"Our Favorite Things" is a new DVD/CD by the notorious experimental music and sound group Negativland, co-released by Seeland MediaMedia and Craig Baldwin’s Other Cinema Digital. The launch event takes place at 8:30pm this Saturday, December 1st at Other Cinema in San Francisco.

Or you can buy it online.


To understand the DVD compilation Our Favorite Things, one has to comprehend the basic tenets of Negativland’s philosophy. Thematically, the band appears to follow the William Burroughs’ method of cut and paste creativity. The notorious beat author, responsible for the incomprehensibly brilliant Naked Lunch, used to write long passages, tear out the typed page, cut the sentences into soundbite snippets, and reconfigure the prose into new, unexpected phraseology. Much of the music Negativland makes is standard rock and electronica stomps. There’s even a peppering of pop and pleasant valley sundriness to it. But the lyrics, when there are any, follow a more free flowing, stream of subconsciousness pattern. read more


link | via-1, via-2, via-3

INTO THE WILD

Eddie Vedder has written the sound track for Sean Penn's movie Into the Wild, based on the book by Jon Krakauer. Later this month Vedder will release a CD of songs written for or inspired by the movie, the closest thing to a solo album he's ever done.

Into the Wild is the true story of Chris McCandless, a good kid from a prosperous but unhappy family, who left home, changed his name to Alexander Supertramp and in 1992 walked off into the Alaskan wilderness. He died there of starvation 16 weeks after he arrived.

McCandless was an adventurer who celebrated his college graduation by destroying his driver’s license and his social security card. Hitting the open road, and intending to turn his back on his family, he later abandoned his car, burned all his money, and set out on foot to traverse the continent. He kayaked down the Colorado River to Mexico, hopped trains and hitchhiked back north up the coast, then trudged beyond the outer limits of civilization to spend more than 100 days in the rural northern territory of Alaska. His body was discovered in the Alaskan wilderness by two buffalo hunters in 1992, some weeks after he had apparently died.

Into The Wild goes on limited release September 21st.

via

"Redacted" stuns Venice

A new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears.

"Redacted", by U.S. director Brian De Palma, is one of at least eight American films on the war in Iraq due for release in the next few months and the first of two movies on the conflict screening in Venice's main competition.

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

De Palma, 66, whose "Casualties of War" in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film's images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.

"The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people," he told reporters after a press screening.

"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.

Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was gang raped, killed and burnt by American soldiers in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. Her parents and younger daughter were also killed.

Five soldiers have since been charged with the attack. Four of them have been given sentences of between 5 and 110 years.

"IT'S ALL ON THE INTERNET" Continued...

Warner Bros. is teaming with Depp's Infinitum-Nihil and Graham King's GK Films to develop a feature based on the '60s daytime supernatural sudser "Dark Shadows."

Depp, who is coming off "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" and who just wrapped the Tim Burton-directed "Sweeney Todd," is next expected to star in "Shantaram," a Mira Nair-directed adaptation of the Gregory David Roberts novel that Depp, King and Plan B are producing for Warner Bros. Depp, King and WB are also mobilizing to make a film about the life of Alexander Litvinenko, with Depp poised to play the former KGB agent, who was fatally poisoned.

link

Dark Shadows could be fun. And the Litvinenko story must be told; it may as well be Depp.

From the trailer of SICKO

NARRATOR: When Michael Moore decided to make a movie on the health care industry, top-level executives were on the defensive. What were they hiding?

EXECUTIVE: That's not on, right?

MICHAEL MOORE: No.

EXECUTIVE: Okay.

EXECUTIVE: The intent is to maximize profits.

MICHAEL MOORE: If you denied more people health care you got a bonus?

WOMAN: When you don't spend money on somebody, it is a savings to the company.

HEALTH CARE WORKER: I denied a necessary a man a necessary operation and thus caused his death. This secured my reputation and it ensured my continued advancement in the health care field.


POLITICIAN: I want America to have the finest health care in the world.

MICHAEL MOORE: Four health care lobbyists for every member of Congress. Here's what is what it costs to buy these men, and this woman, and this guy, and this guy. And the United States slipped to 37 in healthcare around the world - just slightly ahead of Slovenia.

