Without Mudhoney, there’s no grunge scene writ large and so therefore there’s no Nirvana either. A bold claim to be sure, but not too controversial when you consider that Mudhoney was the first band from Seattle during that era to make a major splash outside of the Pacific Northwest, which had the effect of attracting area musicians to the city while also putting the world and major record labels on notice.

If you were a fan of the grunge movement as it was happening, you’ll be sure to enjoy the 2012 documentary I’m Now: The Story of Mudhoney, directed Adam Pease and Ryan Short. It’s chock full of amusing tidbits.

For instance: Mark Arm’s day job is managing the Sub Pop warehouse. When you order something from Sub Pop, there’s a decent chance that Mark Arm himself is the person who seals it in cardboard for shipping.

The movie covers Mudhoney’s origins as a high school band called Mr. Epp, in which both Arm and Steve Turner played. Later on, Arm’s band Green River, whose LP was Sub Pop’s first release, broke up, and Arm instantly got on the phone to cajole Turner into forgoing his studies and joining forces.

Arm is touted in the movie as the originator of the term grunge but with typical humility he hastens to point out that the word was originally applied to Australian bands such as the Scientists and Beasts of Bourbon. In voiceover, a band member acutely observes that the term was really “a different way of saying punk rock.”

Legendary Seattle producer Jack Endino mentions that his only comment upon hearing the band play was, “Are you sure you want the guitarist to be this dirty?”

Continues after the jump…

 
In 1968 Anthony Fawcett, a friend of John Lennon’s who later became one of the employees of Apple Records, proposed lithography to Lennon as an area that might spark his artistic interest. Lennon was initially reluctant, as the relatively time-consuming methods that were involved ran counter to the “impulsive” approach that Fawcett perceived as Lennon’s preference. Fawcett came up with a couple of hacks that would enable the lithography process to be more like Lennon’s usual facility at doodling and sketching.

Several months passed, and Fawcett assumed that Lennon had forgotten all about the subject. But when Lennon and his new bride Yoko Ono returned from Europe after the week-long Bed-In for Peace in the spring 1969 it turned out that Lennon had gotten more interested in the process. As Fawcett wrote in his 1976 memoir John Lennon: One Day at Time, Lennon “had made a series of drawings of the marriage and honeymoon, and was now anxious to see how they would look as lithographs. ... Yoko was the main subject, there were many portraits and nudes of her.”
 

When he saw them John was ecstatic, oohing and ahhing with childlike enthusiasm, laughing, wildly gesticulating and obviously impressed at the results. He seemed thrilled by the new dimension his drawings had taken on, master-printed on the thick luxurious Arches paper. Yoko, too, was excited for John and watched his exuberance with a kind of motherly pride.

 
A plan was concocted to sell some of the lithographs in a limited-edition set. The set would be titled Bag One, a reference to John and Yoko’s theory of “Bagism” which prevailed at the time. Peter Doggett in The Art and Music of John Lennon has this to say about the project:
 

The drawings were converted from Lennon’s small originals to poster size, organised into limited edition packages, and given to John so he could sign each lithograph. They were then placed inside special Bag One folders, and sold to art-minded (and rich) individuals around the world. It might have been more in keeping with Lennon’s principles if they’d been issued as postcards instead.

 
In the event, Lennon was obliged to sign three thousand posters, which he did at the Toronto-area farmhouse of Ronnie Hawkins.

In January 1970 the lithographs were displayed at an exhibition in London. The authorities, however, were not amused. As Fawcett writes,
 

Inevitably, on the second day of the exhibition, the police raided the gallery with a warrant, supposedly after Scotland Yard had received complaints, and eight of the lithographs were confiscated. The summons alleged that the gallery had “exhibited to public view eight indecent prints to the annoyance of passengers, contrary to Section 54(12) of the Metropolitan Police Act, 1839, and the third schedule of the Criminal Justice Act 1967.

 
In January 1970 the magazine Avant Garde published what they termed “John Lennon’s Erotic Lithographs,” being a subset of the Bag One set. This post features the full magazine spread of that issue. You can see the full issue of Avant Garde here; vintage issues can be purchased at Amazon as well.

