It’s seldom that you’ll hear me saying a good word about Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the rightwing lawman from Arizona’s Maricopa County who’s known for taking racial profiling to outrageous heights and for being one of the foremost diehard “birther” idiots. BUT in this case, I have to hand it to the Sheriff: When I heard about the sad, sordid and sick tale of the hapless would-be horse-fucker Michael Crawford, arrested by Arpaio’s men in an undercover sting operation last Friday, my first thought was “I’m glad they got this sick fuck.”

And then my second thought was realizing that there was VIDEO FOOTAGE of Crawford’s sting. As the kids say: OMG. I mean… It’s the REALEST thing you’ve ever seen (Today at least).Totally revolting. To Catch a Predator on steroids.

Via USA Today:

Michael Crawford, 68, landed in Phoenix believing he would meet with a horse owner he’d been corresponding with online, according to a statement released by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Crawford hoped the fictitious owner would allow Crawford to engage in “perverted” sex acts with an animal, Sheriff Joe Arpaio said at a press conference Sunday.

Crawford posted an ad on a popular website soliciting a willing horse owner, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Investigators in the Animal Crimes Investigations Unit opened the case in October and corresponded with Crawford via e-mail and phone-call conversations.

“If you can really help with what I am seeking, I am definitely interested in traveling out to meet you,” Crawford told the detectives. He admitted that he had traveled the country since the 1970s to find horse owners willing to let him have sex with their steeds.

On Friday, Crawford was met by undercover deputies at the Phoenix airport and taken to a “meeting” with the horses in Tolleson, Arizona. It was all videotaped.

You will never get you innocence back after you watch this 68-year-old perv gleefully licking his lips over which horse he thinks he’s going to fuck.

How is that even enticing? HOW? If you’re a horse-fucker, does it matter if it’s a boy or a girl? So many questions.
 

“Celebrigum” brainchild, Steve Young—pictured here with The Gum
 
In August of 2010, a strange website called CelebriGum appeared on the Internet, without fanfare, conducting some sort of Dadaist examination of America’s unwavering worship of fame and celebrity. For three years straight, CelebriGum presented a barrage of images of famous celebrities who, without their knowledge, were photographed from a second story office window with a piece of old hardened gum on the window ledge that was always in the frame. CelebriGum featured a revolving door of celebrities of all kinds, but The Gum remained constant and unchanging. Celebrities were made to share photographic space with a piece of inanimate matter that eventually came to be as beloved, to some fans, as the celebrities themselves.

CelebriGum was the brainchild of Steve Young, who (up until May 20th of this year) was a 25 year veteran writer for David Letterman. But Young, a Harvard graduate who cut his comedy teeth writing for the Harvard Lampoon, has been involved in much more than just writing jokes for late night television. He has written for The Simpsons, most notably the season eight masterpiece entitled Hurricane Neddy.

In 2000, he won an Annie Award for his screenplay adaptation of the animated holiday special Olive the Other Reindeer. And he’s recently written what many consider to be the definitive history of the industrial musical in the remarkably strange and informative book Everything’s Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals.

Given his background in creating and disseminating the odd and hilarious, a peculiar sociological project like CelebriGum was certainly not outside the realm of possible weirdness for Young. And as a writer for The Late Show, he could choose from an endless supply of celebrities as they were arriving at or leaving the Ed Sullivan Theater. He would linger at the second floor window and wait for the opportunity to snap perfect photos of some of the most famous people in the world—alongside an old piece of gum.

Needless to say, it wasn’t long before Young’s photos, which would always be presented on the website with some sort of witty caption or deep observation, began to acquire a fan-base. More precisely, The Gum began to acquire a fan base. True fans of The Gum understood what Young was up to with his surreal goofiness, and they looked forward to each new installment to see who was the latest celebrity being made to look ridiculous from above. CelebriGum was, as David Letterman described it, “a perfectly silly, genius idea.”
 

