The director in a scene from Nice Bombs…
 
Chicago-based Iraqi director Usama Alshaibi seems to be one of the most prolific Arab filmmakers in the American independent film scene—and he’s almost certainly the most experimental. Working often in close collaboration with his wife Kristie, Alshaibi has jump-started the canon of what we might term transgressive Arab-American film.

In his over 50 short films, Alshaibi has updated the techniques of transgressors like William Burroughs and Kenneth Anger to transmit his obsessions with culture-clash, technology, religion, violence, sexuality and identity. He’s finished four features, two of which deal with porn and STDs, one with cross-cultural relationships and another with the personal reality of post-Saddam Iraq. He has three in production or post-production now, two of which—American Arab and Baghdad, Iowa—portray growing up Arab in the heartland in the in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and today, and the third, Profane, about a Muslim dominatrix in spiritual crisis.

As the news media shamelessly reduces the complex relationship between America and its Arab and Muslim communities into a dopey controversy over where to build a friggin’ cultural center or mosque, we need the perspective and imagination of Alshaibi’s work now more than ever.

Like most hard-working indie filmmakers, Alshaibi can always use financial help making his vision manifest. Click to donate to help him finish Profane or American Arab.
 

 
After the jump, check out a clip from American Arab…
 

 
Anthony Newley’s misbegotten take on The Beatles’ “Within You Without You” is so stunningly bad it has a certain hideous allure. It’s from the 1977 TV special The Beatles Forever, which featured Newley, Tony Randall, Ray Charles, Bernadette Peters, Paul Williams, among others, eviscerating Beatles classics. It doesn’t get much worse than this…and that’s why I dig it.

The Youtube description of the video is almost as amusing as the clip itself:

Movietone News footage of Sunbury 1974 (the end of the 60s) with Mr Newley’s epoch defining reading of George Harrison’s exotic toe-tapper from the Beatles Pop Art album Sgt Peppers. Newley is magnificent as always.

Tony Randall introduces the song.
 

 
In 1969 Apple Records released Maybe Tomorrow by The Iveys, a band that was poised to be the next big thing.

Although the album was scheduled to be released worldwide, the release in the U.S. and the U.K. at that time was halted without explanation. Many reasons for halting the album have been suggested by the band and Apple employees, but the most common theory in that Apple’s newly-hired president, Allen Klein, stopped all non-Beatle releases on Apple until he could examine the company’s finances, which were in disarray at the time.

Dismayed by the failure of their first album to get a proper release and the general consensus among band members that the name The Iveys was a bit too twee, the group changed their name to Badfinger and later re-released most of the songs from Maybe Tomorrow on Badfinger’s Magic Christian Music.

The song “Maybe Tomorrow” is a decent little pop tune. “Tube Train” is a standout raver with a distinct Who vibe. A lost gem.

Maybe Tomorrow was released on CD in 2004 but has gone out of print. It’s available at a price here.
 

 
“Tube Train” after the jump…

 
Welsh born Paul Bradley Couling (Mal Ryder) never made it as a rocker in Britain, but with his band The Primitives he became a superstar in Italy during the sixties.

I took part in four international Sanremo festivals, and all the top Italian TV shows, photo’s on the covers of all top magazines, scandals in the papers of my supposedly flirts, there were paparazzi everywhere, my private life was non-existent, my shows, full houses, and I was getting mobbed everywhere I went. I drove fast sports cars, well, you name it I did it !!!!!   I was doing so well in Italy by this time, that it was pointless going back to England, as I had nothing going for me there, and I was making one hit after another in Italy, at first with The Primitives cover versions of a Young Rascals song called ‘I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore’ in Italian ‘Yeeeah’.  Success was growing every day, so much so that every song got in the charts, most to N° 1. and selling a million copies, like my version of the Bee Gees song ‘I’ve Got A Message To You’, in Italian ‘Pensiero d’amore’, after which I made a musical film, one of four I made in my career as an actor.”

Mal’s stardom would remain an Italian phenomenon. Try as he might, success in Britain eluded him.

At one stage I tried to make it back in England, with a record, using part of my real name Paul Bradley for the Baby Records. We recorded it in London’s PYE Studio. All songs where in English. This LP came out in 1980 called Silhouette from which was taken some singles which got into the charts in Italy and in many other countries, (but not England.)!!!”

