Erstwhile Soul Coughing vocalist Mike Doughty has released an album wherein he covers his past self. A baker’s dozen of Soul Coughing songs have been re-imagined for the release Circles Super Bon Bon…, which is something of a surprise for two reasons. First, the man has very little good to say about his tenure in that groundbreaking band. Second, revisiting past successes usually signals waning inspiration, but Doughty’s solo output has been terrific. His flair for marvelous wordplay has never dimmed, and there’s a great deal to enjoy about his post-‘90s output once you can get past what a bunch of frat bros the bulk of his fans are. From his web site:

1. The parts about Soul Coughing in my memoir, The Book of Drugs, were a big fat ball of darkness. After a long, arduous book tour, reading these parts to audiences, I sat down with an acoustic guitar and picked through them. I found myself wanting to figure out what I meant, who I was, where I was when I wrote the songs. I wanted to separate the songs — not the recordings, but the songs — from the darkness.
2. These songs are as I meant them to be, when I wrote them, in the ’90s: some are club bangers, some are pop songs; in general, they’re bigger, heavier, cleaner, funkier, more streamlined than the originals.

The crowd-sourced album was fully funded in under a day, and, unsurprisingly, the songs are, for the most part, fairly stripped down. Really, it would be hard for them not to be relatively sparse without the dense, playful, trippy layers of keyboards and concret Mark degli Antoni brought to Soul Coughing - and incidentally, if you’ve ever been curious what it’s like to be stoned in a fishbowl, immerse yourself in his sorely overlooked 1999 solo album Horse Tricks. But though Doughty’s voice seems to have lost a bit of flexibility—middle age can be a motherfucker to male singers’ high registers, so it goes—the songs are still great fun, and the beats retain their punch. The entire album is on YouTube, check it out:
 

 
Or if you’re about the a/b thing, compare “Super Bon Bon,” old and new, and marvel at the delightfully odd video Doughty and director Meg Skaff conceived for the new version.
 

 
Also, never say never.
 

 

 
Over the years I’ve introduced several people to the Tommy Westphall Multiverse, and it never fails to generate a good conversation. It’s a way of understanding the interconnections between TV shows, and also lends insight into the creative process, especially in-jokes, of the people who work in the television industry. In essence, the Tommy Westphall Multiverse is a thought exercise, a parlor game writ large. And it’s tailor made for pop culture obsessives.

The starting point for any explanation of the Tommy Westphall Multiverse begins with a specific episode of a specific television show. That episode would be the final episode of the 1980s TV series St. Elsewhere, in which the show’s producers pulled an incredibly audacious trick on the audience.

I can’t remember if I watched that episode when it first ran or not. I probably did not, because the episode first ran on my 18th birthday—May 25, 1988. I seriously doubt that I was watching St. Elsewhere that night. I suppose I heard about the episode a little bit later.

In the very final scene of the episode, and thus of the series, there is an abrupt change in tone. We find ourselves in a working-class apartment—the familiar Dr. Donald Westphall enters, but—he’s wearing a hard hat; odd—and there’s Dr. Daniel Auschlander, sitting in a wing chair reading a newspaper, watching over Dr. Westphall’s—if he is indeed a doctor?—autistic son Tommy. Through the dialogue it is revealed that Auschlander is actually Westphall’s father—and thus the grandfather of autistic Tommy. Tommy keeps fiddling with a large snow globe, and his dad expresses some frustration that he can’t enter into the mental link his son has created with it. Eventually he takes the snow globe out of his son’s hands and places it on a countertop—after which the camera zooms in relentlessly on the snow globe, revealing the familiar contours of the St. Eligius Hospital inside, familiar to its fans via the show’s opening credits.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?” you can still hear the show’s fans crying in unison. Are you saying that the entire plot of the show was all just the fractured projections of an autistic mind? I can hardly think of a bleaker, nastier jape ever perpetrated on a major television network. Dallas may have erased a season via the old “it was a dream” maneuver—but the entire series? St. Elsewhere may have had a modest following for network TV of the 1980s, but that’s still several million people. The audacity of the parting shot could hardly be more profound.

And thus we can begin to ask the most important question of the Tommy Westphall Multiverse—Who is in the snow globe? Obviously all of the beloved characters on St. Elsewhere are in the snow globe—Dr. Craig, Dr. Ehrlich, Dr. Wayne Fiscus, Dr. Auschlander, and all of the rest of them—they’re all in the snow globe.
 

The Tommy Westphall Snow Globe!!
 
