“I’m a little teapot…” By Charles Krafft. As seen on LAShTAL.
Quiver and quail, Thelemites, for Τὸ Μεγα Θηρίον‘s whelping day is upon us. What better way to acknowledge the degenerate rice-cooker than with one of David Tibet‘s crowning musical/lyrical achievements, a magickal rap ditty called “Crowleymass Unveiled”?
File this one under the ultra specific hybrid category of “Can’t believe this actually exists/Can’t stop laughing.” Along with this. Also, this.
This is a difficult time in the world, and I would like to ask each of you to find ways to be a part of positive solutions. There is something that each of us can do, and it’s just a matter of searching your own soul to find the way that you can give to others. Some of us can give of our time and talent, and some of us can donate money or items. The trick is to give without looking to receive – to give of yourself to your family, your friends, your community, and the world community with love.”
It’s strange that Solomon Burke isn’t quite the household name that James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes or Barry White became. Quoting author and musicologist Tom Reed, Burke was a “founding father of what was defined as soul music in America in the 1960s.” He paved the way for them all. The man was just as influential a King of Rock n’ Soul, and an original Blues Brother.
He may be gone now, but listening to dozens of recordings of that huge, kindly voice, it’s impossible to feel too sad. He was a giant who has left behind a giant legacy. (Not to mention 21 children, 90 grandchildren, and 19 great grandchildren.)
He liked to say, “loving people is what I do.” Love you, too, Big Soul. Rest in peace.
Jared Leto’s always been just a little too-cool-for-school for my taste. I wanted to swat his My So-Called Life character’s laconic ass for being such a jerk to sweet grunge ingenue, Angela Chase. The slick, overproduced 30 Seconds to Mars pap he’s pumping out more recently makes me do the green apple quick step. But Helena SelfOblivion, the Russian cosplaying sorceress behind the following clip, well, she’s another story. If this young lady turns out to be underage, I’m going to feel like even more of a filthy old lech than usual, but it has to be said; this is huuhhhhHAWT:
Am I right? Teh hawt. Also? ADORBZ! (Be sure to watch to the end.) Her DeviantArt account is brimming with creative genderfuckhattery as well.
Via The Daily What, “the most moving lip dub of Queen and David Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’ performed by a homeless man holding two Kermit puppets you will see today, guaranteed”:
Currently there’s no solid information listed about the talented puppeteer, just a general link to nonprofits. It’s unclear if he’s homeless, or a performer trying to raise awareness. Either way, I’d love to put some dollars in his hat.
(EDIT 5/9/10: More information on this clip has surfaced! Read all about it at NY magazine. The puppeteer’s name is Sky Soleil, and the director of the video is Brian Maris. Thanks for the tip, alumiere!)
Haven’t seen High School Confidential yet? It’s high time you did. (Double-decker pun intended, natch!) Directed by Jack Arnold, it’s a campy, unexpectedly sharp teensploitation romp that peaks with this adrenalizing scene:
The finger-snapping nihilist’s name was Phillipa Fallon, and that was her all-too-brief moment to shine.
Approximately mid-way through the Albert Zugsmith exploitation film masterpiece High School Confidential(1958), an attractive, quasi-bohemian woman strides on stage at a coffee house and belts out a beat poem that provides a delightfully nihilistic snapshot of the Cold War—including references to the space race and atomic evacuation. The fact that she happens to be accompanied by Jackie Coogan (who plays a heroin kingpin in the film) on piano is, like, pure existential gravy. Predictably, the teens in the audience appear to be digging Coogan’s incongruous ragtime key work and disregarding the depressing content of the lyrics.
B-movie actor and writer Mel Welles (1924-2005) was the person most responsible for the hep jargon —including “High School Drag”— in Confidential. He was recruited by producer Zugsmith for help in this regard because, as Welles recalled for interviewer Tom Weaver in 1988, “I was an expert on grass in my day…”
Up until very recently, precious little was known about the sneering sex bomb “who so memorably portrays the hipsteress delivering Welles’ boptastic words.” But just last month, after years of sleuthing and compiling, CONELRAD began to parse out Fallon’s story on a separate site devoted to her life and times. Installments are still going up.
