“Margate during a bank holiday, 1981.”
 
I can’t look at these poignant pictures of skinheads and punks in the U.K. around 1981 and not start humming “No Thugs in Our House” by XTC, which, as it happens, was recorded in late 1981.

You might imagine that the photographer, Derek Ridgers, was a compatriot of these young rebels, but that’s not the case. Ridgers had studied at the Ealing School of Art around 1970 (one of his fellow students there was one Farrokh Bulsara, a.k.a. Freddy Mercury), and in the 1970s Ridgers worked in advertising. In 1981 Ridgers turned 29 years old.

Says Ridgers of his becoming one of the first serious documenters of the skinhead scene: “It was pure beginner’s luck, helped by the photos being timely and available. And because of my advertising background, I had chutzpah and was fairly shameless in touting them around.”
 

In early ‘79 I was already engaged in what eventually turned out to be a lengthy photographic study of the New Romantics (though back then they were not known as such). I’d been documenting this nascent scene in the Soho nightclub ’Billy’s’ and, one evening, a group of about half-a-dozen skinheads turned up. They saw me taking photographs and one of them, a guy called Wally, asked me if I’d like to take some photos of them too. They seemed pretty friendly and not at all camera shy. I took a few snaps, we got talking and Wally suggested I go with the whole gang on one of their Bank Holiday jaunts to the seaside. That was what led, eventually, to five years of photographing skinheads. In those five years I got to know some of the skinheads quite well and liked many of them.

 
Interestingly, Ridgers was so not one of them that he almost entirely misjudged the identity of his subjects. “I must have been pretty daft. At first I assumed that Wally and his friends were just dressing up as skinheads. I thought that they’d probably all come from art schools or fashion colleges and they were benign, skinhead revivalists. … I proved to be seriously misinformed.”

Ridgers’ new book Skinheads was released in September. The captions are Ridgers’ own and come from this gallery at the Guardian website.
 

“I entitled this photograph ‘Smiler’ since he’s got it written on his jacket. His real name was Wayne and his street name was Wally. In an email he informed me that he was 16 when I took this photograph in 1984.”
 

“Kevin, photographed next to The Last Resort shop in Goulston Street, 1981. “
 

“Two skinhead girls photographed on a bank holiday in Brighton (this is the image later used by Morrissey on the Your Arsenal tour).”
 

“Kate, left, and Lesley, Shoreditch, 1979. “
 

“Skinheads hanging around outside The Last Resort shop in Goulston Street, 1981.”
 

“This is John and Dave (gleaned simply from looking at their tattoos) in Chelsea in 1981.”
 
More of Ridgers’ pictures of skinheads after the jump….

 
Last week feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte tweeted an amazing piece of history: a brothel menu from 1912 curated by famed London madam and the owner of two parlours, Mrs. F.A. Tasse.

The menu is some straightforward shit. Read the paragraph below to see what I mean:

No discount for cash. Stink fingers and jerking-off matinees for young men under 21, every Wednesday from 2:30 to 4. Customers must enter with cash in one hand and tool in the other. If you are not a self-starter, stay at home and jack yourself off.

I can’t help but laugh at some of the options. I mean, this is something that would make even the Trailer Park Boys blush!

• Blowing in the asshole, new style… 1.70
• Finger fucking, with juice… .50
Sitting on prick, shoving in stones and all… 2.59

“New style”?

Some people on the Internet are saying this is fake. According to a few folks online this was something printed and sold in the vaudeville era to make people laugh. Kinda of like tourists merchandise. Others are saying, “Yeah, this is remarkably fake. Look at the font - it’s obviously a computer generated and printed font.”

Now I’m not going to type out all the specialties, but you can read a larger version of the menu here.

 
Inspired in equal measures by African funk, horn-heavy soul, and early metal, Staten Island’s Budos Band will release their fourth LP—their first in four years, and their first with an actual title instead of a number—Burnt Offering, on October 21st.
 

 
Having a name instead of a number isn’t the only change the band’s effected with this LP. After their debut, they adopted a cover art scheme of a simple image of a venomous creature (the cobra on their last album III makes for an especially striking cover), but for Burnt Offering, they had their own drummer Brian Profilio, a talented fantasy illustrator, design the artwork, a skulls-and-sorcery nod to the band’s metal influences. We were privileged to obtain some of his working sketches.
 

