It’s well-known to be the only weekly TV series that President Obama watches with his daughters and on Tuesday, Ann Romney told Entertainment Tonight that Modern Family is her favorite show, too.

Modern Family co-creator Steven Levitan responded on Twitter:

“Thrilled Ann Romney says ModFam is her favorite show. We’ll offer her the role of officiant at Mitch & Cam’s wedding. As soon as it’s legal.”

Thrilled Ann Romney says ModFam is her favorite show. We’ll offer her the role of officiant at Mitch & Cam’s wedding. As soon as it’s legal.

— Steve Levitan (@SteveLevitan) August 28, 2012

 
Nice one. Actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays uptight lawyer, Mitch, on Modern Family chimed in with:
 

I have to say, I’m actually thrilled Mitt & Ann Romney love “Modern Family”. I hope it sparks something in them! #Equality

I have to say, I’m actually thrilled Mitt & Ann Romney love “Modern Family”. I hope it sparks something in them! #Equality

— Jesse Tyler Ferguson (@jessetyler) August 29, 2012

 
This is rather fabulous - Grace Jones’ modeling card from 1973.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Grace Jones and Jean-Paul Goude: Their classic advert for Citroën CX

 
With thanks to Tony Vermillion
 

“Phil? Is that you? Crazy? Not me. No way.”
 
On the second night of the Republican Convention, Vice Presidential hopeful Paul Ryan stepped up to the podium as Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town” played in the background and a crowd of pale-skinned squares, who wouldn’t know the difference between Thin Lizzy and a highball glass of Gin Fizz, roared with lemming-like approval.

Is the anti-drug, devout Catholic and ultra-conservative Ryan aware that Thin Lizzy’s frontman Phil Lynott, who described himself as a “black Paddy bastard,” was an alcoholic and heroin addict who died as a result of his booze and drug excesses?

If Lynott were alive today, I wonder what he would think of the irony of the uber-uptight and desperately unhip Ryan glomming onto the legacy of one of rock’s epic bad boys?  Probably wouldn’t give two shits about the image thing but might have a big problem with his song being used to rally the right-wing masses.

And you gotta question what Ryan and his fellow Republican asswipes were thinking when they chose to use “The Boys Are Back In Town” as Ryan’s intro in the first place. Did they even bother to listen to the fucking lyrics of the song? They were the truest words spoken all night.

Guess who just got back today?
Them wild-eyed boys that had been away
Haven’t changed, haven’t much to say
But man, I still think them cats are crazy

Paul Ryan may try to come off as some kind of rock and roll candidate, but the dude is to rock and roll what white wine is to whiskey.

By the way, I’m pretty sure the RNC version of the “The Boys Are Back In town” was performed by the wretched G.E. Smith Band, who are serving as the Republican’s house band this year. You may remember Smith as the leering neanderthal guitarist who had a gig on Saturday Night Live for a few years and was briefly a sideman to Bob Dylan. Lately, when he’s not electrifying crowds of mouthbreathing conventioneers, he gigs with the utterly irrelevant Hot Tuna on the jamband circuit.
 

 
Laibach’s upcoming album,  An Introduction to… Laibach: Reproduction Prohibitied, is an all cover versions collection. Numbers include covers of The Beatles’ “Across The Universe” and “Get Back,” Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man and “The Final Countdown” by Europe.

The first video from the album, for the ironic Slovenian totalitarian avant-gardists’ cover of The Normal’s influential 1978 synthpop classic “Warm Leatherette” was directed by artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. The video features appropriately Ballardian found footage of crash test dummies being put through their trials.

An Introduction to… Laibach will be released by Mute on September 3.  Laibach is currently making a series of appearances in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia.
 

 
Etsy shop TheAllSeeingCat makes these one-of-kind handmade and hand-painted “Hello Aleister Crowley Kitty” sculptures from polymer clay and acrylic. Who wouldn’t want this?

They’re $222.00 + shipping at Etsy.
 

 

 
With thanks to Dan Smith!

 
After the success of Breathing, her haunting collaboration with composer Michael Karlsson, film-maker Anna Österlund has returned with her latest short, Clara - a beautiful and impressionistic film examining the conflicting pressures of motherhood.

‘I made the film after hearing designer and musician Jenny Grettve‘s music and seeing her collection which drew inspiration from the 19th century composer Clara Schumann.

‘Clara was a mother of 7 children, and yet, she was considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era.

‘In the eyes of society, being a performer and the main breadwinner for her family, Clara was in direct conflict with the expected role as a wife and mother. Some of the hardships she must have gone through in combining the two, I also see in my friend Jenny’s life. She’s had 3 kids within 3 years, while at the same time she started her own fashion brand.

‘I see the joy, the love and the struggle, the wish to drop everything, yet embracing it, and the fantastic creativity that comes out of being under such a pressure.

‘So I asked her to just act herself in her own collection and I put her in contrasting situations involving her, her kids, music and creativity, and let the camera roll.

‘I worked with symbols from classic paintings such as the apple symbolising temptaition, and other symbols showing struggle, hard work, restlesness and love. I’m leaving it up to the viewers to make their own interpretations, but everything is there for a reason.’

Prior to film-making, Anna set-up her own highly successful design company Ravishing Mad in 2007, which she described as a contrast of things she loves: ‘being outrageous and yet stunning, clean but not strict, dirty and oh so powerful.’

