The author at right,
 
It seems like everyone is suddenly dying- Dennis Hopper, Gary Coleman and Ronnie James Dio.  As a lover of metal, when I heard that there would be a public memorial for the late great former singer for Elf, Rainbow and Black Sabbath I decided I should go.  Then when I heard that the Westboro Baptist Church would be there protesting I was even more intrigued. In case you don’t know the Westboro Baptist Church are a group led by Reverend Fred Phelps who are famous for protesting at funerals with signs saying “God Hates Fags.”

Why were they there? Their website lists a lot of reasons including that Dio disrespected God by taking the name Dio (meaning God in Italian) and that he did not follow the Biblical precept to love his neighbor, evidenced by his being mean to Ozzy Osbourne.  If there ever was any doubt that the Westboro folks are great performance artists, I think this proves it. It’s hard to believe that it has taken anyone this long to realize that they are the Christian equivalents of Billionaires for Bush or the English Monster Raving Loony Party. They take all the ridiculous ideas and hypocrisies of the Christian right and take them to their logical extremes.  When Pat Robertson says that Katrina was New Orleans punishment for being a gay friendly city, they say that Americans soldiers dying is America’s punishment for being a gay friendly country.  Right wind Christians recoil at them while they are shoving the mirror of their own homophobia and hatred in their faces.  These same people also once claimed that heavy metal would lead the world to hell and so the Westboro folks have to show up at Ronnie James Dio’s funeral to prove this point.

When we got to Forest Lawn Cemetery, there were only three Westboro protesters there but they were surrounded by a larger group of pranksters with their own comical signs riffing on Westboro’s signature themes.  A memorial is naturally a time of sadness but the protesters brought a little bit of fun to the proceedings.  We all stopped to take pictures and pose with our own signs that my good friend Jill McGraw had been kind enough to make.  I was surprised to find the Westboro people to be uniformly friendly and glad to pose for photo after photo with everybody. A few people tried to logically argue with them, which I have to say, sure sounded silly. As you can see from the photos they added to their bag of tricks some new great slogans for which they have websites. The woman was promoting their brilliant new site Jews Killed Jesus, while the men were promoting Priest Rape Boys. They obviously realize that God Hates Fags isn’t as fun as it used to be, so I’m glad they are branching out into new areas of comic extremism.  

After the levity of this time with the wonderful Westboro people and the pranksters they inspired, we trekked up the giant hill to the memorial. So many people showed up that they had to issue admittance wristbands to the first 600 people who showed up. Those folks got to enter the memorial hall where the memorial took place. Most had showed up at 8AM for an event that started at 2. The rest of us got to watch the memorial from outside the hall on jumbotrons. Memorial buttons were issued to everyone as well as a beautiful program with testimonials. Sadly no heavyweights like Tony Iommi or Richie Blackmore made it there. There were musical performances which featured Dio songs played for some odd reason on acoustic guitars and flutes(!!!). Somebody from the awful band Asia sang “Heaven and Hell” which almost seemed more disrespectful than the Westboro people being there. But the testimonials from friends and family were great. I learned that Dio was his high school class president!  There was lots of talk about who Dio was jamming with in Heaven. (I don’t know why but everyone thought he’d be working with Dimebag Darrell from Pantera first!) All in all a sad but inspiring tribute to one of the great rockers of the heavy metal era!

—Julien Nitzberg

 
70’s German rockers Tiger B. Smith must be seen to be believed.  As you can see up above, they are not messing around with their tiger gimmick.  Lead by Holger B. Schmidt, their music is a sludge of heavy metal, glam and some serious Hendrix-isms.  The group’s patchy trilogy of albums does contain some gems including the one above, which is the title track to their second album.  The song featured below is not as awesome but the clip is just unreal!
 

 
A mixed martial arts fighter has been arraigned on charges of ripping his close friends heart out after drinking psychedelic mushroom tea in Northern California. According to the Contra Costa TImes, the victim and the suspect, according to the testimony, became preoccupied with the idea that a tidal wave was coming, that the end of the world was upon them and that a struggle between God and the devil was taking place.

Not to make light in any way of such a grisly, horrific crime, but it seems to me that his fellow was gripped in equal amounts by paranoiac delusions brought on by psilocybin mushrooms, as he was by religious superstition… and yet religion is still legal:

Under questioning by Del Norte County District Mike Riese, Sgt. Elwood Lee said he was dispatched to Requa on March 21 to meet a man who had reported a stabbing nearby. Lee met the man, later identified as Justin Davis, who took them to the Fizer Road house in question. When Lee entered the house, he noticed what he believed to be dried blood on some cabinets in the entryway, and broken glass on the floor. Drywall had been discovered on a wall, Lee said. He heard someone mumbling in the living room, and saw a foot sticking out from a couch. Lee testified that he saw a man, later identified as Wyatt, standing near a body on a couch, naked and covered from head to toe in what appeared to be dried blood. Wyatt said,”I killed him,” Lee said.