Avant Garde’s cheeky intro compares John and Yoko to other “famous couples in history” such as Dick and Pat Nixon, noting that we must exercise our imaginations to envision them in the act of lovemaking. Not so with John and Yoko!
 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

 
There isn’t anything that’s more American than our local television stations. Every city in this country has its own wacky weatherman or eccentric car salesman. Local news is powered by the ridiculous dumb shit that happens in our communities on a daily basis and the guests on our morning talk shows can often be so bizarre that you couldn’t possibly make it up. Or could you?

Over the course of the past two years, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, the VHS wizards behind the Found Footage Festival, have been appearing on local TV as the exercise duo “Chop and Steele.” Having realized how easy it is to book themselves interviews on local television, the FFF founders have turned their appearances on breakfast shows into one big elaborate prank.

You see, Chop and Steele are not your average exercise team. They are a strongman duo, and they utilize ordinary everyday objects such as tools for their exercise routines. The two have appeared on several morning talk shows, performing snippets of their workout routine “Give Thanks 4 Strengths.” According to their press release, which falsely claims they’ve appeared on America’s Got Talent, the duo promotes “using their muscles to entertain and educate, promote unity and address the subject of bullying and ways to prevent it through humor, courage and self-respect.” As demonstrated, the mission statement is achieved by stomping straw baskets, karate chopping tree branches, hitting a tire with baseball bats, lifting milk jugs of brown liquid, and a rather uncomfortable see-saw weightlifting technique.
 

 
The workout hoax is a continuation of previous morning show gimmicks performed by the comedians, whose personas include a fake chef with tips on how to reuse Thanksgiving leftovers. This one also comes strikingly close to the brilliant Nathan for You caper, “The Movement.” Our heroes face what could be a legitimate lawsuit, as Wisconsin television station WEAU Eau Claire is looking to sue.

More after the jump…

Monique St. Pierre, Playmate of the Year, June 1979.
 
Marilyn Monroe was the first Playboy cover girl featured in the magazine in December 1953. That copy of Playboy wasn’t actually dated as publisher and editor Hugh Hefner didn’t know if there would ever be a second issue. Marilyn was also the magazine’s first “Sweetheart of the Month,” a title which changed to “Playmate of the Month” with Playboy’s second issue in January 1954 when Margie Harrison became the magazine’s first ever centerfold. Marilyn’s iconic photo spread only appeared over pages 16-18. Since then, Playmate of the Month has continued right on up to present day with Elsie Hewitt featured as Playmate of Month for June 2017 and Brooke Power featured on the cover as Playmate of the Year.

There was a well-told urban myth about the glamorous Playmates featured on the cover that claimed they were given a marking, out of twelve, according to Hefner’s tastes. This was based on the stars printed on the cover either on or next to the letter “P” of Playboy. This rumor alleged Hef was giving “stars” for either the cover girl’s looks, or performance in bed, or even how many times the old goat had slept with her. This was never true. The stars which appeared on the cover between 1955 and 1979 denoted regional or international advertising for that particular issue.

Playboy is now synonymous with America and American values as Mom’s apple pie, the Stars and Stripes, and Abraham Lincoln. That Hefner’s magazine and his multi-million dollar porn industry have achieved such a strange (shall we call it?) respectability says much about the dynamic changes in culture and morals over the past six decades.

A selection of Playmates was recently offered the opportunity to replicate their iconic covers some thirty years on from their original appearance. Playmates Candace Collins, Monique St. Pierre, Cathy St. George, Charlotte Kemp, and Reneé Tenison, among others, were photographed by Ben Miller and Ryan Lowry as part of this project. As can be seen from the photographs below, the results are quite incredible.
 

Monique St. Pierre, 2017.
 

Candace Collins, Playmate, February 1979.
 
More then and now Playboy Playmates, after the jump…
 

 
Last Friday, June 2, I spent the entire day checking the mail. I’d preordered the new Roger Waters album—his first album of original rock material in nearly a quarter century—and was eagerly awaiting its arrival when I got notice from Amazon at about 7pm that evening that the delivery would be delayed, possibly until the following Tuesday. Being as I am, a married middle-aged man, this was going to be the highlight of my fucking week and listening to it on headphones, stoned to the gills, constituted most, if not the entirety of my weekend plans. Drats! Foiled again! My disappointment was palpable, but I googled the reviews to sate my curiosity only to read one critical appraisal after another of the most vaguely worded, tepidly positive sentiments. I’d seen the second (not including the dress rehearsal in NJ) show of Waters new Us + Them tour in Louisville, KY (more on this below) over the recent Memorial Day holiday weekend and the reviews I was reading didn’t really jibe with my expectations for the new album, having already heard a handful of the songs from the upcoming album played live and being blown away by how great the set’s new material was. It was difficult to tell what anyone really thought of it from the early reviews.

Rolling Stone’s reviewer was one of the worst offenders. The nearly pointless review of Is This the Life We Really Want? read as if he’d played the album once and dashed it off in about 15 minutes to collect a couple hundred bucks. (One commenter sighed “This review has zero substance. ‘It’s just Roger being Roger.’ Way to phone it in.”) One after another of these empty calorie reviews used the same words—“bitter,” “bleak” and “dystopian” prominently among them (and all referenced President You-Know-Who)—and indicated that good ol’ Rog was still up to his same old bag of tricks, etc, etc, etc. As the editor of a website like this one, I’m well aware of what lazy writing looks like and frankly nearly all of last Friday’s release date reviews of Is This the Life We Really Want?—at least the ones I read—smacked of it to my trained eye. In aggregate they equaled almost nothing useful. I wondered how it was possible not to have a strong opinion about a new Roger Waters album after so many years. Many of them, I imagine were written by underpaid millennials with only the dimmest idea who Roger Waters is, who were just cribbing from the press release.

The next morning the album was delivered before 10am and my weekend plans were back on.

Now don’t get me wrong, while anyone could be forgiven for assuming a priori that the first new release in decades from a 73-year-old multi-millionaire rock star would not necessarily be something to jump up and down about, by the time the first side was over I was completely gobsmacked, stunned at the darkly gorgeous poetry and sonic brilliance of the musical gold that had just been poured into my ears. I flipped it over for two even better, even more emotionally powerful songs. Riveting stuff. Oh sure, it’s true that not every new album by a septuagenarian rock superstar is going to be an instant classic, standing alongside their best work, but Waters’ astonishing and deeply profound Is This the Life We Really Want? is one, and does. I think it’s the best thing he’s done since Animals and I feel like that is saying quite a lot. This is a major event in pop culture. A big fucking deal with sirens blaring.

Now obviously, if you’re Roger Waters and you’ve got something (anything) to say, you (he) can say whatever you want, whenever you want and however you want to say it and a major media conglomerate will rush to exploit this to the hilt and squeeze every last bit of money they can out of your every utterance. Roger Waters and “the music of Pink Floyd” (as the current tour is billed) is a very big business—his multi-year worldwide The Wall Live trek is the highest grossing solo rock tour in history—but admirably, rather than put out one uninspired going-through-the-motions album after another like so many classic rockers of his vintage, Waters waits—25 years if he has to—to make sure that he’s got something important to say before going into the recording studio. No Sinatra covers for him. No Christmas albums. He’ll never record one of those awful “Great American Songbook” things. It’s just not going to happen. There is no squandered goodwill in that way between Waters and his fans. Since 1999 Waters has toured extensively, but without releasing any new material since 1992’s Amused to Death save for the recording of his French Revolution opera Ça Ira. After decades of playing the hits (and amassing a ridiculous fortune that’s managed to survive four divorces) the material on Is This the Life We Really Want? is just about the most potent musical statement imaginable for the Trump era, even if many of the songs were probably written and recorded before his surprise election. Perhaps the ferocious “Picture This” doesn’t refer directly to Trump, although it certainly seems like it does.

