WONDERWALL (1968)

An eccentric, lovable scientist falls in love with the girl next door - in an unusual way. Set in 1960's London, Wonderwall tells the story of a reclusive professor who becomes obsessed with a stunning model called Penny Lane. A psychedelic fantasy steeped in voyeurism, this film features a musical score by George Harrison with musical contributions from Eric Clapton and Ravi Shankar. Dutch designers The Fool, were set designers for the movie.

I like this film; but I like strange, psychedelic films so view it with caution it that's not your usual fare. It may remind you somewhat of Jodorowsky or Fellini. It's been showing on television lately and you can also get it at Netflix and at Yahoo!.

Bogus Science - The LSD-Chromosome Scare

Fraser Clark reminds us of the 1967 scare that Science Magazine published about LSD causing chromosome damage.

"THE HIDDEN EVILS OF LSD", screamed the Saturday Evening Post, Aug 12, 1967.

"By evening, the charge that LSD could break chromosomes was in all the nation's media." Peter Stafford: ‘Psychedelics Encyclopedia.’

But the entire story was basically a government-funded scam based on the examination of a single patient!

When I had my first child, my Mother was mortified that my previous lsd use (not while pregnant) would produce a deformed baby because of the bogus stories that started in 1967. It didn't.

Somebody wanted a whole generation to be scared straight. It worked about as good as those warnings on a pack of cigarettes do.

link

Acid Logic

When I was younger and did boatloads of cocaine, I also ran 6 - 8 miles a day. And I did lots of weight training and cardio. In fact I was compulsive about exercise back then.

When I did lots of acid (and other psychedelics) we grew our own food and began living and eating organically and chugged it back with vitamins. Especially Vitamin C and B-12.

The rumor was that Vitamin C was potentiating the acid. The acid logic was that the healthier you were, the cleaner and better the lsd experience.

It's just strange that in the presence of psychedelics or cocaine I idiotically felt compelled to balance it with what I believed to be a healthier lifestyle.

Welcome to the bizarre universe of Alejandro Jodorowsky, a monstrous talent whose alchemical insights and sublime freak-outs epitomize an era of rare cinematic enlightenment-- provocative and psychedelic on a grand scale.

Thanks to the end of a bitter 30-year feud, the deranged, gruesome films of Jodorowsky have finally been released. (The films we've previously seen have been poor quality bootlegs.)

Amazon has a May 1, shipping date for this DVD package with El Topo, Fando Y Lis, and The Holy Mountain. It also includes a DVD of Jodorowsky's never-before-released first film, La Cravate and the La Constellation Jodorowsky doc and more interviews, scripts and such.

Secret Drugs Of Buddhism

Mike Crowley and his excellent work on the Secret Drugs of Buddhism. First is an introduction and a brief synopsis of his adventures leading up to his engagement with Buddhism. A lama is asked if psychedelics have been used as a secret practice. He answers, "How would I know if it was secret?" Mike Crowley elaborates an idea which many of us have long suspected.

Read more | via

Goa Gil - May 19, 2007 - Deerfields (Asheville, NC)

Atlanta Psytrance and Those People Productions welcome Goa Gil back to the Southeastern US, on his second rite of passage as your shamanic guide, for an extended journey into the heart of Primordial Bliss.

Join us in a regional gathering of the tribes as we celebrate as one primal force Goa Gil's sonic transmission of cutting-edge psychedelic trance across Deerfields, a 940-acre private retreat in the sacred Appalachian Mountains. Beneath the skies, on earthen soil where nature abounds, we will dance by ritual fire as the ancients once did -- guided by Goa Gil in Redefining the Ancient Tribal Ritual for the 21st Century through the Trance Dance Experience!

link

Utopian Bliss Balls is a product exclusively available at Azarius. They are derived from the real Bliss Balls from the sixties, made of psychedelic LSA seeds and bee wax. This modern variety contains Hawaïan baby woodrose (Argyreia nervosa), fo ti tien (Centella asiatica), damiana (Turnera diffusa), ginseng (Panax ginseng) and bee pollen.

Very popular in the sixties among hippies and artists in California. Azarius gives them a brand new look! Made with the traditional ingredients like the Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds and damiana. Gives you an LSD-like trip.

Never heard of them, but it's sure got a great name.

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)

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)

Friday Random Ten - Shuffle 'em up and show us your ten. I'll show you mine...

