In celebration of Detroit-based DJ Jeff Mills aka The Wizard’s 50th birthday today, Nerdcore lovingly posted his groundbreaking DJ sets from “The Electrifying Mojo” radio show on WJLB from the mid 1980s. When it came to beat juggling and scratching, Mills was in a class by himself. He was also an early member of the “militant” Detroit techno outfit, Underground Resistance at the end of that decade.
When Mills DJs, he most often uses three turntables (or now CD players), a Roland TR-909 drum-machine and utilizes (I guess “plays” is the wrong word) up to seventy records an hour.
If this doesn’t make you wanna get up and shake yer ass, nothing will!
I just had a HOLY SHIT moment! I’ll be damned if I see a better music video than this all year. It has everything: love, loss, anger, regret, redemption, destruction. Pimples being squeezed. 30 second thrash pop. Sets to make John Waters proud.
SF heroes Hunx And His Punx, aka the gorgeous Seth Bogart and his (mostly) all girl backing group, return with a new record in July called Street Punk, and to whet our salivating appetites to the point of drowning, have dropped a new clip featuring not one, not two, but THREE tracks squeezed into one 5 minute video. So, technically, it can’t actually be called a music video, singular, which excludes it from end-of-the-year polls. That makes it even better.
But it doesn’t matter what those poll-building squares decide anyway, man, we finally have the queer-punk Star Wars. Street Punk Trilogy defines a generation; like Lord Of The RIngs before it, it manages to convey that universal mystery of the human condition, while making bold statements about life in the late-capitalist, early 21st Century.
OK, full disclosure: one of the highlights of my performing career so far has been warming up for Hunx & His Punx last year in Manchester (pics cos it happened) so of course I am biased. They are super-nice people, and, most importantly, they are brilliant. So really, it doesn’t matter what I say or how much hyperbole I lay out, this video is still ace, and I dare any of you to watch it and not lol at least once.
Help some Punx get viral people, give this a whirl:
The stupider that you act, the more the media will pay attention to you. This immutable law of media is proven daily by the likes of the Kardashian family, Snooki and… Sarah Palin. All of them are masters at appealing to idiots. Fellow idiots relate to them. Dum-Dums think they’re “cool.” They are icons of idiocy and they are handsomely remunerated for their trademarked brands of frivolity and foolishness.
Palin co-hosted Fox and Friends yesterday, and just like Miss Utah over the weekend, in her own inimitable way she managed to chip away just a lil’ teensy bit at America’s collective IQ. Even if you weren’t watching.
Last night on The Daily Show, fill-in host John Oliver suggested that we all start ignoring the snowbilly grifter and give ourselves a national “brain enema.”
If you would, then you may be interested in this site Penis Pans, or (apparently) One Woman’s Struggle to Use Her Penis Pan.
The site is c(h)ockful with penis-shaped recipes (“Wizard Cake,” “Palm Tree Cake,” and “Elephant Cake”), and the opportunity to purchase a fine array of penis pans. It’s all in a bid to sell goods (of course) for “Bachelorette” parties and (no doubt) to get people to put dicks in their mouth.
If that’s your thing (so, to speak) then check it all out here.
Another big thank you to Laughton Sebastian Melmoth!
This image was tweeted on China’s micro-blogging site Sino Weibo, purportedly showing a pair of hairy-leg tights for girls to wear in summer to stop “perverts.”
@Happy张江: Super sexy, summertime anti-pervert full-leg-of-hair stockings, essential for all young girls going out.
Happy张江: 超性感，夏日防狼全毛腿丝袜，女童鞋出门必备[xkl喜]THK博友投稿
I dunno—I think it won’t be too long until these “hairy-legged” pantyhose become a fetish all of their own. (Though a part of me suspects it’s all been Photo-shopped.)
Via China Smack, with thanks to Laughton Sebastion Melmoth
As an introduction to Martin Witz’s outstanding documentary on Albert Hoffman, The Substance, I thought I’d share my experience of ingesting 20,000 mics or so of White Lightening acid when I was 16 years old—my first religious experience and one that reverberates through my being still to this day.
It was a typically hot and humid Washington D.C. afternoon in 1967 and John and I were packing what was reputed to be Owsley’s latest batch of White Lightening acid into gelatin caps. The source was close to Owsley and the quality was certainly of Owsley’s caliber. We had no reason to believe it was anything less. John was my high school English teacher and he had good connections in San Francisco. He’d fly there regularly to purchase the latest batch of acid from Owsley’s people: Licorice-flavored Batman acid, purple tabs, orange tabs, white tabs, window pane, blotter, white powder… Was it all certified Owsley. We liked to think so.
