Could Alternate Reality’s “The King That Never Was” be the worst song and music video of 2011? You tell me.
The video starts out with the aesthetic of a high budget porno, but then it unexpectedly turns into something else… wizardcore! Yep, I said wizardcore! Seriously, this needs to been seen to be believed. Take that, Rebecca Black!
Does anyone else find it entertaining that the lead singer doesn’t even have a microphone?
Barbara Dayan of Nimcompoop Nipomo, CA (supposedly) writes:
Dear Mrs. Cain Don’t pay attention to these pathetic husbandless women who are jealous of women like you in happy long-term marriages. These vindictive women can’t find a husband or keep one. They are like stalkers who try to latch on to any man who shows a bit of kindness or attention to them. When these unstable women come out of the woodwork to make accusations about Herman just say, “Honey, get a life, I believe my husband.” We want you to be our First Lady Mrs. Cain!”
Does this “Barbara Dayan” really exist? Or did Cain or that smoking guy weirdo write this?
This CAN’T be from a real woman! Women see right through this guy. EVERYONE does!
That’s even a stock photo image of the four women!
Here’s another winner, supposedly from a “Robin Haraway” of Millington, TX.
“Sir, I firmly believe that you were sent to our nation through Divine Providence and I believe that you are the man to preserve our Republic for our children. Remember, you have overcome many adversities in your life. You have pulled yourself up by your bootstraps through sheer determination and honesty. You were delivered from cancer. My prayers are for strength and guidance for you and your beautiful family this weekend.
This one might be real, though. It’s from Adrienne (Caos) Sinclair, of, as she calls it: “CALIFORNIA, CA”
“Dear Mr Cain many years ago I find this not so unique for christians I knew a man Charles in died at 54 i knew him and and his wife and they were beautiful from the heart christians. at one point in my live i was going to lose my home and well he heard about it, so me at Maass and told me Adrinne I want you to go down to the bank Monday and there wil be a check for 40.000 dollars. I told him I dont know how in the world i would pay it back and he just said don.t worry you are young and you have your whole live to pass a blessing on to someone else, At any rate he died at 54 of a heart attack and when I went to the funeral I was not surprised to see at least 500 or more people at his funeral and I went up to his wife and she told me has helped so many people his whole life and I looked in those green eyes with flowing tears and I said I was one of those people! she looked at me and just hugged me and said you know he would always keep his giving between God and himself, I said yes not for others to see. That was a long time ago and it is funny and it is so normal men who have that kind of heart, My dad would give a waitress 100 dollar tips and I just thought since I was a child that was normal, giving unconditional that is true Christianity and I get Herman Cain and A president who will save the Republic, I wish there are more Herman Cains they don’t show up at big benefits they give and only God can see, that is real to me,,, yes and I have had a life where I can give even when it hurt to women men children, that was a good lesson to learn where only God can see.”
Posted: December 2, 2011 at 2:23 am
Talk about setting yourself up for a spectacular fall. Cain is one Republican hypocrite who does not disappoint! His preposterously rampant egomania is starting to look like clinical insanity. He’s got no one but himself to blame. What a profoundly idiotic man!
This one is almost heart-breaking. Almost!
Debbie Stevens-Paulsen, TULSA, OK
“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Cain, I want you to know that I fully support you! I’ve sent $9.99 several times, and will continue to do so every chance I get. I wish I could do more! I’m “reassessing” my Christmas List… instead of buying misc $10 gifts for people I barely know anyway, I’m sending all that money to you. YOU are who this country needs. Please don’t let the opposition win, they are vile liars and will face God for what they’ve done to you. How can We the People choose who WE want (you!) if you allow them to run you off? Gingrich has DONE all the things they’re accusing you of, and Romney is a RINO.. we call him Obama Lite. PLEASE don’t give up. Speak up loud and clear that you are not giving up, and please let Gloria speak out again. I’ll admit that when I heard that you sent $ to a woman w/out your wife knowing, it gave me pause.. I wouldn’t appreciate my hubby sending $ to another woman w/out my approval… but then I thought about and discussed it with everyone I know. We came to the conclusion that you’re a good man worth the benefit of the doubt. We figure that you’re probably a very busy man who comes in contact w/ tons of people daily, and that you probably both have friends the other isn’t friends with, and that you have helped other people, men and women, without discussing it, because that’s just what you do, you’re a softie (stop that now!) and got taken advantage of. That happens. I have NO doubts about you after thinking and praying about it. If Mrs. Cain is OK w/ what you did, I am. Please send her back to Greta again! That’s between you two anyway. Lots of couples have separate money and do what they want with it. That is ok! Don’t give up sir, please. Don’t make me beg! Don’t let the evil conspirators push you out of this race. I have signs, bumper stickers, your Book, I tweet constantly about you (@FoxieNews) and share everything I can about you and your plan to help America. I support you 100%. Please say you’ll press on and get back to actual campaigning! Don’t play their games anymore.. gloves OFF time! God bless you, your wife and family, and your staff always. Happy Holidays!!! .... and 9-9-9!!!!”
Here’s hoping that Herman Cain (and the rest of these GOP no-hopers) stay in the race until the bitter end, soaking up all of those hard-earned reactionary donations. Aside from the laughs, the candidacies of these clowns are an effective way to incinerate perfectly good Republican political donation$:
In this respect, Herman Cain is the literal definition of a useful idiot.
