“Boxxy” is some girl who posted this video to 4Chan and has apparently claimed the hearts of every nerd on that God-forsaken website. Watch this video and weep for the future of humanity, because in the future this is what ALL children will be like. This is what happens when kids are raised on the Internet and texting. This. This. THIS.
Now behold this: The “greatest” scene from the horrendous remake of the Wicker Man.
I heard about this venerable jam at Burning Man a couple years back. It’s undeniable. Just undeniable. I mean, how can you go wrong with a beat like THAT and lyrics like THIS:
The guys on the sidewalk
Workin’ it out,
Talkin’ ‘bout Menergy.Menergy…Menergy…Menergy…
The boys in the back room
Laughin’ it up,
Shootin’ off energy,
The guys in the street talk checkin’ you out,
Talkin’ ‘bout Menergy.
I laughed. Twice.
Cowley, a groundbreaking Hi-NRG producer was, sadly, one of the first victims of AIDS; his influence lived in 1980s dance acts like New Order and the Pet Shop Boys. You can hear that pretty clearly in this funky jam, which also stars the vocal stylings of Sylvester.
Cross posting this little gem from Brand X, where I also blog:
L.A. City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, who has been very open about his intentions to rein in the proliferation of medical marijuana clubs in L.A., came out last week with an entirely new complaint against the facilities. In an Oct. 9 appearance Fox News 11, he explained that a pesticide used to kill Mexican fire ants had been found on medical cannabis distributed by local dispensaries and is evidence that the weed is both potentially poisonous and possibly being supplied by Mexican drug cartels.
Having previously argued that any over-the-counter sale of marijuana is illegal in a controversial interpretation of the California Supreme Court?
I’ll bet this pint-sized, south of the border Marjoe Gortner wanna-be has a great future ahead of him as a first class fleecer of the faithful…
I am somebody who watches the price of gold rather closely—it’s actually the second thing I look at in the morning. We have no clocks in this house, so the first thing I do when I get out of bed is glance at the time in the corner of my computer, then click on the gold price widget on my desktop. When the price of gold wildly shoots upwards, it tends to mean that bad things are coming. But many times, such rocket-like fluctuation can be ascribed to group-think investor paranoia—or some barely justified Wall Street exuberance when gold drops in price—rather than any game-changing economic event. To be clear, I am very pro-gold, and think it’s a good solid investment, but I have watched it closely enough over the past few years to see the price drop even as the fundamentals of the economy got worse and worse. The opposite is supposed to happen. The price of gold does not change as “whimsically” as stock prices do, although gold is still most certainly subject to investor “moods”—moreso than any other commodity. That’s sort of the point, I suppose.
Lately gold has been on a bit of a tear with all of the doomsday “High Noon for the Dollar” type headlines and the rumors of China, Russia and the Arab states ending the US dollar’s almighty place in the scheme of “things” as the world’s reserve currency. (I’d wager Matt Drudge and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard must both have sizable gold holdings!).
Dangerous Minds pal Charles Hugh Smith presents a more nuanced view of the dollar’s fate at his Of Two Minds blog:
As the “news” continues to trumpet the decline/collapse of the U.S. dollar, many observers seem to have forgotten that the U.S. dollar is the defacto “shared currency” of the world’s largest economy and its biggest rising-star economy. Yes, the U.S. and the PRC—China. China’s currency (officially the renminbi, a.k.a. yuan) is transparently pegged to the U.S. dollar at about 6.8 yuan to the dollar, down from 8+ a few years ago.
Given that Japan is the world’s second-largest economy by most measures, and that the yen is informally pegged to the U.S. dollar (trading in a band of 90-110 yen for years on end), then it could be argued that the world’s three largest economies all “share” the U.S. dollar.
—snip—
Let’s establish the primary context of China’s leadership: 1 billion poor citizens seeking a better job/wage/life. Here is a puff piece by former U.K. prime Minister Tony Blair which makes one key point: most of China’s citizens are still very poor, and thus the leadership is obsessed with “growth” and jobs above all else: China’s New Cultural Revolution: The world’s largest country has a long way to go, but there’s no question it’s changing for the better. (WSJ.com)
Superficial stories about China are accompanied by glitzy photos of Shanghai skyscrapers and other scenes from the wealthy urban coastal cities, but the fact is that the consumer buying power of China is roughly equivalent to that of England (51 million residents).
Thus those who believe the vast Chinese manufacturing-export sector can suddenly direct its staggering output to domestic consumers in China are simply mistaken: Chinese consumption is perhaps a mere 1/10th of that needed to absorb the mighty flood of goods being produced by China.
