Honestly, I have no freakin’ clue what’s going on here or why this woman felt compelled to bitch-out a welcoming Easter Bunny. But she did. And it deserves to be here on Dangerous Minds.

It’s not her first appearance here, though, it’s her third. She’s Christine Weick, the same Christian wingnut activist (prophet?) who was promoting that obviously true Monster Energy drink satanic conspiracy theory back in 2014. She also went nutso at a Muslim prayer event held in the National Cathedral not long after that and you may recall when she got a Slushie thrown in her face in front of a news crew on Mother’s Day as she held a sign reading, “Thank your mom today for not being gay!”

Weick, who admits to living out of her car, has authored the book Explain This! A Verse by Verse Explanation of the Book of Revelation.

God “speaks” to Christine Weick, if you know what I mean…and I think you do.

I like the part towards the end when her lil’ sidekick and partner-in-crime yells, “Hugh Hefner!” The whole thing is just… too surreal.

 
Wow am I happy I discovered Baltimore-based Ryan Grastorf AKA Mushroom Ninja’s Instagram which features insanely glorious-looking mushrooms. His photographs of color-drenched fungi are a sight to behold. I had no idea just how beautiful mushrooms can be. I thought they grew on shit. These ‘shrooms are like salt water fish. The peacocks of toadstools!

According to Grastorf, “As an effort to reduce stress in life, I just started hiking more.” He told Instagram Blog. “I found a mushroom, a very cool looking mushroom, and the rest is kind of history.”

Do yourself a favor and follow the Mushroom Ninja on Instagram here. You’ll be happy you did.

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Gerald Casale famously began conceiving the “Theory of Devolution” after surviving the infamous May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings. Basically a misanthropic philosophy leavened with deadpan absurdist humor, the theory held that despite or because of (it probably doesn’t matter) the march of civilization and advances in technology, humanity was not evolving per the Darwin model, but was in fact collectively getting dumber, more primitive, and ultimately less fit for long-term survival, and that principle (and some very strange books) laid the foundation for Casale’s and his KSU partner-in-crime Mark Mothersbaugh’s band DEVO, who by the late ‘70s became emblematic of the New Wave.

Though DEVO have been only very intermittently active as a touring and releasing entity since 1990, Casale remains a steadfast believer in and promoter of the reality of devolution—and what sentient being possessing a modicum of attentiveness could look at this world and possibly disagree with him? While Mothersbaugh has enjoyed a long career scoring films, Casale has directed dozens of music videos and remained an off-the-map provocateur, spinning social commentary with brilliant conceits like DEVO 2.0 (and, sometimes, bafflingly tone-deaf outfits like Jihad Jerry and the Evildoers).
 

 
At last year’s annual “DEVOtional” fan convention, Casale expressed a wish for DEVO to reactivate—though the band has never officially broken up, it hasn’t done anything since a brief ten-date tour two years ago. He seems to have taken the reins on his own, though, as he’ll be releasing the single “It’s All DEVO” on April 16th. The physical release is a Record Store Day Exclusive, but the digital release will be available on the same day, without throngs of eBay flippers crowding you out of the bins. The song seems to be Casale’s way of underscoring his sustained belief in and critique of our infuriating march toward our own ruin via our embrace of idiot demagogues (guess who makes an appearance?) and our all-consuming consumerism.

The song and video are both collaborations with Italian artists—a musical assist was provided by the prolific Neapolitan duo The Phunk Investigation, and the video is credited to the wonderfully bonkers collage artist Max Papeschi (think Winston Smith with a brighter palette) and director Maurizio Temporin. Asked for comment, Casale offered this:

The video for “Its All DEVO” distills the current state of the world as we know it to be down to 3 plus minutes of a cartoon, technicolor nightmare. The transgressive juxtaposition of G-rated Americana, corporate malfeasance and totalitarian horror is as sweet as Kool Aid - thus easy on the Millennial mind and body. Working with the infamous Italian artist Max Papeschi was an exciting collaboration as satisfying as my early DEVO days.

