Dangerous Minds pal Brian Butler has a new short film that’s part of a film festival coming up in Los Angeles soon. Brian was a producer on the Disinformation series with me a while back, helming two of the show’s more memorable segments: the feuding Satanists and Rocketboy, the real life superhero/half cat. He also introduced me to Uncle Goddamn. Brian also contributed the great essay on Marjorie Cameron, Cameron: The Wormwood Star to my Book of Lies anthology. For these reasons and more, I shall be forever grateful. The video clip below is a shorter version of Night of Pan that was made for a Beijing arts festival, the full version will be shown at the Projections festival. It’s pretty striking, I think you’ll agree!

From the press release:

Brian Butler’s Night of Pan Premiers in LA at Projections Festival, January 16 at Roberts & Tilton

Los Angeles, CA: Noted filmmaker, artist and musician Brian Butler (www.brianbutler.com) will premier his short film, “Night of Pan” in Los Angeles on January 16 at 7:30pm at the opening of Projections, a festival of rare and hard to see films including other directors such as Spike Jonze, Harmony Korine, Jean-Luc Goddard, and Miranda July . Projections was curated by Aaron Rose an artist, film director, writer, musician, and independent curator most noted as the co-curator of the successful museum exhibition and book Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art & Street Culture which toured the world through 2008.

Projections takes place at the Roberts & Tilton Gallery, 5801 Washington Boulevard, between La Cienega Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, in Culver City, California from January 16 to February 20, 2010. In addition to screening on January 16, “Night of Pan” will also be screened in a loop at the gallery on February 18, 2010.

“Night of Pan” is a seven and a half minute film featuring film auteur Kenneth Anger and actor Vincent Gallo. The film has been screened in various versions internationally in Beijing, Lisbon, Cannes, Athens, Rome, Berlin and elsewhere, but never in Butler’s base, Los Angeles.

In the film, Anger, Gallo, and Butler depict an occult ritual that symbolizes the stage of ego death in the process of spiritual attainment.

Brian Butler is a multidisciplinary artist who creates works around dark magical themes. He had worked extensively as a producer on director Kenneth Anger’s recent work. Additionally he has written for Dazed & Confused and performs along with Anger in the band Technicolor Skull.

 
Crowd-sourced surrealists Improv Everywhere are holding their second annual LA No Pants Mission starting with a “pants-less” subway ride in Los Angeles on Sunday before everyone ends up at the Hollywood and Highland complex. They’re being joined by members of the GuerilLA and other urban pranksters. Details below, but the subtext here is worth pointing out: while the rest of the country is freezing its collective ass off, we here in the great city of Los Angeles can go outside without our pants on! It was around 74 degrees here yesterday. Gorgeous.

To quote Randy Newman, “I love L.A.”

WHAT: 2nd Annual No Pants Metro Ride
WHEN: Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 2:00 PM
WHERE: Metro System
BRING: $5 for Metro Day Pass, pants you can easily take off, something in which to keep them

This mission is pretty self-explanatory: we ride the subway just as anyone would on any given normal day, just without pants. (Note that this is NO PANTS, not NO UNDERWEAR day. Wouldn?

 
My colleague at the Los Angeles Times, Ramie Becker, wrote a great short article about the closing of iconic LA nightspot Dragstrip 66, looking back at the club’s almost unheard of seventeen year run. (Make sure to browse through the photo gallery. Some winners there):

Equally inspired by high fashion and lowbrow art, Dragstrip 66 carved out a niche for those who liked their night life tempo somewhere between a John Waters film, a Bob Mackie fashion show and a drunken punk dance party. It became a who’s who of the alternative/queer performance art scene; Jackie Beat, Joey Arias, Varla Jean Merman, Chi Chi LaRue and Jer Ber Jones all graced its stage. A-list celebrities showed up too: Marilyn Manson, Claire Danes, Roseanne Barr, Traci Lords, RuPaul, Alan Cumming, Drew Barrymore and Adam Lambert among them.

