Here you’ll find William Burroughs having dinner with Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger; Grace Slick and Janis Joplin playing-up for the camera; and the usual suspects backstage at concerts. There are also a couple of fun video clips, including a chat-show meeting between Alfred Hitchcock and James Brown. It’s a bit like Us or Hello! Magazine with a degree in Pop Culture, and you can see more here.
The Weather Channel has contrasted images, from Google Earth with those just released by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to show the horrific devastation in Joplin, Mo., before and after it was devastated by an EF5 tornado, which ripped through the town with winds of more than 200mph.
In response to an outbreak of horse herpes virus, the Rodeo Queens of Farmington, Utah demonstrate American ingenuity and can-do spirit by substituting phony ponies for horses and gain valuable experience in riding the stick.
Because of the outbreak, contestants at the Davis County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse Junior Queen Contest had to cowgirl up Thursday night without their mares.
Instead of competing on horses, as is typically the case, contestants were asked to trot around the arena with stick horses as their show ponies.
One rodeo queen, Savanna Steed, looked at the bright side:
“It will give you experience for if you happen to have a problem like this later in life,” Steed said with a smile. “You already have the experience of riding a stick horse!”
Poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron died today at the age of 62. Cause of death is unknown at this time. As an artist, teacher and thinker, his influence was massive.
According to his publisher, Gil Scott died in a New York City hospital, after falling ill upon returning from a trip to Europe. A rep for his label XL Recordings also confirmed the news of Gil Scott’s passing.
Gil Scott-Heron was one of the most revered and influential spoken word/political artists of the 1970’s, mixing percussion with spoken word performances. The hit single “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and numerous other tracks from Gil Scott’s catalog heavily influenced the genre of Hip-Hop music.
His works have been sampled by a number of artists, including Kanye West, Common, The Game, Tupac Shakur and others.
The countdown intro of Gil Scott-Heron’s song “The Bottle” has been sampled numerous times as well.
Additionally, Gil Scott released a number of influential albums with musician Brian Jackson, including critically acclaimed releases like Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, Pieces of A Man, Winter in America and From South Carolina to South Africa.
Gil Scott-Heron released his last album, I Am New Here, in 2010.
A variety of rappers eulogized Gil Scott via Twitter upon hearing the news of Gil Scott-Heron’s passing.
“RIP Gil Scott-Heron,” Eminem tweeted. “He influenced All of hip-hop.”
“RIP GSH,,and we do what we do and who we do because of you” Chuck D. said. “And to those that don’t know, tip your hat with a hand over your heart & recognize.”
The news was especially shocking for Slim Thug, who recently released a video that features Gil Scott-Heron singing on the hook.
“That’s crazy my album came out last year that got Gil Scott-Heron on the hook and today he passed.”
This interview with Gil Scott-Heron conducted a year ago by Hungarian art organization Mediawave is one of the last documents we have on the man and his music. It’s a loosely structured video interspersed with live concert footage shot in Budapest. Scott-Heron, in a casual mood, discusses his legacy and his on-going plans to share his art one day and one country at a time. He looks and sounds like a man still very engaged with life.
Literally Unbelievable collects stories from The Onion as interpreted on Facebook by people, who, as source of all things interesting, Laughton Sebastian Melmoth points out, “think ‘satire’ means ‘not sat there’”.
The site is curated by Hudson Hongo, who is a contributor to McSweeney’s, The Morning News and The Bygone Bureau.
To coincide with his appearance at this year’s Hay Festival, in Wales, film director, writer, stand-up comic, artist and all-round-good-guy, John Waters has compiled a list of “10 things every role model needs”:
1. History. You can’t have a one-night-stand role model. No one can become a role model in 24 hours. It helps a lot if you knew them when you were young, so they sort of grow or fester with you, like Johnny Mathis was for me.
2 Be extreme: all my role models have to be. They have to be braver than I’ve ever been. Even to survive success is hard, no matter if it’s widespread success like Johnny Mathis had, or Bobby Boris Pickett, who his whole life just had to sing one song [The Monster Mash]. Today too many people are trying hard to be extreme. For the people I admire it was natural, and they turned it into art.
