WHOA! Here’s an excerpt of a bizarre interview freaky YouTube user Tonetta did with Lolokaust:
 
Lolokaust: Every time someone new comes on the scene the music press always try and categorize and pigeonhole an artist, this wont be easy in your case so how would you describe what you do?

Tone: I don’t really know i just accept what it is

Lolokaust: Do you collaborate with anyone to make your music?

Tone: no I do it all myself

Lolokaust: Who are your musical influences and is there anyone to whom you aspire to?

Tone: the genius John Lennon

Lolokaust: There are many references to the male member in your lyrics, is this something particularly close to your heart?

Tone: I’m simply promoting it.

Lolokaust: Many of the songs are about sexual deviancy, Would you consider yourself a Sexual Deviant?

Tone: Yes I am.

Lolokaust: You have had incidents with Youtube deleting your videos/accounts, What are your thoughts on Internet Censorship?

Tone: Makes no sense
 
Read more of the interview with the infamous Tonetta over at Lolokaust.
 

 
How sad is this? Paul Hooson writing on the Wizbang Pop blog:

The wife of indie-music icon, Alex Chilton, Laura Kersting, revealed how the legendary singer was suffering serious heart symptoms recently, but had to delay seeking medical help due to a lack of health insurance. According to his wife, the 59 year old singer had been mowing the lawn recently, when he developed shortness of breath and chills. Chilton lived in New Orleans.

Chilton was the lead vocalist of The Box Tops, and had a multi-gold 4 million selling single with “The Letter” at the tender age of just 16. Chilton was scheduled for a reunion show with Big Star only days before he called his wife at work to say that he wasn’t feeling very well. She rushed home to get him, and while in the car, Chilton lost consciousness only a block before they arrived at the hospital emergency room door. Chilton was soon pronounced dead.

Chilton lived in a mixed race neighborhood in New Orleans. He and and his wife managed to survive the great storm that ruined the city in recent years. Strangely, Chilton chose to use a push mower to mow his own lawn, and lived a very humble life. Although, Chilton had sold several million records over his career, he never became wealthy.

Despite a string of great singles and a huge imprint on American power pop music, Alex Chilton was just your “Average Joe” musician.

Thanks Steven Otero!

Thanks again to Matt Musick at Motherboard.tv for sending me this segment they did on Sid Meier—the acknowledged greatest game designer of all time (he’s most famous for the game “Civilization”—“Pirates” and “Alpha Centauri” are two other favorites). The video follows Meier as he judges a contest to create a video game in 48 hours, apparently the video game equivalent of the 3-day novel and 24-hour comic book.

The master behind Civilization I through IV, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, and dozens of other titles, Sid Meier is one of the most acclaimed game designers of all time. Always a true believer in the idea that games will someday rule the world, Meier wants to inspire a new generation of game designers. Namely, the ones from his alma mater at Michigan, where he returns in this episode of Motherboard, in order to judge and of course participate in the “7th Annual Wolverine Soft 48 Hour Game Design Contest,” which pits coders and designers against each other in a race to create a game in two days.

Sid first used a computer as an undergrad at Michigan, when punch cards and time-sharing meant that one mistake cost hours of time. It was on that early IBM mainframe that Sid designed the first tic-tac‐toe game, a use for which he was chastised and nearly kicked out.

(Motherboard.tv: Sid Meier and the 48 Hour Game)

(Sid Meier’s Civilization V)

Shocking news—professional StarCraft, the biggest national sport in South Korea, has apparently been rigged by the mob for years. Infected Hive! INFECTED HIVE!

We all know South Korea takes their StarCraft seriously, but here’s a new window into just how seriously: Reports of widespread match-fixing and illegal betting is rocking the pro-gamer StarCraft community in the country, literally shaming some of the most popular professional StarCraft players into retiring.

As Gamepron reports, “various pro gamers” were involved in rigging their matches in coordination with illegal gambling groups, having some players intentionally lose their matches as well as leak replay files of their matches to said gambling groups. But it wasn’t just a few current players involved in the deceit—evidently the widespread match-fixing involved retired players and coaches who helped the gambling rings get in contact with the current players in the first place.

And what’s more, reports state that the e-sports organizers in South Korea knew about the match-fixing (although for how long isn’t clear), and attempted to resolve the issue themselves before actually discussing “the possibility of co-existing with the illegal betting sites.”

(1up: Starcraft Rigged!)

(Previously on Dangerous Minds: The Odd World of Professional Starcraft Players)

(Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty)

 

 

 

via Illogical Contraption

 
If you’re left unamused by the shameless mugging on Friends, you won’t be laughing much at this either.  Who knew North Korea had a long-running sitcom on the…oh my God, beans?  Hysterical!
 
(via HuffPo)

 
Caught an excellent interview last week with recovering skinhead Frank Meeink.  Meeink’s promoting a new autobiography on how he went from neo-Nazi mouthpiece to lecturer for the ADL, so I thought maybe the time was right to revisit Stormfront and see what might be looming on their summer reading list.  Here’s a sampling of what those white-priders are recommending on the Whatcha Reading thread:

The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor by David Irving

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby by Paul Findley

Remotely Controlled: How Television Is Damaging Our Lives by Aric Sigman

Ultimate Sniper: An Advanced Training Manual For Military And Police Snipers by John Plaster

An Evil Love: The Life of Frederick West by Geoffrey Wansell

Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer by Elliott Leyton

Ford County by John Grisham

The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem by Henry Ford

Dune by Frank Herbert

What he said…
 
thx Thomas Wincek !

 
Wonderful tale about tracking down what really happened to one of the wildest, most iconic set pieces of 1970s rock shows, the Parliament-Funkadelic Mothership. Forget about Kiss, the Mothership was ten times cooler. George Clinton is a god. From the Washington Post:

Before the Mothership was built, it was a concept. Parliament released “Mothership Connection” in 1975, an album with a title track about hitchhiking to cosmic transcendence: “Swing down, sweet chariot. Stop and let me ride.” Clinton started dreaming up a tour to match. After watching the Who’s 1969 rock opera “Tommy,” he asked himself: “How do you do a funk opera? What about [black people] in space?”

He called upon David Bowie’s tour producer, Jules Fisher, to help bring the Mothership to life. “This was theater. This was drama,” says Fisher, a renowned Broadway lighting designer. “Current shows like U2 and the Stones—they don’t provide this narrative arc.”

The Mothership was assembled in Manhattan and made its first descent in New Orleans from the rafters of Municipal Auditorium on Oct. 27, 1976.

Minds were blown.

 
I’ll bet they were! The Mothership lands about 8 minutes in on the below clip. This must have been so amazing to see live.
 

 
In Maryland, George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelic and a missing Mothership (Washington Post)

 
The Last Supper with scientists: Galileo Galilei, Marie Curie, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Thomas Edison, Aristotle, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin.
 
(via I.Z. Reloaded and Nerdcore)

This gentleman is certainly in touch with his inner canine. He really takes you there.
 
thx Brian Morishita !

And a cartography of inner space via the inimitable Russian psychedelic blog LSDEX.RU. Presumably this is what the next iteration of iTunes visualizer will look like. If so, I might actually get around to buying an iPad, you know, just to hang on my bathroom wall.

(LSDEX.RU: The Formula)

Via Cool Hunting, here’s an excellent find: Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton’s new book “Cartographies of Time,” which collects ways in which the human race has represented time throughout, um, time; a timeline of timelines. I want one.

In their new book “Cartographies of Time,” Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton dissect and track the methods people used when attempting to record the passage of time. These timelines, lists and antiquated infographics reveal particular attitudes and novel approaches to documenting history.

Rosenberg and Grafton organize Cartographies, naturally, in chronological order, tracing the earliest timelines from ancient Greece all the way to modern reinterpretations. Expertly showing the evolution of the form, the book’s fascinating swathe of cartographic imagery will appeal to history buffs and data visualization fans alike.

The central dilemma these historians and chronologists faced over the centuries was to decide what was important, and—the central theme of Chronologies—the myriad methods employed to illustrate and recreate those histories.

(Cool Hunting: Cartographies of Time)

I’m a huge sucker for the sound of clunky old drum machines, so this brilliant 1972 single by one time Cannonball Adderley sideman Timmy Thomas is a slice of heaven for me. The B-side (below) could almost pass for Cabaret Voltaire for the first 30 seconds with that weirdly processed beat box. Sweet !

thx Ian Raikow !

 
Still in the mood for some old fashioned pop electronics ? Here’s two of the four tracks from this rather attractive 1962 E.P. by Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan a.k.a. Dick Raaijmakers, Holland’s kings of primitive synthesis and tape manipulation wrought pop gems for the whole family.

 
bonus clip: The gents at work in the lab. Unfortunately Dutch language only but lots of lovely gear porn shots !