The creation of the Tommy Westphall Multiverse came about because of efforts to figure out certain connections—crossovers, let’s call them—between the characters of Homicide: Life on the Street and other programs, especially Law & Order. At some point those crossovers led to St. Elsewhere, and it was only a matter of time before someone realized that—if the characters of Homicide and Law & Order are in the same universe as St. Elsewhere, then that means that Lenny Briscoe, Jack McCoy, Claire Kincaid, Dr. Emil Skoda, Robert Goren, Olivia Benson, Meldrick Lewis, Frank Pembleton, Tim Bayliss and on and on—they’re also in the Tommy Westphall Snow Globe!

But we’re just getting started.

Because of the many opportunities television affords for (a) cross-promotion, (b) spin-offs, and (c) in-jokes, there are literally dozens and dozens of shows in the Tommy Westphall Snow Globe. The entire L&O universe is in there, but that also means that all of The Wire is in there too—keep in mind that John Munch popped up on an episode of The Wire......
 

 
The more you look at the Tommy Westphall Multiverse, the more fascinating it gets. Personally, I can look at this chart for 20 minutes at a time before getting tired of it. You know who else is in the Snow Globe? Darrin Stephens from Bewitched, Fred Mertz from I Love Lucy, Radar O’Reilly from M*A*S*H, Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Devon Miles from Knight Rider. It seems incredible, but it’s true. That’s quite a fertile imagination that little autistic kid had!

Part of the fun is tracking how the links have been forged over time. Sometimes it’s in the form of a blatant cross-promotion—a character from Friends appearing on 30 Rock, for instance. But many of the links derive from playful homages that don’t require the consent of the party being celebrated. For instance, quoting now from the Multiverse’s all-important “Key,” which explains the connections, in this case how The X-Files got in: “The fictional car rental company Lariat where Mulder & Scully always rented their cars was featured prominently on the Veronica Mars episode ‘Rat Saw God.’”

I could say so much more, but the fun is in exploring the Multiverse on one’s own. And before you ask: No, Breaking Bad isn’t in the Multiverse, and neither is Mad Men. But give it time…..
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘We’re doomed’: ‘Wire’ creator David Simon on the end of America
Omar’s coming!: The Wire’s Michael K. Williams reveals playlist he listened to get into character

Ignorance about religious beliefs is one of those things that can range from hair raising and volatile to hilarious. A good example of the latter would be when one of my college friends received a double VHS set (and this was in the early 2000’s)  about the Satanic evils of rock & roll music as a well intentioned gift from his parents. The list on the back of the tape mentioned the usual suspects but then made a point to name both Bow Wow Wow and Earth, Wind & Fire. This? Was hilarious to us and heck, it is still funny to me now. I can see parents being nervous about their impressionable fundie kids listening to Venom, but the band that sang Shining Star? Heaven knows that when I think of ole Scratch, 20 piece bands in shimmery outfits singing about love and happiness come instantly to mind. Anyways, speaking of Satan, the dark one’s name gets mentioned a LOT in the at times fascinating and unintentionally funny obscure Mondo-relic, Witchcraft ‘70.

 
Originally released as Angeli Bianchi….Angeli Neri or White Angels…..Black Angels, Witchcraft ‘70 plays like your middle-aged, space-age fabric pants wearing uncle trying to be hip and understanding all of those wacky things you kids are into. But because said uncle is a) more square than the “700 Club” and b) is about as covertly pervy as anyone on any 700 Club-esque show, his perceptions are going to be seriously off.

Any film that begins with such gloriously ham-boned narration as “Explore the naked truth about witchcraft” is going to give you very little truth but a healthy amount of the skin show. It gets better, with the narrator, veteran British character actor Edmund Purdom in all of his serious as the grave intonations, informing us that some of the footage was obtained due to the crew “steal (ing) our way into their black settings in attempts to observe Satan’s unspeakable and yet sometimes erotic rites.” Already, the film is painting a mental picture of the Devil being some mustachioed, smoking jacket wearing mofo who knows how to throw one helluva swinger’s party..

 
If you are in any way knowledgeable about non-traditional religious belief systems and have a weak sense of slack, then you might want to stop the film right here. The first segment, dealing with witchcraft, actually makes the statement that “witches believe in Satan like Christians believe in Christ.” Most witches don’t really believe in the Christian God, so worshiping the Christian Devil is going to be a tricky thing.

