The president she once pointed a gun at has been dead for nearly three years, and her longtime idol and leader, Charles Manson, remains in prison.
However, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme is about to get her first taste of real freedom in more than three decades.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Fromme, now 60, is set to be released on parole August 16.
Fromme is housed at the Federal Medical Center at Carswell, Texas.
I am happy to report that I will interviewing Phillip Proctor and Peter Bergman of the legendary Firesign Theatre in early September for Dangerous Minds. Very excited about this, but as if that wasn’t enough, I’ve just confirmed that I’ll also be interviewing the entire Firesign Theatre—yes, all four or five of the Crazy Guys—on October 11th, just days before their series of reunion shows in Los Angeles at the Barnsdall Gallery Theater.
I was looking for a video clip to post. There isn’t tons of Firesign Theatre visual material out there, they are mostly audio performers, of course, but there are a few things. I thought I might be able to find a clip or two from Martian Space Party and lo and behold, I found the entire thing on Google Video. Here’s what IMDB says about it:
A concert film/mockumentary posing as live news coverage from the 1972 National Surrealist Party Convention, interrupted by news flashes from Monster Island, where the president is denied entrance to the forbidden city, but does meet his nemesis, Glutomoto.
That’s not exactly right. It’s not a concert performance—although there is an audience—it’s a film of a live radio show from the Firesign’s Let’s Eat! radio series. I believe this was filmed at KPFK in Los Angeles and that it was the very last “live” radio show the FST did during their classic era. It was produced by tech journalist Steve Gillmor, of The Gillmor Gang.
Forward Into the Past: The Firesign Theatre live in Los Angeles (Buy Tickets Here)
Laurie Hill’s marvelous animated short about the odd customer requests at the Hulton Photo Archive.
Winner Animation Grand Jury Prize - SIFF 2009 Short Film Jury Awards.
[Oh, if you were really expecting a photograph of Jesus, click here]
I’m fascinated by what’s often the fuzzy line between representation and reality, so I guess that explains my interest in photographer, Jaime Diamond, and her slyly subversive series, Constructed Portraits. Diamond assembled groups of strangers in rented hotel rooms, and took their picture. As she explains it:
It all began with my own family portrait. Somehow the image it portrayed didn?
Our friends at Feral House and Process Media are co-hosting this event at The Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles:
Was The Process Church truly “one of the most dangerous Satanic cults in America”? Or were they an intensely creative apocalyptic shadow side to the flower-powered ‘60s and New Age ‘70s? Scores of black-cloaked devotees swept the streets of New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, and other cities selling magazines with titles like “Sex”, “Fear”, “Love” and “Death”, and a theology proposing the reconciliation of Christ and Satan through love. Marianne Faithfull, George Clinton and Mick Jagger participated in Process publications and Funkadelic reproduced Process material in two of their albums. The inside story of this controversial group has at last emerged with Feral House’s LOVE, SEX, FEAR, DEATH
by Timothy Wyllie and other former members. Feral House and Process Books present a re-creation of an actual Process Church ?
Beautiful, somber new Radiohead single available for download on their website. You can listen to it here.
Titled Harry Patch (In Memory Of), the song is a tribute to the oldest surviving Tommy who fought in World War I. Harry Patch was 111 years old when he died on July 25th, 2009. He fought in one of the grimmest battles of the war, the Battle of Passchendaele, where over 325,000 Allied casualties occurred and over, 260,000 Germans. The 99 day battle from July 31st 1917 to November 6th 1917, saw an average of 3,000 British troops killed, wounded, or captured daily. (By contrast, in Iraq, 3,650 US troops have died and approximately 26,000 have been wounded).
Here’s what Thom Yorke had to say about the song and Patch:
Recently the last remaining UK veteran of the 1st world war Harry Patch died at the age of 111. I had heard a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the Today program on Radio4. The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me. It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death.
It was done live in an abbey. The strings were arranged by Jonny. I very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor.It would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of Harry to remind us.
I hope we do not forget.
“War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings”—Harry Patch
All proceeds from the track will be donated to the Royal British Legion.
Here’s a website dedicated to the hottest women in classical music. Beauty in Music says, “Beauty exists in music and the universe. Humans will never know what existed before the Big Bang, but we do know what exists after the explosion.”
Feel the hotness!
Thanks Wilson Smith!
Our friend David Pescovitz at Boing Boing posted this hysterical video of Henry Rollins mashed up with The Techno Viking.
SEED magazine published Saved by Science, a wonderful portfolio of Australian-American artist Justine Cooper’s large-format photographs of what lurks behind the scenes of the American Museum of Natural History with an accompanying essay by Carl Zimmer.
I used to know Justine quite well in the early 90s in New York but have not seen her in about fifteen years. Her work displays the quality of wide-eyed curiosity about the world that I associate with my memory of her:
A natural history museum is really two museums, and when you?
Let’s hope Congress throws a bone to that Cash For Clunkers program, fast! In what feels like a further sign-of-our-Ballardian-times, My Interesting Files has posted these photos of unsold cars from around the world. The sheer acreage of unclaimed autos is staggering. As are the numbers behind them: Sales of new cars in the UK have slumped to a 12-year low, and the number of cars rolling off production lines fell, at the tail of last year, 47.5% to just 53,823.