Read more: Dragstrip 66: Saying goodbye is such a drag (Los Angeles Times)

 
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, something like this comes along:

My New Pink Button (tm) is a temporary dye to restore the youthful pink color back to your labia. There is no other product like it. This patent pending formula was designed by a female certified Paramedical Esthetician after she discovered her own genital color loss. While looking online for a solution she discovered thousands of other women asking the same questions regarding their color loss. After countless searches revealing no solution available and a discussion with her own gynecologist she decided to create her own. Now there is a solution!

They have several different shades—but of course—in their product line.

For instance, there’s “Bettie”:

Think of that favorite lipstick you wear for those dressy black tie affairs and think “Ginger.” This shade blends with a woman’s own skin tones to bring out that “sexy hot pink, I am fired up, look”. Go dancing this weekend and remember to bring “Bettie” along!

“Audry” will give your vagina a ?

Rowan Atkinson as Marc Almond. YouTube just barfed this on my lap. Funny!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Marc Almond Covers Aleister Crowley’s “Tango Song”

Richard on Marc and the Mambas

 
The much-maligned Ed Hardy clothing company has simultaneously given the fashion-challenged, uh, idiot population a way to express their “uniqueness” to the world while giving the rest of us something to point at and laugh about (well “white people” at least, but I suspect it’s possible for persons of any race, creed or color to find the Technicolor vomit of Ed Hardy clothing absolutely insufferable). Now there are some new kids on the fashion block and they want to do for trust fund hipsters what Ed Hardy did for Jon Gosselin and the cast of MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”

Yes indeed, the Grammy award-winning Kings of Leon pop group are coming out with a new line of expensive prefab hipster togs which will be for sale in just one store on London’s trendy King’s Road. Starting this month, if you are so inclined, you can spend your parents’ hard-earned dough on a dozen overpriced items of the ?

 
The Simpsons opening, re-imagined as taking place in Estonia by Estonia TV3.
 
Via Pandora Young/Fishbowl LA

 
Maybe David Letterman should retire his “Stupid Pet Tricks” segment in favor of a new one called “Stupid iPhone Apps.” Is it just me or are the below apps pointless time (and money) wasters? And a couple of them seem highly likely to cause actual damage to your iPhone. Apparently Apple sells 350 apps per minute from the iTunes app store—over 3 billion since it launched—but surely, soon, we’ll all be suffering from “cute” novelty burnout when the useful ideas have been used up ... or maybe not. Never underestimate the American consumer, eh?
 
Exhibit the first: Happy Dangy Diggy. This whimsical app allows you to blow virtual kisses to the object of your affection cyber-stalking. Although this might’ve come in handy were we in the midst of a full-blown H1N1 pandemic (you know, like the one that was supposed to happen), in the absence of a public health crisis, it’s just plain goofy. If you need an iPhone app to flirt, well, dude, you’re pathetic!
 
Next up: the iSteam app, which will fog up your iPhone with realistic digital fog. Someone showed me this at a party recently and I just shook my head in bored disbelief. You can simply breathe on your iPhone for free to fog it up, but at least that’s all that the app costs anyway. It’s gratis for now from the developer—which is about what it’s worth, if you ask me. Cute? Sure, but who cares?
 

 
Moving on, we have the iPhone Blower, which will push air out of your iPhone speaker. Enough to extinguish a candle. Big whoop. Watch the demo video:
 

 
If you don’t think this will cause damage to your iPhone ... then move on to the next two, the iHandWarmer (who thought that name up?) and Pocket Heat. The iHand Warmer actually kind of works by using up 100% of your CPU and draining the battery, but does it give off enough BTUs to really warm your hands? Doubtful. Pocket Heat, on the other hand, is admittedly mostly just a gimmick that’s meant to look like a space heater, rather than perform like one. Now that’s really pointless.
 

 
Via Gizmodo, Krapps and Brand X

 
Pornography.  Karaoke.  Those worlds collide once a week in a bar in LA’s San Fernando Valley.  Filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten were there to capture it one night as part of their ongoing Sparrow Songs Project which endeavors, once a month for a year, to make and exhibit a short documentary.

One male fan in the (vaguely NSFW-ish) clip below says that by singing good, he hopes to make the girls feel good about themselves.  Well, by the clip’s end, I don’t think Bowie himself could make that happen.

 
(via Coilhouse)

 
David Tennant’s tenure as The Doctor has ended and now Matt Smith’s has begun.

Via Minds Delight