Want your foreskin back? Check out RestoringForeskin.org, a social networking site for men who wish to participate in a community devoted to foreskin restoration.
There are different methods of restoring your foreskin. One method is tugging. You can tug manually or you can use tape or a strap.
Tugging is not dangerous. But, tuggers can often be their own worst enemy. I have heard of guys hurting themselves. Usually, if there is an injury it is either because the person is tugging too hard (too much tension or tugging for too many hours at a time) or fell asleep while tugging and either slept through the pain or had a nocturnal erection. Fortunately, most injuries are only skin tears that will heal in a short time. But, there is no reason to ever injure yourself. Just tug in moderation and avoid sleeping while tugging until you have the experience to do it properly, if you do it at all. If you tug properly and have normal skin, you will not get stretch marks! My first concern when I started was that I would get stretch marks. Never happened. In fact, it rarely happens to anyone. Stretch marks occur when there is too much tension for a long period of time. If you are tugging that hard, you will see other signs before you get to the point of having stretch marks. If you see your skin getting red, raw, or you are getting sore or feeling pain, STOP! You are tugging too hard.
Here’s a clip on tugging from three tugging experts, James Haughey, Roland Clark and Ron Low.
Since guitarist/vocalist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong came together to make music in New York City as The Books in 1999, they’ve put together four albums worth of some of the most unique and emotive music you’ll ever hear.
These two work in the poetic collage/sample music realm inhabited by artists like People Like Us and Negativland. But they distinguish themselves via their live instrumentation and Zammuto’s vocals, which often follow and repeat the various voices sampled from advertising, self-help media and other sources, transforming them into modern-day chants.
Zammuto’s also a pro at accompanying The Books’ music with amazing video collage, like this one that he put together for “I Didn’t Know That” from their latest album, The Way Out.
Stephin Merritt is one of my favorite songwriters and they’ve made a movie about him. Stephin embodies a part of New York City I love.
‘Strange Powers’, which surveys Mr. Merritt’s career and captures his uneasy relationship with fame (he wants it, but doesn’t want to be seen wanting it), sometimes feels like a cross between a standard rock biography and ‘Grey Gardens’.
Set in the cultish world of ballet and revolving around a performance of Swan Lake, Darren Aronofksy’s The Black Swan may be the best Dario Argento movie that Argento didn’t direct. It’s a psychological horror/thriller that recalls the finest of the Italian giallo films. Or imagine The Red Shoes directed by Hitchcock at his most demented and you’ll get a sense of the spinetingling creepiness and ravishing visuals served up by Aronofky’s wonderfully warped cinematic mindfucker.
It’s rare for a film these days to actually be scary. Most contemporary horror flicks are repulsive rather than frightening, assaulting the viewer instead of seducing them. The Black Swan is jump-out-of-your-seat scary and it achieves its scares honestly, through evocative storytelling and crafty film making. In addition, it’s sexy as hell, full of gothic atmosphere and genuine eroticism - a fairytale for adults.
Natalie Portman, Barbara Hershey, Wynona Ryder and the perpetually intriguing Vincent Cassel deliver terrific performances. Matthew Libatique’s cinematography is inverts the technicolor opulence of The Red Shoes, the dread shoes. The art direction by David Stein ( Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) evokes the German expressionism of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari.
Aronofsky, who directed one of the worst films ever made, the loathsome Requiem For A Dream, has now redeemed himself with two extraordinary films in a row: The Black Swan and 2008’s The Wrestler.
I’m rather certain my Argento comparison will hold up to careful scrutiny. I need to see Swan again but on a first viewing many of Argento’s stylistic flourishes, both psychological and visual, permeate The Black Swan like a cloud of intoxicating opium smoke: surrealistic dreamscapes, the lethal eroticism of sharp-edged objects, a virginal heroine in the thrall of suppressed sexuality, setting the action in a theater, windows and mirrors as portals into the subconscious, mother love, lesbianism, Catholic guilt, secret societies, occultism, the id on fire, blood, blood, blood….The Black Swan would make a great companion to Suspiria and Opera.
At the end of tonight’s screening of The Black Swan at the Austin Film Festival the audience cheered loudly in a spontaneous eruption of delight. We all felt the kind of giddiness one feels after being manhandled by a master filmmaker. Aronofsy may not quite be a master yet, but he’s getting there.
Is it controversial to post an over half hour version of Dark Star by the Dead here on the DM? I guess I’ll find out. The Dead have grown on me over time. Hated ‘em as a kid, perhaps you have to be a decrepit old hippy to “get” them. Whatever, they sound great to me now, maaaaan. Here’s some footage of them at their exploratory best that I was never before aware of that I found whilst stumbling around the series of tubes (as you do). Some delightfully acid-fried “you are there” scenes and some Gilliam-esque animated interludes as well as the crystal clear sound coming off the stage. Evidently this is from a film that was considered even too lysergic by the band themselves to bother completing.
