Well, I admit it. I was fooled. And yes, it seemed almost too good to be true.  And yep, it was.

So, this isn’t Werner Herzog reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, but it’s still a nice thought, just like the one I have about the fat guy in the red suit with the white beard, who’s allegedly bringing me lots of presents…I hope.
 

 
A few days ago I called the office of United States Congresswoman Diane Watson, who represents me and the other residents of the 33rd Congressional District here in the metro Los Angeles area. I called Rep. Watson to encourage her to vote against renewing the Bush tax cuts for millionaires.

Since Rep. Watson was one of only 148 members of the House courageous enough, smart enough and as committed to the well-being of the common man enough to vote against this obscene affront to the concept of fucking “fairness” in this country, I wanted to thank her publicly. Rep. Watson will be retiring at the end of the 111th Congress and I want her to know how incredibly grateful I have been to have someone who I tend to agree with 100% of the time, representing my interests in Washington. For me, the match between constituent (that would be me) and Representative has it has never been better (and I’ve always lived in areas leaning heavily toward liberal politics). I will be sorry indeed to see Congresswoman Diane Watson retire, but wish her the very best.

Ironically, I clipped the following text from Michelle Malkin’s blog. She prefaced this by calling Diane Watson a “racist.” I’m a 45-year-old white male, so if I agree 100% with this, would that negate Malkini’s idiotic charge of racism? This took guts to say in this political climate!

WATSON: You might have heard their philosophical leader. I think his name is Rush Limbaugh. And he said early on, “I hope that he fails.”
Do you know what that means? If the president, your commander-in-chief, fails, America fails.

Now, when a senator says that this will be his Waterloo, and we all know what happened at Waterloo, then we have him and he fails. Do we want a failed state called the United States?

And remember: They are spreading fear and they are trying to see that the first president that looks likes me fails.
Now just understand what’s at the bottom line.

And you know we just got, 48 hours ago, we just go back, we were in Beijing, China, Hong Kong, China, we were in Taiwan, we were in Guam, we were all over the Far East.

I just want you to know: People look at the United States as a country that has changed its way and has elected someone from Kenya and Kansas, I’ll put it like that.

And they’re saying, “We thought you would never do that.”

So we don’t want to have this young man, and he just turned 48 — we want him to succeed, because when he succeeds, we regain our status. We regain our status.

It was just mentioned to me by our esteemed speaker, “Did anyone say anything about the Cuban health system?”

And lemme tell ya, before you say “Oh, it’s a commu–”, you need to go down there and see what Fidel Castro put in place. And I want you to know, now, you can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met. [APPLAUSE]

And you know, the Cuban revolution that kicked out the wealthy, Che Guevara did that, and then, after they took over, they went out among the population to find someone who could lead this new nation, and they found…well, just leave it there (laughs), an attorney by the name of Fidel Castro…

 
Here’s a nifty last minute gift idea for your kid this year. You’re welcome. Oh, and calories not included.

Mc Donalds Mcd Drive Thru Center (Closed Box)

(via TDW)

 
I’m not someone who is over-impressed by gadgets and technology. I realize it’s almost heresy to admit this in today’s world, but even though I own a cell phone, I never, ever carry it. I just don’t like to be bothered. BUT, that is not to say I wasn’t kinda bowled over by the new iPhone app called “Word Lens” which was released yesterday from Quest Visual.

You simply point your iPhone’s video camera at text and it will do a real-time Spanish to English translation (or vice versa). Other languages to follow. As one of the reviewers points out, “It’s like a visual version of Douglas Adam’s Babblefish.”

That it is! Once they load up on some more languages, this puppy would really come in handy hitchhiking around the galaxy, eh?
 

 
Phill Niblock, himself a notable composer in his own right, made this lovely, minimalist filmed portrait of Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra in 1968. Shooting them on a rooftop in high contrast black and white and focusing in on fingers and mouths, this is as good an excuse as any to take 17 minutes out of your day to enter the waking dream world of Le Sony’r Ra.
 

 
Niblock’s portrait of Max Neuhaus after the jump…

 
San Francisco disco diva Sylvester James’s appearance at a dance party in a subterranean SF Muni station in the Castro district in 1979 couldn’t have been more fraught. The neighborhood had just been shaken to the core the previous fall with the shooting death of Harvey Milk, SF’s first openly gay supervisor. Ahead lay the AIDS epidemic, which would eventually take Sylvester himself 22 years ago this week at age 41.

But on that night, Sylvester was at the peak of his success. He was just about to release his 5th album, Stars, the follow-up to 1978’s Step II, which had hit #7 on the American R&B charts and included one of gay America’s legendary anthems, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” After his first taste of mainstream success, and after nine years of the official Gay Pride parade in San Francisco, after coming this far, perhaps it seemed fitting for the community to get back to its roots and and take the party underground again.
 
Thanks to Erica Green for bringing this to my attention…
 

 
The Tron-a-sutra has been updated and animated for those who found the ancient pictorials a bit too mystifying.