Filling double 0 caps with fine LSD-laced powder was tricky business. We wore surgical gloves and masks so the acid wouldn’t get into our mouths or the pores of our skin. White Lightening was extremely pure and powerful LSD and the pile we were working with contained several thousand doses (at approx. 500 mics per dose). It wasn’t a precise system but we were careful. Packing the caps just so, not too tight, not too loose.
At one point, we stopped to take a break. There was a fan in the room that kept the humid air circulating and relatively dry. It was cautiously pointed away from the table. I had taken off my mask to get some air and was feeling slightly high from being exposed to some of the powder. John was feeling higher and did something stupid or, depending on how look at it, divine. He got up and absent-mindedly turned the fan in the direction of the table and the pile of acid. The White Lightening immediately became a psychedelic dust storm spinning toward my face and into my mouth and eyes. I ran to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked Marcel Marceau. But this wasn’t clown makeup. This was several thousand micrograms of high grade LSD. I blurted out “oh shit” and it was punctuated by a puff of white dust.
I started splashing my face with water, irrigating my eyes and washing out my mouth. But, it didn’t help. The acid was kicking in and I began the ultimate ego death trip.
Timothy Leary said if you didn’t go through a death trip experience on LSD you hadn’t taken enough. Well, I had. I sat on John’s living room floor and for what seemed like an eternity (and it was, relatively speaking) I died, was reborn, died again, born again, flipping the metaphysical television dial from cosmic station to cosmic station, whipping through the Bardo planes while hungry ghosts growled and laughed and mocked and danced and poked at me with their long ancient galactic fingers, chakras opening/closing, kundalini doing the serpent power mambo up my spinal cord, heart unfolding like a giant pulsing red lotus. I was passing through dimensions not even Rod Serling could imagine. Walls shimmered and breathed, rainbows everywhere, mandalas spinning like heavenly roulette wheels… I was so fucking high! And as far OUT and IN as I went, I remained calm. I was so overwhelmed that my ego made no attempt to resist. I was without fear. I felt at one with everything: huge, expansive, complete and unbounded, totally absorbed by the entirety of the Universe. GOD, or whatever you want to call it, wasn’t somewhere out there, it was suffusing me, penetrating me and I was dissolving into its essence. I was in that moment of complete union with all things. I was no longer functioning as a separate entity; there was no fear because the one who did the fearing no longer existed. I was complete in my absolute non-existence. This was the white light experience where the ego is absorbed into the infinite molecular dance of absolute reality.
Enlightenment doesn’t happen to you because there’s no “you” for it to happen to. Enlightenment is there always. It’s that door of perception you walk through and suddenly disappear into. One moment you’re on the diving board. The next, you’re in the ocean.
12 hours later as I started to “come down,” I felt exhausted but refreshed, renewed and reborn. Within a matter of days, I returned to being my usual egocentric little self. But, I had had a genuine religious experience, one that has lingered throughout the years and one I often return to in small ways to put things into their proper perspective. LSD was wonderful. I tremble still in awe of its magic and often dream of finding some really pure acid out there… if it still exists. The Church of My Brain could use a nice house-cleaning.
The Substance successfully toured film festivals last year to much acclaim. It’s a terrific movie and I hope that more like it get made. Society as a whole need to re-address the use of psychedelics and acknowledge their undeniable benefits. LSD is a life-changer and there’s plenty of lives that need changing. I know mine did.
Iggy Pop takes a stroll around New York’s Lower East-Side, in May1993.
As Iggy explains it: he likes living in New York because he is a ‘high-strung, suggestible person,’ and the city gives him a structure in which he can operate. Los Angeles, on the other hand, made him crazy because there was no center.
Iggy highlights some his favorite things to Dutch film-maker Bram Van Splunteren, as he gives a guided tour of the neighborhood. The graffiti, the people, the vibrancy, the food, the street signs, the artists and his personal belief that no one will tell you to shut-up for making any noise—which means Iggy can make as much noise as he likes.
It’s a fun trip, and closes with Iggy talking about Rap, Ice-T, why cops made him fearful and angry, and why he listens to Bob Dylan.
