Iceberg Slim is well-known as the literary progenitor of gangster rap (Ice-T, Ice Cube and Jay-Z have all listed him as a formative influence), mostly for his groundbreaking autobiography Pimp. Check out this great tribute to Slim by Josh Alan Friedman:

Like the painter Grandma Moses, Iceberg Slim was reborn an artist after age 40. His third, and harshest prison sentence - 10 months in steel solitary at the Cook County House of Corrections - finally crushed the pimp right out of him. Vilifying past predatory values, he exorcised his demons into folklore, leaving a seven-book legacy. Pimp: The Story of My Life, contained bookend warnings against the life. But Iceberg’s masterpiece only bolstered pimp liberation amidst the blaxploitation movie craze. In Times Square, for instance, a hundred fur-coated Superflys lorded over a thousand streetwalkers, taking renegade control of 8th Avenue. For them, Pimp declassified the sorcery of whore control, became a textbook for wannabe’s, and lent ethnic pride to the hideous profession.

Pimp still holds as perhaps the greatest chronicle ever written on male-female relations. In the flush of literary success, white feminist-journalist types sought out interviews like intellectual groupies. Pimp philosophy, Iceberg believed, might be adapted to mainstream relationships. “My theory is that some quantum of pimp in every man would perhaps enhance his approach to women,” he told the Washington Post. “Because I think it’s a truism that women gravitate to a man who can at least flash transient evidence of heelism. . . Women are prone to masochism, anyway. I think if you are able to manufacture a bit of ‘heelism’ in your nature and give them a sense of insecurity as to whether some voluptuous rival might come along and steal you, then you are a treasured jewel.”

I read Pimp when I was 13. I’m not sure it exactly uh helped my skills with women, but it certainly gave me a new vocabulary to irritate my friends with.

However, nothing compares to Slim’s readings of his own work on the album Reflections. Hearing Iceberg Slim’s renditions of key points in his life?

Pope Benedictus
 

Lady Di
 

Dalai Lama
 
From Lost At E Minor:

The latest innovation in the world of the puppet toys are the unsettling dolls of celebrities that are manufactured by the German company ?ج

 
Naughty WTF video from French electronic band Flairs. Ummm… Err…

Truckers Delight animated video clip directed by newcomer wunderkid J?ɬ

I hear the sound of heads exploding all across the vaunted land of Nerddom. Porn star and Darklord of the IXth Dimension Sasha Grey is set to star as Molly Millions in a six hour stage production of Neuromancer at the New Museum in NYC. R. U. Sirius at h+ Magazine says:

It’s a play… no it’s a reading… no it’s… hard to tell.  But on November 22, from noon to 6 pm, the New Museum in NYC is doing some sort of cool six hour Neuromancer thing that they describe thusly:

“An ambitious new work by Brody Condon, Case is a contemporary adaptation of the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. Combining Gibson?

 
If you live or find yourself in Paris this holiday season, you must visit the first big Paris show of artist Paul Laffoley at the Palais de Tokyo through Jan 17, 2010. There is also a new Laffoley poster from the event and it’s amazing, I got mine in the mail yesterday. Proceeds from the poster sales are 100% dedicated to the costs of completing photography and printing of the Paul Laffoley Catalogue Raisonne currently being put together by Douglas Walla at Kent Gallery in New York. There is a lot of work so it’s a huge undertaking that will be spread across several volumes. I think it’s what’s needed before the public at large finally catches on about what a genius we have in our midst.

You can buy a Paul Laffoley poster here. Makes a great Christmas present!

Paul Laffoley in Paris.

The gallery at Palais de Tokyo.

 
An enterprising activist/prankster named Robert Erickson yes man’d a contingent of mentally challenged Tea Baggers in Minneapolis by getting them to chant—it was an anti-immigrant rally, basically—“Columbus go home” like braying jackasses until a few of these dim-bulbs caught on. It’s bust-a-gut funny and disturbing at the same time. Watch the one old guy in the NRA hat guy lose it at the end.

