RuPaul Redux
The Mean Old Man
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Old man lives up to ‘angry’ song |
An elderly man opened fire on fans at a Senegal rap concert he believed were making fun of him by singing a song about cranky old men, police say.
The 70-year-old began shooting with a hunting rifle at Lobaly village in the Matam region at the weekend.
Police say the gunman warned fans to stop singing “Pa’ Tang Xol” (Angry Old Men) by popular Senegalese artist Baaba Mal before opening fire.
Five people were taken to hospital and two were seriously injured, say police.
Concert-goers had been listening to warm-up music before the live act at the gig on the border with Mauritania, 700km (440 miles) from the Senegalese capital Dakar.
The man took offence when he heard the Wolof language track’s lyrics and told the fans to stop singing it. When they did not, he opened fire four times, said police.
“The elderly gentleman felt that these young people were insulting him in their songs,” a policeman told Reuters news agency. The gunman was reportedly arrested.
One police source said that his own children were in the crowd but they were not injured.
Just Like Professional Athletes, Beauty Queens Should Always Have Another Profession To Fall Back On
Prince Berman and The Women
Two Artists United by Devotion to Women
As artists’ biographies go, those of Wallace Berman and Richard Prince could hardly be more different. Berman, who died at 50 in 1976, the victim of a drunken driver, was a kind of Beat guru flying just below the radar, showing his work in only one conventional gallery exhibition during his lifetime and popping into rare view in strange places: a cameo in “Easy Rider”; the cover of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” where his face is wedged next to Tony Curtis’s, just below Jung’s.
By contrast Mr. Prince, 59, labored in obscurity for years but not exactly by choice: he wanted a larger audience and found it. For more than two decades he has been one of the most influential contemporary artists, and his work — paintings, photography, car-centric sculpture — has sold for many millions of dollars, allowing him to create an impressive studio complex in Rensselaerville, N.Y., in Albany County.
But Berman’s eccentric, highly personal art and career has long fascinated Mr. Prince, who has painstakingly collected copies of his signature work, Semina, a kind of early California zine that Berman made with — and mailed only to — his friends, from 1955 to 1963. For Mr. Prince, a bibliophile with a special love for the Beat years, the fascination stems partly from Berman’s Zelig-like connections in those years: his circle included Allen Ginsberg, Dennis Hopper and Henry Miller. One of Berman’s collaborators was the artist known as Cameron, whose first husband, Jack Parsons, as Mr. Prince notes, was a friend of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology
Lady Godiva
Grace Jones in Chocolate
Posted by Mark, 10 December 2008, 13:42
Hurricane album inlay photography by Jonathan De Villiers
Image has always been an integral part of Grace Jones’ music career, her visual identity being almost as important as her voice. The artwork for her latest album, Hurricane, designed and art directed by Tom Hingston Studio, knowingly works the conceit of the popstar as visual commodity: in this case featuring life-size versions of Jones made out of chocolate. Here’s how they did it…
Photographed by Jonathan De Villiers, the cover for Hurricane features a production line of chocolate Grace Jones heads with supporting imagery showing Jones inspecting a range of body parts at various stages of the manufacturing process.
This holiday season TOMS wants to give 30,000 pairs of shoes to children in Ethiopia
‘Gæddamned Kids!’
Texas bus driver accused of threatening students with knife over Oreo crumbs
Sunday, December 21st 2008, 10:30 PM
A school bus driver in Texas has been accused of brandishing a knife at three sixth-graders who left Oreo crumbs on a seat. Officials say police confiscated a pocket knife from 66-year-old William Allen on Friday in Mansfield.
He was taken into custody on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Two students told their parents Allen removed them from the bus Wednesday at Mary Orr Intermediate School and threatened to cut their wrists if they didn’t admit to spilling crumbs.
