Photo credit: Sean Colello
 
Skaters Sean Collelo and Rob Miceli take you on a pretty wild ride through an abandoned psychiatric ward in New York state. As I was watching them walk through the underground tunnels all I could think of was too much asbestos. Those old pipes are just covered in it!

The footage wasn’t entirely shot in the psych ward, but some other abandoned buildings as well. They never reveal the exact locations, so it’s up to you to figure it out. But dammit, I’m a sucker for this type of stuff.

The campus is a pretty huge area made up of about 10 abandoned buildings and 4 buildings that are still functioning. Psych patients roam around the complex and so do cops. Most of the abandoned buildings are pretty boarded up so you can’t get in, but the thing that’s so sick is all the buildings are connected with underground tunnels, so if you can find a way into one, you can access them all. The nurses used these tunnels to deliver food and supplies to the patients all over the center. It’s surprisingly untouched. You will still find office supplies, files, photos, machinery, and other artifacts.

Once we found our way into the tunnels, we quickly learned it was a giant maze: Loads of dead ends, stairs going up and down, and puddles so big you have to use cinder blocks as stepping stones. The reason we called the project ‘The Search For BLDG.40′ is because the first room in the video that Rob skates was the hardest to get to.

What I dig most about this is that it’s where skate culture meets art. And it looks fun as hell too!

 
Via Gawker

 
Meet Japanese ballerina Lilly Yokoi. Here she is performing some amazing bike tricks on TV variety show The Hollywood Palace in 1965. The ABC program used a different host each week. Joan Crawford was the host on this show which aired on October 9, 1965.

Throughout the sixties and seventies Yokoi was considered the world’s greatest acrobat on a bicycle. She was known as “The Ballerina On The Golden Bicycle.”

I can’t find any information on Yokoi’s whereabouts today, but I believe she’s still alive. In any case, she’d give a lot of X Games competitors a run for their money. And mind you, she’s doing this in heels. Go Lilly!
 

 
via reddit

If you find yourself in this situation, RUN.

Add this to the list of reasons to be very, very nice to Stranglers bassist and singer Jean-Jacques “JJ” Burnel, if you should ever meet him: he can kill you with his bare hands.

Burnel has, let’s say, a heavy reputation. According to the Guardian, the Stranglers’ authorized biography devotes no fewer than 20 pages to the subject “Burnel, violence.” The Stranglers’ former singer and guitarist, Hugh Cornwell, writes that he and Burnel fell out when the bassist attacked him backstage after a show in Italy, and that the incident was a factor in Cornwell’s decision to quit the band in 1990. Burnel had famously beaten up punk journalist Jon Savage in 1977 for giving No More Heroes a bad review in Sounds, and decades later, in an interview with Strangled, he was unrepentant about that encounter:

“I tracked him down one night to the Red Cow,” JJ explained. “And I punched his lights out right there in front of Jake Riviera, Andrew Lauder – our A&R guy, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe – all these people saw what I did. So yeah, we made a lot of enemies, bless ‘em, and these people got in a lot of influential positions within the music industry and literature… Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill… But we weren’t gonna suck up to these c*nts.”

 

Has anyone heard from the magazine editor who misspelled JJ’s last name recently?
 
Burnel, now 62, started training in martial arts at the age of 19. Since 1991, he has been the branch chief and chief instructor of the Shidokan GB organization. He is a sixth dan black belt, and as a teacher he has attained the formal title of Renshi. (I am just a flabby nerd from the suburbs and I do not pretend to know what these ranks and titles mean, but they scare the shit out of me.) According to the Shidokan GB website, London residents can train with Burnel at Slim Jims in Broadgate on Tuesday evenings. There are a few clips of Burnel in competition at the 1:40 mark in the segment below, from the ITV series After They Were Famous.

When most musicians say they have “chops”... oh, never mind.
 

 
I have to admit, they had me going there for a while…. I thought it was real. I stumbled on the Bandcamp page for the Kosmischer Läufer project two days ago, courtesy of WFMU, who blandly supplied no information about it. The site purported to be the “secret cosmic music of the East German Olympic Program, 1972-1983.” (Kosmischer Läufer means “cosmic runners.”) Volume 1 came out last year, vol. 2 this week.

So I’m listening to these tracks of magnificent 1970s-style German electronic music and taking in the backstory of one Martin Zeichnete, an apprentice sound editor for DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) who, starting in 1972, was transferred to the Olympic training music project, that is, to compose music for East German athletes to train to. Having furtively imbibed the forbidden Western tones of Kraftwerk and Neu! in his hometown of Dresden, Zeichnete managed to smuggle in some avant-garde ideas to the project and generate some pretty sweet Musik that (just by chance) would be tailor-made for the discerning hipster of 2013. Volume 1 represented a program that “should allow the average runner to complete a 5 kilometre run at a reasonable pace. Included are 3 minute warmup and warm down pieces.”
 

