FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Hey Russell Brand: ‘Read some f*cking Orwell!’
10.30.2013
04:58 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
With their recent Russell Brand-edited issue, The New Statesman probably got the most bang for their buck ever in the entire 100 year history of the venerable socialist journal. Brand is obviously a controversial figure and he pulled no punches during the—I thought totally amazing—interview he gave to BBC broadcaster Jeremy Paxman to promote the issue. Seen all over the world, I can’t think of a better advertisement for what the New Statesman is selling or radical ideas in general.

It was a worldwide mass media coup and Brand’s comments penetrated the normal noise. That people were talking about socialism, the capitalist oligarchy and the survival of the human species, well, great work for a comic. Even Fox Business News dipshit Neil Cavuto inadvertently opened the door to a brief discussion of socialism on his show in a segment critical of Brand’s comments. Anyone curious enough to follow up got exposed to something they’d never normally see on Fox.

Brand concluded his own epic “letter from the editor” exhorting his readers NOT to vote as it only lends legitimacy to politicians and the capitalist system, something which has now led comic actor Robert Webb, the self-described “other one” on the brilliant Peep Show series (watch it on Netflix, Americans) to respond to Brand in the pages of, where else, The New Statesman.

From Webb’s “Russell, choosing to vote is the most British kind of revolution there is”:

... I thought you might want to hear from someone who a) really likes your work, b) takes you seriously as a thoughtful person and c) thinks you’re willfully talking through your arse about something very important.

It’s about influence and engagement. You have a theoretical 7.1 million (mostly young) followers on Twitter. They will have their own opinions about everything and I have no intention of patronising them. But what I will say is that when I was 15, if Stephen Fry had advised me to trim my eyebrows with a Flymo, I would have given it serious consideration. I don’t think it’s your job to tell young people that they should engage with the political process. But I do think that when you end a piece about politics with the injunction “I will never vote and I don’t think you should either”, then you’re actively telling a lot of people that engagement with our democracy is a bad idea. That just gives politicians the green light to neglect the concerns of young people because they’ve been relieved of the responsibility of courting their vote.

Why do pensioners (many of whom are not poor old grannies huddled round a kerosene lamp for warmth but bloated ex-hippie baby boomers who did very well out of the Thatcher/Lawson years) get so much attention from politicians? Because they vote.

Webb, of course has a very good point here, but I can see where Brand is coming from as well. I used to think voting was futile myself, because no matter who I voted for, the government was always getting elected. In my defense, I was in my 20s and there was a thimble-full of difference between between Democrats and Republicans during the Clinton era. Now I vote, it’s insane not to until the Tea partiers die off en masse.

He continues:

You’re a wonderful talker but on the page you sometimes let your style get ahead of what you actually think. In putting the words “aesthetically” and “disruption” in the same sentence, you come perilously close to saying that violence can be beautiful. Do keep an eye on that. Ambiguity around ambiguity is forgivable in an unpublished poet and expected of an arts student on the pull: for a professional comedian demoting himself to the role of “thinker,” with stadiums full of young people hanging on his every word, it won’t really do.

That’s one way to look at it—mature, nuanced, something a Cambridge grad might argue—but as much as I respect what Webb has written, I don’t think his open letter will sway the adressee much one way or the other. If you look at the some of the other articles in Russell Brand’s New Statesman issue, it’s pretty clear where he’s coming from and it’s not a timid place. He might not be coming out and directly calling for a violent revolution—although he surely hints at it—but some of the pieces he selected for publication most certainly do a lot more than beat about that bush, notably Naomi Klein’s essay which asks aloud what a lot of people—including many scientists—have been wondering: Is waging revolution against the unsustainable capitalist Leviathan the unambiguous answer to climate change and survival of the human species?

