Andrew Shirvell, Michigan Assistant Attorney General, has got to be one of the single most ridiculous people living in America today and that is REALLY SAYING SOMETHING. The guy is a fucking clown. It’s unbelievable that he’s still in his position. You can read the backstory here.

You have to hand it to Anderson Cooper, he’s really sticking it to some people who deserve it this week. This fellow is the very definition of “dickhead.” Watch it for the comedy of it all and laugh until you cry.

Previously on Dangerous Minds: Anderson Cooper vs. Islamphobic Hillbilly Republican congressional candidate

 
After some time spent with DC’s Vertigo imprint and then Devil’s Due, Fabrice Giger’s fabled Humanoids Publishing house (who’ve put out work by the likes of such prestigious creators as Moebius, Yves Chaland, Igor Baranko, Bilal, Pierre Christin,  Philippe Druillet, Milo Manara and others) is back in action with what looks to be a high gloss publication of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’s 1970s series, The Incal.

The Incal came as a result of the proposed Jodorowsky-directed film version of Frank Herbert’s Dune (which was to have starred Orson Welles, Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali, with music by Pink Floyd) biting the dust. Rather than lose all of their great ideas, the disappointed duo turned out The Incal comics series instead.

Long out of print in this country, the November republication of The Incal series in English comes at the same time as the book’s publication in French. Past Jodorowsky/Humanoids collaborations, such as the incredible Techno Priests series, have been beautiful objects to behold, so I’ve got high hopes for The Incal, which will come in its own custom slip case.
 

 
Humanoids Publishing blog

Via Arthur

Toyota Proto, 1957

Nissan Prince Sprint 1900 Prototype, 1963

Toyota EX-II, 1969

Mazda RX-500, 1970

Pink Tentacle currenlty has a great post on Japanese concept cars from 1957-2009. I’m not so sure about the Toyota EX-II from 1969, tho… Yikes!

See a few more concept cars after the jump…

From the 1987 film Howling III.

 
“Hey, you know something people? I’m not black, but there’s a whole lots a times. I wish I could say I’m not white”—Frank Zappa, “Trouble Every Day”

There is a well-written, fascinating—but fucking depressing—cover story (avec an awesome Drew Friedman cover illustration) by Steven Thrasher in the Village Voice today. Not much for me to add to this, I snarked myself into exhaustion yesterday, just read it and weep amongst yourselves:

About 12:01 on the afternoon of January 20, 2009, the white American mind began to unravel.

It had been a pretty good run up to that point. The brains of white folks had been humming along cogently for near on 400 years on this continent, with little sign that any serious trouble was brewing. White people, after all, had managed to invent a spiffy new form of self-government so that all white men (and, eventually, women) could have a say in how white people were taxed and governed. White minds had also nearly universally occupied just about every branch of that government and, for more than two centuries, had kept sole possession of the leadership of its executive branch (whose parsonage, after all, is called the White House).

But when that streak was broken—and, for the first time, a non-white president accepted the oath of office—white America rapidly began to lose its grip.

As with other forms of dementia, the signs weren’t obvious at first. After the 2008 election, when former House majority leader Tom DeLay suggested that instead of a formal inauguration, Barack Obama should “have a nice little chicken dinner, and we’ll save the $125 million,” black folks didn’t miss the implication. References to chicken, particularly of the fried variety, have long served as a kind of code when white folks referred to black people and their gustatory preferences—and weren’t many of us already accustomed to older white politicians making such gaffes? But who among us sensed that it was a harbinger that an entire nation was plunging into madness?

Who didn’t chuckle, after all, the first time they heard that white people had doubts that Barack Obama had even been born in the United States and was therefore ineligible to be president? It sounded like one of those Internet stories in which some (usually white) writer does his best to prove something everyone knows to be true is actually the exact opposite. And you go along with it for a few paragraphs to see how long the writer can convince you that what you know is right is actually wrong.