David Letterman and The Gum
 
CelebriGum ran for three years before Young voluntarily pulled the plug on the project—but during that time, he actually got to hold a New York Times reviewed gallery exhibition of his CelebriGum photos.

We were fortunate enough to pin Steve Young down for a few questions about the CelebriGum experience:

How long had you been taking photos of celebrities from your office window before you realized that those A-listers were being upstaged by a piece of old gum that was clearly visible in each photograph? What kind of an epiphany did you have at that moment?

Steve Young: It was actually the other way around. I noticed the gum first, somewhere around the beginning of 2010. I looked at it every day as I hung out by a window in the hall near Dave Letterman’s dressing room, and thought “maybe I can do a photo project of the gum enduring all sorts of weather until someday presumably it falls off.” I took a few photos, but it wasn’t really very interesting.  Then one day, the Eureka moment: I realized that celebrities were getting out of limos and SUV’s on the street below. I could get both at the same time.  CelebriGum was born: “Different day, different celebrity, same gum.” I launched the CelebriGum.com site in August of 2010.
 

“The Gum” itself, in a rare close-up.
 
Your photographs possess a keen sense of the absurd. Can you elaborate on any techniques you may have used to enhance the CelebriGum experience? Or did you find that the element of total randomness, as opposed to any staging or manipulation, produced the most striking images?

SY: There was a certain element of “the broken clock that’s right twice a day.” I found that after the initial conceptual notion of celebrity plus old gum had settled in, I was searching for ways to get pictures that were visually interesting within the very limiting framework I’d chosen. Sometimes it was just snapping a lot of pictures and later noticing the telling detail that made one particular shot a winner. Sometimes it was new conditions, like snow or a blinding onslaught of paparazzi flashes at night. Sometimes it was the lucky composition of a guest coming in on a gray day with an orange traffic cone providing the one vivid flash of color in the picture. And sometimes it was a magical moment of a star interacting with a crowd, or a star trudging along the sidewalk seemingly alone. But plenty of the photos aren’t very interesting. I only presented a very small percentage of what I shot.

I didn’t do much manipulation. Once in a while I did some overtly clumsy photo doctoring in the service of a joke, but mostly it was cropping and adjusting levels to get the picture I wanted.

Were cell phone cameras used for the majority of these photos? At some point there’s an upgrade in the quality of the photos. Can you tell us about your gear?

SY: At first I was just using the very modest camera in a circa 2007 Motorola flip phone. That was okay for the first few months, but I realized that I’d need something more sophisticated if I was going to continue when the days got shorter and it got dark in late afternoon. I bought a used Canon point and shoot camera on eBay to use as my CelebriGum camera. That did pretty well for a while, though night-time photos were still a challenge. I eventually bought a Sony RX100, which is an outstanding camera that can still fit in a pocket, not just for CelebriGum but for my other photography as well. And during the last winter of CelebriGum I bought a little light that I used to illuminate the gum on the ledge. It may be a cool photo of Mick Jagger down on the street, but if you can’t see the gum, it ain’t a CelebriGum photo.
 

Mick Jagger and The Gum
 
Your photos seem symbolic of something much deeper than the simple juxtaposition of famous people with a piece of old gum as a goof. CelebriGum seemed to be providing a winking commentary on the inherent ridiculousness associated with fame, and the possible dangers posed to those who seek it—a hammering home of the notion that fame and celebrity will eventually chew you up and spit you out. The poignant undercurrent running through the entire CelebriGum narrative is that fame is ephemeral and fleeting. Some of your images actually evoke a feeling of profound sadness. Was any of that intentional?