The clueless conservatives chatterboxes on Fox News and AM talk radio cheering on the evictions of the rapidly dwindling in number Occupy sites around the country have another thing coming if they think that the fun is over. It’s not the end of anything, no matter what smug frat-boys like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or Eric Bolling claim to “think.”
The Occupy movement isn’t waning, it’s mutating into something different now. Something we can’t predict yet. The rightwing echo chamber acts as if standing around in freezing cold public spaces with the intention to annoy the “job creators” was the movement’s sole aim. I think these Marie Antoinette Republicans are… wrong.
Here’s what respected historian Todd Gitlin told Associated Press:
The Occupy movement is beginning to follow a familiar pattern, said Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at Columbia University and an authority on social movements. He noted that the 1960s anti-war movement grew gradually for years until bursting onto the world stage during the election year of 1968.
He predicted big rallies around the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.
Until then, “I think there will be some kinds of occupations, but I don’t think they’ll be as big and as central,” Gitlin said.
When the dust settles and the history is written, Zuccotti Park will be seen as a “strange attractor” rallying place, a “temporary autonomous zone” and a very potent symbol of what could be, but that’s all it will be in the final narrative: The First Act.
And what a beginning it was. People in Wisconsin, in Ohio, in Michigan, in Los Angeles, in Oakland, previously apathetic Americans are starting to wake up to the stark and shitty realities of life in our times in an unprecedented manner and actually fight back. I’m someone who thought “the revolution” would have taken place by the end of the 1980s. I’ve been predicting something like this for 30 years. Even a stopped clock has the right time twice a day, I suppose, but it was getting ridiculous.
As everyone who was there knows, something really special happened in lower Manhattan. Now, no matter where you live, it’s time to use the winter months to organize for next year’s election. There is a chance to gain a lot of ground in 2012. The Reichwing is in a state of preposterously comic disarray with no savior in sight. It might even be possible to push Obama and the Democrats truly leftwards for a change (stranger things have happened, see also FDR; see also what REALLY happened during Great Depression). No one knows what is going to happen next, but I do suspect for there to be a lot of it about, to paraphrase Spike Milligan.
To get too bogged down in trying to hold on to some real estate would have merely become a distraction and as time went on, the “visuals,” as so many in the media like to say, would have taken on a different semiotic and not done the movement any favors in what is, essentially still a war of images. All things considered—and this is just one asshole’s opinion, mine—I think it’s probably the right time for the various Occupy encampments to disperse. It was starting to feel like the first act needed to come to a climax. And what a G-spot barnstormer that curtain-closer was.
Even as I was privileged to have witnessed Occupy Wall Street on three occasions in all of its life-affirming, carnivalesque glory, for anyone looking at the situation as a supportive outsider, the writing was on the wall in October about how long Zuccotti Park could reasonably be expected to be held by the wide cross-section of people who kick-started the movement. As more and more people were going to get peeled off because of the diabolically cold New York winter, it’s a blunt fact that after a certain point, only the chronically homeless would have still been camping out in that freezing cold concrete park. And Fox News would have been all over Zuccotti Park, the open-air homeless shelter.
Lest you think I am disparaging the homeless contingent at Occupy Wall Street, I’m not. In very little of the reporting I’ve seen or read on the OWS encampment, is there any mention of the extremely pivotal roles that were played by the hardcore homeless people and the gutterpunk types in what went down at Zuccotti Park. THEY are the ones who made it possible for the park to be held long enough for the others to join them. Nope, I’m not dissing the homeless participants in OWS, in the least, I think they were amongst the very first frontline heroes of the movement, but it’s just time to move past romancing this idea of the ragtag encampments. go back inside and get better organized. Some people, sympathetic to the movement’s goals are never in a million years going to do something “rash.” It’s time to reach out to them now, so the government knows what size crowd it’s dealing with! (That “silent majority” thing works both ways, as the establishment is finally starting to find out. Americans don’t like “Socialism” but they seem to LOVE socialist ideas, especially in times when their families are starving and they can’t afford to heat their homes. Just saying).
During the past few days, I’ve noticed quite a few more than just vaguely supportive “What’s next for the Occupy movement?” articles popping up in the mainstream media, including the front page of the New York Times, and from the Associated Press and Reuters. There’s also been some worried “What are we going to do about the OWS movement?” type things appearing in the conservative blogsphere.
A pretty good indicator of opinion on the right can be seen in Republican strategist Frank Luntz’s comments to the Republican Governors Association this week in Florida. Say what you will about Luntz—I hate his guts and think he’s made this country a much shittier, meaner, stupider place than had he never been born—the man, like Karl Rove, is an evil genius. But can even the sinister Mister Luntz do anything to stop the tidal wave of history? (To paraphrase the Carol Beer character in Little Britain, “Dialectic says ‘NO’”).
“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” Luntz told the GOP governors. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”
“I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz told them. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”
You could read into that statement a lot of different ways. I’ll leave you to your own interpretation.
