Leonard Cohen’s new album Old Ideas is being released next Tuesday. The critical reception has been ecstatic. Which thrills me because I have loved Cohen from the moment I heard “Suzanne” when I was 15 years old. He’s been a massive influence on my own music. My debt to him is deep.
Here’s something to hold you Cohen fans over until Old Ideas release: a brilliant performance by Mr. Cohen on Austin City Limits from 1988.
Well, well, well… Look who was PRO-medical marijuana—actually went out on a limb for it—way back before he wanted to behead people and cut off their hands for possessing it…
Here’s what Newt Gingrich wrote to the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1982:
Legal Status of Marijuana
To the Editor:
The American Medical Association’s Council on Scientific Affairs should be commended for its report, “Marijuana: Its Health Hazards and Therapeutic Potential” (1981;246:1823). Not only does the report outline evidence of marijuana’s potential harms, but it distinguishes this concern from the legitimate issue of marijuana’s important medical benefits. All too often the hysteria that attends public debate over marijuana’s social abuse compromises a clear appreciation for this critical distinction.
Since 1978, 32 states have abandoned the federal prohibition to recognize legislatively marijuana’s important medical properties. Federal law, however, continues to define marijuana as a drug “with no accepted medical use,” and federal agencies continue to prohibit physician-patient access to marijuana. This outdated federal prohibition is corrupting the intent of the state laws and depriving thousands of glaucoma and cancer patients of the medical care promised them by their state legislatures.
On Sept 16, 1981, Representative Stewart McKinney and I introduced legislation designed to end bureaucratic interference in the use of marijuana as a medicant. We believe licensed physicians are competent to employ marijuana, and patients have a right to obtain marijuana legally, under medical supervision, from a regulated source. The medical prohibition does not prevent seriously ill patients from employing marijuana; it simply deprives them of medical supervision and access to a regulated medical substance. Physicians are often forced to choose between their ethical responsibilities to the patient and their legal liabilities to federal bureaucrats.
Representative McKinney and I hope the Council will take a close and careful look at this issue. Federal policies do not reflect a factual or balanced assessment of marijuana’s use as a medicant. The Council, by thoroughly investigating the available materials, might well discover that its own assessment of marijuana’s therapeutic value has, in the past, been more than slightly shaded by federal policies that are less than neutral
Newt Gingrich
House of Representatives
Washington, DC
Fourteen years later, as House Speaker, this same hypocritical piece-of-shit would introduce the Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996, which called for executing any person caught importing just an ounce or two of high-grade marijuana (“100 usual doses” is how it was written in the legislation, which obviously didn’t pass).
What’s more, when challenged about his own admitted use of marijuana in the past, Gingrich had this to say to Wall Street Journal reporter Hilary Stout:
“That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era. See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality… That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t.”
“Okay for thee, but not for me,” sez rich, well-fed white guy. Thanks for the succinct explanation, mean old man!
Now, if you’re looking to make sense of this stuff don’t even try. He’s a Republican, ‘nuff said.
Here’s what Gingrich said at a fundraiser for fellow Georgia GOP pol Rep. Charlie Norwood in 1995:
“If you import a commercial quantity of illegal drugs, it is because you have made the personal decision that you are prepared to get rich by destroying our children. I have made the decision that I love our children enough that we will kill you if you do this.”
“I have decided”???
Imagine this asshole being allowed to decide anything of importance!
Gingrich, unable to help himself, continued:
“The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, ‘Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?’ the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically.”
Ethan Nadlemann, the executive director of Drug Policy Action, a bipartisan advocacy group for ending the drug war called Gingrich “basically a nightmare” when it comes to drug policy issues. “For a guy who’s supposed to be an intellectual and intelligent, the quality of the argumentation on his part is embarrassing.”
As one wag quipped on the topic of Drug Importer Death Penalty Act of 1996 at The People’s Forum:
Fortunately didn’t pass. His other proposed acts, the Serial Adultery Death Penalty Act and the Congressional Influence Peddling Death Penalty Act, unfortunately failed as well. And he reportedly killed the Fat Loudmouth Pandering Pseudo-Intellectual Death Penalty Act before it could be introduced.