SY: That was always there, though I didn’t want to be heavy-handed about it. Ideally, the better pictures worked because they were weird and visually striking, and for each post I always tried to have a humorous riff inspired by the photos. But from the beginning, I thought that the juxtaposition of celebrity and old discarded gum had that potential built-in commentary. Just as you say; fame chews you up and spits you out when your flavor has been extracted. Looking back at the run of photos now, there are many instances in which a temporarily well-known person has fallen off the radar. In at least a couple cases, celebrities in the pictures have died.  Everything is temporary, even the excitement and glamour of an A-list star. Someday all that will remain of each of us is a wad of inert matter. But in the meantime, ooh, look, Tom Hanks!  Tom!  Tom!  Over here!
 

Tom Hanks and The Gum
 
How much of CelebriGum’s popularity do you think was based on the American fascination with celebrity schadenfreude? Do you think that the idea that famous celebrity millionaires were being taken down a notch and unknowingly made to look kind of silly by The Gum’s stoic presence in every shot was an element of CelebriGum’s success?

SY: From the aerial view, I got an interesting perspective on celebrity culture. It certainly doesn’t seem like much fun to be a celebrity. Sure, you get to ride in a luxury SUV, and an assistant carries your bottle of water, but parts of your life are dehumanizing, and not just because you’re being photographed with old gum. In many pictures, there’s a crush of paparazzi photographers waiting for the star to step out of their vehicle, and they’re not there because they care about Celebrity X, most likely, but because they need to make a buck. Nothing wrong with making a buck, but it just illustrates the cynicism of the machinery of fame. And if it’s someone who’s not a very big name, and the weather’s nasty, then there may be nobody jostling to get their photo, and that’s depressing in a different way. Then there are the fans. There were often many real fans excited to see a star and get a picture and maybe an autograph. But there was sometimes a creepy feral mob mentality to it. Dozens or hundreds of people screaming, supplicating, and if you didn’t feed the crowd and give them what they want and just dashed inside because you were late, “Boo!  You suck!” Meanwhile, twenty feet up, the gum serenely surveys the madness, unchanging. Yes, there are many wonderful entertainers and athletes and even politicians whose efforts enrich the world, but some days they would probably prefer to be the gum, literally and figuratively above it all. 

The element of the gum also was the great equalizer. Celebrity, assistant, security guard, photographer, fan, bike messenger, pedestrian: all equal in the presence of The Gum. Okay, the celebrity is special in one regard: they have to be there to provide the celebri- half of the equation. But I ended up regarding stars mainly as props for my photography.

After CelebriGum became more well-known, were you ever aware of any celebrities who arrived at the show hoping or expecting to be photographed from above with “The Gum?”

SY: There were a few celebrities who were aware of it, but it was generally after the fact. I’d give them a shout-out on Twitter, “Hey, look, you’re on CelebriGum!” and a few responded and were charmed. Alec Baldwin requested a copy of one of the photos. The only celebrity who ever looked up and acknowledged the camera was Jamie Oliver. He passed me as he came down the stairs from his dressing room after his appearance, and I said “Hi!  I’d like to take your picture from this window with this old gum once you’ve gotten down to the street! Could you look up and say hello?” He did look up but didn’t go so far as to wave. I’m sure it all seemed very odd.
 

Jamie Oliver and The Gum
 
Continues after the jump…

 
There’s really not much to say about this fantastic painting of Divine and John Waters taking the place of the old prairie couple in Grant Wood’s iconic 1930 painting “American Gothic.” I simply dig it.

I had a hard time tracking down the artist as I misread the signature as GG Allin. To be honest for a few moments there I actually thought the late shit-hurling hate rocker painted this. The artisit’s name is spelled GIGI ALLIN and here are links to her Instagram and website.

The work in progress via Instagram
 
Via Divine on Facebook

 
I can’t remember the last time I was able to muster a level of passion and excitement over any particular thing or activity that would compare to the love that Nova Scotia native, Frankie MacDonald, feels for all things weather-related. Frankie is an Internet enigma and superstar, having dedicated his life to monitoring weather systems worldwide and then uploading amateur forecasts, updates, and warnings—based on his analysis of those weather systems—to a personal YouTube channel called dogsandwolves.

That sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. Frankie’s videos are like no weather report you’ve ever seen before. In most of them, he barks rapid-fire instructions on how to stay safe in a staccato cadence like a jovial Marine Corps drill sergeant charged with the giddy task of relaying apocalyptic warnings about impending cataclysmic meteorological events—regardless of whether or not the dreaded threats are actually threats that need to be dreaded (or something that’s even real).

For example, it’s not unusual to hear Frankie warning everyone to brace themselves for the onslaught of milder temperatures in Minnesota, or to hear him predict a date for (and issue a “warning” about) the occurrence of some specific surrealistic meteorological event like “severe tacos” in California.

Frankie’s motto is “be prepared,” and he takes it very seriously. Here was his advice concerning a snowstorm that was approaching the Baltimore area in 2014:

People in Baltimore, Maryland: Be Prepared—have your winter boots, winter jackets, hats, gloves, scarfs and ski pants ready and order your pizzas and Chinese food and buy cases of Pepsi and Coke and do your grocery shopping! Don’t wait until the last minute—Do it right now!

By way of contrast, here is Frankie’s recent dire warning on how to survive “severe tacos,” which are predicted to hit California and several Western states in October of 2015:

People in California: Be prepared! Have your lettuce, taco sauce, tomatoes, and hamburgers ready—and it will be a lot of tacos! Especially in California in the Southern California, including the Los Angeles area and the surrounding areas, and the severe tacos will hit Oregon, Washington State and Vancouver, British Columbia and the surrounding areas! Best of luck to ya, people in California—be prepared for a lot of tacos in October, 2015! Take care and stay safe and don’t get caught in a lot of tacos—Stay safe!

 

“IT MAY FLOOD THE STREETS WITH TACOS!”
 
Frankie’s forecasts tend to involve either actual changes in the weather or some type of food falling from the sky. Nevertheless, his YouTube channel has received over 10 million hits, and he was recently honored in the House of Commons with these words: 

We, as Cape Bretoners, are very proud of Frankie the Weatherman and wish him all the best as he continues to keep us safe from Mother Nature.

Someone has even inked a tattoo of Frankie on his leg:
 

 
The bottom line is that Frankie the Weatherman just wants you to be prepared and stay safe. Any other utility that can be attributed to his fantastic weather updates may be a bonus, but if he has helped you to be prepared for inclement weather in any way, then his job is done. And as far as today’s forecast is concerned, there’s a 100% probability that Frankie MacDonald will be having more fun than you.

Meanwhile, beware West Coasters—The SEVERE TACOS are headed your way!
 

 
Once upon a time, masturbation was said to make you blind or lead to hairs growing on the palm of your hand, now it is claimed onanism will have serious consequences for men in the hereafter.

During a television interview in 2000, self-styled Muslim “televangelist” Mucahid Cihad Han told viewers that men who masturbate will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife. (What I wonder, happens to women’s hands?)

Han’s bizarre warning took place during a Q&A session with viewers when he was asked for advice by a viewer who “kept masturbating even though he was married.” Han initially looked puzzled by the question, but after the interviewer repeated the sticky question Han urged the man to “resist Satan’s temptations” and added:

“Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over its rights.

“If our viewer was single, I could recommend he marry, but what can I say now?”

Frankly, I’m at a loss.

When Han tweeted this interview to his 12,000 followers on Saturday, he “was mocked on Turkish social media,” according to Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News.
 

İstimnâ (Mastürbasyon) Caiz mi? ''Elini nikahlayan mel'undur kıyamet günü eli hamile olarak gelir.'' Hz. Muhammed https://t.co/VAbLblHanG

— Mücahid Cihad Han (@mucahid_han) May 24, 2015

 
In its report on the story, the paper queried Han’s interpretation:

“Istimna,” the Arabic term for masturbation that Han also referred to, is a controversial issue in Islam, as there have been varying opinions on its permissibility throughout history. The Quran has no clear reference to masturbation and the authenticity of many hadiths is questionable.