The video is indeed a vivid brainfuck of DEVO references, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sight gags, and slams on consumer culture’s sacred cows, and it’s Dangerous Minds’ pleasure to debut that video for you today, after the jump…

 
Jack said he stayed at the Overlook Hotel and you know he’s got a photograph to prove it. Well, now you can say that you stayed there too with one of these notepads for fictional hotels from cult books, movies and TV shows.

I have a desk drawer crammed with stationary liberated from various hotels across the globe but nothing quite as fancy as this box set of eight different notepapers available from Herb Lester of such fine imaginary establishments as:

Kellerman’s Resort (Dirty Dancing)
The Empire Hotel (Vertigo)
Bertram’s Hotel (At Bertram’s Hotel, Agatha Christie)
The Great Northern Hotel (Twin Peaks)
The Overlook Hotel (The Shining)
Royal Imperial Windsor Arms Hotel (National Lampoon’s European Vacation)
The Green Man Inn (The Wicker Man)
The Taft Hotel (The Graduate)

Each notepad is A6 in size and contains 50 pages. If this tickles your fancy, then you can get your set here.
 

The Green Man Inn from ‘The Wicker Man.’
 

The Taft Hotel from ‘The Graduate.’
 
More after the jump…

Keith Moon sitting at John Bonham’s drum kit while Jimmy Page looks on, June 23rd, 1977.
 
While many (most?) drunken escapades end up badly—but especially when they’re taking place in front of thousands of people—the time The Who’s antic-prone timekeeper Keith Moon crashed a Led Zeppelin gig in 1977, was thankfully not such an occasion.
 

Keith Moon and Robert Plant on stage at the Forum in Los Angeles, June 23, 1977.
 

Keith Moon sitting behind John Bonham’s mythical drum kit, June 23, 1977.
 
On June 23rd, 1977, the perpetually drunk Keith Moon unexpectedly joined Led Zeppelin onstage at the Forum in Los Angeles, along with his bongos and a tambourine during “Moby Dick” and the band’s encore. At one point after Moon’s impromptu materialization, he commandeered Robert Plant’s microphone and began to regale the crowd before Plant, who was chopping away behind Bonham’s kit, shut him down.

The action with Moon, who engages in what I can only describe as an awesome “drum duel” of sorts with Bonham, starts at about 5:40. Sadly, it would turn out to be the last time Moon would perform on U.S. soil as he passed away just over a year later in September of 1978 at the all-too-young age of 32. Bonzo wouldn’t last that much longer himself, dying in his sleep on September 24, 1980. He was also just 32 years old.

After the jump, watch footage of Keith Moon crashing Led Zeppelin’s party at the Los Angeles Forum in 1977…

 
One of Keith Hudson’s nicknames was “the Ghetto Dentist,” because—unlike, let’s say, Suge Knight—he funded his Inbidimts label and shop (a/k/a Imbidimts) by filling teeth. Hudson died in 1984, but an impression of his basic decency remains. Dennis Alcapone, who made his first recordings with Hudson and remembers him as “a nice bredda who try ‘im bes’ to point you in a right direction,” says Hudson didn’t just give him a break in the record business, but set the DJ up with his first bank account and “a wicked tuxedo outfit” to wear on stage, too.

Caps and crowns also paid for Hudson-produced singles by Ken Boothe, Delroy Wilson, U-Roy, Big Youth, Alton Ellis, and Augustus Pablo, and, before Virgin signed him, much of Hudson’s own formidable solo discography. His Pick A Dub is Jon Savage’s choice for “the greatest dub album ever.” The first track on side two of Hudson’s 1975 LP Torch of Freedom was reportedly the favorite song of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, whose bereaved bandmates recorded their own chilly version of “Turn The Heater On” during a Peel session two years after Curtis’ suicide.
 

 
In her memoir Touching From a Distance, Curtis’ widow Deborah writes that the singer immersed himself in reggae in 1975, after the newlyweds moved in with Curtis’ grandparents in Hulme:

Ian always had an interest in reggae music; Bob Marley and Toots and the Maytals already figured in his diverse record collection. Moving into that area of Manchester gave Ian the opportunity to throw himself into the local culture. He began to spend much of his time in a record shop in Moss Side shopping centre, listening to different reggae bands - although, as our cheap record player was packed away ready to move to the new house, he spent very little money there. Once again Ian became obsessed with a lifestyle different from his own. He began to infiltrate the places where white people didn’t usually go. He took me to the Mayflower in Belle Vue, which at best was a seedy version of the Cotton Club and at worst a place where they held tawdry wrestling matches.