Republicans whine and Republicans bitch/Our rich are too poor and our poor are too rich.
Below, Newt Gingrich shooting his big mouth off about the drug war and how the US should emulate Singapore(!) on The O’Reilly Factor as “Papa Bear” nods with approval.
Thank you Mr. Michael Backes of Sacramento, CA!
Did the world really need a cover of MGMT’s “Kids?” I say yes…as long as it’s this damned groovy.
From the debut album Future Loops by Britain’s Radio 1 Beatbox Champion THePETEBOX.
The track was recorded live in one take.
Future Loops will be released on April 12.
Here’s something quite lovely, a tour inside of Salvador Dali’s Spanish home.
Open Culture provides some history and description:
Along the Costa Brava in northern Spain, in the little seaside village of Port Lligat, sits the house that became Salvador Dalí’s main residence in 1930. It started off as a small fisherman’s hut. Then Dalí went to work on the structure, renovating it little by little over the next 40 years, creating a living, breathing, labyrinthine home that reflects the artist’s one-of-a-kind aesthetic. Writing about the house, the author Joseph Pla once said:
The decoration of the house is surprising, extraordinary. Perhaps the most exact adjective would be: never-before-seen. I do not believe that there is anything like it, in this country or in any other…. Dalí’s house is completely unexpected…. It contains nothing more than memories, obsessions. The fixed ideas of its owners. There is nothing traditional, nor inherited, nor repeated, nor copied here. All is indecipherable personal mythology…. There are art works (by the painter), Russian things (of Mrs. Gala), stuffed animals, staircases of geological walls going up and down, books (strange for such people), the commonplace and the refined, etc.
For many, it’s a long trip to Portlligat, and only eight people can visit the house at a time. So today we’re featuring a video tour of Dalí’s Spanish home. The interior shots begin around the 1:30 mark. If you love taxidermy, you won’t be wasting your time.
Nicely photographed. But I find the music a bit distracting.
Dangerous Minds’ reader Rhodri turned me on to this slowed down (from 45 r.p.m to 33 r.p.m) version of The Osmonds’ “Crazy Horses.” A pretty great rock song has now become a monolithic slab of heavy metal with Cookie Monster vocals.
I added some video as eye candy and I think it works quite nicely.
Armageddon rock from America’s favorite Mormons. Considering the song is about the deadly effects of automobile pollution, this slooooowed down version is suitably doom-laden.
These two delightful behind the scenes videos from The Muppet Show were generously posted by an ATV cameraman who worked on the program named John O’Brien.
In the first clip, we see what The Muppet Show would have been like had they used real-life actors—well, at least the crew members—instead of puppets. Not quite the same, is it?
A little bit of fun by the crew recorded at the end of the first series/season of The Muppet Show in 1976 (I joined ATV in 1977 during Season 2) ... I am not sure who was responsible for putting this together (I suspect Peter Harris had an input) but I’m sure someone will tell me.
The cast includes Peter Harris, Richard Holloway, Jim O’Donnell, Brian Grant, Steve Springford, Jerry Hoare, Phil Hawkes, Gerry Elms, John Rook, Martin Baker, Sue Boyers, Francis Essex, Dennis Bassinger, David Chandler, Bryan Holgate, Peter Milic, Claude Walters and the ladies from the Canteen.
And then there’s the second video, which is also pretty amazing:
A behind the scenes glimpse of the Muppet Show on it’s last day of recording at the Elstree Television Studios in 1980 on which I was privileged to work as a Cameraman.
Featured is Jim Henson and Frank Oz who were the main inspiration and creative forces behind the show. Narrated by Peter Harris, one of the two directors on the show … it mostly reveals crew and cast having a very silly day as everyone said their final farewells. Richard Holloway (now Executive Producer on “The X Factor”) had been the Senior Floor Manager for the duration and it was probably inevitable that he became the victim of the flan flingers … he took it in great spirits.
