Congratulations are in order for Dangerous Minds pal, Mark Jeffrey, the author of the Max Quick series of young adult books and podcast audiobooks. May 1, 2011 will mark HarperCollins hardcover publication (and ebook) of Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant, although it’s already starting to appear in bookstores around the country.
When time stops all over the world, creating ‘the Pocket’ of time wherein basic physics are strangely altered, only Max Quick and a few other kids seem to unaffected. While the rest of the world remains frozen around them, Max—and Casey, Ian and Sasha—find that it is up to them to discover how this has happened and reverse it. Along the way, they encounter ‘magic’ books, ancient artifacts and other clues to the riddle of stopped time. And Max finds that his own true identity may not be what he once believed. Now he must embrace his past to save the future and prevent the very world from being altered forever…
The” podiobook” version of Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant has received over 2.4 million downloads to date. If reading to your children is a nightly habit and they like things like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games or His Dark Materials—which is to say, YA book series that are smart enough that you might also enjoy them—then the Max Quick series is probably worth a look when you’re trying to decide on the next book. You can read the first chapter here.
When not writing books, Mark is CEO & cofounder of ThisWeekIn.com, a new web TV venture with Jason Calacanis and actor/comedian Kevin Pollak. (The Dangerous Minds talkshow is recorded there thanks to the generous patronage of these gentlemen and the fab Mr. Kenny Chen, who produces the show).
In 1983 and 1986, YouTube user RailroadPacific, a German tourist, visited a much grittier New York City and shot some amazing footage of the subway, Times Square, Chinatown, and the never to be seen again view of the city from atop the World Trade Center.
It would be silly of me to introduce Divorce to a brand new audience, I feel, without also pointing people in the direction of the other relatively new Glasgow band that absolutely slays (in a punk fashion) - Ultimate Thrush. Being the day that’s in it, this can act as another special dedication to Kate and Harry. Perhaps this is a suitable soundtrack to the conjugal rituals that will take place in Buckingham Palace tonight?
Ultimate Thrush come from the same Glasgow School Of Art-influenced noise/d.i.y. nexus as Divorce, but have a very different approach. Comprising just one guitarist, one drummer and a lead screamer, they too make one hell of a racket but this time sound like a more math-rock take on the better bits of the Jesus Lizard. It should be noted that the drummer and guitarist are brothers, and are both incredibly good and incredibly tight.
Another band who have a dedicated mosh-pit following, Ultimate Thrush usually take to the stage dressed only in white sheets, and have been known to crucify their fans for the benefit of spectacle. Their stated aim on forming was to piss people off, but this backfired majorly as they are now one of the most popular live acts in the city. They have toured the UK and released a split tape with Divorce on Milk/Winning Sperm Party, and their debut 10 track EP on Winning Sperm Party is one of the best rock releases I have heard in the last 5 years. If you like punk/noise/thrash/Black Flag/Melvins/Sonic Youth I really can’t recommend it highly enough. As a taster, check out these two rehearsal clips:
You can listen to and download (for free) the debut Ultimate Thrush EP from Winning Sperm Party. If you want to hear more, I guess you could go to their MySpace.
What a beautiful day. The sun us shining, birds are singing in the trees, flags are fluttering in the breeze. It is, indeed, a nice day for a white wedding. And down in old London town, ancient rites of passage are being replayed as we, the British Nation, stand as one in mind, body and spirit to salute the dawning of a new era, the start of a new chapter in how we the common people are governed over by ancient power elites.
As the future king takes his bride-to-very-shortly-be up the aisle, I too would like to do my small (but perhaps significant) part in helping write this page of history. Tonight I shall be dressing as a priest and singing “Gett Off” at a gypsy wedding reception in Salford, but until then I will turning the volume up, banging my head, and revelling in the girl-powered noise glory of Glasgow’s Divorce.
