UK Edition, 1961
 
Here are my choice selections from the dozens of book covers of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road posted by the Beat Book Covers website.

Apparently this was Kerouac’s response to all the different cover designs and foreign editions:

“When I’m old, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to study languages reading these.”

 

Jack Kerouac’s own (unsed) concept for the book jacket, done in 1952.
 
 

USA Edition, 1958
 
More ‘On the Road’ after the jump…
 

 
Spanish beat combo Los Bravos were the first (only?) group from Spain to have a top five hit in America. Their instantly recognizable classic, “Black is Black,” with its plaintive, Gene Pitney-esque vocal courtesy of German-born singer Mike Kogel reached #2 in the UK charts and #4 here in 1966.

Los Bravos weren’t technically “one-hit wonders” as they landed a second single in the British charts with “I Don’t Care.”

In the wonderful pop art-inspired clip below, Los Bravos lip-sync their hit in the 1967 film Los Chicos Con Las Chicas.
 

 
FILMography is a cool site where movie stills are placed within their original film locations, and then photographed.

The theory is: ‘FILM + photography = FILMography.’

This delightful site is curated by writer, journalist and photographer Christopher Moloney.
 

 

 
More Filmography, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Robert Coupée and Anne Billson
 

 
Harold PInter liked Samuel Beckett because he rubbed his nose in the shit. He wasn’t leading him up the garden path. He wasn’t giving him the wink. And he certainly wasn’t fucking him about. No.

Pinter knew Beckett wasn’t selling him anything. But if he was selling him anything, then he would have bought it hook, line and sinker.

Pinter first read Beckett in 1953, while working in Ireland.  When he returned home to London, Pinter searched the libraries for any of Beckett’s books. He couldn’t find any, that is until he happened upon a copy of Beckett’s novel Murphy in the Bermondsley Reserve LIbrary. Pinter borrowed it, and as he noted that the book had not been taken out since 1939, he kept it.

This is Pinter’s astounding performance in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. Though Patrick Magee was Beckett’s original choice for the role, Pinter brings a dark, bitter irony to the character, as well as a heightened sense of personal mortality. Pinter described the play he sees as being about death, and about love - the impossibility of love and the necessity of love.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

When Harry Met Sammy: Pinter on Beckett

Patrick Magee: Stunning performance in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’

 
In the early-to-late 1980s, British record label 4AD’s visuals had a certain nocturnal, gothic and industrial look and feel that was simple, elegant and occasionally as fragile as moth wings . Most of the covers I recall, used photographs that were black and white or de-saturated color. The fonts were distinctive, the layouts uncluttered. The overall effect was timeless, nothing tied the work to fashion trends of the moment. Which has allowed the label to maintain their “look” throughout the years, even without the contribution of the two guys who were responsible for creating it.

In the 1985 documentary 23 Envelope we are introduced to graphic designer Vaughan Oliver and photographer/filmmaker Nigel Grierson who created the record sleeves for 4AD from 1983-1988. If you’ve seen record jackets for Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, Pixies or Cocteau Twins, you’ve seen the work of Olivier and Grierson. The film contains music by 4AD bands of the era covered.
 

 
What’s Russian for “pwned”?

It’s been another horrific, shitty, awful week for GOP nominee Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney. Now, even Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t resist piling on the insults aimed at the increasingly hapless Republican standard-bearer.

Yesterday Putin said he was “grateful” to Mitt Romney for saying Russia remained the United States’ “No. 1 geopolitical foe” because this idiotic statement of non-fact aimed at the GOP’s abundant pool of cud-chewing low information voters, actually helped Putin in missile defense negotiations!

According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Putin told reporters:

“I’m grateful to him for formulating his stance so clearly because he has once again proven the correctness of our approach to missile defense problems. The most important thing for us is that even if he doesn’t win now, he or a person with similar views may come to power in four years. We must take that into consideration while dealing with security issues for a long perspective.”

Seems reasonable enough to me!

Way to go, Mittens! That’s what happens when you pander to people who get their information from ALL CAPS EMAILS. Yet another reason why Mitt Romney will never be the President of the United States.