This last day in Studio D was the culmination of 5 years work, fun and laughter on what was arguably the most successful Children’s Programme in the world at the time, having been sold to some 110 countries … it was the end of an era for many and the Muppets have gone on to become truly iconic.
Via Nerdcore
Glitterbug was Derek Jarman’s final film, compiled from the many hours of Super 8 footage he had shot throughout his life. Originally made in 1994 for the BBC’s Arena. arts strand, Glitterbug is a visual journal that ties together aspects of Jarman’s life from the 1970s to 1990s.
The film opens with the artist awakened by the memory of dreams, of lovers, of friends, of place - Jarman’s lofts on Bankside, Upper Ground, the Thames River; of self, shaving, washing, breakfasting - those small rituals that prepare the day, the structuring of artifice and order. The world outside, My Tea Shop, the day-time existence, Jarman’s curiosity for the world around him. Then at night another world, we see preparation for Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World, returning to day, a garden party, is this Andrew Logan singing as Little Nell Campbell dances? Duggie Fields watches, Jarman films.
The dreamer sleeps, travels to the country, Van Gogh fields, standing stones, the memory of place, absence of others, a white-washed cottage room, the creation of art, the structuring of order.
The dreamer awake, and we are now watching Jarman at work, Sebastiane, the sea flecked gold, the actors at play, legs entwined. An office, an apartment, ‘phone calls, then filming the artist Duggie Fields, his designs, his face, a prelude to Jubilee, a young flame-haired Toyah Willcox, The Sex Pistols, Jordan and a dress rehearsal for what will become The Last of England, as she pirouettes around a burning Union Jack, Adam Ant, hair-cutting, the Silver Jubilee.
Jarman is showing us the sketches for preparation, the themes he returned to throughout his life. Rome, ritual, the research for Caravaggio, punk, the art of mirrors, The Slits, William Burroughs, Gensis P. Orridge, Throbbing Gristle, Jarman’s fascinations and obsessions, his idols and co-conspirators. The ritual of sharing tea, sharing cigarettes, a shared communion, youthful faces, sun flecked, smiling in the sun, a future ahead, too often cut short by the frost, this the last summer they danced on the rooftop, ‘Here I am, here are my secrets,’ he is saying, as we plunder through his film diaries, Super 8 scrapbook, glittering trinket chest, memory is what makes us, what sometimes betrays us, what gives us the love we have to share, returning to the Thames, the friends, the lovers, those living, those dead.
Glitterbug Derek Jarman’s Super 8 films, with Andrew Logan, Duggie Fields, Tilda Swinton, Michael Clark, Adam Ant, Toyah Willcox, William Burroughs and Genesis P. Orridge. Music by Brian Eno, specially commissioned for this film.
You’d have to be a fan of both HBO’s Game of Thrones AND The Goonies to understand why this is absolutely freakin’ hilarious!
So funny. So wrong.
No liquids while watching. You’ve been warned.
(via High Definite)
Nice little animated GIF of our human ancestors morphing into one another.
(via reddit)
Tonight in New York, revered graphic designer Milton Glaser (do a Google Images search if that name doesn’t ring a bell) will take part in a panel discussion with Mirko Ilic about the creation of powerful politically driven graphics. The event is hosted by Reality Sandwich creative director, Michael Robinson
This panel discussion features graphic design legend Milton Glaser and award winning designer/illustrator Mirko Ilic focusing on graphic design’s ability to convey how power is effectively used and distributed, and justice is fulfilled. Based upon Glaser and Mirko’s book The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics, the authors will discuss how today’s image makers and corporate shamans can use design to create the more beautiful and just world we all know is possible.
This event is co-sponsored with Evolver/Reality Sandwich. Hopefully they’ll put a videotape of the discussion online soon.
Thursday, January 26, 8–10pm at The Open Center, 22 E. 30th St., NY
Below, a delightful portrait of Milton Glaser by Hillman Curtis:
Milton Glaser’s Graphic Influence: 14 Iconic Images (Fast Company)