Slipping far back in polls, can Jeb Bush bounce back in the next debate? I don’t see how. He came off last time like the fat kid to Trump’s schoolyard bully. Let’s just say expectations for Jeb are low. As in low energy. Jeb sucks. (Washington Post)

Narco Nazis: New Book Sheds New Light on Hitler’s Drug Use, ‘Amphetamine Blitzes’: Der Fuerhrer had his own personal Dr. Feelgood shooting him up with prescription speed, and Nazi soldiers. gobbled down amphetamines by the millions. Speed and the secret pharmacological history of Nazi Germany. (AlterNet)

DEVO’s Jerry Casale Throws 9/11-Themed Wedding Party: DEVO co-founder and his bride had a wedding cake modeled after the World Trade Center, with their images on top of each tower. Guests got real box cutters as party favors. Too soon? (TMZ)

No snow: Californian water source at 500-year low: Measured on April 1, the natural, frozen reservoir was barely five percent of the 1950-2000 average, threatening tens of millions of Californians and the state’s $50-billion agriculture sector with chronic water shortages. (Yahoo!)

Bernie Sanders Challenges Liberty University Students To See Inequality As A Moral Issue: Sanders began his speech by immediately acknowledging that he believes in marriage equality and in a woman’s right “to control her own body.” But he went on to argue that on issues like income inequality, childhood poverty, youth unemployment and access to health care, he and religious conservatives should be able to find some common ground. (Huffington Post)

Must Read: What Do You Say to a Roanoke Truther?: Trolls told Chris Hurst that his grief over losing his girlfriend in the Roanoke murders was a lie. But I’ve known him for years. Maybe, I thought, I could get them to listen. “But what if you’re wrong?” (The Daily Beast)

Computer predicts your chances of dying: ER computer assesses whether or not you’ve got a prayer before the doctor even gets to you. (BBC)

What are the REAL risks of Bioweapons research? The Pentagon accidentally mailing plague and anthrax, it turns out. (Popular Science)

Republicans are becoming the party of climate supervillains: They’ve moved beyond pure domestic policy obstruction to sabotaging international negotiations. (The Guardian)

Woman whose husband died of a heroin overdose smiles for a photo by his casket with their two young children ‘to show the reality of addiction’: Mike Settles, 26, died of a heroin overdose in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 2 (Daily Mail)

Robots are going to steal the jobs of chefs, salespeople and models, researchers say as they unveil full list of likely robot professions: 35% of all jobs eliminated within twenty years according to the authors of “The Future of Employment.” (The Independent)

Missouri mom charged after two kids found living in a cave: A 24-year-old mother is in custody Saturday after her two young children were found barefoot, dirty and living in a wooden shipping crate in an underground cave on the eastern edge of Kansas City, Missouri. (Associated Press)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform a simply staggering “Stagger Lee” live at the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles:

 
Holiday fun from Austin’s Mondo Gallery. Curators and retailers of limited edition screen-printed posters, movie soundtracks on vinyl, VHS re-issues, toys, and clothing, the freaks at Mondo are always on the cutting edge of pop culture weirdness.

This collection of Mondo Slasher Sweaters was inspired by Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Designed by Middle of Beyond, these spooky threads are on sale right now. Just in time for Halloween.

The Freddy cardigan is perfect for the demented stepfather or creepy old uncle in your life. Or perhaps your math teacher, the one with the twisted smile and the tombstone eyes.
 

 

 

 

 
It’s tough when you’re in the nation’s top blues-based two-person rock combo, and another blues-based two-person rock combo comes along and gets some serious hosannas from the likes of Rolling Stone as well as some decent sales….. The blood between Jack White of the White Stripes and two fellas from Akron calling themselves the Black Keys has been pretty bad at least as far back as the time White urged his former wife, Karen Elson, to pull their two kids from the Nashville-area school that Dan Auerbach’s daughter had recently joined.

