Frank Zappa was fond of cheesy monster movies and sci-fi flicks. He had a record label called Barking Pumpkin and his favorite holiday was Halloween. From 1977 until he stopped performing, Zappa and whatever Mothers of Invention he was touring with at the time, made a stop at New York’s Palladium Theater on 14th Street, the same venue where The Clash’s Paul Simonon smashed up his bass (as seen on the cover of London Calling) and that was reborn as the Palladium nightclub (home of Club MTV) and later NYU student dorms…
 

 
First up, the 1977 show as recorded by radio’s King Biscuit Flower Hour:
 

 
The marathon (nearly four hours) 10/31/1978 show from that year’s Palladium run:
 

 

 
In 1981, MTV did a live simulcast of Zappa’s Halloween show from The Palladium:
 

 
Stanley Kubrick was a notorious perfectionist—Slim Pickens turned down the role of Dick Hallorann in The Shining, eventually played by Scatman Crothers, because Kubrick refused to promise to limit his number of takes on any of Pickens’ shots to under 100.

So it’s no surprise that Kubrick gave some thought to the foreign-language versions of his movies. One of the pivotal scenes in The Shining occurs when Wendy Torrance, played by Shelley Duvall, comes upon the thick, typewritten manuscript that her husband Jack has been working on for weeks, only to find that every single page is covered with thousands of iterations of the creepy phrase “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Kubrick understood that the power of the scene is considerably blunted if you can’t understand the text and therefore must rely on a bland, impersonal, possibly poorly translated subtitle at the bottom of the screen. So Kubrick took the time to shoot four other versions of the scene, for use in the Spanish, Italian, French, and German cuts of the movie.  According to The Overlook Hotel, a website run by Toy Story 3 director Lee Unkrich that is dedicated to Shining ephemera and lore, “Kubrick filmed a number of different language versions of the ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’ insert shot as Wendy leafs through Jack’s work. Many of these alternate language stacks of paper can be seen in the Stanley Kubrick Archive.”
 

Italian:
Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca
(The morning has gold in its mouth)

German:
Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen
(Never put off until tomorrow what can be done today)

Spanish:
No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano
(No matter how early you get up, you can’t make the sun rise any sooner)

French:
Un Tiens vaut mieux que deux Tu l’auras
(What you have is worth much more than what you will have)

 
The link provided by The Overlook Hotel is 404, and my lengthy, feverish attempts to track down pictures of these “alternate stacks of paper,” alas, came to nothing. I would love to see these stacks of paper!

I was able to track down stills of the German and Italian versions on the Internet, but I can’t vouch for their authenticity. They do look legit, though.
 

 

 
Here’s the legendary “All work and no play” scene—in English:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Shining: Overlook Hotel Children’s Placemat
Impressive Jack Nicholson from ‘The Shining’ and 1/6th scale Joker head sculptures

 
Not exactly buried in Alexis Petridis’ interview with Giorgio Moroder today at The Guardian—naturally he used all three names in his headline—is this amazing anecdote:

Alexis Petridis: There’s a story that you attempted to collaborate with Bob Dylan, which seems a bit unlikely.

Giorgio Moroder: That’s right. It was actually Sylvester Stallone who asked me to ask him to sing a song for a Rambo movie. So I composed a song. I wanted him to write the lyrics, of course. I went to see him in Malibu, where he had a beautiful house. He listened to it about four times. I’m not sure if he didn’t like the music that much, or if he wasn’t interested because of the nature of the movie, which was totally anti-Russian, anti-communist. I think he didn’t feel like being involved with a movie such as Rambo. It was nice to meet him, and it could have worked, but it didn’t work out.

Christ it’s a shame that never happened!

Read the entire thing at The Guardian.

Thank you Chris Campion of Berlin, Germany!

