Hate Obamacare? Wanna Fire Gays? Create a Fake Church! And you just know that this Supreme Court would totally let that happen, too. (The Daily Beast)

Chris Christie Has Used Birth Control—“And Not Just the Rhythm Method”: Hooray for TMI! (Time)

Rod Stewart to Rejoin Surviving Members of the Faces for Show in September: Bassist Ronnie Lane died in 1997 and keyboardist Ian McLagan passed away late last year, but Stewart, Ronnie Wood, and Kenney Jones will all be present at the charity event. (Consequence of Sound)

Don’t Look Now, But Trump’s Favorables Are Improving: From a -28% net approval to a +17% net approval in just a few months—very impressive indeed. Trump isn’t going to go away very soon. (TPM)

Joe Biden’s Schrödinger’s Cat Campaign: Biden serves his ends—and the ends of the Democratic Party—by being neither wholly in the race nor wholly out of it. (Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight)

Why Historians Are Fighting about “No Irish Need Apply” Signs—and Why It Matters: How common were the signs in the U.S.? Are the Irish stuck in a “culture of victimhood,” or were they actually victimized? (Vox)

Elizabeth Warren Hammers GOP: “Did you fall down, hit your head, and think you woke up in the 1950s or 1890s?” Sock it to ‘em, lady. (Salon)

New Pavement Rarities LP Available for Streaming at NPR: Obscure Pavement on vinyl? Yes, please. Matador, you know where to find me. (Matador)

Hollywood Blockbusters Are Getting More and More Incomprehensible: From Transformers 2 to Furious 7 and beyond. (The Guardian)

Trump Converts His Private Cell Number into a Campaign Asset: Gawker thought it was being cute when it punk’d him yesterday by publishing his number, but Trump is just damn hard to box in right now. (The Verge)

Democrats Unveil a Plan to Fight Gerrymandering: Well, it’s about goddamn time.
(New York Times)

Jon Stewart Changed Everything: When Stewart took the TDS job in 1999, little in his resume would have suggested that he could ever become anything like the public conscience of the liberal elite—but he did. (Salon)

It’s Time to Start Liking Tom Cruise Again: Not over my dead body—although I have to admit, Edge of Tomorrow was tons of fun. (Vulture)

Below, the Yes Men explain to Californians that they can have steaks or showers—but not both:

Layne Staley, his amazing hair, and his date attending the Shorewood High School prom, 1986
 
Now here’s something you don’t see every day. The video below of Layne Staley (the late vocalist of Alice in Chains) performing with his band Sleze was shot in 1985 at Lakeside High in Seattle. It was one of many local high school gigs the band would perform, fully two years before Alice in Chains would come to be.

According to Johnny Bacolas, the founding member and guitar player of Sleze who uploaded the video, the band mostly stuck to playing cover versions of Slayer and Armored Saint songs. As a matter of fact, the video captures Staley looking rather glam in a ripped-up shirt and striped blazer, while banging out Armored Saint’s 1984 knuckle cracker, “False Alarm.” The drummer (James Bergstrom) is wearing dark lipstick and a choker, and the bass player (Chris Markham) is shirtless and wearing striped spandex pants and some sort of skirt made out of what looks like plastic. It’s first-rate, car-crashy heavy metal goodness.
 

Layne Staley on stage with Sleze, 1985/1986
 
Sleze never played many clubs due to the then-recent passage of the notoriously awful Teen Dance Ordinance, which made it nearly impossible for clubs to accommodate underage clientele (the law was repealed in 2002), so most of Sleze’s gigs took place at local high schools. Despite the fact that Staley didn’t actually go to Lakeside (He went to Meadowdale in Lynnwood, about fifteen miles away from Seattle), it’s still a pretty incredible snapshot into the past life of the greatest grunge-era vocalist ever.

How could this get any better? Maybe the fact that the name Armored Saint is spelled “Armoured Saint” on the bottom of the screen? How fucking adorable. Oh, high school…. how I miss being high in high school.

Full disclosure: The video sadly cuts off just as Sleze breaks into an excellent jam called “Burning Star,” a song recorded in 1984 by the Texas metal band Helstar. To make up for that, I included a quick clip of Staley and Sleze in action in the straight to Seattle Public Access TV cable movie, Father Rock. Also, the audio isn’t the best, but it’s still a must-watch.
 

 
Sleze performing “False Alarm” on June 4, 1985, at Lakeside High School in Seattle, Washington
 

Layne Staley and Sleze and their huge hair making their “acting” debut in Father Rock

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Watch a teenage Mike Patton and pals at Mr. Bungle’s high school talent show
Teen Ween you’ve never seen: Another cult band’s high school talent show

 
Not sure what the Muppets are promoting during this fine, sultry August week—maybe it’s just their bad selves.

