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Firesign Theatre: Duke of Madness Motors
02.23.2011
05:29 pm
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Peter Bergman and Firesign Theatre producer and archivist, Taylor Jessen, discuss the newly released box set of Firesign Theatre radio shows (1970-72), Duke of Madness Motors, featuring over 80 hours of MP3 audio on a DVD-ROM and a 108 page full-color book! Order your copy of Duke of Madness Motors today, because there are only 200 copies left and it’s unlikely to ever be reprinted.

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.23.2011
05:29 pm
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‘Witch Dr. Head Shrinkers Kit’
02.23.2011
04:49 pm
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Here’s a delightful late-‘60s TV commercial for a shrunken head kit from Pressman Toy Corporation. Pressman says, “Now, shrunken heads for all occasions, collect ‘em, swap ‘em, give ‘em to your witch doctor friends. You can always cook up more with Pressman’s Witch Dr. Head Shrinkers Kit.”

 
(via Nerdcore )

Posted by Tara McGinley
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02.23.2011
04:49 pm
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Malcolm X assassinated on this date in 1965
02.21.2011
11:46 pm
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On February 21, 1965 Malcolm X was assassinated by three members of the Newark chapter of the Nation of Islam led by Elijah Muhammed.

The New York Post published this eye witness account by reporter Thomas Skinner on February 22, 1965:

I Saw Malcolm X Die.

They came early to the Audubon Ballroom, perhaps drawn by the expectation that Malcolm X would name the men who firebombed his home last Sunday, streaming from the bright afternoon sunlight into the darkness of the hall. The crowd was larger than usual for Malcolm’s recent meetings, the 400 filling three-quarters of the wooden folding seats, feet scuffling the worn floor as they waited impatiently, docilely obeying the orders of Malcolm’s guards as they were directed to their seats.

I sat at the left in the 12th row and, as we waited, the man next to me spoke of Malcolm and his followers: “Malcolm is our only hope,” he said. “You can depend on him to tell it like it is and to give Whitey hell.” Then a man was on the stage, saying: “. . . I now give you Brother Malcolm. I hope you will listen, hear, and understand.”

There was a prolonged ovation as Malcolm walked to the rostrum past a piano and a set of drums waiting for an evening dance and stood in front of a mural of a landscape as dingy as the rest of the ballroom. When, after more than a minute the crowd quieted, Malcolm looked up and said, “A salaam aleikum (Peace be unto you)” and the audience replied “Wa aleikum salaam (And unto you, peace).”

Bespectacled and dapper in a dark suit, his sandy hair glinting in the light, Malcolm said: “Brothers and sisters . . .” He was interrupted by two men in the center of the ballroom, about four rows in front and to the right of me, who rose and, arguing with each other, moved forward. Then there was a scuffle in the back of the room and, as I turned my head to see what was happening, I heard Malcolm X say his last words: “Now, now brothers, break it up,” he said softly. “Be cool, be calm.” Then all hell broke loose. There was a muffled sound of shots and Malcolm, blood on his face and chest, fell limply back over the chairs behind him. The two men who had approached him ran to the exit on my side of the room shooting wildly behind them as they ran. I fell to the floor, got up, tried to find a way out of the bedlam. Malcolm’s wife, Betty, was near the stage, screaming in a frenzy. “They’re killing my husband,” she cried. “They’re killing my husband.” Groping my way through the first frightened, then enraged crowd, I heard people screaming, “Don’t let them kill him.” “Kill those bastards.” “Don’t let him get away.” “Get him.”

At an exit I saw some of Malcolm’s men beating with all their strength on two men. Police were trying to fight their way toward the two. The press of the crowd forced me back inside. I saw a half-dozen of Malcolm’s followers bending over his inert body on the stage, their clothes stained with their leader’s blood. Then they put him on a litter while guards kept everyone off the platform. A woman bending over him said: “He’s still alive. His heart’s beating.” Four policemen took the stretcher and carried Malcolm through the crowd and some of the women came out of their shock long enough to moan and one said: “I don’t think he’s going to make it. I hope he doesn’t die, but I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

I spotted a phone booth in the rear of the hall, fumbled for a dime, and called a photographer. Then I sat there, the surprise wearing off a bit, and tried desperately to remember what had happened. One of my first thoughts was that this was the first day of National Brotherhood Week.”