Inspired to form at a gig by modern noise legends Aids Wolf, Divorce launched in 2008 with a core ratio of four girls to one boy, and a run of chaotic but highly energised gigs around the city. The mosh-pits they inspire are instantaneous and legendary, with as many women being thrashed about as men. The group released their first (self-titled) 10” single on the Optimo label in 2009, to considerable acclaim, and have gone on to release split singles with Comanechi and Ultimate Thrush. A full album was recorded and mixed for release in 2010, but was put on indefinite hold after the departure of the singer Sinéad and guitarist Hillary.
While this may seem like a career-ender for anyone less committed, Divorce have taken it in their stride, moved on and hired a new singer called Jennifer. There have been some new demos floating around on the net of this new line up (that sound great) and having seen Divorce mark II play I can confirm that they have lost none of their energy and connection with the crowd. Now, if only they can get their fingers out and finish another album, then we’d really have an excuse for the country to take a day off work, get blind drunk, and beat up anybody perceived to be even slightly different.
This may be the best Dylan cover I’ve heard. Barely singing an intelligible word in English, this song and dance man from Japan manages to capture something purely Dylanesque. It’s in the intonation, the stretching of vowels and the aural equivalent of a sneer that transcends borders. The video demonstrates that you don’t have to speak English to sing a Dylan song. You just need to speak Dylan.
Here’s a rare video of Little Richard performing “It Ain’t What You Do” on American Bandstand on March 6, 1965 with his back-up band The Crown Jewels. Jimi Hendrix was a member of The Crown Jewels in ‘65 and there’s some debate as to whether or not Hendrix appears in this American Bandstand performance.
Is that Hendrix in a Royal Guardsman uniform at the 1:29 point in this clip? No one seems to know. I think it is. You may not. But the one thing I think we can all agree upon is that Little Richard is wearin’ a bitchin’ wig in this video.
Sound is out of synch but this thing is still amazing.
The Shiloh Baptist Church, the historic African-American house of worship attended by the Obama family on Easter Sunday (and that has been visited in the past by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush) has received more than 100 threatening phone calls and messages since Sean Hannity’s Monday night broadcast on Fox News:
The Rev. Wallace Charles Smith said the church has received more than 100 threats since Fox News channel’s Sean Hannity aired a tape Monday of a speech Smith gave in January 2010 at Eastern University in Saint Davids, Pa.
“We received a fax that had the image of a monkey with a target across his face,” Smith said. “My secretary has received telephone calls that have been so vulgar until she has had to hang up.” …
On Sunday, Obama and the first family visited the church, founded in the 1860s by former slaves. On Monday, Hannity aired a clip of a speech Smith gave when he served as president of Palmer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
“It may not be Jim Crow anymore,” Smith says in the videotape. “Now, Jim Crow wears blue pinstripes, goes to law school and carries fancy briefs in cases. And now, Jim Crow has become James Crow, esquire. And he doesn’t have to wear white robes anymore because now he can wear the protective cover of talk radio or can get a regular news program on Fox.”
Sean Hannity’s Neanderthal audience sorta made the good Rev. Smith’s point for him, don’t you think?
Then, being the crass, small-minded scumbag asshole that he is, Hannity e-mailed the Washington Post on Wednesday, writing that he’d requested comment from Rev. Smith and had offered him “an open invitation to explain his comments on our show and he refused. We played his own words in full context but now it’s time for him to explain.”
So he can get a thousand threats and pictures of monkeys in cross-hairs sent to his office next time? I’m sure Rev. Smith will get right on that, you racist frat-boy bully…
Personally, I think it’s time for the SEAN HANNITY to “explain” his ratings-driven race-baiting but I won’t hold my breath for that. This motherfucker claims to be a patriot and love his country. Sean, where is the love?
Shiloh Baptist Church receives threats after comments from Sean Hannity (Washington Post)
News reaches Dangerous Minds that one of the organizers of tomorrow’s Government of the Dead’s Right Royal Orgy / Zombie Wedding has been allegedly arrested for “potential breach of the peace.”
