Really cool video from a skateboard’s perspective. I believe the camera is mounted underneath the deck. Directed by Eli Stonberg, skateboarding by Aryeh Kraus with music by Blackbird Blackbird.
Thanks, Syd Garon!
At this point there is no defending Rep. Anthony Weiner. He’s a fucking idiot. I always liked the guy, but he’s made a goddamned buffoon of himself.
His wife must be furious and I’ll bet Bill and Hil are PISSED, too! I can’t wait to hear what Jon Stewart does tonight!
And he had to apologize to Andrew Breitbart! What an idiot, Weiner is. He has single-handedly helped Andrew Breitbart get a brand-new shiny media make-over. Way to go, idiot!
It pains me to have to say that about a liberal Democrat who was willing to go to bat on the single-payer healthcare option. I like Weiner, and as a former New Yorker, I always have, ever since he first got elected to the city council at the age of 27. He’s a gutsy Democrat who’s willing to play ball on Fox News for sport and I just love that in a Democrat… but for Christ’s sake, Anthony Weiner is a fucking idiot!
For a politician, in this day and age to think even for a split millisecond that something like this wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass is farcical. It’s preposterous. It speaks VOLUMES about his shitty judgement that these photos exist AT ALL. [Note to Congressman Weiner: You are a United States Congressman, from one of the single SAFEST Democratic districts in the country—you want to be the mayor of New York—and you take photos of your johnson and send it off to women—not women who you have fucked, I might add—but that you have never even met???? WHAT IS WRONG IN YOUR HEAD, MAN? You didn’t even meet them, let alone fuck them, you fool! What a loser! And you used social media! What a fool you are! It’s mind-bending how reckless you were with your reputation and your marriage! You deserved to be caught, dumbshit!]
I never thought I’d say this, but better Michele Bachmann than Weiner on the House Intelligence committee, eh?
His effectiveness as an anti-Republican jabber has been greatly compromised by this entire sordid affair and that’s really too bad. I don’t think Weiner did anything so bad that he should resign, but good luck staying married, pal.
And have you seen his wife? She’s one of the best-looking women in Washington, DC and an honorary Clinton, to boot. Screwing up a marriage to this babe is a fuck-up of epic proportions!
Anthony Weiner’s a dickhead, no two ways about it. (Did I mention that he’s an idiot, also?)
The best part of the press conference was when a reporter asked, “Were you fully erect!?”
WHY didn’t he come clean about this a week ago? Because he’s a fucking idiot, that’s why!
Before they shortened their name and became a Halloween-loving ska octet called Oingo Boingo, movie maestro Danny Elfman and his brother Richard Elfman were the leaders of the sprawling weirdo performance art/musical troupe, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Formed in early 70s Los Angeles, here’s a look at what their act back then was like, with this 1976 appearance on The Gong Show.
Richard Elfman is in the rocket, and Danny is playing the trombone. The celebrity judges are Buddy Hackett, Shari Lewis (sans Lampchop, sadly) and “Mr. Eddie’s father” and future Bruce Banner, Bill Bixby. They won that episode, receiving 24 points out of a possible 30, without getting gonged. You’ll recognize many of the faces here from Richard Elfman’s cult classic, Forbidden Zone.
Thank you, Danae Na Val Campbell!
Our friend Xeni Jardin writes on Boing Boing of the passing of Leon Botha, South African artist and DJ best known for being the “hype man” for Die Antwoord. Leon died on Sunday from complications related to progeria. He was 26. As Xeni mentions, he was likely the longest-living person with the condition, but that’s not how he wishes to be remembered:
We ended up becoming internet pen-pals of a sort. Through this, and through some of his friends (who all expressed great affection and protectiveness toward Leon) I learned more about his visual and performance art work. In that work, in his written word, and in some of the incredible monologues you can find from on YouTube, his presence radiates. All who knew him, and all who were touched by his spirit through those videos, will know what I mean when I say that he emanated deep sincerity, gentleness, a serenity and quiet wisdom. Leon was aware of his own mortality in ways most people are not. He transformed that awareness into a sort of mindfulness of how vast and awesome life is.
One day over email, Leon shared with me that the passing mentions of him that existed on Wikipedia were upsetting to him. He was mentioned only on the page for Die Antwoord, and under the page for his disease, progeria.
“I was a bit paranoid that my art wouldn’t be in there, in case something happened to me,” he said.
Leon was very mindful of the value of the internet as a reflection of human life, and an archive of the living after they die. He wanted to be understood as a complex, self-determined, thoughtful creator and connector and thinker. Not as a disease, and not as a footnote in someone else’s better-known story. He wanted to be known for who he really was while he was alive. He wanted us to respect him, and his work, after he was gone.
Recently, our email exchanges seemed to include more and more news of challenging physical hardships from Leon. He never complained, but when I asked after longer silences, he shared. I can’t imagine the physical suffering he endured.
