A posting on Dallas Craigslist is purportedly selling a selection of guitars and amplifiers from the infamous Great White disaster at The Station nightclub. On February 20, 2003, a pyrotechnic display at a Great White concert at the Station in West Warwick, Rhode Island, set fire to the club and killed 100 people. Another 230 were injured.
The question that instantly comes to mind is: is this for real?
The solid money is on “probably not.” Judging by the text of the Craigslist ad, there appears to be an attempt at “sick” humor playing out.
“These instruments are not in the best condition,” can’t be serious, right?
“They could be worth a fortune someday when Great White gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” definitely can’t be serious.
If the items in this ad could be shown proper provenance, then one could suppose there’s some (hopefully very) niche audience for such morbid curiosities.
If, as it’s safe to assume, this ad is someone’s idea of macabre humor, then fair enough, I suppose it’s not the worst thing the Internet has ever stooped to. Today.
The “seller” may want to remind himself, however, that real people died for his Craigslist jollies.
Warning: this is one of the worst things you will ever watch:
Here’s a typo-riddled homage to the Bon Jovi song “It’s My Life.” Not only does the person sporting this sucker for life have the embarrassing misfortune of a glaring typo on their arm, just look how poorly that ink job was done.
Indeed, “It’s is My Life.”
I’m gonna assume drunk whilst tattooing or it was a bet this person lost.
These remarkable dreamlike images come from a 1924 book that came out in Germany called Buch der Hasengeschichten (“Book of Rabbit Stories”). The author published under the name Tom Seidmann-Freud, but her given name was Martha Gertrud Freud—her mother, Maria Freud, who went by “Mitzi,” was one of Sigmund Freud’s five sisters. Martha was born in Vienna in 1892 but her family moved to Berlin in 1898. As a teenager she adopted the name “Tom.” In 1920 she met a writer named Jakob Seidmann, whom she married two years later.
Tom Seidmann-Freud
In 1924 Seidmann-Freud published Buch der Hasengeschichten through the Peregrin Verlag (Peregrin Publishing Company). Over the next few years, she published a number of incredibly distinctive children’s books, the most famous of which is Die Fischreise (The Fish’s Journey) of 1923. As Marjorie Ingall writes in Tablet, “She hung out with Berlin’s avant-garde crowd, as well as with her family’s academic and Zionist friends. … Her style involved outlining folk-art-y, simple illustrations precisely in ink, then filling them in with watercolors. She frequently used stencils and paint together in a bright, lively technique called pochoir.”
In the space of few months, both Tom and Jakob committed suicide for reasons stemming from financial troubles. Sources differ on the exact reason—German Wikipedia says blandly that they had founded Peregrin Verlag, which ran into difficulties when the global financial crisis that started in 1929 arrived. Ingall isolates the problem with a separate venture called Ophir Verlag, which was to be a publishing company specializing in Hebrew books for children. That story involves a third party named Chaim Nachman Bialik, whose failure to live up to his obligations led to their suicides. Ingall cites a letter from 1925, suggesting that the money problems had been going on for a while, although the culpability of Bialik is simply not established in her account. Whatever the reason, it was clearly financial in nature; Jakob hanged himself in October 1929 and, now suffering from depression, Tom died of an overdose of sleeping pills in February 1930.
According to Ingall, during the Nazi regime her children’s books became destroyed in great numbers as part of the purge of Jewish authors—we’re lucky that her works survived the Third Reich, thanks for Seidmann-Freud’s family members as well as art lovers.
Will Schofield calls the book “whimsically apocalyptic,” which seems entirely apropos—I’m a little puzzled for his use of the term “rabbit dreams,” which seems a little misleading. Seidmann-Freud was trained as a Jugendstil artist, and her vibrant, imaginative, purposefully “flat” images definitely have a powerful, untethered, dreamlike quality all their own.
As writer William S. Burroughs once said (echoed in song by Laurie Anderson): “Language is a virus from outer space.” Were he still alive in 2015, it would be fascinating to hear his observations on YouTube comments, no?
Indeed, there’s something very, very Burroughsian about this brilliant video. Both the message and the reasoning behind it. STAY with it, because you’re gonna learn something. At first it seems like it’s some sort of academic psychobabble about how our personal “thought germs” behave like “a glob of snot trying to get into your brain” and end up infecting the entire Internet, but by the time you’re finished watching it, the whole world will make perfect (depressing) sense.
As a few folks points out in the comments on reddit:
pokingnature - This should be the video that everyone has to watch before being allowed on the internet.
Coneyo - How about every time they enter the comments section? But definitely it should only be a requirement for everyone else, because I don’t need to watch it.
Despite the sledgehammers, chainsaws and occasional police-instigated violence that became heavily associated with Plasmatics’ shows, the late, great Wendy O. Williams was first and foremost a gentle soul, with more than a touch of hippie influence. As a teenage runaway she bounced around the Rocky Mountains and sold crafts, moved to Florida to be a lifeguard and even cooked at a health food restaurant in London before making the stage her home.