Webb feels the most British form of revolution is precisely the one waged at the voting booth:

What were the chances, in the course of human history, that you and I should be born into an advanced liberal democracy? That we don’t die aged 27 because we can’t eat because nobody has invented fluoride toothpaste? That we can say what we like, read what we like, love whom we want; that nobody is going to kick the door down in the middle of the night and take us or our children away to be tortured? The odds were vanishingly small. Do I wake up every day and thank God that I live in 21st-century Britain? Of course not. But from time to time I recognise it as an unfathomable privilege. On Remembrance Sunday, for a start. And again when I read an intelligent fellow citizen ready to toss away the hard-won liberties of his brothers and sisters because he’s bored.

I understand your ache for the luminous, for a connection beyond yourself. Russell, we all feel like that. Some find it in music or literature, some in the wonders of science and others in religion. But it isn’t available any more in revolution. We tried that again and again, and we know that it ends in death camps, gulags, repression and murder. In brief, and I say this with the greatest respect, please read some fucking Orwell

.

Left-of-center types not voting out of protest will only cede the government to the reichwingers, Webb’s right about that, but seriously dude, death camps and gulags are NOT the obvious consequences of a revolution against capitalism either. I winced when I read that. Reading a little Orwell can never be a bad thing, though.

What about voting AND some direct action so they know we’re fucking serious?

I think where both Robert Webb and Russell Brand might agree is that things seem to be coming to a head.

Billy Bragg posted the following to his Facebook page today:

Have to admire Robert Webb’s pro-active response to Russell Brand but it has also made me wonder, in a week when I’ve been protesting on the streets of London with Mark Thomas and Bill Bailey, why is it comedians who are willing to take a stand these days rather than musicians?

Below, a classic clip from That Mitchell and Webb Look:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.30.2013
04:58 pm
|
The House of David: Religious barnstorming with the original baseball beardos
10.30.2013
01:24 pm
Topics:
Tags:

Harry Laufer of the House of David
Harry Laufer of the House of David
 
The Boston Red Sox are looking to clinch their third World Series in the last 10 years—if that doesn’t happen, Game 7 is tomorrow, in which the St. Louis Cardinals will attempt to win their third World Series in the last 8 years. Either way, by Friday the baseball season will be over.

If you’ve been watching the TV coverage of the postseason action, you’re probably sick to death of the attention that’s been dedicated to the Red Sox players and their stupid beards. The faithful of Red Sox Nation populating Fenway tonight has taken up the gimmick in full force, and you’ll be sure to see some fake beards in the crowd if you watch tonight.
 
Red Sox beardos
Red Sox beardos
 
As Bill Murray pointed out in a recent interview with Esquire, “With the beards, they look like—what were they called, the Sons of David?” A footnote makes the clarification—Bill was referring to the Israelite House of David, a religious society founded by Benjamin and Mary Purnell in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1903.

Ben Purnell was fond of baseball, so he had the idea of getting together a team from the commune. In 1913 the House of David team started playing competitive baseball—they were an active barnstorming team from then all the way up to the 1950s, when the integration of major league baseball effectively put an end to the Negro Leagues and other similar teams like the House of David. As Wikipedia explains, “The team members wore long hair and beards as they played. … Some professional players grew their beards out to show their respect towards the god of Israel, while others wore false beards.”
 
Eliezer Schechter
Eliezer Schechter
 
The House of David is probably the only team in baseball history that consisted entirely of celibate players. The team also invented the warmup game of pepper. The early 1930s were a heady period for the House of David—the pitcher/manager was Grover Cleveland Alexander from 1931 to 1935. In 1933 Jackie Mitchell signed with the team, becoming the first woman ever to sign a pro baseball contract. The next year saw the addition of Babe Didrikson Zaharias as well as, for the Denver Post tournament, Satchel Paige his catcher Cy Perkins.

The House of David traveled all over the country as well as to Canada and Mexico, and their competition included some of the most formidable Negro Leagues teams such as the Homestead Grays. In the late 1930s, the House of David barnstormed across the country with the Kansas City Monarchs, another legendary Negro Leagues team. After Babe Ruth’s career came to an end, the House of David offered him a contract—but the Babe’s carousing habits more or less ruled him out of consideration.