1. Moon Occults The Sun - Espers
2. For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield
3. Waiting Phase One - Porcupine Tree
4. Hyper-Ballad - Bjork
5. Rejoicing in the Hands - Vashti Bunyan & Devendra Banhart
6. Green Pasture - Growing
7. Winters Love - Animal Collective
8. Pandora - Cocteau Twins
9. Black Wall - Six Organs of Admittance
10. Monkey Man - Rolling Stones

Neo psychedelic music is garnering so much roar; not for pushing the envelope so much but for crawling up inside that envelope and mailing it back to 1969. Like the sounds I heard when I spent yards of time stoned in front of the 8-track. Go ahead. Jump in. (listen) You'll have a safe warm place to land.

From the INBOX

GreyLodge Podcasting Company is pleased to announce our new alliance with the incredible avant-garde resource UbuWeb.

2nd Amazonian Shamanism Conference in Peru in June. A gathering of scientists and healers. Link

The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis by Paul Levy is now available for purchase online. Link

Ovi Magazine - 'Promises' is the theme of Ovi 14 and has all the usual cartoons, illustrations, poems, fiction and radio shows, along with a few extra Ovi peculiarities.

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream - www.altpr.org. In my opinion the absolute best snapshot into the daily news.

Tons of good links in the Gaia Media Newsletter.

* The Church of Reality is a religion based on the practice of Realism, believing in everything that is real. Their motto is, "If it's real, we believe in it."

* Adventurer and writer Kira Salak reports about her ayuahuasca experiences for National Geographic. Read her story and see a short video clip.

* Starhawk and Donna Read, the makers of the film Signs of the Times, about the life and work of Marija Gimbutas, have organized a series of Goddess Salons.

* The German group LightRiders are working hard on a 2 to 3 hour DVD project "The Spirit of Basel", featuring the Saturday night concert with "Akasha Project", "Stars Sounds Orchestra", and "Guru Guru", including short excerpts from the major spoken presentations. Have a first glimpse with their Teaser.

* The Vernal Equinox 2006 issue of The Entheogen Review contains "Reflections on Basel" by Jon Hanna and João Serro, but also an article entitled "Halperngate" by Jon Hanna.

* Surrealartforum is the largest Surreal, Fantastic, Psychedelic & Visionary Artist Links Gallery on the Internet. An incredible collection.

And more...

GAIAN MIND SUMMER FESTIVAL

June 22nd-25th, Four Quarters, Central PA, USA

Just added! Daniel Pinchbeck is one of the leading voices in today’s counter-culture and is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, which has given him a higher profile among those interested in alternative religion and spirituality. He will be speaking at GMSF2K6 in support of his forthcoming book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. more…

John Halpern: an informant for the DEA?

-- by Jon Hanna

"I've recently penned the article "Halperngate" for the current issue of The Entheogen Review."

"Since this article deals with a lesser-known snitch, John Halpern, who has also been a psychedelic researcher largely supported by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and who still frequents underground events (he will be part of a team at the 2006 BOOM Festival's crisis tent), I feel that it is important for the psychonautical community to have the opportunity to read about Halpern's past choice to repeatedly provide testimony to the DEA related to the arrest and trial of Leonard Pickard and Clyde Apperson, who were ultimately both convicted of LSD manufacture." A PDF of the article is posted at:

www.entheogenreview.com/halperngate.html

"Information about the availability of the hard-copy of this issue of The Entheogen Review will be posted at their main site after 4/12/06; this issue (Vernal Equionox 2006) also contains some reviews of the LSD conference in Basel, the H.R. Giger museum, and a Swiss absinthe bar. As well, there's an ayahuasca article from Peter Gorman, and network feedback notes on the psychoactivity of Pedicularis species, Kaempferia galanga, Atropa belladonna, and DOC. Plus there's an events calendar, my "Sources" column reviewing the latest in psychedelic art, entheobotanical vendors, and book dealers, and a remembrance for Carla Higdon, who passed away earlier this year. See www.entheogenreview.com for more information on the journal."

Interesting.... and probably not the only one in the psychonautical community.

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. May 4 release date. Pre-order from Amazon.

Throughout the 1990s, Pinchbeck had been a member of New York's literary select. He wrote for publications like ArtForum, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine. Critics acclaimed his first book, Breaking Open the Head, as the most significant contribution to psychedelic literature since the work of Terence McKenna.