‘List of Demands’ Ad Age Song of The Year
Indonesian Army Chicks
6 / 14
Banda Aceh, Indonesia: Members of the Indonesia Womens Army on parade
Photograph: Hotli Simanjuntak/EPA
No Poo-poo For Pooh
Fine Jewelry
Jewellery art market: artists with an eye for jewellery
Thousands of pounds’ worth of jewellery by top artists including Dali, Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor is about to go under the hammer at Sotheby’s for charity.
By Colin Gleadell Last Updated: 5:33PM GMT 19 Dec 2008
Eye eye: Dali’s eye of Time brooch, on sale for £20,000
Four of the world’s top living artists who have experimented with making jewellery have donated examples that will be sold for charity at Sotheby’s tomorrow. Artists give works to charity all the time, but this is the first occasion on which these artists have taken part in a jewellery sale.
Among the Cartier and Bulgari diamond necklaces, brooches and earrings on show today are a silver charm bracelet by Damien Hirst (£12,000 to £17,000); a 22-carat gold-and-enamel ring by Anish Kapoor, with a void where a stone would normally be placed (£15,000 to £20,000); a gilded cuff bangle shaped like intertwined fingers by Louise Bourgeois (£25,000 to £30,000); and a ruby-and-diamond pendant by Subodh Gupta, the star of the new Indian Highway exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery (£20,000 to £25,000).
For Joanna Hardy, Sotheby’s jewellery expert, the auction “marks an extremely exciting development in the recognition of unique jewellery as art”.
As such, it is building on the little-charted tradition of jewellery-making by earlier 20th-century artists who worked primarily as painters or sculptors. Picasso and Braque both made jewellery late in their careers, as did the Surrealists Salvador Dalí, Man Ray and Meret Oppenheim. During the Sixties and Seventies, the Italian goldsmith GianCarlo Montebello worked with a number of contemporary artists, such as Lucio Fontana and Niki de St Phalle.
Contemporary Art Market: A Candid Look from the Inside
“I’m looking for the best American Beef. Give me 50 burgers.”
Grazie, Mama-chan, to A. Smith ‘doo ’90 for the Melt-Banana reminder. One of the last true good times besides Funston Park before departing SF was to Melt-Banana @ The Independent. Sick Zip Everywhere.
Research Indicates Holidays Not As Dangerous Or Depressing As Once Thought
“Let’s get crazy, dear, and wrap the turducken in bacon this year.”
Bacon recipes galore!
Bacon has a place at the table morning, noon and night. And venture beyond its natural pairings to the unusual yet sublime — in an apple coffeecake or as a martini garnish. Enjoy.
We were opening Christmas gifts last year when my much better half dropped a package on my lap — a cold, heavy package. Curious (and suddenly chilly), I opened it. Bacon. Six pounds of artisan bacon, ranging from thick-cut hickory-smoked to jalapeño-spiced and apple-cinnamon, varieties hailing from Virginia to upstate New York, Texas to Tennessee.
Now if that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.
I’m a bacon fanatic. In or out of the kitchen, sometimes it’s all I can think about: the vibrant red as it cooks, the smokiness, the subtle crunch, the sizzle, the wonderful aroma that will not be denied.
And bacon works so well in so many dishes, from soups and salads to chili and stuffed pork chops. Layer it in burgers or use it as garnish, wrapped seductively around fillets or brats for a little extra flavor.
For Thanksgiving, I added bacon to a turducken — a pound of it carefully lining the turkey breast just beneath the skin. Officially, it was to keep the meat moist as the 40-pound behemoth cooked. Secretly, I knew that turkey, duck and chicken weren’t enough — that monster needed bacon, just because.
Mom’s Ovariture
Cool.
Officers: Pierced gothic kittens’ marketed on Web
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – Humane officers say a Pennsylvania woman marketed “gothic kittens” with ear, neck and tail piercings over the Internet.
Officers with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals removed three kittens and a cat Wednesday from a home outside Wilkes-Barre, about 20 miles southwest of Scranton.