But if you combine Kool and the Gang‘s classic funk jam “Jungle Boogie,” which was of course made extra super famous by Pulp Fiction, and make Sam the Eagle the cranky frontman, and you really can’t go wrong.

This was clearly the song Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem were put on this earth to play. Enjoy!
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Garage Rock Madness with The Muppets first Ed Sullivan appearance, 1966
Gonzo from The Muppets sings Digital Underground’s ‘The Humpty Dance’

 
It may be impossible, I suspect, to fully catalog every song that Yo La Tengo has covered. Between their legendary request sets during WFMU’s frequent telethons (call in and pledge a donation and they’d play, live on air and on-the-spot, whatever song you asked for) and their 12-year run of guest- and covers-heavy Hanukkah shows at the late lamented Hoboken venue Maxwell’s (so it’s clear: the Hanukkah shows were for all eight nights of the holiday), the number of covers they’ve done in their thirty-some-odd years of existence surely must run over a thousand.

And yet, the band has begun a Spotify playlist to collect, in once place, the songs they’ve covered. These are mostly the originals, not YLT’s versions, with the exception of their new version of the Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” (we told you about that one not so long ago), so they’re limited by what’s even on Spotify to begin with, and they’ve got a long way to go. The list currently stands at only 56 songs. To illustrate how ridiculously short that falls of the band’s actual covers repertoire, the 2006 album Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics alone sports thirty covers, plus a medley of 8 more. Eleven of the sixteen songs on their classic album Fakebook are covers. And well over half of the forthcoming Stuff Like That There…. you get the point, right? So I’m assuming the playlist is a work in progress. By all means give it a listen and have fun cruising the series of tubes for YLT’s versions. It’s a worthwhile timesuck if you like rock music—you like rock music, right? Meantime, I’m going to a share few YLT covers that I consider essential but are absent from the list.

Their WFMU cover of Daniel Johnston’s “Speeding Motorcycle,” with Johnston himself literally phoning in the vocals, is still legendary after 25 years. It even got a painfully limited 7” release once. It’s easier to come by on the album Genius + Love = Yo La Tengo. Or you could just check it out right here.
 

 
A whole lot more music after the jump…

 
As one of the first major artists in American comics, cartoonist Will Eisner had immeasurable influence on the genre, particularly with his early masked crimefighter series The Spirit. His art actually proved so popular that he was charged with the daunting task of making compelling materials for the U.S. Army. His military comics were incredibly popular, but the most memorable of his creations has to be Connie Rodd, the brilliant (and professional!) bombshell who graced the pages of PS: The Preventive Maintenance Monthly—a publication that must have really been challenging to sex up!

As a pinup, Connie was actually a little more transgressive than she appears at first glance; since her first appearance in 1951, she was the most capable voice of reason in Preventive Maintenance Monthly. Connie knew her shit. For 123 issues, you had a woman explaining the procedures and standards of military machinery to a bunch of male soldiers—most notably the boneheaded “Joe Dope” character. To be fair to the men serving under Connie, it appears her slammin’ bod proved to be a little bit of a distraction—even the machinery salivated over her! 
 

 

 

 

 

 
Lots more Connie Rodd classics after the jump…..
 

 
We’re all familiar with the creepy Death’s-head Hawkmoth from its appearance in the 1991 thriller The Silence of the Lambs, but there’s a lepidopteran out there even more foreboding. This goth moth’s appearance is downright Satanic.

The Clymene Moth (Haploa clymene), a member of the Tiger Moth family, can be found throughout eastern North America. It can be identified in the wild by its metal-as-fuck upside-down cross marking.

Of course there are Christians out there who would like to appropriate this moth, like they did with the dogwood tree, creating legends about God using natural markings as signs of his watchfulness and good works. For instance, this Christian website posted the following photo:
 

 

When God created the first Clymene moth, at least several thousand years ago did He think about the Cross? As you can clearly see the black marking on the wings looks like the silhouette of Jesus hanging on the Cross. I took this picture yesterday morning as the moth sat quietly on a tomato plant.

I think that when “God created the first Clymene moth at least several thousand years ago” he was probably aware that the head goes at the top—not the bottom. Sorry, Bible-guy. Posting upside-down photos is cheating. Here, let me fix that for you:
 

 
Make no mistake. This moth is PURE EVIL. Especially if you happen to be an Oak, Peach or Willow tree—as its larvae will be decimating you.