Another thing I see happening, and I applaud the editors who are sharp enough to get why this would be a good idea, is that people who have actually physically been at the various Occupy encampments and were writing from an “on the ground perspective” there, are starting to get hired by some of the major newspapers to cover current events, and the arts, from the point of view of the Occupy movement.
One of these individuals is Arun Gupta, the founding editor of The Indypendent, who wrote “This is a movement for anyone who lacks a job, housing or healthcare, or thinks they have no future” in a fascinating essay, “The Revolution Begins at Home An Open Letter to Join the Wall Street Occupation” that I read on Naomi Klein’s website. I’ve taken notice of his byline ever since.
“This is uniquely American,” I remark to Roy about interviewing her while both in cars but thousands of miles apart. Having driven some 7,000 miles and visited 23 cities (and counting) in reporting on the Occupy movement, it’s become apparent that the US is essentially an oil-based economy in which we shuttle goods we no longer make around a continental land mass, creating poverty-level dead-end jobs in the service sector.
If that last bit didn’t drain the blood out of your face, then read it again.
From the interview with the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things:
Arun Gupta: Why did you want to visit Occupy Wall Street and what are your impressions of it?
Arundhati Roy: How could I not want to visit? Given what I’ve been doing for so many years, it seems to me, intellectually and theoretically, quite predictable this was going to happen here at some point. But still I cannot deny myself the surprise and delight that it has happened. And I wanted to, obviously, see for myself the extent and size and texture and nature of it. So the first time I went there, because all those tents were up, it seemed more like a squat than a protest to me, but it began to reveal itself in a while. Some people were holding the ground and it was the hub for other people to organise, to think through things. As I said when I spoke at the People’s University, it seems to me to be introducing a new political language into the United States, a language that would be considered blasphemous only a while ago.
Arun Gupta: Do you think that the Occupy movement should be defined by occupying one particular space or by occupying spaces?
Arundhati Roy: I don’t think the whole protest is only about occupying physical territory, but about reigniting a new political imagination. I don’t think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost. The fact that in New York and other places where people are being beaten and evicted suggests nervousness and confusion in the ruling establishment. I think the movement will, or at least should, become a protean movement of ideas, as well as action, where the element of surprise remains with the protesters. We need to preserve the element of an intellectual ambush and a physical manifestation that takes the government and the police by surprise. It has to keep re-imagining itself, because holding territory may not be something the movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United States.
Arun Gupta: At the same, occupying public spaces did capture the public imagination. Why do you think that is?
Arundhati Roy: I think you had a whole subcutaneous discontent that these movements suddenly began to epitomise. The Occupy movement found places where people who were feeling that anger could come and share it – and that is, as we all know, extremely important in any political movement. The Occupy sites became a way you could gauge the levels of anger and discontent.
Arun Gupta: You mentioned that they are under attack. Dozens of occupations have been shut down, evicted, at least temporarily, in the last week. What do you see as the next phase for this movement?
Arundhati Roy: I don’t know whether I’m qualified to answer that, because I’m not somebody who spends a lot of time here in the United States, but I suspect that it will keep reassembling in different ways and the anger created by the repression will, in fact, expand the movement. But eventually, the greater danger to the movement is that it may dovetail into the presidential election campaign that’s coming up. I’ve seen that happen before in the antiwar movement here, and I see it happening all the time in India. Eventually, all the energy goes into trying to campaign for the “better guy”, in this case Barack Obama, who’s actually expanding wars all over the world. Election campaigns seem to siphon away political anger and even basic political intelligence into this great vaudeville, after which we all end up in exactly the same place.
—snip—
Arun Gupta: You’ve written about the need for a different imagination than that of capitalism. Can you talk about that?
Arundhati Roy: We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word “capitalism”, but once you’ve actually seen, let’s say, what’s happening in India and the United States – that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says “democracy” is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population. Thousands are losing their jobs and homes, while corporations are being bailed out with billions of dollars.
In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There’s something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties. Money need not be our only reward. Corporations that are turning over these huge profits can own everything: the media, the universities, the mines, the weapons industry, insurance hospitals, drug companies, non-governmental organisations. They can buy judges, journalists, politicians, publishing houses, television stations, bookshops and even activists. This kind of monopoly, this cross-ownership of businesses, has to stop.
The whole privatisation of health and education, of natural resources and essential infrastructure – all of this is so twisted and so antithetical to anything that would place the interests of human beings or the environment at the center of what ought to be a government concern – should stop. The amassing of unfettered wealth of individuals and corporations should stop. The inheritance of rich people’s wealth by their children should stop. The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated and redistributed.
Standing ovation!
The interview concludes when Gupta asks Roy if the term “occupation” can be reclaimed: She tells him “We ought to say, “Occupy Wall Street, not Iraq,” “Occupy Wall Street, not Afghanistan,” “Occupy Wall Street, not Palestine.” The two need to be put together. Otherwise people might not read the signs.”
Arundhati Roy: ‘The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution’ (The Guardian)
Look for more of Arun Gupta’s work on Salon. Follow him on Twitter.
