Little-known clip of David Bowie nominally performing “Sense of Doubt” from Heroes on Italian television. The YouTube uploader says this was filmed at Hansa Studio in Berlin, but several people objected, saying that it’s not Hansa. I vote that it’s not. Having seen the interior of the legendary studio in countless documentaries, it doesn’t look like Hansa to me, either.
 

 
I love this photo because I totally understand the use of a wastepaper basket as a hat. You gotta use what’s around you when you’re broke and trying to improvise on the spot. 

In the 70s I wanted to be Wonder Woman real bad, but I was stuck with a shitty Dorothy Hamill haircut my mother had given me. So, I put one of my mother’s dishtowels on my head for the long luscious locks-look and was completely convinced I was fooling the world. 

(via Nistagmus)

 
Another guest essay from Charles Hugh Smith, cross-posted here from his essential Of Two Minds blog:

The U.S. is due for another cultural revolution, led by the younger generations, perhaps including a fifth Great Awakening.

There seems to be a 40-year cycle of cultural change in American society. The classic exploration of generational types and cycles, The Fourth Turning, identified a four-generational, 80-year cycle of profound crisis and transformation:

1781 - end of the Revolution and establishment of the nation
1861 - Civil War
1941 - Global war and end of the Depression
2021 - end of the Savior State and debt-based “prosperity,” Peak Everything and geopolitical conflict over resources

In terms of cultural revolutions, these seem to sweep through every 40 years or so, a two-generational cycle within the longer cycle. It’s not an exact cycle, but consider these dates and eras:

1740: The First Great Awakening: The Protestant evangelical movement of the 1740s played a key role in the development of democratic concepts in the period of the American Revolution and helped foster a demand for the separation of church and state.

1776-1781: Revolutionary War, cultural shift away from the British Empire and toward an American identity.

1820: Second Great Awakening: sparks the rise of the Abolitionist movement which sets the cultural, social and spiritual stage for the Civil War.

1860: the Civil War

1890s: The Gay 90s, a period of American expansion and new freedoms of expression, clouded by the Panic of 1893 which sent the economy into a 6-year depression.

This era was the culmination of the Gilded Age, the industrialization of the U.S. economy between 1865 and 1900. By the beginning of the 20th century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States led the world, with per capita incomes double that of Germany or France, and 50% higher than Britain. Not coincidentally, the birth of the modern industrial labor union occurred around 1890.

1925-30: The Roaring Twenties, an era “marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity and a break with traditions. Everything seemed to be feasible through modern technology. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality in both daily life and architecture. At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity, and as such the period is also known as the Jazz Age.”

1967-1970: The Counterculture, which included the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement and the birth/expansion of the feminist movement, Eastern spirituality in the U.S., back-to-the-land self-sufficiency, rock music as a cultural force, the nonviolent anti-war movement, the anti-nuclear movement, experimentation with communal living and drugs, Futurist concepts, and a widespread expansion of freedom of self-expression and experimentation. Many observers believe this ear also launched a Fourth Awakening as evangelical denominations expanded and “Jesus freaks” found religious inspiration outside mainline churches.

The book What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer makes a strong case that this era set the stage for the ultimate technological medium of experimentation and self-expression, the personal computer, which then led irresistably to the World Wide Web (all the foundational technologies of the Internet were in place by 1969—The first permanent ARPANET link was established on November 21, 1969, between UCLA and Stanford Research Institute.)

Which changed the world, of course. Those darn hippies!

1970 + 40 = 2010: That takes us to the present. Right now the nation is wallowing self-piteously in a fetid trough of denial and adolescent rage/magical thinking that the nation’s bogus, debt-based “prosperity” has crashed and cannot be restored, though Ben Bernanke and the clueless “leaders” the citizenry has fecklessly elected keep trying to glue Humpty Dumpty back back together again.

Unfortunately, all they’ve accomplished is to glue their own fingers together.