 

 

 
The album cut “The Sticks” was released online for streaming a couple of months ago, and DM is proud to debut here the video for the album’s title track.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
New African psych-blues from Tinariwen

Pasture-raised pork schnitzel with overwintered vegetables and Og Kush butter
 
As pot begins its slow (but hopefully steady) move towards legality, we are faced with a wild new frontier of drug commodities. As far as I know, the plant itself has yet to be cultivated into super-costly strains—or at least… so I’ve heard, but that doesn’t mean pot extravagance isn’t springing up everywhere. There’s been an explosion of stealth bongs, vape pens and vaporizers all in the tony price range, but when a pipe can just as easily be made from an apple, “luxury weed” can be kind of a hard sell.

Enter the world of fine-dining edibles! The gorgeous foodscapes below (from photographer Justin Walker) depict the sorts of meals served at Sinsemil.la, an underground fine dining club with chapters across the US that specializes in high-end food expertly combined with pot. From the website:

The meal is a carefully calibrated experience from start to finish. Marijuana varietals are tested not just for their organic qualities, but specifically to balance the flavors of each dish and for their psychoactive properties throughout the flow of the dinner.

Sinsemil.la isn’t about getting high — it is about haute cuisine.

Uh-huh. Sure dude. I’d argue that this concept is about novelty, first and foremost—if not taking care of getting high and the munchies in one fell swoop—but who cares? Enjoy your meal, and enjoy your high (where it’s legal, of course). Be careful though! Edibles can knock you on your high-class ass if you’re not expecting it—just ask The New York Times!
 

Potato gnocchi with White Widow buttered wild mushrooms and fresh Diesel
 

Roasted local ribeye with Maui Waui baked potatoes and spring vegetables
 

Warm Girl Scout Cookies Chocolate Cake with Rhubarb and Grand Daddy Purple Ice Cream
 
More after the jump…

 
It’s the biting and the kicking and the hitting that comes as a surprise, especially in one so old. The shouting and swearing were always present, but the biting, that’s probably the most unexpected. My father has Alzheimer’s and dementia. It’s not quite the happy sing-a-long of “getting by with a little help with your friends” as the current ad on British TV suggests. It’s is well-intentioned of course, but the reality for most carers, most families when dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s is nothing like a rousing chorus of a Lennon and McCartney number. It is stressful, constant, endless, unrelenting, with little to no respite. Indeed, my father seems no longer capable of sleep. It’s called “sundowning,” when twilight begins and night closes in, the sufferer becomes anxious, fretful, often aggressive. My father knows he has something to do, but he does not know what.

Last year, when I had four rounds of surgery for cancer and post-operative infection, there was the inevitable thoughts of mortality before the anaesthetic sent me off to temporary oblivion. In the same way, I think nightfall (darkness) brings some subconscious response to the end of life, the rush of panic, the rage against the dying of the light—so much still to do, but what, but what? There’s not much else one can do but try and soothe, listen and help.

All this has made me a cheery little fellow, and of late I have reading Iris Murdoch and sadly thinking how Alzheimer’s eroded her once great mind. Here was an author who was described by her husband John Bayley as “the most intelligent woman in England,” who was said to have composed the novels in her head first before putting first mark on paper—which is some remarkable feat. Together Murdoch and Bayley lived an intensely cerebral and sheltered life at their home, Cedar Lodge, in Steeple Aston, Oxford. They had their own language, held tight in their own world—once removed from the fickle fashions of modern culture. It was a hothouse where Murdoch returned again and again to her favored classics, rarely reading any modern literature, drawing much of her inspiration from the works of William Shakespeare.

Everything comes out of Shakespeare: pure romance, melodrama, marvellous characters, poetry, and wisdom about life. I read the plays again and again hoping something will rub off.

Things did indeed rub off—most obviously in her novels A Fairly Honorable Defeat (based on Much Ado About Nothing), The Black Prince (a reworking of Hamlet), The Sea, The Sea (elements of The Tempest) and The Good Apprentice. Writing fiction allowed Murdoch to revel in the complex ambiguities, the magic and mystery of life. She created self-contained worlds, like perfect snow globes that may to some now seem dated now but are ultimately still immediate and relevant because of Murdoch’s ability to tell a story. Spinning a yarn, as she once pointed out, is “a fundamental human form of thought.” Which made her loss to Alzheimer’s all the more tragic.

Murdoch did not give many television interviews, those that are available on YouTube are of a rather dry discussion on philosophy and literature, which is all fine and dandy but don’t reveal much of her giggly enthusiastic personality as this interview between Murdoch and James Atlas for the 92Y and The Paris Review does, capturing the author at her brightest and best as she discusses her life and career.
 