The Metropolitan Police is concerned over professor of anthropology, Chris Knight‘s intentions, to be-head of effigies of the Royal Family with a guillotine. Last year, Mr Knight, a professor of anthropology, made national headlines over his support for the student demonstrations at Tory HQ. In 2009, he took part in the “Hang a Banker” demonstration.
The Right Royal Orgy which will take place in London, at the same time as the Royal Wedding is advertised on Facebook as follows:
The Government of the Dead requests the pleasure of your company at The Right Royal Orgy mass bed in, love in and touch up in the shadow of the working guillotine!
Bring sumptuous trappings, extravagant and outre costumery, and duvets decorated with ‘blessings’ and ‘wellwishings’ for the royal nuptials.
We will gather from 10am in Soho Square, and process via Eros statue Piccadilly to bare our tidings of great joy to one and all in Westminster!
Yes folks, there will be a spanking new working guillotine on hand! The Hell’s Grannies’ team of tricoteuses will be directing the entire operation! Remember this is YOUR celebration! We’re paying for the party, so it’s OUR party! The invitations must have been lost in the post what with CUTS to the ROYAL MALE!
Suggested costume themes: Bunga Bunga bloc; Hieronymous Bosch bloc; Bloody Naked/Sluts v Cuts bloc; Big Penis bloc; Sheela-na-Gig bloc; Executioners bloc; Hell’s Granny Tricoteuses bloc (bring your knitting needles); Bunny Girrrll Bloc (is the year of the Playboy Bunny’s revenge!); Werewolf bloc; Balaklava Body bloc…and more than you can ever imagine!
casting couch auditions for Marie Antoinette (with cake!) and naked BUTTlers now on…
all genders need apply to the bunny boss!
The Guardian confirms that Chris Knight has been arrested, along with Camilla Power and Patrick Macroida. The 3 activists were arrested outside Mr Knight’s home at 18.15 hours on April 28, as they were preparing to drive their theatrical props, including a home-made guillotine and effigies, into central London when three police cars and two police vans drew up near Knight’s home in Brockley. Fellow activist Mike Raddie told the Guardian:
“Chris was arrested first. He lay down on the pavement opposite his house to make the arrest difficult,” said Raddie. “He was pulled up by four police officers and two bundled him into the back of a van.
“Camilla was put in the back of one of the police cars. Patrick was dressed up as an executioner when he was arrested.”
Raddie said the police also seized a van containing the group’s props, which included a wooden guillotine. “It’s a working guillotine but it doesn’t have a blade – just wood painted silver,” he added.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “This evening, 28 April, officers arrested three people – two males aged 68 and 45, and a 60-year-old woman – in Wickham Road, SE4 on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance and breach of the peace.
“They are currently in custody at Lewisham police station.”
A Channel 4 film crew were present during the arrests, filming for the Unofficial Royal Wedding,which is due to air at 19.10pm on Monday May 2. Some of their equipment, which was in the activists’ van, was also confiscated.
Almost 14 years after his death, William S Burroughs is on trial for corrupting Turkish morality. The Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into Burroughs’ novel The Soft Machine, which was recently translated and published by Sel Publishing House in January. Tukey’s English Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review reports:
The court referred to a report written by the Prime Ministry’s Council for Protecting Minors from Explicit Publications that accused the novel, The Soft Machine, of “incompliance with moral norms” and “hurting people’s moral feelings.” Sel Publishing issued a press release that included parts of their testimony in the court.
“It is impossible to understand the insistence in sending books written and published for adults to councils that specialize in minors. If we consider things from this perspective, then dozens of such reports could be written about TV channels, newscasts and thousands of books,” read the testimony given by the publishing house.
The testimony also argued that the Prime Ministry’s council had no credentials in literature, aesthetics or translation, thus causing what the representatives of the publishing house called a “freakish” decision by the council.
