from VICE

66 long-lost polaroids of madonna in ’83 show a mega star on the verge

Photographer Richard Corman looks back on meeting and shooting the charismatic East Village club kid as she was poised for stratospheric stardom.

by Rory Satran

In June 1983, Madonna was an ambitious 24-year-old getting some heat on the club charts. When photographer Richard Corman met the young singer, she served him bubblegum and espresso on a silver tray at her beyond-bohemian walkup on East Fourth Street between A and B. It was, as he puts it, “literally right before she stepped out and ran into the stratosphere.” The month after they took some casual casting Polaroids, she released her debut album, Madonna, which produced three top-ten hits (“Holiday”, “Lucky Star”, “Borderline”). One year later, she was writhing around a wedding cake in her career-making MTV VMA performance of ‘Like A Virgin.’ But when Corman took these gorgeous, stripped-down SX-70 Polaroids, she was still DJ Jellybean Benitez’s girlfriend, the good dancer from Funhouse and Danceteria, and a hustler who paid the rent by waitressing and posing nude for art students. As she wrote of that time, “I felt like a warrior plunging my way through the crowds to survive.”

Richard Corman was well-connected in the early 80s. He had assisted Avedon, and his mother Cis was a casting director who worked on films like Raging Bull and The Deer Hunter. When Corman photographed Madonna, he was also taking pictures of Keith Haring in Soho and Jean-Michel Basquiat at his Great Jones Street studio. But nothing prepared him for the young woman who looked to him like she “was going to rule the world.” After 30 years of languishing in a warehouse, the 66 polaroids will finally get their due this fall as a book and an exhibition. Corman shares the story with i-D.

[ click to continue viewing at VICE ]

from The Drive

The 10 Muscle Cars Everyone Forgets About

Don’t let these less-than-iconic muscle monsters die of neglect.

BY BEN KEESHIN

HEMMINGS.COM

Rock ‘n’ Roll has Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones—the most-loved icons of the genre. In the realm of the muscle car, running parallel to those stars are the Pontiac GTO, Plymouth Hemi Cuda, Dodge Charger, Chevy Chevelle and Buick GSX, the most celebrated and culturally significant of their kind. With long coupe bodies, big-block V-8s and enough vinyl to side a suburban McManse, the classic quintet of muscle cars have enough mid-century swagger to rival even The King.But what about the proverbial Big Mama Thorntons, Bo Diddleys and The Seeds? The cars pushing just as much power and style that have been forgotten over the years, living in the shadow of the fifty-foot letters, G-T-O? During Big Muscle’s prime years, 1964 through the gas crisis of the early Seventies, Detroit churned out super-powerful cars at a reckless rate; today, only a few are held aloft. To rectify such amnesia, we’ve lined up the 10 muscle cars forgotten by the masses—not out of hipster-y, in-the-know superiority, but because we love the muscle car too much to let its middle-children die from neglect.

That’s not just metaphor—for every cherry red Chevelle shined to a blinding finish is a 427-equipped Chevy Kingswood rotting in a barn. Please, go find ‘em.

[ click to continue reading at The Drive

from The Observer

Boston’s Debut Album Isn’t a Guilty Pleasure—It’s One of the Best Records Ever

by Tim Sommer

I have long detested the phrase “guilty pleasure,” especially when it is applied to music, art, films, books, TV shows, and other cultural ephemera. It presumes that the user has to feel bad for liking something; it assumes that a person believes their friends will think less of them if they admit they listen to something.

Listen: It’s O.K. to like BTO’s Greatest more than Amnesiac. You don’t need to make excuses to me, or anyone else. History has taught us that the only thing any music fan should feel guilty about is not outgrowing Elvis Costello by the time you finished your junior year at SUNY New Paltz.

Boston isn’t a guilty pleasure. It’s one of my 50 favorite albums.

Boston’s debut album, which turns 40 this month, is an absolute treasure of melody and architecture. It has the immediacy of pop, but also the deliberate intricacy of prog rock; it has California pop’s attention to zealous sweet harmony, yet it also has some of the heaviest and most memorable guitar riffs on the planet. Until the day Fu Manchu and the Moody Blues get together to re-record Days of Future Passed, it is sui generis.

Like the debut albums by the Ramones, the Velvet Underground and Neu!, it’s difficult to know where the hell Boston came from; it is so staggeringly unique, but also deeply rousing, resonant, aurally sensuous and pleasing.

And do not let its extraordinary commercial success (or our desire to confine it to the trash bin of ‘70s nostalgia, alongside Jimmy Carter, Chevy Chase and Mark Spitz) distract from its innovation or originality. Boston is a spy, a vastly unique spy in the house of memory, virtually as original and as individual as any of those more “credible” acts I just mentioned.

How do you describe Boston’s stunning, heavy/light planetarium bubblegum, this mix of garage rock memes and pure FM Valentine? I mean, it’s like freaking Paul Revere & the Raiders recording Dark Side of the Moon.

