From the Everything Old is New Again Department: All this talk of the fall of the Berlin Wall is making many in the Eastern Bloc nostalgic for bygone days and simpler tastes. Although the idea of Soviet chocolate does sound kinda exotic, I’d imagine that it would be kind of bitter?

Once the butt of jokes the world over, Communist-era East European goods from sweets, to rustic washing machines and clunky cars are all the rage again.

As the world prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, souvenirs such as portraits of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu are now avidly sought at markets. In Belgrade, cafes are named after Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito or even the Soviet KGB secret police.

Two decades on, many who then welcomed change now want to turn the clock back by eating Szerencsi chocolate, driving Trabant two-stroke cars or using Frania washing machines to wash carrots.

Nothing is too tacky, the quality never too questionable. For older people there is the nostalgia of the bad old days. Among younger people there is a curiosity to find out how their parents lived.

Many food brands have made a comeback on supermarket shelves using the same packaging that made them look so old fashioned and unwanted between 1945 and 1990.

Read the entire article here
 

 
Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn columns in The Guardian are always funny, but this week’s is especially hilarious. Brooker writes on a new British telemovie that imagines the trial and death of Britain’s most notorious pedophile, former popstar Gary Glitter, whose 1972 hit “Rock and Roll Pt 2” is still to this day played by the unwitting at sports events big and small across America:

Don’t know about you, but sometimes I can’t sleep at night for wondering what it might be like if Gary Glitter were executed. I just can’t picture it in quite enough detail for my liking. Would they fry him? Gas him? Or pull his screaming head off with some candy-coloured rope? I can never decide, and it often leaves me restless till sunrise. Thank God, then, for The Execution Of Gary Glitter (Mon, 9pm, Channel 4), which vividly envisions the trial and subsequent capital punishment of pop’s most reviled sex offender so you don’t have to.

I can’t believe what I’m typing: this is a drama-documentary that imagines a world in which Britain has a) Reinstated the death penalty for murder and paedophilia, b) Changed the law so Britons can stand trial in this country for crimes committed abroad, and c) Chosen Gary Glitter as its first test case. It blends archive footage, talking-head interviews with Miranda Sawyer, Garry Bushell and Ann Widdecombe, and dramatised scenes in which Gary Glitter is led into an execution chamber and hanged by the neck until dead.

He’s not just swinging from a rope, mind. The Glitterphile is all over this show, like Hitler in Downfall. There are lengthy scenes in which he argues with his lawyer, smirks in court, plays chess with the prison chaplain, weeps on the floor of his cell, etc. Visually, we’re talking late-period Glitter, with the evil wizard shaved-head-and-elongated-white-goatee combo that makes him resemble a sick alternative Santa. It would be funnier if they showed him decked out in full 70s glam gear throughout, being led to the gallows in a big spangly costume with shoulder pads so huge they get stuck in the hole as he plunges through. I assumed the Glittercution would feature dry ice, disco lights, and a hundred party poppers going off as his neck cracked. But here there’s not so much as a can of Silly String. This is a terribly serious programme.

 
Read the whole thing at The Guardian

 
For a mere $30 entrance fee, L.A.‘s “cougars”—and the younger men who love them—can learn all there is to know about the intricacies of older woman/younger man dating and mating rituals Friday at the California Cougar Convention. Like: Who pays for dinner? Inquiring minds (and aspiring gigolos) want to know.

The event will feature a keynote speech by “cougar expert” Lucia (see video clip below), the crowning of Miss Cougar California (selected by the “cubs” attending) and what is being described as a “giant feline dance party.” Prior to the main event, there will be a women-only “Cougar School” for aspiring Mrs. Robinsons that begins at 6:30 p.m.
 

 
(Speaking as a guy, when I watched this clip, all of the men in it have that “this is like shooting fish in a barrel” look in their eyes. I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it?)
 
The California Cougar Convention, Nov. 6,  7 p.m., Crowne Plaza, 1150 S. Beverly Drive. www.cougarevents.com
 
(PS: Does anyone living in LA want to cover this story for DM?)

Cross posting this from Brand X

 
Saw an interesting TED talk the other day by Design Mind editor-in-chief Sam Martin on The Quirky World of Manspaces.  I’m pretty sure Martin would see as “quirky” this 20,000 Leagues-inspired home theater space.

 
(via DudeCraft)

 
Spotted over at Sociological Images, the Stuffed Jumpsuit With A Gold Bikini, “Because there is nothing funnier than a person, disadvantaged by the perfect storm of race, class, and gender, being forced to give lap dances to feed herself.”

To pick one up, or complain: Dee’s Fancy Dress.

 
I suppose you can consider the attached Merv Griffin clips where George and Kathy Lutz join actor Rod Steiger of the Amityville Horror movie, a Dangerous Minds “Halloween post.”  But I find them interesting for a reason beyond tomorrow’s holiday.

Without getting into the “truthiness” of the Lutz’s claims, and knowing this was obviously great publicity for the movie, they remind me of how seriously the television landscape back then treated matters of the occult and the supernatural.

In fact, as a kid growing up in the ‘70s, that’s exactly what made that decade, for me, feel so terrifying: even adults weren’t taking this stuff lightly!  Today there’s Ghost Hunters, sure, but that’s a self-contained show—a self-contained world.  And I can’t quite imagine the ladies of The View devoting an entire hour to a supposedly haunted house on Long Island.