Feast ye now upon this demonic gallery of ungodly nature photos of Haploa clymene, the most METAL of moths. Each photo is accompanied by an appropriate quote from Matt Paradise’s Book of Satanic Quotations:
 

“God is a sound people make when they’re too tired to think anymore.”
—Edward Abbey
 

“As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.”
—William Blake
 

“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved—the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”
—Thomas Jefferson
 

“If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.”
—Thomas Carlyle
 

“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”
—Aleister Crowley
 

“I can find no room in my cosmos for a deity save as a waste product of human weakness, the excrement of the imagination.”
—George Norman Douglas
 

“An actually existent fly is more important than a possibly existent angel.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

“Religious ideas have sprung from the same need as all the other achievements of culture: from the necessity for defending itself against the crushing supremacy of nature.”
—Sigmund Freud
 

“O ye generations of Christ-deluded imbeciles! Ye swarms of moonstruck meeklings! Ye burnt out cinders of men! Ye blessing lambs! One day! One day! Ye shall be flung to the lions! Behold! I spit upon your Idols—your Opinions. Now would I pour molten hell through the ventricles of your soul.”
—Ragnar Redbeard
 

“The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind”
—Marquis De Sade
 

“There is no god more divine than yourself.”
—Walt Whitman
 

“I deny Jesus Christ, the Deceiver and I abjure the Christian Faith, holding in contempt all of it’s Works.”
—King Diamond
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Goths and metalheads, is your heart black enough for the Indonesian Ayam Cemani Chicken?

 
Donald Trump Used to Say, Legalize ALL the Drugs—But Not as GOP Front-Runner: The irony is, the old Trump was more in tune with today…. (The Daily Beast)

Chris Christie Booed at Some Horse Racing Event: Okay, okay, it’s called the Haskell International. Remember when “President Christie” seemed like it might be a thing? That was a loooooong time ago. (Huffington Post)

Climate Change Activists Punk Scott Walker with Huge Fake Koch Bros. Check in NH: Click through to see a fantastic picture of Walker posing with them, utterly unaware that the check is a dig against him. (Washington Post)

Jeb Bush Goes After Low-Hanging Fruit in Attacking Lazy Members of Congress: Weirdly, the YouTube spot has gotten virtually no traction thus far. (Kevin Drum/Mother Jones)

Ted Cruz Cooks Bacon with his Gun: Ah, but can he do sausage links? In this YouTube video, the Smarmiest Man Alive makes a bid to be the GOP’s true “red meat” candidate.

John Roberts Has Been Trying to Gut the Voting Rights Act for Decades: Ironically, he is Chief Justice in part because of the voting rights travesty that is Bush v. Gore. (Scott Lemieux/The Week)

The Declining Marginal Value of Crazy: The usual GOP nut cases just can’t compete with Trump’s incredibly effective, incredibly authentic-sounding, non-Beltway version of the gaga. (Josh Marshall/TPM)

Rand Paul and the Scarlet “I”: Paul sold out his iconoclasm to become the GOP’s darling, and ended up alienating everyone. Now, in the hawkish Republican Party, he’s looking to make some waves with Isolationism with a capital I. (Ed Kilgore/Washington Monthly)

Friends Of Starbucks’ CEO Want Him to Run Against Hillary: Just like your local barista, make sure you spell his name right when you write him in on your primary ballot—H-O-W-A-R-D S-C-H-U-L-T-Z. (Time)

New Hendrix Documentary Focuses on 1970 Atlanta Concert: If you have Showtime, you’ll be able to watch it starting September 5. (Rolling Stone)

Washington, D.C., Deserves to Be a State (or at least Have Full Representation in Congress): John Oliver makes the case—very persuasively. (Last Week Tonight)

Are Royal Trux Reuniting? And more to the point, would anyone care if they did? (Pitchfork)

Wal-Mart, Amazon Pull Toy Guns From New York Shelves: Sounds good to us. (Newsweek)

Clueless KKK Member Confronted for Wearing FUBU Sneakers: FUBU stands for “For Us, By Us”—it’s a group founded by African-American entrepreneurs to empower the African-American community (The Raw Story)

Check out that KKK guy’s sneaker game here:
 

 
Suntory is possibly best known to American moviegoers as the client that brought “Bob Harris” to Japan to film a commercial, in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 gem Lost in Translation. It’s Japan’s oldest whisky distillery, and if that causes you suppose that it is in any way dusty or not keeping up with the current trends in whiskeyology, note that just last year its Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013 secured the award for “Best Whisky in the World.”

Not only that, Suntory recently announced that it intends to send some of its delightful spirits to age in outer space. They suspect that the zero-gravity environment may result in nothing less than the smoothest whiskey ever produced.

Take that, Wild Turkey!

According to RocketNews24,
 

Suntory will be sending six varieties of whiskey, aged for 10, 18, and 21 years, along with recently distilled beverages, to outer space as part of an experiment. Their theory is that the weightlessness of space will result in a smoother aged whiskey than is possible to attain on Earth. Employees at JAXA’s Tsukuba City Space Center in Ibaraki Prefecture recently prepared glass flasks that will be used to transport the spirits when Konotori Vehicle 5 (HTV-5) launches from JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Center on August 16.

