They say that there is no such thing as bad press, but when your publicist is getting called out for how inept they are, it’s hardy something that can be reclassified as a media triumph is it? A shitty publicist only has one function and that is to make the individual or company that hired them look poorly. It’s what you might call “counter intuitive” to have a bungler handle your PR. The public questions your judgment for hiring them.
I mean, hey, if making you look like a fucking idiot is what you’re paying them for, then you win, I suppose… but get a load of the preposterously self-defeating tauntstweets that Sarah Palin’s “cyber messenger” prodigy, Rebecca Mansour, came up with. This is the best media strategy money can buy? [Note to Mrs. Palin, I’ll take over your Twitter feed and Facebook FOR FREE! Email me, let’s talk!]
You’ll get more with sugar, than you will with shit, as my mother used to say, but if all Mansour has on offer for the media is the same two-day old bread, what should be expected of them? People are getting really bored with Sarah Palin. I know I am. I can barely be bothered to read about her anymore, let alone write something snarky. She burned out way faster than I thought she would. Her shtick has just gotten too damned repetitive (and predictable) lately to be able to squeeze any humor out of it. Everything there is to be said about her has already been said a hundred million times.
Wolf Stephenson stands in what is left of the legendary Malaco Records.
Severe storms and a series of tornadoes has plagued the Midwest and Southern states throughout April. One of the casualties of the violent weather is the legendary blues and soul label Malaco Records in Jackson, Mississippi. It was crushed by a tornado on April 15.
You can read about Malaco Records, “The Last Soul Company,” and its formidable history at their website.
Malaco Records’ flamingo-pink main office was one of the few buildings in the area when it opened in 1967 on the west end of Jackson’s Northside Drive.
“We were practically out in the country,” said Wolf Stephenson, vice president and chief engineer. “I can remember all of us sitting out in the parking lot in the wee hours of the morning, eating watermelon and listening full blast to the song mixes we were working on at the time. We wanted to see how they sounded away from the speakers.”
Stephenson, 67, managed to chuckle at the memory Monday afternoon, a few seconds of escape from the grim reality brought on by Friday’s tornado that ravaged parts of Clinton and northwest Jackson, injuring seven and causing major damage to numerous homes and businesses.
The twister didn’t spare Malaco, which has produced its share of music history. It destroyed the accounting building and shipping warehouse. The main building, which housed executive offices and the legendary recording studio, was pummeled.
There were some bits of good news: Approximately 20 employees who were at work when the storm struck escaped injury. Couch and Stephenson said they plan to rebuild. And Malaco’s thousands of precious master tapes weathered the storm in a vault-type building made of concrete blocks and supported by reinforced steel.
The recording studio was dark and dank Monday. A grand piano and a Hammond B3 organ were barely visible, buried in debris. The sound of music was replaced by the flapping of a blue tarp, serving as a temporary roof. Pieces of the wood tile floor were scattered about. Amplifiers and microphones looked soulless and lonely.
Hits were born in this room. Among them: Jean Knight’s 1971 No. 1 single, Mr. Big Stuff; King Floyd’s Groove Me, which went to No. 1 on the R&B chart; and Dorothy Moore’s 1976 classic, Misty Blue. Paul Simon recorded Learn How to Fall here. It appeared on his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, which earned two Grammy nominations.”
Here’s a link to a Malaco Records video mix courtesy of The CW Austin. Click here and scroll down the page for the mix.
The Malaco Records story aired on WAPT in Jackson, Mississippi in 1999.
Admire if you will the stark, utilitarian design of these paper products from yesteryear. Bound for the dustbin by design, these were easily ignored then and total eye candy now.
Candy Darling, still looking beautiful on her deathbed.
A few weeks ago I posted an article on DM that used the word “tranny,” and which sparked some debate in the comments section. The use of the word is a hot topic in the LGBT community at the moment, after the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) made a statement criticizing Glee over their use of “tranny” in their Rocky Horror Picture Show episode. Susan Sarandon, star of Rocky Horror lest we forget, in turn made a statement criticizing GLAAD, saying they were getting out of control.
