A gentlemanly crow lights Tippi Hedren’s cigarette.
I think we can safely assume that this was a promotional shot for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Via Retronaut
In celebration of the great Bea Arthur’s birthday (the “Golden Girl” would have been 91 years old today) here she is demanding “some marijuana” by YouTuber DewFuzz.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
WTF? Bea Arthur and Rock Hudson sing about coke, meth and weed
Etta Lopez, 31, of Sacramento is charged with assaulting a cop. What was her motivation for the unprovoked attack on the police officer you might ask? Well, she wanted to quit her smoking habit, naturally! She thought by slapping the cop, she’d be put in jail and that would help her kick the cancer sticks.
“There’s easier ways to stop smoking besides hitting a cop,” Roger Spearman, a neighbor, said. Spearman, who knows Lopez says she does smoke a lot, and they used to smoke together.
“I have not heard of something like that before,” Kimberly Bankston-Lee with the anti-smoking group Breathe California said.
I guess this is one way to quit…
Via Arbroath
This is all kinds of fantastic.
This surreal lost Dragnet episode was made by Frank Conniff of Mystery Science Theater and former Mr Show and Chris Rock Show writer Mike Upchurch as a presentation pilot for Adult Swim. They’ve digitally inserted popular alt-comedians into the 1967 cop show Dragnet, and turned it into a story about bad cops trying to eradicate a powerful strain of medical marijuana. It’s technically stunning, exceeding Forrest Gump and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid in both ambition and outcome, while being produced in a living room for only $200.00. (NSFW due to language.)
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘The Gary Show’: A large, dim-witted boy who loved breakfast cereal
Ralph Polnicky of Shawnee, Oklahoma is outraged, damn it! And he has a good reason to be! Allegedly after an “ugly” confrontation with an employee at the Tractor Supply store, Polnicky received a threatening 8-inch dildo in the mail with “Ralph Is A Dick!!” and “Tractor Supply. Don’t come back!!” written on it.
“We were aghast, I mean, we were absolutely shocked by what’s in this box,” he said. “My wife was, just, ‘Oh my God! What, who is this? What do they want? What are they going to do next?’”
Polinky says “Don’t come back!” was shouted at him by the employee at Tractor Supply after Polinky complained “about taking too long to order a product.”
According to reports, “Tractor Supply acknowledged hearing about the package but couldn’t say anything about it. ”
Via Arbroath
John Lydon’s handwritten response to the U.S. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame regarding the induction of the Sex Pistols in 1996:
Next to the SEX-PISTOLS rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. Were not coming. Were not your monkey and so what? Fame at $25,000 if we paid for a table, or $15000 to squeak up in the gallery, goes to a non-profit organisation selling us a load of old famous. Congradulations. If you voted for us, hope you noted your reasons. Your anonymous as judges, but your still music industry people. Were not coming. Your not paying attention. Outside the shit-stem is a real SEX PISTOL
Via The World’s Best Ever and Letters of Note
Well, he’s certainly oozing something, isn’t he?
There was a nearly identical video that Keith made, but they took it down as of last night. He must’ve seen it and thought, “Fuck me, I look like a fucking twat.”
Mick seems, shall we say, somewhat less “reflective” than Keith is. I don’t even think Jagger knew exactly which “Bay Area” he was referring to here, do you? I don’t think he really cares, either.
Via the always interesting Bob Lefsetz
For a generation of gay British actors and performers, camp comedy was a way to promote queer culture, through media of television and radio, into the nation’s living rooms.
Up until homosexuality was decriminalized by an act of Parliament in 1967, being gay or, admitting to homosexual acts, was a crime punishable by imprisonment or chemical castration. The latter was used as sentence on the code-breaking genius and computer pioneer, Alan Turing—which gives an idea of the brutality and bigotry of Britain pre-1967.
But through the use of camp comedy, performers such as, Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howerd, Charles Hawtrey, John Inman and Larry Grayson, were able to subvert the horrendous, homophobic orthodoxy of their time.
For me, each of these men were revolutionary, and together with writers like Eric Sykes, Galton and Simpson, Marty Feldman and Barry Took, they were able to subtly change the public’s attitudes to sex and sexuality.
In her Notes on ‘Camp’, Susan Sontag describes camp as a means for promoting integration:
...Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or polemical comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.
...The reason for the flourishing of the aristocratic posture among homosexuals also seems to parallel the Jewish case. For every sensibility is self-serving to the group that promotes it. Jewish liberalism is a gesture of self-legitimization. So is Camp taste, which definitely has something propagandistic about it. Needless to say, the propaganda operates in exactly the opposite direction. The Jews pinned their hopes for integrating into modern society on promoting the moral sense. Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.
Camp may have been a weapon for education and change, but it wasn’t the sole preserve of gay men. Comedians such as Dick Emery, presenters like Bruce Forsyth, actresses like the Late Wendy Richard and Lesley Joseph, and most importantly writers (in particular Marty Feldman and Barry Took, who created the inimitable Julian and Sandy for Round the Horne) helped promote camp comics as innuendo-laden revolutionaries.
What A Performance is a wonderful romp through the lives and careers of some of Britain’s best known and best loved Kings of Camp: Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard, Larry Grayson, John Inman, Julian Clary, Lilly Savage and Kenny Everett. The documentary contains contributions from Matthew Kelly, Lesley Joseph, Clive James, Harry Enfield, Chris Tarrant, Jonathon Ross, Barry Took, Wendy Richard and Cleo Rocos.
With thanks to Mark Dylan Sieber
Joan Jett and Lita Ford wishing Leif Garrett would leave them the fuck alone…
It was…. THE SEVENTIES… and all that implies…
Sure it was a sleazier time, but on the surface, it was a more innocent time as well…. How else to explain why/how jailbait rockers, The Runaways, would be invited to participate in ABC’s prime-time special, The Rock ‘N Roll Sports Classic which aired on May 3rd 1978? They needed some nubile teenage girls in shorts, I suppose, and Freddie Fender just wasn’t going to cut it in that department. A young Lita Ford running provided some… uh, bounce and… production value to the proceedings (I was 12 years old when this aired, with a poster of the Runaways wearing lingerie on my bedroom wall. You can bet I was watching when this was originally transmitted!).
Unsurprisingly, the “neon angels on the road to ruin,” half the ages of the rest of them for the most part, kick some major ass here.
The special was a musical version of the popular Battle of the Network Stars specials. Participants included The Jacksons (Michael swam in the relay race and ran the 60 yard dash), Tanya Tucker, Earth Wind & Fire, The Commodores, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Leif Garrett, Rod Stewart, Boston, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Kenny Loggins, Sha Na Na, Seals and Crofts, Anne Murray and others.
Tom Waits, wedding singer, on America 2-Night in 1978. Waits croons “Better Off Without A Wife” after a snarkily funny intro by Barth Gimbel (Martin Mull):
“I think there’s no better way to really make a tribute to these people than through music. And fortunately we have a very special guest with us… Mr. Tom Waits! And when he plays and sings, it’s almost like music.”
Waits had appeared the previous year on Fernwood Tonight before the show moved to Alta Coma, California (“the unfinished furniture capital of the world”) and changed its name.
While Waits’ appearance on Fernwood Tonight from 1976 has been viewable on Youtube for awhile, this America 2-Night clip is a bit of a rarity.
“I get a little choked up on occasions like this. Actually the closest I have ever been to a marriage is… I was the best man at a friend of mine’s divorce.”
