Nice time-lapse video of a Robert Moog mural commissioned by Moog Music for their factory in Asheville, NC. The mural was created by local Asheville artist, Dustin Spagnola.
Thanks, Dustin!
In 2008, 47-year-old British businessman Barry Pring had just finished celebrating his first wedding anniversary at a restaurant near Kiev with his Ukrainian wife, Ms Zuizina. As they stood outside waiting for a taxi, Ms Zuizina realized she’d forgotten her gloves and popped back into the restaurant. A car came roaring ‘round the corner and took Mr Pring’s life.
Initially ruled by the Ukrainian police as a random hit-and-run, pressure from the British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Mr Pring’s remaining English family (who are contesting £1.5 million Pring fortune with the widow) has led to it being upgraded to a murder inquiry this week.
“Ms Zuizina, a former stripper,” notes BBC News, with a frigid nudge-nudge wink-wink, “met Mr Pring on the internet in 2006.” Say no more, guv,nor, say no more!
Far be it for me to pre-empt anything, but if it was foul play, this sort of thing is apparently quite common, which is why any gentleman looking eastwards for a younger, poorer wife might do worse than consult the charming Russian Bride Guide: How to Meet, Court and Marry a Woman from the Former Soviet Union by husband and wife intercontinental matchmaking duo Stuart J Smith and Olga Maslova.
I must admit to bringing a number of preconceptions to the Russian Bride Guide, but, randomly opening the volume yesterday on the bus (not hugely recommended) I instantly came upon the following halva-sweet sentiment:
“Of course, love is ideal…”
Well isn’t that outright romantic, I thought – it just goes to show yet again that you should never judge a book by its cover, even if that cover does feature a half-naked woman athwart a cardboard box.
Yet what is it, I wondered, reading on, that drove such idealistic men to travel so far and to undertake the risks and costs detailed in this very practical book (its chapters have titles like “Scams, Scammers and Sharp Practice”)? The Russian Bride Guide (a sort of “The Decline of the Western Woman”-type manifesto) explains:
“Because they simply don’t find fat, lazy, smoking, junk food-eating, sloppy, flip flop-wearing [!] women to be attractive. Unfortunately, this is all they seem to see at home.”
Faced with all these “self-empowered, man hating feminists” (in the book’s words), what can the RBG’s “fat, old, ugly and bald” readers (also the book’s words) expect from a Former Soviet Union bride?
“Why pick girls from poorer countries? Less money means fewer cars and more walking, more walking means slimmer bodies. The same scarcity of money means junk food is unpopular, hence less junk food consumption and slimmer bodies again.”
One of the ways the good old RBG tries to protect its readers is by warning them off really excessive age differences. While a couple of decades are the least every “fat, old, ugly and bald” Western man deserves, a cautionary note is struck for those hoping to aim for anything significantly more pronounced:
“If seeking a very large age gap, you must consider the future when she is bopping around the house listening to the latest dance music eyeing the young muscular gardener through the window and you are dozing in your rocking chair with Bing Crosby oozing out of your stereo. It happens; what do you think will happen next?”
Ummm, Svetlana’ or Uschi forgets her gloves (and who could blame her)?
This will take your breath way!
Last night CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° show saw the debut on the world television stage of Stacey Pritchard, one of the pinhead Christianists who attends the Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina. Providence Road has been getting a lot of unwanted (?) attention lately due to Pastor Charles “Kill the Queers” Worley’s recent sermon there about putting gays and lesbians inside of an electric fence until they died. Last night Pritchard went on CNN to defend Worley and the result was TV magic!
It is AMAZING just how stubbornly impervious this woman is to basic facts. It’s like she has an impenetrable bubble all around her where no intelligence can get in or out (Only Cheetos, Mountain Dew and Domino’s pizza can pierce her force field of ignorance. I don’t know what happens on the other end and I don’t want to know).
Mark my words, this is a bravura, star-making appearance by one of American’s most dreadfully dumb people. Of course, I jest, there might be people stupider than Stacey in some dark, backwoods"holler” of America, but do they have her sneering, know-nothing Tea party charisma? Her fashion sense? Her gift of gab?
I don’t think so. A STAR IS BORN.
This woman is already an ICON OF STUPIDITY, even if she doesn’t know what that means…
Why, Stacey Pritchard, you just might be the female equivalent to Joe the Plumber! (Secretly I think you’re better than he is!). Please run for US Congress in your state (you’d win!) and caucus with Michele Bachmann, Allen West, Steve King and your North Carolina home girl/soul sister in MENSA, Virginia Foxx! A Sarah Palin endorsement must be imminent. The abjectly stupid gotta stick together!
