You are reading an advertisement. Well, that’s not exactly true, you are reading what is known as “advertorial,” a paid for conflation of advertising and editorial. The four of us here at Dangerous Minds met last Sunday evening and toured the Equinox Fitness Club on Sunset Blvd in West Hollywood. Each of us will be writing about what we saw there and if you are curious, you can click here for a 3 day trial to the Equinox nearest you.

The Equinox club that we visited offers their members an ultra high end gym and spa experience. By far the best I’ve ever personally experienced, and I’m no stranger to gyms, or high end gyms at that (I was a member of what is probably Equinox’s main competitor for years, but there is absolutely no comparison). It was like being in a combination night club, luxury hotel, gym and beauty spa. Nice architecture, modern furniture, soft state of the art lighting, friendly helpful staff, a dramatic entrance, I think there was a live DJ—it’s a pretty glamorous place to work out, I must say.

The clientele, this being West Hollywood, tend to look like movie stars. Some of them, of course, are movie stars. No matter what your sexual orientation, there is some amazing eye candy working out here, but the vibe is respectful and the unspoken rule of all gyms (“Men do not hit on the women” I think sums it up) applies here at Equinox as well.

But these are somewhat superficial things that have nothing to do with how good of a workout you get. To be honest, the only thing I care about is the equipment. I want it to be new—this is really important to me, because they keep coming out with better and better machines all the time—and I want it to be CLEAN. Equinox comes up a winner in both categories. It’s as clean as a five star hotel and the machines are state of the art. They have a new fleet of Schwinn exercise bikes and they even have several Pilates Reformers for group classes, which takes the package completely over the top in my opinion.

Simply put, Equinox is the Rolls Royce of gyms. Click here to redeem your 3-day trial membership to Equinox.

Maxim posted this funny piece titled 11 Awesomely Bad Pieces of Kenny Rogers Art. Maxim says, “He may not have had a hit in over a decade, but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t think Kenny Rogers is a beloved cultural icon, not to mention a flat-out badass. Hell, after Elvis and Tony Montana, Kenny gets the velvet painting treatment the most often. Some of these attempts have turned out better than others, so with that in mind, here are 11 pieces of Gambler tribute art - velvet and beyond - that prove you gotta know when to walk away ... and when to run.”
 
11 Awesomely Bad Pieces of Kenny Rogers Art
 
(via Presurfer)

Having just watched it, I am compelled to comment about the new Lady Gaga video. It is, by the way, incredible. This is my love letter to Ms. Gaga.

Over the last couple of months Lady Gaga has come to embody—for me and, I imagine, for her fans—a kind of posthuman life strategy. She presents a response to the horrors of the 21st century that reeks, strangely, of absolute sanity—to very archly embrace the most grotesque excesses of the materialist culture that is destroying the planet. At once clinging to a very human New York hoodrat identity and also becoming indistinguishable from the inhuman culture machine that promotes her, she is the perfect evolutionary advance, designed to outlive the cockroaches themselves.

Ezra Pound once said: “And round about there is a rabble?—of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth.” And so she has.

Lady Gaga is the Devil card of the Tarot: the lie that there is nothing but matter—though the card is inverted, tongue-in-cheek. She is a successful gray alien hybrid, stripped of all human emotion or compassion, a thing made to flourish in this grim, mechanical age. She is the newest model android from the MTV fembot assembly line. She is the latest and greatest Terminator. She is Skynet. She is self-aware.

Lady Gaga is everything that terrifies us about the Coming Race: Absolute destructive materialism and complete lack of identity past a 140-letter Twitter quip. Female sexuality inverted into male sexuality and weaponized. Did they build her in an underground laboratory, like the one featured in this video? They must have, for what other perverse, mutated perfection of the human form could be better equipped to succeed in this most horrible of world climates?

While the rest of the world spirals into economic degradation, environmental pestilence and complete systems failure of ALL of the old world models, Lady Gaga reigns above the flames. Pay attention to the lesson: Lady Gaga is the ONLY person prospering in this cultural climate. Therefore she has done something RIGHT. She is the necessary evolutionary adaptation to our times and THIS is why people are disturbed by her: This is what we must all become.

Indestructibly empty.

(Lady Gaga: Bad Romance)

(Lady Gaga: The Fame Monster [Deluxe Edition])

 
“Take a pull off his tiny buttocks, and you will be transported back to one of his legendary scat-filled performances of yore!”  A few weeks back, Dangerous Minds brought you news of the GG Allin bobblehead.  Well, here’s a commercial for the toy.  Oh, and for you Meatmen fans, there’s a Tesco Vee doll, too.  Thanks Aggronautix, but I’ll reach for my Visa only when you show me an El Duce!

 
See also: Milo of the Descendents Throbblehead

(via TWBE)

 
ArtFagCity today helps connect some dots between the bearded gent in the majorly creepy “Magic Painter” video (below), and David Brandt Berg (above), the leader of “The Family,” aka “The Children of God,” the Christianity-based religious cult.  Wait a minute…apocalypse-prone cult leaders orchestrating kiddie-enticing videos?

This wouldn?

Kid gets extremely angry about David Letterman’s affair. Cool story, bro!

Comics Alliance shares this combination of two of the greatest things ever. It’s like my personality ideals as a 7-year-old and a 27-year-old were combined into one big stew of awesome:

If you missed the “Mad Men” finale last night, my lips are sealed, but daaaaamn am I excited for the next season. As the interminable wait begins for Season 4, we’ve got a little something to tide you over: An X-Men Meets “Mad Men” mashup. Tell me these aren’t perfect (except for the spelling of Jean Grey’s name)! The notion of a smoldering brood-off between Jon Hamm and Hugh Jackman is truly a wonderful thing to imagine.

(Comics Alliance: Mad Men/X-Men)

I recently watched the pilot episode of the new V series just cause, you know, you gotta keep up on your mass brainwashing. It was stupendously bad. However, I did have to laugh that the reptilian alien visitors in the show come bearing promises of “change” and then offer humanity… wait for it… wait for it… UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. Sweet holy f*K, is that what it’s going to take to get the U.S. up to the baseline quality of life standard of the rest of the “first” world? Space lizards? Well, if so, I for one welcome our new overlords. (Wink wink)

Asylum points out the similarities to the Obama administration:

1. The aliens come to Earth using Obama-campaign watchwords hope and change, and offer the most literal form of universal health care. Aided by a complicit news media, they assuage rabid protesters through a sweet-talking figurehead. Skeptics try to warn everyone of the impending danger, but nobody listens.

2. Of course, the most striking comparison is that, while many Obama opponents are sure he’s concealing an alien birth certificate, the seemingly benevolent V’s are pretending to be just like us, but (spoiler alert) are hiding lizardy evidence that they just aren’t.

3. The whole thing could have been lifted from the minds of Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs.

For bonus points, check out this fundie blog going off about the show, and this video from C-SPAN of the White House reacting to the show.

 
George Lucas could hardly have been luckier when he secured the talents of the mighty Walter Murch for his first feature film, THX 1138.  Renown for both his sound design and editing chops, Murch’s resume reads as long as it is Coppola-impressive: Godfather I and II, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation.  In that last film in particular, Murch’s wizardry conjures up a sonic landscape that’s as dense and bewildering as Gene Hackman’s San Francisco.

Murch co-authored with Lucas THX 1138, and engineered its complex, way ahead of its time sound design.  You can now hear it for yourself over at Egg City Radio, who’ve assembled a great compilation of THX 1138 audio highlights.  Here’s what AllMovie says about the ‘71 film:

In a 1984-esque white-washed future underground dystopia where sexuality is banned, all humans sport shaved heads and the same shapeless outfits as they go about their work in a mandated state of sedation, listening to exhortations to ?

This is the most disgusting thing ever. Even if I wasn’t a vegetarian it would be disgusting. In LA they sell hot dogs wrapped in bacon on the street. Sometimes when I am drunk I am tempted by them. But I never give in. And this, this. I would never be tempted by this. Tempted to do anything other than laugh. And laugh. Oh, Turbaconducken. You so crazy.

Bacon Today says:

Just in time for the winter season comes a recipe that is sure to bring bacon lovers some warm holiday cheer. Turbaconducken. That?