DJ Jazzy Jay and Afrika Bambaataa demonstrate the art of scratching for a studio full of kids in a 1984 episode of Nickelodeon’s Live Wire.
Check out audience member Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) of The Beastie Boys slipping in a plug for “Cookie Puss.”
The film version of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel “The Rum Diary” is finally hitting the screen on October 28 after a long and tumultuous trip through development hell. The movie had been optioned by now-defunct production company The Shooting Gallery who never managed to get it off the ground.
On January 22, 2001, in a fit of frustration and anger, Thompson sent production executive Holly Sorensen the following letter:
Hunter S. Thompson
Woody CreekHOLLY SORENSON / Shooting Gallery / Hollywood / Jan 22 ‘01
Dear Holly,
Okay, you lazy bitch, I’m getting tired of this waterhead fuckaround that you’re doing with The Rum Diary.
We are not even spinning our wheels aggresivly. It’s like the whole Project got turned over to Zombies who live in cardboard boxes under the Hollywood Freeway… I seem to be the only person who’s doing anything about getting this movie Made. I have rounded up Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Brad Pitt, Nick Nolte & a fine screenwriter from England, named Michael Thomas, who is a very smart boy & has so far been a pleasure to talk to & conspire with…
So there’s yr. fucking Script & all you have to do now is act like a Professional & Pay him. What the hell do you think Making a Movie is all about? Nobody needs to hear any more of that Gibberish about yr. New Mercedes & yr. Ski Trips & how Hopelessly Broke the Shooting Gallery is…. If you’re that fucking Poor you should get out of the Movie Business. It is no place for Amateurs & Dilletants who don’t want to do anything but “take lunch” & Waste serious people’s Time.
Fuck this. We have a good writer, we have the main parts casted & we have a very marketable movie that will not even be hard to make….
And all you are is a goddamn Bystander, making stupid suggestions & jabbering now & then like some half-bright Kid with No Money & No Energy & no focus except on yr. own tits…. I’m sick of hearing about Cuba & Japs & yr. Yo-yo partners who want to change the story because the violence makes them Queasy.
Shit on them. I’d much rather deal with a Live asshole than a Dead worm with No Light in his Eyes…. If you people don’t want to Do Anything with this movie, just cough up the Option & I’ll talk to someone else. The only thing You’re going to get by quitting and curling up in a Fetal position is relentless Grief and Embarrassment. And the one thing you won’t have is Fun…
Okay, That’s my Outburst for today. Let’s hope that it gets Somebody off the dime. And if you don’t Do Something QUICK you’re going to Destroy a very good idea. I’m in the mood to chop yr. fucking hands off.
R.S.V.P
(Signed)
HUNTER
cc:
Depp
Benecio
M. Thomas
Nolte
Shapiro
Here’s the trailer for The Rum Diary. It’s directed by Bruce Robinson based on his own screenplay. Robinson wrote and directed the fabulous Withnail And I, one of my all-time favorite movies. The Rum Diary is produced by and stars Johnny Depp who was close and very loyal to Thompson. These are good indicators that the movie may be a fine one indeed.
Robinson, a recovering alcoholic, was hit with a bad case of writer’s block while working on the screenplay for the movie. He jumped off the wagon and managed to kickstart his Muse by drinking a bottle of booze a day. I guess he needed to get into a gonzo frame of mind. Once the work was done, he immediately went back to his life of sobriety.
The long summers of Edwardian England were a product of the 1920’s imagination, when those who had been children during that decade looked fondly back to a time of seeming innocence. This in part became a theme central to a generation of British artists and writers - Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden, Nancy Mitford, George Orwell, Francis Bacon, Evelyn Waugh - all Edwardian children, who produced work that reflected the loss of certainty and identity caused by the Great War.
These photographs of Edwardians in color capture some of the wistful nostalgia that the ubiquity of cameras and film usage helped develop during the century.
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Via How to be a Retronaut
More Edwardians in color, after the jump…
Seldom-seen footage of the short-lived Krautrock “power trio” iteration of Kraftwerk consisting of Florian Schneider, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger that existed ONLY briefly when Ralf Hütter left the group to study architecture in 1971.
As Rother and Dinger went on to form Neu! at the end of 1971, this could be looked at more like this is Neu! with “special guest” Florian Schneider (who totally rocks out here!) but this is a Kraftwerk performance. And the quality is stellar!
Below, “Köln II”
“Kakteen, Wüste, Sonne” (which translates as “Cactus, desert, sun”)
(via Testpiel.de)
Black Sabbath were filmed live in Paris performing songs from their first album and Paranoid in December of 1970 for regional Yorkshire Television. It’s the best footage, bar none, that you will ever see of the band in their evil prime.
A scorching, killer set of the devil’s music. Play it LOUD.
Set list:
Paranoid
Hand Of Doom
Rat Salad
Iron Man
Black Sabbath
N.I.B.
Wasp
Behind The Wall Of Sleep
War Pigs
Fairies Wear Boots
Via TreeAshMusic/Thank you Henry Baum!
I don’t always agree with Noam Chomsky. I think he’s too reflexively anti-American (to the detriment to his works being more widely read), that he’s been getting a lil’ cranky as he gets older (as we all do) and sometimes he veers a little too far into conspiracy theory territory for my tastes. Still, when he’s on it, Chomsky can zero in on a complex confluence of events and trends and elucidate them like few other observers of national and world politics can. He recently took on the topic of American decline on the pages of al-Akhbar:
The post-Golden Age economy is enacting a nightmare envisaged by the classical economists, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Both recognized that if British merchants and manufacturers invested abroad and relied on imports, they would profit, but England would suffer. Both hoped that these consequences would be averted by home bias, a preference to do business in the home country and see it grow and develop. Ricardo hoped that thanks to home bias, most men of property would “be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations.
In the past 30 years, the “masters of mankind,” as Smith called them, have abandoned any sentimental concern for the welfare of their own society, concentrating instead on short-term gain and huge bonuses, the country be damned—as long as the powerful nanny state remains intact to serve their interests.
A graphic illustration appeared on the front page of the New York Times on August 4. Two major stories appear side by side. One discusses how Republicans fervently oppose any deal “that involves increased revenues”—a euphemism for taxes on the rich. The other is headlined “Even Marked Up, Luxury Goods Fly Off Shelves.” The pretext for cutting taxes on the rich and corporations to ridiculous lows is that they will invest in creating jobs—which they cannot do now as their pockets are bulging with record profits.
The developing picture is aptly described in a brochure for investors produced by banking giant Citigroup. The bank’s analysts describe a global society that is dividing into two blocs: the plutonomy and the rest. In such a world, growth is powered by the wealthy few, and largely consumed by them. Then there are the ‘non-rich,’ the vast majority, now sometimes called the global precariat, the workforce living a precarious existence. In the US, they are subject to “growing worker insecurity,” the basis for a healthy economy, as Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan explained to Congress while lauding his performance in economic management. This is the real shift of power in global society.
The Citigroup analysts advise investors to focus on the very rich, where the action is. Their “Plutonomy Stock Basket,” as they call it, far outperformed the world index of developed markets since 1985, when the Reagan-Thatcher economic programs of enriching the very wealthy were really taking off.
Before the 2007 crash for which the new post-Golden Age financial institutions were largely responsible, these institutions had gained startling economic power, more than tripling their share of corporate profits. After the crash, a number of economists began to inquire into their function in purely economic terms. Nobel laureate in economics Robert Solow concludes that their general impact is probably negative: “the successes probably add little or nothing to the efficiency of the real economy, while the disasters transfer wealth from taxpayers to financiers.”
By shredding the remnants of political democracy, they lay the basis for carrying the lethal process forward—as long as their victims are willing to suffer in silence.
Read more of American Decline: Causes and Consequences by Noam Chomsky
Below, Ali G interviews Professor Chomsky in 2006:
NASA’s beautiful and formidable images of Hurricane Irene, taken today from the International Space Station, as the hurricane moves devastatingly ever closer to the east coast of America.
Cameras mounted on the International Space Station captured new views of Hurricane Irene as it churned across the Bahamas at 3:47 p.m. EDT on August 25, 2011. Irene, which is a massive and powerful category 3 hurricane, is moving north-northwest toward a likely brush with the outer banks of North Carolina Saturday before tracking up the mid-Atlantic states and a possible path over the metropolitan New York area and New England late this weekend.
See NASA’s photostream here.
With thanks to Danielle Delgado
In 1979, John Lydon made an unexpected appearance on the goofy Jukebox Jury television panel show. His fellow panelists included Joan Collins and Elaine Paige!
(The expression on his face, above, sums up perfectly, I feel, what most Brits probably think about Noel Edmonds, the host of Jukebox Jury ....)
This sign, by Jason “Jay Shells” Shelowitz for his “Metropolitan Etiquette Authority” project deserves a standing ovation. Bravo!
(via TDW)
Well, this is a turn up for the books. Here is more info, via a press release from the Peter Tatchell Foundation:
Jamaican reggae singer Mista Majah P has released the world’s first pro-gay reggae album. Called Tolerance and featuring rainbow stripes on the cover, the album includes 11 songs, variously in support of same-sex marriage and adoption by gay couples, as well as attacks on homophobic bullying and the US military policy, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The tracks also feature swipes at the anti-gay prejudices of ‘murder music’ reggae singer Beenie Man and of the Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding,
Explaining why he created the album, Mista Majah P said: “I want to counter the myths that all Jamaicans are homophobic and that all reggae music is violent and anti-gay. I’m seeking to challenge ignorance and reach out to gay people.”
“My hope is that this cd, Tolerance, will break down the homophobic stance that certain reggae artists and heads of government have taken towards the LGBTQ community. Because of the hateful songs that some performers have been singing, gay people have been threatened and harmed. Some foolish people act upon what these artists are preaching because they worship these artists like gods. My music is about tolerance. It shows that reggae music can respect gay and lesbian people. Reggae music used to be about love, peace and unity. Now it is too often about bigotry and violence. I want to bring the music back to its progressive roots,” said Mista Majah P
“Since releasing the album, Mista Majah P has received numerous death threats and has been warned to not return to Jamaica (he currently resides in California). He’s undeterred and defiant, stating that ‘murder music’ has given reggae a negative image, which is bad for the music industry and for all reggae artists,” noted Mr Tatchell.
You can hear Mista Majah P’s album Tolerance (and buy it) at cdbaby. For more info visit Mista Majah P’s website. Here’s the album’s opening track:
Mista Majah P - “Love and Tolerance”
Alexey Titarenko has photographed Saint Petersburg since he was 8-years-old. In fact, he says, he has dedicated his whole life to the city. Titarenko sees his photographs as reflecting the history of his city, and Russia, over the past 20 years.
“Through the prism of my native city, I attempt to show events that occurred not only here, but throughout the country - the changes, the catastrophies, and the human tragedies, which have swept this city and the people of this land.”
In the 1990s, Titarenko was working on a series of photographs about totalitarianism, centered on the signs and statues that were crumbling around him as Soviet communism failed. Poverty spread as rationing was introduced.
“Food was rationed. To obtain food in exchange for the ration tickets, people would run from one store to another, with a desperate air, and their eyes full of sorrow. I’d place my camera at the subway entrance and take photographs.
“The activity around the station, which was located in a shopping district, overlapped with the sensations I felt when I listened to certain musical compositions, Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony in particular, the movement entitled “At the Shop”.
“The mass of people flowing around the subway station formed a sort of human tide, giving me a sensation of unrealness, of phantasmagoria, These people were like shadows, one would meet in the Underworld. I decided to express that feeling in my work, to convey my personal expressions. I had to find a visual metaphor that would enable the viewer to share my feelings as acutely as possible. That is what prompted me to try a long exposure process.”
Titarenko’s pictures were haunting, disturbing, like malevolent ghosts crowding the frame. He called the series City of Shadows,
Via My Modern Met. With thanks to Tara McGinley
More hauntings pics, and rest of documentary on Alexey Titarenko, after the jump…
Ladybird Bachmann’s taxpayer-supported counseling practice was descended upon by a flash-mob of over 100 “barbarians” this morning:
A local actor posing as Marcus Bachmann was “baptized” with glitter after dancing with the barbarians to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”
“Let’s be clear: Marcus Bachmann is the practitioner of an unhealthy, unscientific and dangerous practice,” event organizer Nick Espinosa told Columbus Go Home.
“The American people have a right to know: does the Bachmann family profit from bogus ‘gay reparative therapy’ or not,” he added. “The medical evidence against the practice aside, the Bachmann’s subversive marginalization of the LGBT community is despicable.”
In July, a smaller group threw glitter in the lobby of the clinic after staffers said that Bachmann was not available.
The LGBT activists were inspired by Bachmann’s claim that homosexuals are “barbarians” who “need to be disciplined.”
One of the staffers at the Bachmann business was seen driving away in a purple car. Not that there is anything wrong with purple cars. Just saying…
Via Raw Story
According to Redditor I_am_Bob: “That’s how the four unicorns of the apocalypse arrive.”
Click here to see larger image.
