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‘Generations’: Exclusive interview with legendary photographer Scot Sothern
05.11.2022
08:52 am
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scotsothern_weirdo
‘Wierdo.’
 
Scot Sothern grew up in a photographic studio. His old man photographed weddings and portraits. He told him: When you take a portrait of the bride you gotta see her with the same love the groom has for her. It was a lesson Sothern never forgot.

Sothern worked around the studio. He started in the dark room then ended up taking wedding photos. He was expected to take over the family business. Sothern wanted to be a writer or maybe an artist like Andy Warhol.

It was the late 1960s. A time of revolutions. Sexual, social and political.  Sothern quit home in Springfield, Missouri and headed for Southern California looking for teenage dreams of sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll. He wasn’t making it as an artist. He wasn’t making it as a writer. Instead of giving up Sothern thought “fuck it, I’ll do whatever I want.” He started taking photographs. Kids making out at the skating rink. Working guys drinking at a bar. White working class people on the periphery. But no one was interested.

In the 1980s, Sothern documented the junkies, winos, and hookers. He followed his “hard-on.” He photographed his subjects with the same love a groom felt for his bride. He shot with a flashbulb or used sunlight. Nothing else. He showed his father his work. He liked the composition, the lighting, the power. The subject matter not so much. His brother thought he was “degenerate”. Sothern’s work said as much about his life as it did about the women and men he was photographing. He wrote the down their conversations. A short story of their lives. Still no one took an interest.
 
scotsothern_lowlife
From ‘Low Life.’
 
1990: Sothern has motor bike accident. He stops taking photographs. He starts writing. But no one’s interested. He returned to photographing the people most politicians want to forget. The poor, homeless, and fucked-up.

It took 40-years for Sothern to get established. 40-years of rejection slips, and sorry this ain’t our kinda shit letters. In 2010, John Matkowsky at the drkrm Gallery in LA put on Sothern’s first solo show Lowlife. At the age of 60, Sothern had arrived.

Over the past decade, Sothern has exhibited across the USA and in Europe. He has published several books and launched a parallel career as a writer. This month, These Days will exhibit two major Sothern exhibitions under the title Generations: Sothern’s earliest personal photographs, Family Tree 1975-1980, and his most recent body of work, Identity both of which “explore time, change, and the multi-directional evolution of America.”
 
scotsothern_generations
 
Tell me about your new exhibition ‘Generations’?

Scot Sothern: Well, Generations consists of two different bodies of works. The Family Tree photos were shot nearly fifty years ago and I think the original impetus was all about making my photography something more than portraits and snapshots. I was still in my twenties and mostly running wild, with little respect for the societal norms. I decided the best way to rationalize my lifestyle was to call myself an artist.

The other half of Generations, Identity, comes from looking for something new and wearing my politics on my sleeve. America has changed to a very different place since the Family Tree series, a lot the good of the Baby Boomer generation has decayed or was merely a delusion in the first place. A lot of things got fixed but in general America is fucked-up. I’m inspired by anger and I find I am inspired by younger generations of people who are reclaiming the identities that had been previously been kept in the closets.
 
scotsothernfonz
‘The Fonz.’
 
More from Scot Sothern after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.11.2022
08:52 am
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Debutantes, drag queens & Vaseline: The epic ‘Coming Out Party for Miss Alice Cooper,’ 1971
07.29.2020
03:50 pm
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An alternate image for Alice Cooper’s album ‘Killer.’ This image was also used for a calendar that came along with the record.
 
In the May 6th, 1972 issue of Billboard, there’s an amusing story about how a controversial poster of Alice Cooper (pictured above) ended up plastered on a “staff only” door in the White House during Richard Nixon’s administration. Allegedly, someone at Warner Bros., Cooper’s label at the time, had a pal (described as a “semi-longhaired fellow”) who worked at the White House. The W.H. staffer’s rocker friend would send him care packages full of records and other Warner-related stuff including a poster of Alice Cooper hanging from a noose covered in fake blood. The image was an alternate for Cooper’s 1971 album Killer and also appeared on a nifty Alice Cooper calendar for 1972, included in the record. The staffer then took the poster and stuck it on a door at the end of a “staff only” corridor in the W.H., presumably until it was discovered and burned by one of Tricky Dick’s dicks.

Did this really happen? One can only hope, as Bob Regehr, one of Warner’s greatest assets in the 70s and 80s, was Cooper’s champion and likely had everything to do with the circulation of this fantastic piece of folklore. Regehr was instrumental in signing acts like Roxy Music, the Sex Pistols, and Laurie Anderson. Back in the day, Cooper had Regehr in the first spot in his Rolodex, and for their next act to keep Killer on everyone’s mind, they devised a plan to throw an elaborate party in Cooper’s honor. And when I say “elaborate,” I really mean “deranged,” which makes more sense since this was 1971 and Alice Cooper was involved.