Officer Carol Morrison says the society got a tip that the Ross Township woman was selling the pierced kittens on the Internet.
She says, “It’s unbelievable anybody would do this to kittens.”
Charges are likely against the homeowner, whose name was not released.
Morrison says the woman has a pet grooming business in the basement of her home.
Two AAA Batteries and a Whole Lotta Air
Pocket Taser Stun Gun, a great gift for the wife. A guy who purchased his lovely wife a pocket Taser for their anniversary submitted this:
Last weekend I saw something at Larry’s Pistol & Pawn Shop that sparked my interest.. The occasion was our 15th anniversary and I was looking for a little something extra for my wife Julie.
What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse-sized taser. The effects of the taser were supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse affect on your assailant, allowing her adequate time to retreat to safety….??
WAY TOO COOL!
Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home. I loaded two AAA batteries in the darn thing and pushed the button.
Nothing! I was disappointed.
I learned, however, that if I pushed the button AND pressed it against a metal surface at the same time; I’d get the blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs.
AWESOME!!!
Unfortunately, I have yet to explain to Julie what that burn spot is on the face of her microwave.
Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn’t be all that bad with only two triple-A batteries, right?
There I sat in my recliner, my cat Gracie looking on intently (trusting little soul) while I was reading the directions and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh & blood moving target.
I must admit I thought about zapping Gracie (for a fraction of a second) and thought better of it. She is such a sweet cat.
But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised.
Am I wrong?
So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses perched delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, and taser in another.
The directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a major loss of bodily control; a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water. Any burst longer than three seconds would be wasting the batteries.
All the while I’m looking at this little device measuring about 5′ long, less than 3/4 inch in circumference; pretty cute really and (loaded with two itsy, bitsy triple-A batteries) thinking to myself, ‘no possible way!’
What happened next is almost beyond description, but I’ll do my best…?
I’m sitting there alone, Gracie looking on with her head cocked to one side as to say, ‘don’t do it dipshit,’ reasoning that a one second burst from such a tiny little ole thing couldn’t hurt all that bad.
I decided to give myself a one second burst just for heck of it. I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and . ..
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD . . . WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION . .. . WHAT THE HELL!!!
I’m pretty sure Jessie Ventura ran in through the side door, picked me up in the recliner, then body slammed us both on the carpet, over and over and over again.
I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fet al position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, both nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position, and tingling in my legs?
The cat was making meowing sounds I had never heard before, clinging to a picture frame hanging above the fireplace, obviously in an attempt to avoid getting slammed by my body flopping all over the living room.
Note: If you ever feel compelled to ‘mug’ yourself with a taser, one note of caution: there is no such thing as a one second burst when you zap yourself!
You will not let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor. A three second burst would be considered conservative?
THAT HURT LIKE HELL!!!
A minute or so later (I can’t be sure, as time was a relative thing at that point), I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape.
My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. The recliner was upside down and about 8 feet or so from where it originally was. My triceps, right thigh and both nipples were still twitching.
My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, and my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs. I had no control over the drooling.
Apparently I shit myself , but was too numb to know for sure and my sense of smell was gone. I saw a faint smoke cloud above my head which I believe came from my hair.
I’m still looking for my nuts and I’m offering a significant reward for their safe return!!
P. S. My wife loved the gift, and now regularly threatens me with it!
‘If you think Education is difficult, try being stupid.’
‘How ’bout a full-body Brazilian today there, Miss?’
And I Thought A Wrinkle in Time Was Over My Head
Whatever Bubbles Bubbles Up
Lucas With The Lid Off, video by Michel Gondry
The Carpenter
James Frey to write ‘third book of the Bible’
James Frey: from drugs to Jesus. Photograph: Antonio Olmos
James Frey is moving on from his drugs and booze-soaked memoirs to write the third book of the Bible, in which his version of Jesus will perform gay marriages.