But the unexpected occurred: Pinchbeck found himself increasingly pulled into the shamanic and metaphysical realms he was reporting on as a journalist. As his mind opened to new and sometimes threatening experiences, disparate threads and synchronicities made new sense: Humanity, every sign suggested, faces an imminent decision between greater self-potential and environmental ruin. The Mayan "birth date" of 2012 could herald the close of one way of existence and the beginning of another, symbolized by the prophesied return of the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl, the mysterious "Plumed Serpent" of ancient myth. In just the nick of time, the skeptical modern mind can reclaim the suppressed psychic, intuitive, and mystical dimensions of being, and institute a new planetary culture. But it is only - and by no means assuredly - possible if we confront the environmental catastrophe staring us in the face.

Something is in the air: many, if not most, of us feel that real change - for good or ill - is afoot. Pinchbeck's journey - a metaphysical opus that takes the reader from the endangered rain forests of the Amazon, to the stone megaliths of the English plains, to the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert of Nevada - tells the tale of a single man in whose trials we ultimately recognize our own secret thoughts and unease over modern life. And a redemptive vision of where we are heading. [via]

New Larry Carlson Site

SKYHASEYES - Your daily dose of surreal energy!

This new blog is a growing collection of psychedelic artist Larry Carlson's multimedia art (flash movies, video, soundtracks, web art, digital and mixed media artworks). New work will be featured here, as well as old work from his archives.

Link

WEBTRAIL - Born, Explore!, Crispin, Cohen, King, Lovelock & Blangha

'Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man' is a low-key and impressive music documentary that screened at Sundance on Saturday. Australian director Lian Lunson builds her film around a recent Australian concert at which musicians from Rufus Wainwright to Jarvis Cocker, Beth Orton and Nick Cave covered a set-list of Cohen numbers. We see Cohen performing for the benefit of her film, and after a minute, the camera pulls back to reveal his backing-band. It's U2. Rufus doing 'Hallelujah' is a fucking masterpiece. So good it hurts [MORE...]

Chapter One of the new book, 'Cell' by Stephen King

Born Magazine - Exquisite Art & Lit Collaboration. Link

Flickr: Explore! - Flickr labs have been hard at work creating a way to show you some of the most awesome photos on Flickr.

News on the uber imaginative Crispin Hellion Glover and his long time project, "What Is It?" which prompted one reviewer to exclaim, "Like Fellini on psychedelics-- wildly creative but completely twisted." He's been working on this project f o r e v e r. Link from the excellent insider's film news CineMadMag.

The current 'Reality' of Gaia - Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again. Link

What is Blangha? Blangha is a contraction of the words "blog" and "sangha." The Blangha is an aggregator of news feeds from a community of Zen-oriented Buddhist bloggers.

This website looks best when viewed on company time.

Psygarden

The site features psychedelic art contributed by 42 artists from all over the world.

You will also be able to visit the gallery in real life as a traveling expo.

Shown is Carey Thompson from Galactivation and Burning Man fame.

Link [via]

Sitting at work waiting to go home? Wannaspell is a fun no-brainer to play with. Here's another good Sudoku puzzle.

I like my men like I like my coffee. Ground up and in the freezer.

Lots of events surrounding the January 13-15, 2006, International Symposium celebrating the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann in Switzerland.

Project Eleusis - Release date: January 9th 2006. This Compilation is a Birthday Gift - A Tribute to his Revelations and Inspirations. The music on this CD is created under the influence of... Kykeon - the magical mystical Brew. All tracks are listed with their mp3 links.

Dropout Productions and Gaia Media Stiftung present:
Mystical Experience - Closing Ceremony for the International Symposium. Psychedelic Art and Live Music.

problem child and wonder drug

The Rare Vinyl Network specializes in 'hard-to-find' vinyl. But I also reading enjoy the back story on the albums about the band members or what was happening at the time it was made.

In 1967 the Beatles were in Abbey Road Studios putting the finishing touches on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At one point Paul McCartney wandered down the corridor and heard what was then a new young band called Pink Floyd working on their hypnotic debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. He listened for a moment, then came rushing back. "Hey guys" he reputedly said, "There's a new band in there and they're gonna steal our thunder". With their mix of blues, music hall influences, Lewis Carroll references, and dissonant experimentation, Pink Floyd was one of the key bands of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, a pop culture movement that emerged with American and British rock, before sweeping through film, literature, and the visual arts. The music was largely inspired by hallucinogens, or so-called 'mind-expanding' drugs such as marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), and attempted to recreate drug-induced states through the use of overdriven guitar, amplified feedback, and droning guitar motifs influenced by Eastern music.