The whiskey samples will be left on the International Space Station for an unspecified number of years before being brought home to be inspected. Unfortunately for drink connoisseurs, Suntory has already stated that they have no plans to sell space whiskey as a product to the general public.

 
“No plans” is discouraging but that sounds like, if it goes as well as they hope, they’ll be selling it as soon as they can make it work. Now I’m envisaging an Alien or Independence Day-type movie where the first contact with sinister extraterrestrials occurs when they chance upon a satellite full of delicious Suntory product and they invade Earth in order to…... party on a grander scale with the geniuses who developed it.

Ridley Scott: call me.
 

 
via Huh.
 

Amateur sketch of Lizard Man by its first recorded eyewitness, Christopher Davis.
 
A South Carolina woman came forward to the media on Sunday to report a spotting of the legendary swamp creature known as “Lizard Man” and has provided photographic evidence of the sighting.

The woman, identified only as “Sarah” by WCIV ABC News 4, says she “went to church with a friend Sunday morning, [and] stepped out of the sanctuary to see the Lizard Man running along the tree line.”

“My hand to God, I am not making this up,” she wrote in an email to the news station.

WCIV reported her claim as well as the cellphone photo she submitted:
 

Photo of the Lizard Man taken by South Carolina’s “Sarah.”
 
The cryptid, known as “The Lee County Lizard Man” or “The Bishopville Lizard Man” or “The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp,” was first reported in 1988 by 17-year-old Christopher Davis. Driving home from work around 2:00 a.m., Davis had to stop near Scape Ore Swamp to change a flat tire. As he was finishing up, he reported having heard a thumping noise from behind and turned to see a seven-foot-tall bipedal creature running towards him. Davis said it had glowing red eyes, green skin, and three clawed fingers on each hand. Davis said the creature tried to grab at his car and then jumped on its roof as he tried to escape—clinging on as Davis swerved from side to side.  Davis’ side-view mirror was found to be badly damaged, and scratch marks were found on the car’s roof.  After Davis’ tale was reported, others came forward with their own accounts of the beast. According to former Lee County sheriff Liston Truesdale, at least twelve witnesses have come forward.
 

 
On July 30, 1990, Bertha Blythers and her five children witnessed a strange creature near Scape Ore Swamp lunge toward the passenger side of their car. In a statement given to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, Bertha described the creature as being tall, wide, and having “two arms like a human.” “I never seen anything like it before,” she told the police. “It wasn’t a deer or a bear. It was definitely not a person either.”

Not quite as big a celebrity in the world of cryptozoology as Bigfoot or Nessie, the Lizard Man still has a cult following among investigators. A 2013 book, Lizard Man: The True Story of the Bishopville Monster, tells the story of the elusive creature. Cartoon Network has even produced an action figure of the Lizard Man.
 

 
Sales of Lizard Man-related merchandise, along with a lucrative speed trap (one I’ve had personal experience with) are major sources of revenue for impoverished Bishopville/Lee County.
 

 
This latest sighting is sure to boost the local Bishopville economy, and if nothing else, proves that local TV affiliates (as well as Dangerous Minds) will report on anything. Going only by “Sarah”‘s photo, we’re wondering if the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp might possibly be a Sleestak.
 

 
Here’s a short documentary on the Lizard Man:

 
And this song by R Logan tells the tale of the creature:

GG Allin marionette
 
There are entirely too many times during the day that while doing important “research” for DM, I audibly utter the words “I can’t.” However, after learning of the existence of a GG Allin marionette, I wasn’t even able to muster a sound in protest, and was instead at a total loss for words.
 

 
Alex Godfrey, an artist and blogger over at The Guardian, posted blow-by-blow images of his fellow blogger/artist friend Shehzad making a marionette of GG Allin to give to him on his birthday last year. Because nothing says “Happy birthday, scum fuck!” like your very own naked, bloody version of GG Allin that can be controlled by strings. Shehzad’s didn’t skimp on the details—and from the looks of it, few details were spared when it came to making his version of GG look as much like the notorious man himself as possible.

If you want to know why, take a look at the NSFW photos of the GG marionette that follow as well as images from Shehzad’s “creative process.” There are also a few I can’t post, which helps illustrate my point about Shehzad’s attention to detail. If you really need to see them, click here. If you are familiar with GG, then I’m going to assume you’ll know what to expect. I also included a super-short video of marionette GG’s maker putting on a brief show with his most valuable (and possibly possessed) creation. See you in HELL!
 

The making of the GG Allin marionette in progress
 

 

 

 

 

The GG Allin marionette spazzing out

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
GG Allin is seeking gainful employment: Read his actual resumé!
Crappy tattoos, bleeding wounds and poop stains: It’s the GG Allin Doll!
GG Allin Latex Mask
An exclusive peek at some of GG Allin’s prison drawings: NSFW