from the NY Daily News 

Photo from ‘Adventures in Tornado Alley: The Storm Chasers,’ (Thames & Hudson, $29.95) by Mike Hollingshead and Eric Nguyen.

from the AP

Breakdance Pioneer Dies in NYC

By ULA ILNYTZKY – 3 days ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Wayne “Frosty Freeze” Frost, a hip-hop pioneer whose acrobatic performance with the legendary Rock Steady Crew in the 1983 movie “Flashdance” helped set off a worldwide breakdancing craze, has died. He was 44.

Frost died Thursday at Mount Sinai Medical Center after a long illness, said Jorge “Fabel” Pabon, a senior vice president of the crew where Frost and other so-called b-boys (for beat or break boys) made their name performing complicated and daring dance routines.

“He was one of most charismatic b-boys that ever lived,” said Benson Lee, director of the new documentary film “Planet B-Boy.”

Breakdancing emerged from the Bronx and Harlem in the early 1970s, part of the hip-hop culture that also included graffiti, MCing or rapping, and disc jockeys scratching and mixing vinyl records on turntables.

During extended pauses, or breaks, in the music, b-boys would mimic James Brown’s showmanship and footwork and Bruce Lee’s martial arts, adding their own signature moves.

Frost was known for his energetic style, intricate choreography and fearless moves including back flips and head spins. One was even dubbed the “Suicide.”

Frost got his start in 1978 with the Bronx-based Rock City Crew. In 1981, he became part of the Rock Steady Crew, joining such acclaimed breakdancers as Ken Swift and Lil Crazy Legs.

Frost toured the world with the Rock Steady Crew and other hip-hop artists, including Fab 5 Freddy, Futura 2000 and Kool Lady Blue.

Frost’s appearance with Rock Steady Crew in “Flashdance” spread the breakdance phenomenon globally, said Joseph Schloss, a visiting scholar in the music department at New York University. “He was one of the first B-boys that most people ever saw,” Schloss said.

Graffiti artist and close friend Zulu King Slone, who knew Frost for 15 years, said he was “like a walking hip-hop culture encyclopedia.”

As a member of the Rock Steady Crew, Frost also appeared in several movies on hip-hop culture, including “Wild Style,” “Beat Street” and “Style Wars.” He also appeared on the cover of the Village Voice in 1981.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.

Associated Press writer Tania Fuentez contributed to this report.

On the Net:

• http://www.rocksteadycrew.com 

from Variety

MTV grooms ‘Fur TV’

Warp Films moves to tube with warped puppets

By DOMINIC SCHREIBER

MTV has picked up “Fur TV,” an adult comedy series about a group of foulmouthed, sex-mad puppets, made by Warp Films, the U.K. shingle behind BAFTA-winning feature “This Is England.”

Skein is Warp’s first move into TV. Created by filmmakers Chris Waitt and Henry Trotter, “Fur TV” centers around three puppets who share a flat in the human world and spend their time drinking, fighting and trying to chat up girls.

“I can’t imagine any other channels having the guts to commission a concept like ‘Fur TV,’ ” said Heather Jones, executive VP content and creative, at MTV Networks U.K. “It’s fresh, funny and outrageous and will make perfect late night TV.”

Set to launch on MTV One in the U.K. on a Sunday night slot on April 27, theseries started out as a short film, which won a BBC Greenlight Award for new comedy in 2003 and a Golden Rose for best pilot in 2004. It aired on BBC2 in 2004.

When Warp producer Mary Burke came across the short, she approached Waitt about making a feature-length version, but, by then, the project had already been set up at MTV.

Last year, Waitt directed his first film for Warp, the feature documentary “A Complete History of My Sexual Failures,” which recently screened at Sundance. His other credits include the Channel 4 short “The Naked Rambler.”

Based in Sheffield, in the north of England, studio’s other recent releases include thriller “Donkey Punch,” which also premiered at this year’s Sundance, and Paddy Considine’s short “Dog Altogether.”

found at the LimeSpot

Even Charles Manson Digs Creative Commons By zab 

Think nobody interesting uses Creative Commons?

CC is a special license that allows anyone to download, share and mix other people’s music as long as they give proper credit. Recently, Nine Inch Nails released their album under a Creative Commons license, and it has been a great success!