3 Style. You can have bad style, but you have to have some style. That’s why I wrote about Rei Kawakubo, who reinvented fashion to be damaged and to be everything you hoped it was not when you bought an outfit. And she quadrupled the price. That’s a magic trick.
4 Be alarming – I think that’s important. And it’s different from being shocking. Alarming threatens the very core of your existence, it doesn’t just shock you – but you don’t know why it makes you nervous at first. You know, St Catherine of Siena drank pus for God. That was important to me because I thought: I want to be her, I don’t want to be half-assed! If I was going to be a Catholic, it would have been before the Reformation.
5 Humour. It’s very important to be well-read, but I never understand why people are so sure their partners have to be smart. What kind of smart do they mean? I’m not interested in talking about literature in bed! I like people who can make me laugh. Humour gets you laid, humour gets you hired, humour gets you through life. You don’t get beat up if you can make the person that’s going to beat you up laugh first.
6 Be a troublemaker. All art is troublemaking, because why go through all the trouble of making it if you don’t cause a little stir?
7 Bohemianism. Bohemia saved my life. And by bohemia I mean all sexualities mixed together, and people who do what they do not to get rich – freedom from suburbia. People who want to fit in but don’t are losers. Bohemians are people who don’t fit in because they don’t want to.
8 Originality. Someone unique like Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, is an easy role model to have. She could fit into any of these categories – her outfit looked like Comme des Garçons, and anybody who could scare children like that… The problem was, I wanted to be her. And as I turn 65, that has sort of come true.
9 Neuroses. I think it helps to be neurotic. Neurotic people always end up being in the arts. If your kid fits in while in high school they’re going to be a dull adult. I still see a few people I went to high school with, but the other ones, when they come up to me I say: “I’m sorry, I took LSD, I don’t remember you.” It works, because then they aren’t offended personally. It’s really just manners.
10 Be a little bit insane. That’s different from neurotic. You can stay home and be neurotic. You have to go out to be insane. You can be a little bit of both, but both need to be joyous. As long as you can find a moment of joy in even your worst behaviour, it’s something to be thankful for.
John Waters will be discussing his book Role Models on Saturday at the Hay Festival at 8.30p, details here.
Seen here looking like “a cross between a human blackened spoon and Count Dracula,” in the memorable words of Nick Kent, the human riff himself is interviewed on Australian television in 1973
Topics include “the Blues,” Satan, the then-unreleased Rock and Roll Circus TV special and he’s got a few well-chosen words for John Lennon. I thought this was an especially good Keith interview.
Ha-ha, I always knew this would eventually happen. It was only a matter of time…
Christian voters must choose: Ayn Rand or Jesus.
GOP leaders and conservative pundits have brought upon themselves a crisis of values. Many who for years have been the loudest voices invoking the language of faith and moral values are now praising the atheist philosopher Ayn Rand whose teachings stand in direct contradiction to the Bible. Rand advocates a law of selfishness over love and commands her followers to think only of themselves, not others. She said her followers had to choose between Jesus and her teachings.
GOP leaders want to argue that they are defending Christian principles. But, at the same time, Rep. Paul Ryan (author of the GOP budget) is posting facebook videos praising Rand’s morality and saying hers is the “kind of thinking that is sorely needed right now.” Simply put, Paul Ryan can’t have it both ways, and neither can Christians. As conservative evangelical icon Chuck Colson recently stated, Christians can not support Rand’s philosophy and Christ’s teachings. The choice is simple: Ayn Rand or Jesus Christ. We must choose one and forsake the other.
The Republican Party IS in the grips of a long-dead, fanatically anti-Christian cult leader. Straight up, I’d have to say that this message is on point. (I might add that it was Ayn Rand more than ANY other figure who caused me to “lose my religion” when I was a pre-teen. This is about the ONLY good thing that came of my brief junior high school infatuation with Ayn Rand’s books.)
The far-right cultural warriors are turning on each other! Fantastic!
Ayn Rand on why the Christian Message is “Monstrous” and Christ’s Teachings are “Evil” (American Values Network)
With my rudimentary high school French, I’m not entirely sure what this is all about, but I think it’s something about your kid being too stupid, so turn them into a broom?
