“The mentality of your generation just boggles my mind.”
That’s a two-way street, lady! What if your son is the next Duke Ellington or… Steve Vai?
What a soul-crushing witch!
Via reddit
What started out has an experiment with using rope as a material to make a flat rug, quickly turned into a whole other project of shaping the rope into extravagant masks for artist Bertjan Pot. He says, “The possibilities are endless, I’m meeting new faces every day.”
More masks after the jump…
San Francisco’s Flipper were one of the most unique hardcore bands to come out of the Bay Area, or indeed to spring out of any US city’s punk scene. Their slow, sludgy, THICK bass-led sound made them seem extra heavy—much more heavy metal than any mere heavy metal group—and would influence The Melvins, Nirvana (who were huge boosters of the band) and the entire “Stoner Rock” genre.
Flipper’s live shows were utterly insane and intimidating. A pal of mine back in the early 80s suggested that the ultimate drug cocktail for a Flipper show was to sniff glue and smoke Angel Dust. Although I personally never tried that, I think he was probably correct. On record you only got half of the Flipper experience, live you got the whole thing pounded into your skull like a spike.
I first discovered the joys of Flipper via a friend who had secured (against all odds, I grew up in West Virginia) a copy of their “Love Canal/Ha Ha Ha” single in 1981, which I then got my own hands on (and have to this day). Their disturbed, demented and deranged “Ha Ha Ha” is something I used to stick on mixed tapes all the time, especially ones that I’d hand over to friends about to take a road trip telling them “Don’t listen to this one until late at night.”
I recall seeing Flipper co-bass player/singer Will Shatter stumble into the Odessa Diner on Avenue A one night in the mid-80s, looking like he’d gone to Hell and come about halfway back. I was eating with my friend Hillary—who actually knew him—but he was in such bad shape that she opted to leave him in peace to shove his eggs into his face. Shatter was dead not long after that of a drug overdose, and two more members of the band would also fatally OD over the years..
Bruce Loose has apparently appeared on-stage with a cane and heart monitors when the band has reformed in recent years. Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic was a member of Flipper from 2006 to 2008.
Below, is Target Video’s document of Flipper’s May 29, 1981 opening set for Throbbing Gristle at San Francisco’s Kezar Pavilion. At a certain point Loose’s bass breaks, and Genesis P-Orridge lends his axe so the show could go on. Set list: “Shine,” “nothing,” “Low Rider,” “one by one,” “Hard Cold Old World,” “Life.”
My Bloody Valentine fans, rejoice: With the re-release of their back catalog (well, much of it) on May 7th, come seven unheard rarities.
According to the Creation Records website:
They will release their 2 full-length studio albums, Isn’t Anything and Loveless, plus EP’s 1988-1991, a brand new compilation which draws together their 4 EP releases, Feed Me With Your Kiss, You Made Me Realise, Glider and Tremolo alongside 7 additional rare and previously un-released tracks.
The original studio albums have been painstakingly re-mastered by Kevin Shields at Metropolis Studios in London and Loveless comes as a 2-disc set featuring a previous re-mastering from original analogue tapes, completed by Kevin Shields but never released. Alongside their EPs, the compilation album features a mixture of rare and unavailable and previously unreleased tracks.
Twenty years on and these albums still sound as modern as fuck…
To perfect a French-Canadian accent for his role in the 1966 film The Trap, Oliver Reed spent several days around the docks and bars of Montreal. One would suspect the great Hell-raiser spent most of that time in the bars, rather than around. However, the film company were smart enough to ensure Ollie didn’t spend too much time in the bars, and assigned a local to read him newspapers and teach him the lingo.
That was the thing about Reed - he was a great actor, but his life and work was over-shadowed by his off-screen excesses - even this interview from the set of The Trap ends up on his brawling. Of course, it made him a lovable rogue and, yes, at times a terrible bore, but the main affect was to lower the appreciation his performances deserved. Let’s be clear, he never had the critical acclaim his fellow mavericks Burton, O’Toole, Harris or Hurt achieved, even when Reed regularly proved himself to be a far better film actor, or at the very least their equal. From early fodder like Curse of the Werewolf through Paranoiac to his collaborations with Ken Russell (The Debussy Film, Women in Love, The Devils) and Michael Winner (Hannibal Brooks, The Jokers, I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘is Name) Reed was an exceptional actor.