Gil Noble, producer and host of the public affairs program Like It Is, directs and narrates this heartfelt documentary on Malcolm X.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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02.21.2011
11:46 pm
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Nina Simone: in the name of freedom
02.21.2011
11:39 pm
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Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born 77 years ago today in the tiny town of Tryon, North Carolina. As Nina Simone, she’d go on to become the most powerful singer/songwriter of the Civil Rights era, blending the rawest aspects of jazz, blues, soul, and gospel into a unique style that buoyed her message of liberation.

As a generation of despots falls in the Middle East and people confront the forces of greed in Wisconsin, it seems apropos to recall what Simone bestowed on the world…
 

 
After the jump: Simone repossesses the Beatles’ “Revolution” and Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” in the name of avant-garde freedom blues…

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Posted by Ron Nachmann
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02.21.2011
11:39 pm
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The changing face of London during the Swinging Sixties
02.21.2011
07:36 pm
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These two short films from Rank’s classic Look at Life, hint at two of J G Ballard’s preoccupations - high rises and cars.

“Rising to High Office”, made in 1963, examines the development of high rise corporate life; while “Goodbye Piccadilly” looks at the planned redevelopment of the famous London landmark at the start of the sixties that intended to create a “double-decker” Piccadilly Circus, with a new pedestrian concourse above the ground-level traffic. The plans were lasted for most of the decade, but were killed off in 1972 when it was discovered the plans would not help the required increase in traffic flow.

Amazing quality and in fabulous color, they capture a little seen aspect of the changing face of London during its most famous decade.
 

 
Previously on DM

London in the sixties: 2 groovy films on fashion and cafe culture


 
High Rise London in the swinging sixties, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.21.2011
07:36 pm
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Reagan: The critics speak 2
02.20.2011
10:20 am
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All observations made during his presidency, except for Edmund Morris’s recollection from the recent HBO documentary:

“A high-powered cheerleader for our worst instincts, a nasty man whose major talent is to make us feel good about being creepy and who lets us pretend that tomorrow will never come.”
     —Activist Roger Wilkins

“His answer to any questions about young men being killed for some vague and perhaps non-existent reason in Central America has been to smile, nod, wave a hand and walk on.  And America applauds, thus proving that senility is a communicable disease.”
     —Columnist Jimmy Breslin

“Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears.”
     —British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

“I dig the cat. He’s spontaneous. A lot of times he’ll blurt stuff out – I can relate to that.”
     —Van Halen replacement lead singer Sammy Hagar

“Reagan swaggering around. Poor old thing! He’s about as masculine as Marjorie Main. He was never a symbol of masculinity – though he sort of plays it ... There is something rather grandmotherly about Reagan. And then again, he’s rather boyish. Between the two, he comes off as non-threatening ... He isn’t popular. There isn’t anything about his policies anybody likes. The pollsters’ questions are so dumb: ‘Do you find him a nice old thing who makes you feel good when he honks away on the box?’ ‘Yes, he’s a nice old thing who makes me feel good when he honks away on the box.’ Well, that isn’t an endorsement of war in Nicaragua.”
     —Author Gore Vidal

“His errors glide past unchallenged ... The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year.”
     —British journalist Simon Hoggart

“The difficulty about figuring Reagan out was he was not introspective.  Therefore, to try and interview this guy, who was so incurious about himself, was very unrewarding.  He would tend to take refuge behind anecdotes and jokes, but when I tried to probe him about fundamental things – his religious beliefs, his feelings about women and children – I just got this echoing sound that I was talking into a large, rather cool cave.”
         —Reagan biographer Edmund Morris

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.

Below, Ronald and Nancy Reagan like drugs. A lot.
 