[laughter]


WOMAN: I get a bill from my insurance company telling me that the ambulance ride wasn't pre-approved. I don't know when I was supposed to pre-approve it. After I gained consciousness in the car? Before I got in the ambulance?

MICHAEL MOORE: There's actually one place on American soil that had free universal health care.

MICHAEL MOORE: Which way to Guantanamo Bay?

GOVT OFFICIAL: Detainees representing a threat to our national security are given access to top-notch medical facilities.

MICHAEL MOORE: Permission to enter. I have three 9/11 rescue workers. They just want some medical attention - the same kind the evildoers are getting...Hello?


If you missed Michael Moore on Democracy Now today you can get caught up at the website and listen, read, or watch the Sicko trailer. And do NOT miss the transcripts of his California Assembly speech half way down the page. Out-fucking-standing.

READ MORE

Van Sant on Acid

Gus Van Sant will direct a film of Tom Wolfe's seminal New Journalism tome The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters driving cross-country in 1964. Lance Black (Big Love) will write.

link

Sicko Premieres At Cannes

This time, the U.S. government apparently has Michael Moore in its sights. To make "Sicko," he traveled to Cuba with some rescue workers who became ill after cleaning up debris from the terror attacks in New York. In the film, he shows them getting health care in Cuba that he says was unavailable to them in the United States.

The film got a warm welcome at Cannes on Saturday where it played to a packed house. It's main message is that the U.S. health care system is driven by private industry greed. The film asks why 50 million Americans have no health care coverage, and why many who have health insurance still have trouble getting treatment.

"I understand why the Bush administration is coming after me -- I have tried to help the very people they refuse to help..."
-- Michael Moore

"Sicko" presents an emotional portrait of an array of people, including volunteer rescue heroes of the September 11 attack, who are denied needed care -- despite the fact that most are insured. And it points a finger at the source of the crisis, a profit-driven insurance industry whose "biggest accomplishment is buying our U.S. Congress" to prevent real reform.

It also focuses on the suffering caused to the nine million children living in the United States whom Moore says are left without any health cover because of the country's reliance on private insurance. 'We are the last country in the industrialized world to have this system,' the film-maker said after the screening. 'The poorest child in Britain has a longer life expectancy than the average American child.'

link

I don't know what drives this lovely man to want to fix our unconscionable health care system, but I'm grateful for all the passion and love that he displays.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

This weekend the little-known 1970 film will get a brand new score performed live by Espers, Philadelphia freak folk musicians — including a harpist, a cellist and an "enigmatic electronicist". Will you even need libation at the after-party?

What about a girl who gets her period and discovers her womanhood 'Alice in Wonderland' style? Not freaky enough for you? The 1970 Czech film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a nudie fairy-tale head trip, an Aquarian stew of Freud, Murnau, Hefner and the Brothers Grimm, complete with lecherous priests, a pubescent heroine and a vampire grandmother.

Valerie and her Week of Wonders
8pm Saturday and 9pm Sunday--March 10 and 11
Anthology Film Archives

Very cool that Espers is doing the music, but besides that, try to catch this old film sometime. You may like it if you enjoy wicked strange cult films.

Derailroaded: Inside The Mind Of Larry "Wild Man" Fischer is currently running on Sundance Channel.

Josh Rubin's strangely fascinating documentary parses the life of outsider musician Larry "Wild Man" Fischer. Growing up in the '50s, Fischer was an undiagnosed manic-depressive schizophrenic who, after attacking his mother with a knife, landed in a mental asylum.

Eventually he headed to California in the late '60s, where Frank Zappa discovered him singing his own strange compositions for a dime a song along Sunset Boulevard. In a strangulated growl somewhere between a possessed Tiny Tim and Bobcat Goldthwait, Fischer's music is something of an acquired taste. Zappa championed him and he led a convoluted career appearing on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and landing on the British Top 50 charts.

Derailroaded is interspersed with plenty of talking heads delivering anecdotes, as well as footage of Fischer performing, but ultimately this is a film not about music or fame, but about the ravages of mental illness. Despite many moments of levity—such as a completely bizarre re-enactment of an interview between Dr. Demento and Frank Zappa, done with puppets—it's a devastating portrait of delusion and fathomless despair.