Despite Han’s assertive religious stance, only a limited number of Islamic interpretations categorize masturbation as “haram,” while most of others call it a “makruh” (disliked) act. Many of the mainstream Islamic interpretations even allow it in certain conditions, like if the act could be used to avoid the temptation of an extramarital affair.

Han, who has more than 12,000 followers on Twitter, was mocked on Turkish social media on May 25, after newspapers published his latest television “fatwa.”

“Are there any hand-gynaecologists in the afterlife? Is abortion allowed there?” one Twitter user asked, while mentioning Han’s Twitter user name.

“So you think that being pregnant is a God-given punishment?” another user asked.

We have the video of Mr. Han’s interview, but alas no subtitles and still no answer regarding women’s hands.
 

 
Via the Hurriyet Daily News.
 

 
NBC Washington reported on Friday that failed Reagan-assassin, John Hinkley Jr., is interested in starting a band:

A psychiatrist treating the man who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981 says he wants to start a band and should be allowed to publish his music anonymously.

Dr. Giorgi-Guarnieri testified Friday during court hearings that will ultimately determine whether and under which conditions John Hinckley Jr. will be allowed to live full time outside a mental hospital.

Giorgi-Guarnieri says Hinckley should be allowed to start the band, but not perform publicly.

Hinckley’s lawyer and treatment team say he’s ready to live full time at his 89-year-old mother’s home in Virginia under certain conditions.

Hinckley has been allowed freedom in stages. He spends 17 days a month at his mother’s Williamsburg home. One of his interests is music, and he sings and plays the guitar. He also participates in music therapy.

John Hinckley, Jr., best known as the man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan in 1981, in a J.D. Salinger and Travis Bickle-inspired attempt to win the affections of a teen-aged Jodie Foster, was found “not guilty by reason of insanity” and has since remained under the care of psychiatrists at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.
 

Hinckley, who never got that big hit he was looking for, now has a chance to put a band together and give it another shot.
 
The attempt on Reagan’s life was a boon for punk bands looking for song topics in the ‘80s. If Hinckley’s band plans on doing any covers, he might consider looking for some inspiration from those he, himself, inspired.

After the jump, the top five John Hinckley-inspired punk songs…

 
Chubby Checker, born Ernest Evans, holds a place in rock history as the man who popularized “The Twist,” a song originally a minor hit for Hank Ballard. Evans was given the name “Chubby Checker” by (American Bandstand host) Dick Clark’s wife, as a play on “Fats Domino,” whom Evans did impressions of in his act.

Checker’s recording of “The Twist” was a number one Billboard Hot 100 smash in 1960—and again in 1962. The song kicked off a nationwide dance craze, and Checker followed it up with such diverse hits as “Twistin’ USA,” “Let’s Twist Again,” “Slow Twistin’,” “Twistin’ Round the World,” “Twist It Up,” and (not really, but according to a bit of hilarious wikipedia vandalism) “You Stopped Twisting. Why?”
 

 
After all but dropping off the music charts in 1969, Chubby came back hard in a poignant 1988 duet with The Fat Boys:“The Twist (Yo, Twist!).”

Chubby certainly is an important figure in rock history, and no one thinks so more than Chubby. I was recently unpacking a box and ran across a page from the July 28, 2001 issue of Billboard Magazine. This page was actually stuck to my refrigerator door for ten years before my last move, and is a full-page, paid-letter from Chubby Checker addressing “the Nobel Prize nominators and the nominators of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, TV, radio, motion pictures, entertainment, entertainers, and the general public at large, world wide.” It’s seriously one of the strangest things I’ve ever read, and I was surprised to do some research and find its contents haven’t really been discussed, at length, by “the general public at large, world wide.” A full-page ad in Billboard couldn’t have been cheap, even in 2001—so whatever Chubby had to say must have been really important.
 

