Do space aliens “tag” us with implants the same way we microchip our beloved pets? Are we their pets?

The jury’s still out on that front, but if you are an Angeleno and suspect you’ve got an alien implant, then next weekend, at the Pickwick Gardens in Burbank, Dr. Roger Leir, M.D., a SoCal-based podiatrist, well-known to UFOlogists, George Noory fans and Fortean-types will be on hand to help.

Leir no longer feels the need to debate the existence of UFOs; it’s the implants he’s more concerned about, considering them proof positive of the alien reality. What Leir’s research wants to get to the bottom of is, what are their motives? What are their plans for us? And how the heck did those otherworldly implants get there in the first place?

Also appearing at the event is conspiracy theorist Jordan Maxwell, a fellow who describes himself as “a preeminent researcher and speaker in the fields of secret societies, occult philosophies, and UFOlogy since 1959.” Maxwell is scheduled to lecture about “The Hidden Dimensions in World Affairs.”

The tinfoil-hat brigade should be out in force at the event, which will be hosted by Noory himself. A lil’ zany? Perhaps, but something tells us that the people-watching will be very interesting.

The Hidden Dimensions in World Affairs event, Feb. 7, 2 to 9 p.m. (doors open at noon), Pickwick Gardens, 1001 Riverside Drive, Burbank. $50

 
Just when you think there are no new surprises coming out of the underground, something like the Taqwacore movement arrives, a fictional Islamic punk rock subculture that has become a REAL Islamic punk rock movement. Melissa Henderson writes at Brand X:

Originally imagined as a fictional world of living on the edge, Muslim punk rockers in Michael Muhammad Knight’s 2003 novel, “The Taqwacores”, Taqwacore has since evolved into an honest-to-goodness, real-life, fight-the-power scene, replete with young and charismatic activists, artists and Punk the only appropriate soundtrack to any decent rebellion.

Groups like the Chicago doom-crust band Al-Thawra and Boston-based ska-punkers the Kominas are rapidly gaining attention, as evidenced by August’s Los Angeles Times feature. Omar Majeed’s documentary about the subculture, Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, made Spin magazine’s Best Music Documentary list of 2009, and “The Taqwacores”, Eyad Zahra’s feature film adaptation of the novel, premiered this week as an official competitor at the Sundance Film Festival. (For more on that, check out the post at the LA Times 24 Frames blog).

Knight, a Rochester, N.Y., native who converted to Islam in his teens and then struggled with an inability to reconcile his faith with his inner Punk, coined the book’s title from the Arabic word “Taqwa,” which means piety or God-fearing, and hardcore, a subgenre of late-70s punk rock. The novel, which he handed out for free in parking lots before finding a publisher in 2004, resonated so strongly with young Muslims dissatisfied with traditionalists in their own communities and cliches foisted on them by outsiders that it became something of a manifesto.

 
READ MORE: The rise of Taqwacore: from parking lots to Park City (Brand X)
 

 
Won’t you be my “special friend?”
 
Also see: Proof Mister Rogers is a Blood

I have been left completely speechless by the video. Stick with it, it gets progressively more insane every minute.

(UPDATE: This guy has a whole YouTube channel AND ALL OF HIS STUFF IS BRILLIANT. Who is this guy???)

 
From our very own Los Angeles treasure, food writer Jonathan Gold’s current column in response to a reader’s question: “Is there a food equivalent to a snuff film? “

Dear Ms. W:

Zhou dynasty gourmands enjoyed rat, which they called “household deer.’’ I have heard of a bean, grown in Indonesia, that is so delicious its fanciers are willing to endure the inevitable three days of excruciating liver pain that follows the feast. My friend Ruth was telling me the other day about the strips of jellied water-buffalo skin she enjoyed in Laos, available with or without fur. None of those is available here, although as it turns out I did once try a version of that water-buffalo skin in a long-deceased Little Saigon cafe. There is a place in the Wilshire District that looks a little like the back office of a disorganized accountant really, no tables or cooking smells, where you sit for a while on worn vinyl chairs and are eventually, or possibly, or rumored to be able to be, brought the bosintang you have come there for. Takeout only. Allegedly. And I have heard that lately, it is strictly BYOD. Either way, I have never managed, or even been tempted, to try the goods. Goat stew is an acceptable equivalent.