This psychedelic consciousness was seeded, in the United States, by countercultural gurus such as Timothy Leary, a Harvard University professor who began researching LSD as a tool of self-discovery from 1960, and writer Ken Kesey who with his Merry Pranksters staged Acid Tests - multimedia 'happenings' set to the music of the Warlocks (later the Grateful Dead) and documented by novelist Tom Wolfe in the literary classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) - and traversed the country during the mid-1960s on a kaleidoscope-colored school bus. Suzy Hopkins, formerly *Suzy Creamcheese, a dancer and inspirational figure on the underground scene in Los Angeles and London, remembers the visceral way psychedelic culture affected the senses. 'There's a difference between a drug and a psychedelic. Drugs make you drugged and psychedelics enhance your ability to see the truth or reality' she says. For her, LSD and music created a kind of alchemy. Many psychedelic bands explored this sense of abandonment in their music, moving away from standard rock rhythms and instrumentation.

* She's ONE of the Suzy Creamcheesees.

MORE

Web Trails

Aleister Crowley, British occultist born on October 12, 1875. He was an occultist, mystic, sexual revolutionary, and drug addict (especially heroin).

Other interests and accomplishments were wide-ranging (he was a chess master, mountain climber, poet, writer, painter, astrologer and social critic).

We place no reliance
On virgin or pigeon;
Our Method is Science,
Our Aim is Religion.
~Aleister Crowley

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
~Aleister Crowley

MORE

Psychedelic Sunday - Berbati’s Church of Psychedelia is a free event organized by Point Line Plane’s Josh Blanchard. It has been going strong every last Sunday of the month since its inception last January.
Link

Exciting material relating to rock greats Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones to lead Christie's annual sale of Pop and Rock Memorabilia at Christie's Rockefeller Center, 21 November 2005.
Link

Psychedelic Books for Independent Minds
Leary Library, Lilly Library, Fringe Series, Entheo-Spirituality, Psychedelic Library and more. Part of The Psychedelic Ring which has 29 sites, which may or not be surf-worthy.
Link

Faster Firefox - Speed up your Firefox browser by tweaking settings. Installs into Firefox Options if you can’t find it. Anybody tried this yet? Mitch? It's different from the tweaking we did last year on Firefox; it's a download. Thanks, Devon.

Is anyone watching Lost? I'm trying to watch it, especially after I heard someone talking backwards, reminiscent of Twin Peaks, which brilliantly stands alone in tv series innovation. 4 8 15 16 23 42 is keeping the secret.

British Library Online Gallery - Turning The Pages.
Leaf through 14 great books and magnify the details. Very nice. Thanks, Carol.
Link

I noticed Salon has a new design and read this piece: Thousands of men are shelling out $6,500 for hyper-realistic dolls that answer all their needs -- and don't talk back. Ask Davecat about Sidore. How fucked up ARE these guys anyway? Let me count the ways.
Link

Go get 'em, BDM. Big Daddy Malcontent takes the banks and christians to task.
Link

LORDS OF ACID
How the Brotherhood of Eternal Love Became OC’s Hippie Mafia

Leary’s mantra—Tune in, turn on, drop out—had already led countless disaffected middle-class kids to quit their jobs or classes, head to California and drop acid. The Brotherhood’s bible was Leary’s Psychedelic Prayers, his idiosyncratic translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Mystic Arts sold copies of Leary’s book, along with incense, candles and imported countercultral paraphernalia. Behind a bamboo-covered wall, church members gathered in a secret meditation room decorated with a massive Taxonomic Mandala, a technicolor spiral depicting the evolution of life, from primal ooze to Homo sapiens.

But Mystic Arts was more than a head shop or meditation center. And although it didn’t start out that way, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love wasn’t just a church. It was also Orange County’s first major international drug smuggling network. [more »]

Members of Pink Floyd put aside their long-standing personal differences to reunite for Live 8 and many say they stole the Live 8 show. (According to AOL & BBC polls) I agree. I enjoyed them most of all. They were absolutely mesmerizing with the haunting guitar licks, and Gilmour's mischievious grins while they led some of us down a familiar psychedelic path of days gone by.