President Obama drew blood with his own viciously witty riposte to Romney’s idiotic/politically suicidal statement about the crisis in Libya:

“There’s a broader lesson to be learned here: Gov. Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later and as president one of the things I’ve learned is you can’t do that. It’s important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts and that you’ve thought through the ramifications before you make them.”

Dropped. Romney really tossed that ball right over the fuckin’ plate, didn’t he?!?!?

Fox News viewers who have never heard of any of this and who have no idea what any of this means can go here, here and here for more information.
 

 
Comedian Candy Candido puts his three-octave voice to good use in this sweet little Soundie for the song “One Meatball.”

From Candido’s Wikipedia entry:

Candido provided the voice of a skeleton in Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, and he later teamed with Bud Abbott during Abbott’s attempted comeback in 1960. He was the voice of the bear in the Gentle Ben TV series, and he worked as a voice actor on animated films, notably for Walt Disney, where he portrayed the Indian Chief in Peter Pan, one of Maleficent’s goons in Sleeping Beauty, the Captain of the Guard in Robin Hood, Brutus and Nero in The Rescuers, the Escaped Convict (Gus) in the Haunted Mansion attraction and Fidget the peg-legged bat in The Great Mouse Detective. Other animated films with Candido voices: Chuck Jones’ adaptation of The Phantom Tollbooth, and the Ralph Bakshi movies Hey Good Lookin’ and Heavy Traffic.”

Thanks to the badasses at Badass Digest for this one.
 

 
All next week, Cinefamily in Los Angeles will be screening a brand new 35mm print of Busby Berkeley’s kaleidoscopic 1943 extravaganza, The Gang’s All Here:

It’s the most hyper-saturated Technicolor musical of the 1940s, it’s the picture featuring the legendary Carmen Miranda “Tutti Frutti” banana number, it’s the camp classic that launched a thousand drag queens — and it’s one of Hollywood’s most gleeful slices of vintage war propaganda ever. It’s The Gang’s All Here, legendary director/choregorapher Busby Berkeley’s most purely kooky on-screen effort, and one amazing good time out at the movies. Plot, schmott — it’s all about the the geometric conflagrations of chorus girls, the dancing, the singing, the oversized psychedelic fruit, the charmingly overt suggestions to invest in war bonds, and the unbelievable.

Screenings start tonight and run through next Monday. Get tickets at Cinefamily.

Below, Carmen Miranda’s mind-boggling “Tutti Frutti” production number from The Gang’s All Here.
 

 
A poll released Monday by Public Policy Polling shows that Mitt Romney is at a distinct disadvantage in the highly important Electoral College swing state of Ohio, polling just 45% to Obama’s 50%, but one of the ancillary questions the pollsters mischievously slipped in sheds some light on how pathetically misinformed—or willfully ignorant—some Ohio Republicans really are.

Does this seem like a trick question to you?

“Who do you think deserves more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?”

63% percent said Obama, 6% said Mitt Romney and 31% of the respondents said they were not sure.

If you break it down (see cross tabs), about 15% of the Ohio Republicans who rated themselves “very conservative” actually believe that Mitt Romney deserves the credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

That’s more than one in ten!

Mitt Romney obviously can count on, and receive, the support of the most blinkered ignoramuses in the country. No wonder the GOP is so virulently anti-education. Without the low IQ buffoon bloc standing so square-headed in their corner, they’d never win another election, EVER.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying “Democrat” = “smart,” because that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms, but self-identifying as a “Republican” is an admission of one of two things: that you are either throwing your lot with the fucking idiot brigade or that you are a fucking idiot yourself.

Pick one. It’s not a trick question.

 
Retronaut posted the above vintage photo circa 1885 of a woman taking snuff. There’s some debate on the Internet as to whether it’s real or ‘shopped, but I’m not sure why it’s so controversial. As “unladylike” as it may seem for that era, snuff was actually considered an aristocratic luxury which separated the upper classes from the tobacco smoking lower classes.

I found another, smiliar photo, dated 1860 on the CWFP website. Maybe they’re just picking their noses and those aren’t snuff boxes they’re holding at all, but “booger holders”?
 

 
Below, an image of two Zulu women sniffing the snuff in 1925.