Even take for example, his performance in The Trap - a movie with primarily two actors - Reed as a trapper who unwillingly takes a mute girl, Rita Tushingham, as his wife in, to live together in the remotest wilds of Canada, and what happens when he falls into a bear trap - and watch how he delivered a complete range of emotions that carried the film beyond its very slim storyline. Tushingham is equally as good, and their pairing works well.
Reed died too soon, and too young. But fuck it, he left behind a major body of work, which still needs to be properly assessed. And let’s not forget, he died pissed and arm-wrestling in his favored place - the bar.
Previously on DM
When Oliver Reed Met Keith Moon
Girl Model is an extraordinarily delicate, expertly observed and ultimately very disturbing fly-on-the-wall documentary that focuses on Nadya, a 13-year-old aspiring fashion model from a remote Siberia village, and Ashley, the seemingly morally bankrupt American model scout who plucks Nadya from her impoverished family home and sends her off to Japan.
Nadya is promised $8000 dollars worth of modeling work (the minimum requirement for a Japanese work visa). Her apprehensive family spend their meagre savings to send their daughter abroad, because upon her return, the money she makes modeling will pay for them to build a much-needed addition to their cramped home. Their pretty, wide-eyed daughter’s dreams are their dreams, too, for she represents their only escape from living the way they do.
Upon her arrival at Narita Airport, the young girl—who can speak no Japanese, let alone any English—panics when there is no one there to meet her. Thing go downhill rapidly for Nadya from there.
Ashley is a former model herself. Her role as a scout is to descend on Eastern European countries looking for the type of tall, skinny, barely pubescent young girls that are in-demand with the Japanese modeling agencies. Although we see footage that Ashley shot of herself in a mirror at the age of 19, pouring her soul out to her video camera about how much she hates the modeling world, like a dutiful gear in the machine of the fashion industry, she still performs her function to flatter, entice, seduce, and basically lie to young girls and their families about the money and glamor that awaits them in Japan. What happens to them when they get there is really not her concern.
In Girl Model the audience watches helplessly as a child’s dreams are smashed against the cold reality of the fashion industry, in a heart-breaking head-on collision. Although Nadya does attend many “go sees” and even does one photo shoot in Tokyo that she sees printed in a glossy fashion magazine, she returns to her family in Siberia with a crushing $2000 debt.
Co-directors Ashley Sabin and David Redmon were initially approached by Ashley herself—she was a fan of their prior documentary work—regarding making a film about the young Russian models who are often exploited in Japan. One can’t help concluding that Ashley offered her story to the directors in an effort to somehow exonerate herself for her deeds. She is not successful.
She is a fascinating figure—obviously she’s terribly conflicted about her own role in the exploitation of these girls—but in the end, Ashley reveals herself to be a psychic vampire as we see her performing her spiel about modeling in Japan for an Eastern European TV television crew, as Sabin and Redmon focus their cameras on her next young victims’ faces.
Below, Dangerous Minds spoke to co-director Ashley Sabin about Girl Model at the SXSW festival:
Rut-roh! The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has made public several confidential documents which outline the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) plan to thwart the gay marriage movement. The documents were reportedly acquired after NOM’s unsuccessful attempt to circumvent Maine’s campaign finance disclosure laws brought them to the attention of state investigators. Holy buffoonish backfire, Batman!
The documents reveal some of the group’s overtly racially-driven strategies. None of this is a surprise, of course—the Prop 8 matter here in California, it has been argued by many, was decided by African-American churchgoers—but to see it laid out with such vulgar bluntness is nevertheless disturbing:
“The strategic goal…is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots…”
“The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity—a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation.”
HRC President Joe Solmonese denounced the group: “Such brutal honesty is a game changer, and this time NOM can’t spin and twist its way out of creating an imagined rift between LGBT people and African Americans or Hispanics.”
Some additional highlights of the NOM documents, via Think Progress:
Interrupt the “attempt to equate…sexual orientation with race” so that marriage inequality is not perceived as discrimination.
Draw attention to the “bigotry and intolerance” displayed by equality advocates and “document the victims” through a rapid response media team.
Emphasize the importance of “religious liberties” to limit the impact of marriage equality’s legislative advancements.
“Develop side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political leaders” like pornography, “protection of children” and religious liberty at the federal level.
Expose Obama administration programs that “have the effect of sexualizing young children” or threatening “childhood innocence.”
“Find, train, and equip young leaders” to become a “next generation of elites” capable of opposing marriage equality.