Wendy was also an advocate for animal welfare and a vocal vegetarian. One might understandably assume that her dietary choices were entirely ethically motivated, but this 1984 interview from Vegetarian Times (see her as the adorable cover girl above) shows she was also incredibly health-conscious—a serious urban gardener who avoided drugs and alcohol, exercised regularly and sprouted her own macrobiotic diet from a Tribeca loft. Williams actually taught a macrobiotic cooking class at the Learning Annex!
The best part? The article includes Williams’ own super-hippie recipe for salad dressing—it actually sounds like a pretty intriguing flavor profile too. Save it for your next Plasmatics themed dinner party!
Wendy’s diet is very heavy on live foods and sprouts. The salad dressing is the result of experimentation in the blender and it’s rather unique in that it includes fresh greens chopped up into the dressing. She advises that its [sic] best to use two different types of greens; one for the dressing, one for the salad.
1 1/2 cups rejuvelac (soak a cup of wheat berries in 3–4 cups of water for 3 days or until berries settle; then strain)
1 clove garlic
1 Tbs. miso or soy sauce
2 Tbs. lecithin
1 Tbs. cumin
1 tsp. basil
1 tsp. oregano
Fresh herbs of your choice
Mixed greens (parsley, celery, sorrel, lettuce, spinach, or green
beans, sprouts)
Add seasonings to rejuvelac and whir in blender. Add, little by little, 1 pound of mixed greens, Until greens or chopped and mix well. Best when used fresh.
Below, Wendy and her fellow Plasmatics go on a safari with John Candy on SCT.
Violent Femmes have unleashed upon the world, via Soundcloud, the new song “Love Love Love Love Love.” Apart from a charmingly odd cover, in 2008, of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” this is the first new release from the band since the 2000 LP Freak Magnet. “Love…” is itself a cover, of a song by a Los Angeles musician named Jake Brebes, but it heralds a new Femmes E.P., Happy New Year, due out next month. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is, while it’s no return to the band’s original, amazing form, “Love…” is quite good, and sets high hopes for the rest of the E.P. The bad news is it’s a goddamn Record Store Day exclusive, so if you want one, you’ll have to stand in line and possibly get into a physical altercation with an eBay-flipper scumbag to get one.
Formed in 1980 as a coffeehouse/streetcorner trio, Violent Femmes were famously discovered busking by the Pretenders in 1981, and became instant and permanent cult figures with the release of their impossibly angsty and indisputably classic self-titled debut LP in 1983. They followed that up with two more must-haves, 1984’s Southern-Gothic stunner Hallowed Ground, which is definitely the band’s masterpiece and easily one of the best rock albums of the ‘80s, and 1986’s excellent The Blind Leading The Naked. The band long outlived that initial burst of inspiration, declining into mediocrity even while experiencing better album sales during the weirdo-indulgent period of the early ‘90s.
The band made some unfortunate waves in 2007, when their vegetarian singer Gordon Gano bafflingly sold the band’s signature song “Blister in the Sun” for commercial use to the hamburger chain Wendy’s, prompting bassist Brian Ritchie (whose solo albums should be items of interest to people who like good records) to sue him, precipitating a breakup, and not their first. They clearly reconciled by 2013, re-forming the band, but replacing original drummer Victor DeLorenzo with the Dresden Dolls’ Brian Viglione. There’s also more good news and more bad news. The good news is that the revitalized Violent Femmes will be touring this summer. The bad news is they’‘ll be opening for the goddamn Barenaked Ladies, so if you want to catch them, it’ll cost a fortune to see them play for 25 minutes, and you’ll have to endure an ocean of people who like Barenaked Ladies. Here they are during their peak, in a 1985 appearance on the marvelous Spanish music TV show La Edad de Oro.
If you can get this past security at your local strip club—and let’s be honest, if your local strip club has security, it’s probably not that interesting to begin with—you can be the reigning (raining?) King of Fools parted from his money.
This miracle device allows its brandisher to blow through large amounts of cash at an alarmingly high rate of speed. You’re not just “making it rain,” you just brought the typhoon up in this piece.
The Cash Cannon™ Money Gun is a toy that dispenses paper items in a rapid but user controlled manner. The preferred item of choice to dispense is of course cash but any item that fits in the loading compartment and out of the slot will work with the device. The Cash Cannon™ is the first device that performs this function and is simple enough in terms of design to be mass manufactured for the public use.
If the psychology behind throwing out large amounts of money in a gentleman’s club is creating an atmosphere of fun from an affected lack of concern, then the Cash Canon instantly turns what might have been three minutes of self-important limelight into four and a half seconds of pathetic confusion. The top dog always spreads the money around and you can’t get top doggier than literally spewing it all over the place like a first year fraternity brother retching up last night’s kamikazes. All you have to do is load the Cash Cannon with your favorite denomination of currency, gently squeeze the trigger, and look forward to tomorrow’s regret.
On the busy streets of Kinshasa, capital of Democratic Republic of the Congo, there’s a new sheriff in town—or rather, there are some giant robots now directing traffic. A local taxi driver said (ominously), “There are certain drivers who don’t respect the traffic police. But with the robot it will be different. We should respect the robot.” Of course people will “respect” the robot! We’ve all seen Terminator!