Good old Charles Manson of the Tate and LaBianca murders has done the same thing. His recent album, “One Mind” is licensed in a way that allows anyone to share it with others, remix it and use it for non-commercial uses. The exact legal details are here.

So, you can download the full album here if you like (or you can shop for more Charles Manson at the LimeWire Store

from the Guardian UK

Audio slideshow: American retro 

Frustrated with the faceless, corporate America on offer to the casual tourist, Dave Gorman decided to travel from coast to coast without giving any money to The Man. Read all about Dave’s adventure in this Saturday’s Guardian. America Unchained by Dave Gorman is published by Ebury at £11.99

Press  below to start the slideshow.

I met this guy in a church once and then went and had a beer with him. The video is pretty cool – just turn down or skip past the predictable psychadelic top 10 sequences, altho the version of ‘Incense and Peppermints’ is a nice alternate to what you’re accustomed. – Editor

snipped from Daily Swarm excerpt of a GQ excerpt

James Brown really was a Sex Machine: “That man died trying to come”

TDS EDITORS

Sean Flynn’s lengthy James Brown profile in this month’s GQ (excerpted online here) is making headlines for its claims that the Godfather of Soul had a vasectomy in 1984 (thus throwing doubt on one of the paternity claims filed against his estate), while going a long way to explain why the late soul music legend fully intended to omit most of his blood kin from his will, and how it was almost inevitable that his extended family would battle for their share after his death.

Flynn adds plenty of dirty details about just how and why Brown managed to sire so many children in the first place:

When Mr. Brown grew up, when he was a famous performer touring the world forty, fifty weeks a year, he fucked a lot of women. That is a deliberate term, fucked, because Mr. Brown was not a man who made love or even had sex. Mr. Brown fucked. “He did not know about the soft,” a longtime friend says. A lot of times, he’d let one of his cronies deal with the preliminaries, make small talk with a girl, get her a drink, keep her company. “She ready?” he’d ask. “I ain’t got no time now. Make sure she ready.” He’d hop on, roll off. Straight missionary, straight to the point. He never saw a reason for much else. “Why’s a white man eat a woman?” he once asked a white friend. “What’s he get outta that?”

Hell, the man was in his sixties before he discovered doggy style on the Playboy Channel. He called up Roosevelt Johnson at three in the morning to tell him about it. “You sittin’ down, Mr. Johnson?” he asked, which is what he always said when he had an astonishing new fact to report. “Black man don’t know nothing. Black man don’t know a damned thing. A white man, he get up in his woman from behind.” Johnson pretended to be surprised by that. (“You had to go there with him,” he says, “because you didn’t know anything Mr. Brown didn’t know.”)

So how many women? How high can you count? Mr. Brown always kept a few girlfriends on the side, some for decades, and he always found a woman or two in whatever city he happened to be playing. “There’d be times, literally, when one would be coming in the front door while another one was going out the back,” says Buddy Dallas.

Naturally, some of them got pregnant.

In fact, even after age, diabetes, prostate cancer, and copious drug use had rendered him impotent, that didn’t stop him from digging into the dust and trying:

“Motherfucker was crazy,” says Gloria Daniel, a girlfriend he kept on the side for forty years. “It was the drugs.”

Mr. Brown smoked his drugs—PCP, until that got hard to find, then cocaine—mixed with tobacco from his Kools. “You sitting there rolling tobacco out of a cigarette—that’s a woman’s job—and you sitting there naked so he can look at you ’cause he getting ready to fuck you,” she says. “Yeah, right.” She rolls her eyes. The drugs, to say nothing of the diabetes and the prostate cancer, made him impotent. “He tried like hell, though,” she says. “He’d wear you out. That man died trying to come.”

One night in the summer of 2001, after he’d slathered her in Vaseline (“He liked you all greased up,” she says. “Like a porkchop”) and wore her out trying to come, he gave up and left the room, and Gloria dozed off. When she woke up, Mr. Brown was standing at the foot of the bed in a full-length mink coat over his bare chest, a black cowboy hat, and silk pajama pants with one leg tucked into a cowboy boot and the other hanging out. He had a shotgun over his shoulder and a white stripe of Noxzema under each eye. “I’m an Indian tonight, baby,” he announced. “C’mon, let’s let ’em have it.” Then he dumped a pickle jar of change on the floor, told her to get a machete, and went out to the garage. He took the Rolls, drove ten miles to Augusta, weaving all over the road, clipping mailboxes, smoking more dope, and screaming about being an Indian.

