A collection of 10 different limited edition Yellow Submarine posters (in two box sets) by artist Tom Whalen are going on sale on May 29th at the Dark Hall Mansions’ website.
The posters are officially licensed from The Beatles’ Apple company and they’re stunners. They’ll probably sell faster than Kraftwerk at MOMA tickets, but scoring a set would be sweet. I’m in.
The posters release seem to be timed to coincide with the June 5th release of the newly-restored Yellow Submarine on DVD and Blu-ray. Having recently seen the restored digital version on the big screen, I can testify to its mind-altering beauty.
Japanese clothing / novelty online shop Black Store is selling this fun air freshener with the Mona Lisa pictured chillin’ in a weed crop, holding a doobie.
In last week’s episode of Mad Men, smug Madison Avenue advertising honcho Roger Sterling drops acid for the first time, thumbs through a magazine with the above image and then looks into a mirror, seeing himself with a similar situation going on with his own hair.
The ad was actually real and so was the product: “Great Day For Men” hair dye. The gentleman modeling the two-tone ‘do? None other than future “Ted Baxter,” the great Ted Knight!
I’m not sure I’m totally sold on Aliso Viejo’s Dispense Labs’ Autospense medical marijuana vending machine. I suppose for convenience it wins, however cutting out the person behind the counter whose job it is to guide you in the right direction with the vast cannabis selections in states with dispensary cultures is like cutting out the pharmacist at your local pharmacy.
Different strains of marijuana have very different effects, and it really helps to have someone with a working (even anecdotal) knowledge of the strains to assist when making your choices. It’s also important to physically see and smell the cannabis before purchasing. With Autospense, you can’t do that and it seems like a gamble.
To use, patients must swipe a registration card, then enter a PIN number. Payment may be made with cash, credit or debit, then a door opens to release the product.
After providing the proper documentation, the patient will be issued a pre-approved registration/membership card and have the opportunity to register in an optional finger print scanner system, which enables around-the-clock access to the Autospense machine. The member is granted access and walks into a well secured and camera monitored showroom.
If you happen live in California, I highly (see what I just did there?) suggest visiting your favorite and local dispensaries today for their 4/20 deals and freebies. Talk about a great holiday!
Richard’s favorite dispensaries here in Los Angeles are Green Cure on La Brea at San Vicente and LAPCG in West Hollywood. He won’t let me reveal his favorite strains, though.
Dirty Duck (aka Down And Dirty Duck) released in 1974 was a low-budget attempt to cash-in on the success of Fritz The Cat that manages to stake out its own turf in the X-rated cartoons featuring anthropomorphic animals genre. Directed by Charles Swenson and featuring the voices and music of Flo and Eddie, as well as Aynsley Dunbar, Don Preston and other members of The Mothers Of Invention, Dirty Duck is to Daffy what Charles Bukowski is to Ogden Nash.
Willard Eisenbaum (Voiced by Howard Kaylan) is a day-dreaming insurance worker who thinks he’s about to have the day of this life when he expresses his love to a fellow worker. When Willard’s intentions fail to materialize, he’s told by his boss to investigate an insurance claim from the elderly Martha (Lurene Tuttle). When Martha suddenly kicks the bucket during Willard’s visit, her will says that the one who causes her death (Confirmed by a Ouija board) will have to overlook her duck…Make that a grown, talking Duck! (Voiced by Mark Volman) Within seconds, both Willard and The Duck are hitting the streets, brothels, and tons of indescribable locations to get laid. By the time the film ends (Which is rather quickly) Willard will appear to be in love…But with whom? Or What?”
Within the raunchy confines of Dirty Duck’s universe lurks many pop culture references, including several that conjure up the spirit of Frank Zappa.
