My colleague at the Los Angeles Times, Ramie Becker, wrote a great short article about the closing of iconic LA nightspot Dragstrip 66, looking back at the club’s almost unheard of seventeen year run. (Make sure to browse through the photo gallery. Some winners there):

Equally inspired by high fashion and lowbrow art, Dragstrip 66 carved out a niche for those who liked their night life tempo somewhere between a John Waters film, a Bob Mackie fashion show and a drunken punk dance party. It became a who’s who of the alternative/queer performance art scene; Jackie Beat, Joey Arias, Varla Jean Merman, Chi Chi LaRue and Jer Ber Jones all graced its stage. A-list celebrities showed up too: Marilyn Manson, Claire Danes, Roseanne Barr, Traci Lords, RuPaul, Alan Cumming, Drew Barrymore and Adam Lambert among them.

Read more: Dragstrip 66: Saying goodbye is such a drag (Los Angeles Times)

 
I have a love/hate relationship with CNN’s Rick Sanchez—I mostly like him, but his show can just as easily prove goofy rather than great. He’s CNN’s best showman right now, by far, but he can let off some real howlers from time to time, too (which, as I think about it, is probably why I find his show so watchable). Watch here as he really goes after scandal-chased—and conservative Christian, natch—Republican Senator John Ensign. The fun really starts at 1:32 in.

Senator?

 
Variety reports that as the efforts to challenge Proposition 8 are set to begin next month in San Francisco, a media coalition of the major networks, Hearst Corp. and Dow Jones & Co is asking for the permission to broadcast the court proceedings. TruTV (formerly Court TV) would broadcast everything, from start to finish, daily.

Defenders of the anti-gay marriage proposition are objecting, complaining that witnesses would face harassment and “the potential for intimidation.” Oh, you mean like the kind of harassment and intimidation they’re sowing against gays and lesbians? Are these people for real?

In a letter sent to (Judge) Walker on Monday, their attorney, Charles Cooper, referred to the aftermath of the 2008 election, a time marked by protest rallies, marches and, in some cases, boycotts of those who contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign, including one website that identified donors and their addresses with a Google map overlay.

Indeed, some potential witnesses have indicated that they will not be willing to testify at all if the trial is broadcast or webcast beyond the courthouse,” Cooper wrote.

—snip—

Attorney Thomas Burke, representing the media coalition, said that they anticipated there would be some opposition to the effort, but he noted that because the trial will be public, witnesses will be identified whether cameras are present or not.

Burker further added: “Moreover, given the historic nature of the case, interest among the public in the details of the proceedings are significant.”

Count me as real interested, how about you? These busybody religious people took it upon themselves to try to RESTRICT THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF OTHER AMERICAN CITIZENS. They sponsored Prop 8, they paid for it and they are actively trying to amend the constitution of the state of California! Do it in the the light of day, folks, if you are so sure God is on your side. Do it in the daylight if you have the courage of your convictions. Own your deeds if you’re so proud of yourselves—and shouldn’t gays and lesbians (and intelligent people in general) have the right to know who these preposterous people are so they can boycott their businesses? If not, why not?

A matter this important deserves a PUBLIC hearing. Let’s hope we get one. This whole matter is a waste of brain cells and tax payer money. It’s an embarrassment to California.

 
Russian overlord Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has offered his apparently highly capable services to the National Judo Team:

The 57-year-old prime minister made the proposal at a special coaching session on Saturday aired on state television, adding to his carefully-crafted macho image.  Putin, who many observers believe is still paramount leader despite standing down as president last year, entered the hall of St Petersburg’s School of Sport Mastery dressed in a white judogi and black belt, to applause from the assembled squad.  After bowing, the former KGB spy went onto the mats, throwing squad members half his age and even tackling the chief trainer, Olympic Gold medallist Ezio Gamba.

And when he’s not tranquilizing tigers or riding semi-naked on a horse, Putin makes instructional videos.  To coincide with his 56th birthday, the ex-, soon to be next, President of Russia’s “Let’s Learn Judo” came out last year.

 
Black Belt Putin Offers To Join Russian Judo Team

Lou Engle, the GOP’s new it-kid spiritual leader, is banging on the gays and how they are possessed by “demons.” Predictably, this has been received positively. (By demons, do they mean the unholy trinity “Bed, Bath and Beyond”?)