But when the Curtises got their own place in Chadderton, actually turning the heater on was something you could count on Ian Curtis never to do:

It didn’t take long to realize that married life was not going to be as comfortable as we had expected. We had very little spare cash for socializing and trying to keep the heating bills to a minimum meant that only the living room was warm. There were storage heaters in the house, but Ian refused to use them; in fact he disconnected one of them and lugged it into the back yard. The only thing he didn’t economize on were cigarettes.

After the jump, hear Hudson’s upful original and New Order’s somewhat more dour take on “Turn The Heater On”...

 
Emory Douglas served as Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party and artistic director of The Black Panther newspaper from its inception in 1967. Douglas is unquestionably one of the most important artists and designers working in the political realm in the last several decades, and his work is a necessary component of anyone’s understanding of the lived experience of activism, advocacy, and resistance.

If you are trying to push an issue forward on the grass-roots level, whether it’s women’s health issues, the crimes of the 1%, or the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the work of Emory Douglas is relevant to you.

Douglas was a native of the Bay Area; as a “guest” of the California Youth Authority (today it’s called the California Division of Juvenile Justice)—basically prison for teenage offenders—he was told to work in the print shop, which he called “my first introduction to graphic design.”
 

 
Huey P. Newton asked Douglas to provide the Black Panther newspaper with an effective visual style. Douglas and Eldridge Cleaver did many of the early issues pretty much by themselves.

One inspiration Douglas had was to mimic woodcuts for their ability to communicate ideas very clearly in a simple and stark visual style, an approach that proved very effective for his entire career. One factor that influenced Douglas’ style was that the Panthers could only afford one other color (aside from black and white), most of the time. So the picture would be conceived in a powerful black-and-white way and then the single color would be used to highlight some portion of the picture. In a way, it helped that the pictures weren’t too complex in terms of the color palette.
 

1969
 
Continues after the jump…

Image via Twitter

Meet 55-year-old Eva Tiamat Medusa whose life goal is to become the world’s first real “dragon lady.” According to Eva, she’s the first and only person to have her ears and nose cosmetically removed to give her a more dragon-like appearance.

Born Richard Hernandez, Eva is transgender and has gone through a lot of rather painful surgeries to achieve her look including:

...nose modification, tooth extraction and eye colouring.

She also has a forked tongue and a full-face tattoo as part of her transformation into a ‘mythical beast’.

snip ~

Now going by the full name Eva Tiamat Baphomet Medusa - or Tiamat for short, the name of a dragon video game character - she has taken on several personas over the years and undergone multiple stages of transformations before finally settling on becoming a dragon.

She has also had horns implanted onto her forehead, and tattoos and scarification on her face and chest that resemble reptilian scales.

“I don’t care what people say about me or my views, and if I have to I will defy and stand alone against the world, but never will I make any compromise to my integrity.” wrote Eva on a recent photo of herself.

But what I really want to know is can she breathe fire?

Image via Twitter

 
via Daily Mail

“If Nancy was an Acid Freak.” An illustration by Joe Brainard.
 
Over the course of fifteen years, prolific American author and artist Joe Brainard took the much loved image of comic strip character “Nancy,” (originally conceived and drawn by Ernie Bushmiller starting back in the early 1930s) and inserted her into approximately 100 very un-Nancy-like situations. From playful and amusing—such as Nancy emerging from my grandmother’s ever-present pack of Tareyton cigarettes, to the strange unexpected pornographic depictions of Brainard’s neuvo-Nancy, 70 of these pieces included in 2008’s The Nancy Book.
 

 

“If Nancy was an ashtray.”
 

“If Nancy had an Afro.”
 