Cut to Capitola, California, a seaside tourist town and burgeoning hotspot for “hippies or hips.” The cameras talk to one Lt. David Estes, who is either a horrible actor or frighteningly real. The Lieutenant, who appears to have all the awareness and social insight of a dust mite living in the basement, states that the two main problems are “drugs” and “the spiritual revolution.” The latter basically means witchcraft, at least to this officer, who is then asked about the mutilated animals that have been found scattered across town. I like to think it was the local hippies messing with the guy, pointing at roadkill and saying it was due to “the spiritual revolution.”

After that scenic trip, the film goes to England, where the “practice of witchcraft is widely accepted,” which just screams dubious. It is here where we get to witness a “black mass.” (Cue up your Electric Wizard album and throw rotten meat at your neighbors!) The coven meet in an abandoned church, not out of any spiritual necessity, but just to toss a dash of “spice” into the mix. Black candles, black robes and enough darkness to invoke clove cigarette smoked fueled memories of hanging out at the local goth club, fill the area. They commence with a ritual celebrating the Greek God Pan, which for our narrator means only one thing….SATAN!!! Granted, I’m sure the two would make fantastic golfing buddies, but one in the same? I guess invoking “Satan” is far more ooky-spooky than the ancient deity of pleasure and fertility.

 
Of course, there’s the usual nudity, complete with the naked girl on the altar. Get used to this because it is going to come up a LOT. My personal favorite touch was, in an act of intentional sacrilege, they take the host, put it in a glass of wine and then throw the wine on the ground. It’s just so over dramatic and the Count Chocula style narration is not helping. The fact that the odds of this being a real coven are between zero to 1% doesn’t help, but it does heighten the amusement factor.

Also in England is a woman named Eleanor Bones, who preaches against Christianity in Hyde Park. For Eleanor, it’s not just a hobby but also a way to lure potential customers for her witchy wares. We then get a peak into her coven performing a ritual to conduct a spell to help out a sick man. Naturally, they get naked, though the fact that there’s a mixture of body types and not just slim, moderately attractive folks in their early 20’s might very well mean that this could be real. Maybe.

Next we go to Italy, where an older Italian woman channels the spirit of her dead nephew, the victim of an automobile accident. She uses him as a vessel to communicate with the dead, specifically others who have also died due to automobiles, and give messages to the grieving. This lady is more like a rogue Catholic, though more accurately, a rogue bullshit artist and seeing the throngs of weepy eyed lost villagers is no fun. But such is the way of the Mondo films, mixing the bitter with the sweet.

 
The hoodoo-voodoo is bound to come up in a film like this and come it does, with the setting being a warehouse in the middle of Louisiana. Thanks to a smiling paid informant and a hidden camera, we see the group worship “ the snake, zombie or the devil.” It’s religious confusion here on the Damballah ranch. Nobody, except for certain strains of horror film fans, worships zombies. Satan has nothing to do with voodoo either, unless you’re Pat Robertson. But all of this smug misinformation does give us some sweaty dancing, a voodoo queen serving some Tina Turner circa ‘67 realness, blood drinking and of course, nudity. There is also an animal sacrifice that is mercifully off screen.

After that, we get an occult wedding, footage from Brazil that looks like it was more than likely culled from an unrelated project, some European fundie Christians “casting the devil out” and more “ooga-booga” colonial nonsense.

Just as things are really petering out, here comes the Church of Satan founder himself, Anton LaVey. Like a breath of fresh air, LaVey’s segment is prefaced by some choice voice over lines, including “Some left their heart in San Francisco, but others have left their souls too.” Awesome. If there was ever a PSA for the Church of Satan, that line should totally be cribbed for it. We get a peek inside LaVey’s amazing black Victorian house, complete with secret bookshelves and a poster featuring the man pointing towards the camera with the script, “Satan Wants You!.” This poster should have been a fixture in every witchy head shop across North America, but we can all dare to dream.

 
A young couple approaches LaVey to perform a Satanic wedding for them. It’s not completely clear if they are all that aligned with the Church necessarily, but they are seeking his services due to a severe disillusionment with not only Judeo-Christian beliefs, but with the world around them. The service is everything you would expect. Black room, LaVey resplendent with horns and a nude buxotic on the altar. The narration soon turns snarky, referring to the Church of Satan parishioners as “bored” and “middle-aged.” Its seems unusually bitchy especially given the hijinks that have already been witnessed and commented on.

The film goes back to the Lieutenant who actually makes a statement saying that he believes that young people are becoming possessed by the Devil due to LSD. This moves smoothly into some more secretly recorded footage, this time of a hippie cult in California. All of this may sound sexy in a “make it witchy” kind of way, until you realize it’s basically a bunch of pseudo hippies hanging around a campfire and toking it up. It’s about as sinister looking as a Phish concert, but only half as evil.