 
It doesn’t seem like this bizarre snippet from a Japanese book designed to teach English can be chalked up the usual problems that generate “Engrish”—defined as “the misuse of the English language by native speakers of some East Asian languages.” No, it seems that the writers of this textbook just weren’t thinking about what they were writing or else decided to indulge in a delirious moment of black comedy.

In a sidebar entitled “Rest Station,” the student is given a typical bit of English conversation that you might encounter in a doctor’s office. The participants are a small boy and his doctor. The boy speaks first:

A: Doctor, I’m so alone. Nobody seems to notice me.
B: Next patient, please.

In an illustration, the speech balloon for the poor kid contains only a single black blot, a pretty good visual approximation of clinical depression, while the smiling, clueless doctor is depicted barking out his insensitive sentence.

Best of all, the kid is making the Akbar and Jeff gesture with his index fingers.

via RocketNews24

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Japanese WTF Commercial Of The Day
Wacky Japanese Meth Warning

 
Hugo Chávez was a unique figure in the world of geopolitics. The Venezuelan president was in office for fourteen years until his death earlier this year and was arguably the most successful communist head of state, ever. Venezuela’s status as one of only two South American countries in OPEC (the other is Ecuador) ensured the possibility for an unusual regime. As a popular communist leader harboring an open hostility to the United States (and especially George W. Bush—I can relate), Chávez was never going to get a fair hearing in the U.S. press. Not to excuse some of the conduct his government perpetrated, but it’s not that easy to be a populist Marxist leader in a neoliberal world.

Starting with his first year in office, Chávez commenced hosting an unscripted talk show, broadcast on both radio and television. It was called Aló Presidente, and it went on the air every Sunday afternoon for nearly 13 years (the show started at 11 am every Sunday and had no fixed ending time; it usually ended around 5 pm most days). The show ran 378 times. He required cabinet ministers to appear on the show and submit to an interview, and he occasionally forged important policy decisions on the program. According to Wikipedia, on the March 2, 2008, show, Chávez “ordered a top general to send ten battalions of troops to the border with Colombia in response to a bombing by Colombian forces inside Ecuador which killed Raúl Reyes, a top member of FARC [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia].” In the event, the battalions were not deployed.

Below is a generous compilation of some of moments from Aló Presidente. Regardless of your opinion of his politics, it’s difficult not to concede that he wasn’t bad at all at being a talk show host. Of course, running the country probably helps to get people to play along.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Hugo Chavez joins Twitter: Socialist leader’s social media volte-face
‘Christ is with the Revolution’:  Watch Hugo Chavez doc, ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’
Remembering Hugo Chavez… particularly that hip-hop marketing campaign

 
Italy’s largest-circulating daily, La Repubblica, recently featured an interview and performances by the wonderful, durable songwriter Lloyd Cole on its “Music Corner” web feature. Cole preforms solo acoustic renditions of his songs “Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?,” “Music in a Foreign Language,” and the new song “Period Piece,” and weighs in on matters like being bound by genre:

I think my - whatever it is that I have, I think it is quite narrow. I think I can just apply it in different areas. I think I found out, you know, in the early ‘90s. My generation of musicians, we grew up with David Bowie as I think probably the hero for many of us, and every album was different, and every persona was a reinvention. And I think we thought that we all had to do this. And I think around about 1993 I realized that… I’m not David Bowie!

 

 
He also discusses music formats in a way that may make vinyl purists pop a forehead vein:

I think when things change from what you expect, it’s difficult. I grew up with an album being this big, and I dream of being a rock singer, and so I think of what I want to make in terms of this 12-inch/30-centimeter square. And when that changed, I was very unhappy, because I felt that this [CD] size was not so good. But you adapt. I mean, I have no choice. When things go digital I adapt. When the internet becomes important and I have to have a presence on it, I adapt. If I don’t adapt, I die. So we adapt, and you know now? I find the 12-inch vinyl, I find it to be quite a bulbous thing. It’s particularly - because I have an Internet web site now, and I have a web shop, we do a lot of shipping - vinyl is not green! It costs a lot of money to ship it. The little CDs I make now are completely cardboard, and they’re very light. And I think they’re more beautiful.