Click on image for larger version.
 
In this rambling letter, Chubby Checker ranks himself in terms of greatness amongst Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Dr. George Washington Carver, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney, and suggests that he alone is responsible for people “dancing apart to the beat.” According to Chubby, “dancing apart to the beat is the dance that we do when we dance apart to the beat of anybody’s music and before Chubby Checker it could not be found!” As he clarifies in the letter, essentially, if you dance with someone and you are not touching—and you are dancing to the beat… well, Chubby Checker invented that shit. 
 

 
In the letter, Chubby demands that he get his own private space, away from other performers, in the courtyard of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where they are to erect a statue on a “thirty foot or so” pedestal of Chubby in the pose from his “Chubby Checker’s Beef Jerky” logo (!!!)
 

 
In the letter, he is somewhat dismissive of Elvis and The Beatles, who, in his eyes were nothing new, though they did improve upon the artists that came before them—just as Chubby improved upon the hit song which he covered. But Elvis and The Beatles, after all, didn’t invent dancing—as Chubby states, “let’s face the truth… this is Nobel Prize territory.”

Here’s the full text of the letter, just in case it sounds like I’m making any of this shit up (Checker’s grammar left intact):

This is my message to the Nobel Prize nominators and the nominators of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, T.V., Radio, Motion Pictures, Entertainment, Entertainers, and the general public at large world wide. Should you choose me I’ll consider it honorable. However I have conditions for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

To place the “Twist” symbol that’s on Chubby Checker’s Beef Jerky, this statue on top of a thirty foot or so pedestal in the courtyard of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. l would like to be alone, thank you. I changed the business. I am often called the wheel that Rock rolls on as long as people are dancing apart to the beat of the music they enjoy. Before ”Alexander Graham Bell”...no telephone. Before “Thomas Edison”... no light. Before “Dr. George Washington Carver”...no oil from seed or cloning of plants. Before “Henry Ford”...no V-8 Engine. Before “Walt Disney”...no animated cartoons. Before Chubby Checker…no “Dancing Apart to the Beat”. What is “Dancing Apart to the Beat”? Dancing Apart to the Beat is the dance that we do when we dance apart to the beat of anybody’s music and before “Chubby Checker” it could not be found!

Elvis Presley is the King of Rock & Roll, no doubt, and we love him. However Rock & Roll was already here. He just became the king of it. The Beatles who we all love so dearly, their likeness was done by the Beach Boys, Buddy Holly and The Crickets. But it’s evident that they did it much, much better. Hank Ballard wrote and recorded the “Twist”. The inner city kids made a dance to that song. The record died on radio. Radio stopped playing the record. The “Twist” was dead. No one was going to hear the record and no one was ever going to see the dance. We re-recorded the “Twist” and campaigned the song and the dance at DJ dance parties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Radio stations started to play the “Twist” by Chubby Checker. We finally made it to American Bandstand and showed the world what it was. Chubby Checker changed everything. He gave movement to a music that never had this movement before. The styles changed. The nightclub scene is forever changed.  Checker gave birth to aerobics.

He gave to music a movement that could not be found unless you were trained at some studio learning something other than dancing apart to the beat. It’s fun. The “Twist” the only song, since time began, to become number one twice by the same artist. Oh yes, we’re Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But lets face the truth. This is Nobel Prize Territory.

The “Twist” is very recognizable when you dance apart to the beat. But “The Pony”, two on one side and two on the other side, the dance that I introduced in 1961 is the biggest dance of the century. They do it to everything, in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and now 2000’s. And what about my “Fly”? To explain it better, throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care. If you “Fly” you automatically do the “Shake”. From I959 to this moment it’s either the “Twist”, the “Pony”, the “Fly”, the “Shake” or some other nasty stuff in between.