As many of you already know, it’s been a heartbreaking month in the US for the LGBTQIA community. The tragic story of 18-year old Rutgers student, Tyler Clementi, who jumped off the George Washington Bridge to his death, is the most high profile in a series of suicides in recent weeks of young people believed to have victims of anti-gay bullying and outright hate crimes. There was Billy Lucas, 15 years old, who hanged himself in a barn in Greensburg, Ind. Asher Brown, 13, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in Houston, TX. Seth Walsh in Tehachapi, CA, also 13, hanged himself from a tree in his backyard. Of course, those are only recent deaths we’ve heard about.
Writer, educator and activist Dan Savage wrote this for his Savage Love column late last month:
Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids.
“My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas,” a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. “I wish I could have told you that things get better.”
I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.
But gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don’t bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.
Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don’t have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.
So here’s what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.
Since September 23rd, when Savage posted that initial video of himself and his husband Terry telling their stories and urging kids to hang in there, the “It Gets Better” video outreach project has been growing in leaps and bounds, gaining coverage, support and involvement from all over the place, including NPR, the ACLU, and hundreds of vloggers on YouTube. On Thursday, Ellen Degeneres aired her own “It Gets Better” segment and updated an End Bullying page on her website.
This wonderful project was launched specifically to help LGBTQI youth get through the hard times, but as many participants have noted, it’s a sentiment that can be applied more broadly to freaks, geeks, weirdos, outcasts and oddballs of all stripes. Hang in there, kittens. It really does get better. Meantime, there are tons of resources to tap into: The Trevor Project, Scarleteen, We Give a Damn, We Are The Youth, I’m From Driftwood, PFLAG, We’ve Got Your Back, and a wide assortment of National Crisis Hotlines, for starters. You are not alone.
To share your story of how you got through the rough shit and how life really, truly did get better, create your video, post it to YouTube, and send the URL to mail (at) savagelove.net. They’ll review it and post it to their FAVES section. Bless you, Dan Savage. You’re a mensch.
Watch this and see if you don’t agree that Luke Geissbühler deserves to win some sort of Coolest Dad of the Year award:
This is footage that Geissbühler edited together after he and his young son Max attached a Go Pro Hero HD video camera to a helium-filled weather balloon “that rose into the upper stratosphere and recorded the blackness of space.”
After months of research, planning, and flight tests, the intrepid duo and their friends traveled from Park Slope, Brooklyn to a remote area of Newburgh in Orange County, NY with their camera and GPS system carefully wrapped in a homemade styrofoam capsule and fitted with a parachute. The balloon that carried this hand-crafted vessel skyward was rated to burst at 19 feet in diameter, and reached a height of nearly 20 miles above the earth before that happened.
This was all done within FAA regulations. This is awesome. Not just in the colloquial sense of the word, but by its dictionary definition: amazing, awe inspiring, and provoking wonderment.
Here’s an incredible story about Oak Reed, a transgender high school homecoming king candidate who would have won by a landslide had the school board not disqualified him, and the ensuing outcry from his majesty’s peers. These kids are NOT having it, and now the story’s getting national attention. Via the Daily Kos:
If the kids of Mona Shores High School in Muskegon, Michigan are a harbinger of the future…I have some hopes that our world is going to get geometrically better and more sane with each passing generation. They had elected one of their friends to be homecoming king, a fellow who happens to be registered as a female with the school system. A transgender teen, honor roll student, and well liked guy was elected by the school body to the honor… which of course was stripped away by the school: Then, last Monday, the principal called him into her office.
“They told me that they took me off, because they had to invalidate all of my votes because I’m enrolled at Mona Shores as a female,” Reed said.
Asst. Superintendent Todd Geerlings said the ballot gave two choices: Vote for a boy for king and a girl for queen.
And now the kids are raising holy hell.
Right. Freaking. ON. Oak’s friends and family have started a Facebook page, Oak Is My King, and they’re selling shirts internationally to raise money for his upcoming sex reassignment surgery. The SF Chronicle has picked up the story, and now the ACLU wants to get involved. Way to go, y’all! Huge love and support is heading your way.