You sure can see the Zappa influence but man, oh man, was the poor guy ever out there.

link

WE - A Documentary

'We' juxtaposes the writer Arundhati Roy's eloquent 'Come September' address, with a collage of contemporary and historical footage of our world, against a stirring soundtrack (Lush, Curve, Love & Rockets, Boards of Canada, Nine Inch Nails, Dead Can Dance, Amon Tobin, Massive Attack, Tortoise, Telepop, Placebo and Faithless).

Roy asks her audience to consider September 11 in the years prior to 2001, and what this date might mean to the citizens of the world. She says:

"This historical dredging is not offered as an accusation or a provocation. But just to share the grief of history. To thin the mist a little. To say to the citizens of America, in the gentlest, most human way: Welcome to the world."

She then refers to the September 11, 1973 CIA supported military coup in Chile headed by General Augusto Pinochet, the British government's September 11, 1922 mandate in Palestine and George Bush Sr's announcement to go to war against Iraq on September 11, 1990.

"...to dogmatically hold to only one set of ideas results in, I think, a slow, sad, and unnecessary form of brain death. Westerners need to start reading non-western press if they ever wish to understand the world better than they do at this moment."


'We' was produced by New Zealander Scott Ewing, who initially released it anonymously on the internet. It first appeared on the Australian website: resist.com.au in September 2005.

It's a powerful antidote to the mind numbing propaganda disseminated by our mainstream media. Free your mind. Go to: www.weroy.org

What is this movie "The Secret" that everyone is talking about? This movie exposes a concept that has been around since the beginning of man. When it was discovered how powerful it was, those in control tried to suppress it in order to maintain that control. Throughout history there have been great thinkers who have indicted this secret in their work and literature. In the early 1900's it began to appear more often in many business and success books. Again it was suppressed from the majority of the people.

Finally in this ground-breaking movie, presented by some of the best selling authors and philosophers today who live and practice this "secret", it is being revealed in detail. Many real life stories are detailed about how those practicing this secret have accumulated enormous wealth, eliminated disease, and achieved amazing results. This movie will teach you how to apply this information to your life to accomplish whatever it is that you desire.

The Secret deals with the Universal Laws. The 3 basic laws are the Law of Attraction, Law of Deliberate Creation, and Law of Allowing.

During the month of February you can watch The Secret dvd online for free right here. Runtime is 1 hour, 31 minutes. (I'm watching it now. On a dial-up pc.)

Read 100 Quotes from The Secret.

link

2 Upcoming Films With Links To The 60s

Neal Cassady - From the bars of Denver to the Steel Mills of Utah to the avant-garde parties of Manhattan, across a nation whose heart is calling for a role-model, a leader, a hero... Neal Cassady's on the road again, and all his old pals are there with him--Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, The Merry Pranksters. They're searching for Neal's long-lost father, who holds the key to the great unwritten American novel. But in the end it's Neal alone, and in the rear-view fast-approaching are cops, groupies and the dark chimera of his own vanity.

Release Date: To Be Announced
link


Across The Universe - A love story set against the backdrop of the 1960s amid the turbulent years of anti-war protest, mind exploration and rock 'n roll, the film moves from the dockyards of Liverpool to the creative psychedelia of Greenwich Village, from the riot-torn streets of Detroit to the killing fields of Vietnam. The star-crossed lovers, Jude (Jim Sturgess) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), along with a small group of friends and musicians, are swept up into the emerging anti-war and counterculture movements, with "Dr. Robert" (Bono) and "Mr. Kite" (Eddie Izzard) as their guides. Tumultuous forces outside their control ultimately tear the young lovers apart, forcing Jude and Lucy – against all odds – to find their own way back to each other.

I don't know if I would like this one or not. I've read that it's more like a series of punctuated scenes and characters each represented by a Beatles song - 32 in all. Too much of a musical for me...maybe it has more of a story.

Now the Neal Cassady film sounds promising because the people are interesting. Cassady, Kesey, Kerouac, the the Pranksters, of whom I thought were the end-all and be-all of the universe when I was growing up.

Release Date: September 28, 2007.
View trailer
Link

The Drop Dead Gorgeous Series

For anyone who has eaten the whole box, or bag, or carton the photographs in this series make light of our secret binges. Here, the consequences of indulgence are tabloid or monster movie deaths. Daniela Edburg’s Drop Dead Gorgeous both mocks and satisfies our cravings.