The “too big to fail” banks and Corporate Cartels effectively own the Federal machinery of governance, the Savior State’s fiefdoms are expanding their reach and power like uncontrollable cancers, and the “leadership”—mostly self-glorifying. grossly incompetent, self-absorbed, greedy Baby Boomers, but with a few equally clueless 40-somethings present just to prove that age is no protection against self-delusion and supreme greed—has resolved to surrender to the Financial Power Elites and State fiefdoms, and fiddle around with “extend and pretend” strategies until they can exit the stage with bulging bags of swag.

Their only goal is to not be the one blamed when the whole corrupt contraption finally collapses under its own weight. If there was ever a more pathetic, corrupt, cowardly and incompetent set of “leaders” in the nation’s history, they must have done their skimming during periods of relative prosperity. Now we need real leaders, not TV-ready simulacra spouting bloated slogans that contain the magic word “change.”

Gen X and Gen Y, this is your “lights, camera, action!” call, if not for political power, then for a cultural revolution. I for one am ready for a Fifth Awakening, a Cultural Revolution, and a restoration of self-rule and the real, non-financialized economy.

I hope that you all had a happy Bastille Day, yesterday. It’s time we tore down the Bank Bastille that’s imprisoning us all.

Another guest essay from Charles Hugh Smith, cross-posted here from his essential Of Two Minds blog:

 
Charlie Gilmour, the adopted son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, admitted violent disorder in court today in London, after joining thousands of students demonstrating in London’s Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square last year.

During the riots, Gilmour was seen hanging from a Union Jack flag on the Cenotaph memorial for Britain’s war dead. He was also seen leaping on to the hood of a Jaguar that formed part of a royal escort convoy and throwing a garbage can at the car. Gilmour was one of approximately 100 students who attacked a convoy escorting the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall during last year’s student riots. The Prince and his wife were on their way to the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium theater when the mob surrounded their car shouting “off with their heads,” “Tory scum” and “give us some money.”

The Royal vehicle’s back window was smashed and lime green paint was thrown on the car, although there is no evidence that Gilmour had anything to do with that. He was, however, also photographed attempting to start a fire outside the Supreme Court by lighting a bunch of newspapers on fire.

Gilmour, a 21-year-old Cambridge University student, was told he must serve half of his 16-month jail term behind bars. From The Telegraph:

Shouting slogans such as “you broke the moral law, we are going to break all the laws”, the 21-year-old son of the multi-millionaire pop star went on the rampage during a day of extreme violence in central London.

Video captured by police officers outside the Houses of Parliament showed Gilmour, from Billingshurst, West Sussex, waving a red flag and shouting political slogans. The judge watched one clip in which he was shouted: “Let them eat cake, let them eat cake, they say. We won’t eat cake, we will eat fire, ice and destruction, because we are angry, very f———angry.”

As the clip was shown in court on Thursday, Gilmour sat in the dock giggling and covering his face with his hands in embarrassment.

On another occasion he could be seen urging the crowd to “storm Parliament” and shouting “arson”.

In addition to attacking the Royal cars, he was also part of a mob that smashed the windows at Oxford Street’s Top Shop as staff and customers cowered inside.

What most of the reporting on this matter wants to remind you is that young Mr. Gilmour is the son of a multi-millionaire pop star. Fair enough, we wouldn’t be reading about him if he wasn’t, but from reading this article and some of the others—his swinging from the Cenotaph aside—I couldn’t help feel that his actions a) took guts and b) the students were right.

I don’t think Gilmour should feel like he has to hang his head in shame at all. It’s the job of intelligent young people to behave this way from time to time, if you ask me!

Something that’s often getting left out of this story is that Gilmour’s biological father is none other than anarchist poet, actor, playwright and graffiti polemicist, Heathcote Williams. Williams, who once served as the anarchist “Albion free state” of Frestonia’s ambassador to the UK, is a rabble-rouser of the first rank. His grandmother was a Major in Mao’s Red Army. Rebellion is in this kid’s DNA. Although he and his son are supposed to be estranged, given his own past, surely Williams must feel some paternal pride in his son’s anti-establishment hijinks?

