Quarteto 1111 was a Portuguese progressive/psychedelic rock band founded in 1967 in Estoril. Singer/Keyboardist Jose Cid went on to be what I’ve seen described as the “Portuguese Elton John” though there’s no early warning of that here thankfully. Here are a couple of lovely, pastoral, weirdly produced tracks from their eponymous debut LP, a conceptual piece dealing with racism and emigration (or so they claim). Evidently the censorship-happy Salazar regime made sure it was pulled from shelves the very week it was released. Dickheads.

This (unfortuntely truncated) black and white clip is for thier 1967 hit “El Rei D. Sebasti?ɬ

 
From Daily Record.co.uk:

A woman who killed her partner in a bust-up over whether to play a Kenny Rogers or Bob Dylan CD was jailed for more than six years yesterday.

Andrea Neil stabbed Rober t Hamilton, 46, after the argument at their home in May.

The article goes on to say:

There was an argument about what music to play. It got so heated that the accused asked Mr Hamilton to leave, but he refused.

Mr Hamilton attempted to throw a television at Neil. He then pulled her to the kitchen floor by her hair and a struggle ensued. She grabbed at a knife which was lying on a kitchen counter and stabbed him on the left side of his chest. Mr Hamilton staggered a few steps and then collapsed in the hallway

Jail for woman who stabbed lover to death over Kenny Rogers-Bob Dylan row

Just like the

 
Thank god she didn’t watch “Requiem for a Dream.”

My wife cries at the end of almost every movie. It’s really cute. I grabbed my camera to capture this moment right after we finished Return of the Jedi.

Note: I love my wife to death! She was okay after about 25 minutes. She laughed when she saw this video.

 
(via Arbroath)

 
African Giant Pouched Rats are being trained to detect unexploded landmines in Tanzania. Socyberty says:

The idea occurred to Weegens as he realized that rats were both easy to train and had an excellent sense of smell. Combining these two would, he considered, provide a cheap way to detect unexploded mines and ?

 
It’s a story that is getting surprisingly little national attention: former Mod Squad actress Peggy Lipton has inadvertently found herself at the center of New York’s pension fund scandal. Lipton was the object of the affections of a political operative named Jack Chartier who abused taxpayer supported town cars and other perks of his job in an effort to woo the actress. Chartier has been described in rather unflattering terms in the majority of the articles I’ve read on the matter. (The back story is told here in great detail). But now the scandal is getting deeper.

Tom Robbins write in the Village Voice:

The only victims in the Tiger Woods episode, for instance, are an SUV and the golf star himself, possibly due to a few swings on a nine-iron by his gorgeous wife. Compare that paltry disabled list to the lethal fallout produced after a schlubby late-middle-aged political hack from Queens fell hard for Lipton, the aging but still charming TV starlet. Lovestruck Jack Chartier was chief of staff to the New York state comptroller with influence over billions in state pension funds. The result has been financial scandal history.

Since Chartier, 64, started confessing to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigators about how he abused his office in order to better impress Lipton, at least five powerful figures have been forced to plead guilty to crimes involving the pension fund. Those admitting felonies so far include the former leader of the state’s Liberal Party, a Texas hedge-fund manager, a hugely successful investment adviser, and a pension fund broker.

The latest victim is the biggest catch yet: Elliott Broidy, 52, is the former national finance committee chairman of the Republican National Committee and a personal friend of George W. Bush. Broidy was such a generous and prolific giver that he qualified as a “Super Ranger” on Bush’s fundraising team, a designation for those ponying up $300,000-plus. One glittering evening in 2006, Broidy and his wife had Dubya as the guest of honor at their Bel Air mansion where more than $1 million was raised for the Republican cause. Broidy’s wallet was so wide open that Bush named him to the board of the Kennedy Center, placed him on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, and had him to dinner at the White House with another famously randy figure, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

None of those powerful connections, however, were any help once Chartier started singing after having been being nailed on his own transgressions.

The Peggy Lipton Affair Brings Down Another Mogul (Village Voice)

 
Chicks and vinyl! Vinyl and chicks!

Lifelounge says, “May we present to you a gallery that is a homage to lovely ladies of the past caught mid turntable tease with vinyl in hand. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to get the timeless appeal of this subject. Enjoy.”
 
Chicks and Vinyl

Autonomedia’s 2010 calendar of Jubilee Saints is now available. The calendar tracks world history dates in anarchist and poetic resistance to Teh Machine. (Arthur mag’s blog regularly posts dates from the calendar, which help restore my sense of narrative on a regular basis.)

Autonomedia’s Jubilee Saints Calendar for 2010! Our 18th annual wall calendar, with artwork by James Koehnline, and text by the Autonomedia Collective.

Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, along with the animating ideas that continue to guide this project ?

(Via Reddit)

John Patterson at the Guardian’s critical appreciation of The New World, one of my favorite movies from my favorite director, ever. Patterson calls it the best movie of the decade. I think he’s probably right. It’s the kind of movie that will help you breathe for weeks. John says:

This decade hasn’t been up to much, movie-wise, but I am more than ever convinced that when every other scrap of celluloid from 2000-2009 has crumbled to dust, one film will remain, like some Ozymandias-like remnant of transient vanished glory in the desert. And that film is The New World, Terrence Malick’s American foundation myth, which arrived just as the decade reached its dismal halfway point, in January 2006.

It’s been said that The New World doesn’t have fans: it has disciples and partisans and fanatics. I’m one of them, and my fanaticism burns undimmed 30 or more viewings later. The New World is a bottomless movie, almost unspeakably beautiful and formally harmonious. The movie came and went within a month, and its critical reception was characterised for the most part by bafflement, condescension, lazy ridicule and outright hostility. And, less often, by faintly hysterical accolades written too soon and in terms too overheated to convey understanding. I know, I wrote one of them.

I was lucky. I saw the movie at 10 in the morning, on 20 minutes’ notice. I knew only that it was about Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, and was directed by the man who made Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. I saw it on a screen the size of a warehouse wall, boasting a state-of-the-art sound system that picked out every insect whirr and birdcall, every droplet of falling water, every muted sigh. Having been underwhelmed by The Thin Red Line (upon which critics had ?