Born in Houston in 1975, Daniela Edburg grew up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She got her bachelor’s degree in visual arts from the National University in the excellence program at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico City, where she still lives and works.

Images appear courtesy of Kunsthaus and Daniela Edburg, copyright © Daniela Edburg, all rights reserved.

A series of 12 delightful manipulated images by Daniela Edburg.

link

W A R/D A N C E

Across the country, Ugandan children are getting ready for the biggest event of the year: the annual Kampala Music Festival. Fifty-six schools will compete, but only one will go home the champion. No one expects it to be Patongo ? schools in the middle of refugee camps don?t win awards.

But when the music starts, expressions shift. After a lifetime of trauma, this year Patongo Primary School students have something magical to anticipate. For the first time, they have qualifed to compete in Kampala?s national festival. The capital city may as well be on another planet to these kids. Most have never left the camp, but they dream about Kampala?s towering buildings, plentiful soda and soldier-free streets. Unlike the wealthier schools from the south, Patongo?s students scrap for school uniforms and instruments. Despite the odds, the children endlessly practice their performances, filling the sweltering one room schoolhouse with dust. They are driven by heart, talent and, for some, the need to rebuild lives shattered by the L.R.A.. After months of practicing, it all builds to the big night in Kampala. If their bus can safely make it through rebel territory, they?ll take the stage and give it their all. Win or lose, these children will show what true heart can achieve. (via: World Vision)

Documentaries have richly peppered the film landscape quite generously of late and War/Dance is one beautiful and tender documentary showing at Sundance this week.

W E B T R A I L | Flurb, Anarchy, UFOs, Junky's, Orwellian

Have you FLURBed lately? Rudy Rucker's The Third Bomb is a good article on the latest Flurb and don't miss Cul-de-Sac by John Shirley. Actually, they are ALL good articles on the Flurb.

At Anarchist U, it's all about structure. (wtf?) The four-year-old free school has survived partly because it's, um, well organized. The mere fact that it's entering its fourth year without an address or a registrar, and with total operating expenses of about $50 a year (most of which is the fee for hosting its website, http://www.anarchistu.org), is something of a milestone. [via]
Read More

"If it wasn't for my girlfriend sighting the objects first, I would concede the possibility that it was a hallucination. She knew nothing of my silent request to show me something, and pointed out the objects before I saw them." Professor Pan expounds on the attempted manipulation of UFO manifestations, the concept of UFOs as egregores, and the probability that UFOs are a multidimensional phenomena with a nod to Jacques Vallee, Brother Blue, RAW, Crowley and with more great links to explore. link

:: I missed The Junky's Christmas again this year, (and for the past 15 years) Originally produced in 1993 and presented by Francis Ford Coppola, the film has just been released on DVD. [via]

CHILDREN OF MEN - Fans of progressive rock know Battersea from the cover of Pink Floyd?s 1977 concept album "Animals," the one with the floating pink pig and a playlist that includes songs like "Pigs" and "Sheep." The album seems to have been inspired by George Orwell?s 1945 allegorical novel, "Animal Farm" (the book?s money quote: "But some animals are more equal than others"). [via]
link

Whether there's an Orwellian spin or an artistic approach, the reviews for Children Of Men are kind. On NYTimes.com below the article there is a list of similar movies that lists Brave New World, The Stand, THX 1138, Gattaca, and In the Country of the Last Things. Now THAT should be included on the banner.

George Bush Quote
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

Uma? No. It certainly looks like Uma Thurman. It's Nena Von Schlebrugge, Uma's mother, as she gets ready to wed Timothy Leary. (She later divorced Leary and married Tibetan scholar, Dr. Robert Thurman.)

Nena was 28 when she met Leary, who was then 45, at his annual Fourth of July party upstate in Millbrook. According to Robert Greenfield (who recently wrote a bio of Leary), she told the mind-altering Harvard professor that she "wanted to go to India to seek ultimate wisdom, not to mention the secret sexual practices of the Orient."

"They took LSD and three days later they decided to get married," recalls Leary's ex-girlfriend Peggy Hitchcock.