In 2003, Drawn and Quarterly published cartoonist James Sturm’s The Golem’s Mighty Swing, a fanciful graphic novel about a fictional variant of the House of David.
 
The House of David
 
There’s a lot of information out there on the team, including the book House of David Baseball Team by Joel Hawkins and Terry Bertolino and the the House of David Baseball Team Research Project.
 
“House of David Baseball: The Best Team You’ve Never Heard Of”

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘The Warriors’ baseball card paintings
Major League swingers: NY Yankees Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich swap families, 1972

Posted by Martin Schneider
|
10.30.2013
01:24 pm
|
‘What Would Pussy Riot Do?’
10.30.2013
12:40 pm
Topics:
Tags:

wwprd
 
Anti-Folk mainstay Jeffrey Lewis is having a busy year. Not only has he released a collaborative album with bizarro-folk founding father Peter Stampfel (who just celebrated his 74th birthday yesterday, incidentally), he’s also released the “WWPRD” E.P. and toured extensively with his band The Rain. The centerpiece of the E.P. is an idealistic, poetic tribute to Pussy Riot, the female punk band famously being held captive in Russia for the “crime” of staging a protest. Here’s a partial transcription.

Pussy Riot went to prison
Just to make some people listen
They say church & state’s corrupt
It must be true ‘cuz they’re locked up
Before we lose democracy
You ask yourself, and I’ll ask me -
WWPRD?

Put in jail for two years each
Just for punk rock public speech
What is this, the middle ages?
Let those women out of those cages
Before you choose complacency
You ask yourself, and I’ll ask me -
WWPRD?

Minds can open in a flash
when hit by art or hit by cash
Money wins as like as not
Imagination’s all we’ve got
So let’s just have the decency
For you to ask yourself, and I’ll ask me -
WWPRD?

‘Cause progress is not guaranteed
I say Pussy Riot is what we need
This ain’t the old Red Army Faction
This is bold, non-violent action
To change the world, the biggest hint is
art is really what convinces
That’s why they always try to buy it
But they couldn’t buy off Pussy Riot
So when you see bands on TV
You ask yourself, and I’ll ask me -
WWPRD?

Permit me a mild irony in posting commerce links after that last bit, but in case you might want to support Lewis’ work, the E.P. is available digitally from Amazon and in multiple formats from Rough Trade.

Here’s the poem, performed in Cologne by Jeffery Lewis and the Rain, posted by YouTube user haengendegaerten.

Posted by Ron Kretsch
|
10.30.2013
12:40 pm
|
Own your own Hieronymus Bosch figurine!
10.30.2013
11:01 am
Topics:
Tags:

Tree man
“Tree Man,” £44.99 ($72)
 
The good people at Lenin Imports have hit on a marvelous idea that will spruce up any office cubicle, foyer, dormitory room, or prison cell. For a nominal sum you can adorn your drab living space with a figurine painstakingly reproduced from the masterpieces of Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch, including such imaginative hellscapes as The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Last Judgment, and The Temptation of St. Anthony.

Most of the statuettes are about four inches tall, and most are priced at £44.99 ($72), but they vary a little bit according to size and complexity; one especially large one is priced at £144.99 ($235). If you’re looking for a bargain, note that “Ears with Knife” from The Garden of Earthly Delights is a steal at a paltry £29.99 ($50).

Prices “exclude postage and packaging.”

I’ve selected some of the more awe-inspiring figurines for you to peruse, but there are plenty more at the Lenin Imports website.
 
Blue Flutist
“Blue Flutist,” £44.99 ($72)
 
Ears with Knife
“Ears with Knife,” £29.99 ($50)
 
Devil on Night Chair
“Devil on Night Chair,” £44.99 ($72)
 
Bird with Castle Body
“Bird with Castle Body,” £44.99 ($72)
 
Thank you Michael Vanderbilt!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Low-rent Rembrandt Thomas Kinkade R.I.P.

