This is the first of four audio clips I’ll be posting of Jim reading ‘The Basketball Diaries’ in its entirety.

Stay tuned for the rest.
 

Never in the history of the world have the merchants of obscenity, the teachers of unnatural sex acts, had available to them the modern facilities for disseminating this filth. High-speed presses, rapid transportation, mass distribution: all have combined to put the vilest obscenity within reach of every man, woman, and child in the country.

Perversion For Profit, narrated with lascivious zeal by news reporter George Putnam, is a 1965 propaganda film bankrolled by savings and loan criminal Charles Keating. The film was part of Keating’s fervent anti-porn crusade. In 1969 he was appointed by Nixon to the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Among his many targets were Gays (who he wanted imprisoned), Russ Meyer, Playboy and Oui magazines, the Ramada Inn for offering adult entertainment on cable TV, Larry Flynt, and virtually anything on two legs that possessed any form of sexual energy. “Keating kept a large supply of pornographic examples in his law offices in Cincinnati, to show to any visitors who seemed skeptical about the nature of the problem.”

This same type of rot and decay caused sixteen of the nineteen major civilizations to vanish from the Earth. Magnificent Egypt, classical Greece, imperial Rome, all crumbled away not because of the strength of the aggressor, but because of moral decay from within. But we are in a unique position to cure our own ills: our Constitution was written by men who put their trust in God and founded a government based in His laws. These laws are on our side. We have a constitutional guarantee of protection against obscenity. And, in this day especially, we must seek to deliver ourselves from this twisting, torturing evil. We must save our nation from decay and deliver our children from the horrors of perversion. We must make our land, ‘the land of the free’, a safe home. O God, deliver us, Americans, from evil.”

It’s amusing to watch Putnam rail about porn while the camera lovingly pans across photos of gloriously stacked gals in girly magazines. Fucking hypocrites.
 

More perversion after the jump…

 
A couple of years before forming Yellow Magic Orchestra with Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono released the 1976 album Bon Voyage Co..  Here’s a funky little tune called ‘Chow Chow Dog’ that combines 9th Ward r&b groove with some skankin’ and lounge singer savoir faire.

I hear echoes of Leon Redbone, Beefheart and Van Dyke Parks in Hosono’s music of this period.
 

 
Here’s a delightful documentary on Hosono (with the American appellation of Harry)  and his re-imagining of American music genres, with an emphasis New Orleans-style R&B, with its Caribbean and Jamaican influences. Featuring live, studio & rehearsal footage. 1974-1977.
 

 
Parts 2 and 3 after the jump…

 
Steven John Bator (a.k.a.  Stiv Bators) and his Dead Boys blammoed out of the post-steel paradise of Cleveland and landed in New York’s East Village to help jump-start the punk movement in the bowels of clubs like CBGBs. Soon after the Boys broke up in 1979, Bators formed the post –punk supergroup Lords of the New Church with the Damned’s Brian James and Sham 69’s Dave Tregunna.

That was the band Bators was riding in 1983 when L.A. artist Jeffrey Vallance—who’d scored a miraculous gig as a host of MTV’s underground music showcase (yeah, something like that actually once appeared on MTV!!) The Cutting Edge—grabbed him to “debate” the head of the Southland’s Last Chance Rescue Mission, whose name happened to be, yes, the Reverend Dr. Hands.

As you’ll see, Bators took the path of least resistance, but this segment stands as a fun, somewhat campy artifact of the other side of the Reagan ‘80s. Seven years later, Bators will have become a literal dead boy at 41 after getting hit by a taxi in Paris.

He would have turned 61 years old today.
 

 
Bonus clip after the jump: the Dead Boys give CBGB’s the “Sonic Reducer” in ‘77…
 

 
Slimy, Sarah Palin-endorsed, goon-squad hiring Republican Senatorial candidate from Alaska, Joe Miller’s got some s’plaining to do. It seems that Miller, who thinks Social Security, Medicare and jobless benefits are “unconstitutional” forgot to add that he meant only when other people receive them, not Joe himself! What will the Teabag weenie people think of this hypocritical fuckwit now?

Apparently, when a correspondent for Wonkette asked Miller a question about exactly what percent “disabled” he was from his military service—for which he would presumably recieve benefits—Miller promptly freaked out:

Looking away from your correspondent, Miller yelped to no one in particular, “We’ve gotta go!” He then pointed to his wife and said, “Let’s move!” The Millers hustled to the back of the vacant strip mall office next to the pizza place and surrounded themselves with campaign staffers.