Their Millbrook nuptials were a "phantasmagoric, magical mystery tour, the first real big coming-out party for all the A-list, jet-set, high-fashion beautiful people from New York who had recently discovered LSD," writes Greenfield. "Guests lined up to present the newlyweds with hash, grass and psychedelic mushrooms, as well as snuffboxes filled with LSD and cocaine." The wedding cake was crowned with the Hindu deities Shakti and Siva having sex.

You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You
By D A Pennebaker
1964, 12 minutes, Black & White

Watch Video (Quick Time)

W E B T R A I L

* Above graphic is one example of the excellent collage art by Agnes Montgomery, who is currently working on something for Animal Collective's next release.

* I didn't know there was a David Gilmour Blog

* New anarchy aggregator site, Carnival Of Anarchy, is blazing a path through intertopia. Will be December 29 and the theme is Anarchist Blogs, Anarchist blogging.

* From the One Club, The Alchemists is a film "about 5 people who hated the world so much? they changed yours".

APOCALYPTO - No One Can Outrun Their Destiny

"Gibson has made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty -- it's breathtaking to watch a jaguar racing in the jungle alongside the man who is named after the beast. Say what you will about Gibson, he's a filmmaker right down to his nerve endings." From Peter Travers, veteran Rolling Stone reviewer, who gives Apocalypto an excellent review. The film opens today, Friday, December 8.

If it has half the story as Braveheart, I'll enjoy the hell out of it.

Offical Link

Blood Tea and Red String

"a David Lynchean fever dream on Beatrix Potter terrain as lovingly crafted as it is unsettlingly sour-sweet" - Dennis Harvey, VARIETY

Equally obsessive if far more oblique, Christine Cegavske's Blood Tea and Red String is the fruit of a 13-year process, a stop-motion fable as beguiling as it is baffling.

Crammed with overdetermined images of birth and death, Blood Tea concerns the struggle between a trio of grasping albino mice (done up like the coachmen in Alice in Wonderland) and a group of half-bird, half-wolf critters known as The Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak. Cegavske's debt to Jan Svankmajer is obvious, but the film more closely resembles one of Alejandro Jodorowsky's psychedelic vision quests as re-realized by Ladislaw Starewicz.

Cegavske's ultra handmade style (she did the menacing crows in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things) is the opposite of every trend in contemporary animation, and worth lauding for that reason alone.

The DVD was released this month and I am very curious to see it.

From The Inbox: Tons of good reading material for you to devour on company time

* The first trailer for Factory Girl is out. The movie will be released in December. Plot Summary: A beautiful, wealthy young party girl drops out of Radcliffe in 1965 and heads to New York to become Holly Golightly. Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol, Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick. Interesting casting: Mena Suvari as Richie Berlin.

* The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers represents a global alliance of prayer, education and healing for our Mother Earth, all Her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come.

* Music Makes Your Brain Happy - As a rock producer, Daniel Levitin worked with Stevie Wonder, the Grateful Dead and Chris Isaak. But the music business began to change, and a disillusioned Levitin turned to academia, where a career in neuroscience beckoned.

* PsyComp Academic - Featuring a searchable database of UK and USA University courses that offer an orthodox opportunity to study fields related to the psychedelic compounds. Examples of the types of course are pharmacology, neuroscience, cognitive sciences, anthropology, chemistry and many more.

* Matrixmasters New Podcast Listings from the Palenque Norte lectures at Burning Man2006, featuring Erik Davis, Rick Doblin, Earth & Fire Erowid, Alex Grey, Jon Hanna, Daniel Pinchbeck, Ann & Sasha Shulgin, and many more.

* The Biography Project is an ongoing volunteer effort to catalog and document the contributions of authors, artists, scientists, film makers and other culturally influential individuals on underground culture in its various forms. This is direct response to the unfortunate lack of accurate and comprehensive information on the net regarding Popsubculture

* Pleasure chemical - For years, the brain chemical dopamine has been thought of as the brain's "pleasure chemical," sending signals between brain cells in a way that rewards a person or animal for one activity or another. More recently, research has shown that certain drugs like cocaine and heroin amplify this effect ? an action that may lie at the heart of drug addiction.