But before we get to the party to end all parties, there’s a little twist as to why the party was dubbed “The Coming Out Party for Miss Alice Cooper.” According to another Warner executive, Stan Cornyn, he was part of a conversation about Killer with Joel Friedman, Warner’s head of distribution for the U.S., and Regehr, who was heading up Warner’s Artist Relations. When Cornyn heard Friedman say, “Alice Cooper! Her record is doing great!” he and Regehr dreamed up the idea of Cooper “coming out” to the world during a star-studded, debaucherous party. And that’s precisely what happened—because it ain’t a real party until the gorilla suit rented for the occasion goes missing during the festivities, never to be seen again.

Held at The Ambassador Hotel, the hotel staff did not know any of the details behind the “coming out” party to be held in their Venetian ballroom. Here’s the wording on the invitation:

“You and a guest are cordially invited to attend the summer season debut of Alice Cooper, to be held at the Venetian Room, Ambassador Hotel, 3400 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, the evening of Wednesday, July 14th, 8:30 PM to midnight. Formal dress or equivalent costume is requested, but hardly mandatory.”

The details of the party were left to Dennis Lopez who had plenty of experience throwing unforgettable bashes all over San Francisco for legendary drag troupe The Cockettes. Cooper was known to spend time with the Cockettes whenever he came through S.F., as Cooper dug their “gender fuck” vibe, and likewise, the Cockettes dug Cooper’s over-the-top showmanship. Advertised as a “formal dress” kind of ball, many guests did arrive dressed to the nines. Inside the Venetian Room, an orchestra was in full swing. After guests were greeted by a Cockette dressed in a gorilla suit, more Cockettes (many with beards, beaded gowns, and headdresses) threw red roses as approximately 500 party goers entered, including Randy Newman, various Beach Boys, Gordon Lightfoot, Donovan, and Cynthia Plaster Caster. Because it’s not a fucking party until someone sticks their dick in a plaster mold. Other members of the Cockettes were dressed as cigarette girls offering up cigars, cigarettes, and Vaseline. In addition to the orchestra, Elsie May, aka T.V. Mama (a former backup singer for James Brown), and her “stoned-freak out soul band” ran through a few numbers before T.V. Mama (a lady of “ample” proportions) stripped down to her undies and performed topless. But what about the guest of honor, Alice Cooper?

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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07.29.2020
03:50 pm
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Occultism, cinema and architecture: How a ouija board built the Bradbury Building
02.21.2018
12:33 pm
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As a native Angeleno, I love my city and its architecture. Mostly I love the insane stories that lie within each building’s walls, especially if they somehow involve strange occult groups or bizarre happenings. Luckily for me, LA has plenty of these around. My favorite structure (for many reasons) has a deep history with occultism and is quite well known in the film and television industry. Along with luminaries like classic film actor Edmond O’Brien and action star Rutger Hauer to pop music icon Janet Jackson, the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles has played a co-starring role in many media events over the last 75 years. The building made famous by Blade Runner and the set of Rhythm Nation 1814, MGM’s White Cliffs of Dover (Clarence Brown, 1944) and more, now houses offices of Marvel Comics and other businesses. But that was not always the intent. The design of the Bradbury was quite different and far more “spiritually” engaging. 

Millionaire Louis Bradbury selected George Herbert Wyman to prepare the design for the building and commissioned it in the 1890s. Wyman, working under well-established architect Sumner P. Hunt at the time, was not known but he had what Bradbury was looking for: less conventionality, more creativity, and an interest in more radical architectural design. Influenced by a novel published in 1888 by journalist Edward Bellamy called Looking Backward: 2000-1887, the men conspired to make the Bradbury Building a physical incarnation of utopianism and futurist thought. Within the book, Bellamy spoke of buildings “full of light” designed with windows that allowed this luminosity to flow in from the sides of the building as well as from the roof. This aspect of Bellamy-ism described a construction centered on the virtue of building to and for the very notion of natural lighting, something that ended up being very useful to future filmmakers!

George Wyman and Louis Bradbury were not alone in their attraction to futuristic thinkers like Bellamy. During this time, Los Angeles was home to many clubs, social gatherings and meetings of utopian societies centered on such aesthetic ideals spoke of in books like Looking Backward. But George Wyman was still unsure about taking the contract due to his underling status with Sumner P. Hunt. He felt it would be a betrayal of sorts. So he decided, like any good early 20th century man, to let the decision be influenced by the occult. While this was not singular to LA, as much as any Angeleno loved a good futurist ideal, they adored spiritualism even more. George Wyman decided to contact his dead brother via what we know now as a Ouija board.