Posted by Paul Slansky
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02.20.2011
10:20 am
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Reagan: The critics speak
02.18.2011
08:30 pm
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As I wind up my two weeks on Dangerous Minds, my last two posts consist of my favorite observations by others, offered during his presidency:

“Ronald Reagan is merely an anthology of the worst of American popular culture, edited for television.”
     —Media critic Mark Crispin Miller

“God, he’s a bore. And a bad actor. Besides, he has a low order of intelligence. With a certain cunning. And not animal cunning. Human cunning. Animal cunning is too fine an expression for him. He’s inflated, he’s egotistical. He’s one of those people who thinks he’s right. And he’s not right. He’s not right about anything.”
     —Director John Huston

“I would never refuse an assignment unless it completely repelled me. ... A national magazine asked me to go to Santa Barbara to photograph the President at his ranch. Well, I hate Santa Barbara and, far worse, I hate Reagan. I can’t ignore my feelings and just make a pretty picture.”
     —Photographer/environmentalist Ansel Adams

“It takes deep bravery to be fearless about one’s own hypocrisy. Politicians of average duplicity cower at being found out. Not Reagan.”
     —Columnist Colman McCarthy

“Look at the Reagan of the 1930s: a no-talent jerk with looks, charm, and a line of blarney who talks himself into one cushy job after another ... Then come the 1950s. In return for his manful anti-communistical efforts in the screen actors’ union, the pimps, procurers, and purveyors of popular culture who own stage, screen and radio arrange for him to be paid off with a job selling General Electric toasters on TV and smarmy right-wing politics on the chicken-croquette circuit. How humiliating to think of this unlettered, self-assured bumpkin being our president.”
     —Journalist Nicholas von Hoffman

“If we told Reagan to walk outside, turn around three times, pick up an acorn, and throw it out to the crowd, we’d be lucky to get a question from him asking, ‘Why?’”
     —Unnamed White House aide

“He’s melting. No one’s noticed yet, but he is melting. We’re talking about a semi-solid mass with dark hair. If the Democrats had come out and just said, ‘He’s melting,’ I think they would have done much better.”
     —Actress/writer Carrie Fisher

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.

Posted by Paul Slansky
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02.18.2011
08:30 pm
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Reagan answers some questions about the Arms-for-Hostages scandal
02.17.2011
04:40 pm
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Some highlights from President Reagan’s March 19, 1987 press conference, at which he finally answered questions that had built up in the four months since the Iran-contra scandal broke:

“... I don’t know ... I don’t know ... I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was ... I did not know at that time that there was any money involved. I only knew that ... All we’d learned ... Helen, I don’t know. I only know that ... All that I know ... Sam, all I know is that ... I can’t remember ... There are other people that don’t remember either ... I did not know that I had said it in such a way ... I didn’t realize that I had said that ... We didn’t know ... I didn’t know how far we could go ... I still do not have the answer ... It was a complete surprise to me ... We’re still waiting for that to be explained ... I don’t know ... I don’t know ...”

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.

 

Posted by Paul Slansky
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02.17.2011
04:40 pm
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Oliver Sacks finds some people that Reagan can’t fool
02.16.2011
04:47 pm
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In his 1986 New York Times best-seller The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, an examination of various bizarre neurological disorders, Oliver Sacks provided an account of oppositely impaired patients – aphasiacs, who can’t understand spoken words but do take in information from extra-verbal cues, and tonal agnosiacs, who understand the actual words but miss their emotional content – watching a speech by President Reagan.

“It was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice,” wrote Sacks, which caused the word-deaf aphasiacs to laugh hysterically at the Great Communicator, while one agnosiac, relying entirely on the actual words, sat in stony silence, concluding that “he is not cogent ... his word-use is improper” and suspecting that “he has something to conceal.”

“Here then,” wrote Sacks, “was the paradox of the President’s speech.  We normals – aided, doubtless, by our wish to be fooled, were indeed well and truly fooled ... And so cunningly was deceptive word-use combined with deceptive tone, that only the brain-damaged remained intact, undeceived.”

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.

Posted by Paul Slansky
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02.16.2011
04:47 pm
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President Reagan tells real heroes an inspiring story about a fake one
02.15.2011
04:22 pm
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A companion piece to “Facts? We don’t need your stinking facts!” After all, facts can be so … inconvenient.