Talking to online magazine The Rumpus.net, Frey said he had just finished an outline for the book, and was about to start writing it. “It’s the third book of the Bible, called The Final Testament of the Holy Bible,” he told interviewer and fellow author Stephen Elliott. “My idea of what the Messiah would be like if he were walking the streets of New York today. What would he believe? What would he preach? How would he live? With who?”
Frey’s latest choice of subject matter sees him following in the footsteps of Jeffrey Archer, who last year penned The Gospel According to Judas, which told the story of Jesus through the eyes of Judas. Earlier this year The Crimson Petal and the White author Michel Faber published The Fire Gospel, in which a scholar discovers a fifth gospel in a bombed Iraqi musuem which reveals that Jesus’s last words were “please, somebody, please finish me”.
Frey said his version would see Jesus living with a prostitute. “It doesn’t matter how or who you love. I don’t believe the messiah would condemn gay men and women,” he said. Judas, meanwhile, would be the “same as he was two thousand years ago”, a “selfish man who thinks of himself before the good of humanity, who values money more than love”.
Frey shot to fame in 2005 for his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, which was chosen for Oprah Winfrey’s book club in the US and immediately went to the top of bestseller charts. A gritty read dealing with Frey’s time as an alcoholic drug addict and former criminal, Winfrey declared it to be “like nothing you’ve ever read before”. But it was then revealed that the book contained some fabrications, and in an unprecedented move, Frey and his US publisher Douleday agreed to refund readers who felt they had been defrauded.
Frey, who has been touring to promote his first novel, Bright Shiny Morning, said his books would continue to be “a mix of fact and fiction”. “I think it’s an interesting place to work, especially now. What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.”
Elliott admitted to Frey that he was nervous about the reception of his new book, The Adderall Diaries, which is half memoir, half true-crime: “I know it’s a lot easier to attack someone writing non-fiction,” he said.
Frey encouraged him not to worry. ” If a book is cool, and entertaining, and moving, then get your middle finger ready and raise it often. Fuck’em all,” he said.
Stephen Elliot Interviews James Frey @ The Rumpus
Rumpus Original – An Interview with James Frey
“I’m writing books. They’re still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it’s an interesting place to work, especially now. What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.”
James Frey on the things he wishes he hadn’t said, getting older and getting wiser, writing, being lucky, and making art, by Stephen Elliott
Stephen Elliott: OK. Let’s talk about Bright Shiny Morning. What was the genesis of that?
James Frey: I always wanted to write a book about LA, a big ambitious book. Nobody had ever really done it with LA- treating the city seriously as a major economic and cultural power, as the embodiment of 21st century America.
SE: It’s a monster of a city.
Frey: Yeah, in good ways, and bad. Dreams can come true there in ways impossible anywhere else, and they can get destroyed as well.
SE: The book is sprawling, kind of like the city itself.
Frey. By design. The city has no center, no single unifying place. The city grew and was built unconventionally, as was the book.
SE: The city operates as the spine of the narrative.
Frey: It’s a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its 
unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.
SE: What was the process like. You have these four characters. Did you only work on one character each day?
Frey: It was fun. The most fun to write of the three books. I started at the beginning and just went. No outline, no idea of what was coming next until I did it. I knew the three protagonists, and had an idea of the structure, but nothing else. Coming after all the bullshit related to A Million Little Pieces, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great.
SE: Sounds peaceful. You were able to get back to that place of no expectations.
Frey: Yeah, in a way. Mostly just fun. Made me really love writing again. I love the process of being alone in a room. Being a writer now is about so much more than writing. There’s publishing, touring, marketing, web presence. All this other shit. It all disappeared for me and I was happy to keep writing. I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to do this. Live this life. I did it before I was published and would do it if I still wasn’t.
SE: So tell me about the year. Has it been a year already since Bright Shiny Morning came out?
Frey: It’s been about seven months.
SE: You did a big tour.
