This is it, the absolute apotheosis of insane 70’s Bollywood film tunes. A sublime and ridiculous Frankenstein of Sketches of Spain, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Wild Thing and I Feel Love, this may be even better than Let’s Dance for the Great Guy Bruce Lee. As with said tune, this was a mainstay at the late, great Jac Zinder’s Fuzzyland clubs in early 90’s Los Angeles not to mention a really easy song to do half-hour cover versions of. Dig that tape echo slathered all over the whole mix. Tasty !
thx Wendy Schrodinger !
Talk about timeless. Journalist Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us came out in 2007 just as the implications of the mortgage crisis started coming into focus. This video speculating on how the earth swallows a house over 500 years was produced in conjunction with the publication, and in view of so many foreclosed American houses trashed out by their owners and the oily cancer temporarily zombifying the Gulf of Mexico, it seems rather tranquil.
Get: The World Without Us by Alan Weisman [Paperback]
Fans of Hispanic Batman, at long last, Hispanic Batman, the book! The thing is, it’s only for sale at the San Diego Comic Con. They say that unsold copies will be for sale on the Royal Flush website, but with a cover like this, there is no way this baby won’t sell out!
Created in 1997, Hispanic Batman is the retarded brainchild of Royal Flush creators and comic artists Erik Rodriguez and Josh Bernstein. This parody of the classic comics character has certainly found his unique voice over the last few years tackling the tough issues like immigration, slavery, politics and even American Idol and Hugh Hefner.
Light-hearted, goofy, offensive and extremely well drawn, Hispanic Batman’s charms are irresistible. Appearing in every Royal Flush, Hispanic Batman all his adventures are gathered here into one 80-page tome.
In honor of this special edition, many top comic artists and illustrators banded together to try their hand at the famed Caped Conquistador. Tim Bradstreet (Punisher, Hellblazer, Batman) came aboard to do the killer cover that adorns this book. His take on the Brown Knight gives salute to both Adam West’s campy portrayal of the character and the great Mexican cinema art of the ‘50s and ‘60s.
In addition, there’s over 25 pages of exclusive and brand-new comics and pin-ups from such Royal Flush artists as Danny Hellman, Steve Chanks, Ryan Dunlavey, Matt Siren, Sean Pryor, Brent Engstrom, Patrick McQuade, Woodrow J. Hinton III, Tanxxx, Frank Powers!, Cojo, Luis Diaz, Jayro Lantigua, Pat Sentman, Jim Mazza, Adam Turman, John Jagusak, Jesse Philips and Kristin Koefoed.
The Hispanic Batman Collected Archives, Vol.1 is completely self-published and will only be limited to this 1,000 copy edition. If any copies are left after the San Diego Comic Con they will be available on a first come, first serve basis on RFMAG.com for $15 plus shipping and handling.
Have you been keeping up with the delightful Pekar Project at the Smith website? The latest installment is my favorite, with Dangerous Minds pal Douglas Rushkoff co-starring with our hero! With terrific—kinda perfect—art by Sean Pryor.
Editor Jeff Newelt writes:
A year ago, our own cuddly curmudgeon, Harvey Pekar, joined author / media theorist Doug Rushkoff on his WFMU radio show, The Media Squat, to talk about a pet peev to both authors: the corporate takeover of society. Doug recently wrote LIFE INC: How the World Became A Corporation and How to Take It Back and Harvey legendarily bashed GE on Letterman in the ’80s, so jamming on this was a natural. To create this comic, “Pekar & Rushkoff Kibbitzin’ About How Life Got Incorporated” (part one of a four-part epic collaboration), we treated the transcript of their talk like the first track laid down for a jazz record. Harvey & Doug remixed the script and then artist Sean Pryor brought the dialogue to life. Note the masterful switch in coloring technique whenever the story shifts from the conversation itself to images of subjects being talked about. Sean first collaborated with Harvey on “Gauntet of Rock” a story for Royal Flush Magazine, and has since rocked out three Pekar Project stories, “Searchin’”, “Jungle Music,” and “Two Working Stiffs.” Sean also designed and contributed a Harvey Head to the new Pekar T-shirt.
This is fucking excellent!
Pekar & Rushkoff Kibbitzin’ How Life Got Incorporated by Harvey Pekar & Sean Pryor (Smith)
A super twisted Etsy merchant is selling a Human Centipede cat toy. “This cat toy is 100% medically accurate!”
Wouldn’t you feel bad subjecting an innocent kitty to something so decadent?
As Foreign Policy’s Elizabeth Dickinson writes in the introduction to this powerful photo essay, “As the photos here demonstrate, sometimes the best test is the simplest one: You’ll only know a failed state when you see it.”
Here, men in Uganda rallying against corrupt strongman Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, burn a bus in protest.
Intercommunal violence in Nigeria’s middle belt means the sight of mass graves is common in the area.
The Failed States Index 2010 (Foreign Policy)
This article, about a rather peculiar business practice in China, is quite amusing, I think you will agree. Hell, with my look, I would be in high demand there! From The Atlantic:
Not long ago, I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit.
“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?”
I was.
And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: “Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.”
I just have one question: What KIND of racism is this? Positive racism? Lucrative racism? Self-loathing Chinese racism? It’s clearly racism of one stripe or another, seemingly positive, at least for white males who look like business men, but still, it’s a bit confusing, isn’t it?
Rent a White Guy: Confessions of a fake businessman from Beijing (The Atlantic)
It feels like a Pop Group sort of day, so here we have a couple of vintage promo clips I’ve never stumbled upon before. Having long loved the records, the clips are a bit of shock. Such wholesome looking kids in their nice new wave gear making all that racket ! I never managed to see the doc that Mr Novicoff posted about here nearly a year ago and it doesn’t appear to be available anywhere. I both snooze and lose. Still, the shriek of vocalist Mark Stewart is a true force of nature, a sound like no other !
The great Mixmaster Morris drew my attention to this bit of coverage of the G20 demonstrations in Toronto this weekend by Miguel Barbosa’s YEAH! Films Company. Clip #1 is more raw, and seems to have been converted to the more stylized clip #2. It seems like some of the most de-sensationalized, semi-balanced coverage so far, although Barbosa & co. seem rather generally disenchanted by the protestors, as shown in his posting on the YEAH! site:
If your going to attack a city, I would suggest weapons & better tactics. I knew these guys were gonna attack 10 minutes before it happened…
Anyways, they didn’t like people taking photos & video. It was kind of too late only a few minutes into the protest, the year is 2010, and everybody has some sort of camera. One protester attacked me when I yelled “Do you think this burning car is going to change the world?”
I hope you at home are sane and human enough to see what they did to this city & what they put innocent people through is completely wrong. It was embarrassing for the City of Toronto and it was embarrassing for Canadians. You all should be ashamed of yourselves. I heard you guys smashed a Tim Hortons. If that isn’t crossing the line I don’t know what is.
Barbosa points out the extreme mediation of the event—“everybody has some sort of camera.” Although it can be useful in documenting and possibly preventing police abuse—which seems to have been somewhat the case since, say, Chicago ’68—it’s hard not to detect a bit of collective narcissism as well.
Is there any doubt that the anti-globalization protest video is now its own genre?