Let’s face it - with the Nineties revival beginning to build up steam, it’s only a matter of time before Friends becomes re-evaluated as not just mere trash TV but something deeper, something representative of the culture of the time. And who knows - maybe it was. If the culture of the time was utterly vacuous and so bland and white-washed that having bleached hair was somehow “edgy” and the most rock and roll thing one could do was attend a Hootie And The Blowfish concert. But that wasn’t the 90s I lived through.

Before we go hailing Friends as the voice of a dispossessed generation, let’s take a minute to pause and reflect on how the show represented gay people, and how much of the humor was based on a premise that being gay in and of itself was just so strange and unusual that it’s inherently funny. And that’s not even touching on gender roles as shown in the show - as a friend of mine commented on this clip:

I always thought Friends’ gender policing was outrageous - it seemed like every other episode centred around how hilarious it was that a man was doing things that normal men didn’t do.

Homophobic Friends is a re-edit compilation by Vimeo user WayOutEast, that compiles all the gay-based humor in the show and that runs for over 40 minutes. Bitch Magazine has an excellent feature on this video and its creator, real name Tijana Mamula:

Mamula found that the homophobic and transphobic jokes in Friends tend “to avoid provoking either aversion or anger, and instead prompts the viewer to be swept away by the hilarity of the situations.” Seeing theses moments altogether, one after another, you can see how the audience was presumed to just chuckle and move on. (I couldn’t help but be reminded of the site Microaggressions, which documents the little, caustic everyday incidents that add up to much more).

And wait, there’s more! “I noticed all sorts of other problematic content, some of which I found even more upsetting, like the place of women and foreigners…You could do a whole series of videos, like Misogynistic Friends and Xenophobic Friends.” (See also: this zany montage of the few black characters that have appeared in the show. The overwhelmingly white cast—including the extras, despite the show taking place in New York City—has often been pointed at as one of the show’s shortcomings.)

You can read the rest of that feature here. This is Homophobic Friends:
 

 
Thanks to Niall Ferguson.

 
Stefanie Heminger, who hosts her very own really rad rock and roll website where she interviews seminal artists like Papa Roach, Reo Speedwagon and Ron Jeremy has given Rick Perry her full-bodied endorsement.

Heminger’s rock and roll roots are pretty impressive. According to her bio…

...she started touring, hanging and learning from the pioneers of Rock Music. You might of seen her on Playboy TV, Playboy Radio XM, MTV, Telemundo, Album cover of Murderdolls, or back up dancing for several artists.

This has got to have Obama shaking in his loafers and Rick Perry happier than a homosexual in a pickle patch.

Filmed in Cleavage-Vision.
 

 
Nick Cave and The Cavemen filmed live at London’s Electric Ballroom in April 1984 for Spanish TV.

Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld, Barry Adamson and Hugo Race.

22 minutes of shambolic apocalyptic rock from the masters of mayhem.

The little black bar that pops up briefly at the bottom of the video is there to block out some distracting, inaccurate and unnecessary English to Spanish subtitles.
 

 
You like werewolf movies? You like TV On The Radio? Yeah, so do I.

Here’s a tantalizing mash-up of highlights from werewolf flicks and TOTR’s terrific “Wolf Like Me.” An obvious coupling done well by Editcadet. And it’s actually kind of spooky.
 

 
Here’s Mr. Cadet’s latest, ‘Keep On Walking’: a montage of scenes of people walking away from the camera turned into one seamless tracking shot.
 

 
This issue of Uncensored magazine hit the newstands in August of 1968, nine years after Cary Grant had gone public with the fact that he had taken LSD and two months before it was made illegal.

Cary Grant never tried to keep his LSD use secret. In fact, he spoke glowingly about it in a 1959 interview with Look magazine, saying that it had brought him close to happiness for the first time in his life. He also said that LSD taught him immense compassion for other people, and had helped him conquer his own shyness and insecurity.

Chock full of scandal and gossip, Uncensored was a real bargain at 35 cents. Lesbians, homos, LSD and sex tips from Sean Connery!
 
Via Pulp International.

 
And here everyone thought “Birtherism” had died out. Not so fast, there’s a new kid on the block(head): meet soon to be discharged Air Force staff sergeant Daryn Moran (yes, that’s his real name, this is not some anti-teabagger jibe).

Moran read on the Internet that Obama’s longform birth certificate is a forgery, so he’s decided to a) make a ridiculous YouTube video about it and b) chat with the “Uncle Ruckus” of the conservative wingnut blogsphere, “Dr.” James David Manning and c) go AWOL to protest Obama’s treachery. (Except apparently he lied about that last part.)

Via the AirForce Times:

Moran appeared to believe he was AWOL and thought arrest would be imminent.

“His birth certificate is a proven forgery. I will also not support any other military person who turns a blind eye to this fact,” he wrote on The Blaze, a conservative website founded by former Fox News personality Glenn Beck. “It’s simple. Arrest B. Obama or arrest me.”

In an audio report posted on BirtherReport.com, Moran said he previously served in the Marine Corps, left on good terms and joined the Air Force in the months following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In a follow-up email posted Tuesday on BirtherReport.com and attributed to Moran, the NCO wrote a discharge is imminent and “basically paperwork.”

