Look at the detail on that thing! It’s truly incredible. It’s got the biggest head I’ve ever seen on a Pez dispenser and the dedication to reproducing H. R. Giger’s nightmarish and biologically persuasive design concept for outer space’s most terrifying acid-spewer is positively remarkable.
 

 
Hats off to Peter “Rat D” Davidson, credited as the little gizmo’s creator.

Now, if only we can make the little Pez candies in the shape of the ghastly creature that famously burst through John Hurt’s sternum….
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Anton LaVey Pez Dispenser

 
The New York Historical Society recently obtained some great “Old New York” photography—beautiful shots of the ladies from New York’s formerly infamous Meatpacking District. Though it’s now one of the trendiest (and most expensive) neighborhoods in the city, in the 1980s, the Meatpacking District was the most notorious destination for sex clubs, drugs and prostitution, particularly from trans people. Many of the sex clubs were even forcibly shut down during the height of the AIDS scare by the Koch administration.

It’s a contentious part of the city’s history, and although the characters who populated that part of town at night are long gone, Jeff Cowen’s photographs are proof that they once existed. From The Historical Society’s website:

When New-York Historical acquired these images, Jeff Cowen included a typewritten, four-page narrative he titled “The Drag Queen Stroll.”  In it, the artist details his subjects from their first-hand accounts and his point of view, utilizing an abrupt writing style that’s reminiscent of the Beat Generation.

Cowen maps “The Stroll” from 17th Street and 9th Avenue, running west to the Hudson River, to the southern edge of the Meatpacking District on Gansevoort. His writing draws on the rampant homelessness, drug use, prostitution, theft, and assault in this area at night, which serves as a sharp contrast to the union workers and family men who work in the meat markets and warehouses during the day. Cowen calls this area “a haven for the largest transvestite subculture on the east coast.” And with the advent of crack and HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, he says “the cost of sin has never been higher.”

 

 

 

 

 
Via Animal

 
French music producer known as Drixxxe has made this pretty spectacular mix of songs from ‘70s softcore porn-y films. There’s no tracklist that I can find, but some of songs come from Sessomatto, Black Lolita, Aunt Peg, Madame Claude, Emanuelle and the Girls of Madame Claude, Vampyros Lesbos, Sex O’Clock USA, Skin Flicks, Odyssey, Le Sex Shop and Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals.

Here it is for your listening pleasure. Enjoy!

Sextape by Drixxxé on Mixcloud

 
Via Nerdcore

 
In just a few days all of Germany will decide between the Christian Democratic incumbent chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Social Democratic challenger, Peer Steinbrück. (Germans sensibly schedule their elections for the weekends, when people don’t have to deal with workday commutes and so forth.) Merkel is overwhelmingly likely to win, the polls tell us.

Last month the Italian chocolate company Ferrero decided to capitalize on election fever by releasing a politics-themed commercial in order to promote their white chocolate kisses (called Küsschen) that has irritated more than a few observers. I’m not entirely sure, but I think the concept is a little bit like McDonald’s McRib sandwich; the point of the commercial seems to be that the little white chocolate kisses—emphasis on “white” here—will stick around for good, i.e. they’ll stop being a seasonal product. Something like that, anyway. The ad was created by M&C Saatchi.

In the commercial, a package of white chocolate Ferrero Küsschen is giving a political address in a large hall packed with lily-white and faintly Aryan Bürger (citizens). I scoured the commercial for a nonwhite face, but I failed to find any. I say “faintly Aryan” but in fairness most of the people I saw have brown hair—perhaps M&C Saatchi was anticipating the outrage the commercial would cause? It’s pretty creepy either way, it’s just so many smiling white faces.

“Dear friends!” cries the cute little box. “We all have one common wish, to make the country more delicious! We want white Ferrero kisses for ever! And because friendship is no minor matter (kein kurzer Trend ist), we demand—white nut stay! and now everybody: White nut stay!” The crowd chants: “White nut stay!” (In the original German, the phrase is not quite grammatical, and it sounds virtually identical to the sentence “White must stay”) The voiceover intones: “Germany votes white! White Ferrero kisses, now available forever!” As the commercial ends, a poster unfurls reading “Germany Votes White.”