 
This is a guest post written by Emil Amos of Holy Sons

In early 2006 my father was lying in a hospital bed in the Miami Veteran’s Administration hospital being treated for advanced stage cancer. On weekends I’d call to check in on him on breaks from my job at a homeless shelter in Portland, OR. He’d had an obsession with military history books ever since he’d been a ranger in Marines as a teenager, so I mentioned that I’d recently gotten fixated on books detailing the history of various secret services. That’s when he told me for the first time that he’d been interrogated by the FBI three times in his life and naturally I wanted to hear all the stories…

It was the third story he told that really blew my mind since I’d been deeply immersed in researching 70’s records and my father had hung out with many of the exact musicians I’d been borrowing from in my own music. I’d grown up hearing lots of insane tales about all the musicians that had migrated to Miami in the 60’s and crossed paths with my father. He’d often go sailing with John Oates, David Crosby or Stephen Stills, usually introducing me as “The Boss.” I can remember being with him at one of the Bee Gees mansions and standing in their driveway as my father bargained with one of the Gibb brothers, trying to buy me one of their gold cars.

My mother and I left for North Carolina when I was six so my memories of these times were always foggy and most of the classic stories were handed down to me on long car rides when my mom would tell me just how wild my dad’s adventures had really been. If you’d met him even once, virtually any legendary tale was believable as his charisma, energy and presence was larger than life and had gained him a virtual folk hero status in Coconut Grove.
 

 
For example, I was a little shocked to find out that I was conceived while my father was on LSD while in front of some of my professors, a monk I was studying under, my mother and my buddy Duncan Trussell’s family while we all sat at my college graduation dinner. That’s the kind of anecdote he’d pull out for a quick laugh at the dinner table! 

In the late 1950s my father sailed constantly and could use the stars to find his way and navigate alone, having sailed straight through the Bermuda Triangle and all the way to Morocco. These skills probably began back when he was an underwater demolitions expert in the Marines… something I only really knew about because he’d make grenades on the kitchen table out of gunpowder and drive me down to the docks to toss them into the water to watch their delayed explosions until the cops would come circling around.
 

 
Sailing became trendy among the folk music set in Miami probably because you could feel more free by getting off land, away from the eyes of straights and law enforcement while indulging in the drugs of your choice or trafficking them yourself by picking up dropped shipments. The great folksinger Vince Martin had set off a trend of moving to Coconut Grove by being the first to abandon New York in the early 60’s for Miami’s tropical beauty. Fred Neil, one of Bob Dylan’s early idols, followed him down and wrote classic songs like “The Dolphins” during the period when he’d go sailing with my dad. My father told me they’d actually met when Fred Neil collapsed in the corner of his boat to sleep off an underestimated high before he knew whose boat he was stepping onto. In line with classic Fred Neil legend, he was hiding to avoid a show he was supposed to be playing that night.

My father would sometimes look after David Crosby’s boat “The Mayan” while he was gone on tour and had sailed it back from the Keys along with my mother and I. The Mayan was built in 1947 out of an extremely rare Honduran mahogany that termites couldn’t easily eat and was featured on the picture sleeve of one of my favorite CSN seven inches for the song “Dark Star.”
 

 
The story he told me from the hospital bed began on one of his trips back from the Keys. I never really asked him if he was trafficking drugs back and forth… maybe I didn’t want to risk shutting the conversation down. He didn’t seem to have much interest in the stories himself and I had to pry a lot of it out of him. In this particular story he was about to sail back to Coconut Grove when he was introduced to a man on the dock who needed a ride into town. My father being generally pretty kind and fearless, told him that as long as he helped out with the sails and docking the boat he could come along.

Immediately he noticed how skilled and inquisitive the man was and acknowledged that he had a kind of hyper-intelligence. While they were talking about their backgrounds the man explained he was a musician named “Tim Buckley” and quickly pulled out his new LP to prove his identity. My father, probably not knowing who that was and being relatively unimpressed, went back to manning the boat but was ultimately charmed and invited him to come over and hang out with some friends after they got to shore. By the time they reached the dock the man had literally asked my father about every single motion he’d made on the boat and seemed to have memorized each task so that he’d be able to try and sail the boat himself next time.
 