“Yeeah” is so good I’ve included two versions in the following montage, which also includes a raunchy cover of The Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin”, with Ryder sounding like his Welsh brethren Tom Jones, and “Pensiero d’amore”. The first 100 seconds of this video is among my favorite rock moments of all time - Mal emoting like a motherfucker while a stoic Italian audience responds with bemused indifference.
 
Super stella!
 

 
(via TDW)

 
Noted fashion photographer Terry (“Call me Uncle Terry”) Richardson is a man well-known for his special brand of zaniness. Terry, you see, likes to bring the fun.

Seen here, in a video promoting his new book from Tashen, Richardson lets his id hang all the way out as he performs an acapella version of a punk song he wrote with the apparent title, “Child Molester’s Coming For You.” If it gets to be too much, you can stop watching at any time. Might not be appropriate for children susceptible to nightmares.
 

 
Via Jezebel

 
Two years after the Summer Of Love, Andy Williams drops acid and organizes a be-in on his network TV show.

I experienced the things that most people did when taking psychedelic drugs – the intensely heightened senses, the beauty of colours and sounds, the contrasting phases of feeling. One moment, I would feel like I was a lord of the cosmos, the next I would be focused on a microscopic detail – a coloured thread fluttering in the breeze, or specks of dust hanging in the air.”

In this clip from Andy’s NBC variety series, which aired in March of 1969, Donovan and his parade of flower children create some Aquarian vibes and the audience is swept along on a contact high.

40 years later, Andy’s warm relationship with Rush Limbaugh and comments about Obama suggest he might be be due for another consciousness raising session.

“Obama is following Marxist theory. He’s taken over the banks and the car industry. He wants the country to fail.”

Andy, we love you. Come back. Grooviness awaits.
 

 
Compendium of often amusing Doctor Who bloopers snipped from Great TV Mistakes. Narrated by Robert Webb of Peep Show fame.
 

 
Via Blogtor Who

 
Strange, but true, in the early 80s, Frank Zappa joined showbiz celebs like Nipsey Russell, Scatman Crothers, Erik Estrada, Henny Youngman, and One Day at a Time mom, Bonnie Franklin, to record radio PSAs for the American Dental Association. The spots admonished kids to brush, floss and go for regular dental check-ups. Here are three of them: “Dental Floss Tycoon,” “Trick Or Treat” and “Keep Your Teeth.”
 

 
Thank you Wilson Smith!

 
I have to admit this is a genius idea for a TV show. As bleak, as vicious, as mean-spirited—and just plain wrong—as this is, I know, for sure, that if I was living in Iraq, I’d watch this show.  Tell me you wouldn’t watch this, too:

An Iraqi reality television program broadcast during Ramadan has been planting fake bombs in celebrities’ cars, having an Iraqi army checkpoint find them and terrifying the celebrities into thinking that they are headed for maximum security prison.

The show “Put Him in [Camp] Bucca” has drawn numerous protests but has stayed on air throughout the fasting month, broadcasting its “stings” on well-known Iraqi personalities.

All of them were ensnared by being invited to the headquarters of the private television station Al Baghdadia to be interviewed, but en route to the station a fake bomb would be planted in their car while they were being searched by Iraqi soldiers, who were in on the deception.

The unwitting celebrities are then secretly filmed, Candid-Camera-style, as they reacted with shock, disbelief and anger as fake checkpoint guards shout abuse at them: “Why do you want to blow us up?” “You are a terrorist.” “How much did they pay you to do it? You will be executed.”

Yikes! Tell me this guy wasn’t pissing down his own leg when this exchange took place:

Soldier : “Which group you are working for?”

Television Host: “Al Qaeda for sure.”

Guest: “I am an actor. What are you saying? Is this a game or what?”

Soldier: “This a military checkpoint. What do you think we are playing here? You have got a bomb in your car.”

Television Host: “Why are you doing this? Why are you putting me in such trouble?”

Guest: “I am a family man. I have two kids. How could I do this to my family? I am telling you the truth, it’s not me who planted the bomb.”

 
Punk’d, Iraqi-Style, at a Checkpoint (New York Times)