Picture a courthouse with no fucking laws
Picture a cathouse with no fucking whores
Picture a shithouse with no fucking drains
Picture a leader with no fucking brains

Top that! The song pulses and throbs like the best mid-70s Floyd barnburner, obviously quite purposefully and by deliberate design. Producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck) has surrounded Waters with a crack band of some of the finest musicians in America—among them Jonathan Wilson on guitar; vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig from Lucius; REM/Beck drummer Joey Waronker, a Mason-esque octopus-armed pounder to be sure; and Roger Manning Jr. of Jellyfish on keyboards—with what seems to be the canny dual intention of simultaneously providing Waters with some inspired and well-chosen collaborators who bring their own magic to the table, and using this A-list crew to record what is probably the closest thing to a full-on Pink Floyd 70s headphones album experience as could possibly be hoped for (minus the obviously missing participants). The gorgeous string arrangements were done by David Campbell (Beck’s father, who Wikipedia tells me made his recording debut playing cello on Carole King’s Tapestry) and… wow… just wow. This album is just crazy fucking good on every level.

Continues after the jump…

 
Melanie Gaydos was born with a rare genetic condition called ectodermal dysplasia that hinders the normal development of teeth, nails, pores, cartilage, and bones. She also has alopecia, which prevents normal hair growth, and is partially blind due to malfunctioning eyelash growth causing damage to her eyes.

After a lifetime of weird interactions with almost everybody she met, Gaydos, who is now 28, made the decision several years ago to reject dental implants and wigs and show herself as she “really” is. That choice has led to a remarkable series of events including getting involved with the fashion world in a serious way. It is difficult for someone whose appearance is so unusual to connect with people, and the artificial adornments weren’t helping. Becoming more naked, both literally and figuratively, helped her express what she saw as her more “cool, comfortable, and creative” self.

In 2012 Gaydos appeared in a Rammstein music video, an experience that likely emboldened her to make the decision to try real modeling the next year. Her unusual appearance lends itself to the art of adopting personas that is so integral to a model’s necessary toolbox.

Gaydos has said:
 

I think people think I’m pretty fucking weird. When I go on a photo shoot, if there’s other industry models there, they normally don’t really know what to make of me, and they’re usually like “What the fuck is this?” It’s difficult for me in the fashion world because a lot of people think of me kind of as a gimmick, “Oh, she’s just being exploited for her differences….” People really have to talk to me and get to know me in order to, I don’t know, understand where I am coming from or see where I’m coming from.

 
This year saw the publication of True Style Is What’s Underneath: The Self-Acceptance Revolution by Elisa Goodkind and Lily Mandelbaum, who founded the websites StyleLikeU, in which Gaydos was featured prominently.

Melanie Gaydos’ Instagram account has more than 100,000 followers.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…......

 
Tijuana Bibles were eight-page, hand-sized comic books featuring well-known cartoon characters, sporting heroes, and Hollywood film stars in a sequence of hardcore sexual shenanigans. They first appeared sometime in the 1920s as illustrated dirty jokes featuring squeaky clean comic strip characters like Tillie the Toiler and Jiggs and Maggie from “Bringing Up Baby.” The more straightlaced the character, the more outrageous the smut.

Their instant success led to far more explicit hardcore tales featuring famous movie stars like Mae West, Robert Mitchum, Dorothy Lamour, Greta Garbo, even Laurel & Hardy, alongside such well-loved cartoon figures as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Popeye and Betty Boop porking the fuck out of everything that moved. They were cheap titillation intended to arouse and (in their own way) educate the virginal. They were subversive and offensively humorous.

The name “Tijuana Bible” came from the mistaken belief these comics were produced south of the border and smuggled into the USA. They were actually produced and printed in the States by local artists and independent businesses who hid behind fake publishing titles like “London Press” and “Tobasco Publishing Co.” They were sold under-the-counter in tobacco shops, bars, barbers and bowling alleys at 25 cents a pop. Their greatest popularity was during the Depression of the 1930s, eventually petering out with the arrival of real porn mags in the 1950s. Tijuana Bibles are now considered by many comic book historians to be among the very first underground comix. More importantly, these cheaply produced comic books helped unfetter sex and sexuality from the weight of societal and religious strictures of guilt and taboo by making sex seem fun, natural, and something to be greatly enjoyed.