Another strong—and often very amusing—new voice emerging from the media on the Left is Tina Dupuy, the managing editor of the mighty Crooks and Liars blog. She’s a powerful and persuasive writer and a sometime stand-up comic. Dupuy gave a fascinating firsthand description of what she saw the other night when Occupy Los Angeles—the largest of all the encampments—was evicted, when she was on Sam Seder’s Majority Report yesterday. I’m glad this woman is out there on the frontlines. Tina Dupuy could be another Rachel Maddow. It can’t be long until Current TV or MSNBC snaps her up (Or The Daily Show for that matter. They could use a real Lefty…)
In Congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, the number of people saying they disagree with the Tea Party has risen sharply over the year since the movement powered a Republican sweep in midterm elections, so that almost as many people disagree with the Tea Party as agree with it, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center.
Support for the Republican Party has fallen more sharply in those places than it has in the country as a whole. In the 60 districts represented in Congress by a member of the House Tea Party Caucus, Republicans are viewed about as negatively as Democrats.
The survey suggests that the Tea Party may be dragging down the Republican Party heading into a presidential election year, even as it ushered in a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives just a year ago.
Other polls have shown a decline in support for the Tea Party and its positions, particularly because its hard line during the debate over the debt ceiling and deficit reduction made the Tea Party less an abstraction. In earlier polls, most Americans did not know enough about the Tea Party to offer an opinion.
But the Pew survey shows that Tea Party support has declined even in places where it had been particularly robust.
“We know that the image of the G.O.P. has slipped, but to see it slip so dramatically in Tea Party districts is pretty surprising,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew center. “You think of those as bedrock Republican districts. They are the base.”
In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken earlier this month, 76 percent agreed that the “current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country.” In another recent poll, by The Washington Post/ABC News, respondents were asked: “Do you think the federal government should or should not pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans?” A majority – 60 percent – said the government should pursue such policies.
Meanwhile, public concern about the Tea Party’s linchpin issues – taxes and the deficit – has receded. Asked in late October to name the most important issue facing the country, just 5 percent of respondents to a New York Times/CBS News poll named the budget deficit. A majority said jobs and the economy. This same poll included another result that should give Democrats hope: A strong 69 percent of respondents agreed that the policies of Republicans in Congress “favor the rich” while just 12 percent thought the same thing about Obama’s policies.
Actually that poll should do more than just provide the Democrats with some “hope”—it should give them SOME FUCKING IDEAS. Here’s one for free: TAX THE RICH.
And lastly, here’s the New Statesman blog had a look at the numbers from big strike in the UK:
The unions claim that around 2 million people were on strike yesterday, but ministers dispute this, putting the number closer to 1.2 million.
Well they would say that, wouldn’t they? Either way that’s well over a million people striking. And David Cameron calls that “a damp squib”? What number would it take to really rattle the boy Prime Minister? Let’s hope we get to find out soon!
Writer Michael Bracewell examines the importance of being Oscar Wilde, through the events and works of the great poet’s life.
Here, Wilde is compared to an Existential hero, a man who was brave enough to set an example for all of us - to relish in the essence of who we are.
Wilde was rarely modest, and best explained himself in a letter to his lover Alfred Douglas, Jan-Mar. 1897:
‘I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age…The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring: I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colors of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder.
I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.’
First aired in 1997, this is a fascinating documentary explaining why Oscar Wilde still really matters, with contributions from Tom Stoppard, Stephen Fry, Neil Tennant and Ulick O’Connor.
Before he began directing films, Stanley Kubrick was a photo-journalist with Look magazine, starting his career in 1946, and was, apparently, their youngest photographer on record. Kubrick snapped over 10,000 pictures, sometimes hiding his camera in a paper bag to achieve a more intimate and natural image.
Kubrick’s photographs of New York in the 1940s, have the look of gritty movie stills from some imagined film noir, revealing intriguing personal narratives, for which the viewer can compose their own script.
A selection of Kubrick’s photographs are available to buy from V and M, with proceeds going to the Museum of the City of New York.
This excellent documentary from 1997, narrated by John Peel and shown as part of a commemorative BBC Peel Night, has been online for a while but finally arrives in one 50 minute long piece thanks to uploader abrahamisagreatman. You may have seen this before, but it’s definitely worth another watch:
Have you noticed how we’re not hearing a lot about what’s going on in Japan much anymore? I wonder why that is, don’t you?
Uehara Haruo, the former president of Saga University, who himself was the architect of Fukushima Daiichi Reactor #3, gave an interview to Japan’s Livedoor publication on November 17, where he stated that the explanation of what’s going on given by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) makes no sense at all, and that the dreaded “China syndrome,” he feels, is inevitable. He’s speaking out in an effort to shame TEPCO into leveling with the people of Japan.
He stated that considering 8 months have passed since 3/11 without any improvement, it is inevitable that melted fuel went out of the container vessel and sank underground, which is called China syndrome.
He added, if fuel has reaches a underground water vein, it will cause contamination of underground water, soil contamination and sea contamination. Moreover, if the underground water vein keeps being heated for long time, a massive hydrovolcanic explosion will be caused.
He also warned radioactive debris is spreading in Pacific Ocean. Tons of the debris has reached the Marshall Islands as of 11/15/2011.
Have a nice day.
Thank you kindly Michael Backes of Sacramento, CA!