Anna was born and raised just outside Stockholm. She had a rather lonely childhood, and was often bullied by other kids. To escape Anna spent much of her time alone in her room drawing and sewing, while listening to music. It was the kind of existence that focussed her talents and ambitions.

Once Ravishing Mad was a success, Anna wanted to find new outlets for her cretaivity. ‘I bought a camera and got back into filming, photographing and writing, collaborating with musicians and dancers along with my work in fashion. Now I’m enjoying myself like I never thought possible and my biggest joy is the mix of doing everything.

Anna describes Clara as a mix of music video, fashion video and short film.  ‘Call it whatever you like, but it’s not very typical of the first two. What I’m interested in is awakening emotions and adding an expression that is different to what you see every day.

‘There is an indie feel to most of my work and I have a weakness for the unpolished. I grew up during the 80’s and 90’s and remember how I as a child and teen I recorded films on top of each other until they were completely worn out. I’m so in love with the faults and beauty in old VHS copies and it’s probably a way for me to romanticise the moments when I saw some of my favorite films for the first time. I think my past is quite visible in my work and I try to be honest and to create my own magic world that I can invite fantastic people into.’
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

‘Breathing’: A haunting and eerie short film by Michael Karlsson, Anna Österlund and Truls Bråhammar

 
“A conspiracy theory by Corey Ann Clark.”

Follow Corey Ann Clark on Twitter.
 

 
Via Joe.My.God

 
I really hope to fuck that this is true! Via Raw Story:

A revised Republican National Committee schedule released Monday showed a mystery “To Be Announced” speaker would take the stage just before Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday night. Even the Romney campaign said that they didn’t know who it would be.

During a Wednesday report, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher speculated on some of the possibilities. They included Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, actor Clint Eastwood and NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.

But Gallagher also threw out the name of the former president as potential speaker.

“Maybe a hologram of… Ronald Reagan,” he predicted. “They could do it now with technology. And the word is, maybe they just put Ronald Reagan up on the screen using a little bit of media magic to have Ronald Reagan endorse [Mitt Romney].”

“Is that actually a theory that’s out there?” host Megyn Kelly wondered.

“Yes!” Gallagher replied. “That’s a total theory. They could do it.”

You have to love it if someone at the RNC was inspired by the hologram Tupac at the Coachella Festival to reanimate the Gipper. Life in the 21st century sure is great ain’t it? Guy DeBord would puke in his mouth to see such a spectacle, but I still hope this will come to pass. If Reagan fails to materialize like a demon onstage in Tampa tomorrow night, I shall be bitterly disappointed!

(Another theory is that the mystery speaker is Clint Eastwood. Have you seen the reality show Mrs. Eastwood & Company on the E! network with his awful wife and spoiled brat daughter? Tell me that he’s not going senile. He’d have to be!)

Below, Zombie Reagan, scary as fuck, right?
 

 
UPDATE: CNN did finally go on air about this, but I can’t say that I was impressed.

As you’ve probably already heard last night an attendee of the Republican National Convention in Tampa was ejected from the venue for tossing peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman and taunting her with “this is how we feed animals.”

Follow up reports this morning say that there were actually two people thrown out of the convention center for this despicable low IQ nonsense and this, as TPM’s Josh Marshall writes, puts CNN in a bit of a difficult bind:

Now, one of the more interesting things about this story is that it broke on TPM. Actually, not quite. We first saw a tweet from David Shuster. Then we got confirmation of what happened from CNN and were the first to run the story. (This morning the RNCC essentially confirmed something rotten had happened.) But you may have noticed that one of the biggest news organizations in the world — CNN — has been remarkably tight-lipped about this.

So it’s worth noting why that probably is. There’s a normal and correct tendency for a news outfit not to want to make itself into the story. But this goes way beyond that and puts CNN in an exquisitely awkward position. CNN has been bending over backwards of late trying to position itself as the last holy beacon of objectivity and fairness in cable news, as Fox and MSNBC play to more clearly partisan audiences. Yet they’re under almost constant assault from conservatives for alleged (and basically mythical) liberal bias.

Meanwhile, the Republican National Convention is the GOP’s quadrennial ‘we love us a lotta non-white people’ fest. And given what I said above the last possible thing CNN wants is to rain on that parade or become the focus of a huge messaging nightmare if attendees were harassing an African-American member of their team. Certainly, the Convention organizers want to avoid discussion as much as possible too.

As a side note, one can only imagine how Fox News would be going to town over this had something somehow analogous happened to one of their staffers at a Democratic convention.

Journalists don’t tend to like non-transparency from other news organizations. And CNN’s relative silence (they did finally put out a basic report this morning) will, I suspect, generate a backlash from viewers outraged by the incident.

If this incident isn’t the breaking point for CNN, when will that breaking point EVER occur?

Aren’t any of them—besides Soledad O’Brien, who is clearly a fan of the series—watching The Newsroom?
 

 
You can own the “Fillmore East” t-shirt that Roger Daltrey wore during the Who’s 1976 US tour. And your money will go to a good cause: Teenage Cancer Trust.

The shirt is being auctioned on eBay and so far is at £1,650.00 with 4 days to go. To place a bid, click here.