The original LEGO patent for a “Toy Building Brick” was filed by Godtfried Kirk Christiansen on July 28th, 1958, and registered October 24th, 1961, as Patent No. 3,005,282. O, what joy this simple diagram has inspired.
Via The Khool
The Pope of Trash turns 67 today.
In March a website called the National Report published an obituary for Waters with the headline: “Acclaimed Cult Filmmaker, John Waters … Drops Dead at 67!”
The Fellini of Baltimore is still very much with us.
Below, Werner Herzog on his discovery that John Waters is gay:
If John Waters ever dreamt up a scandal mag full of sex, celebrity and murder, then it might look something like The Exploiter.
Not known for its subtly, The Exploiter was a no-rent tabloid sold in supermarkets that guaranteed interest with such sensational headlines as:
SON CHOPS, CLUBS, STRANGLES AND STABS HIS FAMILY!
(Well, you can never be too careful…)
Or:
Story of Papillon “I ESCAPED FROM DEVIL’S ISLAND!”
And:
Raquel Welch Sells Sex Thrills!
But of course.
Actually, the story on Ms. Welch was a late report on her appearance in the 1967 French comedy Les plus vieux métier du monde, aka The Oldest Profession. But you get the idea…
Also in The Exploiter for 31 January, 1971, was this intriguing job opportunity:
HELP WANTED: ORGY INSPECTOR APPLY INSIDE…
This turned out to be a behind-the-scenes report on various hi-jinks taking place on the set of Ken Russell‘s latest work-of-genius, The Devils.
Interestingly, this story had come across the wires, and was originally posted in The Free-Lance-Star 30 November, 1970. It then appeared amongst the entertainment section of the St. Petersburg Times, for December 2, 1970, next to an advert for “The Sensational, Fascinating T-A-N-T-A-L-I-Z-N-G BUNDLE OF SEX MELINA” at the Twilight Lounge, 2235 Central Ave., and “Stay Young—Go Dancing” with Bob Burklew’s Dixians, at St. Pet Coliseum.
Help Wanted: Orgy Inspector
LONDON (AP) - Equity, the British actors’ union, is appointing an orgy inspector to keep watch on mass sex scenes in movies. His job will be to insure that the male actors stick to the script.
Five actresses complained during the shooting of a scene from “The Devils,” they were sexually assaulted in a crowd of 50 naked male extras, all amateurs. The movie, about sex-mad nuns in the 17th century, stars Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed, who were not involved.
In John Baxter’s long-interview-cum-biography, An Appalling Talent Ken Russell (1973), the great director gave some background to the story, as Mr. Russell explained:
The extras on The Devils were a particularly bad bunch. They weren’t all the same but you only need one bad apple for the rot to set in and we had a whole barrel-load. Casual work like this attracts bad characters and when they learn a bit about how films are made they can hold you to ransom by demanding more money…
...On The Devils they were even worse. They not only tried to get ‘money for breathing’; they were very bad at exterior shots and in some of the cathedral scenes they manhandled the naked nuns more than was called for and one poor girl was even sexually assaulted. I think the union knows what some of its members are like. and after the fuss on The Devils they made an effort to correct things…
So, now we know, there was a serious incident, but there was no job for an orgy inspector.
Still, who knows, maybe one day John Waters will consider editing a scandal mag?
Photo: M. Getz.
Here’s Joni Mitchell doing a 35-minute interview on cable TV in 1989. I think it’s lovely the way Mitchell gives it her all despite being seen by only a few hundred people somewhere out in the ether. A great communicator with a high regard for her audience, no matter how small.
She speaks with great specificity about her recent LP release, 1988’s Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, the Lakota people, political activism, film making and modern American culture.
The TV show originated in Covina, California. The interview is thoughtfully conducted by Jeff Plummer. Produced by Marty Getz.
Part two after the jump…
This was posted to reddit a few days ago. There’s been some discussions as to whether not this is ‘shopped and exactly… who is the proud of owner of the tattoo? Honestly, I have no idea. But it looks real to me.
Via BuzzFeed
In an almost mythical ABC After School Special from 1987 titled The Day My Kid Went Punk, a wholesome all-American family (with Love Boat‘s “Doc,” Bernie Kopell as the worried dad) has to deal with uh… tragedy when their “normal” son starts wearing black lipstick, cuts his hair into a Mohawk and generally goes for an extreme “Goth Eye for the Straight Guy” make-over…
“Nice kid. Quiet. Plays classical violin…”
“Oh, really? Well a Ziggy Ziggy Sputnik lookalike is sitting outside in the lobby for us hire him as our daycare counselor.”
“Who are you talking about? Who is Ziggy Ziggy whatsit?”
Just the above image made the viral rounds a few years back, but this is the longest clip yet of this elusive bit of cult TV to appear on YouTube. Who has the entire thing?
They may seem to be an unlikely pair, but Irish avant-garde writer Samuel Beckett and actor/wrestler André the Giant knew each other.
Beckett even rode the young André Roussimoff, who suffered from acromegaly, a condition that sees the pituitary gland producing excess growth hormone during puberty, to school in his truck, as the young man was too big to travel in school transportation by the age of 12.
From Geekologie:
Samuel Beckett, Nobel Prize winner (literature) and esteemed playwright, probably most noted for Waiting for Godot, bought some land in 1953 near a hamlet around forty miles northeast of Paris and built a cottage for himself with the help of some locals.
