A short bit of documentary footage of T. Rex arriving in Brussels, some music, and a charmingly cocky Marc Bolan interviewed on Belgium’s Pop Shop TV program in 1973.
Thanks to Spike Priggen and the folks at Bedazzled.
I found the original August 3,1937 issue of Look Magazine on eBay at a “buy it now” for $30.00.
(via Nystagmus )
The Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum lays speculation to rest that Alessio Rastani was put up to his nihilistic remarks about the predation of Wall Street stock traders on BBC News on Monday by the Yes Men. In a statement made this morning on their Yes Lab website, Bichlbaum writes:
Rastani is not in Liberty Plaza
The Yes Men wish to commend Mr. “Alessio Rastani” for his masterful performance as “trader” on BBC World yesterday. Mr. Rastani’s real name is Granwyth Hulatberi; he once appeared on CNBC MarketWrap as a “representative” of the WTO. Well done, Granwyth! You’re getting better and better.
Just kidding. We’ve never heard of Rastani. Despite widespread speculation, he isn’t a Yes Man. He’s a real trader who is, for one reason or another, being more honest than usual. Who in big banking doesn’t bet against the interests of the poor and find themselves massively recompensed—if not by the market, then by humongous taxpayer bailouts? Rastani’s approach has been completely mainstream for several years now; we must thank him for putting a human face on it yesterday.
If you’d like to see the human face of the human perspective—the perspective of the 99% victimized by our demented and out-of-control financial system—come join the occupation of Wall Street. Michael Moore did so last night, and pointed out that in America, it’s just 400 people who own as much as most of the rest of us put together—and that when we decide we really want to change the rules of the game, those 400 people won’t be able to do squat about it.
So just as I thought, Rastani IS just a capitalist vulture feeding off the carrion that used to be the lives of the middle class!
Perry makes more sense here than he did in the last Republican debate…
(via The High Definite )
Good lord, if this is true, it’s absolutely fucking hysterical, but I have my doubts: Reuters, CNBC, Forbes, the Washington Post and the Guardian have all reported inconclusive speculation in the last few hours that the “candid” (some might say “sociopath”) Wall Street trader, Alessio Rastani, who told BBC News: “I dream of another recession,” might be member of the genius satirical activists, The Yes Men!
Rastani’s statement, “The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world,” has caused his shocking BBC News appearance to become a viral video sensation in the past 24 hours. An BBC internal investigation has concluded that Rastani is who he says he is, a real trader, but not everyone is buying it:
FORBES: Have you heard of the Yes Men?
AR: Heard of it before? Not quite sure why they’re calling me that. I have no idea where that came from.
FORBES: Because there’s a video of you posing as a Dow Chemical spokesman [She’s totally off-base here, obviously].
AR: What? A Dow Chemical spokesman? Have you seen this video? That can’t be right. I’ve never spoken to Dow Chemical before in my life. Maybe it’s a fake. Are you sure about this? Honestly, listen, I’ve no idea where that came from. That interview yesterday was one of the first ones I did live.
I don’t know why they think it’s a hoax. No, I am a trader absolutely. I have trader friends who could back that up. One of my mentors is a bestselling author and trader. Everyone knows me.
Here’s the problem: The speculation seems to be that Alessio Rastani is, in fact, the Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum. I know Andy personally—Disinformation published the Yes Men book—so unless Andy has had extensive plastic surgery or gotten into a time machine since I’ve last seen him, I can assure that he’s not Alessio Rastani. Rastani also has a blog, several YouTube videos about trading, he’s on Twitter and has been for two years, etc. IF this is a hoax, it’s either one concocted with a very, very long fuse, or else the Yes Men hired a real stock broker to say the same nihilistic, “fuck the little guy” things that brokers say amongst themselves all the time,
I’ll repeat that: I’m not saying that the Yes Men didn’t hire this guy to say what he said on BBC News—I have no knowledge of this—but the speculation that he’s Andy Bichlbaum is absolutely NOT true.