This time, Miller’s phalanx of creepy skinheads dressed as Secret Service agents — last seen assaulting and restraining a local journalist — were nowhere around. Your correspondent was able to escape unscathed.

A West Point graduate who served in the first Gulf War, Miller boasts of his military record in his radio and teevee ads, yet refuses to discuss the nature or the degree of his service-connected disabilities; he receives monthly tax-free payments for life as compensation. If Miller is classified as 30% or more disabled, he receives additional payments for each of his nine dependents. This Veterans Administration benefits chart shows that Miller could conceivably be bringing in over $4,000 a month, tax free, depending on his disability rating.

He needn’t report or declare this income. What are the disabilities for which Joe Miller receives tax-free payments? A Post Traumatic Stress Disorder diagnosis should concern voters more than say, hearing loss.

Yet when asked, Joe Miller froze for a moment and then fled like a guilty child.

Nicely! It’s fascinating watching this tool’s candidacy implode.

Who would be dumb enough vote for this clown, now? The more we know about Joe Miller, the more craven he appears. Yuck.

Joe Miller Runs Screeching From Simple Question (Wonkette)
 

 
What do rich people do when they have too much money? Get wrecked. So it was for Conrad Rooks, who by the age of fifteen was a full-blown alcoholic. Money may give you many things, but apparently not self-control or a conscience.

Rooks’ pappy owned Avon. Ding-Dong, no need to worry about quitting the booze or getting a job. Instead Rooks started a new hobby - drugs. He jumped from booze to dope, to coke, to LSD, to peyote, to heroin, then decided to get clean. Off to Switzerland, where he was given a new treatment - the sleep cure.

This is what happened to Rooks. His story formed the basis for a 1966 movie Chappaqua, which Rooks produced, directed, wrote, and starred in. It is an interesting mess of a film. It picked up a Silver Medal at the Venice Film Festival, and became a “legendary” underground hit due to its association with drugs and the Beat Generation. This is where its importance lies today: in the appearance of William S. Burroughs as Opium Jones. Along with brief cameos from Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovksy, and the beautiful, quite stunning cinematography by Beat film-maker, Robert Frank, who made Pull My Daisy and went on to make Cocksucker Blues for The Rolling Stones. Add to this performances by Ravi Shankar, Ornette Coleman, The Fugs, and a score by Philip Glass. There is enough going on to keep interest, with perhaps the finger occasionally on Fast Forward.
   

 
Colorado residents with a doctor’s prescription for medical cannabis will soon be able to purchase a mass-produced THC-infused soft drink that comes in several flavors. A Colorado-based company called Dixie Elixirs is preparing a line of marijuana-laced sodas for the medical-cannabis market that now numbers 14 states. Not sure exactly how something like this would work across state lines, but I suppose that they’re about to find out. Maybe they’ll have to have plants in each state, which will—HELLO—provide new jobs. Decriminalizing pot is a no brainer.

It’s amusing to note that “discretion” is one of the key advantages to the product (i.e. not smoking something) but maybe they’d want to leave the pot-leaf off the bottle, then! Strikes me as like when people have Grateful Dead bumperstickers. Might as well have one reading “I’ve got pot (and/or LSD) in the car!”

It’s also worth mentioning that a hundred years ago Coca-Cola famously used to have a coca leaf extract which provided its “kick.” This seems tame in comparison.

I’ve tried a similar type of cannabis soda (not a Dixie Elixer, to be clear) but it didn’t do much for me. Okay, I drank three and still felt nothing. Maybe these guys will get it right. The market for something like this could be massive, especially if California’s voters pass Prop 19.

Via Discovery

 
via Creative Review:

In death as in life: Peter Saville and Ben Kelly’s memorial to their friend and collaborator Anthony H Wilson is three years late, but it was worth the wait. Factory Records founder Anthony H Wilson died in August 2007. Just over three years later, a memorial headstone designed by Wilson’s long-term collaborators Peter Saville and Ben Kelly was unveiled in The Southern Cemetery in Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, Manchester. The headstone carries a quote from The Manchester Man, the 1876 novel by Mrs G Linnaeus Banks (aka Isabella Varley Banks), the story of one Jabez Clegg and his life in Victorian Manchester.

And yes, there is a FAC catalogue number involved ! According to a comment on the Creative Review site his casket has the FAC number 501 and his estate has vowed that would be the last thing cataloged.
 
Close-up on the quote after the jump…

 
See more distortions after the jump…

 
This pooch is quite possibly the most talented dog on the planet. He’s like a damn bullet! Just watch this! 

(via TDW)