 
The irony of the stranger’s identity would become more bizarre as they pulled up to the cottage my dad had been living in. Joni Mitchell had just gotten to town and was staying with Vince Martin, Fred Neil’s singing partner. She was looking for a slightly more stable place to stay where she could have her own room and my dad offered his place. So when my dad pulled up to his house with the stranger in tow, Vince Martin and Joni Mitchell were sitting on his porch. As my father approached them, the man introduced himself as “Tim Buckley” and Joni Mitchell said “That’s strange… I just played with Tim Buckley in New York.”  The way my dad told it was that the guy was so incredibly charming that he was able to laugh the situation off, eventually admit he wasn’t that Tim Buckley and charm her just the same. In fact, he ended up charming her so quickly that he moved into my dad’s place to stay with them where he and Mitchell fell in love.

The way my dad told it, their romance didn’t last all that long as she had to leave for a huge tour in a month or two as her career was exploding in the summer of 1968. They began to argue more and more as the tour pulled nearer and just like that, as soon as Joni left for tour, my father said the fake “Tim Buckley” was never seen again.
 

 
About a month later my dad was pushed into a car and then taken a dark room and left there for awhile to think by the Feds. I’m sure he probably figured it had something to do with his associations with local growers and traffickers, but he was initially relieved to find out they were only focused on the stranger he brought to town. As the questioning commenced an agent revealed that the man he’d brought into town was an international diamond thief that was wanted for several high profile heists. My father knew nothing about any of this so was probably very comfortable spewing obscenities and saying he didn’t give a fuck, knowing him. In the end they presented him with a statement that said he transported an international criminal into the US and he signed it just so he could leave.

A couple years later it occurred to me that I should probably order my father’s FBI files under the Freedom of Information act, but as my own music career got much busier I never got around to it. I even contacted Vince Martin to interview him for my favorite magazine Ugly Things, but never completed writing the piece. I got married and toured constantly in three bands so even my dad’s death was folded into an extremely confusing time that I still haven’t quite processed completely now. Searching through my emails the other night, I found Vince Martin’s response to me about this story from years ago and it hit me that he probably knows many more of these stories about my father.

Vince had written:

Wow! I never knew you and that’s a shame… and better late than never is cliche, but therefore very true:)—Did you know that your uncle Ron honored me with some of your father’s ashes which are on my living room table in a stained glass box.  I loved him… he was a great friend, we sailed and hung out a lot.  I miss him—-:)
I type with two fingers & its painfully slow—better to talk it:) ..Anytime Emil:)

Joni lived in my house on Bay Homes Dr.  I lived with her and Chuck, her then husband in detroit for almost a year… we were close.  I introduced her to David Crosby who ultimately produced her first LP…

and the story about the phony Tim Buckley is dead on. The guy sat in my living room and tried to tell me he was who he wasn’t when i knew Tim Buckley and knew this guy was a fake.  Joni and I stared at him… like maybe we were nuts.  Finally we knew it was his lie and we were still able to see.

Reading Vince’s email again brought things back into focus for me and I began searching on Google, typing in anything that might prove there was a show flyer leftover from Joni Mitchell playing with Tim Buckley in NYC like my father had said.

There was nothing out there at all… except one single link to a tiny bit of audio from a Joni Mitchell interview in 1988 that seemed to magically confirm everything immediately!.  My eyes widened as I poured another drink and listened to this fleeting evidence of the details my dad had reeled-off on the phone from his hospital bed.

One has to wonder if the man the FBI was looking for was actually Murph the Surf?

I looked back through more emails and found one from my uncle guessing that the man was either Murph the Surf or his accomplice. The years would’ve matched up pretty well actually considering Murph was imprisoned sometime around 1969, so this window of time may’ve been exactly when the FBI was pursuing him and his gang. How many international diamond thieves could the FBI have been pursuing in the Grove area at that time?

This is a guest post written by Emil Amos, who has recorded over 1000 songs. The new Holy Sons album is called The Fact Facer and it is out now on Thrill Jockey Records. The Holy Sons will be touring with Elisa Ambrogio from Magik Markers.
 

 
I posted these photos a few years ago from io9 writer Ron Miller‘s insane 1970s cosplay-esque photo collection. They need to be revisited again. If not just for the disco dust-era eye candy, then to draw inspiration from these batshit galactic costumes for this upcoming Halloween.

Some have a slightly Kenneth Anger-ish feel to them. Well, Ken Anger meets Sonny & Cher meets Sun Ra meets a contingent of OTO members snorting coke at a Star Trek convention taking place at Studio 54 maybe…

You have your work cut out for you, folks! A good soundtrack for these would be Chic’s “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsa, Yowsa, Yowsa)” don’ you think?

