High diving horses were a regular attraction in Atlantic City in the 1920s. On one hand, it’s a shame that television and the Internet have “saved” us from weird entertainment like this. On the other hand, it’s really not. Oh for an America where you could watch horses getting flung off diving boards while noshing funnel cake.
Nowadays, this whole bag of nonsense strikes me as punk rock meme-reworkable a la pirates, ninjas, unicorns. Sadly, no video remains.
Frank Herbert fans rejoice—with stillsuit-filtered water, of course! In case the total desertification of our planet comes about sooner than later, maybe we can all just downshift into Dune-mode?
Dune has been called the ?
Thomas Pynchon has suggested a rainbow’s true shape is not parabolic, but circular. Well, thanks to this photo taken from the window of a Thai Airways jet, we now have some documentation:
The picture shows the ring-shaped spectrum against a backdrop of cumulocirrus clouds. Rainbows are formed when sunlight strikes the curved inside of a raindrop at a specific angle and is reflected back through the water, creating a prism effect. The apparent semicircle of a normal rainbow is only limited by the horizon. The full circle could be seen if the viewer were standing on a sufficiently high cliff, although it is more easily seen from aircraft.
Rainbows are long said to have had a profound religious and mythological significance. Before they were explained scientifically, they were described in the Bible as a symbol of God?
Artist and political activist, John Douglas’ Homeland Security work is a chilling series of provocative photographs taken of the artist himself holding M16s naked and then duplicated on a computer. Sporting an M16 and nothing else, Douglas becomes a ?
I have a short article in the Calendar section of today’s Los Angeles Times. It was clear to me when I read what my editor there, Dean Kuipers, added to my original draft that he, too, was a big Firesign Theater fan:
The Library of Congress called the Firesign Theatre “the Beatles of Comedy” when its 1970 album “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers” was selected for the National Recording Registry.
An apt comparison, considering that, along with contemporaries Monty Python in Britain, the searing and psychedelic satirical troupe helped invent a literary brand of album comedy that lodged itself in the culture of college students across the country. The group paved the way for later arrivals such as Cheech & Chong, “Saturday Night Live” and Second City.
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of one of its most popular characters, detective Nick Danger, Third Eye, the four-man troupe makes a rare local appearance next week, performing Oct. 14 to 17 at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre with a new show, “Forward Into the Past.”
Read the entire article at the Los Angeles Times
Tickets on sale for the Firesign Theatre show in Los Angeles next week here
Now that the whole Kanye-Gaga thing’s been derailed, I’ve got an open date on my “vulgar spectacle” calendar. Maybe it’s just me, but when I first stumbled across these two grinning mugs, the closing lines of George Orwell’s Animal Farm came to mind: ?
And the hits just keep right on comin’ here at Dangerous Minds.net, yesiree Bob! This next little gem is an all singing, all dancing recruiting video for a meat processing company in Fiji. Look how happy you would be if you worked here!
This commercial appears on videos that you rent in Fiji.
How many times in your life have you seen a choreographed dance routine that included carcasses?!?! Don’t answer that…
WARNING: THIS SONG WILL STAY IN YOUR HEAD ALL DAY LONG AND IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR VEGETARIANS!
Dangerous Minds pal Chris Campion writes: “Popular entertainment in Australia is clearly a little behind the rest of the world. The speech at the end is priceless too.”
From The Boston Globe, “Earlier this week, 1.5 million people filled the streets of Berlin, Germany to watch a several-day performance by France’s Royal de Luxe street theatre company titled “The Berlin Reunion”. Part of the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Reunion show featured two massive marionettes, the Big Giant, a deep-sea diver, and his niece, the Little Giantess. The storyline of the performance has the two separated by a wall, thrown up by “land and sea monsters”. The Big Giant has just returned from a long and difficult - but successful - expedition to destroy the wall, and now the two are walking the streets of Berlin, seeking each other after many years apart. I’ll let the photos below tell the rest of the story.”
See more amazing photos over at The Boston Globe: The Berlin Reunion
(via Nerdcore)
We, the Shamanic Cheerleaders, use the term “Shaman” with great respect for the profound and diverse legacies of healers and mystics throughout the world. We do not claim to be Shamans. We recognize the value and universal nature of Shamanic healing techniques, including their use of intentional song, dance and energy work to promote personal and community healing. We have developed our own unique performance style that has not originated from any one direct lineage but is more a fusion of a wide range of healing and performance modalities.
“After divining, the shaman must address the problems that were uncovered. This is where the shaman may become a trickster. through puns and clever jokes, shamans distract their clients, opening them up to participating in the hard work of admitting some responsibility for their problems. If a patient recognizes her part in creating an illness, for example, she can empower herself to relieve it. In shamanism as in other aspects of life, humor heals.”
quoted from ‘The Woman in a Shaman’s Body’ by Barbara Tedlock, Ph.D.