Sales of their Echoes album have increased 1343% since Live 8 and those profits will be donated to charity. Desktop wallpaper of this Pink Floyd picture can be found here.

Some brightly colored, fun, Firefox themes came out this week. My favorites are SphereGnome and Scribblies, which I'm currently using. I'm getting such a kick out of the juggler juggling in the top right corner while the page loads. Anybody discovered some good Firefox extensions, themes, or plugins lately?

Today's Quote
We don't want too many citizens asking where the power and the money really goes. Informed by psychedelics, people might stop saluting.
--Terence McKenna

Don't miss the Mowendi Art Gallery. Nice clean graphics with fun back.

Entheogenesisis 2: From Darkness Back To Light is a conference scheduled for May 21-23, 2005, in Vancouver, BC. Great roster and excellent topics. Appropriate venue. Featuring 3 days of lectures & slide presentations, Psychedelic art on display, and one evening gathering with Guest DJ’s, a live acid jazz band, a chill room with special film screenings, treats, prizes & more.

The Goddess Ungirdled: Encounters with the Sacred Feminine
--by Lisa Sarasohn (cross posted to Every Woman Is A Goddess; From Susun Weed's April eZine - [Link])

{Local}
Asheville Freecycle group on Yahoo! that's very busy. We discussed Freecycle here last year. Check a search engine to see if your area has one that you can use.

Today's Quote
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of being.
- Carl Jung

np: Jefferson Airplane - Wooden Ships

LSD Tit Print '01 - Annie Sprinkle

An organization that supports psychedelic drug research is hosting an eBay auction featuring ecstasy icon Alexander Shulgin's lab glassware, LSD blotter paper art and a week of "tanning, dancing and trancing" on Ibiza, among other mind-bending items. This blotter print and others for sale until March 21 on eBay. (kulcha brought to you via: wired and annie)

Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving
JOHN HALPERN clearly remembers what made him change his mind about psychedelic drugs. It was the early 1990s and the young medical student at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, was getting frustrated that he could not do more to help the alcoholics and addicts in his care. He sounded off to an older psychiatrist, who mentioned that LSD and related drugs had once been considered promising treatments for addiction. "I was so fascinated that I did all this research," Halpern recalls. "I was reading all these papers from the 60s and going, whoa, wait a minute! How come nobody's talking about this?"

More than a decade later, Halpern is now an associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard University's McLean Hospital and is at the forefront of a revival of research into psychedelic medicine. He recently received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to give late-stage cancer patients the psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy. He is also laying the groundwork for testing LSD as a treatment for dreaded super-migraines known as cluster headaches.

Say, I wonder if my doc would be open to some psychedelic therapy? My own personal psychedelic therapy doesn't seem to help my cluster (fucking) headaches one damn bit.

(link via mousemusings via New Scientist)

* Jim Capaldi, founder member of psychedelic rock group Traffic, has died, it was announced earlier today. The award-winning songwriter and performer had been suffering from cancer of the stomach. He was 60. Traffic was extremely popular in my household growing up. I probably still have some of their vinyl at my Mother's house. Link

* New details have emerged about Robert Plant's upcoming solo album. The 12-track CD will be titled Mighty Rearranger, not Another Tribe as originally reported, and will be released in the United Kingdom on April 25. The disc's first single, "Shine It All Around," will be available a week earlier in the U.K. No word yet on when the album -- which Plant recorded with his backing band, the Strange Sensation -- will come out in the United States. Billboard.com


* Ashley Judd is blogging her trip to Africa as YouthAIDS Global Ambassador. She brought much needed mosquito nets, medicine, and more. She talks about her visit to the slums and the brothels and the effect it had on her emotionally.

Have envelope; Will push.

Weekend Webtrail

New article on Chilean-born director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who is best known for his psychedelic, violent movies (El Topo, The Holy Mountain), but he has also been, at one time or another during his 75 years on Earth, the mime protégé of Marcel Marceau, a surrealist performance artist, an esoteric comic-book author, and a tarot card reader. He recently spoke about "Psychomagic," a healing practice developed by Jodorowsky that "uses the language of the subconscious to undo our deepest knots, phobias, fixations, and obsessions." more »

Keith Richards and Johnny Depp hire CREEM hacks to polish first draft of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Treasures Of The Lost Abyss? more »

How to use a hand puppet to get dates. Hey, guys, you may have been doing it all wrong. Link via jwalk

Watch Me Turn 30 - is a photo documented blog that's nicely executed.