A man called Quinn has scanned a whole selection of these “politically incorrect literary gems” which can be viewed here.
 

 

 
More examples of Tijuana Bibles, after the jump..

 
I don’t know how legit this is, but apparently a kid-friendly swimming pool advertisement has been censored in Saudi Arabia with a woman completely photoshopped out and turned into a Winnie the Pooh beach ball! If you notice, shirts have been photoshopped on the children and the male in the pool, too!

According to BuzzFeed, the ad is very real and you can see the Tweet here or below.

للمسابح حصة كبيرة ضمن عروضات ساكو! لا تفوتوها وقوموا بزيارة معارضنا #الكل_للكلhttps://t.co/YwaR99o792 pic.twitter.com/qL16qJOmJr

— SacoOffers عروض ساكو (@Saco_KSA) June 4, 2017

 

 
via Anorak

 
Is this the perfect wake ‘n bake accessory? Possibly. You just have to dig cereal and weed at the same time. Many people do. The handmade pipe is called “The Breakfast Bowl.” It has a two cup volume for your favorite cereal (mine is Cap’n Crunch) with a “water pipe built into an inner chamber.”

The Breakfast Bowl Pipe is expertly handcrafted with superior borosilicate glass. The eating bowl has a 2 cup volume to satisfy the biggest appetites. The downstem and mouthpiece connect directly to form an inner chamber for the smoke. You’ll love our standard vibrant blue bowl piece, but it can be used with any 18mm piece. Our 9” bent tube mouthpiece is an impressive weight to round off the ultimate experience.

The unique design of the Breakfast Bowl Pipe allows whatever is in the bowl to assist with the cooling of the smoke that comes through the inner chamber.

I thought the coffee cup weed pipe was an inventive way to wake ‘n bake, but this pipe sort of takes the grand prize for your morning rituals.

The pipe sells for $85 here.

As a side note: If you’re on a diet, you can fill it with fruit instead.

Model Betty Brosmer.
 
Like many models Los Angeles-born beauty queen, Betty Brosmer, got her start early, with her first photographs appearing in the Sears & Roebuck catalog in 1948 when she was just thirteen. A year later Brosmer visited New York City with her aunt and had the opportunity to pose for more photographs, one of which made its way to electronics company Emerson who used the photo in published advertisements in magazines across the country.

While she was still a teenager Brosmer received requests from two rather influential pinup artists—Earl Moran, who famously captured some of the earliest images of Marilyn Monroe (while she was still known as Norma Jean), and a man whose name is synonymous with the word pinup, Peruvian artist Alberto Vargas. That high-profile work would prompt Brosmer to make the move to New York City. While attending high school in Manhattan Brosmer would continue modeling, and her photographs would appear in numerous magazines as well as on the covers of sexy pulp novels. The young model was pursued by Playboy magazine, which ended up in a sitting for a shoot in Beverly Hills. But not in the nude as the magazine had hoped. The final photos were ultimately rejected by Playboy and I’m sure many of you will be disappointed to learn that Brosmer never did any nude photography during her long career, as she feared the images would be hurtful to her family, not because she thought it was dishonorable.

Although Marilyn Monroe is the most recognizable blonde bombshell of the time, it was Brosmer’s fair hair, face, and impossible eighteen-inch waist that made her the highest paid model of the 50s, and her image helped pave the way for both Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. In 1961 Brosmer married bodybuilder Joe Weider, the founder of the Mr. Olympia competition and mentor to former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a seven-time Mr. Olympia title holder. After that, Brosmer would drop her last name for Joe’s and subsequently end her modeling career. Betty would then go on to co-author a book with Weider in 1981 The Weider Book of Bodybuilding for Women as well as becoming a long-time contributor to Muscle and Fitness magazine, and an associate editor of the popular women’s fitness magazine, SHAPE. I’ve posted images of Betty (who still looks fantastic at the age of 82 by the way), below that must be seen to be believed.
 

 

 
More after the jump…