Humanity’s inevitable fall to robot overlords aside, there are some real benefits to these machines, who have already proven successful after earlier trial runs in 2013. There impartial, they can’t be bribed, they actually record evidence and they appear to be just as capable of writing tickets and directing traffic as a flesh and blood cop. They’re also solar powered, and at $27,500, I’m guessing they cost less than employing cops round-the-clock.
I remain suspicious. If we’re not doomed to enslavement by massive metal fascists, why do these robot cops look so much like Doctor Who’s Cybermen??? They couldn’t have designed them all tiny and Japanese and cute? Mark my words, this is only the beginning!
If one writes anything mean/true about Ayn Rand on the Internet, invariably the author will receive a litany of howling complaints from her fans (people who seem to have an awful lot of time of their hands for some… strange reason) in the comments. It’s absurd and hilarious to field dumb invective hurled at you by people that you have no intellectual respect for and that you will never, ever meet in real life, but dumping on Rand is a predictable impetus for attracting this sort of thing. Scroll down, I’m sure without looking that they’ll start to pile up like poorly punctuated turds under a rabbit cage before too long.
The Randroids behave as if they’re defending the honor of a saint or a great literary or philosophical genius and not a complete lunatic who wrote the most turgid prose of any best-selling author of the 20th century. I understand their psychology well, for I myself was once a teenaged Ayn Rand true believer. Oh yes, I’ve probably read 99% of every word she wrote or that was publicly uttered by her during her lifetime. Not only did I have every Ayn Rand book, I owned every single copy of The Objectivist and The Ayn Rand Letter, kept in green leather binders. I owned all of her Ford Foundation speeches in pamphlets and on cassette tapes. In the 8th grade, I managed to track down her Playboy interview. This unlikely childhood collection, mind you, was amassed by mail order in the 1970s on money earned from mowing lawns. I was really into it, I’m ashamed to say. Could quote her chapter and verse… Then I discovered drugs, punk rock and girls and promptly forget all about Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand fanboys and girls are a unique bunch, and one trait that many of them—not all, but many—share is that by and large they are not… er… very literate people and Atlas Shrugged is quite often one of the few books they’ve ever read, so it shares an outsized place in their affections.
Ayn Rand is the Enya of fiction. I don’t wish to tar the new agey Irish songstress with the same brush as the Russian novelist with the toxic philosophy, my point being that if Enya (who sells tens of millions of CDs) is music for people who don’t like music, then Rand wrote books for people who don’t like to read. Her books are like Sarah Palin’s in that sense, but when someone who has read precious few books to begin with can wade through a hefty tome like Atlas Shrugged—which IS a page-turner to be fair, the novel’s gripping plot is truly epic—it gives them a sense of completely unmerited intellectual achievement. Problem is they’re too dumb to know that or else they wouldn’t be fucking goofball Ayn Rand fans fancying themselves world-conquering Übermensches in the first place. If you’ve only ever read five books in your entire life and Atlas Shrugged is one of them, you’ll probably think it’s a masterpiece. For those of us who’ve read more than, oh, say, ten books, you look like an absolute fucking knob going on and on about Ayn Rand in Disqus comments. It’s an admission of stunted mental growth, no more, no less. (As someone funnier than I am once said, being an Ayn Rand fan as an adult is like discovering OMD when you’re fifteen and having your mind blown and your musical tastes frozen in time right then and there.)
For the people who have heard all about Atlas Shrugged via Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or being a Ron Paul fan or Tea partier or whatever, but who’ll never, ever finish a gigantic doorstopper of a novel like that one, the news that there was going to be an Atlas Shrugged movie trilogy probably seemed like welcome news until they tried to watch it. There are three “trash compactor” cuts of the Atlas Shrugged films if you’d like to see all three parts in under ten minutes and get “the gist” of what happens.
It still feels at little long, doesn’t it?
Oh look, all new actors in part 2! Obviously part 2 had a significantly lower budget than the first one. Dig the bargain basement Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggarts…
Not wanting to disappoint, the producers got—you guessed it—an entirely new cast for the third installment, too. Except for hamfisted holdover Sean Hannity. And look, Glenn Beck…
Sometime in the 1940s or ‘50s, a dentist named Dr. Joseph Stamp started forming a tooth-filled concrete block at the corner of Riverside Drive and Lexington Avenue in Elkhart, Indiana.
Legend has it that Stamp created it as a memorial to his childhood German Shepherd, Prince, though none of his descendants know why he filled it with human teeth he pulled from his patients. They guess that it “probably saved him on concrete.”
Stamp’s granddaughter, Susan Howard, states, “He pulled thousands of teeth as a dentist” and preserved them in a barrel of chemicals in his practice’s basement, which “kept the teeth from smelling.”
photos by Jennifer Shephard/The Elkhart Truth
Stamp, who passed away in 1978 at the age of 88, is described as “eccentric as all get out” by local history museum curator, Paul Thomas. The creepy tooth-filled rock can still be viewed today.