“Hey Stacey, phone for you. A guy callin’ ‘eemself Roger Ailes wants to offer yew a contract on the Fox News…”
If you missed the recent annular solar eclipse, fret not as an amazing new video has just been released by NASA which reveals the Sun’s surface in a way never before seen.
This video takes SDO images and applies additional processing to enhance the structures visible. While there is no scientific value to this processing, it does result in a beautiful, new way of looking at the sun.
The original frames are in the 171 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet. This wavelength shows plasma in the solar atmosphere, called the corona, that is around 600,000 Kelvin.
The loops represent plasma held in place by magnetic fields. They are concentrated in “active regions” where the magnetic fields are the strongest. These active regions usually appear in visible light as sunspots. The events in this video represent 24 hours of activity on September 25, 2011.
I could stare at this for hours and not get bored.
Graham Skipper, Jesse Merlin (and a headless Brian Gillespie). Photo by Thomas Hargis.
After a highly successful premiere run in 2011, director Stuart Gordon’s ultra-gory musical version of his ultra-gory 80s cult film, Re-Animator™ The Musical has just two weeks left in its current Los Angeles engagement before the show travels to New York City and then the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.
Dangerous Minds has a pair of tickets to one of the Saturday night late shows (this weekend or next) for a lucky reader who tells us in the most creative way, why the Re-Animator tickets must be theirs.
Re-Animator™ The Musical was the winner of six LA Weekly Theater Awards, including “Musical of the Year.” It’s BLOODY terrific (wear a raincoat, don’t say I didn’t warn you) fun and one of the leads is played by my very good friend, Jesse Merlin, who gives a bravura performance as the villainous “Dr.Carl Hill” who loses his head about mid-way through the show, but keeps right on singing anyway. Cheers’ George Wendt will also be returning to the cast as the zombiefied Dean of the medical school. Chris L. McKenna, Rachel Averym, Mark Beltzman, Cynthia Carle, Brian Gillespie, Marlon Grace and Liesel Hanson round out the cast, with Graham Skipper featured as “Dr. Herbert West. ” Book by Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon and William J. Norris. Music and lyrics by Mark Nutter. The special effects are being done by the same guys who did them for the 1985 movie.
I mean, it’s a super-smart musical comedy Grand Guignol—with lots and lotsof blood—based on an H.P Lovecraft story... what’s not to love, here, right? See it now in Los Angeles while you still can!
Re-Animator™ The Musical runs nightly Thursdays through Sundays 8:00pm [Thu., Fri., Sun.] with two shows on Saturdays: 7:00 & 10:30pm at The Hayworth Theatre, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057.
More details at: www.reanimatorthemusical.com
This coming Tuesday the 29th, Stuart Gordon will be at Cinefamily, in-person for an in-depth Q&A session about the process of bringing his legendary ‘80s horror film to the stage as a musical with a screening of the original film and appearances by the play’s cast.
Leave your reason why we should give YOU the tickets in the comments. The best answer chosen by us, for no particular reason whatsoever will win. It’s up to you to get yourself there, so this contest is really only for our local Los Angeles readers (In other words, please don’t enter if you won’t be able to actually attend the performance, okay?)
It’s Bob Dylan’s birthday - Happy Birthday Bob. But rather than the usual cake, candles and documentary clip, here’s a slightly different birthday card: 2 versions of Dylan’s “Masters of War” slowed down by 400% and 800% by Angel Musicfication.
Bob Dylan - “Masters of War” : 400% slower.
Bob Dylan - “Masters of War” : 800% slower.
In April 1970, as rumors spread of Paul McCartney quitting The Beatles, news reporters hurried to Apple HQ, hoping to make their assumptions fit the story when interviewing Beatles’ Press Officer, Derek Taylor, and the band’s recently appointed manager, Allen Klein. This rare little news clip, seemingly missing a linking voice-over, captures the moment the rumors of a Beatles split were confirmed.
With thanks to Nellym
DM pal Tommy Udo reminded me today of this brilliant and inspirational speech by the socialist, trade unionist, politician and writer Jimmy Reid. The whole speech has been posted over at Exile on Moan Street, and my DM comrade Richard Metzger wrote eloquently about Jimmy Reid at the time of his death in 2010.