Put yourself in the shoes of China’s leadership: what do you care about more: $2 trillion in U.S. bonds or creating jobs for 100 million people? It’s the jobs that matter, and despite its very public complaints about the slipping dollar, perhaps China doth protest too much—or more accurately, for domestic public consumption.
The consequences of a weakening dollar are neutral for Chinese exports to the U.S. but positive for exports to Japan and the European Union. Chinese exports to the EU and Japan have risen sharply in the past nine years, and a weak dollar keeps Chinese goods cheaper than rival exports in these key global markets.
Read More: The Forgotten Peg: Chinese Yuan and U.S. Dollar by Charles Hugh Smith
From one of the most notoriously alcoholic cultures on Earth comes this hilarious effort to curb binge drinking:
LONDON ?
Sad news as Brendan Mullen, founder of LA’s pioneering punk rock cub The Masque, passed away earlier today from a stroke. Here’s what Variety had to say about this absolutely essential Angeleno (by way of Scotland):
Mullen emigrated from London to Los Angeles in 1973. He created the Masque—a dank, soon graffiti-scarred 10,000-foot space at 1655 N. Cherokee, behind and beneath the Pussycat adult theater on Hollywood Boulevard—in June 1977 as a low-rent rehearsal space for local musicians. (Mullen himself played drums in his own punk lounge act, the Satintones.)
It quickly morphed into the principal performance venue for the city’s then-nascent punk scene, mounting its first show by the Skulls on Aug. 18, 1977. It served as a stage and a hangout for an honor roll of first-generation punk groups: the Germs, X, the Go-Go’s, the Screamers, the Flesh Eaters, the Weirdos, the Alleycats, the Plugz, the Bags.
The freewheeling Masque, where the charming and oft-acerbic Mullen hosted the proceedings, was a magnet for the antipathy of local merchants and daily scrutiny by police, fire, and licensing officials, and was soon cited by city authorities for various licensing violations.
Closed and reopened more than once, it moved to another space on Santa Monica Boulevard before shuttering permanently in February 1979.
Mullen is seen in the abandoned Cherokee Avenue club in W.T. Morgan’s 1986 documentary about X, “The Unheard Music.”
From 1981-92, Mullen booked shows at the Sunset Boulevard bar Club Lingerie. His diverse shows included sets by talent ranging from veteran R&B, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll acts to hip-hoppers and avant garde rockers. He also mounted dates at the downtown Variety Arts Center in the late ‘80s, and stage managed some of the L.A. Weekly’s music awards shows.
In recent years, Mullen prolifically chronicled the history of L.A. punk, and, not incidentally, his own role in the scene.
His books included “We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk” (2001, with Marc Spitz); “Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs” (2002, with Don Bolles and Adam Parfrey); and the photo history “Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley” (2007). He also authored the Jane’s Addiction oral history “Whores” (2005).
Mullen is survived by his longtime companion Kateri Butler.
Beyond the above clip from The Decline of Western Civilization, there’s not much of Mullen online, but, as a nod to his significance, there’s probably no better day than today to share as well my second favorite video of all time (after this one). It’s from The Unheard Music. In it, X rips through The Doors’ Soul Kitchen with some onstage help from Ray Manzarek.
Whatever your thoughts may be on Manzarek and The Doors (and believe me, my own thoughts on the matter have ranged wildly over the years), I return to this “torch-passing” clip over and over again. Sure, it reminds me that no matter how many times I saw X as a kid, it was still never enough—could never be enough.
But it also tethers me to a moment in LA time I was privileged enough to have witnessed up close (too close, sometimes, depending on the act and the stage).
A moment that felt, in clips like this one, intensely connected to some larger arc of history. Even on our most receptive days, those moments of connection to a place and time can be a hard thing to muster. Indirectly or not, Mr. Mullen provided me with some of mine.
My thoughts are with Kateri Butler and the family of Brendan Mullen.
Brendan Mullen In Swindle Magazine
Bonus: The Weirdos do Helium Bar
In Variety: Club Promoter Brendan Mullen Dies
In the LAT: Local Punk Champion, Masque Founder Brendan Mullen Dies
(with thanks to Ian Raikow)
Jarvis Cocker, Sheffield’s greatest son (after J. G. Ballard), has been awarded an honorary doctorate at Sheffield Hallam University. Quite a kudos after recently being an honorary BBC news presenter. I’m not sure what he’s teaching but I have a feeling his classes would be legendary or make you feel all pervy and wrong depending on what gender you were.
The NME reports:
Jarvis Cocker is to be awarded an honorary doctorate at Sheffield Hallam University this November.
Sheffield-born Cocker credits the establishment ?
Gorgeous images from California Carnivores. According to their website it is the ?