Variety reports that as the efforts to challenge Proposition 8 are set to begin next month in San Francisco, a media coalition of the major networks, Hearst Corp. and Dow Jones & Co is asking for the permission to broadcast the court proceedings. TruTV (formerly Court TV) would broadcast everything, from start to finish, daily.
Defenders of the anti-gay marriage proposition are objecting, complaining that witnesses would face harassment and “the potential for intimidation.” Oh, you mean like the kind of harassment and intimidation they’re sowing against gays and lesbians? Are these people for real?
In a letter sent to (Judge) Walker on Monday, their attorney, Charles Cooper, referred to the aftermath of the 2008 election, a time marked by protest rallies, marches and, in some cases, boycotts of those who contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign, including one website that identified donors and their addresses with a Google map overlay.
Indeed, some potential witnesses have indicated that they will not be willing to testify at all if the trial is broadcast or webcast beyond the courthouse,” Cooper wrote.
—snip—
Attorney Thomas Burke, representing the media coalition, said that they anticipated there would be some opposition to the effort, but he noted that because the trial will be public, witnesses will be identified whether cameras are present or not.
Burker further added: “Moreover, given the historic nature of the case, interest among the public in the details of the proceedings are significant.”
Count me as real interested, how about you? These busybody religious people took it upon themselves to try to RESTRICT THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF OTHER AMERICAN CITIZENS. They sponsored Prop 8, they paid for it and they are actively trying to amend the constitution of the state of California! Do it in the the light of day, folks, if you are so sure God is on your side. Do it in the daylight if you have the courage of your convictions. Own your deeds if you’re so proud of yourselves—and shouldn’t gays and lesbians (and intelligent people in general) have the right to know who these preposterous people are so they can boycott their businesses? If not, why not?
A matter this important deserves a PUBLIC hearing. Let’s hope we get one. This whole matter is a waste of brain cells and tax payer money. It’s an embarrassment to California.
Sad news from Australia: Rowland S. Howard, the guitarist for post-punk legends, The Birthday Party, died of liver cancer on December 30th, 2009. Since the Birthday Party’s break-up in 1983 over his “creative differences” with Nick Cave, Howard’s distinctive, angular, “broken glass” style of guitar-playing has featured in groups such as These Immortal Souls, Crime and the City Solution, Nikki Sudden and the Jacobites and in collaboration with Lydia Lunch on their astonishing goth-tinged cover version of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood’s classic, Some Velvet Morning.
Howard told the Australian edition of Rolling Stone that he had liver cancer and was on the waiting list for a donor. “If you’re trying to write about the human condition there is only so many things you can choose from. Being told that you’ve only got a couple of years to live without a transplant is a pretty frightening experience and certainly changes the way you feel about your life, [it] makes things so much closer.” Howard was 50.
Below: The Boys Next Door (the original name of The Birthday Party) with a young Rowland S. Howard and Nick Cave, perform their cult hit Shivers:
Best quote from the video: “Next, when you enter a nursing home, do not stand there with your group in a large cluster of clowns. Clowns can look rather intimidating if you see a lot of them in one place.”
(via HYST)
Yes, what you’re reading is correct: Gizmo Skirt for $2,100. Why the fuck not? I guess a special “thanks” is in order to designer Brian Lichtenberg for this?
(via Today and Tomorrow )
I first saw Leos Carax’s Pola X back when it first came out in ‘99 and barring one truly amazing scene it has pretty much slipped my mind. That is until I was reminded of it while watching the wonderful Scott Walker doc “30 Century Man” the other day. In the fury of hype over its “un-simulated” sex scene, something that seemed to be sort of in vogue at the time, I had completely forgotten about Walker’s heavy-duty score, which in watching it again makes the film. Don’t get me wrong, I love the depiction of the tortured artiste giving up his considerable wealth and comfort to pursue a dark, forbidden muse (a love affair with his estranged half-sister) but these 3 minutes of film are some of the most striking, vertigo-inducing I’ve seen. Yes, it’s ludicrous to have a factory-dwelling cult playing huge industrial noise symphonies on expensive gear conducted by a charismatic leader in an X-rated French soap opera, but I like it. Alot.
When I was growing up, I could read the Village Voice in the local library and fancied myself “up” on what was going on in New York, at the age of 14, even though I had never been anywhere even close to the island of Manhattan. Having said that, if I wasn’t exactly an expert on New York City per se, I was at least an expert on each and every issue of the Village Voice. (And you can tell a lot about a city from its alt weekly, let’s just say. Reading between the lines = very easy with the Village Voice. True now, and true then.)
But in my hometown, one thing I couldn’t experience, even vicariously, was the insane cable access world of Manhattan Cable, now known as the Manhattan Neighborhood Network.I’d read about shows like Ugly George, where a fat asshole in a silver-lame jumpsuit carried a video-camera (the huge old fashioned kind with the outboard decks) around New York and asked women to take their clothes off for him. Many did. Many more told him to fuck off and die. There was also Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party, which I longed to see, it was so glamorous sounding, there was Al Goldstein’s racy Midnight Blue, but most intriguing of all for me, living in Wheeling, WV where nothing ever happened, were Andy Warhol’s cable access programs. I loved the idea that anyone who wanted to have their own TV show could do so and saw myself having one myself one day (and I did, The Infinity Factory talkshow, which was on for over 2 years opposite ER!)
A great website I just discovered called Zamboni has files of a few of the Warhol programs for streaming and download. Other shows are knocking around out there, too. Many famous faces here including Halston, Pee-wee Herman, Debbie Harry and John Waters.
Depending on who you are, this is either the funniest thing ever posted on YouTube or else a total bore. I don’t think there is a middle ground, You were duly warned.
The gals in the moshpit at the Gathering of the Juggalos, 2009. Oh my.
Via @ericwareheim on Twitter
...Or so they claim. Regardless, this is a spooky and moving experiment worthy of your 10 minutes. Extra points for the dead simple, primitive but super effective music. (evidently a bit of Kate Bush’s “Hello Earth” looped and messed with. Thanks, Troy. No wonder I liked it !).
Here’s something cooler than a canary in a coal mine: Tadpoles genetically engineered to glow when they encounter water pollution.
African clawed frog tadpoles modified with jellyfish genes show promise as a faster and less expensive way to detect pollution than traditional methods, say a University of Wyoming professor and researchers in France. What’s more, the green-glowing tadpoles indicate whether pollution exists in a form that can be absorbed by an organism and therefore might be dangerous to people. That’s more difficult with conventional methods.
“We’re tracking dosages that would show up in terms of development in either a person or a tadpole,” said Paul Johnson, a physics and astronomy professor at the University of Wyoming. Some tadpoles have been engineered to light up in response to metals. Others fluoresce when exposed to pollution from plastic that might cause health problems by mimicking the hormone estrogen.
David Mitchell, writing in the Arkansas Law Review, argues that a new trial is warranted for the so-called West Memphis 3. If the Supreme Court reads the Arkansas Law Review, things might begin to look a little brighter for Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley.
The first paragraph from the press release below is rather telling, don’t you think? Still an Arkansas judge turned down their requests for new trials!
New evidence in the case revealed that while no DNA of the convicted young men was found at the crime scene, DNA from Terry Hobbs, stepfather of Stevie Branch, was found in the ligature binding the hands and feet of one of the other children. In addition, some of the country?
