In the pantheon of “milking decades of relevance out of a single brief role in a movie,” I submit for your consideration Ari Lehman. Lehman played the role of “Jason Voorhees” in Friday the 13th—you can even look it up. He never wore the famous hockey mask, he played Jason as a younger person—in the scene he is shown emerging from a lake. He never played Jason in any of the ... however many movies followed, there were a lot of them.

Lehman is in a heavy metal band called—you guessed it—First Jason. (Fair warning: Clicking on that link will force the hard rock strains of First Jason’s “Soul Seller” on your ears, which never, ever did anything to you.)
 

 
On his website you can buy a “Jason mask glass pipe” for $50—if you would like Lehman’s autograph “in permanent Titanium ink,” then the price is $65.
 

Be one of the first to own this first piece in a line of Quality Glassware from Ari Lehman and Horror Glass. Each piece handblown and decorated in Heavyweight Glass by one of the best shops in the USA $50 + Shipping. Ari Lehman the First Jason Voorhees from “Friday the 13th” will Autograph your pipe in permanent Titanium Ink for an additional $15. ORDER NOW!!! JASON MASK GLASS PIPES MEASURE AROUND 5” BY 1.5” MADE IN USA!!!

First Jason will be performing on Friday, March 6th, 2015 at Wizard World Presents Bruce Campbell Horror Fest, Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, 9291 Bryn Mawr Avenue, Rosemont, IL 60018

Here’s a brief clip from Friday the 13th, the 2009 remake, in which some poor sap meets his untimely demise because he comes across some cannabis plants in the woods. 
 

 
There are not many pop lyricists as good as Jarvis Cocker. Listen to the best of his solo work or the songs written with Pulp and you’ll hear a man who eavesdrops on life and turns the everyday into poetic gold.

When he started, Jarvis had a romanticized view of the writer’s life—the noble poet ensconced in some distant high tower contemplating his own suffering and angst. This all changed after a brief spell in hospital when he tuned into the conversation of his fellow patients and found their lives and tales to be more fascinating than his own. It changed the way Jarvis wrote his lyrics—changing from songs of myself to songs of experience.

When Pulp headlined at Glastonbury in 1995, Jarvis explained his inspiration for the band’s new single:

“‘Sorted for E’s and Wizz’ is a phrase a girl that I met in Sheffield once told me… and she went to see The Stone Roses at Spike Island and I said “What do you remember about it?”. And she said, “Well there were all these blokes walking around saying ‘Is everybody sorted for E’s and wizz?’” And that’s all she remembered about it and I thought it was a good phrase.”

 

‘Drugs: Pulp Fiction’—NME fire an early warning shot about ‘Sorted…’.
 
When Pulp released the “Sorted for E’s & Wizz” as a double-A side with “Mis-Shapes” in September 1995, there was a sense that “Sorted…” would have the curtain-twitchers of Tunbridge Wells scratching angry letters to the papers. But as it turned out, it wasn’t the lyrics or the song’s title that saw a tabloid hate campaign launched against Pulp, but rather the single’s sleeve that caused a furore, as music paper Melody Maker explained at the time:

The cover of the single features a photograph of a page from a magazine folded into the shape of a speed wrap. No drugs are shown on the sleeve. The inside booklet features a series of origami-style diagrams showing how to fold a piece of paper to make a speed wrap. Again, drugs are neither mentioned nor shown. However, under pressure from retailers and Island Records, a new, plain white sleeve has been printed.

The press denounced the cover as a “sick drugs stunt,” and the Daily Mirror ran a campaign to ban the single claiming the band were “offering teenage fans a DIY guide on hiding illegal drugs.”

 

Exhibit A: The offending drug wrap cover.
 
I think it fair to suggest that most teenagers or twenty-something Pulp fans in the 1990s already knew how to make a drug wrap, because everyone was sorted for E’s, wizz, coke and anything else you could get your jammy little mits on during that decade—and this includes a whole tier of hypocritical Fleet Street journalists and TV producers, who snorted in their executive toilets but damned users in print and picture. Right or wrong, it was just the way it was, and Pulp’s song reflected the ubiquitousness of that culture.

But the Daily Mirror wasn’t just content with keeping down some working class pop stars, their journalists cruelly phoned a father whose son had died from taking ecstasy, and used his experience to damn the band. Classy.
 