There’s lots more at  here.

snipped from Daily Swarm excerpt of a GQ excerpt

from the New York Observer

What Makes Annie Shoot?

The great Leibovitz realized she was never a journalist but made news with magazine covers. An artist who was once fascinated with her subjects lately seems largely fascinated with herself   BY CHOIRE SICHA 

“I look back at it now,” Annie Leibovitz said at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1991, “I realize that one of the things I loved toward the end at Rolling Stone were the conceptual covers.” She had left for Vanity Fair in 1983, in part to follow an art director she admired. There she did little until Tina Brown arrived all bluster and balls in 1984—and then she did a lot.

Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone’s owner-operator, had become overly concerned about newsstand sales. “He wanted really clean, you know, head shots really. There was a study—they started to do studies, you know,” Ms. Leibovitz said. “And they came up with this study that the conceptual covers didn’t sell well because the person wasn’t recognizable. … For example, the Steve Martin photograph against the Franz Kline painting was the worst-selling cover that year.”

Annie Leibovitz had gotten too rock ’n’ roll forRolling Stone.

That worst-selling cover—from February 1982—is a real mess, in today’s focus-group-in-a-Chicago-mall terms. Mr. Martin, in a suit, is painted with crude black stripes, and is in mid-campy-dance-step. The black-and-white painting looms beyond him. (Inside you might have learned that he would prefer not to discuss his relationship with Bernadette Peters.)

Then there was her Matt Dillon cover late that year. Mr. Dillon, pouty and incredibly young, is in slacks and shirt and tie, twisted and reclining, one leg up, thereby showing half his ass—and with his crotch placed nearly dead center on the magazine’s cover. What definitely seems to be Mr. Dillon’s extended middle finger rests near his square hairline. It was her last Rolling Stone cover. Now that’s how you say goodbye—to your magazine, your youth, whatever.

Ms. Leibovitz was, for much of the 80’s, an unusual bridge between the fine art world and the commercial world. This meant that in her practice she gathered commerce in one hand and journalism in the other.

Then as magazines went, so went Annie Leibovitz.

[ click to view full article at the New York Observer ]

from Stuff White People Like Blog

#93 Music Piracy

March 30, 2008 by clander 

White people have always been renowned for having ridiculously large music collections. So when file sharing gave white people a chance to acquire all the music they ever wanted, it felt as though it was an earned right and not a privilege.

When (not if) you see a white male with a full iPod, ask him if all of his music is legal. If he does not immediately launch into a diatribe about his right to pirate music, you might have to nudge him a bit by saying “do you think that’s right?” The response will be immediate and uniform.

He will likely rattle off statistics about how most musicians don’t make any money from albums, it all comes from touring and merchandise. So by attending shows, he is able to support the musicians while simultaneously striking a blow against multinational corporations. He will proceed to walk you through the process of how record labels are set up to reward the corporation and fundamentally rob the artist of their rights, royalties and creativity. Prepare to hear the name Steve Albini a lot.

Advanced white people will also talk about how their constant downloading of music makes them an expert who can properly recommend bands to friends and co-workers, thus increasing revenues and exposure. So in fact, their “illegal” activities are the new lifeblood of the industry.

When they have finished talking, you must choose your next words wisely. It is considered rude to point out the simple fact that they are still getting music for free. Instead you should say: “Wow, I never thought of it like that. You know a lot about the music industry. What bands are you listening to right now? Who is good?”

This sentence serves two functions: it helps to reassure the white person that they are your local “music expert,” something they prize. Also, it lets them feel as though they have convinced you that their activities are part of a greater social cause and not simple piracy.

If you bring up this issue with white person who says “nah bro, I don’t give a shit, Dave Matthews has enough money as it is.” You are likely dealing with wrong kind of white person.