Young Mark Wyman had died a few years earlier and George felt it would be best to get Mark’s feelings on the Bradbury contract. According to sources as close to the family as Wyman’s own daughter, the message received via the planchette was: “Take the Bradbury Building. It will make you famous.” George Wyman took the contract. The beautiful Bradbury Building opened in 1893, located at 304 South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. It was just about as full of art nouveau glory, wrought iron strength and light-expansive splendor as a building could possibly be. Sadly, Mr. Bradbury had passed away a few months earlier so he never got to see his creation at its fullest. 

One of my favorite films to be shot here is Rudolph Maté’s D.O.A. (1950) starring Edmond O’Brien. D.O.A. opens with the conclusion of the film and is one of the darkest, most engaging B-noirs ever made. The famous opening scene offers Frank Bigelow (O’Brien) entering the Homicide Division office located in the Los Angeles City Hall building. He sits down, and states: “I want to report a murder.” The commanding officer asks him who was murdered and the camera finally shows us O’Brien’s face. “I was,” he breathes. The rest of the film is a non-stop roller coaster; documenting Bigelow’s action-packed last 24 hours of existence searching for his killer.

The grand finale made great use of the elegant Bradbury Building walkways located outside the offices. The dramatic staircases and wrought-iron elevators add to the film’s drama and visual set-up. The design and openness of the building allow for the full noir vision to be captured in a low-light setting. D.O.A. was a low-budget film, made in under a month. Headed up by Rudolph Maté and shot by Ernest Laszlo, the dystopian visuals affected by their lighting and narrative worked perfectly with the Bradbury’s design.

As Thom Anderson details in his film essay, Los Angeles Plays Itself, director Ridley Scott and his screenwriter did not initially agree on shooting locations for what many consider to be one of the greatest science-fiction and neo-noir films of all time: Blade Runner (1982). Writer Hampton Fancher knew that the building was in regular usage for filming at this moment in time and felt that its idiosyncratic aesthetic made it far too recognizable of a structure. Ridley Scott felt differently. “It hasn’t been done the way I’m going to do it,” he stated. Scott knew that the visual landscape planned for Blade Runner matched the architecture of the Bradbury Building perfectly. It even allowed for the fact that, by the 1980s, the building was a little worse for wear (the building was renovated in the early ‘90s, but in 1982 it was pretty run down).

The beautiful multi-paneled skylight stretching over the atrium on the Bradbury, influenced by early 20th Century futurism, now became a whole new science fiction: Scott exploited that with style, shining searchlights and blinking neon through the ceiling, calling attention to the anxious and claustrophobic feel of the film.

Today’s Bradbury Building may not look exactly like it did when these works were shot, but it still maintains the architectural schema that Wyman and Bradbury originally planned. It is an extraordinary place to behold: light flowing in from the windowed ceiling, breathtakingly beautiful latticed ironwork on the elevators. Filmic works that are shot there now are typically less nihilistic than the ones of the past but since the renovation, the building is in better shape. As part of our treasured Los Angeles history, the 125-year-old building is the oldest structure to be named as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (LAHCM). It has also been nationally recognized, garnering a place in the US National Register of Historic Places and a US National Historic Landmark. Not too shabby for a building whose contractor took the job from an Ouija board response.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Ariel Schudson
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02.21.2018
12:33 pm
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Angry Samoans, Dickies, Suburban Lawns and more in a cable TV report on L.A. punk (c. 1980)


 
What’s Up America was a newsmagazine show that ran on Showtime from 1978 to 1981, covering “topics such as BB guns; female boxers; urban cowboys; Elvis Presley impersonators; chariot racers in Pocatello, Idaho; and a couple who lived year-round on Liberty Island in New York Harbor,” as well as pay TV premiums like “pornographic film actors, strippers, prostitutes, and a nude beauty pageant.”

One segment, roughly contemporary with The Decline of Western Civilization, profiled the Los Angeles punk scene. There are not-so-familiar faces and voices, like those of Orange County’s Nu-Beams, and slightly more familiar ones, like those of Claude “Kickboy Face” Bessy and Phranc of Catholic Discipline, BÖC lyricist and VOM singer Richard Meltzer, and DJ Rodney Bingenheimer.

Speaking of Rodney, the warm feelings showfolk used to pretend to have for one another are not much in evidence on this broadcast: the Angry Samoans name the former English Disco owner as one of the people they would like to murder, along with Kim Fowley, Phil Spector, and “Rockefeller” (Nelson?), who, as one member points out, is already dead. The report opens with the Samoans at Blackies (the club Black Flag’s then-singer Ron Reyes mentions during the introduction to “Revenge” in Decline), playing their love song “You Stupid Asshole.”
 

 
The Suburban Lawns are in there, performing their self-released first single “Gidget Goes to Hell,” then in its second pressing. (I think this dates the show to ‘79-‘80, or else the Lawns would be plugging “Janitor.”) Bassist Vex Billingsgate expresses the wish that a record company will soon relieve the band of its independence. The show saves the Dickies, the first L.A. punk band signed to a major label, for last. Singer Leonard Phillips spells out the Dickies’ ethic, or lack of same:

We’re not really aggravated about a producer taking our live sound and transforming it into a commercially successful product, because we’re capitalists, and if it’s going to help us sell more records, I certainly would make a compromise.