 
It forced Pulp to change the single’s cover and opt for a clever and rather tasteful knitting pattern design for the song “Mis-Shapes.”

As Jarvis explained the change was more about giving people the chance to hear the song than just giving in to the ire of a few media pundits. In an interview with the Melody Maker, he discussed what happened:

When did you first become aware that the Mirror was going to run with the story?

Jarvis Cocker: It was about half past 10 on Tuesday night. It was my birthday. Usually I would be out on my birthday, but I wasn’t that particular night, and I got a call saying it probably was gonna happen. The next thing I heard about it was my mother calling up at quarter past 10 the next morning, saying breakfast TV and various people had been ringing her up trying to get my number and trying to get her to make a statement about it, and stuff. But me mum’s alright, she’s not daft, so she didn’t say anything to them.

It surprised me, cos the thing that I was anticipating having trouble with was getting the record played on the radio. I’d been told that, because it mentioned drugs, they wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. They wouldn’t listen to it, and so they wouldn’t realise that it was just a song about drugs. It wasn’t saying drugs are fantastic. So, you know, I thought we were home and dry, but then they started taking exception to the sleeve. It’s stupid, cos that’s basically an origami diagram. Origami does not lead to drug addiction, as far as I know - I might be wrong. Nowhere on the sleeve does it say, ‘Put your drugs in this handy container’. People say it’s obvious what it’s for, but it’s them who’ve spelt it out. It’s like saying if you have a picture of a gun on a record cover, that means you’re gonna go out and shoot people. The subject matter of the song is about drugs, so it’s appropriate that it has drug related imagery.

Any road, the Daily Mirror took it upon themselves to ring up the Association Of Police Officers and get their opinion on it. It was kind of weird, cos they rang back and said they thought the song was great and they had no problem with it, but they thought the sleeve was bad. That was a problem for us, cos basically that could have led to it being banned from a lot of shops. So I thought to myself, I think it’s an important song for people to hear, and if the sleeve is gonna get in the way of people hearing the record, I don’t want that. I’ve been quite angry today cos there’s all this stuff to do with the chart people and all this daft formatting business, and they’re saying if you change the sleeve then it’s another format so it’s not eligible for the charts any more.”

 

 
More from the Melody Maker:

Ironically, the pre sales on the single were already well over 200,000 before its release on Monday - the biggest advance figure in Island Records’ history, according to the label’s marketing director, Nick Rowe. Regardless of the tabloid reaction, with Sorted For E’s & Wizz, Pulp seem to have tapped into the wider debate going on in the media concerning drug use in Britain. Recent examples being Channel 4’s ‘Pot Night’ and the current series, ‘Loved Up’.

Jarvis Cocker: I’m not saying I did it cos I thought we could open up a forum for discussion, but I think the drugs thing in Britain now is something that people can’t ignore any more. So many people are doing it you can’t just say it’s these fringe elements and they should be rehabilitated. People are just doing it on a recreational basis and treating it in the same way as they treat drinking or having some fags, so you can’t just say everybody who does it is an evil monster, and you can’t just like shut your ears to it every time somebody mentions it. There’s got to be some kind of a change in attitude to it. That’s why I thought it was great that it got played on the radio, cos that to me showed that there had been a change in attitude to drugs.”

 

Exhibit B: The offending diagram showing how to make a wrap.
 
Despite all the unnecessary hoo-hah about nothing much in particular, “Sorted for E’s & Wizz”/“Mis-Shapes” went on to hit the number two spot in the UK pop singles charts.

Below Pulp premiere “Sorted for E’s & Wizz” at Glastonbury 1995.
 

 
In the early 90s, my friend Oberon Sinclair and I decided that we were going to host a once-a-week party in Los Angeles. She’d moved here from London, I’d relocated from NYC and we both thought the nightlife in El Lay was lacking. The idea was to do something “different.” Something glamorous (her department) and also something deeply weird (mine).

We’d found a venue (Leonardo’s on La Brea, a tacky Mexican nightclub with red gingham table cloths and anti-bug candles everywhere) and we’d chosen a name for our event (“Good Evening”) and the image for the invitation (the cover of the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore album of the same name).