Still, the fact that this is being speculated about as a Yes Men media prank is simply delicious! I’m sure they’ll keep quiet about this as long as possible. Why not milk it, especially if it’s a freebie, you know? Not sure if I want it to be a hoax or not. Probably not, which means I’m rooting for Rastani to actually be the sociopathic stock broker he represented himself as on the BBC News channel…
Yak nipple dress, anyone? I don’t even think Lady Gaga is daring enough to sport this dud. You’d really have to be a tit to wear this! From People UK:
A BRIT designer has been slammed as “sick” after her show at London Fashion Week included dresses made from yaks’ NIPPLES.
Models wearing Rachel Freire’s creations – fashioned from 3,000 nipples – paraded down the catwalk at Somerset House on Monday.
The 32-year-old designer – who has worked with stars such as Christina Aguilera and Courtney Love – said she was excited about the two dresses and bras made up from body parts given to her by a tannery.
The controversial show also included an elaborate bra made from protruding nipples.
Dress made from yak nipples that shocked London Fashion Week
(via Nerdcore )
As readers of this blog most probably know by now, I’m a massive, massive Bowie head and have been for over 35 years. Although I tend to think I’ve seen and heard about 99.9% of everything relating to the man’s life and career, I’ve been finding that the .1% of the stuff I’ve never come across before is almost always pure gold and that there is also a seemingly bottomless pit of it. Maybe I should revise my total down to 95%? (Let’s hope the real number is actually closer to 50%).
Like I was saying, there is still a lot to discover, such as this, my new top favorite photograph ever taken of David Bowie. What’s more, he’s probably never seen it himself, either.
The photograph above was taken on the evening of Bowie’s first arrival in the United States. It’s on the Flickr account of Michael Olberman, a writer who covered pop music at the time. His brother happened to work for Bowie’s then record label, Mercury Records. This would have been in Jan-Feb of 1971, when Bowie was in America promoting The Man Who Sold the World (Apparently that’s a card or something that he’s holding and not a joint). Here’s the caption Michael wrote:
This was David Bowie’s first night (ever) in the United States. I am the one waving in the photo. David was great. He went to dinner with me, my brother and my parents. This photo was taken in my parent’s living room in Silver Spring, MD. Later that night he came to my house and spent the evening. Incredible memories for me. David, if you flickr—hello again!
Click here to see a larger version of the photo.
Below, Bowie sings “Space Oddity” in a German TV appearance from 1969 and wadda ya know, I’ve never seen this clip before either!
Curator of all things weird and wonderful in the world of rock and roll, Mick Stadium, has done it again by unearthing this video of X performing “Blue Spark” on the Jerry Lewis telethon in 1982.
Fascinating short film about the Wall Street occupation movement.
And if you haven’t read David Graber’s Guardian article, “Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination,” then you probably should:
Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?
Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down.
But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world’s financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.
Everything we’d been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like “Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?”
It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an “economy” is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they’d been before.
Perhaps, it’s not surprising. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we’re all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart.
Read more of
Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination (Guardian)
I was prepared for the worst but nothing quite as bad as the song “The View,” from the upcoming Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration. If this track is indicative of what’s on the rest of the album, it will end up embarrassing everyone involved. This will satisfy no one…not Lou’s fans, not Metallica’s.
As music, it’s intolerably bad, sounding like some hellish noise cooked up in the basement by a 10th rate metal band and their loony uncle and the lyrics read like something scrawled on the back of a goth kid’s composition book. A sample:
I WANT TO SEE YOUR SUICIDE
I WANT TO SEE YOU GIVE IT UP
YOUR LIFE OF REASON
I WANT YOU ON THE FLOOR
AND IN A COFFIN YOUR SOUL SHAKING
I WANT TO HAVE YOU DOUBTING
EVERY MEANING YOU’VE AMASSED
LIKE A FORTUNE
OH THROW IT AWAY
FOR WORSHIP SOMEONE
WHO ACTIVELY DESPISES YOU
As a long suffering Lou Reed fan, I was hoping that my gut feelings that this project was going to be disastrous would be proven wrong. If the rest of the album is as shitty as this track, it could go down in history as one of the most misbegotten musical couplings of all time.
The View by Lou Reed & Metallica