You can’t look away, can you? Just try.

Thanks, Winslow B!

 
This culture always seems to conflate hip-hop’s artists-turned-marketing-moguls—Diddy, 50, Jay-Z—with its true renaissance people, those who are truly hands-on in many of the disciplines inside hip-hop. People like Bronx-raised Derrick Jones a.k.a. D-Nice, who for the past couple of years has put together the excellent short video series True Hip-Hop Stories.

Starting as a teen in the mid-‘80s Jones was the third original member along with KRS-ONE of Boogie Down Productions, and he put out a couple good but undersung albums as part of that crew. Since then, he’s become one of hip-hop’s original go-to guys for web design, and he’s also made his name via his photography and video work, along with getting back into DJing.

Basically he’s pushing culture rather than colored water or a clothing line. That’s refreshing. Here’s one of his first videos for the True Hip Hop Stories series—it’s Masta Ace talking about how he got in on one of hip-hop’s quintessential posse cuts, the Juice Crew’s fantastic “The Symphony” from 1988. It’s recommended you check out the rest of his vids.
 

True Hip-Hop Stories: Masta Ace from D-Nice on Vimeo.

 
After the jump, the damn funny official video for “The Symphony.”
 

 
Noah Scalin, known for creating a skull a day over the course of a year, recently created a massive one made of human brain slices for Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum.

Noah describes working with the museum’s curator and the process of creating his fascinating work of art:

Anna, the curator, asked if I could make a new skull for an upcoming project of theirs and of course I said yes, and then suggested that I make it in the museum itself. Since most of the items on display are very fragile I figured I’d be working with display jars or other non-historical materials. However, to my delight they had just acquired a collection of hundreds of beautiful real brain slices encased in acrylic (which had been dubbed “Zombie MRE’s”)! Since they’re very sturdy I was allowed to used them as my material and I was set up in a lovely room that holds the card catalog for their library. Over the course of two days I arranged the slices on two large old library tables and climbed a ladder over and over making sure the image looked right from a single vantage point (where I would eventually take my picture). All told I used 375 slices and a bit of fabric for the eye/nose holes…

As someone who has a thing for craniums and mandibles, I find this pretty damn exciting.

You can purchase Noah’s book ‘Skulls’ here.
 

 
Interview with Noah Scalin after the jump…

 
According to the cat, “I did it as a joke because I thought it would be funny. I never thought it would be trapped. I expected it to wriggle out.”

(via TDW)

 
I lived in Manhattan’s East Village from 1984 to 1991 and the sight of the great poet Allen Ginsberg around the neighborhood was a pretty common one, although it was still cool to see him each and every time, I must admit. Now the apartment where Ginsberg lived until the mid-90s has been renovated and come on the rental market. There is a link to the listing today—$1700 for the one-bedroom—on Gothamist:

Allen Ginsberg spent 21 years of his life (1975 to 1996) living in a fourth floor walk-up in the East Village, and now—following the death of his partner Peter Orlovsky, it’s on the rental market. Earlier this month, The Allen Ginsberg Project stopped by as it was undergoing renovations, and there’s little left of the poetic madman’s presence. For example, the bedroom that his pal Harry Everett Smith once resided in is now a bathroom (read an interview Ginsberg did with Paola Igliori in 1995, where the two discussed his one-time roommate)

.
 

Above: Harry Smith’s in the guest room, now a bathroom.
 

Above: Here’s how Wired’s Steve Silberman remembers the apartment:
 

Left to right: Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Louis Cartwright, Herbert Huncke, William Burroughs, Allen & Peter’s new apartment, 437 East 12th Street, New York City, December 1975. Photographer unknown. (Via)
 

 
Above: Allen Ginsberg on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line TV program in 1968.

There’s also a link on Gothamist to some photos of the converted YMCA on the Bowery where William Burroughs used to live, famously dubbed “The Bunker.” John Giorno, who took over the place when Burroughs left, kept his bedroom exactly as it was.

 
Truly one of the most ravishing and mindblowing songs ever recorded: epic, beautiful, cinematic. Hearing it for the first time in 1967 was one of the lifechanging events in my life as a young rock and roller. ‘A Day In The Life’ altered my sense of what a rock song could be, it expanded the scope and vision of rock and roll in the way that Walt Whitman enlarged poetry, it opened the field for future artists to experiment on a new scale of creative imagination that was fresh to the form. The extraordinary Pet Sounds had preceded it by a year. But, as groundbreaking as Brian Wilson’s masterpiece was, The Beatles took things to the next level (argue amongst yourselves).

Released both in stereo and mono as a track on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, here’s the 2009 stereo remaster of ‘A Day In The Life.’

The video is cool too.
 

 
When I posted here in March about Zak Smith’s blog, Playing D&D with Pornstars, it was a merely a popular blog, but now it’s a Internet video series called I Hit It With My Axe, with a couple dozen episodes released so far. In the below clip you will witness Sasha Grey, Kimberly Kane, Mandy Morbid, Satine Phoenix and others, including Smith himself, participating in the favorite hobby of geeks everywhere. (Er, maybe their second favorite pastime, I guess, but this sort of incorporates both interests, doesn’t it?)
 

 
See all episodes of I Hit It With My Axe (The Escapist)

 
As part of their promotional push for Robert Rodriguez’s controversial exploitation flick Machete, 20th Century Fox commissioned filmmakers to do ‘lifestyle’ videos of the folks involved with making the movie. This first one, directed by Estevan Oriol from SA Studios, features perennial badass Danny Trefo lowriding in East L.A.. with his buddy Mr. Cartoon.

Rodriguez knocked me out with his zombie gorefest Planet Terror, so I have high hopes for Machete. Trejo as a ridiculously over-armed desperado looks like my kind of hero, Billy Jack on steroids.
 

 
Italian electro-futurist disco producer extraordinaire, Giorgio Moroder, now 70, has had his share of hits working with the likes of Donna Summer, Blondie, Sparks, David Bowie, Elton John, and, uh, Leni Riefenstahl (?), but he’s had a few misses as well, like this shockingly crap/brilliantly awful discofied version of The Moody Blues’ classic, “Nights in White Satin” from 1976. Of all the songs to cover in this fashion… I mean, the Moody Blues??? (Moroder’s version is actually titled “Knights in White Satin.”). This is so wrong that it’s right.

I was LOL’ing about this and I mentioned it to Tara, who promptly replied that she had the CD in the car stereo at this very moment. My wife is awesome.
 

 
The B-side, “I Wanna Funk With You Tonite” is even better!
 
(Listen to the original Mooody Blues version here)

Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Norman René, Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cookie Mueller, Klaus Nomi….the list of New York artists who died of AIDS over the last 30 years is countless, and the loss immeasurable.

A heartwrenching tribute to New York City painters, writers and performers who died of aids, Last Address is composed of images of the exteriors of the buildings where the artists last lived. The video was shot by Ira Sachs and if you visit the film’s website you can read about the artists featured in this bittersweet poem of a film.
 

Last Address from Ira Sachs on Vimeo.