Lonely this Valentine’s Day, bucko? Adopt a pet! If you or someone you know has been thinking of adopting a new pet and you live in Los Angeles or San Francisco, this Valentine’s Day between 11 and 3pm, Amoeba Records, the best record stores in the entire world (or at least the parts I’ve been to) will be there to make your love match with a pooch or kitty.
Thanks Ramie Becker!
A man sits in a couple of different tacky/surreal hotel rooms (possibly the Madonna Inn ?) contentedly manipulating tape loops on an ancient flea-market deck, oblivious to the goings-on beneath the covers of the beds next to him. It’s the mysterious work of LAFMS master loopist Joseph Hammer and artist/ hypnotist Sayo Mitsuishi aka The Swinging Chandeliers. Play both at once !
other LAFMS posts previously on Dangerous MInds here and here
Back when time and sleep were of the more surplus variety, I would sometimes spend the tail end of a late night with that horse-happy, cigar-waving TV preacher, Dr. Gene Scott. Scott wasn’t like the other preachers littering the cable crap-scape. He had a Ph.D. from Stanford, and, as he often demonstrated while dissecting a bit of scripture at his beloved dry-erase board, was fluent in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.
He was also, apparently, fluent in alcohol. Oh, and womanizing. As the Internet Monk’s Michael Spencer says in his terrific article on Scott, “I Just Couldn’t Look Away.”
And while his shilling for money was a near-constant, his gruff persona and random cutaways to his ponies (and “pony girls”) made it all seem oddly endearing. After an hour or so of watching, it was hard to not start hoping Scott got some of that cash he was asking (barking!) for.
So…in short, was he crackpot? Absolutely. But, hey, he was an L.A. crackpot. And just the type of self-possessed subject to attract director Werner Herzog. What follows at the bottom is the little-seen documentary Herzog made of Scott in 1980, God’s Angry Man.
Barbie Bridges vs. Melissa Scott
Gene Scott died close to 5 years ago from complications arising from prostate cancer. His younger-by-40-years wife, Melissa Scott, seized took over the still-profitable ministry’s reigns—and still dodges allegations of having had a possibly pornographic past (see above).
Or one final screwing before you go completely. A new U.S. patent was granted yesterday for the above “Easy Inter Burial Container.” According to the patent application for the EIBC, the reasons for such a vessel are three-fold: space, time, and cash are all at a premium.
This invention relates to conserving land area and easy to install burial containers which can be pressed, agitated, screwed, self bored or by other means set into earth or other receiving materials and do not require a large amount of land area or a large pre-dug rectangular hole with subsequent refilling after the placement of the burial container.
(via Neatorama)
For rousing you, I imagine, One Second Before Awakening From a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate:
A Clock so strange, Dali would have it himself if he were alive… A fish rotates around the clock once a minute while Dali’s moustache tells the time. A surreal Alarm Clock is the perfect way to wake you up and smack you with your own realism at 6:30am!
(via BOJ)
Doctor Who continues its steamroller assault on all fandom with the new announcement that Neil Gaiman has been contracted to write an episode next year for the new Doctor (aka “the Encyclopedia Britannica kid”). Apparently Michael Moorcock is writing a Dr. Who novel, too.
Neil Gaiman has been picking up literary prizes left, right and centre over the last year, but the fantasy author announced this weekend what could be the biggest honour yet for a long-time fan of Doctor Who: writing an episode of the television series detailing the adventures of the Time Lord.
Creator of the Sandman series of comics and author of novels including Anansi Boys and Coraline, Gaiman said in his acceptance speech for winning best comic at the SFX awards on Saturday that he had been a fan of Doctor Who since he was three years old, when he would watch the show from behind the sofa. “And while I know it’s cruel to make you wait for things, in about 14 months from now, which is to say, NOT in the upcoming season but early in the one after that, it’s quite possible that I might have written an episode. And if I had, it would originally have been called The House of Nothing. But it definitely isn’t called that anymore,” revealed the author, who won the best comic prize for his Batman story Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader.
Gaiman, whose latest novel The Graveyard Book won many awards last year, including best novel at the Hugos, the Newbery medal and the UK’s Booktrust teenage prize, is not the first fantasy author to have been tapped by the Doctor Who machine. Last year, Michael Moorcock revealed he had been approached to write a new Doctor Who novel for publication next Christmas.
From the New York Times, a rather odd article about karaoke killings in the Philippines. Sing a SInatra song poorly and it may be your last…
“I used to like ‘My Way,’ but after all the trouble, I stopped singing it,” he said. “You can get killed.”
The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”
The killings have produced urban legends about the song and left Filipinos groping for answers. Are the killings the natural byproduct of the country’s culture of violence, drinking and machismo? Or is there something inherently sinister in the song?
Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord (New York Times)
I read about the beta-launch of something called Chatroulette this morning on a German blog I frequent called Nerdcore and something tells me this thing is gonna be HUGE. As in huge, huge. Facebook huge.
First off, it’s super easy to use—hit the “start” button, and you’re off. The people you’ll meet are from all over the world and Chatroulette works in real time (like Skype) and there’s audio, too.
What makes this thing so exciting/addicting/cringeworthy all at the same time is easy to summarize: You never know WHO you’re going to get when you click that button. My friend and I tested it out today. Our first interaction was with a male in his mid-20s. He said he was from China. Fifth go around we got the Jonas Brothers. No shit, it was the real Jonas Brothers. “Are you guys the Jonas Brothers?” They said they were in New Jersey. It looked like they were in an airport. There was a lot of starring and smiling going on. They asked if I was a fan of theirs. I said nothing. Awkward moment. Screen went black, we lost contact.
But seriously, there is lots of WEIRD shit going on here. Lonely guys jacking off in front of their computers, couples having sex and waving at you, monster mask pole dancing, obese women masturbating, lesbian orgies, guys eating pizza watching football, folks wearing clown masks, wholesome families waving at you, people smoking joints, teenagers yelling “show me your tits!’... it’s endless. I was truly shocked by what I was seeing, but that’s not to say we weren’t laughing so hard we were crying for several hours. Aside from teen pop star siblings—I mean, what are the chances?—we also encountered a hillbilly mom and her son who looked at us on her screen and murmured “They must be ‘hipsters.’ I’ve heard all about them” as well as a man… and his dog, let’s just say, and leave it at that…
This isn’t going to end well. Not at all.
UPDATE: I was punked! Chat Roulette With The Jonas Brothers
If you want to know more about Chatroulette, read The Human Shuffle: Is ChatRoulette the future of the Internet or its distant past?
Chatroulette (NSFW)