I just found out, by way of the brand new issue of Phil Proctor’s always wonderful Planet Proctor e-zine, that all four members of the Firesign Theatre recently got together in the studio in Washington State to record some podcasts for Peter Bergman’s Radio Free Oz. I haven’t listened yet myself, but intend to partake immediately upon posting this and smoking an incredibly massive joint…
Surreal wordplay, witty banter and liberal kvetching with Proctor, Bergman, Philip Austin and David Ossman, together in one room again! Listen to “The Firesign Theatre’s new recordings “Talking Over Each Other” at Radio Free Oz and subscribe to Planet Proctor here (you’ll get it in your email as a PDF)
Firesign Live! Portland Center For The Arts, Winningstad Theatre in Portland, Oregon. Get tickets here for the shows on December 9 & 10!
When I arrived in Boulder, Colorado in 1971 it was a small town with a big campus filled with privileged white kids. It was also home to thousands of hippies. I’d left Berkeley for Boulder drawn not by the institute of higher learning but by a desire just to get higher…literally. Convinced that a massive earthquake was imminent, I fled the Bay Area and headed for the higher ground of the Rocky Mountains. I had also been told by people I trusted that Boulder was my kind of town: Berkeley without the angst. Tibet of the West. And as a child I had lived in Boulder while my father attended the University (on the G.I. Bill) and I had distant memories of something magic about the place.
Boulder in the 70s was an easy mix of stoned and moneyed youth and rough-edged mountain Bohemia. On the fringes of the University, was a thriving arts and intellectual scene. Professors, hipsters, local poets, divinely intoxicated recalcitrant drunks and various combinations of all of the above would hang out at a downtown watering hole called Tom’s Tavern. Tom’s sold cheap beer, had a pool table and a jukebox stuffed with vintage rock, old standards and hillbilly music. It was the center of off-campus intellectual life in Boulder. Within the smoke stained and booze infused walls of Tom’s I found my University, a joint where Jean Paul Sartre could drink Hank Williams under the existential table while Arthur Rimbaud shimmied to “Mickey’s Monkey.”
I had always considered alcohol the drug of choice for straight people. It was my parent’s drug. Alcohol was for squares. But at Tom’s you drank. And that’s what I did. I started drinking. I also started getting serious about being a poet.
In 1971, Tibetan Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa landed in Boulder and the mix of academia, back to naturists, spiritual seekers, old beatniks and young hippies was given an energizing and discombobulating dose of high-octane Crazy Wisdom.
Trungpa had developed a style of teaching meditation and Buddhist philosophy that was user-friendly for Westerners. Raised in the classic Tibetan monastic tradition as a child and later as a student at Oxford, Trungpa had the experience of ancient wisdom coupled with a modern education that allowed him to fluidly adapt to contemporary expectations and to challenge them. Unlike the kind of gurus most of us were accustomed to, Trungpa wore tailored suits, smoked menthol cigarettes, was a heavy drinker and known to have experimented with psychoactive drugs. He upended every holy man stereotype in the book. In his own sly way, Trungpa was shedding light on how superficial our ideas about “spirituality” are. As Catholics and Christians, many of us were substituting Bibles, crosses, crucifixes and rosaries for prayer beads and the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. Trungpa let it be known from the get-go that spirituality was more than just changing your costume.
Trungpa’s fresh approach to Buddhist instruction and initiation included methods that were controversial and his drinking and womanizing created a lot of scandal among the more conservative and traditional Buddhists, both in America and back home in Tibet. Sometimes his methods were as radical as the old Zen master who broke his student’s finger in order to bring the student into the moment. I experienced Trungpa’s teachings first hand and the results were mind-altering and soul-shaking.
I was celebrating Trungpa’s birthday (his 35th?) with a bunch of his students and friends at a home in the foothills above Boulder. Everybody was roaring drunk, including Trungpa. At one point, he grabbed the kitchen sink water hose and starting spraying everyone until we were all soaking wet. He then began hurling handfuls of birthday cake in all directions, landing a direct hit on my face. I grabbed some cake and threw it at him. With the speed and ferocity of a lion, Trungpa lunged forward and dragged me down to my knees by my hair, which was very long at the time. He yanked at my hair until tears flowed from eyes. After what seemed like an eternity, he let go of me and laughed. I was mortified.
Later that night I cut off all my hair. It was the first haircut I’d had in seven years. When I was 15 I had been expelled from school for being a longhair. I never went back to school and hadn’t cut my hair since. Looking in the mirror, I was appalled by how I looked. My identity had been so linked to my “freak flag” that I barely recognized the nerdish fellow staring back at me. My beautiful hair was gone and so was an important symbol of my freedom…a symbol that I had relied on for years to declare my independence, my spirituality and general grooviness. I had grown so attached to my hair and what I thought it stood for that I had become lazy in developing other ways of being truly free. At least that’s the conclusion I came to based on what I felt was a lesson from Trungpa.
I was certain that Trungpa’s hair-pulling rage was a mystical transmission of a profound teaching, a bit of the old Crazy Wisdom. I was absolutely convinced that Trungpa’s actions were much more than just a drunken reaction to my tossing cake at him. I was the recipient of something ancient and precious. This is the kind of thing that happens in a guru/student relationship. The student reads and projects a lot into whatever the guru does, whether there’s anything there or not. But it doesn’t matter whether or not the teacher is teaching. All that mattered to me is that I was compelled to question my identity, my ego, my reliance on exterior symbols as substitutes for real wisdom and real freedom. I was also reminded of one of the main reasons I had grown my hair long in the first place: I have big ears.