Director Henry Jaglom and the great Orson Welles knew each other pretty well. The younger man was one of the participants in Welles’ legendary but never-completed satire of Hollywood, The Other Side of the Wind, and Jaglom directed Welles himself as an actor in his first film, 1971’s with A Safe Place (which co-starred Jack Nicholson, Tuesday Weld and Phil Proctor from The Firesign Theatre) as well as Welles’ final film performance, 1987’s Someone to Love.
They had lunch together from time to time at Ma Maison in Los Angeles. Welles, like Malcolm McClaren and Quentin Crisp, was a gent who was happy to sing for his supper as long as the tab got picked up. Jaglom also recorded their conversations and transcripts from these tapes are being published in a new book titled My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles by Peter Biskind.
New York Magazine’s current issue has a few delicious, bitchy excerpts:
Henry Jaglom: By the way, I was just reading Garson Kanin’s book on Tracy and Hepburn.
Orson Welles: Hoo boy! I sat in makeup during Kane, and she was next to me, being made up for A Bill of Divorcement. And she was describing how she was fucked by Howard Hughes, using all the four-letter words. Most people didn’t talk like that then. Except Carole Lombard. It came naturally to her. She couldn’t talk any other way. With Katie, though, who spoke in this high-class, girl’s-finishing-school accent, you thought that she had made a decision to talk that way. Grace Kelly also slept around, in the dressing room when nobody was looking, but she never said anything. Katie was different. She was a free woman when she was young. Very much what the girls are now. I was never a fan of Tracy.
Henry Jaglom: You didn’t find him charming as hell?
Orson Welles: No, no charm. To me, he was just a hateful, hateful man. I think Katie just doesn’t like me. She doesn’t like the way I look. Don’t you know there’s such a thing as physical dislike? Europeans know that about other Europeans. If I don’t like somebody’s looks, I don’t like them. See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I’m profoundly convinced that that’s a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. Bosnians have short necks.
Henry Jaglom: Orson, that’s ridiculous.
Orson Welles: Measure them. Measure them!
I never could stand looking at Bette Davis, so I don’t want to see her act, you see. I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.
Henry Jaglom: I’ve never understood why. Have you met him? [Jaglom is forgetting about Casino Royale]
Orson Welles: Oh, yes. I can hardly bear to talk to him. He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge.
And as if THAT conversational gem wasn’t enough, try this LOL anecdote on for size:
Henry Jaglom: What is wrong with your food?
Orson Welles: It’s not what I had yesterday.
Henry Jaglom: You want to try to explain this to the waiter?
Orson Welles: No, no, no. One complaint per table is all, unless you want them to spit in the food. Let me tell you a story about George Jean Nathan, America’s great drama critic. Nathan was the tightest man who ever lived, even tighter than Charles Chaplin. And he lived for 40 years in the Hotel Royalton, which is across from the Algonquin. He never tipped anybody in the Royalton, not even when they brought the breakfast, and not at Christmastime. After about ten years of never getting tipped, the room-service waiter peed slightly in his tea. Everybody in New York knew it but him. The waiters hurried across the street and told the waiters at Algonquin, who were waiting to see when it would finally dawn on him what he was drinking! And as the years went by, there got to be more and more urine and less and less tea. And it was a great pleasure for us in the theater to look at a leading critic and know that he was full of piss. And I, with my own ears, heard him at the ‘21’ complaining, saying, “Why can’t I get tea here as good as it is at the Royalton?” That’s when I fell on the floor, you know.
Henry Jaglom: They keep writing in the papers that, ever since Wolfgang Puck left, this place has gone downhill.
Orson Welles: I don’t like Wolfgang. He’s a little shit. I think he’s a terrible little man.
This book can’t make it into my hands fast enough! In just the short excerpt in New York magazine, Welles dishes on all of the above, plus “super agent” Irving “Swifty” Lazar (who he accuses of being a germaphobe) and fucks off Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, too! Peter Biskind’s My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles is published by Metropolitan Books.
Scientists may have discovered how cancer spreads around the body - io9
A 10-year-old girl was forcibly married to a 50-year-old man in Pakistan’s Punjab province under a custom in which a girl can be offered in marriage to resolve a feud - Hindustan Times
The House opens debate Tuesday on a farm bill that would include unprecedented cuts to food assistance. With less money for quality food, though, comes more obesity, more sickness, and more overall cost - The Atlantic
What can I do with a Smartwatch and should I get one? - Lifehacker
GOP plan to appeal to millennials: “Make abortion funny” - Salon
