In the Dangerous Minds household, each new episode of Adult Swim’s geenyus Rick and Morty cartoon is greeted as a sort of gift from God—or at least the God of Dimension C-137, rumor has it that the show is absolute shit in other dimensions and produced by Chuck Lorre, not Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland—so I am more than happy to premiere the new video from Portland’s Eyelids directed by R&M animator Jack Cusumano. Come in for the nifty animation, stay for the catchy song!

 
The main Eyelids are John Moen from Decemberists and Chris Slusarenko of Guided by Voices and Boston Spaceships. For their Eyelids collaboration the duo indulge their fondness for earworm California “sunshine pop,” New Zealand’s Flying Nun Records groups and the jangly guitars of the early 80s Los Angeles “Paisley Underground” psych scene. Their new self-titled, four-song EP, produced by REM’s Peter Buck features two originals—“Bound to Let You Down” and “Broken Continue” as well as cover versions of John Cale’s “Only Time Will Tell” and The Dream Syndicate classic “Halloween.”

The new Eyelids EP, on limited edition colored vinyl from Jealous Butcher / Schizophonic Records, comes with a download card featuring three exclusive live videos (including Stephen Malkmus performing “Hey Joe” w/ Eyelids).
 

 
Eyelids will be touring with The Charlatans on their upcoming US cross-country trek, culminating in a hometown gig:

Nov 9 Milwaukee, WI Turner Ballroom
Nov 10 New York, NY Webster Hall
Nov 12 Washington, DC Howard Theater
Nov 13 Chicago, IL House of Blues
Nov 15 Los Angeles, CA The Fonda
Nov 16 San Francisco, CA The Regency
Nov 18 Sacramento, CA Ace of Spades
Nov 19 Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom
 

 
We’ve cycled through cultural periods where zombies were the big entertainment draw, and other times when it was all vampires… or pirates. Is it finally the mummies’ turn? After all, The Mummy from 1999 barely scratched the surface of a genre that was sparked by the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun‘s tomb. If so, perhaps history will trace the impending mummy craze to popular discussion of the burial rites of Tana Toraja because this is ripe for a horror film!

The Toraja are a people who live in mountainous South Sulawesi in Indonesia, and their society rests on a sturdy foundation of animism, the belief that a spiritual essence pervades all things, living and unliving, including animals, plants, trees, and rocks. Tana Toraja means “the land of Toraja.” One of the most noteworthy aspects of the Toraja are their funeral rites, which last several days and often occur many weeks after the star of the show has shuffled off his or her mortal coil. The rituals include tree burials for infants who died before teething as well as the parading of actual mummies.

Since funerals are such an elaborate affair for the Toraja, the bereaved family members very often lack the funds for the ritual at the appropriate time, so sometimes the funeral has to wait months or even years until the requisite capital is accrued. In the meantime, the deceased is embalmed and stored in the same house as his or her family. Here’s the amazing bit: Until the funeral ceremonies are completed, the person is not considered to be dead but merely suffering an illness.

Amusing Planet explains the astonishing rest:
 

Toraja tribe members are rarely buried in the ground. They are either placed in caves dug out in the rocky side of a mountain, or in wooden coffins that are hung on a cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, representing the deceased is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land.  The coffins are beautifully decorated, but over time the wood begins to rot and the bleached bones of the deceased often drop to the bottom of the suspended burial ground.

Babies are not buried in caves or hung from cliffs but buried inside the hollow of living trees. If a child dies before he has started teething, the baby is wrapped in cloth and placed inside a hollowed out space within the trunk of a growing tree, and covered over with a palm fibre door. The hole is then sealed and as the tree begins to heal, the child is believed to be absorbed. Dozens of babies may be interred within a single tree.

The burials are completed, the guests have feasted and returned to their homes, but the rituals are not over. Every few years, in August, a ritual called Ma’Nene takes place in which the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village like zombies.

 
Without further ado, here are several stunning pictures of infant tree graves, wooden effigies of the deceased, hanging coffins, and mummies taking part in a Ma’Nene celebration.
 

 

 
Many more mummies after the jump…

 

 
Just when you thought you’d heard it all when it came to collector specificity—“I only collect Beatles original press on Vee-Jay!” “I only collect sealed Firestone Christmas records!”—something like this comes along and leaves you in kind of minor awe. There’s long been a collectables subset that’s coveted private press records and tapes meant for distribution only among employees of a certain business. Broadcaster April Winchell shares rather a lot of such unintentionally comical material on her completely amazing MP3 sharity page; highlights include the infamous 1979 McDonald’s flexi-disc and a KFC “inspirational” pep-talk. This is related, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing it before. Via Chart Attack:

Mark Davis worked behind the Service Desk at the Naperville, IL Kmart in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Every month, corporate office issued a cassette to be played over the store speaker system — canned elevator-type music with advertisements seeded every few tracks. Around 1991, the muzak was replaced with mainstream hits, and the following year, new tapes began arriving weekly. The cassettes were supposed to be thrown away, but Davis dutifully slipped each tape into his apron pocket to save for posterity. He collected this strange discount department store ephemera until 1993, when background music began being piped in via satellite service.