Cue one gigantic facepalm.

Where to begin? For reasons I needn’t detail here, racial purity is quite obviously an extremely touchy subject in Germany—indeed, perhaps it’s a touchier subject in Germany than any other place in the world. Germany since World War II has behaved much better on tolerance issues, but xenophobia is a persistent problem in Europe generally. The depiction of a political rally full of enthusiastic Germans emphasizing the virtues of whiteness—I mean, you don’t have to be Dr. Siegfried Kracauer to detect the uncomfortable symbolism lurking within.

One irritated person wrote on the Facebook page dedicated to the ad campaign, “I hope the advertisers behind this dumb campaign get a chocolate kiss stuck in their throats, and there aren’t any Nazis around to dislodge it.” Ouch. Tahir Della, Chairman of the Initiative for Black Germans, notes that the very fact that this commercial made it as far as the airwaves “shows how subtle racism can be in Germany. It’s recognizable to people who are affected by it but the majority doesn’t catch on so quickly.” He points out that Germany is becoming more diverse but still largely regards itself as a homogeneous country, a dynamic that we also see playing out in the United States, if only in the minds of some of our less evolved citizenry.

Ferrero has pulled the commercial. In an email statement, Ferrero offered the following CYA blather: “It is important for us to clearly stress that we are strictly against any form of xenophobia, right-extremism or racism. . . . All of our assertions were purely about white chocolate—and without xenophobic intent. We regret that the commercial was misunderstood and the product messaging was otherwise construed.”

“Misunderstood,” right . . . it’s really the fault of everyone else who isn’t willing to cut the Ferrero company a break. Ah, how about making a commercial that doesn’t obviously brush up against such sensitive issues?

In an odd twist, the commercial appropriates (not very cleverly, in my opinion) the best-known slogan of the most famous multicultural candidate in the world. In the commercial some of the audience members are holding signs saying “Yes Weiss Can” (Yes, White Can), which is an obvious nod to President Obama’s 2008 slogan “Yes We Can”—but it doesn’t even rhyme or anything, and weirdly mixes German and English. (It should be noted that President Obama is wildly popular in Germany, as he is in most of Europe.)
 

 
via Spiegel Online

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Whip Wielding Elfin Irish Nazi Demons (Now In Paperback)
Furniture Nazi: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad in new revelations

Nina Hagen on the cover of MONDO 2000 magazine

In the late 1980s into the early 90s, for me, and for a lot of people, a new issue of the sporadically published cyberculture magazine MONDO 2000 appearing on newsstands was… a big event. There was nothing else like it and I’d pore over each issue, reading it from cover to cover. Then I’d read it again. It came out on a very irregular schedule, but I always seemed to have a sixth sense about a new issue coming out—or maybe I just really haunted bookstores more then than I do now—in any case, I doubt that an issue was ever on the stands for more than 24 hours before I held a copy in my hands.

I discovered a lot of great stuff via MONDO 2000 and was exposed to a lot of new ideas (hacking at a time when a fax machine was still a novelty), new technologies (virtual reality) and even new drugs (Piracetam, I’m looking at you, kid), but I think the strongest attraction that MONDO 2000 had on the imaginations of so many people was that it seemed to indicate that an entirely NEW counterculture was being born. It was like a William Gibson novel had sprung to life. It was the best thing since post-punk.

Some of the elders of the 60s (like Tim Leary) became fellow travelers of the MONDO 2000 crew—which was led by two cheerfully druggy, but terribly smart, hedonistic pied-pipers by the names of R.U. Sirius (AKA Ken Goffman) and Queen Mu (AKA Alison Kennedy). Clued-in younger people, too, seeking a “scene” for themselves gravitated towards San Francisco to check out in-person what they’d been reading about in the magazine. bOING bOING’s David Pescovitz, for instance, once told me that he ended up in SF as a very direct result of MONDO 2000 magazine.