The story originally came to me via a friend, who had a friend, who had a film script – that’s how things happen, like ‘Chinese Whispers’, they start off as one thing and become something else. It was a good script, and would have made a fun wee movie, the kind Bill Forsyth or Charlie Gormley made about Glasgow in the 1980s, you can Google the type, Comfort and Joy meets Heavenly Pursuits, something like that.
I hocked it around but no takers, one to put down to experience. But I was still intrigued and thought there was maybe something more here, especially as the story was loosely based on real events. So, I’ll start with how it ended and then tell you how it began and where it all went wrong.
It should have been the best of times, but just weeks after 19-year-old, James McCreadie won £1500 on the Scottish Daily Express Place the Ball competition, three men, who claimed to be from the newspaper, turned up at his door and demanded he hand over £1300 of his winnings. If he didn’t pay up, then the men would put him in a concrete overcoat and dump him in the River Clyde.
Suddenly, it was the worst of times, and while most would have coughed up the money to avoid the fish, McCreadie had a problem - he didn’t have his winnings, he’d spent them on drinking, gambling, and a new £95 color TV for his gran. In fear for his life, the teenager went to the police - and this is how the cops uncovered biggest fraud in British newspaper history.
It began with Catherine McChord. At twenty-seven, she felt her life was over and could only dream of escaping the deprived housing estate in Baillieston, on the outskirts of Glasgow, where she lived with her husband, Eddie, a twenty-seven—year-old taxi driver. When the couple discovered, two years into their marriage, they could not have children, they decided to set their sights on the top, as Cathy later told the Glasgow Herald:
“I don’t really know why I became involved in this. Maybe it would have been different if we could have had children. I don’t know.”
McChord worked as an office clerk at the Scottish Daily Express, where she earned £35 a week. For Cathy, it seemed that her future life was all around her - older women who had worked at the same job in the same office, year-after-year, until they retired, received their handshake, and had nothing to show for it but a few happy thoughts and the faint memory of a fling at the Christmas party. That wasn’t for Cathy, she wanted a taste of the good things in life - holidays, a car, a new home. That was the dream, and in 1973, the dream became a little closer when she was appointed Deputy Competitions Clerk, to the new Head of Competitions, Colin Hunter.
At thirty-six, Hunter was very similar to Cathy. He’d spent a life working hard at a job as a middle management accountant, who knew his promotion to Head of Competitions, with a salary of £80 a week, was as high up as he would ever go.
Like Cathy, Colin wanted more from life. He hated living in Castlemilk. He felt it wasn’t a safe place for his family to grow up in. The sixties promise of a modern Glasgow was now a grey reality of bleak new towns, housing estates and high rises. Hunter felt his best years were over and just wanted to give his wife, and especially his two children something of value, something that would change their lives for the better, and now here was that chance.
In the 1960s and 1970s Britain was addicted to a newspaper competition called Spot the Ball. Each week, the Scottish Daily Express, amongst others, would publish a photograph from a soccer match and invite readers to guess the position of the ball, which has been removed from the picture. In its day, the Scottish Daily Express’ Place the Ball was as popular as the National Lottery today. Unlike the lottery, individuals used mathematical theory, random algorithms, body language, lines of sight convergence, and a considerable amount of potluck to pin-point the exact position of the missing ball.
The Express offered a weekly cash prize of £1,500 – the equivalent of the average workers’ yearly wage. This was later increased to £5,000 and then to £20,500 and £22,000 – the equivalent of a £1,000,000 win today.
Too great a temptation for Cathy, who realized, when it was rumoured the Scottish Daily Express was to close, and the staff made redundant, she had found a way to have those things she had always wanted.
On hearing her suggestion, Hunter turned a blind eye, but later claimed he joined the criminal cartel after he heard redundancy money was being offered at Express departments, and he and his colleagues hoped to collect as well. “But in March 1974, we were told we were being retained. That was the final trigger for the involvement.”
It was a simple plan. Cathy and Hunter ran a syndicate, made up of Eddie McChord, and friends John Smith, Thomas Hutton, and Donald Williamson. These friends located a suitable winner – someone who needed a small sum of money. Once the bogus winner was selected, a winning entry form would be submitted in their name, which then won the £15,000 Place the Ball prize.
The bogus winner kept £200 of their winnings, returning £1300.
The £1300 was divided three-ways: £500 each to Cathy and Hunter; and £300 for the other members of the syndicate.
