A few days ago, I posted here about disco singer Monti Rock III, the first queen I ever saw on TV when I was a kid, and I mentioned that he had not really crossed my mind in a very long time… then coincidentally, yesterday, Robert Coddington, Nelson Sullivan’s archivist (who I wrote about here), gave me a copy of a short film by D.A. Pennebaker titled You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You. Who should turn up in this obscurity? Well, Monti Rock III, that’s who, then working as a celebrity hair stylist (he did the bridal party’s hair). A young Richard Alpert (AKA Ram Dass) and jazz great Charles Mingus also turn up in the film.

And Mrs. TImothy Leary? Well, after divorcing the High Priest of LSD—their marriage lasted about a year—the high fashion model then known as Nena von Schlebrügge married Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman. Their daughter, actress Uma Thurman, was born in 1970.

Here’s how Pennebaker describes the Leary nuptials:

This movie is something of a mystery. Timothy Leary was getting married to a model named Nena Von Schlebrugge up in Millbrook, New York at the Hitchcock house, where Leary had been carrying on his hallucinogenic revelries for the past year or so after leaving Harvard. It was rumored that this was going to be the wedding of the season, the wedding of Mr. And Mrs. Swing as Cab Calloway put it.  Blackwood took me downtown to meet Monte Rock III who was singing at Trudy Heller’s but who was also a very pricey and off-the-wall hairdresser and was in fact going to be doing the bride’s hair.  Nena’s brother, Bjorn, known as the “Baron” was a friend of the Hitchcock’s, as was I, and the idea of going along and filming the wedding seemed not unwarranted. I’ve always wanted to film someone getting married.

So we drove up in Monte Rock’s ancient Buick, Diane Arbus, an editor from Vogue whose name I can no longer remember, and of course Monte Rock, his fingers covered in rings. Close behind, Proferes and Desmond filmed us as we drove, up the Taconic and through the gates of the Hitchcock mansion.

There were Hitchcocks and friends and relations of Hitchcocks, the Baron and his court, a score of models, and Charles Mingus playing a lonely piano. Even Susan Leary fresh out of jail.  It was indeed an amazing wedding, and for all I know, an amazing marriage, although someone later told me it was over before I’d even finished editing the film.

After Nena divorced Leary she married a Tibetan scholar, Dr. Robert Thurman and her daughter Uma is Uma the actress.  Dick Alpert became his own guru, Baba Ram Dass and achieved a sainthood of his own.  Monte Rock III left Trudy Heller’s and went out to Hollywood and became famous for his line in the John Travolta movie, Saturday Night Fever, when as the disco DJ he exclaims, “I love that polyester look.” Charles Mingus got thrown out of his loft and sadly perished, and in time the Hitchcock house itself burned down, or so I’ve been told.  The mystery is that we never filmed anyone actually getting married.

D A Pennebaker, 1964, 12 min., b&w

 
Part II after the jump…

 
Derek Jarman films artist Duggie Fields at home, in this rare Super-8 footage from 1975.

Jarman was an artist before he started his film career as a production designer on Ken Russell’s masterpiece The Devils. Jarman designed the now legendary, pristine white-tiled city of Loudon for the film. The design was inspired by Aldous Huxley’s description of the interrogation of the possessed nuns, taken from his novel The Devils of Loudon, as like “a rape in a public toilet.”

Working on The Devils proved a turning point for Jarman, as he discovered the medium through which to best express his artistic vision. From 1970 onwards, he experimented with a Super-8 camera, filming his friends in short home-made movies, which later provided him with a visual lexicon for his films.

At Home with artist Duggie Fields (1975) is more in the style of Kenneth Anger, than Russell, for as Jarman once told me:

I learnt how not to make films from Ken Russell; and how to make them from Kenneth Anger

 
Or maybe not…

“No man knows he is young while he is young.” - Gilbert K. Chesterton

(via The High Definite)

 
Andrew Shirvell, the asshat Assistant Attorney General in Michigan who made headlines this week for his cyber-bullying of Chris Armstrong, a gay student body president at the University of Michigan, actually has a history of being outspoken about his anti-homosexual views. This man needs to be medicated.

Read all about it in this July 18, 2005 article titled “Gay pride sticker sparks controversy at pizzeria” from The Michigan Daily:

Members of a local student-oriented Catholic parish received an e-mail last week urging them to boycott the New York Pizza Depot on East William Street because of a gay pride rainbow sicker on its front door.

The sticker has upset some people, including Andrew Shirvell, an NYPD customer and member of St. Mary’s Student Parish, located down the street from NYPD.

Shirvell, a University alumnus and former president of Students for Life, said the sticker is offensive because it endorses homosexuality instead of simply tolerating it.

“I find the rainbow flag offensive because it is a symbol of the homosexual movement that, in my opinion, indicates a validation of the homosexual lifestyle, as opposed to a sign that indicates ‘openness’ to customers who are of the homosexual orientation,” he said.

Jaya Kalra, a co-chair for Stonewall Democrats, said that it was very surprising that a parishioner reacted so strongly to the sticker, especially because she knows that St. Mary’s has been supportive in the past.

Actually, it’s not all that surprising coming from Mr. Shirvell is it? Have you seen him? You hardly have to be Nostradomus to see where this one is headed… Cue the inevitable Funny or Die parody clip with Paul Reubens playing Shirvell!