If you look back at who appeared between the covers of MONDO 2000, whether as subjects, or as writers, you’re talking about the likes of William Gibson, Robert Anton Wilson, the anonymous psychedelic adventurers “Gracie and Zarkov,” Mark Frauenfelder, Grant Morrison, Douglas Rushkoff, Debbie Harry, Nine Inch Nails, John Perry Barlow, “life extension” pioneers Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, Rudy Rucker, Negativland, Bruce Sterling, Diamanda Galas, “Xandor Korzybski,” the conspiracy theorist/ranter, cultural critic Mark Dery, Nina Hagen, and Mark Pesce. That’s a heady crew, but the list goes on and on.

R.U. Sirius’ upcoming book, Use Your Hallucinations: MONDO 2000 in Late 20th Century Cyberculture, is the story of the magazine—half personal memoir, half scrapbook from the MONDO archives and oral history from the participants. An excerpt recently appeared on the Omni Reboot website:

William Gibson: MONDO was arguably the representative underground magazine of its pre-Web day. It was completely outside what commercial magazines were assumed to be about, but there it was, beside the commercial magazines. I was glad it was there. And then, winding up on the cover of Time —what does that do? How alternative is something that makes the cover of Time? Could MONDO even happen today?

Douglas Rushkoff: The idea of having a scene, a place…Oddly enough, MONDO was the last scene of the last era. It’s the last sort of Algonquin group or whatever. I mean, physical reality isn’t what it used to be. Now you create a Facebook group to do what MONDO did.

The first time I met Grant Morrison, the topic turned to MONDO 2000 and he told me that it was, to him, the single most important piece of press he’d gotten to that point. I felt the same way. When Disinformation debuted online in September of 1996 (btw, the 17th anniversary of that launch was—gulp—yesterday) and MONDO 2000 wanted to cover it, like Grant, I was thrilled. I was similarly tickled to be depicted in the pages of the magazine with three heads in a wild two-page spread illustrated by artist Omaha Perez. A young Reese Witherspoon was on the cover.

During one visit to San Francisco, I got to visit “the MONDO house” a large mansion in the Berkeley Hills rented by Alison Kennedy where she lived and where the mag was put together. She was an interesting character, a strikingly beautiful older woman, charming, literate and obviously brilliant. Kennedy is an heiress who put her inheritance into the building the magazine. She walked with me up the hill to show me a home that Timothy Leary had once occupied and pointed out a garage that Leary had built himself and then she made an absolutely fabulous meal, telling me a great story about Aldous Huxley as she cooked. I was very impressed by her, but I had been warned by more than one person that she was quite eccentric, and by the time it was starting to get dark, she was saying some incredibly paranoid, kooky things and it got a little bit awkward.

If you want to read a great piece of journalism about what it was really like around the MONDO 2000 orbit, Jack Boulware’s classic SF WEEKLY article, “MONDO 1995: Up and Down With the Next Millennium’s First Magazine” is a must-read (R.U. calls it “mostly true.”) You can find out more about R.U. Sirius’s MONDO project here.
 

 
The perversions of Chuck Berry - VICE

Edward Snowden is in the running for a European human rights prize whose past winners include Nelson Mandela and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi - Reuters

Iggy Pop to play stoned caterpillar in upcoming TV show Once Upon A Time In Wonderland  - Cherry Bombed

Thailand’s cure for meth addiction? The leafy jungle stimulant, “kratom” - Global Post

California: 95-year-old war veteran marries boyfriend of 20 years - Pink News

Pig-manure fertilizer linked to human MRSA infections - Nature

It’s a miracle that Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits even got made - io9

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it dumped about 1,130 tons of tainted rainwater Monday into the Pacific Ocean after it accumulated at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant - Japan Times

Surviving Whole Foods - Huffington Post

Ear wax from whales keeps record of ocean contaminants - NPR

A Grand Theft Auto fan was hit with a brick, stabbed and robbed of the new computer game moments after queuing to buy it - Telegraph