Frey: Did a big tour, a fun tour with bands and a multimedia show and other writers I admire, you among them. Had some huge crowds, a small riot in LA, and some empty houses. The book’s reception was polarized, which I love. And it sold, which was very nice.
SE: Emotionally, that sounds like a roller coaster.
Frey: Compared to other things in my life, not really. I really was thrilled just to have another book out and be able to keep doing this.
‘Hey, baby – I can’t wait to get you in the stanza.’
Men ‘lie about books they have read to impress on dates’
Men are twice as likely as women to lie about what books they have read to try impress on a first date, new research has revealed.
By Caroline Gammell
Last Updated: 7:16PM GMT 10 Dec 2008
Men may lie to suggest they have read books they haven’t.
For both men and women, exaggerating the extent of your literary appetite is second only to false boasts about previous conquests in bed.
More than a third of Britons – 39 per cent – are not entirely honest about what they have read and are more likely to lie about what books and magazines they have devoured than they are about their age or their job.
The research, carried out by the National Year of Reading, found that men and women did not confine themselves to books when trying to create an impression.
Men were twice as likely to read Heat magazine or rifle through a collection of poetry before meeting a potential partner.
Nearly one in five adults – 18 per cent – said they would read while waiting for their date to arrive in order to make a good first impression.
More than quarter – 26 per cent – said they would try and entice someone into bed by leaving a copy of the book they had been discussing earlier in the evening by the bed.
For men, the book most likely to win over women is Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, while men were impressed by women who had inspected news websites before a date.
Support Your Local Bookstore This Holiday Season
Holiday Message from Roy Blount Jr.:
Buy Books From Your Local Bookstore, Now
December 11, 2008. I’ve been talking to booksellers lately who report that times are hard. And local booksellers aren’t known for vast reserves of capital, so a serious dip in sales can be devastating. Booksellers don’t lose enough money, however, to receive congressional attention. A government bailout isn’t in the cards.
We don’t want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let’s mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that’s just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance!
There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they’re easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children’s books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they’ll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books. Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: “Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now. You see…we’re the Authors Guild.”
Enjoy the holidays.
Roy Blount Jr.
President Authors Guild
“Luring criminals into selling him stolen works of art…”
“We got our dirty little fingers in everybody’s pie”
A young couple moves into a new neighborhood.
The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
“That laundry is not very clean,” she said. “She doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.” Her husband looked on, but remained silent.
Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.
About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: “Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this?”
The husband said, “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.”
And so it is with life. What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look.
For the very first time, this subject line just does not know what to say.
Ram and the Ayatollah Not Kosher
Hollywood film The Wrestler ‘insults Iran’
Iran has again accused Hollywood of “anti-Iranian” sentiment, this time due to scenes in The Wrestler, a Golden Globe-nominated drama starring Mickey Rourke.
Actor Mickey Rourke, left, and director Darren Aronofsky at a screening of ‘The Wrestler’ Photo: AP
The country’s media has reportedly condemned the film in part because of a fight sequence in which Rourke’s character, Randy ‘the Ram’ Robinson, battles an opponent dubbed the Ayatollah.
During the fight, the Ayatollah, played by actor and former professional wrestler Ernest “the Cat” Miller, waves an Iranian flag before ramming the pole under his opponent’s neck. Rourke’s character then grabs the flag and snaps the pole over his knee before tossing it into the crowd.
Newspapers and websites in Iran say the Darren Aronofsky-directed film is just the latest manifestation of Western prejudice towards Iran in Hollywood films.
Last year, the Iranian government blasted Warner Bros over its “anti-Iranian” blockbuster 300, a graphic novel-based retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which the Greeks triumph over the Persians.
It accused the Hollywood studio of participating in a campaign of “psychological warfare”, “plundering Iran’s historic past and insulting its civilization”, and depicting Persians as “ugly and violent creatures rather than human beings”.
Some Iranians also took offence at the sympathetic portrayal of Alexander the Great conquering the Persian empire in Oliver Stone’s Alexander.