 
You know what? As a woman, I’m not even going to try to pretend I understand this. Nope! Not gonna do it.

The standard female Realdoll costs $5,999.00. If you want to add elf features, it will cost you an extra $150.00.

Bonus: There’s a bald and blue Realdoll with white eyebrows available if that’s more to your liking.

 
Realdoll, The World’s Finest Love Doll (NSFW)

 
Okay, I ain’t gonna lie…dummies scare the living shit out of me! Remember those commercials for Magic? (*shudders*) To add salt to my open wound, Public School blog posted a demented photo-essay titled Vaudeville Ventriloquists Dummy Portraits. Click if you dare.

Mike Saputo’s poster design for this year’s Fantastic Fest.
 
I’m convinced there’s no better city in the world to be a movie fan than Austin, Texas. Add this to our bragging rights:

Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library is partnering with the Austin-based Alamo Drafthouse theater chain to archive the company’s growing collection of original film posters designed by contemporary graphic artists. The first group of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Mondo posters arriving at the Herrick will include the latest print, a poster for the classic horror film “Frankenstein” (1931), created by Drew Struzan.

The Alamo Drafthouse began producing limited-edition silkscreen posters in 2003. Mondo, the company’s art boutique, now produces more than 120 posters annually, and through it prominent artists such as Martin Ansin, Shepard Fairey, Olly Moss, Tyler Stout and Ken Taylor are commissioned to create new art for classic films, as well as alternative posters for contemporary movies such as “Inglourious Basterds,” “True Grit” and “Thor.”

“We are always seeking out the unusual, and the Mondo collection certainly fits the bill,” said the Academy’s graphic arts librarian, Anne Coco. “We are looking forward to working with the Alamo Drafthouse to ensure that its contribution to the art of movie posters will be around for future generations to appreciate.”

This ongoing gift from the Alamo Drafthouse will be housed along with the Herrick’s existing collection of more than 38,000 movie posters. The posters in the library’s collection are stored in climate-controlled vaults, and are scanned and entered into the library’s online catalog, where they can be viewed by the public.

“We’re extremely grateful to the Academy for its interest in archiving Mondo’s poster collection,” said Mondo Creative Director Justin Ishmael. “We’re fans of movie art, first and foremost, and to have our artists’ work archived alongside some of the classics of movie poster art is an incredible honor.”

The Margaret Herrick Library poster collection includes a wide range of works created by noted graphic artists, such as the Stenberg brothers’ constructivist poster for “Man with a Movie Camera” and Wiktor Gorka’s arresting poster for the Polish release of “Cabaret.” The library also holds all of the film posters designed by Saul Bass, including his groundbreaking key art for “The Man with the Golden Arm.”

The Austin Film Festival and Fantastic Fest are coming up in the next few months and Dangerous Minds will be there.

Check out some of the stunning movie posters at Mondo’s website.

Here’s a taste:
 

Shepard Fairey
 

Jesse Philips

 
Urban Struggle tells the tale of notorious Southern California punk club the Cuckoo’s Nest. In the early 1980s, the Costa Mesa venue hosted seminal punk and hardcore bands from The Ramones and The New York Dolls to local heroes like TSOL, The Circle Jerks, Fear and Black Flag. The club was the first to have a slam pit and was a magnet for cops and punk haters. The fact that it shared a parking lot with a honky tonk didn’t help.

This 1981 video has long been out-of-print, but a new documentary, We Were Feared, which covers the same scene and bands is soon to be released by Endurance Pictures. Consider this a long teaser. Some great footage of legendary bands.
 

 
As you will detect from his charming accent, DMRH debutant Steven Daly isn’t from around these parts: He’s from Glasgow, although these days he lives in New York’s allegedly fashionable outer borough of Brooklyn and works as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. Steven’s first tentative steps up the glass mountain we call show-business were as the drummer for Orange Juice, a band that is frequently accused of “inventing” indie-rock. Next week Orange Juice are nominated in the box-set category of the Mojo Awards in London, alongside the like of the Kinks, Eric Clapton and David Bowie. Good luck, Steve. Let us know how you get on against that competition!
 
Ian Dury and the Blockheads - There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards
The Boys - The First Time
Subway Sect - Nobody’s Scared
Nosmo King and the Javells - Goodbye Nothing to Say
Dexy’s Midnight Runners - I Love You
Holland-Dozier-Holland - Don’t Leave Me Starving for Your Love
Lauryn Hill and Refugee Camp All Stars - The Sweetest Thing
Syreeta - I Love Every Little Thing About You
George Faith - To Be a Lover
I-Roy - Don’t Get Weary Joe Frazier
Morrissey - The Last of the Famous International Playboys
Sugababes - Push the Button
The Faces - You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (Even Take The Dog For A Walk, Mend A Fuse, Fold Away The Ironing Board, Or Any Other Domestic Short Comings)
Juggy - Soul at Sunrise
 

 
Download this week’s episode
 
Subscribe to the Dangerous Minds Radio Hour podcast at iTunes
 

Bonus video : 50,000 supporters of my beloved Celtic Football Club, of Glasgow, singing an early Depeche Mode classic in a stoutly heterosexual fashion!
 

 
In case you missed it, some fantastic reporting from The Rachel Maddow Show (by way of Right Wing Watch) on Rick Perry’s wingnut Woodstock, “The Response.”

What will future people think of this era? (Provided of course, these crazy assholes don’t kill us all first)
 

 
There has been a lot of dropping of the H-Bomb here lately, whether it be in relation to riots at SXSW, or criticism of The Stone Roses. The word “hipster” has gone from vaguely meaning “poseur” to being a catch all term to describe anyone with different tastes to ourselves. I think it was time I addressed the matter head on. I’m not going to try and define what a “hipster” is here - if you need a crash course, I’ll point you in the direction of the Wikipedia “Hipster (contemporary subculture)” page, which is surprisingly on-point. I don’t even need to prove to you that the term is media fabrication used to hate on the young - though I probably will. No. I just want to say “Enough! If you going to call someone a hipster as an insult, then you should know that makes you a square.”

The first article I ever read on the subject of “hipsters” was Douglas Haddow Adbusters’ piece “Hipster - The Dead End Of Western Civilsation” from 2008. The article’s shrieking headline and hyperbolic tone should be a giveaway to the author’s intentions, but the fourth and fifth parts of the essay really show the hypocrisy involved. Haddow is at a party taking photos, yet manages to complain about both the other photographers at the same party AND the kids who want their photos taken. It’s genius! And herein lies the rub - the people doing the complaining themselves fit into the neat little bracket they have described. We have cultural commentators and arbiters of previously obscure tastes moaning about the now more widespread acceptance of those tastes. We have opinionistas offering up opinions on why we should hate other opinionistas. Photobloggers bitching about other photobloggers. Fixed gear cyclists who tell us only THEY can ride bikes properly.

Using WIki as a guide, it is possible to trace how this meme caught on in the media, and came to be some sort of established fact . It was not the first time the term was used this way, and “hipster” was not completely pejorative when it re-emerged in the last decade, but articles like Tim Walker’s “Meet The Global Scenester” re-inforce the idea that “hipster” was a stick used by cultural commentators to beat a perceived threat to their roles. There was no talk of the positive elements of the emerging youth culture, a culture these articles sought to define. It felt like it was a backlash waiting for an actual scene to happen. For a time in the early ‘90s, the UK music press lumped shoegaze bands together as “The Scene That Celebrates Itself” - anti-hipster chroniclers could now just as easily be labelled “The Scene That Berates Itself”. 