10 great films considered failures in their time - Pop Matters

Ian Curtis’ lyrics and notebooks to be published in new book - Faber Social

The most depressing discovery about the brain, ever - AlterNet

AMC announced today that the final season of the Lionsgate series Mad Men will be expanded to 14 episodes and equally portioned with seven episodes airing in spring of 2014 (“The Beginning”) and the final seven episodes of this iconic series (“The End of an Era”) airing in the spring of 2015 - AMC TV

Professor Stephen Hawking, the scientist, has given his backing to the legalisation of assisted suicide for the terminally ill - Telegraph

Angry entrepreneur replies to patent troll with racketeering lawsuit - Ars Technica

How Birds Got Their Wings: Fossil data show scaling of limbs altered as birds originated from dinosaurs - Science Daily

Redneck Socks - Neatorama

Below, Brainiac live in Oxford, Ohio, 1995 (entire set):

 
According to the always supremely informative daily almanac published by Vintage Vinyl News, today is the anniversary of RCA’s 1931 introduction of the 12” vinyl 33 1/3 record. (Also, happy birthday to Hank Williams, Fee Waybill and Guy Picciotto, but were it not for 12” records, would we have heard of those people? I say “who knows?” So let’s move on.) This gave me pause, as all of us really good dorks know that credit for the the format is typically offered to CBS/Columbia in the late 1940s, but it appears that RCA beat them to the punch by a long spell, but failed to make the format stick. Their first release on the format that would go on to define hip music geekdom for decades to come was the decidedly square but inarguably awesome Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which you surely know. If not, good lord, what the hell? Seriously? It’s firmly ensconced in the Western Canon for a reason. Here, treat yourself. (And while you’re listening, marvel at Beethoven’s influence over our audio formats - the CD was famously constructed to contain his 9th Symphony, uninterrupted.)
 

 
Here, in an informative article credited to the widely respected (and sadly now deceased) British sound archivist Peter Copeland on the MASSIVELY out of date History Of Rock web site (last updated in 2009, last redesigned, perhaps, in 1997), the history of record sizes, materials and rotation speeds is discussed, and it’s less dull than you’re imagining.

The 33, a.k.a. the “LP” (Long Playing record) or “album” ... was invented in 1948. These LPs were popular until around 1990 when CDs were popular enough to take over. An LP could hold up to a total of 60 minutes of music, but most didn’t have more than 40 minutes. They are made of vinyl plastic rather than shellac, so they are more flexible and don’t tend to break like 78s. The grooves are 4 times smaller, so they were originally called “Microgrooves” (MG), and early LPs have this written on the label.

Interestingly enough, there are enough people still willing to buy “classic” albums, particularly jazz and blues, that some of the labels in those styles, like Blue Note records, Original Jazz Classics (a.k.a. Prestige, Riverside, Contemporary, New Jazz, etc) and Delmark Records are once again pressing and selling LPs for about $9 - 13 through mail order. LPs of some newer releases are available, in very limited quantities. [Obviously this predates the format’s revival - RK]

Records of 33 1/3 rpm were developed in conjunction with films. A 12-inch 78 with Berliner-type grooves could hold between 4 and 5 minutes per side. The first practical sound films produced in the US in the late 1920s had their sound on separate disc records and it was more important for the sound to be continuous. A reel of film might run for 11 minutes, so a rotational speed of about 32 rpm was required to make the sound match the picture. History doesn’t tell us why precisely 33 1/3 was chosen, but in retrospect it was a very good choice because stroboscopic speed testers can be made for this speed which will work on both sides of the Atlantic.

And that, kids, is why we can buy fake collectibles on Record Store Day. Ain’t history a gas? And speaking of history, enjoy this wonderful 1956 documentary on how records are made. Don’t let the film’s vintage throw you, the technology has hardly changed a bit.
 