White has accused the Black Keys of ripping off the White Stripes sound. Then last year, there was some kind of reconciliation, evidenced by White’s statement of late May 2014 that he wishes “the Black Keys all the success they can get.”

Today has seen a kind of Twitter war (complete with truce) erupt between Jack White and Patrick Carney, the drummer of the Black Keys, however, including some indication that there might have been a scuffle or something like that. According to Pitchfork, Carney started the whole thing off with this series of tweets (which have since been deleted) in which he indicated that White, as a “40 year old bully,” “tried to fight” a “35 year old nerd” at “a bar in Nyc” and also called White “a bully asshole” and “basically billy corgan’s dumb ass zero t-shirt in human form.”
 

I’ve never met jack white.
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

Until last night.
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

He came to a bar in Nyc I go to a lot with a few friends and tried to fight me.
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

I don’t fight and don’t get fighting but he was mad!!!
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

He is why I play music. The bully assholes who made me feel like nothing. Music was a private non competitive thing.
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

Not sure what he’s unhappy with cuz I just liked Zeppelin a lot and wanted to play guitar. Cut my pinky off and ended up being a drummer
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

Not the best drummer but a passionate one. But any way jack white. A 40 year old bully tried to fight the 35 year old nerd.
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

It might get loud but it might also get really really sad and pathetic.
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

Jack white is basically billy corgan’s dumb ass zero t-shirt in human form.
— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) September 14, 2015

 
White’s first response to the tweets was to issue a statement to Pitchfork directed at Carney. The statement included the following: “Nobody tried to fight you, Patrick. ... Nobody touched you or ‘bullied’ you. You were asked a question you couldn’t answer so you walked away. So quit whining to the Internet and speak face to face like a human being. End of story.”

As is the way these things often turn out, somehow White and Carney immediately contacted each other and have done a complete about-face from the trash talking earlier in the day. At 11:03 a.m. Carney tweeted that he had “Talked to jack for an hour he’s cool. All good.” For his part, about half an hour later, White’s label Third Man Records tweeted, “‘From one musician to another, you have my respect Patrick Carney.’ -Jack White,” as a way of signaling that both sides of the dispute now view the matter as closed.

For observers, however, the incident remains puzzling. Did Jack White shove Patrick Carney? And if not, why did Carney suggest that such a thing happened? At a minimum, despite whatever olive branches are being flung into the fray, it remains obvious that the relationship between Jack White and his Nashville neighbors Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach might remain fraught. 

After the jump, the White Stripes play live in Germany from 2007…

 
These Centenario Terry brandy ad, made for Spanish TV, dates back to 1964 and feature a young and impossibly beautiful Christa Päffgen who would soon go on to join the Velvet Underground at the behest of Andy Warhol.

Years later we have this entry from Andy Warhol’s Diary on Monday October 6th, 1980:

“Went to C.Z. Guest’s for drinks. A guy there told me, “We have someone in common.” He said that his family owned all the brandy and sherry in Spain and that in the sixties Nico was the girl in all their advertisements in all the posters and subways and magazines, that she was famous all over Spain. He wanted to know where this beautiful girl was now and I said that it was a whole other person, that he’d never believe it, that she was fat and a heroin addict. He wanted to see her and I said that if she was still playing at the Squat Theatre we could go see her.”

There used to be a few more of these ads on YouTube, but most seemed to have vanished.
 

 
The actor here, Hans Meyer was apparently closely associated with this particular brand of cognac.
 

 
It’s much easier to write about something you really, really love—or conversely really, really hate—than something you feel lukewarm about. Passion in one direction or the other is generally speaking, a necessary component of blogging: “Here’s this thing I feel enthusiastic about” (or the flipside of that). And this is why I’ve been sitting in front of my keyboard all morning trying to think of something to write about the new Comedy Central series, Moonbeam City, which I watched last night. I wanted to like it. I expected that I would. Conceptually it’s pretty neat—a neon-hued pisstake of Miami Vice rendered very much in the style of artist Patrick Nagel with a gloriously synthed-out soundtrack partaking in every 80s musical trope—but ultimately Moonbeam City just left me pretty cold.