Brainard (who once sat for a screen test with Andy Warhol in 1964), sadly passed away long before The Nancy Book ever saw the light of day. In addition to Brainard’s works, the publication also includes essays from writers and poets such as Ron Padgett and Frank O’Hara. Although it’s not a part of The Nancy Book, it’s worth mentioning that punk pioneer Richard Hell wrote an essay on Brainard’s book that appeared in his 2015 book, Massive Pissed Love. Here’s an excerpt from Hell’s thoughts on Brainard’s unorthodox “Nancy”:

The pictures speak for themselves. Acid freaks, terrible diseases, afro hairdos - Nancy is the constant, the immortal essence— everything else is costume. All the world is Nancy in drag.

Another interesting bit of backstory on The Nancy Book is an amusing piece of “hate mail” (which I desperately hope is real) sent to the book’s publisher, Siglio Press back in 2011. According to the angry letter, Brainard’s “filthy weird” book was given to a fourteen-year-old girl named, you guessed it, Nancy, on her birthday by a relative who found it on Craig’s List. Here’s the letter below in all its “discusting” finger-wagging typo-riddled glory.
 

 

9-27-2011
A few months ago my daughter 14 years old was given a book for her birthday from my 55 year old nephew. My daughters name is Nancy. She was given “the Nancy Book” By Joe Brainard and it was published by Siglio Press Co. My nephew purchased this book on Craig’s list. He had no idea that is was a filthy weird book. My daughter has a collection of Nancy & Sluggo things and books by Ernie Bushmiller. This book was discusting—I showed the drawings and fotos to my friends and their reaction was the same as mine. The book was wrapped in cellophane so we were unaware it was a truly dirty rotten book. Can you imagine a 14-year-old girl getting a book like that for her birthday gift. I know Ernie Bushmiller has died, he would be astounded that this Joe Brainard copied his comic strip and made such trash out it.

I can not understand how you and your press company would publish such filth. The price of this book was $39.95. This was not works of art.

 
I don’t know about you, but I’m planning on working the expression “filthy weird” into as many conversations as possible. You can pick up The Nancy Book here. I’ve also included more images—some were so NSFW you should just hunt for them on your own time—from the book as well as the trailer for a lovely documentary on Joe Brainard (which you can download here for $5 bucks), below.
 

“If Nancy was a sailor’s basket.”
 
More ‘filthy weird’ nasty Nancy after the jump…

 
“Boyd Rice is one of the most influential and controversial figures of modern American counterculture,” begins Brian M. Clark’s Boyd Rice: A Biography. While that grandiose statement may oversell Rice’s cultural importance, it’s certainly true that Boyd Rice is a household name in a lot of weird households.

Rice is a prolific American sound experimentalist, author, artist, actor, archivist, and prankster. He also tends to be a polarizing figure in countercultural circles.
 

Boyd Rice a.k.a. “NON”—breaking records
 
I became familiar with Boyd Rice beginning in the late ‘80s and throughout the ‘90s. It seemed for a time that any esoteric interest I began exploring, Boyd Rice’s name would pop up as someone who had been there to document it or be associated with it first. My initial exposure to Rice was his work on the Incredibly Strange Films book released by RE/Search in 1985. In the late ‘80s, this was perhaps the most-thumbed reference book on my shelf. Rice turned up again on my radar in 1988 as a talking head on Geraldo Rivera’s sensationalist Exposing Satan’s Underground TV special. I was deeply interested in Satanism at the time, and here was Rice as one of its chief defenders and spokesmen. As I became interested in the bizarre records I was finding at thrift stores, particularly fake Hawaiian recordings, I began finding articles written by Rice about his love of “exotica” music. When RE/Search’s Pranks book came out, I became obsessed with that volume, particularly Rice’s chapter. I got the accompanying video as soon as it was released and found the interviews with Rice quite charming. Around this same time I was starting to get heavily into noise and industrial music and there was Rice too—at the forefront with his ground-breaking work as NON. And there was Rice on Current 93 records. And there was Rice in Lisa Carver’s fantastic Rollerderby magazine. And then there were the hysterical tapes of his appearances on evangelical minister Bob Larson’s radio call-in show, which were de rigueur tour van tapes while playing in bands in the ‘90s. Rice was seemingly everywhere, all over everything I found fascinating in the ‘90s—and he was always there a few years ahead of me as its champion. Who was this industrial man of mystery?

More on this contentious character after the jump…