We’d also found a yodeling senior citizen drag queen accordion player, a completely freaky fortune teller and a group of Beatle imitators named the Mop Tops (that’s another story) to entertain our guests, but we needed more than that, which is how we came to be seated at the Brand Chicken Restaurant on Brand Ave in Glendale, CA.

The Brand Chicken Restaurant was a fast food joint that was decorated to seem like it was part of a chain, but it obviously wasn’t. There were the familiar sort of molded furniture booths seen in McDonald’s, Wendy’s and KFC, except that the place was decked out in lurid pink and green.

We were at the Brand to meet up with “Rockin Robbie B” an Elvis impersonator who had just moved to Glendale from somewhere in the deep South and was seeing what opportunities might await him here in the entertainment capital of the world.

Rockin’ Robbie B lived above the restaurant and quite literally sang for his supper with a portable karaoke machine. They paid him in chicken sandwiches. The two Sikh brothers who owned the place might’ve been his landlords too. In a sense they were his artistic patrons.

With the exception of a diamante-encrusted “TCB” belt buckle Robbie didn’t dress like Elvis, at least at the restaurant, and looked more like country singer “C.W. McCall” than he did the King of Rock and Roll, but he did do a very, very good Elvis impression, with one tragic flaw: He lisped. Badly. And when he sang, he sprayed.

Let’s just say we were quite happy to be seated near the back of the place with our chicken sandwiches when we heard the opening bars of “Suspicious Minds” on his karaoke machine! He also did covers versions of songs not by Elvis, but as if Elvis covered them (like “Ghostbusters”) and he did “I Want to Hold Your Hand” as “I Want to Bite Your Hand” in a Bela Lugosi voice.

This was already a fairly surreal mise-en-scène but what happened next made it even better: Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach walked by, knocked on the window and waved excitedly to Rockin’ Robbie B who turned around on his stool and warmly greeted them back.

I tell you this tale to lead into an amazing peek into the home Lux and Ivy shared in Glendale. In it you’ll get a glimpse of their legendary record collection and some of their STUFF.

They’ve got good taste, so sit on my…
 

 
Thank you kindly Erleen Nada!

 
Don’t ask me how (or why) I happened to stumble across this oddly fascinating narrative of how Ace Frehley tribute band leader Bill Baker first idolized and then became buddies with the original KISS guitarist… but I did. Baker is a luthier—guitar craftsman—and formerly the head honcho of Fractured Mirror, a Frehley-flavored tribute act.

I don’t really want to say too much about this, and I think it speaks for itself, other than to say that this story would make a good indie film or an even better Peter Bagge graphic novel. Bill Baker self-published a book, Ace Frehley: The Ultimate Fan Scrapbook which is nearly sold out. You can buy it at his website, which features all manner of Ace Frehley memorabilia and videos.

These two clips, from a documentary titled KISS Loves You, tell the story of how Bill and Ace met and… what happened next.

The good times:
 

 
The aftermath, after the jump…

 
In the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, black entertainers made considerable sums of money selling ghetto wine and malt liquor to their less fortunate brothers and sisters. “Liquid crack” was dirt cheap and fortified with alcohol and shitloads of sugar to get you higher faster. As Billy Dee Williams said in his TV pitch for Colt 45, “It works every time.”

40-ounce warriors were macho, sexy and hip…at least that’s what the commercials wanted the black community to think. The reality was much more grim. Malt liquors like Schlitz, Colt 45, Olde English 800, St. Ides, King Cobra and bum wines like Thunderbird and Wild Irish Rose were responsible for an increase in alcoholism, violence and crime in black neighborhoods. High alcohol content and the cost of a bottle being under two bucks was a deadly combination. Add to that the veneer of coolness that Kool and the Gang, Fred Williamson, Biggie Smalls and Snoop Dogg brought to the mix and you got a problem that went viral. 

Nowadays, low-rent white hipsters drink the poisonous piss in order to give them some kind of street cred while hip-hop artists have moved on to Cristal and Dom. But the high-end shit hasn’t trickled down to Skid Row yet.

While the product sold was crap for sure, the ads themselves are fascinating time capsules, some sending signals that are incredibly politically incorrect: making light of drunk driving, intimating that women will give it up after a few drinks, and using racial stereotypes that border on Stepin Fetchit caricature. And Blacks weren’t the only ones denigrated—check out the East Indian guy in the “Gunga Din” Colt 45 commercial below.