Moonbeam City‘s pilot episode “Mall Hath No Mercy” (which you can watch now in advance of its Wednesday night TV debut on the Comedy Central website) introduces us to “Dazzle Novak,” an idiotic cop in the “Sonny” Crockett mold. He’s an incompetent, vain, skirt-chasing, narcissistic fashion plate who can’t shoot straight, but he’s the “#1 Cop” in Moonbeam City, or at least that what his coffee mug reads. He’s an undercover cop who wrecks havoc on the pink fluorescent Art Deco metropolis he loves, with car chases and macho catch phrases like “I hope your brain is hungry—it’s having bullets for dinner.”
 

“Captain Pizzaz Miller” voiced by Elizabeth Banks
 
There’s much to recommend in Moonbeam City—the animation, done by Los Angeles studio Titmouse (Superjail!, Metalocalypse, Black Dynamite) is pure eye candy—truly the best of the best—and the music, by Night Club, is pitch perfect, too. There’s the voice-over work of Rob Lowe, Elizabeth Banks, Kara Mara and Will Forte. The problem is that it looks and sounds better than it is written.

Clearly Comedy Central have higher hopes for Moonbeam City than I do, scheduling its premiere after South Park‘s 19th season premiere. Sadly Moonbeam City seems, to me, to be a one trick pony. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous product, but once you get over the art direction and audio-visual flash, the writing is just kind of “blah” and pedestrian. Honestly, I’m kinda on the fence about watching a second episode. I don’t really see where they could take it. But don’t take my word for it, you can watch the Moonbeam City pilot here.
 

 
Casting in movies or TV is a difficult job for the ordinary viewer to get his or her head around, because the tendency to regard the finished performance as “the only way” it could have been done is so powerful, and this is true even for quite ordinary movies. When it comes to a movie as iconic as Pulp Fiction, however, it’s almost impossible to think of Vincent Vega as anybody other than John Travolta, and likewise for Jules Winnfield and Samuel L. Jackson (indeed, both actors were nominated for the Academy Award for their work in Pulp Fiction).

But such things are always more flexible than they appear, and it’s the job of casting directors to try to guess what the combination of this actor and that role is likely to produce. Yesterday there appeared on reddit an intriguing document that apparently represents Quentin Tarantino’s “wish list” for Pulp Fiction, which was to be his second feature after his successful 1992 debut, Reservoir Dogs. The list naturally contains some expected choices—including the actors that were eventually cast—but also some surprises.

On Reservoir Dogs Tarantino worked with Michael Madsen, Harvey Keitel, and Tim Roth, and it’s not super surprising that all three of those actors were Tarantino’s choice for the roles of Vincent, the Wolf, and Pumpkin, respectively—Keitel and Roth, of course, did end up playing those roles. For Vincent, Tarantino wanted Madsen for the part but effectively considered Travolta to be a co-front-runner for the role. Tarantino’s list reads as follows: “Wrote part for Michael. ... John Travolta (strong, strong, strong second choice).” It turned out that Madsen was committed to Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp starring Kevin Costner, which freed up Travolta for his career-altering turn as Vincent. 
 

(click for a larger view)
 
The application of image filters on the page reveals some hidden text behind the page, specifically:
 

THE WOLF
Harvey Keitel***
Wrote part for Harvey, if unavailable other possibilities:
Warren Beatty

 

 
The main image on reddit, which covered the casting of Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, Vincent, and drug dealer Lance and his wife Jody, did not include the key roles of Mia Wallace, Marsellus Wallace, the Wolf, and Butch and his girlfriend Fabienne. In the comments on the same page on reddit, however, is a four-page fax dated July 14, 1993 (faxing a document apparently typed up on July 2, 1993), which included Tarantino’s cast list for those parts as well as others. Surprisingly, an actor who played a career-defining role in Pulp Fiction and is well known as one of Tarantino’s very favorites, Uma Thurman, was not on the director’s original list for Mia. Rather, Tarantino wanted Virginia Madsen (Michael’s younger sister), with Marisa Tomei, Patricia Arquette, and Bridget Fonda also mentioned—Thurman’s name is nowhere to be found.