 
My knowledge of German came in handy, here. There was a puzzlement or two to clear up. The name “Zeichnete,” which means “drew” or “sketched,” isn’t an entirely convincing surname for a German national. The story of being scarily apprehended by the Stasi authorities, only to be suddenly transferred to the Olympic training department, seemed far-fetched. The titles were an absolutely perfect imitation of what the contemporary English speaker would want them to be—“Mausi Mausi,” for Chrissake? “Flucht aus dem Tal der Ahnungslosen” means “Escape from the Valley of the Clueless” and really, that’s a great title in any language and perhaps more to the point, a clue to anyone taking all this retro guff too seriously. The only real problem with it all was that sizable gap between 1989 and 2013. Where were these tracks all this time? What had taken Zeichnete so long? Why was he staggering the releases? Why did some of the tracks sound so perfectly like what a Stereolab-influenced electronic music nut would generate today, given the chance?

More to the point, the whole thing was beginning to seem a bit ridiculous.
 

 
Turns out, these fine tracks of faux 1970s e-music had been introduced in a (successfully funded) Kickstarter last year launched by one Drew McFadyen of Edinburgh. (This blog says there’s more than just one person behind it, but I couldn’t discern anyone’s name but that of Mr. McFayden.)

Sehr witzig, mein guter Kerl!

In any case, instead of the most marvelous musical find of this or the last century and an incredible artifact of the Cold War, we have a excellently rendered simulacrum of same. It’s a hoot if you’re in the mood for some free tracks to listen to on Bandcamp or YouTube, but the files can also be ordered on iTunes or Amazon (links to individual tracks are below). Unfortunately, as often happens with Kickstarters, the original run of LPs is sold out. (If you’re listening, Unknown Capability Recordings, remember me if you ever do a future pressing!)

You can read an interview with the fictitious East German, Martin Zeichnete—it’s worth reading, they did a very good job with it. The reference to Andreas Pavel’s Stereobelt was just the right touch.
 

Track listing:
Kosmischer Läufer: The Secret Cosmic Music of the East German Olympic Program 1972-83, Vol. 1

1. Zeit zum Laufen 156 (Time to Run 156)
2. Sandtrommel (Sand Drum)
3. Die lange Gerade (The Long Straightaway)
4. Tonband Laufspur (Audio Tape Running Track)
5. Ein merkwürdiger Anschlag (An Unusual Attack)

Kosmischer Läufer: The Secret Cosmic Music of the East German Olympic Program 1972-83, Vol. 2

1. Zeit zum Laufen 172 (Time to Run 172)
2. Morgenröte (Dawn)
3. Flucht aus dem Tal der Ahnungslosen (Escape from the Valley of the Clueless)
4. Die Kapsel (The Capsule)
5. Die Libellen (The Dragonflies)
6. Mausi Mausi (Mausi Mausi)
7. Walzer der roten Katze (Waltz of the Red Cat)
8. Der Hörraum (The Listening Room)
9. Für Kati (For Kati)
10. Weltraumspaziergang (Spacewalk)

 
Here are a couple of the videos, cleverly sync’d up to some bitchin’ footage of East German athletes in their former glory:

“Die Libellen”:

 
More after the jump…

 
Admittedly, I don’t know that much about Lucha libre (meaning “free wrestling”) culture. But what I do know is the costumes, colorful masks and buff bodies make for some interesting eye candy. These vintage magazine covers and pages from a Lucha libre glossy, I believe, prove my point nicely.

They sure as hell beat American-style wrestling getups, anyway!

 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

 
Those of us who lived through the seventies won’t soon forget the various ABC celebrity sports extravaganzas, especially the Battle of the Network Stars of various years. I didn’t remember, however, the Rock-N-Roll Sports Classic from 1978. Aside from a few genuine immortals (Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Rod Stewart, Joan Jett), the panoply of athletes is mostly reminiscent of a Columbia Records Club advertisement or the $1 bin at your local LP store (Boston, Leif Garrett, Anne Murray, Seals & Crofts, Tanya Tucker, Kenny Loggins, etc.).
 

 
Events include cycling, basketball, swimming, track and field. The main takeaway is that the Runaways kick ass, with both Joan Jett and Sandy West winning events. Michael Jackson appears in the 60-yard dash, but his brother Jackie wins that event. In soccer, Rod Stewart defeats ELO bassist Richard Tandy in a penalty-kick competition.

The roster of announcers is nearly as long and impressive as the list of performer-athletes: Ed McMahon, Sandy Duncan, Phyllis Diller, Kristy McNichol, Barbi Benton, and Alex Karras. Fred Travalena is also on hand to do a few timely impressions, such as Richard Nixon, who had resigned as president four years earlier.
 