In Little Tokyo, you once could get braised bear paw, at an absolutely bowel-clenching price, until the Chinese restaurant that served it was shut down. Hamhung in Koreatown once featured a dinner of barbecued tiger, lion, elephant and antelope, all legal oddly enough, until the ‘92 riots and the Japanese recession stanched the flow of rich Tokyoites to that part of town. (Hamhung still does have very good buckwheat noodles with seafood, which you should keep in mind when the weather gets warmer.) Meat smuggling from Europe has been substantially more difficult lately thank you, underwear bomber!  but if you ask around at better cheese stores, you should be able to find the raw-milk cheeses you desire. As for endangered species practically all sea fish seems endangered at the moment, at least in the long run. In season, Urasawa will sell you fugu, the kind that can kill you if it’s indifferently prepared, and charge you as much for it as you paid for your first car. But even in Los Angeles, as far as I know, you will find neither primates, nor human flesh, nor coelacanth. And we’re all better off for it, I think.

 
Born with eight limbs and two torsos fused at the hips, Lakshmi Tatma was named after—and worshipped from birth as the reincarnation of—the Hindu goddess of wealth and fertility.  Now, two years after the ground-breaking operation which separated her from her parasitic twin, Lakshmi’s a happy four-year old and has just started school:

‘When I think of the way she was, never in a million years would Lakshmi have been able to go to school or have the life she does today,’ said her mother Poonam, 26.  ‘All the things she’s capable of now were impossible two years ago.  ‘I often try to think what she might be like today if she hadn’t had the operation—she couldn’t even sit up before and now she runs around like other children.

And while Lakshmi can now play cricket and hang out with friends, her doctors are just getting started.  Lakshmi still requires a number of operations, ranging from spine correction to the creation of buttocks, which, because she was connected in the womb to her “twin,” never managed to form.
 

 
The Little Girl Who Had Eight Limbs And Was Worshipped As A Deity Starts School

 
Blood, shadows, a pregnant woman screaming…the below trailer looks like it’s teasing some kind of It’s Alive knock-off.  But it’s really a promo spot for the “horror film” 2028, one of fifteen anti-teen pregnancy spots sponsored by the United Way of Milwaukee’s Healthy Girls organization.

Hoping to deglamorize Bristol Palin-type pregnancies, the trailers end with the message, Get pregnant as a teen and the next 18 years could be the hardest of your life,” and a Web address for BabyCanWait.  The campaign’s print ads are no less subtle with their “images of teen boys with pregnant bellies and a baby diaper with a brown scratch-n’-sniff spot.” 

And while BabyCanWait isn’t per se of an abstinence-only mindset (they provide information about STDs and contraception), Broadsheet’s Tracy Clark-Flory (breathlessly) wonders:

Are these shock-and-awe tactics the best way to reach kids? While I sympathize with the goal, and appreciate the clear and creative commitment to it, something about the trailer didn’t sit well with me.

For one thing, horror movies are glamorous, too. (Older) teens and women like Saw, say.  Not saying it’s aspirational, but the genre itself is seen as a double-dog-dare lark, not a cautionary tale about (say) losing your virginity at summer camp REE! REE! REE!  You know?  So there’s that.  There’s also something about it that contributes to an ugly stigma.  Teen mothers as screaming bloody victims.  The baby as some sort of evil spawn.  Or something like that.  Ick.  Not helpful.

Finally, I don’t think kids are running around getting (people) pregnant because Bristol and Jamie Lynn made it look so, like, cute.  Or even just because ADULTS ARE LYING TO THEM ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL, which they are.  There are so many naive, misguided, melancholy, ironic reasons that teens want to get pregnant, be parents.  They’ve seen their sisters and brothers and friends do it.  And it’s hard hard hard. But based on what’s become normal to them it’s not a horrorshow.  I’m not sure you can convince them it is in a one-minute trailer when the rest of their life says otherwise.