* Shematrix is a body of diverse and courageous women who serve as gatekeepers for the Rite of Initiation, which happens within a 3-day journey. For women, this is known as The Gift -- A Woman's Rite to HerSelf and for men, The Grail -- A Hero's Quest to the Self.

* The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization, dedicated to ensuring that humanity safely adopts increasingly powerful technologies, including genetics/biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards a technological singularity.

* Ritual - In Lila, the Journal Of Cosmic Play -- Explorations into Shamanism and the Transpersonal Vision, the Bricoleur explains what he thinks are the most accurate descriptions of a "Ritual".

(most links via gaiamedianews monthly newsletters)

FUCK: A Documentary
Tagline: The movie that dare not speak its name

via monochrom

"Scholars and linguists will examine the long history of fuck. Comedians, actors, and writers who have charted and popularized the upward course of fuck will be heard from, often while defending the Constitutional Right of Free Speech, all the way to the Supreme Court. FUCK will visit with those who actually fuck for a living. We'll hear from advocates who oppose fuck and it's infringement into our everyday lives. We'll watch some of the most famous and infamous film and television clips that feature fuck, we'll hear some of the most famous fucks ever uttered and we'll feel the impact of fuck on our everyday lives."

"The trailer looks amazing, it features Ice T, Kevin Smith, Janeane Garofalo, Billy Connolly and fucking Hunter S. Thompson!"

FUCK: A Documentary was released in the US on November 10, 2006. Maybe we'll laugh our fucking asses off.

link

Tuesday WEBTRAIL::
Gallery/Bare/Voxing/Carlin/Courtney/Atheism/Johari/

* Huzzah Hussar - Good to finally see more about artist Michael Hussar whose new series, Red Red Robin," opened at Pasadena's Mendenhall Sobieski Gallery on Saturday nite. Also paintings from Camille Rose Garcia's Doomcave Daydream

* Vox Rox - Vox is a really nice platform for keeping a weblog or a journal. It's from the Six Apart family who also has Livejournal and Typepad. One of the best features of Vox is the tons of templates to choose from. If you could ftp it, I'd leave Blogger in the wind.

* Courtney: "This is more Movie Star, isn't it?" she says, wriggling. "I don't want to be too, you know . . . rargh." She mimes a state of base sexual allure. "You know, Warren [Beatty] took me for lunch, and he said: "Courtney, in the movies there are wives and there are whores. You have to learn to play a wife." Revealing article. Times Online

* George Carlin on Religion: The Greatest Bullshit Story Ever Told

* Bare Down There or Square - Do you dare bare your pudanda? Whoa... personal. But we'd still like to know, wouldn't we? link

* Blogickal has a post about using "...The Johari Window to test just how differently people perceive my online and offline personæ", which intrigued me to no end. link

* An Atheist Laments - "Those with the power to elect presidents and congressmen-and many who themselves get elected-believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's Ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the Earth and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God. This is embarrassing." link

Lurking is the new black. Thank you for stopping by.

Webtrail | Thursday Eve Edition

URGENT THINGS THAT PEOPLE SAY WHEN THEY'RE TALKING LOUD ON THEIR CELLPHONES WHILE THE PLANE IS BOARDING. "I had a tuna fish sandwich in the airport. Tuna fish. Tuna fish. TUNA FISH. Yes, right, tuna fish. But they didn't toast the bread. No, no, they didn't toast the... THEY DIDN'T TOAST THE BREAD. Right. They didn't toast it." I know you've heard this person before...! link

The Twyla Tharp musical that uses songs by pop superstar Bob Dylan will close Nov. 19 at Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre, after a brief run. Halle-fuckin-lujah. How could this NOT have been a real suckfest? Bob Dylan on Broadway? Come on. I don't care what he said in the interviews, he hated it, too. He WILL bullshit an interviewer.

Truth - Full Of Shit And Dangerous

Subterranean Cinema is back online with more film goodies all You-Tubed up. Does anyone remember the Loud Family on PBS? I loved every minute of this groundbreaking series of a family self-destructing live. And there's Andy Kaufman, the El Topo screenplay, Mad Magazine's parody, "A Crockwork Lemon", the Doors, The Rolling Stones have some clips there, although they had to take down Cocksucker Blues, which I still haven't seen. link

Is he experienced? Supernaturally, yes. Until Leon Hendrix, younger brother of rock legend Jimi Hendrix, had a prophetic dream a few years ago, he had not pursued music himself. Now he's readying his first domestically available album, due out early next year. link

Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, has a new nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column called "Breaking the Sound Barrier." link

"On the afternoon I toured the Vixen Creations dildo plant I got much more than I bargained for. Sure I got to see acres and acres of erect, happy and proud colorful phalli waiting patiently in rows before being plucked, packed and sent to their final orgasmic destinations." Another fine SFGate.com article from Violet Blue. Read more about Violet and the Dildo Factory here.