12/8/83 Continuing his tradition of holiday season insensitivity, an obviously well‑fed Ed Meese scoffs at the notion that the Administration’s policies are unnecessarily cruel to the poor. “I don’t know of any authoritative figures that there are hungry children,” he declares. “I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal stuff, but I haven’t heard any authoritative figures ... I think some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily. I know we’ve had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that’s easier than paying for it ... I think that they have money.

12/12/83 Addressing the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, President Reagan tells this heart-warming story: “A B‑17 coming back across the channel from a raid over Europe, badly shot up by anti‑aircraft ... The young ball‑turret gunner was wounded, and they couldn’t get him out of the turret there while flying. But over the channel, the plane began to lose altitude, and the commander had to order bail out. And as the men started to leave the plane, the last one to leave – the boy, understandably, knowing he was being left behind to go down with the plane, cried out in terror – the last man to leave the plane saw the commander sit down on the floor. He took the boy’s hand and said, ‘Never mind, son, we’ll ride it down together.’ Congressional Medal of honor posthumously awarded.”

12/12/83 Introducing this year’s White House Santa, black action star Mr. T, as “a man who I admire a lot,” Nancy Reagan plops herself in his lap and plants a kiss on the top of his bald head.

12/15/83 Ed Meese tells the National Press Club that literature’s classic miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, to whom he has recently been compared, suffered from a “bad press in his time. If you really look at the facts, he didn’t exploit Bob Cratchit.”  Explains Meese, “Bob Cratchit was paid ten shillings a week, which was a very good wage at that time ... Bob, in fact, had good cause to be happy with his situation. He lived in a house, not a tenement. His wife didn’t have to work ... He was able to afford the traditional Christmas dinner of roast goose and plum pudding ... So let’s be fair to Scrooge. He had his faults, but he wasn’t unfair to anyone.”

12/16/83 Columnist Lars‑Erik Nelson – after checking the citations on all 434 Congressional Medals of Honor awarded during World War II – reveals that not one of them matches the story President Reagan told the other day. “It’s not true,” writes Nelson. “It didn’t happen. It’s a Reagan story ... The President of the United States went before an audience of 300 real Congressional Medal of Honor winners and told them about a make‑believe Medal of Honor winner.” Responds White House spokesman Larry Speakes, “If you tell the same story five times, it’s true.”

12/20/83 At a press conference, President Reagan claims that El Salvador has “a 400‑year history of military dictatorships.” As it happens, though, the first military regime didn’t take power until way back in 1931. Okay, so he was off by a few centuries, so what?

12/21/83 The Washington Post reports that the White House is feverishly searching the Medal of Honor files in an effort to verify President Reagan’s story. Says a researcher, “We will find it.” They never do.

12/28/83 Dr. George Graham, a member of the President’s Task Force on Food Assistance, says he doubts that “anyone in their right mind believes that there is a massive hunger problem.” He further claims that black children are “probably the best‑nourished group in the United States.”

12/28/83 Lars‑Erik Nelson reports that a reader saw a scene very similar to President Reagan’s Medal of Honor story in the 1944 movie Wing and a Prayer. “Adding to the confusion,” writes Nelson, “Dana Andrews at one point reprimands a glory‑seeking young pilot with the words: ‘This isn’t Hollywood.’  ... You could understand that some in the audience might confuse reality with fiction.”

1/11/84 Lars‑Erik Nelson suggests another source for the Medal of Honor story: an apocryphal item in the April 1944 issue of Reader’s Digest, a magazine known to be a life‑long Reagan favorite. “The bomber had been almost ripped apart by German cannon,” it read. “The ball turret gunner was badly wounded and stuck in the blister on the underside of the fuselage. Crewmen worked frantically to extricate the youngster, but there was nothing they could do. They began to jump. The terror‑stricken lad screamed in fear as he saw what was happening. The last man to jump heard the remaining crewman, a gunner, say, ‘Take it easy, kid. We’ll take this ride together.’”

All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook. More to come.

Posted by Paul Slansky
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02.15.2011
04:22 pm
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