Please l urge you not to look upon my comments as self-centered, proud love thy self. This is not what this is about. Since l have such a unique situation in the music business, I feel only I can explain it. If the music industry knew or understood this reoccurring phenomenon, that’s renewed every time the beat begins, they would have explained it through decades. Yes, “Dancing Apart to the Beat” is Chubby Checker. Everybody is doing it everyday, every month, every year, since it’s discovery in 1959. Chubby Checker’s given the music business something great. Now he wants his greatness returned. 

I want my flowers while I’m alive. I can’t smell them when l’m dead. The people that come to see the show have given me everything. However l will not have the music business ignorant of my position in the industry. Dick Clark said, and l quote, “The three most important things that ever happened in the music industry are Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Chubby Checker”. Now l ask you. Where is my more money and my more fame? God bless and have mercy. You know I love you.

Yours truly,
Chubby Checker

P.S. l am also placing this letter on www.chubbychecker.com for the world to see. It would grieve me to have them ignorant of what l stand for in the music industry. Chubby Checker is King of the way we dance worldwide since 1959.

Checker’s website is still up, and you can still buy his beef jerky. Checker is still not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but was in the news, as recently as last year, still demanding his place.

Here’s a Hall of Fame worthy performance from the man who invented aerobics, at the top of his game, with The Fat Boys:
 

 
The Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council of Los Angeles posted a letter, written by either a child or someone rather child-like, to their Facebook page with the caption “We enjoy reading your letters and emails, like this one that came all the way from Milwaukee.”
 

 
Apparently dog, cat, and human sacrifices are not wanted by anyone in Eagle Rock, or the rest of the United States, for that matter—and besides, human sacrifice is illegal!

LAist.com reported on the supposed “Satanic cult”:

A little internet-sleuthing reveals that a group with an Eagle Rock P.O. box made the cut of an old list of Satanic cults. It seems that along with JNCO jeans and the X-Files, Satanic ritual abuse panic is making a comeback. The group is called Feraferia and it was formally chartered by Fred Adams in 1967 who lived in Pasadena and used to take groups up into the San Gabriel Mountains for rituals, according to a website dedicated to the group. The group was an offshoot of neopaganism dedicated to Hellenic goddess. It is big on being in touch with nature, the Goddess, faeries, vegetarianism and optional nudity.

Adams eventually moved up north to Nevada City with to be with his soul mate and co-ritualist Lady Svetlana in the 90s and he died in the late aughts.

So apparently the author of that letter has some out-dated information on cult activity in Eagle Rock—which is a welcome relief! With that problem out of the way, the neighborhood can now get to the more pressing matter of building that desalination plant and the sabotage-proof pipeline nets.

H/T: LAist.com

 
Despite the fact that I was a pretty sports-averse youth, growing up in the eighties and nineties, it was basically impossible to avoid having a Saturday morning run-in or two with pro wrestling. The WWF came on right after cartoons, and, like a mosquito to a bug-zapper, you just couldn’t help but find yourself, like it or not, sucked in by the bloviating, vein-popping, pile driving, yelling-and screaming phenomenon.

A strong contender for pro wrestling’s Shouter-in-Chief at the time was Jimmy “The Mouth of the South” Hart. Hart, a Jackson Mississippi native, is famous for being the bullhorn-toting manager for the likes of Hulk Hogan, Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase, King Kong Bundy and The Honky Tonk Man among several others. Hart’s Wikipedia page indicates that he was named Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Manager of the Year in 1987, an award he won again in 1994, facts of which I never thought I would be in possession.
 

Jimmy Hart and Hulk Hogan taking tan to a ‘whole nutha level.’
 
Amazingly however, before he was the “Mouth of the South,” Jimmy Hart lived a life of a different sort, still in the entertainment industry, but as a singer for a modish band of garage rockers called The Gentrys who scored a top five hit in 1965 with “Keep on Dancing,” a cover of a 1963 recording by the Avantis. And, as many of you may already be aware, the band was pretty damned good.