 
(via Alternet)

 
The first round of child sexual abuse allegations were leveled against Michael Jackson in ‘93.  Amid all the “avalanches of dirt,” Jackson found an unlikely ally in the Academy Award-winning actor, Maximilian Schell (Judgment At Nuremberg, The Black Hole), who wrote the King Of Pop a gushy fan letter that appeared on the back page of the Hollywood Reporter:

MAXIMILIAN SCHELL

NOV, 19 1993
TO: MICHAEL JACKSON
(SOMEWHERE ON THIS PLANET)

DEAR MICHAEL,

I AM DEEPLY ASHAMED—FOR THE PRESS, FOR THE MEDIA, FOR THE WORLD - I don’t know you - we met only ONCE on one of those Award-Dinners (“ENTERTAINER of the DECADE”) - We shook hands - you were kind and polite - I don’t think you knew who I was - HOW SHOULD YOU? OUR WORLDS ARE TOO FAR APART - (I am more, “CLASSICAL” - minded -) but I looked into your eyes—THEY WERE KIND—

You are a great artist and I admire you - my little daughter (she is 9?Ǭ?) LOVES YOU! DEEPLY - SHE EVEN WANTS TO MARRY YOU! (-“BUT HE NEVER CALLS ME!”) SHE IMITATES YOU ALL THE TIME - and quite well -

WE ALL LOVE YOU

I would like her more to listen to MOZART - but she loves YOU! AND I RESPECT HER TASTE!—

THAT YOU SURVIVE THIS AVALANCHE OF DIRT THROWN AT YOU - I ADMIRE TREMENDOUSLY -

THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU ARE!

GOD BLESS YOU

Maximilian Schell

P.S. “ONE CAN ONLY SEE GOOD WITH THE HEART - THE ESSENTIAL IS INVISIBLE FOR THE EYES - (“THE LITTLE PRINCE”)

To see a copy of Schell’s actual missive, check out Letters Of Note

 
First Zinn, now my second favorite literary recluse, J.D. Salinger.  Given Salinger’s nonexistent output since Hapworth 16, 1924, the broad strokes were probably written years ago, but here’s a snip from today’s obit in the New York Times:

J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years.  He was 91.

Mr. Salinger’s literary representative, Harold Ober Associates, announced the death, saying it was of natural causes. Despite having broken his hip in May, the agency said, his health had been excellent until a rather sudden decline after the new year. He was not in any pain before or at the time of his death.Mr. Salinger’s literary reputation rests on a slender but enormously influential body of published work: the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the collection Nine Stories and two compilations, each with two long stories about the fictional Glass family: Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.

Catcher was published in 1951, and its very first sentence, distantly echoing Mark Twain, struck a brash new note in American literature: If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you?Ѣll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Previously on Dangerous Minds: Salinger On Why Catcher Will Never Be A Movie

J. D. Salinger, Enigmatic Author, Dies at 91

 
Gayle Haggard, wife of multiple inner-demon battling Ted, is now absolutely convinced that the disgraced Reverend’s cast aside his amphetamine-fueled, same-sex loving ways.  And not only has she written a book about how really NOT gay Ted now is, she sat down with Meredith Vieira to discuss it:

Gayle Haggard appeared on the “Today” show on Wednesday to talk about her new book, “Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made In My Darkest Hour,” and declared that her one-time Evangelical superstar husband was cured of his homosexual compulsions.

“Our sexuality is conditioned, and we can be conditioned in any number of ways,” she told Meredith Vieira.  “Ted was dealing with certain compulsions that were unwanted.”  However, through therapy, she claims those compulsions—which she said Ted had suffered from most of his life—were gone.

Regarding the compulsions Haggard “suffered” from and subsequently “cured” himself of, Gayle was considerate enough to later point out that that might not be the path for everyone.

Previously on Dangerous Minds: Ted Haggard: Back In The Saddle

Gayle Haggard: My Husband Ted Haggard Is Free From Homosexual Compulsions—For Real This Time