As reads go, I remember Jay Anson’s Amityville Horror book being spooky and terrifying.  To my young mind, the demonic visitations that plagued the Lutz family felt entirely plausible.  Hell, even the cover announced it as “a true story.”  Not even “based on,” just true.  And it was happening to adults, authority figures—people in charge!  Like I said: spooky and terrifying.

But between In Search Of…, Night Gallery, and Ghost Story (both Sebastian Cabot‘s and Peter Straub‘s) that’s largely how I remember the ‘70s, anyway: far more spooky and terrifying than the decades that followed it.  And I don’t think this was entirely due to my young age, or some particular rise in darker shit going down.

The likelier culprit was that decade’s proximity to the one that preceded it: the nervous breakdown fallout from the ‘60s was still seeping and spilling under the floorboards of the ‘70s’ pop cultural landscape.

George and Kathy Lutz show up on Merv Griffin in Part IV.  Links to the remainder of the show follow below:

 
The Amityville Gang Does Merv Griffin, Part: I, II, III, V

The Secret World is an upcoming MMORPG in which players join one of three secret societies and battle evil forces threatening to overwhelm the world by 2012. Something like this’s been coming for a while… let’s see if it lives up to expectations.

From IGN:

Last week, Funcom released the second teaser trailer for its highly anticipated MMO The Secret World. At the same time, an “initiation test” went up on the game’s website, classifying test-takers into three secret societies - the Illuminati, the Dragons and the Templars, providing a brief description of each with a promise of more information to be revealed at Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. If PAX attendees had hoped to catch a glimpse of some gameplay or anything other than the video, they would have been disappointed because the revelations were done behind closed doors. The good news is that we were there to see it.

Funcom’s Creative Director Ragnar T?ɬ?rnquist started off the presentation with a video that was shown at GDC in April, which was mostly about the game’s setting and its universe. The Secret World takes place in modern day cities all around the globe, but it’s a world where paranormal occurrences do happen. The designers have drawn upon various myths, legends and conspiracy theories to create a world where supernatural beings exist right under our noses, for the most part undetected or ignored by us. The player takes on the role of a hero with great magical powers who has to battle zombies, vampires, demons and other fell creatures in order to keep the rest of the world safe.

(The Secret World: Dark Days Are Coming)

 
It used to be—well back in the 1980s at least—that Joey Arias was one of New York’s best-kept secrets. His outrageous drag and cabaret performances—often channeling doomed jazz chanteuse Billie Holiday with uncanny accuracy—made him the talk of the town. Arias became a bit of a Gotham legend with noteworthy appearances with Klaus Nomi (the pair sang back-up for David Bowie on “SNL”) at the annual Wigstock drag festival and with his arch portrayal of Joan Crawford in a staged Christmas spoof of “Mommy Dearest.” Arias also took memorable turns in films like “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Love Julie Newmar” and “Big Top Pee-wee” as Shim, the half man/half woman. Eventually, even Manhattan got too small to hold Arias’ unique talents and the performer made the move to Las Vegas as the Mistress of Seduction at the adult-themed Cirque du Soleil show, Zumanity.

Now Arias is preparing to make a Los Angeles homecoming—he was raised here and was a founding member of the Groundlings comedy troupe—with an extended run at REDCAT of his new show, “Arias With a Twist.”

The “twist” in question is famed puppeteer Basil Twist (who is also collaborating with Pee-Wee Herman for his comeback shows). A “one person show” with six hidden puppeteers, “Arias With a Twist” seems sure not to disappoint Joey’s admirers. The show begins with Arias being probed by aliens while performing Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” before being ejected from their spacecraft and landing in a jungle. Costumes for the show were designed by Thierry Mugler and Chris March. The show, which just completed a run in Stockholm, has been nominated for a 2009 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience.

“Arias With a Twist” runs from Nov. 18 to Dec. 13, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:30 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m.
(Added performance Nov. 24; No performance Nov. 26). Tickets: $35 to $40 [Students $28 to $32]. Call the REDCAT box office for more information (213) 237-2800 or visit www.redcat.org

 
Cross posting this from Brand X

 
Revolt in the Fifth Dimension is a 1967 episode of the old Spiderman cartoon which was directed by a then 25-year old Ralph Bakshi. For reasons no longer recalled, this was the only episode of the series that NBC chose not to air again, although it lived on in syndication for years afterward. The probable reason they didn’t retransmit this episode is how druggy it seems! (Not that the death theme and flying sperm weren’t enough!) This has to be the most wigged out episode of any cartoon series, ever, or at least until the advent of Adult Swim. I recall every second of it, especially the music.
 
Here’s Revolt in the Fifth Dimension:

 
Part II is here. Dangerous Minds pal Calpernia Addams is also a fan of Revolt. Here she gives it a fun MST3K treatment.

 
“Paprika, is the inside of my head this messed up?!”  If you’ve never seen Paprika, Satoshi Kon‘s wildly imaginative anime from ‘06, it’s definitely a head trip worth taking.  The film’s infamous “parade” sequence disturbs and dazzles in equal measures (see here, and here), and possibly explains why the “augmented reality” clip below induced in me a host of uneasy feelings.  Thanks again, JapanProbe!