Lee was able to cuff Wyatt without incident, and then he proceeded to look at the body on the couch. The body had had the majority of its face removed, and an 18-inch incision in its chest cavity. Lee said that he did not attempt first aid because he could see the man was dead.
”At one point,” Lee said, “(Wyatt) asked if we were God, or if we were God coming to save him.”

Lee said that Wyatt said he’d cut out Powell’s tongue, and that he’d removed his heart. He also mentioned that there had been a “big fight” in the kitchen. Wyatt told him that when he’d looked at Powell’s face he’d seen the devil, Lee said.

 
Mixed martial arts fighter Wyatt faces murder charge in Northern California (Contra Costa Times)

Thank you Paul Gallagher!

 
Dangerous Minds pal, Julien Nitzberg, director of the amazing documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, sent the following short note to Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin and myself:

“I was excited when Dangerous Minds profiled me. I was complimented by Boing Boing writing about me.  But why does this make me the happiest of all: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t711880/  WOW!”

Nothing says you’ve really hit the big time quite like seeing your nose and ethnicity mocked on a white-supremacist forum like Stormfront, eh? It easily trumps an SNL parody!

A sampling of what the skinhead Roger Eberts at Stormfront think of Jullien’s documentary:

This is the most anti-white, offensive thing I’ve ever seen.—Cougarspeed

Did you see the nose on Nitzberg???? I could park my motorscooter in there.—White Reverence

How do you like that jew who created the film? Seems like jews have a nose for what people will buy. Heh. Jews can smell actual metal gold from fifteen feet away…I swear. They are the perfect “middle man”. And they will do/film ANYTHING for money.—Embattled Warrior

The Wild Whites of West Virginia opens theatrically at the end of June. Available now as a download on Amazon and on POV from many of the large cable operators.

(Above) Director Julien Nitzberg, with nose, and the film’s executive producer, Johnny Knoxville.
 

 
You have to love the fact that a joke political party in Iceland, started six months ago by a comedian, won the most seats during a local election The party, know simply as “the Best” won local elections in the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, scoring 34.7% of the vote and securing 6 of 15 seats of the city council. The campaign video featured members of the party, including founder Jon Gnarr—now the city’s mayor—singing Tina Turner’s “The Best” (what else?)

From BBC News:

Key pledges included “sustainable transparency”, free towels at all swimming pools and a new polar bear for the city zoo.

The party also called for a Disneyland at the airport and a “drug-free parliament” by 2020.

As well as specific pledges, its video promised change, a “bright future” and suggested that it was time for a “clean out.”

Clearly Icelanders, who have seen their entire economy collapse, get the joke!

 
Ummm… Err….

 
Mr. Laner’s Krautrock post from earlier this week put me in a Can kind of mood (although it takes very little).  What follows below is a kinda wonderful fan-made video for Future Days, the epically dreamy title track from the final Can album to feature the vocal stylings of former street busker, Damo Suzuki.  The vid’s creator cribbed its imagery from banned films from the 20’s and 30’s.  Trippy visuals aside, as we ease into what should be a sunny Memorial Day weekend here in LA, make Future Days part of your soundtrack!

Kids say the darndest things.  I’m probably going to hell for posting this one.

 
It felt like the 80’s died last year with the passing of both Michael Jackson and John Hughes.  Losing Gary Coleman pretty much seals the deal for me, as Diff’rent Strokes was THE show as a kid.  Check out this classic episode up above condensed down to five minutes courtesy of the Minisode Network.

 
Yep, starve…to death.  A 41-year-old taxi driver and his wife were sentenced to 2 years in prison for choosing to play 10 hours a day at internet cafes rather than bottle feed their newborn daughter more than once a day.  And, for tragic irony, the couple’s game of choice, Prius, was one where they “played” raising a virtual baby. 

Court affidavits also stated that the girl, who was born premature and weighed 5 pounds, was fed rotten formula and, when she cried out of hunger, was beaten by her parents.  What did the couple name their newborn?  The Korean equivalent of “love.”  Oh, and, FYI: the mother received a lesser sentence because she’s currently pregnant with baby number two.  Some pre-sentencing video follows below:

 
South Korean Couple Let Baby Starve To Death