Similarly, Bruce Willis was not on Tarantino’s mind for the role of Butch: Matt Dillon was Tarantino’s first choice, with Sean Penn, “Nick” Cage, and Johnny Depp on the list as well. Depp, who filmed Ed Wood around the same time as Pulp Fiction was filmed, was Tarantino’s second choice for Lance, the drug dealer played by Eric Stoltz.

Samuel L. Jackson was not Tarantino’s first choice for Jules Winnfield—Laurence Fishburne was. Tarantino sprinkled Jackson’s name all over the document, considering him as possible for Marsellus, Captain Koons, the Wolf, and Lance. For Vincent, the Wolf, and Captain Koons, Tarantino let his imagination run wild, with some big-ticket casting ideas. Tarantino threw out the names Alec Baldwin, Michael Keaton, Denzel Washington, and Sean Penn, while for Capt. Koons, Tarantino considered Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Tommy Lee Jones.

It’s awfully fun to imagine a version of Pulp Fiction with Denzel Washington as Vincent, Eddie Murphy as Jules, Johnny Depp as Butch, Danny DeVito as the Wolf, Marisa Tomei as Mia, Michael Keaton as Lance, Pam Grier as Jody, and Robert De Niro as Capt. Koons. One wonders if such a movie would ever have gotten nominated for seven Oscars…...
 

 

 

 

 

 
This is the fourth part of a continuing series. Part One can be found HERE, Part Two can be found HERE, and Part Three can be found HERE.

Recently a friend hipped me to a song that I had NO IDEA existed, having thought for decades that the COVER of it by an ‘80s one-hit-wonder band was the original and only version that was ever recorded. This led to a conversation about hit songs that we didn’t at first realize were covers—sometimes not discovering the original versions until many years after the fact. A few friends joined in and at the end of the conversation I had a list of over 50 songs that were “surprise” cover versions.

As a public service to Dangerous Minds readers, I’m sharing this list so that you can wow your friends at parties with your vast musical knowledge. Granted, our readership is a smart and savvy bunch, so undoubtedly you’ll come across songs on this list and say “I already knew about that.” Of course you did, but indulge the rest of us. Hopefully, though, something here will surprise you.

We’ll be continuing to roll this list out in parts, as we have for the past next few weeks. In no particular order, this is Part Four of Dangerous Minds’ list of hits you (probably) didn’t realize were cover songs.
 

 
The song: “All Shook Up”

You know it from: Elvis Presley

But it was done first by: “David Hill” (AKA David Hess, star of The Last House on the Left)

“All Shook Up” was a number one hit single for Elvis Presley in 1957. Penned in 1956 by Otis Blackwell, the first recorded version of the song was recorded that same year by “David Hill,” which was the stage name of David Hess. Hess’ recording was a flop, but he later achieved fame as an actor in Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left, as well as other horror films such as The House on the Edge of the Park, and Hitch-Hike.
 

 
Many more after the jump…

 
Cat-calling is not without gradient, and not all uninvited attention from a strange man is threatening or really even obnoxious. For example, the besuited senior citizen who once shouted “God Bless America” at me from his milk crate throne was perfectly charming—namely because he wasn’t vulgar, didn’t expect a response, and made no move to follow me. On the other end of the spectrum you have guys who trail behind you as you walk, pester you for acknowledgement, become enraged at your evasion, or just plain disgust you with graphic harassment. Yesterday I had some rando yell at me, “What that mouth for?” and while I always hope I would be quick enough to yell “for biting off dicks!” in such a situation, I was thrown by the sudden shock of being screamed at by a stranger, and I didn’t gain my composure quickly enough for a decent riposte.