As the Rachel Maddow Show has recently showcased, on December 16th the Family Research Council sponsored a “Prayercast” event, attended by GOP luminaries including Senators Jim DeMint and Sam Brownback, and House Representatives Michelle Bachmann and Randy Forbes. But FRC head Tony Perkins did not lead the prayer event. That honor fell to Lou Engle, Founder of TheCall. Besides leading the capstone stadium rally for pro-Proposition 8, antigay marriage organizers last November 1, 2008 at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium, Lou Engle could also be found, at a special ceremony at a Virginia Beach megachurch last summer, anointing and blessing GOP presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich.

Meet the Republican Party’s new spiritual guru, Lou Engle:

“My son Jesse, he’s nineteen years old. God has given him dreams, to go to San Francisco to launch a house of prayer, one block from the Castro District - where the homosexuals boast the dominion of darkness. He’s going there with weeping in his heart. With the dream that prayer is stronger than the dominion of that spirit.

...He said to me, “dad,” he said, “as long as I’m there I don’t think the Lord will judge San Francisco.” [boos, angry murmur from Engle’s audience]...

He’s nineteen years old. He’s starting to cast out homosexual spirits out of our new converts. It’s scary*. The whole thing’s scary. But fathers are to send their sons into the darkest places.”

(AlterNet: GOP’s New Prayer Guru Says Gays Possessed By Demons)

 
Is Sen. Jim Inhofe jealous of Sarah Palin’s starring role as pied piper to the idiot wing of the Republican party, or is he perhaps trying to position himself as a potential running mate for her in 2012? It’s hard to tell what the silliest Senator from Oklahoma was thinking, or if he’s really capable of much thinking at all. Witness what the witless Republican had waiting for him when he showed up in Copenhagen with his “message” of a Hollywood conspiracy that’s behind global warming:

Sen. Jim Inhofe flew across the Atlantic and ?

 
As Sociological Images (where this was spotted via Media Matters) points out, it’s entirely possible that a similar clip could be cobbled together from the blatherings of left-wing pundits.  But I don’t think so.

John Michael Greer of the Archdruid Report contributes an excellently on-point article about systems theory and the relation between the American Neoconservatives and the Bavarian Illuminati (no, it’s not quite what you think). This is a masterful analysis of geopolitics and a very simple explanation of why conspiracies fail. Read on…

The problem with Professor Weishaupt’s fantasy of an illuminated Bavaria was a bit of bad logic that has been faithfully repeated by intellectuals seeking power ever since: the belief, as sincere as it is silly, that if you have the right ideas, you are by definition smarter than the system you are trying to control. That’s Weishaupt’s Fallacy. Because Weishaupt and his fellow Illuminati were convinced that the conservative forces in Bavaria were a bunch of clueless boors, they were totally unprepared for the counterblow that followed once the Bavarian government figured out who the Illuminati were and what they were after.

For a more recent example, consider the rise and fall of the neoconservative movement, which stormed into power in the United States in 2000 boldly proclaiming the arrival of a “new American century,” and proceeded to squander what remained of America’s wealth and global reputation in a series of foreign and domestic policy blunders that have set impressive new standards for political fecklessness. The neoconservatives were convinced that they understood the world better than anybody else. That conviction was the single most potent factor behind their failure; when mainstream conservatives (not to mention everybody else!) tried to warn them where their fantasies of remaking the Middle East in America’s image would inevitably end, the neoconservatives snorted in derision and marched straight on into the disaster they were making for themselves, and of course for the rest of us as well.

(John Michael Greer: Weishaupt’s Fallacy)

(JM Greer: The Long Descent)

 
Senator Franken, I could kiss you!

 
An open letter in the underground press that accused the Beatles of going soft and selling out to the establishment, comparing John Lennon’s call for pacifism in “Revolution” to a BBC radio soap opera, and conferring superior revolutionary credentials on the Rolling Stones, so incensed the Beatle that he spent six hours 40 years ago giving an interview to a couple of college students offering a rebuttal that was finally published today in the pages of the New Statesman magazine.

In 1968, Maurice Hindle and a friend hitch-hiked to Surrey to meet Lennon, who picked them up personally at the train station in his Mini Cooper. Yoko Ono fed them homemade macrobiotic bread and jam. Lennon spoke nearly continuously for six hours.

He says “Revolution” was no more revolutionary than Mrs Dale’s Diary. So it mightn’t have been. But the point is to change your head - it’s no good knocking down a few old bloody Tories! What does he think he’s gonna change? The system’s what he says it is: a load of crap. But just smashing it up isn’t gonna do it.

Hindle writes “Lennon demanded Black Dwarf publish his response, which took [writer John] Hoyland to task for his “patronizing” tone, and ended with the defiant challenge: “You smash it—and I’ll build around it.”
 

 
The full interview is only available in the print edition of New Statesman magazine.