 

 
You can watch the entire interview here.

Bonus: Cole speaks candidly about his career with Telegraph critic Neil McCormick, shortly after the release of his wonderful (as usual) new album Standards.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Lloyd Cole is a musical genius (and it’s high time that everyone realized it)

Magician Harry Houdini (Erich Weiss) died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix on October 31, 1926 in a Detroit hospital. He was buried in the family plot in Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York in a bronze coffin he had purchased for one of his escape acts.

Throughout his career Houdini considered spiritualists to be frauds who conned gullible grieving people. But he didn’t exactly rule out the possibility of ghostly contact either. Shortly before his death he and his wife Bess agreed that, if spirit communication was indeed possible and she outlived him, he would contact her via séance on the anniversary of his death. They established a secret code (“Goodnight Harry”) so that she would recognize his spirit’s authenticity if a medium claimed to have a message from him. Every Halloween for a decade after his death, she held a séance. She also sat in seclusion with his photograph every Sunday to await a sign from the afterlife. None ever arrived.

 
Santa Muerte candle, stones, and playing cards left at Houdini’s grave. Photo by Allison Meier.

Séances continue to be held all over the world every Halloween in an attempt to reach Houdini’s spirit.

Houdini’s widow’s final séance, Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel, October 31, 1936:

Via Atlas Obscura

 
You couldn’t really not dig it. Last month I went to the first London screening of James Batley’s Kneel Through the Dark. It was at the Bunker, Dalston, which was a fair bit better than it might sound. For a start, the Bunker is (or was) an actual WWII bunker, with stinking rotting walls lined—for the occasion—with guttering sputtering candles. Then there was the rain, a mighty downpour above ground that the ceiling only filtered through its filth, so that it sluiced dirtily down, refilling drinks gratis and forming such large puddles about the film gear that the nerves of the sodden audience were soon getting quite lustily strummed by the dual threat of flood and fire. Meanwhile Batley himself—great name!—flitted (or flapped) hither and thither in a splendid black cape.

As for Kneel Through the Dark itself, the short, Crowley-inspired film left an impression more physical than mental. A bassline clawed nastily at your stomach, while the images—a turning torso of technicolour smoke; a submerged face; a boy crowned with antlers—flashed by.

Like I say, you couldn’t not dig it, and since there’s a special Halloween screening in London town, I thought it’d be an opportune time to trouble Batley himself (whose work has collected plaudits from Dennis Cooper and Gus Van Sant, among others) with some inescapably inane questions…
 
Thomas McGrath: Loved the screening. I found the atmosphere and setting to be a part of the film, rather than extraneous to it. How important is it to you where you show a film?

James Batley: Ah thanks. The environment definitely adds an extra dimension. When I first walked down those stairs and saw how the bunker sucked in light, the stale air choked my lungs and rancid water dripped through my eyelashes. I was like… this is perfect

Thomas McGrath: Could you think of some kind of ideal setting or circumstance?

James Batley:I’d love to do a screening in a burning building.

Thomas McGrath: Tell us a bit about Kneel Through the Dark?

James Batley: It’s my second short film shot on Super 8 that features an Aleister Crowley magick ritual but it’s about a lot more than that. It’s a bit like a spell that buries into your subconscious and pushes your whiskers to the ether.

Thomas McGrath: Go on, unpick its symbolism for us a bit…

James Batley: I don’t like to break it down too much. I hate going to an art show where the plaque on the wall tells me more about the art than the piece does or just spells it all out arbitrarily.  Why’d you create something when you could have told me on a postcard?  I don’t like to be lead around and told what to think.  Art is ultimately subjective anyway. Anything you connect with is because it relates to your own experiences or self in some way, no matter how coded or buried in your subconscious it is.