Originally posted on 04/08/11.

After the jump, the relation of irony and authenticity to fashion and music, new media and new cultural norms versus old school cool, and John Peel as the ultimate hipster.

 
Along with Dangerous Minds, it’s Harry Dean Stanton’s birthday. Hard to believe that he’s 85 years old.

Here’s an amusing and rare clip of Harry in A Fistful Of Dollars.

When A Fistful Of Dollars was aired on the ABC Sunday Night Movie in 1977 network execs felt a prologue needed to be shot to give Clint Eastwood’s character less of an amoral edge. They wanted there to be some clearly defined motivation for the carnage that followed in Sergio Leone’s existential western. Thus, they hired director Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) to create this intro with Stanton (who appears nowhere else in the movie) and a stand-in for Eastwood.

Neither Leone or Eastwood had anything to do with this scene. The reaction shots of Eastwood were inserted using footage from other scenes in the film. This results in some unintended humor.
 

 
The “Bop Gun” was an imaginary weapon, theorized by George Clinton, leader of Parliment, on their 1977 album, Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome”. The “Bop Gun” would fill the being of the soulless automatons moving robotically through modern life with FUNK and dancing would be inevitable.

You’ll note that I wrote that it “was” an imaginary weapon. Now someone’s gone and built a real “Bop Gun”—it can yours for a mere $1200:

Finally the conundrum of the universes’ missing funk has an answer: BOP GUN.

5 mixed squarewave oscillators allow for rapid phase matching and total funky collapse of even the most complex wave functions!

LFO modulates filter! All oscillators, LFO and filter are controlled by global attack/decay functions at the pull of a trigger! INVERT function allows for continuous function for those situations requiring fancy long-term funkic interventions. Funkify traffic! Passers-by! Bar Mitzvahs! The sky!

LED feedback ring at the business end reacts to funk levels, providing photonic enhancement in attractive aqua green tones. Extra-sweet readout panel provides incomprehensible feedback from selected functions. Audio output jack included, and batteries fit in the handle.

 
Below, Glen Goins, the Parliament singer famous for “calling in the Mothership” during their elaborate concerts, explains the “Bop Gun” concept to this Houston crowd during a 1977 performance:
 

 
Via Nerdcore

 
There seems to be some confusion: This October will see the release of The Thing, which is, apparently, a prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing. If that’s the case, then I’ll save my dollars as I know the ending - everyone is killed except an Alaskan Malamute that escapes (after a disastrous helicopter chase) and infects Kurt Russell’s science station with an alien life form.

If it’s a remake, well - why bother?

John Carpenter’s The Thing was a remake of Howard Hawks’ classic 1951 film The Thing From Another World.

Hawks’s original was an unforgettable classic, an adaption of John Wood Campbell, Jr.‘s fanastic short story, “Who Goes There?” - and is one of the greatest science fiction movies of the 1950s (along with Them!, Inavders from Mars and Invasion of the Body Snatchers).

As for Carpenter’s remake, I thought it one of the best films of 1982 - it reinvented the original, gave it a dark, terrifying twist, and had incredible special effects by Rob Bottin (and Stan Winston).

So now, here’s a new version, which leaves me thinking “O, FFS,” as it again confirms Hollywood’s bankruptcy of ideas , and the unwillingness or inability to invest in new talent, new ideas, and new scripts. But make your own mind up - here’s the trailer and the official synopsis:

Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty.  It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists.  The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being.  It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman.  In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.
Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime.  Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago.  But it is about to wake up.

When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time.  And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.

 
Graphic design company The Library created these ads for Australian printing company Colour Chiefs. The models are wearing printing machine parts as their costumes…ready for the digital Pow Wow. Nicely done. Cyber punk meets the classic Native American portraits of Edward S. Curtis.
 
More photos after the jump…