Watch it after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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11.16.2017
08:29 am
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‘Kimono My House’: Sparks’ audio guide to the Los Angeles rock scene of the Sixties
12.30.2016
09:31 am
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Before they were Sparks, brothers Ron and Russell Mael were teenagers growing up in Pacific Palisades. More than the sunbeams, they bathed in the sound waves of the mid-to-late Sixties’ rock product, nourishing themselves on the transcendent and the trash alike. A decade later, after Sparks had achieved champion status on the international rock market, Russell Mael went on the radio to play his favorite songs from that period and talk about his LA adolescence.

The broadcast is about two hours long. According to the blog stranger than known, where I came across this remarkable recording, it’s a tape of Russell Mael’s appearance on BBC Radio 1 around November 1979. If the date’s correct, Mael would have been promoting Sparks’ collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, No. 1 in Heaven.

Mael sets up each song with a cultural observation, bit of rock lore, or a memory: seeing the Doors at local dances, auditioning bass players for garage bands with the ascending line from “Hey Joe,” driving up to San Francisco to see Moby Grape, watching surfers put lemon juice in their hair, playing the “Louie Louie” single at 33⅓ rpm in the hope of hearing a secret, lewd message, and so on.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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12.30.2016
09:31 am
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‘He was like a walking hit of acid’: Remembering Rex Thompson of the Summer Hits (1968-2016)
09.14.2016
11:59 am
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Rex in the Sea of Cortez, Baja Mexico 2001
Rex in the Sea of Cortez, Baja Mexico 2001 Sasha Eisenman/Sun-Godz
 
In the early 1990’s a 22-year old surfer kid from Newport Beach hit the L.A. music scene and turned it inside out. Rex Kingsley Thompson (nickname: “Tatarex”) was a thin, cool, attractive, 6’4” tall creation that looked like he had just arrived in a time machine. His band The Summer Hits released a handful of singles between 1992-1996 and were played on BBC Radio 1 by legendary deejay John Peel. Then like a flash, Rex left southern California for Europe without a penny in his pocket where he spent twelve years exploring chic, tropical islands and castles with beautiful women of royalty. Last week the news of Rex’s passing at the age of 47 hit the internet and saddened thousands of friends and followers who recount his super unconventional lifestyle and profound cult-like influence on people everywhere he went.
 
Known around skateboard parks for always drinking pink lemonade, Tatarex was also somewhat of a local at “The Wedge” in Orange County, a surfing spot just off the end of the Balboa Peninsula popular for its big waves and laid-back lifestyle. As a mohawked youth back in Glendora, Rex had originally intended to be a tennis player but once he hit his 20’s and left home he began shifting his focus towards other interests such as fashion, the beach, music, and recreational drug use. “He walked around like he was this psychedelic blue blood sometimes. You know what I mean? Because he was always asking everybody about their fashion, and clothes, and hygiene, and appearance. He didn’t judge you he would just kind of point people in the direction of the finer things in life. Not just expensive things, but the things that make you live free and think that you can really enjoy life” says longtime friend Brent Rademaker.
 
Rex drove around in a Volkswagon bus he called “Peanut” searching local vintage stores for groovy clothes and groovy records. Brent recalls the modes of communication before cell phones existed: “He worked at the Newport Classic Inn, I’d call him there. The only way to get in touch with him would be to call him at work. He’d answer the phone ‘Good afternoon the Newport Classic Inn Hotel this is Rex speaking’ It was kind of like the thing in Quadrophenia when the Ace Face gets outed as a bellboy. I even went down there and Rex is dressed in a button-down shirt with a tie. Darren and I came from Florida and Rex really lived all things west coast and lived all things southern California. He made us honorary Californians and he didn’t treat us as outsiders.”
 
The Summer Hits, mid-'90s collage courtesy of Brent Rademaker
The Summer Hits, mid-‘90s collage courtesy of Brent Rademaker
 
With no prior musical experience or training, Rex picked up a left-handed bass and taught himself to play. After his first band fell apart (a C86 influenced local group called Speed Racer) Rex formed The Summer Hits by recruiting friends Darren Rademaker and Josh Schwartz (of the lo-fi “indie rock” band Further). They released a handful of 7"s on labels such as Small-Fi, Volvolo, Silver Girl, and 1000 Guitar Mania. Rex’s unique singing voice on the 8-track recordings was nearly drowned out by a wall of fuzz and feedback, with lyrics that reflected all of his most favorite things: summer, the beach, drugs, listening to music, girls, runnin’ from the fuzz, and retreating into the desert night.
 