 

 

 

 
More photos after the jump…
 

 
An animation made entirely with still photographs, this video tells the love story of Vladimir Putin and French actor Gérard Depardieu (with a cameo by Steven Seagal to boot!)

What do these three men have in common? Wikipedia tells me Gérard Depardieu was granted Russian citizenship in January 2013 so he could avoid French tax. He writes of being buddies with Putin in his new autobiography:

We could have both become hoodlums,’ he writes. ‘I think he immediately liked my hooligan side ... the fact that I had occasionally been picked up off the pavement dead drunk.

‘Like with me, nobody would have betted a penny on him when he was 15.’

Depardieu reveals he regularly writes to Putin: ‘It’s very easy’, he explains, ‘I speak, there’s a guy who taps it out in French then translates it into Russian and it arrives on Putin’s desk. I send him letters that tell him about everything. He’s like an old chum. It amuses him and he replies.’

He’s also an admitted former “rent boy.” As we all already know, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a big ol’ homophobe. And Steven Seagal? Apparently he is also a really good friend of Putin’s. That’s all I’ve got.

I’ve tried and probably failed to connect the dots. Or maybe that’s all there is here. Watch it and see what you think:

 
Via WFMU on Twitter

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Dictator’ cat scratch posts and litter boxes
You can stick Vladimir Putin up your ass

 
Last year I proclaimed Harmontown to be the best comedy podcast, and in the intervening time I have seen nohing to change my mind (although I have grown fond of Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World and Pete Holmes’ You Made It Weird. A couple of days ago saw the release of a documentary about Dan Harmon and the nationwide tour his podcast made in January 2013. It’s available to stream on Amazon for $6.99 (to purchase, $12.99/$14.99).

The question arises, how is it? The simple answer is, it’s very good. I’m a little too close to the subject to review it properly, so while recommending the documentary (directed by Neil Berkeley, who also directed Beauty is Embarrassing: The Wayne White Story) I thought I’d also express some thoughts about why Harmontown (the podcast) is such an achievement as well as a few things the documentary inevitably missed (not a diss, it would have been impossible to cover everything).
 

Spencer Crittenden, Jeff B. Davis, Dan Harmon, and Erin McGathy
 
Dan Harmon is a TV writer and showrunner who is responsible for Community (NBC) and Rick & Morty (Adult Swim). He’s from Milwaukee and he drinks too much and he’s got some impressive verbal gifts and he has issues with people telling him what to do. Harmontown (the podcast) is taped every Sunday at the NerdMelt Theater, the back room of Meltdown Comics in Hollywood. The governing conceit is that Dan Harmon is the mayor and his buddy Jeff B. Davis is the comptroller. Dan occupies a unique niche, as something like the world’s most dangerous showrunner (i.e. writer who oversees a television show). The advent of high-quality TV that requires attention to long-form narrative issues has made a figure like Harmon nearly inevitable—who knew who ran Kojak?  If America loves Chuck Lorre’s shows, then that leaves an opening for an uncompromising indie showrunner who caters to a coterie—that’s Harmon, who plays Pulp to Lorre’s Oasis, perhaps.

Every show involves a mix of discussion about whatever has been occupying Harmon lately, audience participation, special guest appearances (Robin Williams, Patton Oswalt, Eric Idle, etc.) and a 20-minute chunk of D&D. The shows are entirely unscripted, and somehow they manage to be pretty darn diverting just about every week. As Davis points out in the movie, because it’s constructed from scratch every week, every episode feels completely different. What’s guaranteed is that because everything is filtered through Harmon’s lively, dangerous personality, there’s not much out there like it. What it feels like is unprecedented.

Harmon’s a dork of long standing, and his audience overwhelmingly consists of smart, introverted creative people (this is a euphemism for “on the Spectrum”) who, possibly, were bullied in high school; were far too interested in the Alien movie series and pop culture artifacts of that type; and have found some private fulfillment as adults in some interesting endeavor. What’s key is that the generosity, tolerance, and democracy behind Harmon’s sincere efforts at outreach have struck a massive chord among the people of this sub-sector, who in turn regard Harmon as their own special hero. The documentary is largely about Harmon going out into the country from LA to meet the throngs that make up his adoring audience. As Harmon often jokes, “his people” aren’t great at eye contact, which made the lengthy meet and greets after every session of “HarmonCountry” interesting social events in their own right.
 