It’s may be forty years since Reid gave this speech, at his inauguration as Rector of the University of Glasgow, but its inspirational words are still as relevant and much needed today. Back in 1972, Reid’s speech hit resonated across the world, and was published, in its entirety, in the New York Times, where it was described as:
“...the greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.”
No hyperbole. This is one of the Great Speeches, and as Richard has previously pointed out “Mandatory Reading”.
Jimmy Reid’s Inaugural Speech as Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1972
“Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.
“Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways in different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal antisocial behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.
“Society and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially de-humanises some people, makes them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well-adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else. They remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the American Mid-West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care, social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn’t work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think – have you not met his like here in Britain? Here in Scotland? I have.
“It is easy and tempting to hate such people. However, it is wrong. They are as much products of society, and of a consequence of that society, human alienation, as the poor drop-out. They are losers. They have lost the essential elements of our common humanity. Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women. The big challenge to our civilisation is not Oz, a magazine I haven’t seen, let alone read. Nor is it permissiveness, although I agree our society is too permissive. Any society which, for example, permits over one million people to be unemployed is far too permissive for my liking. Nor is it moral laxity in the narrow sense that this word is generally employed – although in a sense here we come nearer to the problem. It does involve morality, ethics, and our concept of human values. The challenge we face is that of rooting out anything and everything that distorts and devalues human relations.
Via Exile on Moan Street, with thanks to Tommy Udo!
The rest of Jimmy Reid’s speech, after the jump…
Anyone care to hazard a guess at why he’s crying?
Via RightWing Watch:
The Family Research Council is currently hosting its annual Watchmen on the Wall Pastors Briefing in Washington DC, featuring a variety of Religious Right leaders and members of Congress working to mobilize pastors from across the nation.
Today, in between speakers, FRC handed the floor over to Jesse Connors so that he could promote his web-based evangelism tool called TrueLife.org which claims to offer “reliable answers from a biblical worldview via the Web that are non-threatening and easy to understand and directs people to church.”
Connors’ service seems to revolve around producing, for a fee, personalized business cards that pastors can hand out, encouraging people to visit the True Life website where they can learn more about Jesus and the Bible and find local churches. At least, that was the best we could discern, as it was hard to know just what Connors was talking about as he grew increasingly emotional while discussing the success of the effort and demonstrating a video about struggling with homosexuality.
Get some help, Mary!
I feel really sorry for this fuckin’ guy.
The British Royal Family, it would appear, are feeling increasingly hemmed in by their approximately non-fictional status. You would have expected it of Diana, somehow, whom I not only believe (as per Kevin Costner’s recent assertion) would have gone on to star in the The Bodyguard 2, but, had she not been in that “accident” would have by now bequeathed the world a dozen docu-soaps, a whole range of sex tapes and at least one (unimaginably bad) album.
But I expected more – humble subject that I am – of Elizabeth II, who was this week said to have been getting up to some extremely post-modern shenanigans with the current James Bond. Daniel Craig, as reported in the following Telegraph article:
“It appears that James Bond, Britain’s best-loved spy, is to be rewarded for his dedication to duty with a knighthood bestowed by the Queen. Daniel Craig, the 007 actor, is reported to have received the ceremonial tap on the shoulder at Buckingham Palace in scenes to be screened during the opening ceremony at the Olympic Games. The Queen is said to have gamely agreed to take part in the action and makes a cameo appearance in the film, which will be beamed around the world.”
Buckingham Palace have refused to confirm whether Craig procedes to give Her Highness one of those rough-ish Bond fucks, but he may as well, as that’s sixty years of otherwise reasonably dignified reign “gamely” flushed down the khazi, ma’am.
Perhaps, it’s worth noting the fact that Elizabethan spy and necromancer John Dee was the original “007” to the “original” Queen Elizabeth’s “M” (current “M” Dame Judi Dench—who played Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love was apparently also filmed at the Palace, completing this bizarre cat’s cradle).
Quite why opening ceremony director Danny Boyle feels it necessary to thus tear down the walls of our national reality is uncertain, but despite his involvement in these nasty Olympics, I can’t shake the feeling that he isn’t an entirely bad egg – not least because he cites Caliban and his “the isle is full of noises” Tempest speech as the main inspiration for his show. That is, not Prospero et al – the ‘enchanted’ rulers/actors of this strange island – but the rest of us. Wonder if we’ll recognize ourselves in the finished product?