Today's Quote
"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind."

-- Vita Sackville-West (British Novelist and Poet, 1892-1962)

GREY GARDENS

A paper bird sits in a rusty gilded birdcage by the window in one of the 28 rambling rooms in Grey Gardens by the shore. We watch Little Edie place a loaf of bread onto the attic floor for the raccoon that crawls out from behind the wall and heartily digs in.

With no running water and cat feces everywhere in this dilapidated house, Little Edie always managed to dress each day in one of her "revolutionary costumes". She would knot up a turban and wear makeshift skirts with a lovely brooch decorating her daily headgear, always in high heels, and red lipstick. Under the skirt were hose. Always. Color: Suntan.

After all, socialites must look presentable.

Are you a "staunch woman?" Does your "best costume for the day" involve a moth-bitten sweater wrapped around your head and pinned with a jeweled brooch? If so, you're likely a devotee of Grey Gardens, the 1975 documentary about an elderly society mother and her aging daughter living in isolated squalor in an East Hampton, NY, mansion. The film, which fixates on the day-to-day insanities of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, 'Little Edie' (the now-deceased aunt and cousin, respectively, of Jackie O), has acquired an enormous cult following over the past 30 years, mainly due to the extreme eccentricity and campy joie de vivre of the women. Nowhere is this popularity more apparent than in last spring's loving adaption of the film to an off-Broadway musical, starring Christine Ebersole in the roles of both the elder and younger Edies (in separate acts). Ebersole entranced sold-out crowds during that first run, and now her powerhouse portrayal will hit the big time when Grey Gardens opens at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway opening night November 2.

Related:
* Fansite
* Documentary
* Yahoo Group
* The Musical

This post brought over from http://easybakecoven2.blogspot.com; date and time adjusted.

New York Protests

SDS New York marched to the United Nations on Tuesday, September 19th, 2006 to protest the presence of George W. Bush in New York City. Bush, whom the SDSers regard as a war criminal, was in New York to "try to sell the world community a bill of goods - a handful of irrational, unbelievable, excuses for acts of barbarism in Iraq and elsewhere - committed in the name of the people of the United States", said Lauren Giaccone of Pace (University) SDS. John Cronan, also from Pace SDS, said: "we are also sending a message to the anti-war movement - it is time that the students' voice be heard as we are the group that is most directly affected by Bush's murderous policies".

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SDS Pace was the first chapter within SDS New York to endorse the "Number The Dead" protest - held on September 17th, 2006 on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. They were followed by MDS New York. Members of New School, Pratt and UCF SDS. The goal was to have 2700 participants stand along the east side of Fifth Avenue - in a human chain extending from 8th Street to 98th Street.

Yoko Ono donated 3000 buttons that stated: "Imagine Peace" - these were distributed to participants by the organizers. At the event, each participant held a placard that contained the name of a dead US soldier or stated "11,000 Iraqis". A documentary film crew videotaped the vigil. More photos by Fred Askew

Tuesday - September 19, 2006 - 17 Arrested at UN Rally

So exhilarating to see the students pick up the torch as they organize their SDS chapters and take it to the streets.

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Movie & TV deals for Little Britain

Little Britain stars David Walliams and Matt Lucas have revealed plans for a film version of their hit BBC show and also might do something for TV out ther.

The comedy duo have signed a deal with Pop Idol producer Simon Fuller to develop a US version of Little Britain for the American cable network HBO.

The pair are also developing a spin-off series for the BBC based around their popular characters Lou and Andy.

Great. Can't get enough of Little Britain. See some of their characters here.