Witchcraft ‘70 is a fascinating and high-tailed relic from an era where the dual forces of curiosity and fear were at a peak with matters of the occult. To the extent where The Occult Coloring Book not only existed but was reviewed in the legendary and short lived teenage groupie rag, Star, back in 1973, just three years after the release of this film. While its approach to alternative beliefs is as backwards as a political conversation at a Southern family reunion, it is an accidentally honest peek into the post-counter culture Pandora’s Box effect. That in itself is a positive thing and worst case scenario, it is a great film to share a healthy amount of libations with a loved one of your choosing.

 
Investigative reporter Mark Ebner has a new haircut. He has gone for the military look. It’s all part of a would-be ruse to infiltrate the Church of Scientology, pop down to their “Super Power Building” in Clearwater, Florida, and deliver a subpoena to “Scientology dictator” David Miscavige.

As regular DM readers will know, I am big fan of the brilliant Ebner, and he is in rollicking good form on this edition of Media Mayhem, “Leah Remini and the Scientology Apocalypse.” Here, with host Allison Hope Weiner, Ebner discusses why Remini quit Scientology, the inside story on Miscavige’s influence on Tom Cruise, the “Super Power Building” fraud, ponzi schemes, and the homicides that have been committed by the “cult.”

As Ebner points out Scientology is in crisis, and it’s not just the likes of Remini that are leaving: to say people are leaving the Church in droves, wouldn’t be right, “as there aren’t any droves left to leave.”
 

 
Jail for mother over son’s ‘I am a bomb’ 9/11 top - The Local

A website to name and shame poachers in Kenya—PoachersExposed.com—has been launched by wildlife campaigners - BBC News

Television reveal they have nearly-finished album sitting in the vaults - NME

Research finds Neandertals, not modern humans, made first specialized bone tools in Europe - Phys.org

Leaked Lost document reveals they had no plan for an ending - The Vulture

Kanye West makes outrageous demands, wants dressing room carpet IRONED & decorated in all white - Radar

Sign of the times: a lost drone poster - Kottke

Due to the economic crisis in Portugal, some prisoners are renouncing their rights to parole, preferring to stay in jail - Digital Journal

Minneapolis sheriff is positive that rape and murder are linked to marijuana use - Death and Taxes

Stephen King damns Shelley Duvall’s character in film of The Shining - The Guardian

Burglars stole midget porn before burning down home - Arbroath

This Porpoise slaughter is seven times bigger than the Cove’s, so why haven’t you heard about it? - Take Part

Parents of teens who trashed Ex-NFL player’s house threatening to sue him - Gothamist

Man’s gut fermented food into alcohol, making him drunk, case study finds - CNN Health

Two universities in the United Kingdom ban “Blurred Lines” for promoting rape culture - Think Progress

92-year-old World War II vet avoids eviction by daughter - ABC News

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man banned in North Carolina - LA Times

Hong Kong braced for ‘strongest storm on earth’ as 180mph monster Super-Typhoon Usagi gains strength over the Pacific - The Independent

Starbucks wi-fi more secure than Pentagon network - ABC.net

The legacy of imprisoned investigative journalist Barrett Brown - The Daily Dot

A collection of Japanese manhole covers - Flickr

Below, Flag live at Irving Plaza on September 19th, 2013, performing “Damaged.” Shot by Glen E. Friedman with a little pocket digital camera after running out of film shooting stills.

 
A wealthy businessman hired over one hundred homeless people in Pasadena, California to wait in iPhone lines outside of the Apple Store there.

Apparently, he promised pizza, cigarettes and $40 for these folks to camp out overnight in hopes of getting vouchers to purchase two iPhones, the maximum allowed per person in line. When there was some confusion at the Pasadena store, and not every voucher was honored, so what did the guy do?

Go on, take a guess…

If you guessed that he reneged on the deal, you didn’t win an iPhone, but that’s the right answer.

“Some people claimed they got paid their $40, but I didn’t get mine,” says one man offered the deal in the video clip below. “If [the rich guy] is a scam artist, then he should get what he deserves.”

I suspect that what this man is going to get—and what he probably deserves in spades—will be Internet infamy as soon as someone figures out who he is in 5, 4, 3, 2… it’s only a matter of time, probably, before his identity will be known. Two people were arrested in connection to this scam.
 

 
With thanks to Eamon Martin!

 
Who does this English political party leader remind you of?