 
Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin’s 2005 documentary My Name Is Albert Ayler is a fascinating look at one of the most enigmatic figures in modern jazz. Albert Ayler’s aggressive, raw, ecstatic free jazz took music even further out than his friend, mentor and admirer John Coltrane had. Ayler famously said “Trane was the Father, Pharoah [Sanders] was the Son, I am the Holy Ghost.”

Ayler regarded his screaming, squawking, deeply spiritual form of jazz as “the healing force of the universe,” and wanted to impart on his listeners “wisdom through music.” His wildly aggressive saxophone improvisations blew the doors off all else going on at the time, although he never attained much more than a cult following during his lifetime, or in the years since his (presumed) suicide in 1970 at the age of 34. He didn’t leave behind the easiest music to listen to—it can take years of effort before you “get” Ayler—but the effort is worth it.

My Name Is Albert Ayler contains the only known performance footage of Ayler and his group playing in Sweden and in France in the mid-60s. It also features in-depth interviews with Ayler’s father, Edward, his trumpeter brother Donald and influential free jazz drummer “Sunny” Murray.

Short parts of the film are in Swedish, but most of it is in English. In 2004, Revenant Records released the highly recommended nine CD box set, Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70)
 

Why is this man smiling…?

Remember the Gastonguay family from Arizona, those kwazy Christians who decided to leave godforsaken, heathen America behind for the tiny Pacific island nation of Kiribati and just like Biblical characters travel there by boat?

Citing immigration reform, abortion, “Christian persecution,” homosexuality and “the state-controlled church” for the reasons behind their, er, “exodus,” the Gastonguays’ hare-brained journey from evil hit a snag when they were left adrift for nearly three months before some Venezuelan fishermen took them to a Japanese cargo ship that dropped them off in Chile, where the US consulate arranged flights back home for them.

The Gastonguays picked Kiribati because they believed that it was “one of the least developed countries in the world” and set out in May from San Diego, despite having almost no sailing experience and NO IDEA of how to navigate to this tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. Aboard for their quixotic (and treacherous) journey were their two young daughters—one is three, the other just eight-months-old—and Sean Gastonguay’s father.

Hannah Gastonguay told the Associated Press, they “decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us.”

They were adrift for 91 days!

But the Lord delivered, right? Of course he fucking did—in the form of the helicopter that just happened to spot them right before their food ran out (they were down to some honey!) Praise Jesus! It’s a miracle!

And now these witless knuckleheads are going to try to do it again. If child welfare authorities are concerned enough about the neo-Nazi couple from NJ who (merely) named their kid after Hitler to yank young Adolph from their home, those white trash goose-steppers seem HARMLESS in comparison to these Christian ding-dongs who’d sail from San Diego to oh, somewhere between Hawaii and Australia with two toddlers in tow, just barely cheat death and then decide to do it all over again!!!

On Monday, Sean Gastonguay appeared on TruNews with Rick Wiles (you think Alex Jones is insane, check TruNews out some day when you’re bored!) to talk about his plans to leave again with his wife and kids. Gastonguay and his wife have the right to kill themselves with these dumbass plans but their kids shouldn’t have to risk losing their lives AGAIN for their parents’ idiocy.
 

 
Via RightWing Watch

 
I’m not one to condone violence, but… I kinda get this.

A 54-year-old North Charleston woman named Vernett Bader has been accused of “wielding a knife in an assault on her roommate after he refused to stop listening to rock music by the Eagles on Monday night.”

The roommate told police Bader grew agitated with him while “he was listening to the Eagles and watching television with his brother.”

Bader expressed that she didn’t want to listen to the band. The roommate responded by telling her to shut up, the report states.

Bader grabbed a serrated knife from a kitchen drawer and swung the weapon at the man, police said.

When the two men wrestled the knife away from Bader, she went back into the kitchen and found another, the report states.

Bader admitted to stabbing her roommate, but says it was out of self-defense because he was choking her. She stabbed him with that steely knife but she just couldn’t kill the beast?

Bader is still in jail awaiting a bond hearing. 

Via Post and Courier and with thanks to Ron Kretsch!