In 1997 the year following the band’s split, Brent issued The Summer Hits compilation CD on his own label Xmas Records. “I took every dime I had to put that Beaches and Canyons CD together. I found all the comp tracks and all the singles and all the tapes and I took them down to Capitol (Records) tower and mastered them. The guy looked at me like I was insane when it came on. You know? And I’m like ‘Can you add even more fuzz?’ and he’s like ‘What?! I can’t clean these up,’ I said ‘I don’t want you to clean them up, I want you to make them dirtier.’”
 

 
Besides being the life of the party and a psychedelic social butterfly, Rex Thompson had been making amazing mixtapes which were then duplicated and passed down by friends and friends of friends. The more tapes Rex made the deeper the tracks got and the more extensive his handwritten linear notes became.  One tape of Rex’s in particular titled Find the Sun really stood out amongst his circle of friends and focused on recordings from 1966-1973 by groups all over the world experimenting with the “west coast sound.” Rex’s personal description of the tape was “Magic hippie vibes for lost cosmic children with countrified brains.” Brent recalls, “It had a great title and it was full of obscure, beautiful, beautiful groups. One day Chris Gunst, Josh Schwartz, and I were listening to that tape and one of us just said ‘We can make a group that sounds like this.’ Slowly our clothes started changing, next thing Chris was wearing cowboy western shirts.” L.A. supergroup Beachwood Sparks was formed, they had a successful career on Sub Pop Records and were later featured on the soundtrack to the 2010 cult classic Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. “We wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for that tape and Rex’s influence.”
 
Radio Stars vol.8 mixtape courtesy of Sasha Eisenman
“Radio Stars vol.8” mixtape courtesy of Sasha Eisenman/Sun-Godz
 
Find the Sun mixtape linear notes courtesy of Maura Klosterman
“Find the Sun” mixtape linear notes courtesy of Maura Klosterman
 
“Another thing that speaks so highly of Rex, the linear notes on his tapes are so in depth. And I’m not saying that the pre-internet world didn’t learn or share knowledge or do research. But at what he had at his disposal he really went in depth and he knew what he was talking about when he was talking about country rock, psych, folk, west coast garage, fuzz. Whatever it was, he knew it.”
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Doug Jones
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09.14.2016
11:59 am
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Angelyne’s pink Corvette is up for auction
06.30.2016
09:30 am
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A vintage shot of LA icon Angelyne and her life-sized Barbie car, a pink Chevrolet Corvette.
 
According a listing on eBay platinum-haired goddess of self-promotion Angelyne (the real star of Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise in her role as the uncredited “auditioning singer”) has put her pink Corvette (one of at least ten Corvette’s that Angelyne has owned throughout her reign as the undisputed billboard queen of Los Angeles) up for auction.

The sweet ride comes with a removable top (because, of course it does) and Angelyne herself will even sign this hot pink rocket for the winning bidder. Here’s Angelyne talking about her love of all things pink and the aquisition of her ninth Corvette back in 2014:

I got my first one in the mid-eighties. This is my ninth one, and I’m going to get my tenth next year. I had a special paint made for me. It has a formula that is very hard to get because it uses a toner that they don’t make anymore.

Right now the bidding for the ultimate adult-sized Barbie mobile is at $12,111.00 and according to the listing the reserve has still not been met.
 

 
More images of the infamous LA blonde and one of her equally famous pink cars follow after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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06.30.2016
09:30 am
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‘We Destroy the Family: Punks vs Parents’: Ludicrous 1982 local L.A. news report
05.27.2015
12:03 pm
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From another ABC Afterschool Special

“We Destroy the Family: Punks vs Parent,” is a 1982 report from LA’s KABC, and it is fantastic vintage moral panic. The segment opens with a Fear show, and in case viewers couldn’t make out the lyrics to “We Destroy the Family,” Lee Ving laughingly provides a spoken-word clarification of the refrain—has he no decency?!? One can assume from the narrator’s serious tone that the viewers are expected to take the threat of punk to the family, very, very seriously, while completely disregarding the fact that hippies (and likely some of these kids’ parents) were expressing similar disdain for the status quo just a few short years prior (albeit on different drugs).

It’s interesting that punk scare-mongering like this and the infamous ABC Afterschool SpecialThe Day My Kid Went Punk” were aired in the 80s—the latter as late as 1987! This is well past the initial punk explosion, but it coincides with the scene’s rebirth as hardcore in the “respectable” suburbs. The resulting cultural anxieties produced Tipper Gore’s busybody committee, the “Parents Music Resource Group” in 1985, who pushed for censorship on the Senate floor at the same time Jello Biafra was being tried on obscenity charges for an H.R. Giger album insert poster. Watching a ludicrous interview with square parents and their gum-chewing punk kids in “We Destroy the Family,” it’s actually kind of tragic how the obvious disaffection and alienation of the era’s youth went ignored as their artistic outlets were attacked.

You can watch parts Two and Three here.
 