James Lee Burke - One of my favorite authors with a new article in January Magazine. more »

Pool betting on Dylan's setlists. 60 Minutes interview Sunday night was good. link

Haiku For You
I've been abducted
And replaced by a geezer
Though she wears my clothes

Today's Quote
One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. ~Nietzsche

Finally. My server was down over the weekend to move from MA to NY and is due to be up and running today by noon.

News|Music

The more I hear from this cd, the more I like it. As in really like it. Local progressive radio station, WPVM, plays songs by Animal Collective quite often, specifically, the Sung Tongs cd with "Mouth Wooed Her" my favorite cut from it. After reading some reviews, they seem to be an either 'love them or hate them' sort of group and some say they're often trippy and psychedelic sounding. But very experimental with their sounds and instruments, almost child-like in their un-pretentiousness (is that a word?). Originality certainly goes a long damn way in the music biz in my opinion.

Band Aid 20. BBC News Online is blogging the recording from outside Air Studios. more »

For 16 years, Warren Haynes has coordinated the Warren Haynes Annual Christmas Jam. Like a family reunion, the annual, one-of-a-kind, semi-structured marathon of music brings together surprise guests and old friends on stage and in the audience at the Civic Center Arena in Asheville, N.C.

This year the event will be held again at the Asheville Civic Center Arena, Saturday, December 18 at 7:00PM. WNCW's Pre-Jam Jam Broadcast Live from the Orange Peel is on Friday, December, 17.
more »

Daughter dear is on her way back from Atlanta where she saw Cradle Of Filth and others last night at the Masquerade.

For some reason, woman oriented politics are especially likely to give rise to silly labels, from the "soccer moms" of yesteryear to the "security moms" of today, and cringe-worthy catch phrases like the Bush campaign's "W Stands for Women." A few years ago, Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway spoke of "the three 'magic M's'—marriage, mortgage, and munchkins" that move women toward conservative politics. This year, a concert/political event in New York intended to galvanize young women's vote in support of the Democrats was titled "Chicks Rock, Vaginas Vote." In the presidential election, the candidates in their urgency to garner the women's vote, sometimes do more harm than good. Neither one of them has reached out for the women's vote that I can see. Link

Long Trip For Psychedelic Drugs - Psilocybin for headaches? A proposal for testing MDMA as a treatment for anxiety in terminal cancer? Link


Dave’s addiction - Red-hot rock guitarist Dave Navarro talks about his latest project: A book documenting his road to recovery, among other big changes, Don’t Try This at Home: A Year in the Life of Dave Navarro.

Free Speech Movement @ 40 - Veterans plan commemoration in Berkeley in October.

So long, Hurricane Jeanne. Thank you for missing me.

Monday was full of errands. Don't you love going to the DMV (Department Of Motor Vehicles)? I had only 19 people ahead of me, so it could have been worse. And has.

World Of Alternatives - A Portal of Brainwave Harmonics, Alternative Medicine, Pagan, Homeopathy, Psychedelic, New Age and Occult links covering the whole world wide web. Specialist links to Magick, Crop Circles, Tarot, Wicca, Paranormal is called, Strange Directory, and is believed to be the largest database of its kind.

Too much posturing and bravado appearing in the US Presidential election ads. The Cowboy vs The Soldier. Kerry likes to spend his time riding Harleys or slaughtering wildlife and 'Bring It On' Bush likes to spend his free time clearing brush on his Texas ranch, dressed in a sweaty T-shirt and a cowboy hat. Just two macho men running for Prez.

We should have an arena for Bush and Kerry, pull out a ruler (or yardstick?) and be done with it. The winner would be the one with the biggest.... biceps. [link via kane]

{Quote Of The Day}
The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose. ~ Heda Bejar

In "Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000," by Martin Torgoff, he refers to his own drug use and abuse throughout the book. Besides using his own story, he fuels the book with a polyphonic spree of supporting characters, among them storied beats Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac; psychedelic superheroes Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna; fallen jazz greats Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie; tragic rock stars Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison; cult figures Ram Dass and Wavy Gravy. The result is a sweeping epic that bounces between orgiastic nostalgia trip and cautionary tale -- and, at times, like t