Posted by Martin Schneider
|
10.30.2013
11:01 am
|
Mad Villainy: Oliver Reed on how to play a bad guy
10.30.2013
10:13 am
Topics:
Tags:


 
Since I couldn’t have a dog when I was a child, it became my ambition to turn into a werewolf. Vampires were dull and superstitious. Frankentstein’s monster was clumsy and no good with kids. The Invisible Man appealed, though he wasn’t too good at small talk, and being invisible could get awfully cold. My short list, therefore, was pared down to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the werewolf. Both had interesting dichotomies, but where Jekyll’s was about repressed guilt and sexuality, the lycanthrope was driven by a powerful animal nature, which I saw as my untamed spirit.

That summer, when I was six, I became a werewolf for a week or so, and howled at the moon.

I learned my lupine behavior from Henry Hull in The Werewolf of London, who was then my favorite lycanthrope, putting a beefy Lon Chaney Jr.‘s Wolfman into second place. This was, of course, until I saw Oliver Reed possessed by a silvered moon in The Curse of the Werewolf.

Reed had the werewolf routine down pat. He knew all the moves, and did a fine line in shirt-shredding and wet-eyed remorse. I quickly realized that being a werewolf wasn’t as much fun as being an actor, and I began to follow Reed’s on-screen career.

I caught-up with his early swash-buckling double-bills at the Astoria cinema, where I also saw Reed as the definitive Bill Sikes in Oliver!, then as a comic and unlikely brother to Michael Crawford in The Jokers, and finally as animal-loving POW taking an elephant to safety across the Alps in Hannibal Brooks.

Reed had a joy for living that radiated form the screen, and unlike all the other fodder on offer, Ollie’s films were different, quirky, and, most importantly, fun.

It was through Reed that I arrived at Ken Russell, the man who made me aware of just how brilliant and original cinema could be.

Looking back, Reed’s films were all peculiarly British. Moreover, during the 1970s, as every other Brit actor fled the country’s eye-watering rate of taxation (75%), it seemed like Reed was only actor keeping British cinema alive.

Ultimately, it proved a losing battle, as the American summer blockbuster brought an end to individuality, intelligence and the art of the cinematic auteur.

Of course, things could have been much different, if Reed had gone for the Hollywood lifestyle: those big budget movies, the box office success, and a life by the swimming pool sipping Evian water.

It wasn’t so far fetched, as at the height of his fame, in the 1970s, Reed was offered two major Hollywood movies that would have changed his career for good.

The first was The Sting, where he was to be the villain, Doyle Lonnegan; the second was Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, in which he was to play the wise, old fisherman, Quint.

Reed turned them down, and both of these roles went to Robert Shaw.

Going to Hollywood, Reed later admitted, “might have made all the difference,” but it wasn’t in his nature, as he explained to the actress, Georgina Hale:

”You know, Georgie, I could have gone to Hollywood but I chose life instead.”

Interesting how he made a difference between “Tinsel Town” and “life.”

But “life” had to be paid for, and over the next two decades, Reed made a small library of bad B-movies that hardly used his talent and did little for his reputation.

When his brothers, David and Simon asked Oliver to go to Hollywood, Reed would always shake his head and reply:

”I don’t think I can do it. I don’t really want to do it.”

Reed’s lack of confidence stemmed from his dyslexia, which saw him damned as dunce throughout his school years, and led him to doubt his own intellectual potential. He covered-up this lack of confidence with drink. Lon Chaney once advised his son to find a movie role he could make his own. Junior soon hit on The Wolfman and became a star. By the 1980s, Reed was making the role of a drunk his own. It was a performance that shortchanged his talents.

Robert Sellars in his authorized biography on Reed What Fresh Lunacy Is This? notes an exchange in an early Reed movie, which parallels the actors own fears.

There’s a scene in The System where Jane Merrow’s character asks Oliver’s Lothario of a seaside photographer why he stays in a small town, thinking him to be the type who would have moved on to a bustling city long ago.