Seemed like that, didn’t it? After all, what was the beef? Obama’s father was Kenyan, and the kid was born in Hawaii—which is barely a part of the United States to begin with (only a state in 1959!). His mother was white, and after the Kenyan guy left, she married an Indonesian guy, so little Barack lived in Jakarta for a while before coming back to Hawaii to be brought up largely by his white grandparents. . . . And that’s it? Come on, this was after-school-special material, the kind of thing that brings a tear to your eye because little half-Kenyan/half-white Barry made good, not the stuff of conspiracy novels.

But the more you shook your head at it, the more it seemed to have taken root deep in the lizard part of the white nervous system. Obama is not an American. He says he’s Christian, but he has a Muslim-sounding name. He’s not black, he’s not white. . . . Is . . . is he even human?

Today, Newsweek has found, nearly a quarter of Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim, with barely 42 percent of the nation accepting his claim that he’s a Christian. CNN finds that a quarter of Americans also believe that Obama was “probably or definitely” born in another country.

Harris found in an online poll that 14 percent of Americans believe in their hearts that President Barack Obama is the antichrist, with nearly a quarter of Republicans saying so.

Read more of White America Has Lost Its Mind (Village Voice)

 
Dangerous Minds pal Brian Tibbetts, a sound designer at Lucas Arts, sent this unusual item my way this morning regarding a literally microscopic instrument called the Micronium, developed by students at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. The instrument is about 1/10 of the thickness of a human hair and from what I can gather, is a bit like playing a microscopic comb with tiny, tiny weights.

On Sunday there was a recital for the composition, “Impromptu No. 1 for Micronium” in Enschede, Holland. The music starts at about 6 minutes in and goes from random Fantastic Planet type tone generation to a perfect micro-rendition of Hot Butter’s one-hit Moog wonder “Popcorn,” which I thought was a pretty rad choice to demo this sucker:
 

 
Via PopSci.com

 
Take a look at Brandon “N2ition” Riley’s video for rising Gary, IN rhymer Freddie Gibbs’s tune “The Ghetto” below, and you’ll notice that you’re looking at something different. The flossy clichés—bling, cars, cash—are absent. Instead, we see high school running tracks, lake beaches, and theatres. We see kids, grannies, murals, dirty piano keys, and broken basketball backboards.

In short, we see real atmosphere, an element that can take something as commodified and played-out as a hip-hop video into a profound direction. Says Riley:

I’m trying to take the hip-hop music video into a more cinematic direction. And I don’t mean cinematic as in ‘Let’s add dialogue at the beginning of the video and then jump into the club scene.’ It takes a real commitment from the artist and their team to believe in a track enough to come up with a unique concept and follow it through. To plan on taking 2-3 days to shoot it. To audition actors to play key roles, etc. You have to be inspired by the music first.

After making videos for his own rap group in college in Charleston SC, Riley started shooting for other acts and building his aesthetic. One of his vids became a top-20 finalist in a YouTube rap video contest judged by Common, 50 Cent and Polow The Don.

Since then, Riley’s made Chicago his home and has shot for local talent like Lungz, LED, Nascent, Big Law, Jay Star and others. His N2ition Productions continue to specialize in videos that eschew the vapid, party-up paradigm for a gritty tone that almost seems inspired by the ghosts of Midwestern blues.

Riley notes a bounty of video talent in his territory:

There are some other great directors in Chicago. Guys I’ve worked with like Travis Long from Ike Films and Noyz from Da Visionaryz and GL Joe from HYSTK. These guys are going to be national names in no time. They really have the borderline genius talent.

Upcoming N2ition projects include a video for “Linen” by Mikkey Halsted and Twista (“Some amazing shots of Chicago in the summer”), and another with LEP and Gucci Mane that he says “should be a nice Chicago anthem.”

And I’m supposed to be working some more with Freddie Gibbs in the near future. I also shot a documentary on Twista that should be out in November. But I’m just as excited about moving into more feature length projects. I just completed a feature with Ike Films and Ill be shooting something in early 2011 with Noyz from the Visionaryz…everything I learn on those shoots only makes my music videos that much better.