 
Via Network Awesome

Posted by Amber Frost
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05.27.2015
12:03 pm
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New Yorkers & Angelenos absolutely losing their sh*t over a bicoastal video hook-up in 1980
11.20.2014
10:24 am
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It’s obscene how we take technology for granted. The Internet is the greatest communication tool since the written word, and what do I do with it? I (expertly) evaluate dick jokes for wage labor, and look at videos of cats soothing babies to alleviate my Seasonal Affective Disorder. We’ve not always been so cynical though.

Artists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz created an installation called “Hole in Space” in 1980. Utilizing cutting edge satellite technology, life-sized audio-visual transmissions were displayed in real-time between New York’s Lincoln Center and an open air shopping mall in Century City, Los Angeles. Not only was the installation setup utilizing technology few had ever seen (much less used), no explanation was given for what was transpiring and no sponsors or artists were credited—it was sort of a huge, impromptu guerrilla video-chat.

Unlike say, a Google Hangout or Skype chat, participants in the piece (who were completely random passers-by), had no “video reflection” of themselves—they couldn’t see their own transmission as the other line did, because there was no extra window mirroring them. This made for a completely organic, unselfconscious moment of communication. The piece ran in two hour increments, for three days (November 11, 13 and 14) and as news of the public-space, bicoastal party line spread, the crowds grew.
 

 
The video below is taken from those impromptu interactions between New York and LA, and it’s absolutely amazing. Viewers/communicators are so shocked and delighted by such a seamless connectivity across the country—it’s an incredibly moving thing to witness. I can’t actually think of a time in my entire adult life where I’ve been as surprised or affected by technology as these people were—much less in public.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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11.20.2014
10:24 am
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Man shouts ‘I love Jesus,’ breaks into cop car as Darth Vader looks on and Superman does nothing
02.12.2014
10:50 am
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This item is… so so many things.

Yesterday on the “Walk of Fame” near the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd in Los Angeles, a man armed with an iron pipe was caught on video yelling “I love Jesus” as he smashed out the windows of a parked LAPD patrol car, before stealing the cops’ laptop! Then he just walked a few feet away and started using it!

Even better? A Darth Vader impersonator watched as a KTLA news crew captured the scene.  Additionally, a man dressed as Superman remarked “I saw the whole thing. It’s not my job to jump in the middle.”

Only in LA, kids, only in LA…

[The video autoplays, so I’m tucking it after the jump.]

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.12.2014
10:50 am
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Breaking news: IT’S RAINING IN LOS ANGELES!!!
11.22.2013
10:58 am
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Call the National Guard! Call FEMA! It’s raining in Los Angeles everybody!!!

I live in Los Angeles. It rained (not heavily) for about five hours. This reminds me of when I lived in Cincinnati, OH, and everytime there was a possibility of snow—even for a freakin’ flurry—the news would call it “White Death.”
 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.22.2013
10:58 am
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Awesome aerial video of Los Angeles shot with a quadcopter and GoPro camera
07.19.2013
02:14 pm
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For those of you who have never been to Los Angeles, this video pretty much captures the essence of the City of Angels. This is what LA—or large chunks of it, at least—really looks like.

For those of you who used to live in L.A. or haven’t visited in some time, you’ll probably find it nostalgic.

Video by Clay Folden.

Posted by Tara McGinley
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07.19.2013
02:14 pm
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How We’ll Live: Futurists’ 1988 predictions about life in 2013
03.15.2013
05:25 pm
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image
 
I love “futurism” but I like it even better when it’s being seen in the rear view mirror. That’s when it gets really interesting for me.

A few years back I re-read most of the 70s and 80s books by Alvin Toffler, futurist author of such best-selling and influential works hailing “the shape of things to come” as Future Shock, The Third Wave and Power Shift. It’s simply amazing how right on the money Toffler was (for the most part) and his classic, now literally decades out-of-date books are still just as much fun to read to see what he got wrong, as much to see what he got right, and why.

In 1988, The Los Angeles Times Magazine published an ambitious, 16 page cover story written by Nicole Yorkin that drew from interviews she had conducted with a few dozen futurists trying to project how people would live in Los Angeles in the year 2013. They got the great Syd Mead, the “visual futurist” and conceptual artist behind Aliens, Blade Runner and Tron—an inspired choice—to illustrate it.

How much of the piece got it right is now, 25 years later, the subject of a graduate engineering class taught at USC by Prof. Jerry Lock­en­our:

Lockenour provided his 25 students with electronic copies of the magazine and they divvied up the articles to determine which of the 1988 predictions came true. To their surprise, the students — some of whom weren’t even born when Yorkin’s look into the future was published — found that many predictions have become reality.