There’s also an interesting clip of Johnny Cannon wielding a Colt 45 pistol and a can of Colt 45 beer. A wise combination, don’t you think? Johnny’s expression of disgust as he guzzles the malt liquor is priceless.

Then I ask a question you brother
What the fuck is you drinkin’
He don’t know but it flow
Out the bottle in a cup
He call it gettin’ fucked up
Like we ain’t fucked up already
See the man they call Crazy Eddie
Liquor man with the bottle in his hand
He give the liquor man ten to begin
Wit’ no change and he run
To get his brains rearranged
Serve it to the home they’re able
To do without a table
Beside what’s inside ain’t on the label
They drink it thinkin’ it’s good
But they don’t sell the shit in the white neighborhood

—Public Enemy, “1 Million Bottlebags”

 
Every year I try to compile a list of the stuff that I’d be happy to get if I didn’t already have it. I’m a difficult person to buy for—I edit a popular blog, so people send me free stuff every single day. Truly I want for nothing when it comes to pop culture products, so I think this list might actually be useful if you’ve got someone infuriatingly difficult to buy for on your Christmas list…

Books

My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles (edited by Peter Biskind) One of the best books I’ve read all year, one of the best books I’ve read period, My Lunches with Orson is a delight from cover to cover. Bitchy, gossipy, profound, funny, wise, egotistical, self-doubting—this book—culled from transcripts of dozens of hours of tapes—probably represents the final great trove of undiscovered Wellesiana. I pray for a sequel and an audiobook version!

The Graphic Art of the Underground: A Countercultural History (Bloomsbury) Ian Lowey and Suzy Prince’s book takes an ambitious survey through the decades of the underground press, psychedelic poster art, punk graphics, album covers, “lowbrow” pop surrealism, the work of Jamie Reid, R. Crumb, Linder Sterling, Winston Smith, Gee Vaucher and more, legitimizing rebel visions and putting them in their proper historical context.
 
 

Conspiracy theories 101: Two great books from Feral House that I could not put down this year were The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America, a reader of the written work of the mother of all conspiracy theorists, Mae Brussell (she was normally a radio broadcaster in the 70s and 80s, do a search for her on YouTube and it’ll send you down a rabbit hole from which you will take months to return from) and Caught in the Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Oswald and the Garrison Investigation by Adam Gorightly about the man who was Lee Harvey Oswald’s one time army buddy as well as being the co-founder of the joke religion of Discordianism popularized by Robert Anton Wilson. I was already a huge fan of Gorightly’s earlier Thornley bio, The Prankster and the Conspiracy and this expanded book really sucked me in with its twisted plot. Wait, plot? This is a biography!

Original Art

Cal Schenkel’s amazingly cheap art sale: Long associated with Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, American artist Cal Schenkel has created some of the most striking, freaky and enduringly classic images ever seen on album covers. I’m a big admirer of his work and I was floored to find out how inexpensive his prints—and even his paintings—are going for on his site. Any Zappa or Beefheart nuts in your life? They will love you long time for a piece of art from the great Cal Schenkel!

Music

Speaking of Beefheart, there’s also Sun, Zoom, Spark: 1970 to 1972—this excellent new box set collects the Magic Band’s classic early 70s albums Lick My Decals Off, Baby, The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot along with a fourth CD of primo, never before heard out-takes. The sound quality of this is exquisite and at long last there’s a version of Clear Spot on CD that doesn’t cut off the last part of the “long lunar note” at the end of “Big Eyed Beans from Venus.” Sacrilege!

If you haven’t noticed—and it would be easy not to, because the format isn’t showing up in many retail outlets yet, mostly just Amazon—over the course of the past two years UMe, the catalog division of Universal Music Group that puts out all of those “super deluxe” sets of classic albums, has started releasing high definition Blu-ray “Pure Audio” discs. These BD discs should be considered as close to the master tape, as heard in the recording studio, as is possible to recreate and experience in your own home. In terms of their HD-DTS Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD tracks, it’s probably not possible to give any more definition to a digital audio signal and expect the human ear to be able to detect it.

So far UMe’s roster of “High Fidelity Blu-ray Pure Audio” discs includes stalwart titles like Nirvana’s Nevermind and In Utero, Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, Miles Davis’ soundtrack album for Louis Malle’s L’Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud, White Light/White Heat and The Velvet Underground & Nico, Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key of Life, Derek & The Dominos’ Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, the fifty song Rolling Stones GRRR! comp, Let It Bleed, and Exile On Main St., Ella & Louis, I Put A Spell On You by Nina Simone, Selling England By The Pound by Genesis, John Lennon’s Imagine, Queen’s A Night At The Opera, Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing, Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire De Melody Nelson and a handful of jazz and classical offerings, about fifty in all. 5.1 surround mixes of The Who’s Quadrophenia and an expanded version of the Legend collection of Bob Marley’s greatest hits came out this summer via UMe and the label also released a three BD set of three complete 1970 Allman Brothers concerts at the Fillmore East.

The UMe BD releases, especially the ones with 5.1 surround mixes (which sadly ain’t all of ‘em) are nothing short of stunning. The two best that I’ve heard, in terms of their audiophile ability to knock your socks off are Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (you can actually hear the sound of his foot on the pedal of his grand piano) and Beck’s Sea Change (I normally don’t care about Beck, but this album is the first thing I grab to demonstrate the possibilities of high resolution surround sound.)

Another audiophile Blu-ray release of 2014 that was in the “speed rack” next to the stereo for most of the year is Rhino’s CSNY 1974 box set of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s mid-70s stadium tour. Graham Nash personally supervised the mix and it sounds phenomenal. The performances are great, too. It’s so good that the first time I put it on, I listened to the entire thing in one sitting (it’s three hours long) and then when it was done, started it over again and played it all the way through a second time.

It’s a late entry, but the third installment of UME’s stellar Velvet Underground sets The Velvet Underground - 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition is another winner, in fact, as great as the first two have been, I rate this one the highest due to the inclusion of the sparkling live material from the Matrix (which was even recorded in multitrack making it arguably the very best sounding live VU set we have.) The 64-track, six-CD package is housed in a hardback book and features several 1969 recordings that were supposed to be for the band’s fourth album, but that ended up rerecorded on Loaded and Lou Reed’s first two solo albums. Those same numbers came out in the 1980s on VU and Another View, but they sounded weak and this release greatly improves upon them.

William S. Burroughs-related

This year, the centennial of his birth, saw continuing fascination with the life and work of William S. Burroughs. I recently finished reading Barry Miles’ exhaustive Call Me Burroughs: A Life, which is, and is likely to remain, the single best WSB biography. It’s 635 pages with extensive endnotes. Another Burroughs biography of a decidedly more narrow scope than Miles’ 635 page book that I also enjoyed reading in 2014 is Scientologist!: William S. Burroughs and the ‘Weird Cult’ by David S. Willis. This book covers—in scholarly detail—Burroughs fascination with Scientology. Although it is widely known that the author was at one time Scientology’s #1 enemy, writing scathing criticisms in the underground press and men’s magazines, what is less known and understood is how deeply into the ideas of L. Ron Hubbard he really was. And for quite a while, too. Sets the record straight. Burroughs was a “Clear”!

Additionally, one of the most exciting developments in Burroughs scholarship in recent years is represented by the two books by Malcolm McNeil, his close collaborator on Ah Pook is Here, an ambitious graphic novel project from the early 70s that would never see the light of day. McNeil’s Observed While Falling: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook, and Me is the memoir part of what amounts to a two volume set, while The Lost Art of Ah Pook Is Here is a large, glossy coffee table book collecting the gorgeous finished art and sketches of the project. No fan of WSB, unusual art or a compelling narrative (McNeil is a very good writer) will be unhappy with getting these books from you, but you should gift them both as they really go together.

Give the gift of binge watching: “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!”