There are a few Zappa references peppered throughout the movie. For one, the duck is roughly the same character that Jeff Simmons morphed into in 200 Motels. At one point the main character and the duck are lost in the desert, and the duck is explaining how he came to be a duck. He says he used to be a TURTLE, but that wasn’t too happening, so he got some advice from his MOTHER and he just sort of FLO’d from there. If by any chance these references are too subtle for the more chemically aided members of the audience, at this point a cartoon version of Frank Zappa’s grimacing visage is looming over the entire scene, having just risen like the sun over the horizon. Hereupon Willard says: “Oh, Eddie, you have GOT to be kidding”, in reference to Zappa’s song Eddie Are You Kidding?. Later, 200 Motels is specifically namedropped. It’s almost as if this movie is a sequel to 200 Motels, sans Zappa involvement.” P. Neve
“You can’t do this to me! I was at Woodstock in ‘69. I saw “200 Motels”! I know who I am!” Dirty Duck.
Its not surprising that Dirty Duck evokes 200 Motels. Both films were produced by Murakami-Wolf Productions, who also produced the Harry Nilsson flick The Point.
Dirty Duck is a foul fowl so be prepared for some freaky, offensive and politically incorrect humor. This is one fucked-up duck.
VICE: Looking back at the films of the silent era, the way they were shot and cut make it seem like everyone was snorting massive lines right up until the director yelled, “Action!”
I find film style reflects it, particularly the Mack Sennett [the director largely responsible for the popularity of slapstick] comedies. And my research proves that they were taking cocaine. You can see a sort of hyper-influence there.
VICE: There are lots of tales that make reference to “joy powder” in Hollywood Babylon, which makes it seem as innocent as taking one of those 5-hour Energy shots. Another phrase you use in the book, in the first few pages, is the “Purple Epoch.” What is that? It sounds nice.
That was when there were very talented people who also had extravagant tastes and money. It was the 1920s, a reflection of the Jazz Age. And the Hollywood version of that was pretty wild.
VICE: Another topic you cover early on in the book is the circumstances surrounding the death of Olive Thomas, which is perhaps the first instance of “Hollywood scandal” as we know it. You write, and it’s long been rumored, that she was very fond of cocaine, which was apparently a fatal flaw when combined with alcohol and ingesting her husband Jack Pickford’s topical syphilis medication.
She was one of the earliest beautiful stars to die in grim circumstances. And so her name became associated with lurid [behavior]. Things going on in Hollywood.
VICE: Her death also seemed to pull the wool from everyone’s eyes. Olive Thomas’s image was so sweet and pure. It caused Hollywood’s reputation to snowball into something far darker than how it was previously perceived. People must have thought, “If Olive’s doing it, everyone else must be too.”
There were other ones too, like Mary Miles Minter [who was accused of murdering her lover, director William Desmond Taylor, at the height of her success]. She was a kind of version of Mary Pickford [Jack Pickford’s sister], but the great stars like Pickford were never touched. These scandals swirled around, but there were certain stars that weren’t implicated in any way by this sort of thing.
This is one for all you fans of 60s psychedelia, and especially pastiche 60s psychedelia. Not to mention being one for fans of transgressive cartoons, and in particular one of the best cartoon shows of all time, John K’s Ren & Stimpy.
In this clip Stimpy gets invited to climb into his own stomach by his belly-button, which disturbingly enough looks like a talking foreskin. Im sure that’a a metaphor for something or other, but as I have not seen the full episode I can’t offer the context. Once inside his navel Stimpy is treated to some pretty great visuals and a very neat tune called “Climb Inside My World”, performed by Chris Goss (producer of Kyuss, Screaming Trees and Queens Of The Stone Age among many others), here channeling that groovy ‘67 spirit of the Beatles and the Small Faces.
It’s great that what was nominally a kids show could get away with something like this. Of course, this was before cartoons were taken seriously as “adult” entertainment, and we can thank Ren & Stimpy hugely for that change in perception. A bit like Stimpy’s own changing perspective.
Ignore the German intro and skip straight to 0:23 for the action. Ooh, there’s that pesky number 23, but I’m sure it’s just a co-incidence…
While no one will mistake this for a historic meeting of the minds, it does have its odd charm. The Marshall McLuhan of punk Billy Idol chats with Timothy Leary about rock n’ roll, cyberspace and computers. “Pretty deep,” Joey Ramone observes while Television (the band) let old skool technologies like drums and guitars do the talking.