In the even more rare situation where someone says “it’s all paid for, and it’s all transferred from vinyl.” You have found an expert level white person and must treat the situation carefully.

 [ click to read full piece at Stuff White People Like ]

from MediaBistro

Tar: New Mag From Blackbook Founder

Evanly Schindler, the visionary behind Blackbook, is jumping back into the magazine world with Tar, a glossy publication slated to launch in October produced by Tar Art Media, the company he runs with Maurizio Marchiori, formerly VP of global marketing and communications at Diesel. “Everything [about Tar Art Media] is connected by art, aesthetics and social consciousness,” Schindler said. “[Tar] is a high-concept publication with the ability to be sustainable.”

To achieve this, the magazine will be published on a combination of recycled and eco paper (meaning, for every tree cut down, one is planted). As a result, paper quality and “digital treatment” varies throughout the prototype we were shown, but according to Schindler, advertisers have not shied away — paging through the mag is actually a very cool feeling. “People [and advertisers] are psyched by something that’s beautiful but is going deeper into people’s minds,” Schindler says, crediting the biannual publishing schedule for allowing editors to focus on big-picture topics. (Every page of the prototype has a swatch of tar on it, creating a “visceral experience.”)

But what about the other big names involved with the project?

Known entities fill Tar‘s masthead. John Mailer (son of Norman) and Alexandra Kerry (daughter of John) are editors. Former Domino features editor Zoë Wolfffills the executive editor role. Susan Cappa, launch publisher for Style.com and former associate publisher at Vogue, is the publisher. Neville Wakefield, curator of Frieze and PS1 is Tar‘s creative director with Bill Powers joining as artistic director. The pub won’t skimp on contributors, either, as Schindler tapped his Rolodex and recruited art-world notables Julian Schnabel, Matthew Barneyand Juergen Teller to contribute to the first issue. 

[ click to read full blurb at MediaBistro.com ]

snipped from TidBits

U.S. Federal Court Declares Email Bankruptcy Illegal

by Glenn Fleishman

In a move that could affect as many as 20 million Americans, the U.S. District Court for New York has ruled that a Poughkeepsie man will need to retain all the email in 

his inbox, and must respond to it with all due haste. The man, 37-year-old Bob Sneed, a sales executive at a local ISP, was intending to delete over 7,500 unread email messages until halted by a court order.

The case was brought by Sneed’s brother-in-law, Philip S. Duenzel, an attorney in Illinois, who used the federal court system because the case crossed state lines. Duenzel alleged, and the court upheld, that he would suffer irreparable damages if Sneed failed to respond to a documented 107 separate emails sent over 3 months, each of which asked for a reply. The email messages variously covered family issues, money owed for shared gifts to relatives, and 23 collections of jokes about lawyers.

In a statement read by his attorney, Sneed said, “I believe the courts are in error for restraining an individual from exercising his right to discrimination: discriminating among which emails are important enough to answer, and which deserve to be deleted without opening.” Sneed is appealing the decision, and until then is relying on a filter that displays and automatically replies to messages from Duenzel as soon as they are received.

Sneed was attempting to declare “email bankruptcy” by deleting all current messages and starting over. According to research ranging from studies by the Pew Internet & American Life Project to the National Rifle Association’s frequent member polls, email bankruptcy is an increasingly attractive option to those overwhelmed with hundreds or thousands of unread email messages.

Judge Randall Siemenbocher’s decision could affect both personal and business users, pending Sneed’s appeal, which has left him in limbo. One Gartner researcher pegged the impact at “$500 billion in lost productivity and legal liability each year” if businesses are prevented from deleting any unread messages. Jaylee Schmitzenlooper, a Gartner senior analyst, said, “Theoretically, this decision could be used to require both individuals and businesses to accept all spam messages, since there’s little technical difference between deleting unread messages in your inbox and having a spam filter do so for you.”

Commenters on Slashdot have already suggested an underground business that would remotely corrupt inboxes in exchange for payments made through third-party anonymous payment systems. One commenter, apparently already in the planning stages for an Albanian-located firm, wrote, “For $50, we could send you an email message that would infect your computer, delete the inbox, and leave clear traces for any potential forensic investigation to prove that it wasn’t your fault. We’d perform an antivirus cleanup at no extra cost.”