Well, it’s actually Nigel Farage. Who? The head of the UK Independence Party, a populist right-wing, “democratic, libertarian” organization, who want out of the European Union, and to cut back on immigration. (Think English Tea Baggers who believe everything bad starts at Calais, and you’ll get the idea.)

In Britain, it’s the “Conference Season” when all the big (and not so big) political parties hold conferences to outline their manifestos to the faithful, and the party leaders give rousing speeches about what they’ll do if and when they ever get into power. Today, it was UKIP’s turn, and leader Nigel planned to give his troops (and the country) his vision for the future. Unfortunately, Nige was upstaged by two incidents.

First, the above picture which appeared on a screen at the BBC HQ in Manchester, as the Independent explains:

A pixelation error on the BBC’s big screen at Media City in Salford meant Nigel Farage appeared to have grown Hitler-style moustache when speaking to BBC Breakfast on Friday morning.

In an unfortunate incident similar to a Father Ted episode where a perfectly square piece of dirt gave the Irish priest a moustache, the Ukip leader was left talking about an immigration crackdown with a large black pixel over his upper lip.

He had been talking to the broadcaster about Enoch Powell following revelations that teachers saw him as a “racist” and a “fascist” at school.

The Ukip leader was forced to deny that he sang Hitler youth songs at school, after a teacher alleged that, at a Combined Cadet Force camp organised by Dulwich college, Mr Farage and others had marched through a Sussex village “shouting Hitler-youth songs”.

Well, if the ‘stache fits…eh, Nigel? Who knows if it was an accident or the work of a wily control room switcher, it’s still a thing of great beauty either way!

Second, and probably far more damaging for UKIP‘s political future was this staggeringly stupid outburst from one of Nigel’s shock troops, Godfrey Bloom.

Bloom is a UKIP Member of the European Parliament (MEP), who only a few weeks ago made a racist reference to somewhere called “Bongo-Bongo land” when describing foreign countries that received government aid.

Today, at a “champagne-fuelled lunchtime reception,” in the exclusive Cinnamon Club restaurant close to Westminster, Godfrey shouted out:

“This place is full of sluts.”

The Daily Mirror reports that when asked outside by a Sky News reporter, if his remarks were offensive:

“Was there a single woman in there who didn’t laugh, you sad little man?” he snarled.

Michael Crick then infuriated him by asking why all of the hundreds of people on the front of the conference were white.

Mr Bloom took the brochure and hit the reporter over the head while shouting: “What a racist comment! How dare you! That’s an appalling thing to say!

“You’re picking people out for the colour of their skin! You disgust me! Get out of my way!” he said, before hailing a cab.

All of the above leads me to think that Nigel and his party faithful have succeeded in getting the essence of their message across to the British public.
 

 
Via the ‘Independent’ and the ‘Daily Mirror’
 

Wonderwall is an unusual and beautiful psychedelic Sixties period piece that sees a scientist (Jack MacGowran) becoming smitten by a beautiful model who lives next door to him.

She is played by the ever so gorgeous Jane Birkin...

 
Wonderwall is probably the ultimate “swinging London” film and what a pedigree it has. The featured Anita Pallenberg and Dutch design collective The Fool (who art-directed the film and were well-known for their work with The Beatles) in cameo roles. The film’s two primary sets (the apartments of the scientist and the model) were designed by Assheton Gorton who’d been previously nominated for a BAFTA for his work on Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (another film in contention for “most Sixties film.”)

 
The soundtrack was by George Harrison and featured Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, some top classical Indian players in Bombay and an uncredited banjo performance by Monkee Peter Tork. There is one song called “Ski-Ing” that features one of the single most ferocious guitar riffs that Eric Clapton ever laid down and most of his biggest fans have never even heard of it.

 
Made in 1968 by first time director Joe Massot (who would later direct the Led Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same and worked on the psychedelic western Zachariah with the Firesign Theatre), Wonderwall was released on DVD in an elaborate package by Rhino in 2004 that now goes for top dollar to collectors.

 
The man is a gift from the comedy gods, we all know this—but if this isn’t the truest thing ever said about smart phones, then I’ll eat mine.

Louis C.K. you’re in the pantheon of the greats. I salute you, sir and revere your dangerous mind.

No way is my kid getting a smart phone. This settled it in my mind!

From last night’s Conan:
 

 
The befuddled looks on the groom’s and bride’s faces are priceless. What a lunatic to do something like this. Don’t let this guy behind the wheel of a car or sell him a gun, he’s DANGEROUS.

No, this is not about YOUR special day. This is about GOD, dammit! Now GTFO!

 
Via Christian Nightmares