So how is one to avoid cat-calling? Comedian Jessica Delfino tried wearing a garbage bag, and it kind of worked! I have to say though, I see a few fatal flaws to her experiment’s conditions. One, this does not look like a trash bag. I mean kudos on the draping and everything, but that is a very fashion-forward interpretation of the medium—even without the figure-flattering benefit of the patented cinch sack! Two, she’s obviously traveling with a cameraman, and despite her attempts to be discreet, you’re way less likely to get cat-called when you’re with a friend, especially a male friend with a camera. Finally, I feel like there has got to be a dude out there with a trash bag fetish for whom this would only be a serious turn-on.

Still, her initial results are compelling, and further trials are encouraged. Personally I’d like to explore the repellent properties of a pregnancy prosthetic—again, you’d get some fetishists, but you can’t avoid every perv.
 

 
Via Dazed

 
Along with Robin Byrd and Al Goldstein, Efrom Allen was one of the pioneers of NYC cable TV talk shows. With its mix of porn stars, punk rockers and nightlife impresarios, Allen’s Nightlife was always reliably weird. As punk rock was throbbing in the clubs downtown, Manhattan cable TV was experiencing its own kind of anarchy. D.I.Y programs like Nightlife were offering demented and surreal entertainment to get us energized before hitting the clubs or to soften the crash as we wound down from a night on the Bowery. The coaxial pipeline was sending signals into our decrepit little apartments that were raw, spontaneous and often exhilarating, punk rock’s cathode equivalent. It was underground, avant garde, sloppy black and white television with a grimy technicolor soul. And Efrom Allen was the ringmaster at the rock and roll circus that made Manhattan in the 70s one of the most wonderfully strange places on the planet.

Leslie Barany has informed Dangerous Minds of the sad news that Efrom Allen has died. He had been suffering from lung cancer.

I was addicted to many things in the 70s and one of the healthier habits I accrued was watching Manhattan public access TV. Uncensored and subversive as hell, public access was truly what it claimed to be. You could reserve time for free on certain cable channels and do pretty much whatever you wanted. What made Efrom Allen stand out was his absolute coolness. He wasn’t cool in the hipster sense, he was cool in the sense of always maintaining an even keel while shit was happening all around him. From nasty crank calls to surreal interviews that included Nancy Spungen, William Shatner, a nude Marilyn Chambers and The Ramones, Allen dealt with everyone with a Zen equanimity, never breaking a sweat and never condescending to his guests no matter how fucked-up or difficult they might be. On the surface, he seemed a bit square but he was actually a pretty gutsy guy who went out on the limb every time he did a show. Nightlife was cutting edge stuff and it makes the current crop of late night talk shows look hopelessly square.

In a phone call earlier today, Leslie Barany said that those close to Efrom will be working on a project to insure that his video archives will be “transferred to a museum or institution that appreciates its historical value, and will digitize it, preserve it and make it available to the public.”

Below, Efrom Allen with Sid Vicious, Stiv Bators, Cynthia Ross and Nancy Spungen:
 

 
“Saturday Morning Cartoons” is a new weekend ritual/feature here at Dangerous Minds. Each week I’ll select a few handpicked—some “troubled,” some quite lovely—drawings, sketches and portraits of your favorite pop idols and movie stars.

This week it’s ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog. ABBA has always had millions upon millions of hardcore fans and throughout the span of their career and beyond, people have drawn and sketched portraits of the Swedish band. The Internet boasts rather a lot of ABBA fan art, if you’re looking for it.

I have nothing against the brunette, Frida, she’s great, but this week, let’s take a closer look at the blonde… sexy yet innocent-seeming Agnetha Fältskog. Here are a few of my favorites. I hope they brighten your weekend.