfect soldier who cannot be dissuaded, cannot be convinced that they may be seriously misguided about some very significant issues because they fully believe their ideas originated within themselves.

In that sense, the fundamentalist push to reflect “Biblical literacy” within the public education system begins to look like a sinister plot designed to teach followers to shut out facts that contradict one’s ‘personal conviction.’ even if that conviction is actually inherited wholesale and largely unquestioned from someone else. Consider the notion of “Biblical literacy”: Aside from containing countless phrases that can’t possibly have a literal meaning, the original Hebrew has no vowel marks. Like a Rorschach blot, the letter clusters in the Hebrew Bible only make sense if we assume vowels for each of the words. (Indeed, traditional Kabbalists maintain that there’s an alternative set of vowels that, after insertion, yield esoteric meanings.) It’s as if someone wrote the Bible precisely to prevent a legalistic and ‘strictly literal’ interpretation. In a sense, therefore, those organizations looking to ‘reform’ public education by having curricula around the country reflect a ‘literal’ interpretation of the Bible are in reality attempting to impose the will (and interpretation) of a small group onto the rest of the American public. Their claim, “this isn’t about us, it’s about God’s will and the Bible” is a lie, but none of its adherents are aware that it’s a lie, and any attempt to prove they’re wrong using so-called “science” and “facts” is viewed as an anti-religion attack from the godless left. Thus, the religious right have become self-protecting vectors of a certain set of viral memes injected by a small secret cabal and coated with the appearance of objective truth.

Now that the vectors are ready, what will the payload be, and who controls it? You don’t have to think too long to take a good guess: It’s about money, and about retaining the power of certain aging industries. In The New Yorker’s recent expose of the billionaire Koch Brothers (See “Covert Operations” by Jane Mayer), the money trails are traced to the various Koch-created PACs, think tanks and even specific branches of the Tea party. As the Kochs control oil refineries, paper products (such as Dixie cups) and various chemical product companies, seems pretty clear that any Koch-supported groups will certainly not be for protecting the environment, and any talk of global warming will hit the protective ideological coating and bounce off like the hard casing around the HIV virus. As the Tea party and like-minded viruses propagate, they insert their anti-environment DNA and get the new hosts to replicate themselves, working perfectly to push away new legislation from impeding the money-flows into those industries that most impact the environment. Is this a mere coincidence? Perhaps.

One thing I’ve found particularly baffling is the vehemence with which the Tea party seems to fight universal health care. As a banker, I would have thought that widely available health care would tilt the economy ever so slightly in favor of small-to-medium-sized business. Currently, there are plenty of employees of large companies that would have loved to work in a small company, or try their hand at creating a new business, but the need to provide health care for their families was a limiting factor. In other words, universal health care would help small businesses (as it does in the rest of the developed world), not hinder them. But the agenda of the Tea party becomes much clearer when viewed as a mere vector of special interests, particularly those tied to specific sectors of big business.

At this point it’s almost superfluous to point out that the Tea party isn’t about freedom or the Constitution or individual rights. The tactical suspension of habeas corpus (for instance) or the assassination (without any due process) of alleged terrorists overseas who are US citizens doesn’t seem to get any recognition at all by the vast majority of the Tea party. Indeed, those may end up becoming useful levers should Tea partiers successfully insert their payload into the halls of Power and the Whitehouse.

As for balancing the budget, the recent Tea party outcry over the Banking Sector bailout is somewhat harder to understand. Of course, we don’t hear the Tea party discussing the elephant in the room: The vast amounts of money that go each year to funding our military, despite the non-existence of wars on US soil over the last century or so. Neither this nor the two perpetu-wars (each now twice as long as WWII) are ever mentioned in any meaningful way, yet they are obviously enormous and ongoing expenses.  Another little noticed fact is that, in the 2008 election (and in the previous two elections prior to that), ALL of the Red states (with the exception of Texas) were net receivers of Federal tax money, often via military bases or national laboratories (which are very military in their bent). So perhaps that’s the key: Banking bailouts (combined with universal health care) represent a potential movement of tax money away from states and industries that are defense and oil-focused.

At this point I’d step out of a conspiracy-like narrative and ask just how feasible it is that the Tea party movement is a synthetic movement, created entirely by some hidden cabal of (most likely) rich, white men. Part of the answer, I think, is that there are some truly significant social issues that have given rise to the Tea party: Not only unemployment, but the wholesale sellout and movement overseas of industries that once employed large numbers of Americans with solid, middle-class wages. This movement represents a deeper demographic shift that has called into question the very future of many sectors of the American middle class. It only makes sense, then, that a “back to basics” movement arise that seeks to reset the clock to a time when it was far easier for the now-Tea partiers to live what used to be the middle-class lifestyle. Hence, the phrase: “take back America”.

On the other hand, perhaps this mass of soon-to-be lumpen proletariat looked like the perfect clay from which to sculpt a veritable army of ‘true believers.’ ready to fight for the cause of big corporate profits. Indeed, to quote The New Yorker article:

Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”

This is for me where the rubber meets the road, where the alleged conspiracy theory becomes real: Take an unorganized and frightened populace, send into their midst well-funded ideological leaders who speak their language, and then load up this golem with instructions to do its’ masters’ bidding. Drag-drop the doublethink of regarding contravening facts as attacks on purity, and there you go: The Tea party is basically just a co-opted gang of stooges, not essentially different from Basij militia in Iran or the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution in communist China. Indeed, even the willingness to use violence in order to terrorize the majority into some kind of perceived purity of thought seems to be gaining ground (which is of course just another way to spread a viral meme).