When I was watching this I was thinking how these people are so angry, they don’t like the way things are going, they know they are less well off than they were before and they are pissed off and they have a right to be, but the problem is, their anger is directed at the wrong targets. This is in no small part due to the out-sized influence of assholes like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly on low IQ Americans. These Tea Bagger’s opinions are simply ignorant—that’s putting it kindly—and their minds are snapped shut like steel traps. They’re so dumb they don’t even know how dumb they are. It’s impossible to take them seriously as a political force. I take heart that as time goes on and demographics change in this country that there will be less of this kind of idiocy moving forward in history. The faces in the crowd here are mostly senior citizens. They’re not going to be around, most of these folks in 20-30 years. We’re watching the death throes of a certain reactionary element of American society that we can all do better without. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but it is will eventually happen. [To clarify, I still think there will be dumb people, but they’ll be less dumb than the Boomer tea baggers simply because they will be less old-fashioned and have lived in a more interconnected, multicultural world than their parents. Does that make sense?]

 
Equinox Fitness Clubs asked we four at Dangerous Minds to tour their facilities, write up our impressions and offer our readers a 3-day trial membership so they can check out an Equinox near them. Click here to sign up.

I agree with all of what Richard had to say in his post about Equinox. The main thing he mentions is that it was sparkling clean and this is quite true. That’s a big plus for me, too—but I have a few other observations to offer.

From a woman’s perspective, Equinox seems extremely luxurious. The spa looked especially good to me and the prices were better than reasonable. Everything smelled nice, the sauna was extra clean (that word again) and I loved the way everything looked. The yoga studio was very “zen” but at the same time ultra modern and chic. There was nice Italian modernist furniture in the waiting room/lobby area. The spa staff had ready answers to all of our questions, were friendly and very knowledgeable about all they offered there. I’m definitely going to check out the spa one day soon and pamper myself. I’d been looking for a good place to go in LA (without naming names, I had a horrific experience once in what is probably LA’s best known spa chain and so I’m pretty picky!) and I was quite impressed by the day spa at the Equinox club on Sunset Blvd, the club we visited.

Second woman-only observation: I would feel comfortable working out at an Equinox club. The male clientele seems to be on the “classier” side of the equation and I wouldn’t fear dumb guys hitting on me in such a high end gym. There is nothing worse than that and every woman knows what I am talking about.

I got the sense during our tour that the club was undergoing constant upgrading and improvements. Improvements to an already pretty fantastic gym, I should say. They had just gotten a fleet of brand new state-of-the-art Schwinn exercise bikes, and the men’s locker rooms were being redone from the floors up when we were there. I know I keep coming back to the same thing, how clean the club is, but if you think about it, gyms can get really grody, really fast and this place positively gleamed. It’s a big, huge part of enjoying your workout experience, are you with me ladies?

Finally, if you did want to hang out and talk to someone cute afterward, there’s an Elixir health cafe with all kinds of yummy drinks and things right on the premises. I can see myself coming here often after a workout. I’d take an Elixir over a Starbucks any day.

All in all, great experience. What more can I say beside this is the single nicest gym I’ve ever been in? If you’d like to check out an Equinox Fitness Club near you, click here for a 3-day trial membership and tell ‘em Dangerous Minds sent you.

 
From the annals of good ideas gone horribly, horribly, wrong, comes this seriously misguided attempt at a domestic violence awareness campaign.  As hatched by a Danish advocacy group, the “Hit The Bitch” website allows you (or someone like you), in the guise a meaty male hand, to beat the crap out of a woman.  And, for the sake of convenience, to simulate the beating, you can use either your mouse or your webcam.  Here’s what Gwen Sharp at Sociological Images has to say about it:

The woman gets increasingly bruised and bloodied as you hit her.  I forced myself to try the site and hit her twice, and it was honestly sickening to watch her head jerk backward or to the side and hear the sound of the slap and her reacting.  At the top, a counter keeps track; you start out as 100% Pussy, 0% Gangsta, but your Gangsta rating goes up every time you hit her (below).

Apparently, though, when you get up to where you?

Everything is Terrible is a stoner video art collective from Planet Nibiru or some such shit. They are, in my opinion, the funniest and most creative video producers on the Internet (yes, even more than Jandrewedits). Maybe it’s because I was a kid in the 80s and 90s and all the crap they sample is hardwired into my soul: after-school specials, weird toy commercials, Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, Xuxa, Barney, etc. etc. Enjoy the video. It peaks at 4:20 when the Christian youth do the Quan Yin.

 
Freelance creative types rejoice—France has just the hotel for you!  For only 99 Euros a night, you, too, can eat grain, run on a giant wheel, and crash out on a bed of hay.

 
(via Reuters)