Asked if he likes living in the town, he replies, ‘No, not particularly.’

‘Then why stay?’

‘Perhaps I’m a little nervous of going anywhere bigger.’

Reed was a star, it’s just the movies that got small. But in his work/life balance, Oliver probably got it right. He achieved a memorable body of work, with at least a dozen important films; and he lived a life of excess that became the envy of beer-bellied frat boys and suburban barflies.
 
deerreviloinatdeend.jpg
 
On British TV back in the 1980s, there was a show called In at the Deep End, where user-friendly presenters Paul Heiney and Chris Serle were given the challenge of mastering a different profession every week. These jobs ranged from working as a chef, becoming a female impersonator, making a pop promo (for Banarama), and acting in a movie.

In 1985, Heiney was given a bit part in the Dick Clement / Ian La Frenais movie Water, a flop that starred Michael Caine, Valerie Perrine and Billy Connolly. With no acting experience, Heiney sought out the advice of Oliver Reed, who gave impromptu acting lesson of how to be a bad guy.

As Heiney later told Robert Sellers:

’[Reed] was wearing a heavy army overcoat,’ says Heiney. ‘Like the ones the Russian army wear, and he said there was nothing underneath. I had no reason to disbelieve him. He was wearing a pair of wore-rimmed spectacles; one of the lenses was cracked. He had a sort of look of death about him, although I’m sure that was put on, and he had in his fist a pint mug with this clear, colourless liquid in it which he said was vodka and tonic, and I’ve got no reason to doubt that, either. Clearly he’d decided from the outset that he was going to play the bad man every inch of the way. Come in, sit down, shut up, don’t sit there, all that kind of stuff, and he was clearly enjoying it. And I wasn’t enjoying it.’

The advice Ollie gives in the interview is like a master class in how to play a villain on film. His big thing was not to blink: bad men do not blink. ‘You don’t see a cobra blink, do you?’ he says.

The next thing was the voice. Villains don’t shout, they don’t need to. Dangerous men have a great silence and stillness about them.

The one thing that’s missing from this clip is Reed’s finally, knowing wink to camera. But it’s all priceless, and shows a flash of Reed’s talents.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
10.30.2013
10:13 am
|
Here’s your Halloween anthem: Tim Curry sings ‘Anything Can Happen on Halloween’
10.30.2013
09:38 am
Topics:
Tags:

Tim Curry in The Worst Witch
 
This year we celebrate Halloween with a delirious clip from the 1986 TV movie The Worst Witch, starring Diana Rigg, Charlotte Rae, and most memorably, the indelible Tim Curry.

Tim Curry is always inescapably Tim Curry, and in this context that’s a positive boon—he may be the only element in this brief clip that’s even halfway up to snuff. Never have I seen so many superfluous and chintzy video effects deployed in such a short span of time—innumerable green-screen effects, several completely crazy swirl transitions, who knows what the hell else. It’s truly a phantasmagoria of 80s cheese.

In the most “meta” moment, the song inadvertently calls attention to director Robert Young’s excessive video trickery with a brief verse about …  of all things, VHS tapes! For no discernable reason, Curry is tasked with warbling, “Gremlins gonna mess up every cassette from London to Idaho….”

It’s all just too, too good. Happy Halloween, everyone!

“Anything Can Happen on Halloween”:

 
If that intrigued you for some reason, watch The Worst Witch in full after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
10.30.2013
09:38 am
|
Hilarious mockumentary ‘Darkest Austria’ goes where ‘no black man has set foot before’
10.29.2013
08:37 pm
Topics:
Tags:


“Anthropologist Kayonga Kagame of Kinshasa University” (Actor Frank Oladeinde)

Purporting to be an episode of “Other Countries, Other Customs: Kayonga Kagame Shows Us The World,” a production of the fictitious All African Television network, Darkest Austria (“Dunkles, Rätselhaftes Österreich) is a pitch-perfect 1994 mockumentary produced for Austrian TV. It’s an audacious comic gem, in the same league as Look Around You and one of the funniest, most original things I’ve ever seen. Really clever, a minor masterpiece even. Certainly you will have never seen anything quite like it.

Darkest Austria is simultaneously a satire of National Geographic documentaries—they get the reverse condescending colonial tone down perfectly—as much as it is a send-up of Austrian culture, which is pretty… uniformly white. Monolithically so. The idea—brilliantly realized by writer/director Walter Wippersberg, a celebrated author of children’s books—was to get his countrymen to see themselves, their rituals and local customs as outsiders would see them. I’m guessing this is viewed as some kind of TV classic in Austria. It must be. It would hardly be possible to make something like this anywhere else!

As the on-camera host, ethnologist Kayonga Kagame explains, doing cultural research on Anglo-Europeans for the first time has many pitfalls, notably the delusional way the white man regards himself:

“The white man’s tendency to indulge in narcissistic self-analysis makes ethnographic research in Europe very difficult.

There is not one psychological or social phenomenon that has not been examined in scores of books.

As soon as the Europeans have written up their theories they start to believe in them. If you read these works of egocentric self-justification, you risk being taken in by the elaborate style in which they’re written and by their seemingly logical arguments. It is easy to end up thinking like the white natives that a curved line is straight, nonsense makes sense and the weird is normal.

If you want to keep a clear head avoid all white self-interpretation and rely on your own common sense.”

When the All African Television documentary team wanders into the darkest regions of the Eastern Alps, they are perplexed by such “patently useless activities” as bike riding for pleasure or mountain climbing, which is viewed as complete lunacy until they conclude that it’s a cult. Oktoberfest’s gluttonous goings-on are seen as Christian rituals, with beer steins and heaping plates of chicken replacing the wine and communion wafers. Money is termed “magic paper” and bemuses the visiting ethnologists. The activity called “skiing” where the local people line up to be chair-lifted to the top of a mountain only to slide down it and then repeat this over and over again all day long is seen as a symptom of an epidemic regression to infantile behavior.

When I first saw Darkest Austria I liked how it referred to an earlier program and assumed this was just a trope that allowed for the African documentarians to be “returning” to the Alps and to make it seem more real, but in fact, the film is not a one-off, there actually was an earlier film, Das Fest des Huhnes (“Festival of the chicken”) but sadly, I wasn’t able to turn up one dubbed into English on YouTube.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
10.29.2013
08:37 pm
|
Dangerous Finds: Millennium Falcon turntable, Math equations on ‘The Simpsons’; ‘Gutter oil’ alert
10.29.2013
07:41 pm
Topics:
Tags:


Photo via Retrogasm
 
Syria polio outbreak confirmed by WHO - BBC News

The fascinating math equations that show up on The Simpsons - Slate 

10 gorgeous, nostalgic photos of New York’s old Penn Station - Atlantic Cities

‘We hurt a lot of people,’ Westboro pastor’s granddaughter says - NPR

Millennium Falcon turntable - Boing Boing

Genome hacker uncovers largest-ever family tree - Nature

Woodchip giant Australian Bluegum Plantations stripped of environmental certification over koala deaths - ABC.net.au

BBC coverage criticised for favouring climate change sceptics - The Guardian

Lou Reed remembered by Blondie’s Debbie Harry & Chris Stein: ‘His hypnotic voice will live forever’ - Billboard

The Psychological Power of Satan: How a belief in “pure evil” shapes people’s thinking - Scientific American

Woman wearing ‘abusive wife’ costume arrested for beating up boyfriend - Gawker

Spain’s prosecutor’s office says it has opened a preliminary inquiry into allegations that Spain was a target for surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency. - AP

Two Lou Reed tracks look set to re-enter the UK Official Singles Charts Top 40 this weekend - NME

The 10 scariest places on Google Street View - The Daily Dot

NYPD trying to catch skateboarders to the tune of the Benny Hill theme song - YouTube h/t Skye Nicolas