I felt so naked and uncool with short hair that I went into a self-imposed exile until it started growing back. I went so far as to stop seeing my girlfriend Mimi. So in addition to being a recluse, I was also a celibate.
The “hair teaching” was yielding all kinds of unexpected results. I was hurled into the life monastic. I was Thomas Merton with Alfred E. Neuman’s ears. “What me worry?” Yes, I was worried all the time. Worried that by the time my hair grew back Mimi would find someone else. And she did. She left me for one of the biggest pot dealers in Colorado. This betrayal escalated my self-pity into self-loathing on a grand scale.
At 22 years old, I had entered my dark night of the soul over a fucking haircut. A blow to my ego and vanity exposed just how firmly strapped to the Wheel Of Samsara (illusion) I really was and the whole fucking game was blown wide open by a drunk Tibetan guy covered in birthday cake.
My hair grew back and a few years later I cut it again. This time I wore it as a Mohawk that I dyed silver. The freak flag was still flying but with a whole lot less at stake. Hair comes and goes, but the ego is forever…until it isn’t.
I could write a book on what it was like being around Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche during those wild days in Boulder. He started a school (Naropa) which drew my literary and counter-culture heroes to our Colorado town. The collective energy surrounding him was madly magnificent. Poets and prophets everywhere: Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Jack Collom, Timothy Leary, Amiri Baraka…the list was long and impressive. They were all coming to Boulder to study with, observe or challenge this young Tibetan sage. They would eventually pull it all together in a branch of Naropa called “The Jack Kerouac School Of Disembodied Poetics.”
As the scene continued to gather momentum, I ended up managing a beautiful old hotel in Boulder where Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso and other poets and artists took up residence for a while. I sat at Ginsberg’s feet and read him my poems. He was patient. But I was a pretty boy and he enjoyed my company. I drank with Corso and listened to his high-pitched rants. Burroughs was the mystery man up on the top floor guarded by his mellow and diligent assistant James Grauerholz. I organized impromptu poetry readings in the lobby of the hotel and people would be hanging from the rafters as some of America’s greatest bards proclaimed, sang and shouted at the heavens.
When I write the book, I’ll recall the night my punk band performed at a Boulder nightclub with Allen Ginsberg and his mighty harmonium as our opening act. He sang from Blake’s “Songs Of Innocence And Experience” and I stood offstage and watched him and realized how fucking lucky I was to be so close to someone who literally changed my life when I first heard him read “Kaddish” on a vinyl record that Carla Bombere (my beatnik girlfriend) gave me to listen to when I was 15 years old. And not far from where I was standing was another young guy taking it all in, a teenager named Eric who helped my band carry our equipment. A few short years later he’d change his name to Jello Biafra and begin his own unique bardic journey.
Chogyam Trungpa’s arrival had a seismic affect on this lovely town at the foot of the Rockies. Whatever magic exists in Boulder wasn’t created by Trungpa, but he was certainly a big part of activating it. And the Naropa Institute continues to sustain that magic. The last time I was there a few years ago, I noticed that Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth was walking the grounds and soaking it all in.
There are those who think of Trungpa as some kind of charlatan, an exotically charming scam artist who beguiled a bunch of gullible people into buying into a bastardized form of Buddhism. I hear it all the time. But take it from someone who was there, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was the real deal. In asking us to look past spiritual materialism, he included himself. Look past the teacher into that formless void from which all things of the ego arise. The great teachers offer us a glimpse into nothingness and Trungpa was a great teacher. His willingness to get down in the trenches with his students is often mistaken as a weakness in his own character. Aren’t gurus supposed to be above it all? Trungpa didn’t give a shit about the games gurus play. Trungpa worked from the ground up, taking energy from wherever he got it and using it to set a fire under his students that would eventually burn away some of the bullshit and illuminate the illuminated. Was he a perfect teacher? Probably not. But that’s what made him special. It was his humanity and accessibility that made him such an effective teacher. There’s nothing remote or exotic about Buddhism. It’s really rather plain and ordinary. Kind of like the nose on your face. Or in my case, the ears.
In the raw documentary Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds , director Costanzo Allione captures some of the communal craziness and excitement that was flowing through Boulder while Trungpa was living and teaching there. It was an exhilarating time and important period in the evolution of America’s Buddha nature.
Watch another fine documentary, “Crazy Wisdom,” on the Naropa scene after the jump…
I was happy to see that those purveyors of fine campy video products, Punchy Players, have returned with another animated adventure of Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.
This time, the mega-talented mother-daughter duo goes grocery shopping and meets Ann Miller. It’s pretty great. Like all their other ones.
The recent News of the World ‘phone hacking scandal wasn’t the first time the red top used illicit means to obtain stories. Back in the swinging sixties, the paper regularly bartered with the police for information to use in its pages.
One of the News of the World’s tip-offs to the cops led to the most infamous drugs trial of the twentieth century, where Mick Jagger, Keith Richard of The Rolling Stones, and art dealer Robert Fraser were imprisoned in an apparent attempt to destroy the band’s corrupting influence over the nation’s youth.