For those of us facing nearly 1,000 unread messages with no hope of responding to them all, now is the time to press Delete.

 [ click to view original article at TidBits ]

from New Scientist

How to transform your arm into a wing

• 00:01 01 April 2008
• NewScientist.com news service
• Jeff Hecht

Daedalus used feathers and wax – and we all know what happened to his son when he flew too close to the sun. Instead, you could try surgery, says Samuel Poore, a reconstructive surgeon at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has now described the steps that would be needed to transform human arms into wings.

It sounds like an idea that might come from the underground world of body-modders, who go in for filing teeth to points, implanting horns – and even more extreme modifications. But Poore studied the mechanisms of bird flight under Ted Goslow of Brown University, Rhode Island, before he began medical school and became interested in hand surgery.

A colleague remarked that Poore would never be able to apply his knowledge of bird anatomy to plastic surgery – and that set him thinking.

A functional wing is, sadly, out of the question. Humans lack the shoulder joint and massive muscles that millions of years of evolution gave modern birds. Wing loading is another killer requirement. Modern birds need at least a square centimetre of wing area for every 4 grams of body mass, so an 80-kilogram human would need two square metres of wing.

But an arm might be converted to a decorative wing. Poore suggests modelling it on the wing of Archaeopteryx, the earliest bird, which had a shoulder much closer to humans than the shoulders of better-flying modern birds.

Getting hands-on

First, fuse the outer set of wrist bones and the hand bones to create a bird-like carpometacarpus, the third bone in a chicken wing. The thumb remains free, like the alula that helps guide bird flight, but other fingers would be fused together.

Next, rearrange the muscle and skin to allow articulation of the new bone arrangement.

Things get tricky when it comes to feathering the wings. Hair grows in different skin layers to feathers and the two consist of different types of keratin. No one knows how to convert one to the other.

In case you were looking forward to getting all Birdy, it all adds up to more trouble than it’s worth, Poore concludes. If you want angel wings, go rent a costume.

“Humans should remain human,” Poore says, “while letting birds be birds and angels be angels.”

Journal ref: Journal of Hand Surgery, vol 33A, p 277 

 [ click to view original article at NewScientist.com ]

from Reuters

“Juno” star sings in sequel to movie soundtrack

Mon Mar 31, 2008 4:12am EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Two months after the soundtrack to the pregnant-teen comedy “Juno” hit No. 1 on the U.S. album charts, a second volume is being prepared for digital-only release.

“Juno B-Sides: Almost Adopted Songs,” a 15-track collection boasting a ditty performed by star Ellen Page, will debut exclusively through iTunes for a suggested list price of $9.99 on April 8, distributor Rhino Records said.

The album will be available through all digital service providers on May 13. There are currently no plans for a physical release.

“None of these songs made the movie, but they are all essential members of the Junoverse,” the film’s director, Jason Reitman, writes in the liner notes.

Olympia, Wash.-based singer/songwriter Kimya Dawson, whose music was prominently featured in the film and the first soundtrack, is back with a pair, including a cover of “All I Want Is You,” the wistful love tune performed over the film’s opening credits.

The man behind that song, children’s entertainer Barry Louis Polisar, also returns, as do Scottish band Belle and Sebastian and Buddy Holly. The soundtrack is rounded out by tunes from indie rock bands Yo La Tengo and Jr. James & The Late Guitar, as well as Boston girl group the Bristols, Mexican combo Trio Los Panchos, and Brazilian bossa nova icon Astrud Gilberto.

Page performs “Zub Zub,” a song written by the film’s Oscar-winning screenwriter, Diablo Cody, for a scene that was eventually cut for time. Page’s character bemoans her fate with such lines as “he filled me with baby batter, then we ate some orange tic tacs after.”

Reitman said the scene provided one of his favorite memories. “I just remember directing with my daughter strapped to my chest in a BabyBjorn (baby carrier) and the whole crew watching on as Ellen noodled around on guitar.”

The original “Juno” soundtrack reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in January, becoming the first chart-topper in archival specialist Rhino’s 30-year history

(Reporting by Dean Goodman)

[ click to view original article at Reuters ]