A fellow writing under the name DubaiDave posted a series of photographs taken at what has to be the world’s single worst amusement park at Theme Park Review. It’s become somewhat of a classic:
OK, I have just got back from a trip to Alexandria in Egypt. Apart from arriving the day that the riots started and the place being dirty as hell we had a nice few days away.
I had heard that there was a kiddie credit at a place called Fantazy Land but could not find anyone who had been there. Anyway We finally found the park and it was the worst run park I have ever been to.
On the net I had found that the entry fee was 7 Egyptian Pounds, around $1.50. However when I got there they said it was 13 Pounds. I went back to the car as or whole group was going to go in, but when we got back to the pay window it was now 30 Pounds each, Anyway, I decided to go in on my own to get some photos.
One thing to note was that when I paid my 30 Pounds I was actually given 3 tickets with 10 Pounds written on them, something tells me I was ripped off. lol
Anyone stupid enough to willingly strap themselves in to one of “The United Rides of Funtazy’s” attractions deserves what they’d get! Still more photos here.
Another Beatles mini-mystery unraveled ! As proven in this fun clip of ultimate keyboard expert and author of the most over-the-top Beatles book I’ve ever seen, Brian Kehew demonstrating the wonders of his Mellotron MK 2, we find that the ornate flamenco guitar intro to The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill was played by no Beatle nor Yardbird. It was a bloody pre-set ! Ballsy, a readymade worthy of Duchamp and nobody ever figured it out except for a few hip vintage keyboard collectors. I love it.
Sure, everyone loves a good ultra time-stretched pop tune. All the kids are doing it. Now you can make your own! I’m fairly sure that it’ll come out sounding the same regardless of what you feed into it, but I had fun playing with the OSX version.
“We are not going to strike. We are not even having a sit-in strike. Nobody and nothing will come in and nothing will go out without our permission. And there will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying because the world is watching us, and it is our responsibility to conduct ourselves with responsibility, and with dignity, and with maturity.”
Reid’s principled leadership was essential in gaining the support of the majority of Glasgow’s residents. A demonstration in support of the union saw 80,000 people march through the city. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were amongst those who donated to the cause of the workers, giving £5,000, which was a substantial amount of money at the time. Reid and the shipbuilders won, and the Edward Heath government backed off on cutting the shipyard’s subsidies.
Another speech, one Reid made to students as rector of Glasgow University on “rejecting the rat race,” is a legendary piece of rabble-raising oratory. The New York Times printed the speech in full and declared it to be on par with the Gettysburg Address. It’s been republished lately in several British papers (here from The Independent) on the occasion of Reid’s death on August 10th and the memorial service held for him today. I highly recommend reading it. It’s surely as relevant today as it was when he first spoke these words. Fans of great writing and speechification, take note, you’ve not heard these thoughts expressed in quite this same way ever before and these words will move you and stay with you for a long time. Seriously, considering the shape the economies of the West are in and what this shitstorm has meant for the common and uncommon man alike, I think this should be considered MANDATORY READING right about now.
I can vividly recall listening to a BBC radio broadcast in 1983, during the apocalyptic miner’s strike going in Britain at the time. I was sitting in the sunny backyard garden of a squat where I lived in the Brixton area of south London. Jimmy Reid was the main guest. It was thrilling for me, as an American, to hear someone say such… Communistic things on the radio. One of the other people who lived there, a Scot himself, made a big deal of it and bought some beers and rolled some joints, insisting that I listen with him in quiet contemplation of what the heroic Jimmy Reid had to say. I was glad I listened and you’ll be glad, too, if you click here and read the entirety of Reid’s “rat race” speech yourself.
Here is an excerpt from Jimmy Reid’s famous speech. It’s a pity it’s not on YouTube, but there is a clip of a young Reid in his fiesty prime embedded below.
To the students [of Glasgow University] I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
Still irresistible, a working-class hero’s finest speech (The Independent)
Final farewell for Glasgow shipyard leader Jimmy Reid (includes video of comedian Billy Connolly’s eulogy and additional links to more reporting on Reid’s life) (BBC News)
Missouri-based design group MK12 have replicated the look and sound of educational/industrial films of the 1960’s in the beautifully constructed Telephoneme. MK12 was partly inspired by the Bell Science Laboratory series of short films we used to have to watch in elementary school. They’ve just added some LSD to the mix.
Telephoneme takes visual cues from The Alphabet Conspiracy as well as other educational films of days past, inspired by the awkward editing & absurd premises that so often defined the genre. The color palette is simple and deliberate, and we also developed a technique in which all the elements were split out into their respective red, green, and and blue channels(similar to how a printer makes several passes of pure color to construct a realistic image). These channels mostly remain superimposed throughout the film, but they sometimes move independently of one another, creating interesting transitional & graphic effects.
After the jump, you can watch a short clip from The Alphabet Conspiracy and see where MK12 got some of their inspiration for Telephoneme.
The Punchy Players return with another Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli animation, Judy’s Baby Daddy. Liza helps Judy get her beat. This one is as good as their first one, Judy’s Cream of Wheat.
New Yorker Judy Linn’s photographs of Patti Smith are an indelible part of the collective consciousness of Patti’s fans and admirers. But, the Dylan one is new to me.
A book of around 100 black and white photographs Lynn took between the years of 1969-1977 of Patti, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shepard, Gerard Malanga, among others, is being published next March by Abrams.
More of Linn’s photographs of Patti after the jump…
Well, we all like Tim Curry for his performance as Frank N Furter in Rocky Horror, and most times he has always managed to make us appreciate his talent (Annie, Clue, the superb TV series, Will Shakespeare, in which he gave one of his greatest ever performances, City Sugar and a host of others, even if he often chewed the scenery (Congo, anyone?), but here we see Mr Curry in a shockingly bad number from The Worst Witch.
I showed this to Tara and she said, “Oh yeah, The Worst Witch, haven’t you ever seen that? Seems right up your alley.”
Seeing that aside from Tim Curry, it also stars Diana Rigg, Charlotte Rae (aka “Mrs. Garrett”) and a young Fairuza Balk, she’s probably right.
Behold the perplexing multi-media underground electropop darlings of Tokyo, Trippple Nippple. Their stage show sounds like a J-Pop version of out-there 70s performance artists, The Kipper Kids, and features stuff like eggs, glitter, milk, blood and rotting food. From an interview posted today at the Dazed and Confused blog:
Dazed Digital: Is there symbolism behind your costumes and performances?
Qrea Nippple: Last time we were doing some guillotine things, and we cut so many heads off balloons. The helium goes to the ceiling. Yuka was crying like, “Oh I feel so guilty for killing so many balloon heads, so I drew some really wicked, bad faces on the balloons, so she wouldn’t feel guilty for cutting their heads off. ”
Dazed Digital: What were some of your most memorable performances?
Yuka Nippple: We have a lot of stories about making a mess. We played club Asia in Tokyo and our costumes were mud, just that. And we put on some blonde hair ponytails. We were just mud and blonde hair ponytail. That was our costume. It was a lot of fun as always. But in the morning when the lights turned on, the whole club was covered in dry mud. And everyone went mad, and everyone had to clean up until about 9am in the morning. We made a lot of people really upset. We didn’t mean to of course, but my bad, but I’d like to announce that we can do “Not dirty one” too! People sometimes misunderstand what we are, but we are musicians!
Dazed Digital: So where did you acquire all this mud?
Yuka Nippple: Amazing, amazing store called Tokyu Hands in Shibuya. It’s a department store with 21 floors of DIY stuff. We get everything from there. You can spend a day just looking for things. We found rice-field mud in a packet.
Look At Life were a series of short documentary films produced in the 1960s by the Rank Organization. They were shown in British movie theaters before the main attraction. Shot in vibrant color, Look At Life often focused on ‘Swinging London’.
In these two clips we get a peek into the King’s Road fashion scene and hip London coffeehouses. Groovy.
On Inauguration Day 1989, Washington DC-based club manager and booker Robert Egger opened the DC Central Kitchen in order to use job training, meal distribution, and supporting local food systems to help fight poverty, hunger and homelessness in the nation’s capital.
It was about five months after a certain repugnant blowhard named Rush Limbaugh took his show into national syndication. Last week, that blowhard had this to say about non-profit organizations:
Egger’s thoughtful response—after the jump—should encourage all you Dangerous Minds readers to donate to the DC Central Kitchen today…watch till the end…