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman: The Complete Series (Shout Factory) I received this last year and I am now about 2/3 of the way through it. If I only got the MH, MH box set (38 DVDs, 325 episodes, plus ten episodes of Fernwood 2Night with Martin Mull and Fred Willard) in 2013, it would still would have been my best Christmas ever. It is astonishing how well this show has aged, and just how far ahead of its time the humor was, too. In a longer post about Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, I said that this long lost, fondly-recalled series was arriving just in time for the binge watching generation and I am still enjoying it immensely over a year later. In a category of its own.

$$$$ (These next items are “big gifts” and would only be appropriate for someone who you really, really like)

The Complete Zap Comix box set. There is no way, none, that this hefty (23 lbs!) box set of the classic underground comic would fail to impress your loved one. Showcased in five sturdy volumes housed in an oversized box, the classic work of Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Robert Williams, “Spain” Rodriguez, Gilbert Shelton, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin and Paul Mavrides has never looked better and has been cleaned up nicely for this high quality publication. It even comes with beautiful lithographs of every Zap cover in a special portfolio. I’ve reviewed this beauty at length here, so I will send you there for more information. My favorite thing of the year, hands down.
 



 
This one is pricey, but it’s worth it: the OPPO BDP-105D Universal Audiophile 3D Blu-ray Player Darbee Edition, the Swiss army knife of fine sound and vision. Forget about how amazing it sounds (and looks—it does 4k upscaling on the video) and the quality of the build—like an Apple product—I find this player especially useful for music on USB drives. If you’ve got a lot of high quality digital music, this player will change your life. It’s got all sorts of bells and whistles that make getting something like this on Christmas day comparable to getting an entirely new record collection, because every single thing you own is going to sound better played on it. Even some vinyl die-hards are coming around to digital when it sounds as good as it does coming out of the OPPO BDP-105D Universal Audiophile 3D Blu-ray Player Darbee Edition. (Read the top reviewer, you’ll be salivating over this thing. It’s what convinced me to pull the trigger.)
 

 
Pioneer put out a line of low cost speakers designed by their chief speaker engineer Andrew Jones, a man known for making speakers that sell for $70k and now audiophiles who can afford speakers that expensive find themselves preferring these popular boxes. Jones set himself the challenge to make the best possible speaker for the lowest possible price utilizing Pioneer’s vast resources, bulk purchasing power and production chain. The result is that the various models in the line of Andrew Jones Designed speakers have absolutely mind-blowing sound for a fraction of what it normally costs to buy sound gear this crazy good. A pair of Jones’ bookshelf speakers—perhaps the best smaller speakers I have ever heard—cost just $125. Two of the towers will set you back $260, but the sound is pretty priceless if you ask me.

And finally, another item from last year that’s returning to this year’s: Dangerous Minds pal Alexander Rosson is the CEO and chief scientist/inventor behind the high end Audeze headphone line. The brand has been given every audiophile award under the sun in 2014. I describe them as being a bit like having tiny Magneplanars strapped to your head.. While Audeze headphones are certainly not cheap, it could be argued that for someone who aspires to own a $20,000 dollar stereo, but will never be able to afford it, these puppies are actually quite a bargain and built for a lifetime of use. The Audeze cans are featherlight and covered in supersoft leather. If Audeze are the Bentley of headphones, then Beats would be like… the Pinto.

 
Whoever suggested that “in space no one can hear you scream” had obviously never watched or more accurately heard Dr. Zachary Smith shriek in terror at the many alien lifeforms he encountered in sixties’ sci-fi series Lost in Space. Anyone who ever watched this particular show will remember two things: the Robot—apparently a “Class M-3 Model B9, General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot,” and the cowardly, interfering, cunning and comic Dr. Zachary Smith unforgettably played by Jonathan Harris—an actor whose mere appearance on screen could enliven the dullest fair. Though neither of these characters were included in the original unaired pilot, both quickly became central to the show’s success.

Lost in Space (1965-68) followed the (mis)adventures of the “Space Family Robinson,” a clan of astronauts, astrophysicists, biologists and their incredibly smart offspring, whose expedition into space was sabotaged by Dr. Smith, sending them altogether with their rocket (Jupiter Two) into the furthest reaches of the universe.

Jonathan Harris was a damned fine actor who, with his clipped mid-Atlantic accent and refined features, once considered the possibility of becoming another Cary Grant, but sense thankfully prevailed,and Harris knew he was best suited to being a character actor. Harris was originally just a guest star on Lost in Space, but as the series developed, and budgets were cut, he was encouraged to rewrite his dialog (“Never fear, Smith is here!” “Oh the pain, the pain…”) and add mannerisms to his character, as co-star Billy Mumy, who played Smith’s young side-kick the child prodigy William, said in 2002:

“...we’d start working on a scene together, and he’d have a line, and then in the script I’d have my reply, and he’d say, ‘No, no, no, dear boy. No, no, no. Before you say that, The Robot will say this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and then, you’ll deliver your line.’