Whether this is an actual conspiracy or not, it’s pretty clear that something like this is happening with the Tea party. And is that a surprise? Any gang-of-goons pretending to purity is in reality just a way that interests-behind-the-scenes leverage their influence to hold on to their power and privilege, just like the Gang of Four launched and directed the Red Guard movement, and just the way the Iranian hardliners control the Basij.

In that sense, then, the Tea party already is the sleeper cell of corporate interests. They are particularly dangerous because they truly believe that their
 ideas stem from some type of deep conviction, rather than having been 
slopped out to them from various right-wing-controlled media outlets. They believe they are acting independently and of their own free will rather than enacting the agenda of hidden privileged forces.

 They’re dupes. They’re stooges. They’re drones.

The hilarious and sad
 thing is that, like any gang of goons, they are regarded as disposable by those whom they unwittingly serve. If they get what they want, they’ll rapidly be so marginalized that they (or their offspring) will end up fighting over jobs at Walmart, with no prospects and no health care. This will be the inevitable and logical conclusion to the economies of scale enjoyed by large corporations that, like a lens, focus the benefit back to a small number of upper-level managers in “Headquarters.”

Years from now, those lucky Tea partiers who manage to survive by working two or three jobs will shake their heads as they push a broom or work the register, and wonder what went wrong.

About the author: Em was a founding member (with John Cale and others) of the New York punk band Doppler Effect in the early 1980s. After living in China in the late 80s, Em worked in the physics and electrical engineering space until 2002, at which time he moved into the financial world. In July, Em returned to the US after having lived in London since 2006 and is a member of the UMOUR art/event collective. He blogs at The Magic Lantern, his"litterbox of the soul.”

 
I’m gonna go ahead and call shenanigans on this supposed Little Golden Book. No way.

Side note: If you look for the phrase “Who Will Toss My Salad?” in Google Images, this (NSFW-ish) photo also pops-up.

(via Twisted Vintage)

 
Of course Howard Stern got it right when he re-dubbed The History Channel as “The Hitler Channel” back in the early 1990s, but did you know that there actually was Nazis television programing going out three nights a week during the Third Reich? That’s correct, the German television industry was, in many respects, far, far ahead of the medium’s fortunes in either Britain or America. Most people think of television as “starting” in the 1950s, but this is simply not true. Before I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone or Your Show of Shows, there was Deutscher Fernseh-Runfunk (AKA “TV Station Paul Nipkow”), which began broadcasting from Berlin in March of 1935. The story of the little-known history of Nazis television, including some downright bizarre examples of the programming, long thought to be lost, was told in Michael Kloft’s 1999 German documentary, Television Under The Swastika:

Legend has it that the triumphal march of television began in the United States in the ‘fifties. But in reality its origins hark back much further. As early as the ‘thirties, a bitter rivalry raged for the world’s first television broadcast. Nazi Germany wanted to beat the competition from Great Britain and the U.S. - at all costs. Reich Broadcast Director Hadamovsky christened the new-born “Greater German Television” in March 1935. And it was only in September 1944 that the last program flickered across the TV screens. For a long time the belief persisted that only very few Nazi programs had survived, but SPIEGEL TV has now succeeded in tracking down a stock of television films and reports which have remained intact since the end of the Third Reich. These include extensive coverage of the 1936 National Socialist Party Convention in Nuremberg which recalls today’s live broadcasts, and of a 1937 visit Benito Mussolini paid to Berlin. Interviews with high-ranking Nazis such as Albert Speer, Robert Ley and the actor Heinrich George are among the finds, along with numerous special reports (i.e. on the Reich Labor Service), a cooking show and the lottery drawing. Television anchorwomen greet their tiny audiences in specially installed television parlors in Berlin, Munich and Hamburg with “Heil Hitler.” The entertainment programs are particularly curious. Cabaret artists are featured - alongside singers extolling the virtues of the “brown columns of the SA and SS.” This documentary by Michael Kloft will reveal a rare and intriguing view of the Third Reich, one far removed from the propagandistic presentations of Leni Riefenstahl & Co. and the weekly cinema newsreel, yet no less ideologically slanted. This is Nazi Germany expressed in an aesthetic medium that we ourselves have only really known since the ‘fifties.

Check out the hottie/haughty blonde Aryan newsreaders! And don’t you love the way the Nazis elites show the little people how they should think and live their lives!?? Looks like the Nazis beat Rupert Murdoch to the punch on the FOX News formula he and Roger Ailes later perfected….

Originally produced for SPIEGEL TV in Germany, this English version of Television Under the Swastika was aired as part of Channel 4’s Secret History series in 2001.
 

The Catacombs, 12 March 1969

Extraordinarily intimate portraits of the denizens of Cape Town, South Africa’s “Les Catacombs” nightclub taken by photographer Billy Monk in 1969, when he was working as a bouncer at the club. Monk also took pictures of the revelry, which he sold to the subjects. Monk’s friendship with many of the people in his photographs is perhaps the explanation for how he got such “let it out hang out” type scenarios on film.

Monk’s contact sheets and negatives were found in 1982 by Jac de Villiers who arranged an exhibition at the Market Gallery in Johannesburg. Monk never saw the ehibition as he was shot dead in a fight two weeks after the show opened. Jac De Villiers has revisited Monk’s work and curated a new exhibition of Monks classic images and some previously unseen at the Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town, from March 1 to April 9, 2011.

The Catacombs, 1968

See more kooky photographs after the jump…