The missionary position allows for easy entry, deep penetration and although women are placed in a passive role (hence “missionary”), it is one of the more enjoyable positions for couples who take pleasure in intimacy.”

To view in detail all 40 positions of the Tron-a-sutra click here.
 

 
Via WHT

 
Hopefully many of you have already listened to the latest episode of The Dangerous Minds Radio Hour, but if not, then maybe this clip of the title credits from The Liquidator—specifically the theme tune, sung by Shirley Bassey and written and conducted by Lalo Schifrin—will entice you to do so. I lead an “all female” set off with this track, taken from the scratchy old soundtrack album.

Obviously, the makers of this film were trying their hand at creating another James Bond, with Rod Taylor playing “Boysie Oakes,” a character that came from a Cold War-era spy book series that also tried to chime in on the James Bond action. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of sub-Bond rip-offs during the Sixties. The Liquidator, to its credit, tried hard by hiring Bassey and Schifrin (who also worked on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. around this time). They even snagged the gorgeous Jill St. John a few years before she became a proper Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever. Superb Richard Williams credit sequence.
 

 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at Alterati

 
Over at Listverse, the home of the ultimate top ten lists, tattoo artist and historian Derek Dufresne has put together a list of the top ten prison gangs in the USA. There’s no info as to what criteria a gang had to meet to make the list, but I’m assuming it has to do with size and influence.

I’ve included detailed descriptions of the top two gangs on the list. To read about the rest, visit Listverse by clicking here.

Prison gangs were originally formed by inmates as a means to protect themselves from other inmates. Throughout the years, prison gangs have evolved from a group that provides protection to its members, to criminal entities involved in prostitution, assaults, drugs and murder. Prison gangs continue to thrive because prosecuting them has, historically, been difficult due to the fact that many members are already serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.”

 
1. Aryan Brotherhood
 

 

Also known as the AB, Aryan Brotherhood is a white supremacist group that was formed in 1967, at San Quentin prison in California. They currently have approximately 15,000 members, in and out of prison. Initially formed for the protection of whites against blacks in prison, the gang gradually moved to becoming a criminal enterprise. The AB are concerned with white-supremacy, and are a ruthless gang who regularly murder those who oppose the system, growing so out of control at times, that even their own ranking members could not consider themselves safe. In prison, they strive to control the sale of drugs, gambling, and “punks,” or male prostitutes. The Aryan Brotherhood has carried out contract killings for the Mexican Mafia, but racist beliefs prevent members from consorting with African Americans, including even taking a cigarette or a candy bar from them. The only way to be a member is to abide by their philosophy of “Blood In – Blood Out.” -Kill somebody to become a member and die to part from it. AB members make up approximately 1% of the prison population nationwide, but are responsible for up to 18% of murders in the federal prison system.”

Read more after the jump…

 
It caused nausea and vomiting when first shown at the Cinephone, Oxford Street, in London. Some of the audience demanded their money back, others hurled abuse and shouted “That’s sick,” and ““Its disgusting.” This was the idea, as writer William Burroughs and producer, Antony Balch wanted to achieve a complete “disorientation of the senses.”

Balch had a hard-on for the weird, unusual and sometimes depraved. It was a predilection born from his love of horror films - one compounded when as a child he met his idol, Bela Lugosi, the olde Austro-Hungarian junkie, who was touring Britain with the stage show that had made him famous, Dracula. Film was a love affair that lasted all of Balch’s life.

He also had a knack of making friends with the right people at the right time. In Paris he met and hung out with the artist Brion Gysin and druggie, Glaswegian Beat writer, Alexander Trocchi, who was then writing porn and editing a literary mag called Merlin, along with the likes of Christopher Logue. Through them, Balch met the two men who changed his life, Burroughs and Kenneth Anger.

Anger helped Balch with his ambitions as a cinema distributor, getting him a copy of Todd Browning’s classic Freaks, which was banned the UK, at that time. Balch paid Anger back when he later released his apocalyptic Invocation of My Demon Brother as a support feature.

Burroughs offered Balch something different - the opportunity to collaborate and make their own films.  This they did, first with Towers Open Fire, an accessible montage of Burroughs’ routines, recorded on a Grundig tape recorder, cut-up to Balch’s filmed and found images of a “crumbling society.” Put together stuff like this and the chattering classes will always take you seriously. But don’t doubt it, for it was good.

But it was their second collaboration, Cut Ups which for me is far more interesting and proved far more controversial. Cut Ups was originally intended as a documentary called Guerilla Conditions, and was filmed between 1961 and 1965 in Tangiers and Paris. It included some footage from Balch’s aborted attempt to film the unfilmable Naked Lunch. The finished material was collated and then conventionally edited - but the process didn’t stop there, no. For Balch divided the finshed film into four sections of equal length, and then...
 

 
Bonus clip of ‘Bill and Tony’ after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds