Beginning June 15, vintage Firesign Theatre radio shows, dating from 1970-72 will be rebroadcast for the first time since their original air dates on WFMU radio. This is comparable to being a James Joyce fanatic and finding not just one notebook where he’s working out the themes that would become fully developed in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, but an entire crate of ‘em. Some of the most mind-bending, thought-provoking and hilarious material of their career and unheard for the past 40 years. A counter cultural treasure of the highest order. Firesign Theatre LIVE in Portland and Eugene, Oregon this weekend!

Twenty-three years ago today, Fawn Hall became the most famous secretary in America. On June 8, 1987 Hall testified in the Iran-Contra hearings  to helping her boss Lt. Col. Oliver North shred documents having to do with the affair, in which senior Reagan administration officials facilitated arm sales to Iran in order to fund the Nicaraguan contras.

According to Hall’s unsubstantiated Wiki entry, that wasn’t her only lapse of judgment:

Fawn Hall dated Contras politician Arturo Cruz, Jr. In one mishap, she transposed the digits of a Swiss bank account number, resulting in a contribution from the Sultan of Brunei to the Contras being lost. On November 25, 1986, she smuggled confidential papers out of her employer’s office hidden inside her leather boots…

Life after the hearings proved just as interesting for the late-20s Hall, who predictably pursued a modeling career and eventually met and married former post-Morrison Doors manager and archetypal L.A. music business maven Danny Sugerman. The Inside Edition clip below—hosted by a then-second-tier Bill O’Reilly—provides a snapshot of mid-‘90s tabloidism as the sordid strands of politics, drugs and entertainment tangle together deliciously. Sugerman later died of lung cancer in 2005 at age 50.

 
What’s with Sir Elton John performing for the, ahem, fourth (traditional) wedding of flaming asshole and noted homophobe, Rush Limbaugh?!?! And not only that fat piece of shit, but Karl Rove and Sean Hannity as well? Isn’t something very, very odd about this situation? Sir Elton has not—so far at least—made any statements regarding why an outspoken—and of course, notably flamboyant—gay man would sing for such a vile occasion, but I hope the answer is that he simply wanted to bleed Rush Limbaugh of a million bucks to donate to anti-Prop 8 and gay rights activists across the country. (I recall reading once the John donated all of the money he made from performing (or was it royalties?) to the Elton John AIDS Foundation which has raised $220 million dollars since 1992, so maybe it’ll go there).

I really don’t want to believe that Elton John would demean himself to perform for fucking Rush Limbaugh for a mere payday—if it was that idiot Sting singing for Kim Il Jong, I’d have no trouble believing that—but if he’s donating it to charity, then I can understand it.

As for Limbaugh, well, fuck that asshole. As for his new bride, Eva Braun Kate Rogers, with any luck, good ol’ Rushbo will drop dead before she’s 40 or 45 and she’ll still have plenty of time left to spend all of that lovely blood money of his. Ka-ching! (The News Corp wire report about the wedding quotes the new bride as saying of the couple’s 26-year age gap: “I’m sometimes not able to relate to the average person my age.” Memo to Kate: No one believes a word of it, doll…)
 

Kate Rogers, left,and her big fat idiotic payday.
 

 
“The Mashin’ of the Christ,” an amazing short film set to Negativland’s “Christianity is Stupid.” Made by Negativland, i.d. and Heath Hanlin. From the Our Favorite Things DVD. (I just bought it today, it’s awesome.)

Want to know more about the preacher on the song? Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Christploitation Cinema: If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?

Negativland’s Mark Hosler discusses the making of Christianity is Stupid (YouTube)

 
Sad to hear that Richard Dunn, the befuddled senior citizen from the cast of Tim and Eric Awesome Show—great job! passed away at 7:14 a.m. on June 4, 2010.

It’s nearly impossible to pick a favorite Pep Pep moment, but this clip, of Dunn and Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro is mine:
 

Via Xeni Jardin/Eric Wareheim on Twitter.

 
@SomeGreyBloke has figured it out!

Via Fishbowl LA/TIna Dupuy

 
“It’s payback time, boys.”  So says the site for Hey Baby, a first-person woman shooter released by, LadyKillas, Inc. (!), that lets ladies (or men, too, I suppose) extract a fair amount of vengeance in response to the leering eyes and catcalls (everything from “I like your bounce” to “I wanna rape you, bitch”) of various creeps and cretins.

Broadsheet’s Tracy Clark-Flory, picked up Hey Baby‘s weapon of choice, a locked and loaded, .80 caliber machine gun (hey, you can, too, right here).  Here’s what she thought of the experience:

Clearly, the game isn’t afraid to stir up some controversy.  We’re used to heroines with big boobs and naughty little getups, but here we’re placed in the shoes of a virtual protagonist whom we never actually see.  Instead of a far-fetched scenario, we’re placed in an infuriating and frightening everyday reality for many women.  Show me a woman who doesn’t have at least one story of being aggressively pursued—verbally or otherwise—by a stranger on the street.

The rage behind the game might be a little too real for some tastes, but there’s no question many women will find it thrilling, maybe even therapeutic.  Personally, I can’t say I’m particularly fond of the “all men as potential attackers” mentality that the game engenders, even if it does make for interesting commentary about the ways street harassment warps women’s views of men.  Ultimately, though, considering the existence of first-person sexual assault games like RapeLay, it’s about damn time someone introduced a street harasser shoot’em-up game.

 
Have you seen the new “gay friendly” McDonald’s ad from France, yet? I suppose the message “Come as you are” is a positive one and the vignette itself is sweet enough, but what does this have to do with fast food anyway? Admittedly, it’s a huge improvement over utilizing a clown in an orange wig, yellow jumpsuit and huge shoes to market their processed meat products, but I can’t say it makes me want to visit a a McDonald’s. You?

Still, it’s worth noting that here in America, a gay dating website called Mancrunch.com couldn’t even pay to broadcast its message during the Super Bowl. In 2010. Seems like it’s our culture that’s French fried, n’est-ce pas?

 
“Why did God create herpes? So Robin Williams could give something to his female fans that they couldn’t just turn around and sell on eBay.”

Last Friday, Xeni Jardin, Tara and I went to Rich Fulcher’s comedy benefit in Los Angeles for victims of the Tennessee flood and on the (stellar) bill was anti-comic Neil Hamburger. I have a few Neil Hamburger CDs and quite enjoy the warped wit and “anti-comedy” of America’s funnyman, but I had never seen the Neil Hamburger experience live and let me tell you, he’s very, very funny “in concert.” His frequent appearances on the Jimmy Kimmel show are the closet thing we have these days to Brother Theodore or Harvey Pekar turning up on Letterman in the 1980s. The next time Neil turns up in your town—and he will—make sure you go see him.

“Why did God give Smashmouth three top ten singles? Well, it was a clerical error—he meant to give them all AIDS.”

Hungry for some more Hamburger?
 

 
What I did not realize until this weekend is that “Neil” (or rather his alter ego Gregg Turkington) was responsible for one of my all time favorite collections of prank phone calls, the side-splitting, Great Phone Calls. Here’s the classic cut I’m in Your Band:
 

 
And here are a couple of pizza related prank calls:
 

 
Neil Hamburger UNOFFICIAL website

Neil Hamburger on Twitter

 
Dangerous Minds pal, Julien Nitzberg, director of the amazing documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, sent the following short note to Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin and myself:

“I was excited when Dangerous Minds profiled me. I was complimented by Boing Boing writing about me.  But why does this make me the happiest of all: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t711880/  WOW!”

Nothing says you’ve really hit the big time quite like seeing your nose and ethnicity mocked on a white-supremacist forum like Stormfront, eh? It easily trumps an SNL parody!

A sampling of what the skinhead Roger Eberts at Stormfront think of Jullien’s documentary:

This is the most anti-white, offensive thing I’ve ever seen.—Cougarspeed

Did you see the nose on Nitzberg???? I could park my motorscooter in there.—White Reverence

How do you like that jew who created the film? Seems like jews have a nose for what people will buy. Heh. Jews can smell actual metal gold from fifteen feet away…I swear. They are the perfect “middle man”. And they will do/film ANYTHING for money.—Embattled Warrior

The Wild Whites of West Virginia opens theatrically at the end of June. Available now as a download on Amazon and on POV from many of the large cable operators.

(Above) Director Julien Nitzberg, with nose, and the film’s executive producer, Johnny Knoxville.