Wikileaks has set up a new website, Free Snowden, to collect money to defend National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden - The Verge

Eyetrack study captures men’s — and women’s — objectifying gazes - UNL Today

Britain’s Cameron says may act against newspapers over spy leaks - Reuters
 
Below, the most stomach-churning thing you’ll see today. How to make ‘gutter oil’:

Video via reddit

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
10.29.2013
07:41 pm
|
Have some shitfaced Halloween fun with the ‘Dark Shadows’ drinking game
10.29.2013
05:20 pm
Topics:
Tags:

Dark Shadows board game
 
If you’re skipping the Halloween parties this year, preferring instead to stay home and drunkenly hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, might I suggest a classic board game to liven up your night? Get your spooky self over to eBay and purchase one the the two varieties of Dark Shadows board games! (By the way, don’t you think a kid’s board game based off of a horror soap opera would cause some pearl-clutching nowadays? How G-rated has childhood become?)

I say combine game-play with a show marathon. Dark Shadows is the best thing to watch in a social setting. It’s streaming on Netflix, so the soap opera format allows the audience to drift in and out or pick episodes at random. And of course all the episodes were shot live and low budget, so despite the high quality of the acting, there’s a ton of line-flubs and technical mistakes. In addition to the actual game, you can start making up your own rules along with the show. For example, every time you see a microphone in the shot, take a drink! Every time a piece of scenery collapses, take a drink!

Just remember folks, every game is a drinking game if you’re inventive!
 
Dark Shadows board game
 
board game
 

 

Posted by Amber Frost
|
10.29.2013
05:20 pm
|
The Death-to-America talent show
10.29.2013
03:21 pm
Topics:
Tags:

unclesammace
 

Iran, not a fan of the U.S. since ELO were in the Top Ten and bellbottoms were unironically fashionable, is combining the worst of both worlds: amateur talent competitions and state-approved propaganda. This bastardization comes in the form of the Marg bar Amrika (“Down with America”) contest, sponsored by “conservative” Iranian news agencies and television stations. As opposed to all of those progressive, independent, free-thinking media outlets that fill the Iranian landscape.

Oh, wait….

Anti-American posters have been a common sight in Tehran since the late ‘70s, even though city officials have ordered the removal of recent posters implying that President Obama’s diplomatic overture is just an excuse for the U.S. to attack Iran.

Iran has been unequivocally clear about how much it despises the U.S. and everything about us. Thanks to the burned flags, charred effigies of American political figures, explicit placards, angry demonstrations, bitchy speeches, celebration (November 4th) of the 1979 attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and the ever-present “death to America” and “down with America” chants, the message hasn’t exactly been lost on anyone.

And now a grand prize of $4000 will be awarded to whomever designs the best photo, cartoon, or article linking the U.S. to “oppression and lying” and blatantly illustrating what choads we are. A secondary prize of $1200 is for documentaries, hymns and blog posts. Could interpretive dance, video installations, performance art and haiku be far behind?

downwithamericalogo
 

Simon Cowell and the usual talent-spotters will not be involved in this judging event. Instead, according to The Daily Mail, “Hardline conservative illustrators and artists from Iran will judge submissions, including cartoonists Maziyar Bizhani and Mohammad Hosein Niroomand, both of whom have been published in the Keyhan [conservative] newspaper.”

boyiran
 

Here are the writing prompts for aspiring propagandists keen on entering the contest:

Why do people say ‘down with America’?
Why is the US is not reliable?
The US and broken promises
The US and self-conceit
The US and human rights
The US and oppression
The US and Islamophobia
The US and Iranophobia
The US and global Zionism
The US and neo-colonialism
The US and democracy
The US dictatorship
The US and freedom of speech
The US and the Occupy / 99 per cent movement

Al Jazeera: Iranians react to U.S.-Iran meeting:

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
|
10.29.2013
03:21 pm
|
Page 945 of 2338 ‹ First  < 943 944 945 946 947 >  Last ›