Even though my article used the term “queen” wrongly, I asked Elizabeth Veldon (the commentator who called me out) to write a guest editorial for us on the how the word should be used. Here it is:
Recently Dangerous Minds ran an article on a film called Ticked Of Trannies With Knives and it led to a debate on the page over the use of language. No, let’s rephrase that: it led to an all out cyber-brawl with much swearing and pissyness.
First things first: In my opinion, calling a Gender Variant Person (possibly the only non-offensive term I can think off) a “tranny” is no better than calling a Jewish person a “kike” or a black person by the “N word.” Indeed a Jewish Gender Variant friend of mine often suffered combined “kike” and “tranny” abuse and I myself have been “accused” of being Jewish when wearing a black suit on a Saturday. Are transgendered citizens all part of some Zionist conspiracy? Sometimes I wonder…
“Tranny” has its roots in drag performances, which is a fine and upstanding tradition, but not one Gender Variant People, on the whole, wish to aspire to. In fact Gender Variant People are not drag queens, drag kings, cross dressers (god bless ‘em), “poofs” who have gone too far or dykes who couldn’t cope with it and became men. Neither are we defenders of patriarchy, oppressors of women or a drag on the queer scene.
Gender Variant People should be of interest to radicals and liberals everywhere damned as we are to suffer violence, constant discrimination and to have our very bodies commandeered by systems of power beyond our control. But we have been left behind, labeled “trannies” (or worse), and left to the tender mercies of a medical establishments that insist we label ourselves as mentally ill before we are “allowed” to carry out body modification surgery (should we wish to). We are most certainly not mentally unstable crazies muttering over knives in our unheated bed sits.
Genderphobes take ownership of our deaths, medics of our bodies, “queer theorists” of our Identities and anything we have left is destroyed by the catch all term of abuse “tranny.”
So what should you say when you meet a “tranny”? What name should you use? The first problem is that you shouldn’t need a name, or a catch all term for other people. The desire to name, as Adam named the animals, and the name he gave them became their name, is to the desire to determine the nature of a thing. Why not ask? Some people are “transpeople,” some transexuals, some “gender trash,” some “gender queer,” some queer, some gay, lesbian, butch, femme. Just ask.
Finally in response to Isrial Luma [director of TOTWK] I offer a new vision of revenge – not ticked off trannies with knives but Diamanda Galas’s “Wild Women With Steak Knives” (with an apology to the guys I know):
Overly earnest young man gets down to the nitty-gritty of “Satanic” rock music in this clip from 1982’s Rock: It’s Your Decision. I like the parts where he’s offering his idiotic Christian exegesis on Barry Manilow and Eagle’s lyrics.
Bonus” “Satan is Real” by the Louvin Brothers. That’s country legend Chet Atkins on guitar.
Jason Williams, a.k.a. Revok, one of the best known graffiti artists in Los Angeles, was taken into custody Thursday at LAX as he prepared to board a plane bound for Ireland. The arrest was for an outstanding warrant he had failed to pay restitution on.
WIlliams is a member of the Mad Society Kings, or MSK, graffiti crew. He is being held in the Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $320,000 bail, according to the Los Angeles Times.
I was driving through Thrall, Texas today and spotted a garden of dead cars on the side of the road. I had to film it.
The Garden Of Dead Cars is not some splashy experimental film. You may find it boring. I found it accidentally. I merely filmed what I saw. And what I saw was the shadows of leaves playing against rusted and decaying cars. It was a breezy day and the shadows were excited. What I also saw was the metal of the cars eroding and oxidizing and taking on the appearance of planet Earth viewed from deep space, hoods and door panels looking like continents adrift in massive oceans, jutting walls of monolithic desert mesas and craggy, desolate mountain ranges or topographical maps of lunar landscapes.
As I looked intently at what I was filming, I realized that even the automobile has a body that is organic and that the elements will work upon that body until a Chevrolet or Ford becomes dirt, mineral and dust. All highways lead to the all-forgiving cunt of Earth to be ground into some essential molecular construct that will generate new forms, new life. In the extreme long run, not even cars die. Carma.
The video’s audio is what was going on around me: wind, birds, and the occasional sound of a car or motorcycle revving its engine, calling out to their dead brothers.
In these images I see our past but also our future.