The council also accused the novel of “lacking unity in its subject matter,” “incompliance with narrative unity,” for “using slang and colloquial terms” and “the application of a fragmented narrative style,” while claiming that Burroughs’s book contained unrealistic interpretations that were neither personal nor objective by giving examples from the lifestyles of historical and mythological figures. None of the above, argued the publishing house, constitutes a criminal act.
The council went further and said, “The book does not constitute a literary piece of work in its current condition,” adding it would add nothing new to the reader’s reservoir of knowledge, and argued the book developed “attitudes that were permissive to crime by concentrating on the banal, vulgar and weak attributes of humanity.”
The representatives of the publishing house responded to these charges. “Just as no writer is under any special obligation to highlight humanity’s fair attributes under every circumstance, the measure of whether a book has any literary value or not, and the judge of what the book may add to the reader’s reservoir of knowledge, is not an official state institution, but the reader himself,” they said.
“Once again, societies comprised of modern, creative and inquisitive individuals are formed by reading and being exposed to literary texts and works of art that can be considered as the most extreme examples of their kind,” further asserted the defendants’ statement.
The testimony also invited members of the council to conduct “a simple Internet research” about the writer, and learn about the fact that Burroughs was one of the pioneers the “Beat Generation” that rebelled against the stagnant morality of the middle class in post-World War II America. The testimony also drew attention to the fact that the “cut-up” technique used in the book was once heralded as a great novelty among literary circles.
“Through this technique, Burroughs runs counter, not just to entrenched attitudes in people’s lifestyles but also in contradiction to [older] literary techniques. That being the case and since the aim of the book itself is to push boundaries, it is clearly absurd to search for criminal elements in the book by suggesting that the book does not conform with social norms,” further stated the press release.
“Moreover, it is also meaningless to expect William S. Burroughs, who was not raised in accordance with the National Education Law, or as an individual who ‘identifies with the national, moral, humanitarian, material and spiritual cultural values of Turkish society, and who always tries to exalt his family, country and nation,’ to have produced a text within this framework,” read the testimony. “It is clear and obvious that this case carries no weight nor any respectability outside of the borders of our country.”
“We demand an end to investigations that constrain our activities and the prosecution of books for any reason whatsoever,” concluded the statement.
Bonus: William Burroughs reads ‘Junky’ (abridged version)
Wal-Mart, America’s largest retailer, where 140 million people shop each week, is not seeing much of a recovery for the U.S. economy. The low-price behemoth has now seen seven straight quarterly declines in sales figures. According to the company’s CEO, it’s because their customers—who let’s face it ARE America—are simply too damned broke to buy much anymore. From CNN/Money:
Wal-Mart’s core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday.
“We’re seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure,” Duke said at an event in New York. “There’s no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact.”
Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in.
Lately, they’re “running out of money” at a faster clip, he said.
“Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year,” Duke said. “This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern.
I must say that I’m far more inclined to trust Wal-Mart’s sales figures as a barometer of the economy’s health than the suspect reports put out by the government. They’re a public company, they can’t get away with lying with impunity the same way Uncle Sam can…
Doesn’t this make you wonder: How much more do the working class and the poor still have left to lose before things start to get really, really hot for Republican politicians? Even online loans have become a resort to many struggling to make ends meet. Imagine that you are the parent of a handicapped child, you can’t find work, you have no health insurance, first fuel and now FOOD is out of your reach? The people who are making decisions to reward billionaire racists like Donald Trump with tax cuts while your family suffers, well, they do have street addresses…
Normally, I am not one for violence, but this position is—how shall I put it—evolving. As the Republican pols around the country continue to cut the social safety nets that allow our society to rise above the barbaric, I sure hope to see the sight of hungry, angry mobs showing up with pitchforks and torches at their homes for a lil’ chat.
What do they expect them to do, just roll over and die?