One of the locals that helped him build the cottage was a Bulgarian-born farmer named Boris Rousimoff, who Beckett befriended and would sometimes play cards with. As you might’ve been able to guess, Rousimoff’s son was André the Giant, and when Beckett found out that Rousimoff was having trouble getting his son to school, Beckett offered to drive André to school in his truck — a vehicle that could fit André — to repay Rousimoff for helping to build Beckett’s cottage. Adorably, when André recounted the drives with Beckett, he revealed they rarely talked about anything other than cricket.
As you would!
Illustration by Séamus Gallagher
I thought Ira Glass giving love advice was the cutest thing on Rookie, a frank website by and for teen girls. However, Thom Yorke (alongside producer Nigel Godrich) answering questions about debilitating shyness has completely lapped him (Of course he’s answering questions about debilitating shyness—they really cater the questions to the guests!)
All very sound, reassuring advice, without condescending to the kids, although I have to wonder if the summary would have highlighted their new project, Atoms For Peace
Via Rookie
Bad girl/it girl Peaches Geldof claims to have settled down at the ripe old age of 24, in favor of raising her young child and family life, but the former wild child so beloved of the British tabloids—pregnant with her second child—has now taken to her Twitter account and urged her followers to read up on the “do what thou wilt” philosophy of occultist Aleister Crowley.
Geldof also tweeted an Instagram pic of the yantra of Babalon (a symbol closely associated with Crowley) with this message:
“#93 #Thelema #o.t.o for all my fellow Thelemites on instagram!”
#LOL
Because we all know that Instagram is just crawling with Thelemites… Apparently Ms. Geldof’s even got a tattoo of the initials “O.T.O,” standing for the religious organization associated with the Great Beast 666, on her arm.
Via The Daily Mail (so take this with a grain, or a pound, of salt):
A source said: ‘Peaches is fascinated by Aleister Crowley and wants to put the word out there.
‘It’s true that she is interested in OTO and she had the tattoo done a couple of years ago.’
Peaches has also dabbled in Scientology and is now said to have converted to Judaism, the religion of her musician husband Thomas Cohen.
She said in 2009: ‘I felt I was lacking something when I didn’t have a faith.’
Professor Ronald Hutton, a historian at Bristol University, said: ‘OTO is about using magical acts to become a stronger, more effective person. It’s more mental magic than anything to do with cauldrons.’
A spokesman for Miss Geldof declined to comment.
What I found much more interesting in the article was the news that British comedian Russell Brand is also apparently a bit of a Crowley buff. That I did not know, but it doesn’t come as any great surprise, either.
J. G. Ballard once said, if by some terrible calamity all art from the 20th century was destroyed except for the work of one artist, then it would be possible to recreate all of the century’s greatest artistic developments if that artist was Eduardo Paolozzi.
Deliberate hyperbole, but there is an essence of truth here, as Paolozzi produced such an incredible range and diversity of art that it has been difficult for critics and art historians to classify him. He began as a Surrealist, before becoming the first Pop Artist—a decade before Warhol put paint on canvas. He then moved on to print-making, design, sculpture and public art to international success.
Born in Edinburgh, to an Italian family in 1924, Paolozzi spent much of his childhood at his parent’s ice cream parlor, where he was surrounded by the packaging, wrapping and cigarette cards that later inspired his Pop Art. This early idyll of childhood was abruptly ended when Italy declared war on Britain in 1940. Paolozzi awoke one morning to find himself, along with his father and uncles, incarcerated, in the city’s Saughton Prison, as undesirables, or enemies of the state. Paolozzi was held for 3 months, but his father and uncles were deported to Canada on the ship HMS Arandora Star, which was torpedoed by a U-boat off the north-west coast of Ireland. The vessel sank with the loss of 630 lives.
Considered psychologically unsuitable for the army, the teenage Paolozzi studied at the Edinburgh School of Art, in 1943, before finishing at the Slade School in London, which he found disappointingly conservative in its approach to art.
After the war, Paolozzi moved briefly to Paris where he visited some of the century’s greatest artists, then resident in the city—Giacometti, Braque, Arp, Brâncuşi, and Léger. In his youthful boldness, Eduardo had telephoned each of these artists after discovering their numbers in the telephone directory. He was greeted as an equal, he later claimed, most probably because the war had just ended. The experience taught Paolozzi much, and emboldened his ideas. On his return to London, Paolozzi presented a slide show of adverts and packaging, which was the very first Pop Art.
Paolozzi developed his distinctive collages and multiple images of Marilyn Monroe long before Warhol and even Richard Hamilton, the artist with whom he showed at the now legendary This Is Tomorrow exhibition, at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1956.
Paolozzi eventually tired of his association with Pop Art, as it limited his incredibly diverse artistic vision. The same year as This Is Tomorrow, he played a deaf mute, with fellow artist Michael Andrews, in the first major Free Cinema movie Together by Lorenza Mazzetti.
By the late 1950s, he had moved on to industrial print-making, before producing an incredibly awe-inspiring range of designs for buildings, sculptures and public art—from his mosaic for Tottenham Court Road tube station to the cover of Paul McCartney’s Red Rose Speedway, through to such epic sculptures Newton, outside of the British Library, Vulcan, Edinburgh, and Head of Invention, Design Museum, London.
In 1984, Paolozzi conceived and produced a brief strange and surreal animation 1984: Music for Modern Americans, which was animated and directed by Emma Calder, Susan Young and Isabelle Perrichon, and based photocopies of Paolozzi’s original drawings.