More after the jump…

 
Just when you think you’ve heard it all, right about at the point when it seems that the United States could not get any more odd, a story like the one I’m about to relate rears it’s head from the annals of the Internet reminding you about how completely insane this entire thing we all call the “American Experience” can be and has always been. This, readers, is the story of Edward Elmer Solly, a convicted fugitive child killer who, after escaping from jail in 1974 and hiding in plain sight, went on to make a living for himself by impersonating and claiming to be deceased Sha Na Na guitar player, Vinnie Taylor.

As many of you already know, Sha Na Na formed in 1968 as an intentionally retro act imitating doo-wop groups from the 1950’s, slicking back their hair and dressing like what could have been Elvis’ personal, gold lame donning entourage. Famously, they played Woodstock, had a syndicated T.V. show that ran from 1977 to 1981 and appeared in the movie Grease in 1978.  Vinnie Taylor (born Chris Donald) was not in the group at the time of the Woodstock performance, joining the band as lead guitarist in 1971. Sadly, Taylor died of an accidental heroin overdose in 1974, so he wasn’t part of the group during the Grease period, either, but he left an indelible mark on the band of anachronistic performers.
 

The real Vinnie Taylor, 1973
 
Fast forward to May of 2001 when a guy by the name of Edward Elmer Solly gets arrested while, according to a New York Times report  on the incident, “fishing for snook from a pier in St. Petersburg, Florida.” But Solly wasn’t being arrested for fishing without a license. His capture was in fact the result of years of searching.  You see, in 1969, Solly was convicted for killing the 2-year-old son of his then-girlfriend, Linda Welsh, in Runnemede, New Jersey in what was allegedly a drunken rampage.  He was sent to jail, but escaped in June of 1974 while, according to the New York Times article, “on furlough to visit a dying sister.”
 

Sha Na Na circa 1972
 
Amazingly, somewhere in the mean time between his 1974 escape and his 2001 capture, Solly made the seemingly insane choice for a wanted man of turning himself into somewhat of a public figure by impersonating Vinnie Taylor in a variety of doo-wop acts in Florida. Solly told people that he had changed his stage name to “Danny C” from Vinnie Taylor, who Solly claimed had faked his death in 1974 for personal reasons.

In a 2004 CBS News article about Solly, Rebecca Leung reported that:

In Florida, doo-wop bands have always been a hit in bars and clubs along the beach. That’s where Tommy Mara’s group, The Saints, and Joe Locicero’s group, The Mello Kings, became two of Florida’s top local groups.

Both men remember being thrilled that living legend and former Sha Na Na singer Vinny Taylor had moved to town.

“You know, he had the talk,” says Mara. “He talked the talk and he walked the walk.”

The former bad boy of Sha Na Na said he had a new stage name: Danny C. And he even had his own Web site, where fans could log on and see all the rock ‘n’ roll legends he performed with over his career.

Locicero and Mara couldn’t believe their luck when Danny C asked their groups to back him up on stage.

“We featured Tommy and The Saints, and then we featured Danny C from Sha Na Na,” says Mara. “Sold it out.”

People from Sha Na Na eventually got wind of Solly’s act (he had a website for crying out loud, and a minivan with the web address printed prominently on the side) and, not knowing that he was on the run from the law, long-time Sha Na Na member, Peter Erlendson even sent Solly a cease-and-desist email asking him to stop performing as Taylor. According to a 2001 article on Philly.com, Solly actually responded to the email and even tried to convince Erlendson that he was in fact Vinnie Taylor and that Taylor had faked his death.  According to the article, Erlendson said “I can assure you Vinnie is dead. He was a friend.”  Sha Na Na threatened a lawsuit, but allegedly didn’t follow through because they didn’t want to give Solly any more undue attention. 
 
More of this strangeness after the jump…