 
Bonus clips after the jump: Another N2ition production starring Gibbs working with Mikkey Halstead, plus some workingman’s-blues-style hip-hop from Jay Star.
 

 
“Think of a sound—now make it.”

Here is a very cool doc by Ian Collie about London’s Electronic Music Studios, the pioneering synthesizer company formed in 1969 that created such items as the voltage controlled synth (VCS3) and the Synthi A.

These and other machines changed the way we listened to music forever. They were used by some of the first pop artists to experiment with electronic music, including Pink Floyd, The Who, Eno & Roxy Music, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Hawkwind.

Collie puts together a very human and warm exploration of what sound synthesis meant to the lives of EMS principals Peter Zinovieff, Tristram Cary and David Cockerell. And in a segment that involves Hawkwind’s David Brock, he also takes on how well sound synthesis meshed with the psychedelic age.
 

 
After the jump, catch parts 2 & 3…
 

 
Thanks Elvin Estela !

 
Does the name Monti Rock III ring a bell for any of you? How about Disco Tex?

Monti Rock III was one of the first quasi-openly gay men that I ever saw on TV. He was a frequent talkshow guest, first on Merv Griffin’s show starting in the mid-60s and then he was on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show A LOT in the 70s and 80s. (He was probably on the tonight show as often as Steve Martin was during that era). I was really too young to have consciously realized what Monti’s flamboyant persona meant, but I think with a character like Rock (not to mention Paul Lynde, or Kenneth Williams in the British “Carry On”), you just kind of got it by osmosis. Or via the eyeliner and glitter. (Or your dad’s grumbling every time Monti appeared on his TV set, perhaps!)

I must admit that the name Monti Rock III has not crossed my mind often in the past, I don’t know, maybe… three decades, but I was happy to read this fun article from Paisley Dalton at Zeitgeistworld (via World of Wonder) indicating that Monti Rock is indeed alive and well and living in Las Vegas:

NYC in the 70s would have been just another cesspit had it not been for the sparkle provided by the head queen himself Monti Rock III. Having scored two top 40 hits Get Dancin’ and I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo, produced by Bob Crewe (The Four Seasons, Frankie Valli, early Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack), under the group name Disco Tex and His Sex-O-Lettes, Monti provided the soundtrack for many gay men who were celebrating newly found sexual freedom on the enfranchised dance floors in New York’s underground disco scene. After fame and notoriety hit from over 80 appearances on talk shows like Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and a feature spot in mega movie Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta, Rock exited stage left with an addiction to booze, a severed relationship from Bob Crewe and a self-imposed moratorium on anything having to do with the glitz, glamour and gayness that made him beloved and in his words ‘a joke’. Now at 72, Monti is talking again…about life as a hustler, endowment (not talkin about money here!), the effete glitter years and… a new life as an ordained minister?

Zeitgeistworld: Hey Monti! What’s up with you?

Monti Rock III: First of all, I thank you for searching me out. I guess most people think I’m dead. Right?

Zeitgeist: To be honest, I don’t think most people under 40 have any idea about you and your contributions. I was a bit surprised that your still doin’ it in Las Vegas.

Monti Rock III: I’m working on a movie. The focus of the film is ‘hope and never giving up’. I see it as a guy, the first openly gay man in the 5os and 60s that got on television. The story should start with that. How being openly gay was very romantic in that era. What it was like to be a trailblazer. Everyone knew I was gay. I was very over the top, darling! If you donned long hair and beads and wore pancake make up in 1961, if that wasn’t openly gay, what was it? The ‘queens’ didn’t do that back then.

Read more: Monti Rock III is Not Dead, Darlin!!! (Zeitgeist World)

Below a fascinating clip of Monti Rock III on the Merv Griffin in 1966 (with Jayne Mansfield). Monti likes chicks with long hair, or so he says…