 
The documentary covers all of this back story—the poster’s touting of the appearances of Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Joel McHale, and John Oliver is a bit of a cheat, they only appear in the movie for a couple of seconds apiece, as talking heads testifying to Harmon as a co-worker in the world of TV (Sarah Silverman and Jason Sudeikis are both in the movie in a fuller way). Implicit in that promotional strategy is that there’s not that much here to sell the movie. Much like Community, Dan Harmon himself is an aquired taste, and people watching the documentary should know that the movie features huge amounts of footage of exactly four people: Harmon, Davis, Harmon’s girlfriend (now fiancée) Erin McGathy, and Spencer Crittenden, the D&D dungeon master who was recruited from the live audience in an early episode and has appeared in the largest number of episodes since, excepting Dan himself of course).

Watching the movie, I found myself wondering what non-devotees will make of Dan Harmon. It’s a little like when you introduce your favorite noise-rock band to a friend, you might not have the best antennae about who will like this band. Same thing here—I love Harmon, but from all external appearances he’s a talkative alcoholic and egomaniac with a mean streak. It would be easy to imagine him wearing on people, which I sincerely hope doesn’t happen because I think Harmon’s worth the trouble. The thing to understand about Harmon is that he’s an idealist of the highest order. For instance, the HarmonCountry tour, even if it was the act of an egomaniac, was essentially an attempt to execute the world’s largest hug. A devotee of the Jungian mythologist Joseph Campbell, Harmon sincerely believes that his own writing accomplishments are merely a reflection of universal wisdoms that could equally well be expressed some other way. Harmon drinks too much and is self-destructive, all of which makes his penchant for unvarnished revelation all the more admirable. The list of his uncomfortable admissions (his purchase of a Real Doll many years ago, for instance) would be long indeed; would that we were all so honest! (Thus we see the idealism at work.)

One of the central issues in Harmontown the documentary is Harmon’s treatment of McGathy, who is clearly Harmon’s #1 supporter as well as his lifetime companion. The legendary Pittsburgh entry of HarmonCountry devolved into a huge onstage argument between Harmon and McGathy; the tour was clearly taking a massive toll on their relationship (they’re still together, obviously). Harmon did a bit about trying to become “visibly” aroused in full view of the audience by fantasizing about an attractive young lady in the audience, a bit that understandably wounded McGathy, who said so onstage some minutes later. The slack-jawed Pittsburghers were treated to a bit that wasn’t a bit, in essence a drawn-out, gut-wrenching conversation about the ways Harmon can wound McGathy and Harmon’s refusal to change. 

Harmontown the documentary faithfully captures the complexity of Harmon and the appeal of the show, almost entirely. Inevitably, a documentary of this type must maintain its focus on Harmon and the rapid rise to nerdy prominence of Spencer, the D&D dungeon master. What a movie of this kind can’t, by definition, capture is one of the central sources of appeal of the podcast, which are the longer-form discussions/banter, and especially the longer set pieces in which Harmon improvs a rant about the injustice of being told to tie his shoes or the faulty logic of Uber or why Captain America is an unsatisfying movie. That’s the stuff I go to Harmontown for, and there’s virtually none of it in the documentary (again, not a diss; Berkeley made the right movie that was there to make). For that, go to Harmontown.com (episode 1) and listen to the podcasts. I wish they’d captured the dapper charm of Jeff B. Davis or the comedic genius—yes, genius—of Erin McGathy. In the movie you would get the impression that McGathy is a fairly typical supportive indie chick, but she has a lengthy background in improv and her comedic instincts are every bit as developed as those of Harmon himself. If anything she’s even quicker, and her bits don’t always depend on the filter of her own psychodramas. She has a podcast of her own about relationships called This Feels Terrible, which I highly recommend.

Download Harmontown the documentary—for some interesting insights into the making of the documentary, the Nerdist episode with Harmon and director Neil Berkeley is well worth a listen.
 

 
Maybe it’s the music, but I found this video of two kangaroos boxing in the middle of a residential street in Australia oddly soothing. Their boxing techniques are like an art form. A marsupial ballet.

I don’t think I’ve ever watched two kangaroos duke it out for so long. The video is over five minutes and worth the watch. I wonder what exactly they’re arguing over? I mean, what led up to this incident? A fight over a female? A drunken bar argument? Politics? Religion?

 
via reddit