Speedway is a typical lightweight Elvis romp from the ‘60s co-starring Nancy Sinatra who plays a sexy IRS agent who comes to audit racecar driver Elvis, whose business manager (Bill Bixby) is an idiot addicted to gambling. She succumbs to the King’s charms, natch. There are songs and a plucky homeless family living in their car. That’s the plot in a nutshell.

Carl Ballantine from McHale’s Navy and Gale Gordon, best known as Mr. Mooney from The Lucy Show are also part of the cast. One production number, for a song called He’s Your Uncle, Not Your Dad, takes place in an IRS office! It’s perfectly dreadful, if entertaining, drivel, but it does have two great numbers in it. Elvis does a rocker called Let Yourself Go that was released as a single, but flopped, which is a shame, because it’s one of my top favorite Elvis tracks. And Nancy Sinatra performs a swingin’ little number called Your Groovy Self, complete with minimalist mod choreography, It’s one of her best songs, certainly one of her best performances on film and the sole track by anyone other than Elvis to appear on the soundtrack album to one of his movies.

Two fun facts: First, Speedway was originally written for Sonny and Cher! Second, take a look at the nightclub: Quentin Tarrentino’s set design for Jack Rabbit Slim’s in Pulp Fiction was inspired by the decor of the Hangout, where Speedway’s in-crowd mix in a racecar booth ‘60s disco splendor.

The plot device that gets Nancy to sing is when Carl Ballantine, the maitre’d of the Hangout shines a spotlight on her, and for some arbitrary Elvis-movie logic, she has to “get up and do something.” This is what she does:
 

 
See Elvis’s big number after the jump

 
Gary Shteyngart is a very funny satirist and in this video he’s sending up the promotion of his own book: Super Sad True Love Story,

A deliciously dark tale of America’s dysfunctional coming years - and the timeless and tender feelings that just might bring us back from the brink.

Very clever ad campaign.

 
Adventurous music folks have had their ears on electronic music trends in sub-Saharan Africa ever since the amplified likembe group Konono No. 1 emerged to Western attention from Kinshasa, in the Democratic Repbulic of Congo five years ago.

Now blogs like Generation Bass, Ghetto Bassquake, mudd up! and others are surfacing all kinds of DIY techno-fied genres from all over the continent. And the tempos seem to be getting as fast as the trend-spotting. As reported first by The Fader, Wills Glasspiegel of Outside Music has uncovered “Shangaan electro” music, a hectic digital blend of breakneck thump-beats, MIDI keyboards, sped-up alien samples and melodic vocals. It’s named after the population grouping from which the musicians come, the Shangaan of the northern Limpopo province of South Africa. It’s gotten enough attention to merit the anthology Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music From South Africa on the UK’s Honest Jon’s label

Here’s Richard “Nozinja” Mthetwa, the godfather& top producer of the Shangaan electro genre, breaking it down:
 

 
More after the jump: Just behind Shangaan electro, the Tanzanian sound of Jagwa…
 

 
Forget about Chelsea Clinton. Jamil Smith Cole and Michael K. Cole were married in what has been called “the wedding of the century.”

If the black gay community has ever come close to having a celebrity- married couple then Jamil Smith Cole and Michael K. Cole are it.

You gotta love Michael and Jamil for not only proclaiming their love for each, but doing it in style.

More images and text after the jump…

 
Watch out, they’re everywhere!

Via our friends at World of Wonder

 
Hypnotic animation—this is an ad, really, but it’s a soft sell—to get people interested to read the Newseek special report on The Beauty Advantage (which is quite interesting). There’s a fairly amusing punchline, but I won’t spoil it for you.

 
The utterly creepy and compelling I Think We’re Alone Now is the cinematic equivalent of rubbernecking, you can’t keep your eyes off this car wreck. The film documents the lives of two stalkers, Jeffrey Deane Turner and Kelly McCormick, who are pathologically obsessed with 80’s pop star Tiffany. The title of the movie is based on her big hit, a cover of Tommy James and The Shondell’s I Think We’re Alone Now.

Deane, a man in his 50’s, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a disorder that severely inhibits social interaction, accompanied by extreme repetitive patterns of behavior and obsession. His love for Tiffany knows no bounds. So much so, that he’s been jailed for stalking her. He has a self-made “radionics machine” that allows him to psychically communicate with the object of his fixation. Kelly McCormick, a 35 year old intersex person (hermaphrodite), claims that she became spiritually united with Tiffany after having a vision while in a coma. McCormick’s barren apartment walls are covered with photographs of Tiffany. I was reminded of Travis Bickle’s digs.

These are fascinating but spooky people. The movie examines their lives unflinchingly and at times is squirm inducing.

I Think We’re Alone Now was directed by Sean Donnelly and he manages to balance the dark comedy of his film with compassion and insight, avoiding blatant exploitation. It will be available on DVD  August 24.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Jeff Turner tells his side of the Alyssa Milano story

 
Here’s some fun unused footage from Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting. Fans of Trainspotting will certainly appreciate these awesome clips.

(via Interweb3000)

 
New ‘bug-eyed” trend alert? Artist Jessica Harrison sure thinks so with her sculptural video using real fly legs for eyelashes. Now where’s the centipede moustache?
 
(via Nerdcore)

 
In a hilariously counter-intuitive move, young Linus Akesson here has transplanted some 8 bit synthesizer technology, meant for fitting into the smallest of devices, into the shell of an old family entertainment organ. Hence: The Chipophone. Looks very functional and makes it easy to play all the uh, classics.

 
Thanks Mike Paradinas !