Last kitteh post… I swear! The final photo makes me a bit uncomfortable.

(via Nerdcore)

 
“Tony Rome” was Frank Sinatra’s hard-boiled detective alter-ego in two films, 1967’s Tony Rome and its 1968 sequel, The Lady in Cement. Bucking the trend of Bond and the sub-Bonds like Our Man Flint (with James Coburn) and the “Matt Helm” series starring his Rat Pack buddy, Dean Martin, the “Tony Rome” movies were much more noirish in their approach, although, natch, this being Ol’ Blue Eyes, there were silly, sexist and “in joke” elements aplenty in the films.

Sinatra was directed in both films by Gordon Douglas (who directed him in Robin and the 7 Hoods) and surrounded by A-list cast members Raquel Welch, Bonanza’s Dan Blocker, Jill St. John, Gena Rowlands and sexy Sue Lyon (who played the title role in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita).

I have always particularly liked the jaunty theme song to Tony Rome, written and produced by Lee Hazelwood and sung by Nancy Sinatra, you can hear it here.

Hugo Montenegro provided the groovy soundtrack to Lady in Cement, here’s the trailer:
 

 
So wrong.

(via reddit)

 
A mash-up long before the term was coined, “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island” by Little Roger and the Goosebumps came out briefly in 1978 but was quickly pulled from the market due to legal threats from Led Zeppelin’s attorneys. Ultimately it became known due to repeated plays on the Dr. Demento radio show. (I sheepishly confess to owning this 45. I’ve had it for at least 25 years and haven’t played it once since the day I bought it)
 

“I think I’m going to puke.”
 
Blowhard asshole Lee Siegel continues to thrash around in the low end of the journalistic cesspool with this utterly idiotic essay in the New York Times comparing the Beat Generation to the Tea Party movement.

The counterculture of the late 1950s and early 1960s appears to be everywhere these days. A major exhibition of Allen Ginsberg’s photography just closed at the National Gallery in Washington. A superb book, by the historian Sean Wilentz, about Ginsberg’s dear friend and sometime influence Bob Dylan recently made the best-seller list. “Howl,”  a film about Ginsberg and the Beats, opened last month. And everywhere around us, the streets and airwaves hum with attacks on government authority, celebrations of radical individualism, inflammatory rhetoric, political theatrics.
In other words, the spirit of Beat dissent is alive (though some might say not well) in the character of Tea Party protest. Like the Beats, the Tea Partiers are driven by that maddeningly contradictory principle, subject to countless interpretations, at the heart of all American protest movements: individual freedom. The shared DNA of American dissent might be one answer to the question of why the Tea Partiers, so extreme and even anachronistic in their opposition to any type of government, exert such an astounding appeal.

Comparing the sexy, druggy, life embracing, progressive culture of the beats to the fascistic, xenophobic, racist, fearful and life-negating Tea Party is absolutely absurd. It’s like comparing fucking to a case of serious blue balls.

The following comment by Siegel not only posits an idiotic argument, it’s morally disgusting:

the Tea Partiers’ unnerving habit of bringing guns to town-hall meetings would have repelled the Beats. But William S. Burroughs fetishized guns, accidentally killing his wife while trying to shoot a glass off her head. Violence, implicit or explicit, comes with the “beaten” state of mind. So does theatricality, since playing roles — and manipulating symbols — is often the first resort of people who do not feel acknowledged for being who they really are.

What the fuck does Burroughs’ wife’s death have to with “manipulating symbols” or some kind of identity crisis?

Read the entire steaming pile of bullshit here.

 
Ron Paul goes psycho on Morton Downey Jr.‘s nutzoid TV show. Guardian Angel Lisa Sliwa, rocker Otto Von Ruggins and yippie Dana Beal ramp up the frenzy.

Paul’s an asshole, but I do agree with him on legalizing drugs.
 

 
Part 2 after the jump…

 
Fluxlasers created this game level based on Cremaster 1 by Matthew Barney using Little Big Planet on a PlayStation 3.
 

 
In 1989, Jeff Koons put up a billboard (pictured above) on the corner of 3rd Avenue and 7th Street (or was it 6th St?) in New York’s East Village, of himself and his then-wife, pornstar/politician, Cicciolina, in a naked embrace. The billboard read “Made in Heaven” and indeed, the couple, who may or may not have been copulating in the photo—I’d vote “yes”—were set against a kitschy “heavenly” background.

To say it was a striking (and somewhat confusing) artistic message to see that large on a billboard is an understatement, but I recall thinking at the time that Koons was a lucky, lucky man (his post-divorce child-custody travails with his soon to be ex-wife, had not yet occurred, obviously). There may have been other billboards like it, but I walked past this particular one on a daily basis going to and from the subway and my apartment on Avenue A and 7th. It was there for quite a long time, too.

The “Made in Heaven” show at the Sonnebend Gallery (back when Soho still had art galleries instead of Banana Republic and Pottery Barn stores) featured several similar large paintings depicting Koons and Cicciolina in various positions out of the Kama Sutra. There were also porcelain statues and glass sculptures of the couple “doing it.” The show was a scandalous success—was it art or pornography?—and saw Japanese tourists, eurotrash and curious onlookers fill the gallery day after day.

Now the “Made in Heaven” work is being presented again—it’s the first exhibit of this work in nearly 20 years—at Luxembourg & Dayan gallery in New York, from October 6, 2010 - January 21, 2011.

Below, an interview with Jeff Koons.
 

 
In the video below, an Indian sadhu accuses Monsanto chemicals of polluting India, resulting in the growth of large vegetables with no “power” (nutrition).

Illegal genetic modification experiments have been going on across India with the complicity of the Indian Government. Over an estimated 125,000 farmers have committed suicide as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops. But, India’s farmers are fighting back:

“We send today, a very clear message to all those who have invested in Monsanto in India and abroad; take your money out now, before we reduce it to ashes”.
Karnataka State Farmers Association, India

Read about the farmers struggle here.

Read about Monsanto’s mission to create and own the planet’s food here.
 

 
Operation Black Storm is coming and they’re going to like… take back their (ours?) country from Hitler and Stalin and LBJ and Jimmy Carter and Obama and shit. I thought only idiotic white people went for this kind of thing, apparently not!

You’ll keep waiting for the punchline, but there is none.

Via Right WIng Watch/Thank you Christian Nightmares!