“He truly, truly singlehandedly created the character of Dr. Zachary Smith that we know — this man, we love-to-hate, coward who would cower behind the little boy, ‘Oh, the pain! Save me, William!’ That’s all him!”

For those who fondly remember Lost in Space, or just fans of the great Jonathan Harris, this three minutes of Dr. Zachary’s screams are utter bliss.
 

 
With thanks to Tim Lucas!

 
When police in Sweden carried out a raid on a server farm in Stockholm on December 9th, seizing servers, computers and other equipment and simultaneously knocking The Pirate Bay and several other prominent torrent trackers (including EZTV, Istole, Zoink and Torrage) offline, it was assumed that they’d struck a crippling blow to the BitTorrent ecosystem.

But before Hollywood and the music industry could celebrate comes the news that a team of Dutch researchers at Delft University of Technology have figured out how to make BitTorrent completely anonymous and remove the necessity of central servers, producing a new client—called “Tribler”—that will keep things alive, even after all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers have been pulled offline.

Tribler’s lead researcher Dr. Johan Pouwelse told Torrent Freak: “Tribler makes BitTorrent anonymous and impossible to shut down.”

“Recent events show that governments do not hesitate to block Twitter, raid websites, confiscate servers and steal domain names. The Tribler team has been working for 10 years to prepare for the age of server-less solutions and aggressive suppressors.”

After last week’s Pirate Bay raid Tribler saw a 30% increase in downloads. The tax-supported team at Delft are confident that their encrypted torrent client can make the Internet safer for downloaders:

“The Internet is turning into a privacy nightmare. There are very few initiatives that use strong encryption and onion routing to offer real privacy. Even fewer teams have the resources, the energy, technical skills and scientific know-how to take on the Big and Powerful for a few years,” Pouwelse says.

You can download Tribler here. There are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux and Tribler is completely Open Source.

 
San Francisco based illustrator Emma Munger is a recent MICA grad who’s working in a comix shop while producing fun portfolios inspired by the famed tattoo artist Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins. Though she’s done pin-ups and flash pages of characters from Orange is the New Black, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Parks and Recreation, and Thelma and Louise, her largest collection is the women of Twin Peaks. You may never look at the Log Lady the same way again, and before you even ask, yes, Agent Bryson is indeed one of the ladies. Prints of Munger’s work are available from søciety6.
 

Laura Palmer
 

Nadine Hurley
 

Audrey Horne
 

Denise Bryson
 
Log Lady and much more (some slightly NSFWish) after the jump…

“Police Force Role Play Set for kids with Combat Vest, Riot Shield, Badge, Handcuffs, Machine Gun Toy, Grenade, Club & Knife”
 
I’m not actually particularly against “war toys.” Kids have violent little imaginations, and I don’t think there’s any causal correlation between acting them out and actual shootings—lots of kids have toy swords, but it’s not like we’re dealing with a rash of impalements. That being said, there is something about riot squad dress-up sets and riot squad vehicle LEGO sets that’s particularly gross, probably because it’s a much more literal representation of a visible violent institution. I mean, when kids play soldier, there’s the antagonist of a foreign “enemy” that keeps it a distant fantasy. Even when kids play “policeman,” it’s a kind of generic take on justice, like being a “sheriff,” but come on, a riot squad? What are they supposed to be doing, playing Ferguson?

I would expect this from a dress-up kit (costume companies are run by insane people, for insane people), but I feel so sad about LEGO stooping to this level! Look at those little minifig pigs! You have to wonder who among the children who will receive these toys will grow up to be dissidents, and who among them will join the other side, right? This is probably about as insidious as war toys are, of course, but can’t we at least agree there’s something creepy about tiny little running dogs of capitalism with itty-bitty riot shields?

EDIT: The “LEGO”-looking toys are not LEGO-brand, but a counterfeit block set, much to our relief. Apologies to readers for the misunderstanding, and apologies to LEGO for besmirching their noble name.
 

Riot Police Car, 325 piece set
 

Minifigs from above LEGO set