Foster closer relationships with Catholic bishops to “equip, energize, and moralize Catholic priests on the marriage issue.”
Focus on “the consequences of gay marriage for parental rights.”
And force your superstitious religious beliefs down everyone else’s throats! Shameful.
Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters paraphrased one of Aesop’s fables:
An Eagle had made her nest at the top of a lofty oak. A Fox, having found a convenient hole, lived with her young in the middle of the trunk; and a Wild Sow with her young had taken shelter in a hollow at its foot. The Fox resolved to destroy by her arts this chance-made colony. She climbed to the nest of the Eagle, and said: “Destruction is preparing for you, and for me too. The Wild Sow, whom you may see daily digging up the earth, wishes to uproot the oak, that she may, on its fall, seize our families as food.” Then she crept down to the cave of the Sow and said: “Your children are in great danger; for as soon as you shall go out with your litter to find food, the Eagle is prepared to pounce upon one of your little pigs.” When night came, she went forth with silent foot and obtained food for herself and her young; but, feigning to be afraid, she kept a look-out all through the day. Meanwhile, the Eagle, full of fear of the Sow, sat still on the branches, and the Sow, terrified by the Eagle, did not dare to go out from her cave; and thus they each, with their families, perished from hunger.
Moral: Gay folks and black folks can argue all day as to who gets to be the “sow” and who gets to be the “eagle.” But both groups better damn well recognize who the hell the fox is.
Pictured above, an upstanding citizen obeying a road sign.
Via High Definite
From the early 1970’s into the 80’s, Robert Abel and Associates were pioneers in the use of computer graphics in TV commercials. His style was clearly influenced by Peter Max, Yellow Submarine, Milton Glaser, Stan Vanderbeek, Fillmore poster art and psychedelic culture in general. In addition to commercials, Abel did special effects work for films like Tron, The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek.
Abel’s style was nicknamed ‘photo-fusion,’ the combining of still photography with video. In his 1975 7-Up commercials, Abel used back-light techniques called ‘candy-apple neon,’ a highly stylized type of animation that created a day-glo effect. In 1982, Abel used ‘candy-apple neon’ to create the look of Tron.
Here’s a selection of Abel’s trippy commercials. The 7-Up ads are particularly lysergic. In addition to the commercials, I’ve included demo-reels and a short documentary on Abel.
More after the jump…
Interestingly enough, this item comes to you courtesy of the kooks at WorldNet Daily. Not really the kind of thing you’d expect to find there among the ads for hardcore survivalist supply companies, books like “The Islamic Invasion” and anti-Obamacare PACs, but there it was…
According to WND a study published last year found that a part of the brain atrophied more rapidly in Catholics and “born-agains” than it did in more “mainline” Protestants.
The study called “Religious Factors and Hippocampal Atrophy in Late Life” was published online by the Public Library of Science last year. Since then, it’s been mentioned by blogs and medical sites but generally has not reached into mainstream reporting.
“The findings of this study indicate that hippocampal atrophy in late life may be uniquely influenced by certain types of religious factors,” write the authors, led by Amy D. Owen of the Center for the Study of Aging at Duke University. Several of her colleagues joined in the report.
The review noted that there have been few studies regarding the relationship between religious factors and structural neuroanatomy, “despite a growing interest in the ways spiritual beliefs and practices are reflected in brain activity.”
The piece goes on for a bit in a more or less neutral “journalistic” tone, then concludes with an explanation (of sorts) that is more in line with what we think of as the typical kooky WorldNet Daily party line:
“This study is among the first to examine religious and spiritual correlates of structural neuroanatomy, identifying several understudied factors associated with hippocampal atrophy,” said the analysis. “Religious factors, including religious group membership and life-changing religious experiences, but not frequency of public and private religious practices, were longitudinally associated with hippocampal atrophy.
“Atrophy in this region has important clinical implications, having been identified as a marker of late life mental health problems such as depression and dementia. These results may reflect an impact of cumulative stress on hippocampal volume.”
That Christians face stress is no surprise.
Newberg cited “persecution,” and a survey done for WND last year showed that 49.2 percent consider the legal activism against Christians and their beliefs regarding homosexuality in the United States to be “persecution.”
And that “persecution,” according to just about one in three Democrats, is “necessary.”
That many Christians seem to honestly believe that they are the targets of persecution for their blinkered and bigoted views on homosexuality is plenty of evidence of atrophied brains, if you ask me…