 

 
22 years later, Davis has done the world the extreme favor of uploading all that material to archive.org. It’s amazing how quaint so much of it seems now. This compilation of pharmacy ads, for example, is full of really straightforward, just-the-facts announcing; the total absence of any heavy emotional manipulation like we’re subjected to in ads now is conspicuous here to the point where these almost sound robotic:
 

 
This call to action to visit the paint department was from the turn of the ‘90s, but with the exception of some sfx near the beginning, it sounds like it could have been scripted and recorded in the early ‘60s. Advertising sophistication grew much more rapidly than this in that time period, I wonder how Kmart could have been so stuck in the past.
 

 
Here’s an example of something less specific, an hour and a half of music and ads. It’s pretty strictly formatted: one blandly soothing contemporary pop/jazz song, one call to action, repeat repeat repeat. There are more than 50 of these, again, at archive.org.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Merry Crassmas: Anarcho-punk goes Muzak (+ bonus Penny Rimbaud interview)
America circa 2013 in a nutshell: The ‘Wal-Mart Cheer’ is the most depressing thing you’ll ever see

 
And don’t even say “Pictures or it didn’t happen” because Little Egg Harbor, NJ resident Dave Black seems to think he has captured a photo of Jersey Devil. Don’t believe him? There’s a photo of it, you damned fool. If it’s on the Internet it has to be true.

If you’re not hip to the existence of the Jersey Devil, here’s some background information from Wikipedia:

The Jersey Devil is a legendary creature or cryptid said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey, United States. The creature is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but there are many different variations. The common description is that of a kangaroo-like creature with the head of a goat, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, cloven hooves and a forked tail. It has been reported to move quickly and often is described as emitting a “blood-curdling scream.”

Dave Black’s words about the Jersey Devil sighting:

“I was just driving past the golf course in Galloway on Route 9 and had to shake my head a few times when I thought I saw a lama,” he wrote in his email.

“If that wasn’t enough, then it spread out leathery wings and flew off over the golf course.”

“Yes, I swear it’s not Photoshopped or a staged thing,” Black responded when I asked if he was willing to let me use his name and state that the photo he sent was not manipulated in any way. “People have said it’s fake, but it’s not. I’m honestly just looking for an explanation for what I saw.”

Sure, seems totally seems legit. My spidey-sense is telling me it’s a drone + elaborate taxidermy = Halloween prank. A pretty hilarious one at that.

Below, are some artists’ renderings of the “Jersey Devil”:

 

 

 
via NJ.com and Geekologie

 
Before Ali G, Borat and Keith Lemon, “Norman Gunston” was trolling celebrities with his bogus interviews for Australian television. Gunston was the madcap creation of actor-comedian Garry McDonald, who ambushed celebrities and probed them with his microphone and excruciatingly dumb questions.

Gunston made his first (brief) appearances on the Pythonesque Aunty Jack Show in 1972, before becoming the “legendary un-personality” on spin-off series Wollongong the Brave in 1974. With his shiny blue suit and his face covered with blood-spotted pieces of tissue paper, the beautifully observed Gunston was an instant hit.
 

Gunston excited to be probing a Beatle.
 
Over the years, Norman Gunston interviewed Paul and Linda McCartney, Cheech and Chong (who he mistakes as comedy duo Morecambe and Wise), and Lee Marvin (caught in a airport terminal). Sometimes the stars played along—like a flirtatious Karen Black or Frank Zappa, who happily jammed with the harmonica-playing Gunston, or Muhammed Ali who said to Gunston “I’m punchy, what’s your excuse?” 

Occasionally, the celebs didn’t know how to handle Gunston—like an eyeballing Elliott Gould, or a confused Warren Beatty, but their desperate responses only add to the comedy.

Continues after the jump…

 
Just some fun photos of Iggy Pop playing a casual outdoor gig with his band the Prime Movers in 1966. These photos were taken a year before The Stooges formed. By 1966 standards, that was some LONG hair!

 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

Elmira Humphries, Miss Radio Queen - 1939
 
From “Miss Beautiful Ape” to “The Diaper Queen” of Chicago in 1947, there there are a seemingly endless variety of strange beauty contests that have been crowning queens since early 1900s.
 