For the first time, the true story behind the arrests and trial is revealed by Simon Wells in his excellent book Butterfly on a Wheel: The Great Rolling Stones Drugs Bust. Wells’ previous work includes books on The Beatles and The Stones, British Cinema and most recently, a powerful and disturbing biography of Charles Manson. In an exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds, Wells explained his interest in The Stones drugs bust:
‘As a student of the 1960s it was perhaps inevitable that I would collide with the whole Redlands’ issue at some point. Probably like anyone with a passing interest in the Stones, I first knew about it mainly from legend - the “Mars Bar”, the fur rug, the “Butterfly On A Wheel” quote etc. However, like most of the events connected to the 1960s, I was aware that there had to be a backstory, and not what had been passed down into myth. This story proved to be no exception, and hopefully, the facts are as sensational (if not more) than what has passed into mythology. Additionally, as a Sussex boy - I was familiar with the physical landscape of the story- so that was also attractive to me as well.’
Just after eight o’clock, on the evening of February 12 1967, the West Sussex police arrived at Keith Richards’ home, Redlands. Inside, Keith and his guests - including Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, the gallery owner Robert Fraser, and “Acid King” David Schneiderman - shared in the quiet warmth of a day taking LSD. Relaxed, they listened to music, oblivious to the police gathering outside. The first intimation something was about to happen came when a face appeared, pressed against the window.
It must be a fan. Who else could it be? But Keith noticed it was a “little old lady.” Strange kind of fan. If we ignore her. She’ll go away.
Then it came, a loud, urgent banging on the front door. Robert Fraser quipped, “Don’t answer. It must be tradesmen. Gentlemen ring up first.” Marianne Faithfull whispered, “If we don’t make any noise if we’re all really quiet, they’ll go away.” But they didn’t.
When Richards opened the door, he was confronted by 18 police officers led by Police Chief Inspector Gordon Dinely, who presented Richards with a warrant to “search the premises and the persons in them, under the Dangerous Drugs Act 1965.”
This then was the start of the infamous trial of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Robert Fraser.
‘It was such a well-known story, I was amazed no one had written a book about it before. It’s one of the most incredible stories of the 20th-century and I couldn’t believe that it had been ignored - given that every other angle of the Stones in the 1960s had been thoroughly explored. Obviously, as I worked my way through the story I became aware of just how the mythology of the tale had been constructed over the years. For a decade awash with drugs, it was somewhat predictable that the events that night had been blown up to such a stratospheric level.’
Wells has written a 5 star book, which explains the full background story, bringing new information to the events surrounding the bust, with particular emphasis on the nefarious activities of the News of the World and a dodgy copper, Detective Sergeant Norman “Nobby” Pilcher.
‘I suppose it was predictable during the star-studded 1960s that London’s otherwise anonymous police force would create their own celebrity copper. In this case it was Detective Sergeant Norman Clement Pilcher,’ says Wells. ‘Norman or “Nobby” as he was known to his colleagues was quite a character, as was his insatiable desire to rise swiftly through the ranks of London’s police. Pilcher may well have had an agenda to curb the activities of London’s musicians, but my own take on him was that he knew the value a celebrity bust. While seemingly the majority of the capital’s youth were engaged in some form of narcotic use, Picher knew that busting a celebrity would raise his profile (and by association, his team) enormously.’
Richard Hamilton’s portrait of Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser under arrest.
Pilcher waged a war on pop’s elite. During his time at the Drugs Squad, Pilcher was responsible for arresting Donovan, Brian Jones, John Lennon and George Harrison. Pilcher always got his man, by bringing along to any bust his own supply of evidence. He was lampooned as a rock groupie by underground magazine Oz, and John Lennon described him as ‘semolina pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower’ in “I Am The Walrus.”
In our present world of anodyne music pumped out by record labels and TV talent shows as a soundtrack for malls, lifts, and supermarkets, it is hard to believe that once-upon-a-time, music, in particular pop music, was considered revolutionary and a very real threat to the established order. Think of this when imagining the world The Rolling Stones burst into back in 1963, as it was the Stones, their music and their alleged drug use that became the focus of British establishment’s ire.
‘As far as attitudes towards soft drug use were concerned,’ Simon explains, ‘I would say it was the most important moment of the 20th century. A massive watershed of opinion that for the first time pitched elements of the so-called “Establishment” against the rebellious young - best exemplified in the metaphor of The Rolling Stones. Obviously, once battle lines were drawn it was going to get messy. With the benefit of hindsight, the debate was far too premature – it was only 22 years since the end of WW2 – and obviously many in authority had seen active service and were aghast at the sight of these youngsters strutting their stuff unhindered. Many saw it as an affront.’
Unlike The Beatles, who played the game, and were considered cheeky and harmless, wore suits and smiled, The Stones were deemed dirty, surly, long-haired, and played Black music - R ‘n’ B, that inflamed their fans to riot. All of this wasn’t helped by manager Andrew Loog-Oldham statement if The Beatles were Christ, then The Stones were the Anti-Christ.