“I always thought when I was little, like, all of this is okay,” he wrote in one email. “Just please don’t let it reach the levels where it is now.”
Read more of In memoriam: Leon Botha, South African artist, DJ, and wonderful human being (Boing Boing)
Exactly what the title says.
(via The High Definite)
Australia’s Today Tonight exposes the deceptive use of transglutaminase AKA meat glue to unknowing consumers. This video might make you rethink your next purchase of rump roast at the local supermarket. Just watch.
(via Dooby Brain)
Hardcore heroes Fucked Up’s new album is released today. David Comes To Life is being touted in some quarters as a modern classic, a rock opera romance for the ages set in 80s Thatcherite Britain. So is it that good? You can make your own mind up by listening to it in full at this link. Or, if you like what you have already heard, you can just go ahead and buy it here. There is more info on the album at Davidcomestolife.com.
British stand up comedian Stewart Lee has returned to the BBC with a second series of his opinion dividing show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. A ratings flop on its first run, it seems like a small miracle that it has made it back to our screens at all. Not least because a lot of hardcore comedy heads just don’t like it - and that includes some of our own writers here at DM, who have turned off episodes of the show in the past.
Lee was one half of the hip 90s alt comedy duo Lee and Herring, who starred in the cultish TV shows Fist of Fun and This Morning with Richard Not Judy. Since parting with Herring some years ago, Lee has followed a more polemical route without resorting to agitprop or being in-yer-face. He also took a very long hiatus from TV before returning in 2009, and seems to have ironed out some of the flaws from the first series of Comedy Vehicle. The involvement of Chris Morris, Arnold Brown and Armando Iannucci has perhaps helped too (worth particular mention are the interview cut aways featuring a very spiteful Iannucci and a deflated Lee).
In comedy terms this is very much an acquired taste. If you are happy to be a passive consumer of lowest common denominator observational humor, then this is not the show for you. If you are a fan of slapstick or rapid fire gags, Lee does neither. Even if you consider yourself a comedic connoisseur and you get what is is that he does, you still might not like it. And I’m not going to lie, Lee can be very hit or miss. But when he hits he hits hard - to answer the question in the headline I think he might actually be a comedy genius.
Watching the first episode of series two, which is ostensibly about “Charity” but is actually about Lee’s fictional grandad’s love for crisps, I felt like I had never seen anyone perform comedy that was this self-reflexive yet this funny before. Maybe I was in the right place at the right time, and in the right frame of mind but Lee manages that incredibly rare, almost magical feat of signposting a joke from miles away yet making the journey to the punchline, and the payoff itself, very funny indeed. See his grandad’s “crisps”/“crips” confusion (and even the repetition of the word “crisps” itself). This had me in stitches - contrary to the suggestion by some critics that his style will inspire a smirk rather than a belly laugh.
Stewart Lee manages to deliver comedy about comedy that keeps an audience engaged and laughing, without resorting to crudity or obviousness. He walks the thin line of being very knowing, and also knowing that we know he knows, without (completely) disappearing up his own arse. The viewer definitely has to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate Lee’s tangental, mumbly approach but if you’re willing to invest a bit more attention to a stand up comic than normal, it is richly rewarded.
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle - Series Two, Episode One “Charity” - Part One
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle - Series Two, Episode One “Charity” - Part Two
Here’s a small piece of TV history as Sir Sean Connery kisses Richard Pasco in a BBC production of Jean Anouilh’s play Colombe from 1960.
This is the first ever male-to-male kiss aired on television. It would take the BBC another twenty-seven years to show two men kissing on-screen again, in an episode of the soap opera EastEnders. For fact-fans, the first man-to-man kiss in a major movie is claimed by Raf Valone in the 1962 feature Vu du Pont.
While this is a TV first, the kissing couple were not lovers but brothers. Connery’s character Julien believes his brother Paul (Pasco) is having an affair with his wife Colombe (Dorothy Tutin), and kisses Pasco to find out what makes him such a good lover. Hm, that old excuse?
This might seem like nothing to us today, but we should appreciate that homosexuality was outlawed in the UK, a criminal offense punishable by gaol, until 1967, when the law was repealed. Therefore, it was more than hugely controversial to have two grown men kissing on TV (whether brothers or not) for it could have finished the careers of both Connery and Pasco, as they would have been seen as “corrupting viewers’ morals” and open to attack from those hateful right-wing moral evangelists, like Mary Whitehouse, who wielded such frightening and dangerous power back then. So, three cheers for Sir Sean and Mr Pasco.
The play Colombe was believed to have been lost or deleted, but copies of the drama turned up in the U.S. last year, after a reseracher found copies that had been sent to broadcaster National Education Television. The programs have now been returned to the British Film Institute in London, where Colombe will screened today.
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Via the Daily Mail