Yorkin’s experts had foreseen smart cars that would drive themselves by 2013. The luxury cars that she wrote about zipping eastbound in the 118 Freeway’s “electro lanes” were outfitted with “inductive couplers” — something that isn’t on the market yet. But the technology exists: Google engineers are testing driverless cars that are equipped with a laser radar system.

“You find some cars that will help park themselves now, so parts of it have already happened,” said Mohammadali Parsian, a 23-year-old USC student from Iran. “Electro lanes? It makes sense…. It takes 25 or 30 years for new things to come into place.”

Classmate Chiraag Dodhia, 24, of Kenya, was also startled by how many of the 1988 transportation predictions were on target. “Things like every car will have computers. Back then it wasn’t common for cars to have diagnostic features and low tire-pressure alarms,” he said.

Other things forecast by the magazine — magnetic induction that lifts cars off the road, car computers that talk to other cars’ computers — may be on the horizon, Dodhia said.

The 1988 forecasts saw a high-tech revolution occurring in public schools by 2013. There would be neighborhood satellite campuses of about 300 pupils with high-resolution computer screens for walls and ceilings. Desks would have built-in computers operated by smart cards.

“Her prediction was not that far off,” said graduate student Nikolaos Vagias, 26, of Greece. “We don’t have smart cards, but we have smartphones and tablets with all these applications. Just like the article said, the price of computers is going down so every kid can afford one.”

Hitendra Mistry, a 25-year-old student from India, noted that even Lockenour’s course is live-streamed to students elsewhere through USC’s Distance Educational Network.

Walter Glaeser, a 50-year-old Boeing systems engineer who lives in St. Louis, is one of nine students taking the class through the network. Some of the magazine’s predictions were far-fetched, he said, but then again, “I’ve never actually met any of my USC professors face to face in the time I’ve been pursuing my master’s degree.”

Some of the original 1988 article is a little locally focused to be of much interest to non Los Angelenos, but man, oh man is it fascinating to those of us who live here to see how much of if they—especially Syd Mead, who once called science fiction “reality ahead of schedule”—got right. If the image on the cover didn’t predict today’s gleaming, overly-developed area near the Staples Center in downtown LA with eerie prescience—downtown was exactly like Mad Max back in 1988, one of the worst, most insane skidrow areas in all of America—then I don’t know what would have!

Ironically, it was the Los Angeles Times Magazine itself that didn’t make it to 2013, as the magazine was shuttered in 2012.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.15.2013
05:25 pm
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Think Pink: Angelyne, the Billboard Queen of LA sings her totally 80s New Wave non-hit
01.30.2013
09:51 am
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“Barbie wishes she were me.”—Angelyne

At one time she was impossible not to notice around the City of Angels: Angelyne the billboard queen, famous for being, uh, “famous” and for having large outdoor billboards of herself plastered all over Los Angeles (Her billboards quasi-qualified as LA “landmarks” just like smog, the Hollywood sign or palm trees; one of them even made the opening montage of Moonlighting, something later parodied in the Futurama credits). For decades she has been a well-known sight, driving around town, as she still does, in her shocking pink Stingray Corvette. She sells Angelyne tee-shirts and merchandise from the trunk of her car.

Although she seemed to have no talent, no real career and no visible means of support, there were rumors for years—Angelyne is notoriously tight-lipped about her “mystique”—that her boyfriend owned the outdoor advertising company that festooned her doughy features across Los Angeles County. Angelyne would say only that she had “investors.” Her signs were everywhere. In 1996, the height of it, probably, I counted fifteen large ones, some of them in prime places—such as Hollywood Blvd and overlooking the 101 freeway near Universal, the very same location that inexplicably kept up a sign for Terminator III: Rise of the Machines before, during and even after the Governator’s term in office—but the LA Times estimated that there were as many as 300 including bus shelter ads. I’d guess that the total cost per year was well in excess of a million dollars. These days there aren’t any that I am aware of, although a new one popped up briefly when they were shooting the Tom Cruise movie Rock of Ages.

Angelyne seems to be a loopy sort of gal. In 2001, I wanted to do a TV piece about Angelyne for UK TV (she had an art show at the time that consisted entirely of self-portraits) but she demanded a ridiculous amount of money per minute—it wasn’t even a round number, something weird like $2242.00 per half-hour—and she just would not budge (I’ve read of producers going up against this same issue, but getting her to finally agree to an interview for $20 worth of candy).

I’m pretty sure that her album came out in 1984. I wanted to post this one a while ago, but all of the versions I could find online were pretty ratty. Here, at long last(?) is Angelyne’s “My List”:
 

 
Get a look inside of Angelyne’s tastefully appointed pink Malibu condo: Angelyne the Billboard Queen Sellin’ Short in the ‘Bu (Realestalker)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.30.2013
09:51 am
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Mark Ebner’s ‘The Rat’: An incredible true tale of a Drug Kingpin who turned Informant

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DM pal, Mark Ebner has posted an excellent article “The Rat” about a former drug king pin turned informant, over at his Hollywood Interrupted site.