Things started to go wrong, after one of The Stones’ riotous gigs, where the famous five had been whisked away from the venue as quickly as possible, but without a toilet break. On the way home, they pulled into a service station, where Bill Wyman asked to use the gents toilet. The garage attendant didn’t like the look of Wyman and his long hair, nor his gurning friends in the back of the van, and refused the bass player access. Jagger and Brian Jones became involved, with Jagger saying he could piss anywhere, which the 3 of them duly did. The incident led to a trial and a fine and was the first hint that someone had The Stones in their sights. If not the Establishment, then rogue elements:
‘I was at pains to point out what really the “Establishment” consisted of during the mid-1960s, and how “they” sought to enact their revenge against Mick, Keith, and Brian. Ultimately, I don’t believe it was men in suits in Westminster discussing the Rolling Stones and plotting their downfall. It’s a hugely romantic image, but it is frankly ludicrous. In reality, there was a Labour government in power who - believe it or not - was attempting to understand the new movement, and equally, were to rationalize drug use through a sweeping review of the arcane narcotic laws that had been in place since the war.
‘However, there were other – less regulated - elements of the so-called establishment that were outraged at the antics by the nation’s youth as exemplified by their defacto leaders- pop groups. Obviously, with The Beatles still the nation’s favorites, The Rolling Stones were an obvious target for sections of the “moral majority” to vent their spleen on. Predictably, it was the News Of The World who decided to infiltrate the Mick and Keith’s core circle and reveal their personal habits to their readership. The papers expose in turn gave the police carte blanch to raid members of the group. Soon, it was open season on musicians – but just not restricted to the UK, but elsewhere too. So the “Establishment” in a sense, yes, but not as many would like to believe.’
There was further rattling of teacups, when Richards purchased a 15th-century house, Redlands, in West Wittering, Sussex. The very thought that a working class guitar player could afford such a posh residence, curdled the milk on the breakfast tables of Middle England.
Add to this the shift in the news away from Wing Commanders and derring-do, to pop groups and hairstyles, saw a growing concern over the fall in the nation’s morals and its role models.
As The Beatles were unassailable, especially after Prime Minister Harold Wilson controversially honored them with MBEs in 1965, the press turned their eye to The Stones for any possible dirt.
Of particular interest was the rise in drug use amongst these young musicians. The News of the World set up a team of journalists to infiltrate The Stones’ circle and get the skinny on their drug use. One night, a journalist spoke with a drug-addled Brian Jones about his chemicals of choice. Thinking they had a major scoop, the paper ran the story. It was to prove a major mistake, as the News of the World couldn’t tell their pop stars apart, and believed they had caught Mick Jagger unawares, rather than Jones. When the paper published its story on Jagger and his alleged drug confession, the singer sued the paper. It led the tabloid to plan its revenge to discredit Jagger.
More on Simon Wells ‘The Great Rolling Stones Drugs Bust’, after the jump…
Martin Sorrondeguy (above), the lead singer of hardcore punk band Los Crudos, queercore group Limp Wrist and founder of the Lengua Armada Discos label, directed Mas alla de los Gritos (Beyond the Screams), a 1999 documentary about the Latino/Chicano punk movement from its late 1970s origins through the early 1990s.
The Chicano punk movement was forged by young, politically aware Latinos who were resisting discrimination and police brutality in the barrio and trying to raise awareness of border and citizenship/residency issues. In California, at least, opposition to Governor Pete Wilson’s Prop 187 was a major focus of the scene in the 90s.
This film narrates the Chicano/Latino punk scene which is said to have exploded in Los Angeles during the late 70’s. Bands began organizing gigs in their own community at a place called The Vex which was located in East Los Angeles. Popularly coined as the East L.A. renaissance of 1976,many Latino/Chicano punk bands were formed around this community. Some of the most popular bands of the times were: The Plugz, The Bags, The Brat, The Zeros, Felix and the Catz, Stains, Los Angelinos.These bands were some of the first bands to create local punk in East L.A. which followed a new style of punk more like the political punk that was coming out of Latin American countries. This new customization of punk includes transnational struggles as well as local which reforms the notion of conventional punk rock music.
“Dear Mr Cain many years ago I find this not so unique for christians I knew a man Charles in died at 54 i knew him and and his wife and they were beautiful from the heart christians. at one point in my live i was going to lose my home and well he heard about it, so me at Maass and told me Adrinne I want you to go down to the bank Monday and there wil be a check for 40.000 dollars. I told him I dont know how in the world i would pay it back and he just said don.t worry you are young and you have your whole live to pass a blessing on to someone else, At any rate he died at 54 of a heart attack and when I went to the funeral I was not surprised to see at least 500 or more people at his funeral and I went up to his wife and she told me has helped so many people his whole life and I looked in those green eyes with flowing tears and I said I was one of those people! she looked at me and just hugged me and said you know he would always keep his giving between God and himself, I said yes not for others to see. That was a long time ago and it is funny and it is so normal men who have that kind of heart, My dad would give a waitress 100 dollar tips and I just thought since I was a child that was normal, giving unconditional that is true Christianity and I get Herman Cain and A president who will save the Republic, I wish there are more Herman Cains they don’t show up at big benefits they give and only God can see, that is real to me,,, yes and I have had a life where I can give even when it hurt to women men children, that was a good lesson to learn where only God can see.”