He wrote in a letter posted Aug. 15 on The Post & Email website that he was a “high priority” for being discharged after meeting with mental-health evaluators. Moran wrote on The Blaze that he would soon receive an “administrative and honorable discharge for a ‘personality disorder’” because he told his leadership that homosexuality is a sin.

He wrote a letter to BirtherReport.com the following day that his discharge was “basically paperwork.”

His first sergeant “passed on the advice to refrain from more internet activity,” Moran wrote. “She knows I cannot do that, because I want to end this crisis. For my family, and for the Constitution and my country, and for B. Obama”

He said he tried to resign several times from the Air Force, but his first sergeant wouldn’t allow it. Moran also said he was removed from his position after a coworker complained that he asked a doctor in his unit about her Muslim faith.

“My conscience is violated,” he said. “I feel like I’m supporting the flag of whatever those Islamic countries are and the rainbow flag and not the red, white and blue. That’s not the kind of people I want to be associated with.”

Here’s the aforementioned YouTube video and it’s every bit as tragic as you might suspect. This idiot is… just an idiot. That’s all you can say about him. He’s an inconsequential twit practically guaranteeing that he’ll never hold a job again. It’s one thing to post pictures of yourself with a lampshade on your head on Facebook, quite another to do this. Who would do a Google search on Mr. Moran and think “This is the bloke I’m gonna hire”?

Good luck in life, Daryn, you’re going to fucking need it as dumb as you are, pal. His wife probably wants to strangle this fool.

If you enjoy listening to crazy people who aren’t very intelligent talking nonsense, this is a classic of sorts…
 

 
But it just gets worse, here’s the Uncle Ruckus “Dr.” James David Manning interview that Moran did. Oh my! Towards the end, he advocates that all the birthers and Christians move to Texas and live under the constitution and not, of course, under Obama’s Islamic tyranny and shariah law and stuff.
 

 
So you want to be a rock & roll star
Well listen now to what I say
Get yourself an electric guitar
And take some time and learn how to play
 
Via Zombies En El Ghetto.

 
Yet another polite rejection letter sent to an aspiring writer by Dr. Gonzo hisself, in this case Mike Peterson who unwittingly submitted an article to Rolling Stone in 1971…

Via Letters of Note

 
Slade never looked cool, but that wasn’t the point. They were four young lads out for a good time, and they wanted you to have a good time too. You can hear it on their classic album Slade Alive, when lead singer, Noddy Holder encourages everyone to get up, get ripping and really let themselves go. And during the 1970s, that’s just what their fans did.

Slade were Noddy Holder, Jimmy lea, Don Powell and the sequined Dave (“You write ‘em I’ll sell ‘em”) Hill. Between 1970 and 1975, they sold over 6.5 million records in the UK alone, chalking up 6 number ones, 3 of which went straight to the top of the charts - a feat not achieved since The Beatles - and this at a time of 3-day weeks, power cuts and food shortages.

For their energy, dynamism and 4-chord songs, Slade were more of an influence on Punk than Iggy and The Stooges. Just listen to the opening riff for “Cum on Feel the Noize”, it sounds like the start of a Sex Pistols track. Or try “Mama Weer All Crazee Now”. As latter-day Mod-Father and frontman for The Jam, Paul Weller noted:

“The whole punk rock thing really happened because of bands such as Slade and the like; rock bands that wouldn’t back off.”

Then there’s Noddy Holder, who may have looked like a grown-up Artful Dodger, but had a brilliant and unmistakable voice, which inspired Joey Ramone:

“I spent most of the early 70s listening to Slade Alive thinking to myself, ‘Wow - this is what I want to do. I want to make that kind of intensity for myself.’ A couple of years later I found myself at CBGB’s doing my best Noddy Holder.”

The tags were all there: Slade’s first single was produced by Kim Fowley; their manager, was ex-Animal, Chas Chandler, who had managed Jimi Hendrix; and their writing partnership of Holder and Lea was compared to the greats who’d gone before, one of which, Paul McCartney saw the future of pop divided between Slade and T.Rex, just like The Beatles and The Stones.

It should have been, but in 1973, drummer Don Powell was seriously injured in a car crash that tragically killed his girlfriend. Slade nearly split. Then, there was their film Flame, not a mop-top romp, but a long-hard look at the music business - it alienated fans though is now considered the “Citizen Kane of rock musicals”. Then, in a bid to conquer America, they spent 2 years Stateside, when Slade returned to the UK, Punk had taken over, and they were “old farts”, even though the Pistols’ Steve Jones thought that:

“Slade never compromised. We always had the feeling that they were on our side. I don’t know but I think we were right.”

It’s Slade is a well-deserved and refreshing reassessment of one Britain’s greatly under-rated bands, with excellent archive and contributions from Slade, Ozzy Osbourne, Toyah Wilcox and Noel Gallagher.
 

 
The rest of ‘It’s Slade’, plus bonus clips, after the jump…
 

 
This news cast was from 30 years ago, but it might just as well be today. We’re living in dark times folks and it ain’t rock and roll that got us here.

In contrast to the southern preachers, who sound like a bunch of drooling idiots, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons are the voices of reason. Ironic that the craziest looking people in the room (in their “evil looking make-up”) are the most sane. Even the newscaster buys into the religious hysteria claiming that Kiss fans “idolize the underworld.”

From a 1982 edition of Entertainment Tonight.

I wonder what’s on Rick Perry’s play list?
 

 
Graphic via Princess Sparkle Pony.