Shirvell said he does not speak on behalf of the St. Mary’s church or parish, but that he does think it is necessary for them to know that this has occurred.

“I was solely acting in my capacity as a parishioner of St. Mary’s in communicating to my fellow parishioners what was going on, again, since many St. Mary’s parishioners frequent NYPD after weekend masses,” Shirvell said. “In my e-mail, I in no way indicated that I spoke on behalf of the parish or any of its ministries, including the Student Social Justice group.”

Timothy Wright, operations director and pastoral associate for St. Mary’s Student Parish, said St. Mary’s does not discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Catholics.

Wright said that Shirvell does not have any official status as a spokesman for the church and that Shirvell’s view on this matter is in opposition to the majority of the parish.

Wright added that of the people he had spoken to about Shirvell’s statements, he could not find many who agreed with him.

“Most of the people — at least of the people I’m at work with — more were outraged and indignant about (Shirvell’s) posture than (the sticker itself),” he said.

After watching Shirvell’s boss, Mike Cox, defend this creep on Anderson Cooper’s show last night, the thought that occurred to me is how Shirvell is undoubtedly harming his chances for gainful future employment. Clearly the guy would be a total liability for any professional law firm to take on. This excercise in hatred, intolerence and utterly pathetic childishness will follow this idiot for HIS ENTIRE CAREER. Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm wants him fired. Everytime someone will google this fool for the rest of his life, what is going to come up about him? Who would hire him after a single Google search? And he seems OBLIVIOUS to how stupid he looks. What a trainwreck this dude is.

Then again, maybe there is a niche market in Michigan for criminal defense lawyers for homophobes and cyber-bullies? He’s their advocate!

And in a related story, there were four suicides of gay teens this week...

 
Meh. If he sang on it, it might have been something. As the man himself has stated: Anyone with some free software can make noisy/interesting post-rock soundscapes these days but there is no software for writing lyrics and human vocals (yet). That takes time and effort; something Herr Eno has evidently decided not to invest in this record. Too bad, as that would most certainly have taken this promising track from just OK to great.
 

Brian Eno - 2 Forms Of Anger (taken from Small Craft On A Milk Sea) by Warp Records
 
Buy Brian Eno’s new album Small Craft on a Milk Sea

 
Today is Marc Bolan’s birthday. The father of glam rock would have been 63 today if he was still among us.

Below, the complete footage of Bolan’s interview on the Russell Harty Plus television program. Might be the best interview I’ve ever seen with him. At the end he says “I don’t think I will live that long.”
 

 
If it’s not the Large Hadron Collider causing a black hole to form, sucking up our universe into dark matter, then it’s something else. Sometimes the supposed “elegance” of modern physics just crawls up its own ass, don’t you think? The end of time is a bloody long ways off, in any case. Sez me.

Look out into space and the signs are plain to see. The universe began in a Big Bang event some 13 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. And the best evidence from the distance reaches of the cosmos is that this expansion is accelerating.

That has an important but unavoidable consequence: it means the universe will expand forever. And a universe that expands forever is infinite and eternal.

Today, a group of physicists rebel against this idea. They say an infinitely expanding universe cannot be so because the laws of physics do not work in an infinite cosmos. For these laws to make any sense, the universe must end, say Raphael Bousso at the University of California, Berkeley and few pals. And they have calculated when that is most likely to happen.

Their argument is deceptively simple and surprisingly powerful. Here’s how it goes. If the universe lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, no matter how unlikely. In fact, this event will happen an infinite number of times.

This leads to a problem. When there are an infinite number of instances of every possible observation, it becomes impossible to determine the probabilities of any of these events occurring. And when that happens, the laws of physics simply don’t apply. They just break down. “This is known as the “measure problem” of eternal inflation,” say Bousso and buddies.

In effect, these guys are saying that the laws of physics abhor an eternal universe.

The only way out of this conundrum is to hypothesise some kind of catastrophe that brings an end to the universe. Then all the probabilities make sense again and the laws of physics regain their power.

Read more of Time Likely To End Within Earth’s Lifespan, Say Physicists (MIT Technology Revew)

 
Oh the horror! There’s ‘honey nuts’, too!  From Cincinnati’s WCPO:

READING, Ohio - A family in suburban Cincinnati found a shocking mistake on a box of cereal created for Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco. An 800 number provided for a charity directed them to a sex hotline.

The number printed on the box of “Ochocinc’O’s” is suppose to send callers to the charity “Feed The Children”. Instead, callers hear a sultry voice offering an adult conversation.

Thanks, Laura C!

Hamburgers = Heroin!

A commercial made to raise awareness in a current social epidemic and to draw attention to those whom the artists believe are most responsible in a bid to drive discussion and action to reverse the downward trend.

(via TDW)

 
British funnyman David Mitchell, one half of the Mitchell & Webb comedy duo, co-star of Peep Show, quiz show host and the UK’s answer to Andy Rooney (albeit 100 years younger, not senile and actually funny) was pictured ducking into a pizza pie with extreme gusto recently. Next thing you know, a Tumblr blog devoted to David Mitchell with pizza pops up and a brand new Internet meme is born…
 

 

 

 

 

 
More at David Mitchell With Pizza