From March 1974, until April 1977, Cathy and Hunter fixed 67 Place the Ball competitions. They also twice rigged two major jackpots of £20,500 and £22,000, collecting two-thirds of these winnings for themselves.
As Cathy and Hunter did the hardest part of the swindle, they took the lion’s share of the loot.
“I enjoy spending money I like good things, wine, food, travel. And I love clothes, particularly trouser suits. I did make flights to London to buy clothes but not as people made out.
“Whenever I had money from the competitions, I would take it to two building societies. I would put between £100 and £300 in one and about the same amount in the other. I did this several times and never once let Eddie know.”
Amongst the first winners, was Cathy’s mother. The syndicate believed they were modern day Robin Hoods, who gave money to those who needed it most. Winners were found from all over Glasgow, as Eddie McChord used his taxi to find and vet suitable winners; whilst his friends, Smith, Hutton and Williamson sought winners from a network of bars and social clubs.
The inevitable tension began to affect Cathy, and she was hospitalized after a serious bout of asthma.
Even so, she continued with the fraud, as for all involved it meant a life of luxury, flash cars, foreign holidays, new houses, lavish furnishings, and expensive jewelry
Cathy bought a new taxi for her husband, a £3,500 car for herself, and made her dream move from Baillieston to an £18,000 house in the suburbs. She also had £12,000 in a building society account.
Hunter bought a gold watch and bracelet, a new Volvo and was in the process of purchasing a bungalow when caught. He had £18,000 in various building societies and £500 in his pocket when arrested.
It seemed the perfect scam, until 19-year-old, James McCreadie was chosen as one of the 67 bogus winners. For the former Tory election agent and son of a bookmaker, blew the whistle on the scam.
McCreadie had originally needed money to pay a fine of £125 for Kirkintilloch Thistle Boys soccer team, an under-13 group that he helped to run.
McCreadie was told that he could keep £200 of his £1500 winnings, but when no one contacted him to collect the rest of the money, McCreadie withdrew a further £200, and bought his grandmother a £95 television. He then withdrew a further £1,100, and spent the lot.
The turning point for ‘Greedy’ McCreadie came when he was visited by three heavies, who threatened to “Chuck him in the Clyde wearing a concrete overcoat.”
Cathy McChord was jailed for 3 years, along with her boss, Colin Hunter after both admitted defrauding Beaverbrook’s Newspapers Ltd. in Scotland of £143,500.
They also admitted a charge of attempting to defraud a further £1500 from the paper’s Place the Ball competition.
Eddie McChord admitted defrauding the Scottish Daily Express of £4,500. He was fined £1,000 or 12 months in prison.
Mrs McChord’s mother admitted 2 charges involving £3,000. Presiding Judge Lord Johnston said her part was minor and admonished her.
John Smith was fined £12,000 and 12 months in prison for defrauding the firm of £131,000. He did not ask time to pay and was taken to the cells.
Thomas Hutton admitted frauds involving £70,000, was fined £4,000 or 12 months in prison.
Donald Williamson was fined £250 or 6 months, when he admitted fraud of £16,500.
Eddie McChord, Hutton and Williamson were allowed time to pay.
After his conviction Hunter said:
“I want to make a fresh start in life when all this mess is over and I want to wipe the slate clean. I suppose I got between £1500 and £1700 of the total money, and I presume Cathy got the same.”
The police recovered only £4224 of the £143,500. £139,000 is still unaccounted for.
Together, Hunter and the McChords stole over £1million in today’s money from the Daily Express.
Sadly, this wasn’t the end of Cathy’s story, just like those misunderstood whispers that change into something different, her life took a dark, and more horrific turn, when in 1982, she was murdered by deranged killer Ian Scoular.
No suitable video for this…but here’s Archie Gemmill’s genius goal for Scotland against Holland in the 1978 World Cup
Bill Hicks on Austin cable television. The show aired on October, 1993, five months before Hicks died.
Bill knows his days are numbered and seems more intent on speaking truth to power than being funny. He’s getting his last licks in, discussing the Waco Branch Davidian masscres and censorship, including Letterman’s chickenshit decision not to air his appearance on The Late Show.
Waco is 102 miles from Austin and the Branch Davidian confrontation was taking place at the time of this interview. Hicks had visited the site of the compound during the siege. His thoughts on the matter swung wildly from being dismissive of Koresh to outrage at the government over the outcome. Here’s a couple of videos of Hicks talking about the Waco disaster.
Here’s an amusing site dedicated to the fine art of crappy vintage American postcards from 1950 to 1975. I found some of these postcards to be truly hysterical.
In Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality renegade researchers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá debunk almost everything we “think we know” about sex and show how our promiscuous past haunts our current struggles regarding monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. Weaving together convergent, often overlooked evidence from anthropology, archeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, Sex at Dawn shows how far from human nature sexual monogamy really is and unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.
Danny Boyle’s new film 127 Hours recreates the nightmarish events that led up to Aron Ralston (portrayed with immense charm by James Franco) cutting off his own arm in a mountain rock climbing accident. Ralston was trapped for 127 hours in a canyon in Utah when a falling boulder pinned his right arm to the canyon wall. Facing certain death, Ralston decided to do the unimaginable: he cut thru his forearm using a dull pocket knife in order to set himself free. He survived and became an international hero, a symbol of man’s can do spirit, a human being with an almost superhuman will to live, inspiring.
It’s a rousing a tale, but not one that is particularly cinematic or filled with any surprises. How much drama and action can you generate when the story is limited to one cramped location and everyone watching the film most certainly know its outcome? Boyle does his best by using lots of flashbacks, dream sequences, technical wizardry and a pounding techno soundtrack.
For the most part it works. The movie is not boring. It has its moments of heartbreak, humor and some very trippy imagery. But the real reason most people will be buying tickets to see 127 Hours is not for its artistry, but for its money shot: the arm cutting sequence. And they will not be let down. Ralston amputating his arm is done in graphic detail, it’s genuinely shocking, and Boyle uses visual effects and sound to make the scene borderline unbearable. The snapping of bones, Ralston’s screams, a special effect in which the viewer sees the knife doing its work from a perspective inside the arm, combine to make the amputation a gore classic.
While the movie strains to make deep spiritual and philosophic points, most of its highmindedness is lost in the sheer audacity of the arm cutting scene. And there ain’t no doubt that people will be talking about it. As much as the film explores Ralston’s soulsearching while being trapped, most of us are on the edge of our seats waiting for the money shot. With that in mind, Boyle, who also wrote the screenplay, tries to pump up emotions using the dream sequences and flashbacks, none of which really amount to much. But they are flashy. The cinematography by Enrique Chediak and Anthony Dod Mantle is stunning and Bollywood music genius A.R. Rahman’s pulsating score gives the movie a heartbeat. But all the razzle dazzle is dwarfed by a cheap penknife puncturing and tearing at human skin. Flesh and blood is the ultimate special effect.
This is a much better film than torture porn like Saw, but despite its good intention, 127 Hours achieves its biggest thrills through the same formula as many graphic horror films: showing us the most disgusting thing possible. And Boyle is such a talented director he manages to show it to us in newly visceral ways. When bones snap, they snap in superamped Dolby surround sound, with a searing bright flash of subliminal light jumping from the screen. In an effort to give the audience a sense of Ralston’s ordeal, Boyle has chosen to subject his audience to its own endurance test, to try to give them a real sense of what it felt like to be Ralston in that moment of self-surgery.
Tonight’s screening of 127 Hours at the Austin Film Festival had the hardy film freak audience gasping, hiding their eyes and squirming in their seats. Ralston was in that cave for 127 hours and as much as Boyle tries to compress all of that suffering, soulsearching and fear into 95 minutes, the movie only really comes alive in those few minutes when it literally cuts to the bone.
Ace photographer Henry Chalfant who produced the classic 1984 documentary on New York City graffiti artists and hip hop, Style Wars, has a new website and it’s a beauty. An incredible resource for anyone interested in street art, hip hop culture and outlaw artists, check out Henry’s site here. It will blow your mind.
These photos were cropped in order to fit the page. See them in their full glory on Henry’s webpage, where you can actually scroll along the full length of the subway car.
The good folks over at See Of Sound have uploaded Jamdown, described as “the holy grail of reggae films”, to their Youtube channel. Reggae fans rejoice.
Jamdown takes you on a journey back to 1980, straight into the heart of the Jamaican reggae scene, following legendary reggae artists Toots Hibbert and The Congos. The film, shot in 1980, had a limited release in France and therefore remained undiscovered by the rest of the world. Since its initial release almost 30 years ago, Jamdown has become what reggae footage collectors often refer to as “the holy grail of reggae films” due to its rarity and the difficulty in finding an original copy of the film. The film contains some of the only known early footage of The Congos, performing tracks from their legendary ‘Heart Of The Congos’ LP, which was produced by Lee Perry at the Black Ark studios at the height of their career. For the first time in almost 30 years, this film has finally been made available to own on DVD. ‘Jamdown’ contains some of the most electrifying live reggae footage ever captured on film, and we hope you enjoy this legendary film as much as we do.
Here’s Jamdown in its entirety. This is deeply rootsy.