 
At the 22:00 mark there’s a weird moment involving Alex Karras. Karras, who died in 2012, was a remarkable fellow by any definition, being an All-Pro defensive tackle for the Lions, Blazing Saddles bit player, and the adult lead for the ABC sitcom Webster for many years. But he was also one of a bare handful of athletes ever to suffer a league sanction for gambling, being forced by the NFL to sit out the 1963 season because of his involvement in gambling activities. So it’s especially weird when, after introducing Marlon Jackson before a race, he adopts the mock desperation of a gambling addict: “Marlon, you gotta win this one, I don’t care about you guys making money, but I need it!”

Indeed, the very existence of the Rock-N-Roll Sports Classic brings to mind the recent issue of drug testing in pro sports—one wonders what results the drug tests for this event would have yielded. Some of the events are actually edited out of this video, but most of them are there, but a judicious assessment of the video’s contents would still conclude that it mainly consists of introductions: “In Lane number two, William King of the Commodores!” It’s still a prime example of the dread nexus of music and television that only the seventies can supply, and well worth watching for connoisseurs of televised weirdness.
 

 
You’ve got to, er, hand it to Myrtle Beach Pelicans general manager Andy Milovich. Last month it was Prostate Cancer Awareness Night at Pelicans Ballpark, and true to the evening’s awareness-promoting events, he took to the mic during the 7th inning stretch and sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” while a grinning MD, dressed in surgical scrubs, investigated his prostate, as is the custom, from the rear entrance.
 

 
Under the circumstances, Milovich held it together admirably. He passed the exam without any problems, and the Pelicans, an Advanced-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers in the Carolina League, managed to put together a rousing comeback 5-4 victory against the hated (?) Frederick Keys, an Orioles affiliate.

We note without comment that this coming Sunday is Breast Cancer Awareness Night at Pelicans Ballpark.
 

 
via Ken Levine’s blog
 

 
Well done to Torchwood star John Barrowman, who opened the twentieth Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last night with a kiss.

The ceremony, which was held at Celtic Park in the city’s east end, began with a kitsch musical number performed by Barrowman and comedy actress Karen Dunbar celebrating Scotland’s diverse culture and history. In front of an estimated television audience of 1.5 billion, Mr. Barrowman kissed one of the kilted male dancers during a sequence on Gretna Green—the romantic village where eloping couples have traditionally married.

The kiss was accompanied by shouts of “Here’s to equality in Scotland.”

The bill for gay marriage in Scotland received Royal assent in March this year, and the first gay weddings will take place in 2015.

The theme of the opening ceremony was equality for all, and Mr. Barrowman’s kiss highlighted the fact that homosexuality is a prisonable offense in an astonishing 42 of the 54 Commonwealth nations taking part on the games.

Among the other artists taking part in the “Friendly games” opening ceremony were Rod Stewart, Nicola Bendetti, Amy MacDonald, DJ Mylo, Billy Connolly, Susan Boyle, Karen Dunbar, Ewan MacGregor and 41 Scottish Terriers. Read a review here.
 

“Final Victory / World Champions 2014”; a Nazi cross topples Rio’s Christ the Redeemer
 
The combination of Argentina and Germany surely put the subject of World War II in the minds of some onlookers—it turns out that not all of them were outside of Germany. After Germany’s impressive 1-0 victory over Argentina on Sunday, “Unbekannt” (Unknown) has produced Nazi-themed T-shirts to mark the great victory of “Die Mannschaft” (“The Team”—as the German national team is often called).

The iconography is unmistakable, but in order to help with the vocabulary: we all know what “Blitzkrieg” means—the term “Blitzsieg” punningly replaces the word for “war” (Krieg) with the far more innocuous yet in this context still somewhat sinister word for “victory” (Sieg). “Endsieg” means “Final Victory”—as Wikipedia points out, “The term is today almost exclusively used with reference to its meaning in the Third Reich.” (In other words, the use of the word can’t be brushed aside as a reference to the referee’s final whistle or some such.) That Wikipedia entry is worth reading in full, as it points out the complex uses such a term is put to in the present day, many of them sarcastic; Germans are far too aware of their loaded history to throw around such a term lightly. The German word for “World Champion(s)” is “Weltmeister.”

As of this writing, those shirts are still available on Amazon.de. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for Amazon.de to pull them and issue an inevitable apology.
 

“Germany Brazil 7-1 Lightning Victory”
 

“Blitzkrieg / Victory 2014 / Germany World Champions”
 

 
via Kraftfuttermischwerk

 
As the whole damned planet knows by now Germany slaughtered Brazil during their semi-final match yesterday. Lots of Brazilians were losing their shit and crying. I’ve never really understood the extreme emotional response some people have over their team losing (or winning). Perhaps I’m just not enough of a sports fanatic and I simply don’t get it?

Either way, there’s a website dedicated to Brazilians with serious cases of the sads over their epic loss to Germany.

 

 

 

 

 

 
via Sad Brazilians