Thomas McGrath: Would you draw any distinction between ritual and art?

James Batley: Art is magick in the Crowley sense.  When you listen to a piece of music, watch a film or whatever, it is momentarily possessing you, directing your mood and bending you to its will. 

Thomas McGrath: How did you come to make films?

James Batley: I just see it as a way of communicating.  Language can be clumsy and fraudulent so I threw up some sound and light to try and express something that gets lost in words.  I tried photography for this but found it wasn’t enough.  Sound is better but put them together and you have something really potent.

Thomas McGrath: Tell us about the Crowley influence.

James Batley: He made his own way in. I’m an aerial for this stuff.  It’s important to be a conduit.

Thomas McGrath: I understand you’re very fond of your cat. How would you describe your cat in five words?

James Batley: Nippett. Will. Eat. Your. Brains.

Thomas McGrath: Crowley has a bad reputation among cat lovers usually, right?

James Batley: Well, yea.  He has a bad reputation generally.

Thomas McGrath: Got a new project in mind/motion?

James Batley: I’m planning out my next short at the moment.  It involves a boy who buries dead bees in the park and draws maps to their corpses.  It’s autobiographical.  It has meteors too.

The next Kneel Through The Dark screening will be in the basement (on a loop) at the DCR Halloween party tonight at Red Gallery, London, EC2A 3DT.  Cheap tickets here. More details at: www.jamesbatley.com Add/follow James on Facebook to find out about future screenings.
 

Alice Adeline Cooke was convicted of bigamy. Aged 24, Alice had several aliases and at least two husbands.

Intriguing mug shots of female criminals, taken directly after they were arrested and charged at a police station in New South Wales, Australia, from around the turn of the twentieth century.

The photographs come from the Sydney Justice and Police Museum.
 

 
Alice Clarke, April 3rd, 1916, arrested and convicted for selling liquor without a license.
 

 
Amy Lee. January 30th, 1930, arrested for being a “victim to the foul practice” of taking cocaine.
 
More after the jump…

Image via Liar Town USA
 
How to eradicate Bitstrips from your Facebook for good - The Daily Dot

London’s cheapest suburb? It’s Barcelona - The Local

Most Canadians see Edward Snowden as a hero, poll suggests - Huffington Post

LSD-laced bread at Casper College prompts investigation - Trib.com

The most terrifying PBS special of all time - AV Club

Motörhead have postponed their European tour, which was due to start next week, after mainman Lemmy realised he wasn’t fit enough to hit the road - Classic Rock Mag

Police seek man who pepper-sprayed woman before stealing her monkey - Arbroath

North Carolina biology teacher has students share needles to determine blood type - reddit

By measuring the electrical activity of cheek muscles and associated neural responses, Princeton University researchers show that people are actually biologically responsive to taking pleasure in the pain of others, a reaction known as “Schadenfreude.” - Princeton.edu

Four brand new David Bowie songs - NME

Stop Marina Abramović! - The Marina Abramović Retirement Fund of America

New trailer arrives for THE VISITOR, the sci-fi epic 1979 couldn’t handle - Badass Digest

Adobe says data for 38 million customers compromised - The Irish Times

Who to dress as for Halloween if you want to start a fight - FlavorWire

A town in Norway on Wednesday began to get winter sun for the first time in its 100-year history after it started beaming down the sun from giant mirrors erected on hills to its north - TheLocal.no

Bitcoin cashes in as its first ATM opens in Vancouver - The Guardian

Artificial blood made in Romania - Balkan News in English

Behind the scenes of Blood Manor, one of NYC’s scariest haunted houses - Gizmodo

Sheffield stab victim killed on final pizza delivery - BBC News

Skokie officer charged with battery after video of face slamming goes viral - Chicago Tribune

Researchers use microscope equipped camera to learn how ticks pierce and adhere to skin (w/ video) - Phys.org

Below, a two-year-old operates an excavator: