“The group is currently performing at the Super Bowl XLV Halftime Show where a lack of post-production effects has revealed their stage show to be of inferior quality to a high school talent show.”
Click here to see larger image.
(via Super Punch)
Paul Slansky is guest blogging at Dangerous Minds about life during the Reagan era.
This is the first in a series of posts reminding those who lived through it – and informing those who didn’t – that contrary to relentless media efforts to portray Ronald Reagan as a great President and his reign as an era of national bliss, he was actually a lazy ignoramus who couldn’t tell fact from fiction, and whose eight years of callous actions (and inactions) had disastrous and ongoing consequences for the country. And here’s how it started:
11/4/80 At 8:15pm EST, with a mere five percent of the vote counted, NBC declares former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan the 40th President of the United States. “I’m not bitter,” says President Jimmy Carter, who concedes the election hours before polls in the west have closed. “Rosalynn is, but I’m not.” Adds the First Lady, “I’m bitter enough for all of us.”
11/20/80 President-elect Reagan arrives at the White House to receive a job briefing from President Carter, who later reveals that Reagan asked few questions and took no notes, asking instead for a copy of Carter’s presentation.
11/27/80 At halftime during its Thanksgiving football game, CBS interviews President-elect Ronald Reagan, who reminisces about his days as a radio sportscaster and fondly recalls his penchant for enhancing the events by “making things up.”
12/11/80 Presidentelect Reagan’s first eight Cabinet appointments – including Donald Regan (Treasury), David Stockman (Budget Director), Caspar Weinberger (Defense) and William Casey (CIA) – are announced. Reagan not only doesn’t attend the half hour ceremony but he can’t even be bothered to watch all of it on TV.
12/12/80 Denying a report that Nancy Reagan “can’t understand” why the Carters don’t move into Blair House during the transition so she can have a head start on redecorating the White House, a spokesperson explains that the First Ladyin-waiting merely suggested that she might do that favor for the next First Family. Says one Carter aide, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to fend off the moving vans.”
12/18/80 Washington Post: REAGAN ON THE SIDELINES / HE OFTEN SEEMS REMOTE FROM TRANSITION
12/19/80 Washington Post: REAGAN ‘IS REALLY RUNNING THINGS,’ MEESE TELLS PRESS
12/31/80 Nancy Reagan is reported to be insisting that whoever is hired as her husband’s press secretary must be “reasonably goodlooking.”
1/17/81 The most expensive Inaugural celebration in American history – an $11 million four day parade of limousines, white ties and mink that prompts Reagan partisan Barry Goldwater to complain about such an “ostentatious” display “at a time when most people can’t hack it” – gets underway in Washington.
1/20/81 At noon, promising an “era of national renewal,” Ronald Wilson Reagan becomes the oldest man to take the oath of office as President of the United States. In a stunning coincidence, just as he completes his speech, the 52 hostages held in Tehran for 444 days begin their journey home. Suspicion lingers to this day about whether behind-the-scenes machinations by the Reagan transition team – machinations which would have been nothing less than treasonous – might have played a part in delaying this moment for days or even weeks in order that it might provide this spectacular opening to the surreal movie about to be filmed.
Later, President Reagan visits Tip O’Neill’s office, where the House Speaker shows him a desk that was used by Grover Cleveland. Reagan claims to have portrayed him in a movie. O’Neill points out that Reagan in fact played Grover Cleveland Alexander, the baseball player, not Grover Cleveland, the President.
All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an eBook. Much more to come.
Director James A. Fitzpatrick visits Cairo in this 1938 short movie he produced as part of his Traveltalk series for MGM studios.
Cairo, City Of Contrast has no pretense of being anything other than a lighthearted travelogue. Colorful and quaint in its optimism.
John Cale performing a scorching version of ‘Pablo Picasso” at The Melbourne Festival Of The Arts in October of last year.
The Melbourne Festival Of The Arts asked some of the world’s finest singers to reflect on our theme of spirituality and mortality with the question: ‘Which seven songs would you leave behind?’
The festival criteria was that the musicians had to include “the first song they wrote, one that switched them on to music, one they covet, one to share, two of their own, and one from the songbook of legendary Leonard Cohen.”
Cale’s list included “Pablo Picasso,” which he wrote with Jonathan Richman, “Letter From Abroad,” “Dirty Ass Rock and Roll,” “Magritte,” “Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend,” Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and “Heartbreak Hotel.”
This is so fucking hot it turned Cale’s hair pink!
“Letter From Abroad” and “Heartbreak Hotel” after the jump…
Cairo artist and electronic musician Ahmed Basiony died at age 32 on January 28, the fourth day of major anti-government demonstrations in his home city.
Basiony’s rather remarkable music is being played continuously on 100radiostation, an arm of Egyptian experimentalist Mahmoud Refat’s now-offline 100copies organization, which organizes the annual 100live electronic music festival in Cairo.
Here he is performing at the 100live festival in 2010:
Basiony leaves behind a wife and son. Let’s hope this revolution is worth all the lives and creative talent lost. Peace, justice, power and freedom to the people of Egypt.
Hat-tip Marc Weidenbaum at disquiet.
In all the hype surrounding Volkwagen’s Super Bowl commercial airing later today and featuring Jon Spencer’s Negritic take on the song “Black Betty,” there is no mention of Leadbelly. It’s as if “Black Betty” never existed prior to Ram Jam’s hit version of the song—the 1977 recording the press keeps referring to when discussing the Volkswagen commercial.
In my opinion, Volkswagen would have made a better (and hipper) impression had they opted to use Leadbelly’s original recording of the tune. But maybe using a Black bluesman singing a traditional Negro work song called “Black Betty” in a commercial featuring a black automobile and black insects might have struck some folks as being a bit racist. Better to go with the white guy. Or change the name of the car to the Volkswagen Boll Weevil.