Miss Beautiful Ape contest, Century City, California - 1972
 
Take for instance the “Miss Beautiful Ape” contest that was held in Los Angeles back in the early 70s. Put on by disc jockey and television personality Gary Owens (whose golden pipes announced the comedy variety show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In) in Century City, the contest was a promotion vehicle for the Planet of the Apes film franchise. The winner of the contest, Dominique Green (contestant number two on the far right) was awarded a role in the fifth (and final) Planet of the Apes film, 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

Naturally, all of these “contests” were means for some sort of revenue generating scheme, and not so much the prestige associated with being crowned “Miss Diaper Queen” (contestants were required to wear cloth diapers), “Miss Lube Job” for the local auto repair shop or “Miss NRA” for which contestants sported a huge fake “tattoo” of the National Rifle Association blue eagle emblem on their back. In some cases, NRA contestants placed a stencil of the emblem on their backs while sunbathing so the logo could be displayed by way of their tan lines. Wow.
 

Miss NRA contestants being judged in Miami, 1930
 

Miss NRA contestants with blue eagle NRA logo tan lines, 1930
 
More images from bizarre beauty contests of the past, after the jump…

 
Patti Smith is currently promoting her latest memoir M Train. During last night’s reading at the Dominican University in Illinois, Smith was reunited with some very personal belongings, as disclosed today by a member of the audience who posts as “maxnix” on the Steven Hoffman Music Forums.

maxnix “wanted to share a quick story . . ” and posted details of this beautiful moment during Smith’s reading:

The family and I went to see Patti Smith last night at Dominican University in Illinois, reading from “M Train”, telling stories, etc. I have seen her do this several times, and it’s always a lot of fun and a moving experience. Usually, she takes a break and takes (and tolerates!) a few audience questions . . mostly “what’s your favorite poem” and the like.

Last night, however, a woman stood up and told Patti that she had a bag of clothes that belonged to her 40 years ago and would like to return it. Smith (and everybody) looked totally confused, but asked the person to come up to the stage and hand her the bag. Patti looked inside and just froze.

Turns out that 40 years ago the band’s truck was stolen in Chicago, all their equipment/clothes/personal things basically everything they owned. These clothes among them. So Patti pulls out these items of clothing and talks about them (the shirt she wore on the Rolling Stone cover, the Keith Richards T-Shirt you’ve seen her wear in a hundred photos) and then gets to the bottom of the bag. Here was a bandana that her beloved late brother had worn and then given to her, and she starts to weep. Before long, half the audience was crying with her.

Naturally, people in the audience were asking where/why/how?? but Patti just put her hands out and said she doesn’t care how, she’s just so grateful to have these priceless items back. Amazing. The rest of the program, after she piled everything on the podium, she couldn’t stop touching them, eventually slowly slipping the bandana into her pocket and proceeded to do a ripping version of Because the Night with her son on acoustic guitar.

What a night.

Read the whole forum discussion here. Below Patti discussing M Train on Democracy Now!.
 

 
H/T Mark Hagen

 
Ever wanted to be a sexy green turd for Halloween? Never fear for Halloween Costumes has you covered. Clearly it’s poking fun at Burger King’s limited edition “Halloween Whopper” which apparently is making some folks poop green.

BUT wait, there’s more! Not only is there a sexy turd outfit, there’s also the Burger King’s black “goth burger” costume to boot! (Unless the turd was actually standing beside the goth burger, I’m not so sure I would get the joke. Solo, I’d peg the turd for “sexy asparagus” cosplay.)

I’m still holding out for the sexy Kim Davis costume.

 

 
via Mashable

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Burger King’s black ‘goth burger’ coming to the USA just in time for Halloween?
Burger King goes ‘goth’ in Japan with their ‘Black Burger’ (and black cheese)

 
Happy Crowleymass, everyone! Aleister Crowley, thee Great Beast 666 was hatched from a dragon’s egg on October 12, 1875. The eccentric English mage, poet, painter and gourmet rice chef would be 140 years old today if, um, he could like live forever or something…

As somewhat of a noted Crowley buff, I’m often asked “Where is a good place to start reading Aleister Crowley?” and this is a difficult question to answer because, in truth, you have to read, pretty much, all of it to make sense of any of it. Going down the Crowley rabbit hole is comparable, I think, to being a scholar of James Joyce because achieving a proper understanding of the subject takes years of study, decades even (and then what are you going to DO with all that arcane knowledge, anyway, smartass?). But one source that I will point curious folk to is the late Tim Maroney’s excellent “Introduction to Crowley (in Five Voices)” which I published in my Book of Lies anthology back in 2004.

Below, I discuss Uncle AL on the History Channel TV series, How Sex Changed The World. I had fun doing this show and I got to explain a general concept of sex magick to middle America! Good times! The Crowley segments starts around 19:30.