“The Rat” tells the story of the man who “ran one of California’s biggest drug empires… …complete with all the trappings — Ferraris, strippers, tricked-out jacuzzis, and garish fake waterfalls – then, the Feds ran him.” 

Mark first met “The Rat” while he was working on one of his books:

‘While researching Six Degrees of Paris Hilton, from out of the blue I received an email from someone claiming that he knew more about one of the criminals I was writing about than anyone. Intrigued, I phoned him, and soon realized that it was HIS story I wanted to tell…

‘“The Rat” and I have remained friends through the years, and I trust him with my life. Once, when I had to confront a pair of Russian mobsters operating out of a pawn shop front, The Rat flew down from Seattle to simply stand behind me and look intimidating. Only a true friend would do something like that.’

Mark also tells Dangerous Minds that “The Rat” will be going public this Thursday, when he will reveal his true identity for the first time on camera.

For my money, Ebner is the best investigative journalist around. He digs up stories long before anyone gets a whiff that there is anything bad going on, and delivers top drawer copy every time. He has also written 3 killer books:  Hollywood Interrupted, Six Degrees of Paris Hilton, and We Have Your Husband: One Woman’s Terrifying Story of a Kidnapping in Mexico, and is currently working on his next.

Here is an extract from Mark’s article on “The Rat”:

The first sign that something was wrong was when a car followed him onto his street – a one-way cul-de-sac at the top of Nichols Canyon in the Hollywood Hills where the mansions start at a million dollars. He was driving back from Bad Boys Bail Bonds, where he’d just dropped three grand to spring one of his drivers who had gotten popped in Santa Monica on a routine haul. Earlier in the day, he had pulled off the kind of transaction that some dealers go their whole lives without seeing – 300 pounds of primo weed for $1 million, which had netted him a cool $90,000 for two hours work. His senses heightened, he could feel the vibe going sour as he steered his discreet rental car past his own driveway. Another 60 feet, and suddenly there were searchlights washing every street corner – at least 30 undercover police cars – with a helicopter swooping down on top of him in case he decided to make a run for it down the open cliff face.

“I hadn’t done a deal in six months,” says Oz (most names in this story have been changed), a 48-year-old ex-marijuana trafficker and big-time baller who once dominated the I-5 corridor from British Columbia to Tijuana, was responsible for 70 percent of the marijuana smoked in Los Angeles and saw $4 million move through his operation every two weeks. “They take me inside – they’re stripping the house, and here’s my $90,000 all out on the table. I said, ‘Dude, just shoot me now. I don’t blame you guys, but I’m not going to rat on any of my people, so I’d prefer to be dead.’ The Fed says, ‘No, man, I can’t do that. But we need to talk.’”

Cruising through the Hills in a tricked-out Lincoln Navigator, on loan from a fellow drug runner who got out of the game when he found religion, Oz can’t help but point the sites of his former glory: The Russian tanning salon in Hollywood where you could order up Vicodin or steroids on demand; the Melrose Avenue tattoo shop that moves 50 to a hundred pounds of weed a week; the Mexican restaurant that serves up kilos of coke with its carne asada. But he is less expansive when describing his life since the 2004 bust that curtailed his hand-built empire – and his uneasy resurrection as an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency. In the world he lived in for over 20 years, the worst thing you could be was a rat – a turnabout of fate that obviously weighs heavy on him. In the past three years, Oz has survived three suicide attempts – not counting his choice of livelihood.

Still retaining the hard angles and displaced muscle mass from his early years as a bodybuilder and protracted steroid enthusiast, Oz today most resembles Arnold Schwarzenegger if you put him through a threshing machine and then tried to spot-weld the bigger pieces back together. He’s had his bicep torn off from trying to break a guy’s neck in a bar, all his teeth are capped from being broken off in fights and he’s literally got screws in his head to hold his skull in place. He earned the sometimes nickname “Shrek” from taking so many punches to the face that his eyebrows calcified into scar tissue, leaving a large protruding ridge in his forehead. And in the kind of colorful anecdote that no doubt made it easier for him to do his job, he once bit his best friend’s ear off in the back seat of a limo.

“I have a short man’s complex,” admits the 5’8, 220-pound brawler, still capable of flashes of intense anger and pervasive menace, as well as intense emotion over the secondary victims of his chosen lifestyle. “I realized at one point that most people were my friends because they were scared of me. I’ve never killed anybody, but I’ve hurt a lot of people – and every one of them deserved it.”

Now read on…

More from Mark Ebner at his site Hollywood Interrupted.

Update

My DM colleague, Marc Campbell has passed on this episode of Media Mayhem, with Mark Ebner, which contains the first on-camera interview with ‘The Rat’.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Being a Short Tale of Mark Ebner and His Adventures on Drastic Radio


 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.17.2012
07:15 pm
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