There’s not much information on the Internet about Little Gary Ferguson—just a few videos and a handful of posters announcing some gigs in the mid-1960s where he shared the bill with The Mothers Of Invention, The Count Five and The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. At one gig, The Mothers were his opening act!
Little Gary was being groomed by Nashville talent agents to be the next Stevie Wonder with James Brown’s moves, but alas it was not to be. He disappeared from the public scene as quickly as he had materialized. Washed up at seven years old.
You may have to squint to see it, but in this poster Little Gary gets top billing over The Mothers Of Invention! Freaky indeed.
Here’s some rare footage of Little Gary on DJ William “Hoss” Allen’s Dallas-based TV show The !!!! Beat. Sadly, there’s no lightshow or Zappa.
Za Bakdaz (the back days?) was a space-age operetta that Klaus Nomi was working on with collaborators George Elliott and Page Wood during 1979. It was unfinished at the time of his death in 1983. Working from old tapes, notes and past discussions with Klaus, Elliot and Wood completed the project and released it as an album in 2008. You can purchase it here.
In this video clips from 1960 German sci-fi film First Spaceship On Venus are wedded to the overture and song “Cre Spoda” from Za Bakdaz. It’s eerily effective.
This Burger King commercial from 1980 falls into the “what the fuck were they thinking?” category. Sir Shake-A-Lot shimmies like a speedfreak after snorting a line of crystal meth the length of John Holmes’ blue-veined-blood-bomber. Sir Shake needs some Thorazine, quick! The dude is fried.
Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “the Elvis of cultural theory,” discuss the revolution in Egypt with insight, wisdom, humor and clarity. What a refreshing alternative to the blowhards on American television.
I love Zizek’s “Tom and Jerry” analogy (though I think he means Wile E. Coyote). At the point President Hosni Mubarak looks down he will see there is no ground beneath his feet and he’s in free fall. But he keeps staring straight ahead.
In case you were wondering what an idiot thinks about the situation in Egypt, Cindy Jacobs has helpfully made another video!
Dangerous Minds’ Paul Gallagher has already done a fitting tribute to Tura Satana, but I thought I’d share this interview that Tura gave for Kevin Sean Michaels’ 2008 documentary The Wild World Of Ted V. Mikels. Tura starred in Mikel’s The Astro-Zombies and The Doll Squad. In the interview she discusses working with Mikels and Russ Meyer.
Tura Satana does a striptease in “The Doll Squad” and is interviewed by Sandra Bernhard after the jump…
Tura Satana died yesterday of heart failure, in Reno, Nevada. Satana had a brief but iconic career during which she was an exotic dancer, starred in the ground-breaking cult film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, dated Elvis Presley and became a cinematic icon.
Satana began her career as a dancer at 14, and was a victim of the brutality and sexism endemic at the time, as she explained in 2008:
“At the age of 15 I became an exotic dancer in the clubs of Calumet City, Illinois, because I had left home due to a bad situation stemming from when I was raped. Instead of the guys who raped me going to jail, I was sent to reform school because they paid the judge one thousand dollars to get off. So I went instead, supposedly because I enticed them to rape me.”
Satana went onto appear in numerous TV shows and films, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce, but it be for iconic role in Russ Meyer’s classic 1965 film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! for which she will always be remembered. In the film, Satana played Varla, a sexy, voluptuous anti-hero, who proved:
“A woman, like my character, was able to show the male species that we’re not helpless and not entirely dependent on them. People picked up on the fact that women could be gorgeous and sexy and still kick ass.”
Satana also said:
“There are a great many similarities between Varla and myself. Varla was an outlet for some of the anger I felt growing up. She was also a statement to women all over the world that you can be a take-charge person and still be sexy. She also showed the women world-wide that women don’t have to be weak, simpering females. They just go after what they want and usually get it.”
John Waters once described Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! as:
”The best movie ever made, and possibly better than any movie that will ever be made.”
Born in Japan in either 1935 or 1938 (dates vary), Satana worked her way though a variety of minor TV roles, including appearing with Dean Martin in Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?, before being chosen by Meyer for Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. Filmed in the desert outside Los Angeles, in temperatures often over hundred degrees, Meyer claimed that “She and I made the movie…” and that Satana was “very capable”:
“She knew how to handle herself. Don’t fuck with her! And if you fuck with her, do it well! She might turn on you!”
Satana went on to make The Astro Zombies (1969) and Ted V. Mikels’ The Doll Squad (1973), after which she was shot by a former lover. Satana then worked as a nurse, until her cult celebrity led to her return to acting this century with Sugar Boxx, Rob Zombie’s animation The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and Astro Zombies: M3 Cloned.
An announcement on her official web site reads:
R.I.P. 1938-2011
My dear, dear friend, you have no idea how much you will be missed…
In 2008, Satana talked to Zuri Zone about her cult status:
“I’m thrilled with the status Faster Pussycat has received when it was first released and at all the additional releases. I think the popularity that it has is because we gave them something that they really wanted to see. I also hope that it is because it shows that women don’t have to be weak and helpless to be sexy. We can be in control and still be feminine. I think that I remain a cult figure even after 40 years because the public like what they see on the screen. At least on the film, I will be forever ageless.”
Bonus clip from ‘Faster, Pussycat!’ after the jump…
Happy Birthday William Burroughs, born today in 1914, one of the most “culturally influential, and innovative artists of the twentieth century.”
Here’s Burroughs in the “informal documentary” The Commissioner of Sewers from 1991, where he discusses his writing, his life, his thoughts on art, literature, and the use of language as a weapon, his world view, as well as space and time travel, mummification, and politics.