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'He created his own universe and became its star'

Director David Cronenberg explains the debt he owes to Andy Warhol's bizarre and chillingly prophetic work

Empire is the classic. It was outrageous - yet somehow it worked. An eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building, it was high concept, not in the Hollywood sense, but the art sense. It's got potency, resonance. Andy even said the Empire State Building was a star. It's so New York, which was the centre of the artistic universe at the time, the 1960s. That's why I decided to begin the Andy Warhol show I am curating with Empire.

Andy Warhol Supernova: Stars, Deaths and Disasters, 1962-64, curated by David Cronenberg, is at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada, until October 22. Details: 001 416 979 6648 or Ago.net.

Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts features | David Cronenberg: on Andy Warhol

Is there anyone who could film something similar to an eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building and present it as art today? Probably not.

Send an email to ABC

On September 10 and 11, ABC Television is planning to run an inaccurate film depicting the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The film was written by an avowed conservative and it largely places the blame for failing to prevent the attacks on the Clinton administration while whitewashing the failures of the Bush administration.

Our review of the film shows it to be full of such inaccuracies. Its distorted version of history is inconsistent with the 9/11 Commission Report, upon which it claims to be based. The events leading up to September 11, 2001 are too important and too tragic to play politics with the facts.

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Occult Classic

The thematic daring and genre-bending perversity of the original Wicker Man by Graham Fuller. Whatever the fate of Neil LaBute's Yank remake of The Wicker Man—which Warner Bros. is releasing this Friday (without advance press screenings) —it's unlikely to generate the enduring passion and rancor inspired by the 1973 occult classic.

Other British films, such as Peeping Tom, The Devils, Straw Dogs, and A Clockwork Orange, steeped in violence and sexual sadism, have been more controversial; Get Carter, lionized by the '90s lad fad, has similarly gained in retrospective glory.

But The Wicker Man's genre-bending, thematic daring, and tortuous history have made it the U.K.'s definitive cult movie. Equally admired by witchcraft geeks and cineastes, though critically neglected, it has spawned two books, three documentaries, websites, and fan conventions.

village voice > film > by Graham Fuller

Jack Smith was a '60s underground legend. Before he was 30, this gay, Jewish, cross-dressing filmmaker had made one of the most influential films of all time, the 1963 avant-garde classic, "Flaming Creatures".

Though eventually banned in the state of New York for its array of bare breasts and flaccid penises, many bright lights of the New York underground hailed it as a masterpiece.

Purportedly made for just $300, Flaming Creatures features exotically dressed transvestites, a rape and enough bare-bones spectacle to make it the fringe cinema's answer to the exotic adventures like Arabian Nights (1942) that so enchanted Smith in his youth.

Avant-garde film enthusiast Andy Ditzler, who almost single-handedly has been keeping film culture alive in Atlanta, will man his blessedly creaky film projector to feature a 16mm print of Flaming Creatures in a one-night homage to some of the pioneers of American underground cinema, Carnivals of Ecstasy, at Eyedrum Gallery in Atlanta. The evening also features a new Ira Cohen work, "Brain Damage", as well as his new expanded "Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda".

The screening is part of Table of the Elements Festival No. 4: Bohrium, which presents five days of music (John Cale, Rhys Chatham, Captain Beefheart, ) and film that shuns the ivory tower for something that more closely resembles punk rock's outsider ethos and anti-establishment buck.

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ZEN NOIR began more than ten years ago, when I was meditating in a Buddhist temple at 5 a.m. Keenly aware of all the half-asleep people sitting in the room, I was suddenly struck with an odd thought: "what would happen if one of us just keeled over, dead?"

From that moment, the ideas slowly evolved: Western vs. Eastern views of death; Love vs. the inevitable fact that Everything Changes; and finally, Logic vs. Reality.

It was this last thought that brought me to the idea of Film Noir. In Film Noir, the detective often sets out to solve one mystery, but ends up finding another, deeper mystery, and having to confront dark, sometimes frightening truths.

In Zen Buddhism, this type of mystery is often expressed as a koan. A koan is a teaching riddle the master poses to the student that cannot be solved with logic. The koan most Westerners are familiar with is: “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” On the surface, the question is absurd, because no amount of reason or logic will lead you to an answer. But there is an answer: the answer is who you become as you explore the question, what you discover about yourself, the universe, and all of existence. Opens September 15.

* A collection of Zen Koans

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