Engrossing story in today’s New York Times that’s as moving as it is revealing. Michael Graczyk, an AP reporter on the death row beat in, of course, Texas has covered, since the ‘80s, every single execution the state has carried out. That seems creepy enough, but, in this age of media downsizing, Graczyk has become the only person at these events “who doesn?
Andy Diaz Hope’s artwork entitled Morning After Portraits are made by using gel capsules. Andy says, ?
Torchwood star John Barrowman is currently appearing on the West End stage in full drag in a production of La Cage aux Folles.
I have to say this getup is rather in better taste than the dreadfully gauche Ed Hardy t-shirt I saw him wearing at the San Diego Comic Con while charging $20 for autographs.
Torchwood star John Barrowman releases his inner diva as he takes to the West End stage as a drag queen.
The actor is barely recogniseable as he dons several revealing dresses to play Zara in comedy La Cage Aux Folles.
Following in the footsteps of Jason Donovan and Brian Conley who took on similar roles in Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Hairspray, Barrowman is said to have slipped into the part with ease, delighting audiences.
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Oh, to have been a fly on the wall Monday when L.A. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley got the dual bad news—well, bad news for them at least—about the U.S. Justice Department’s memo regarding marijuana policy and the California Superior Court’s injunction, which bans enforcement of the city’s moratorium on cannabis dispensaries, issued that same day.
Employees of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles have been showing up for work daily for the last few weeks fearing imminent police raids and participating in “raid drill” workshops, but these nerve-wracking preparations were for naught in the wake of the court’s injunction and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.‘s statement when he released the new guidelines. ?
Wow did this story get even weirder (as if that were possible). Turns out the whole hoax was a ruse, not merely for Richard Heene to become more famous—as we all know, he got that particular wish in spades but probably not in the manner he intended—but also for Heene to become a celebrity for a higher purpose: to warn the world about the “reptilian agenda” and the 2012 “apocalypse.”
Apparently, Heene fancies himself the Yankee version of conspiracy theorist David Icke, the former U.K. footballer and sportscaster who infamously declared himself the “son of God” in a televised interview with talk-show host Sir Terry Wogan in 1991. Icke is the author of 20 books with titles like “And the Truth Shall Set You Free,” “The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World” and “Children of the Matrix.” Icke’s agenda—and now Heene’s, too, it would seem—is to expose the global elite who control us all.
In Britain, Icke is a walking punch line. His zany conspiracy theories include what he terms the “pyramid of manipulation” a hierarchical ranking of crime bosses, bankers, the military, members of the mainstream media, politicians, etc., etc. These nefarious elites want to keep us enslaved, Icke says, and are controlled themselves by shape-shifting extraterrestrial “reptilian beings” at the top of the pyramid, who include the British royal family, the Bush family, actor-musician Kris Kristofferson, beloved hobo country-and-western singer Boxcar Willie and others. The “prison warders,” as Icke calls them, are from the constellation Draco and are hybrid crossbreeds of human and reptile. These reptilian beings appear to be fully human when they drink human blood.
If this sounds suspiciously like the “V” sci-fi television miniseries, it should, because that’s where Icke cribbed it from.
In an interview on Gawker with Robert Thomas, the “researcher” who helped Heene cook up his PR scheme gone wrong, Thomas discussed Heene’s (apparent) true intentions:
But he was motivated by theories I thought were far-fetched. Like Reptilians—the idea there are alien beings that walk among us and are shape shifters, able to resemble human beings and running the upper echelon of our government. Somehow a secret government has covered all this up since the U.S. was established, and the only way to get the truth out there was to use the mainstream media to raise Richard to a status of celebrity, so he could communicate with the masses.
As the weeks progressed, his theories got more and more extreme and paranoid. A lot of it surrounded 2012, and the possibility of there being an apocalyptic moment. Richard likes to talk a lot about the possibility of the Sun erupting in a large-scale solar flare that wipes out the Earth. It got to the point where he was really pressing me, saying we’re running out of time, we’re running out of time, the end of the world is coming. And we have to take necessary precautions to make sure that we’re not among the majority that’s going to be killed.
Here is Icke returning to Wogan’s TV program several years after his original “son of God” announcement. The cutaways to Sir Terry’s perplexed face during the interview are priceless:
Cross posting this on Brand X
From photographer Alan Jaras (or Reciprocity on Flickr):
These are light refraction patterns or ‘caustics’ formed by a white light beam passing through shaped and textured transparent forms. The pattern is captured directly on to 35mm film by removing the camera lens and putting the transparent object(s) in its place. Colours are introduced by placing complex coloured optical filters directly in the light beam.
The processed film is digitally scanned for uploading. Please note these are not computer generated images but a true analogue of the way light is refracted by the objects I create.
Check out an online archive of John Cage’s Indeterminacy stories here, and on YouTube below. Stereophile has this to say:
The idea behind Indeterminacy was, like many Cagean ideas, essentially simple and audaciously original. Cage read 90 stories, his speed determined by the story’s length. In another room, beyond earshot of Cage, David Tudor, pianist and veteran Cage collaborator, performed miscellaneous selections from Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra and played pre-recorded tape from Cage’s Fontana Mix. The resulting collaboration is an astounding piece of “music,” and a fine introduction to the innovations of John Cage. “A wonderfully curious way to hear stories.”
What if Kenneth Anger took a crack at William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies? It might look something like Clu Gulager‘s chilling meditation on boyhood—and manhood—A Day With The Boys. As Vice’s Ryan McGinley says of the short:
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Pedobear approves of this TV ad for the Oregon Children’s Theater Costume Sale. What were they thinking???