[ click to continue reading a The Observer ]

from artnet news

Larry Gagosian and Shaq to Produce Film About the Struggles of a Black Basketball Team in the Hamptons

The basketball-centric film deals with issues of race in the Hamptons.

by Sarah Cascone

Shaquille O’Neal is being interviewed at “30 For 30: This Magic Moment” premiere in New York City. Courtesy of Matthew Eisman/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival.

At first glance, it might seem like a strange pairing: Mega-gallerist Larry Gagosian signs on to produce a documentary about a local basketball team—with legendary NBA Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal?

It’s not as random as a collaboration as you might think, however. The film, Killer Bees, follows the Bridgehampton School basketball team in their quest to defend their 2015 state championship title.

According to the official synopsis, the documentary goes beyond the court and “explores how Bridgehampton’s African American community came to exist in the heart of the Hamptons and its struggle to survive.”

The true story stands in stark contrast to the public perception of Long Island’s East End as a summer playground for the rich and powerful, where artists and collectors gather to party and escape the stifling city heat. Given that inherent tension, support of the film by members of the art world seems natural.

[ click to continue reading at artnet ]

from Deadline

‘Star Wars’ Kenny Baker Dies: R2-D2 Actor Was 81

by Greg Evans

Kenny Baker, the 3-foot, 8-inch actor who played beloved robot R2-D2 in six Star Wars films beginning with the 1977 original, has died at his home in Preston, England following a lengthy illness. He was 81.

The British Baker had roles in Time Bandits and The Elephant Man, TV’s The Goodies, among others, but it’s his work inside Star Wars‘ beeping, whirring little white, silver and blue robot that brought him worldwide and lasting fame. (Coincidentally, TCM aired Time Bandits Saturday afternoon as part of the channel’s 24-hour tribute to actor Ralph Richardson).

“He did extremely well in  his life,” Shield said. “He was very ill for the last few years so we had been expecting it. He had been looked after by one of his nephews who found him on Saturday morning.”

Baker played R2-D2 in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jediand the three prequels that kicked off in 1999.

Shield said her uncle was told as a child that he “probably wouldn’t survive through puberty, being a little person in those times, they didn’t have a very good life expectancy.”

[ click to continue reading at Deadline ]

from The Observer

‘It Came From NYC’ Remembers When White Zombie Ruled Noise Rock (Not Hot Topic)

By Ron Hart

White Zombie. (Photo: Jay Brown)

For many who grew up in the New York City area during the Koch and Dinkins eras, the local underground was always a din of rust, rage and creativity informed by the squalor of its surroundings. Sunday afternoons at CBGB and Saturday nights on the Bowery were a far saltier way to spend your weekend, proving to be more like an exercise in survival than a casual opportunity to catch a show on a free day.

Fifteen or more years on, it’s hard to imagine such cultural inhabitation existing on the sanitized streets of this rapidly gentrified metropolis, a place where Vampire Weekend and Animal Collective would’ve been held at knifepoint in a dark alley near the Williamsburg Bridge and jacked for their vintage Hush Puppies.

In spite of the grit, or arguably because of it, this period marked one of the city’s most fruitful times in underground music, a time when some of the most savage and innovative acts in metal, punk and hardcore converged on the stages of such fabled venues as The Pyramid Club, L’Amour and ABC No Rio. Pussy Galore. Cop Shoot Cop. Swans. Unsane. Live Skull. Sonic Youth. White Zombie.

Wait, what?

That’s right, kids. Before they became the Beavis-approved, platinum-certified, Grammy-nominated alt-metal juggernaut of the 1990s, White Zombie first existed as a noise band assembled by a quartet of students from New York’s Parsons School of Design in search of a way to conjure the elements of Butthole Surfers, Black Flag, The Doors, The Birthday Party and X into one cacophonous brew. When those passions were cross-referenced with the interests of frontman Rob Straker (now Zombie), particularly his love for both The Misfits and Italian horror films, the band’s image stuck out from the masses of torn denim like a fluorescent green thumb.

[ click to continue reading at The Observer ]

from SETI

Perseid Meteor Shower This Week May Develop Outburst – August 11th and 12th

This Thursday and Friday, there will be one of the best annual meteor showers you and your family can watch – the Perseids.    And some experts are even predicting that there might be a meteor “outburst” this year – where the number of shooting stars increases beyond the usual rates.

This is a complicated year for watching the Perseid meteor shower, because the evening sky has a roughly half-lit-up moon in it, making it more difficult to catch the faint “shooting stars.”  So if you can wait until the Moon sets (between midnight and 1 am), you should have better viewing in the pre-dawn darkness.   That’s great advice for people on vacation or camping trips (and for insomniacs,) but probably not useful for those who have to get up for work! (If you are watching before midnight, one suggestion is to get into a moon shadow – a place where something blocks your view of the Moon and it’s easier to scan the sky.)

The best night is the evening of Thursday, Aug. 11 and morning of Friday, Aug. 12^th, although there could be significantly more meteors in the sky on the night before and the night after, too.  Meteors or “shooting stars” (which have nothing to do with stars) are pieces of cosmic dust and dirt hitting the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and making a flash of light as they burn up.  These flashes could happen anywhere in the sky, so it’s best to view the shower from a dark, wide-open place.  See the list at the end for viewing suggestions.

[ click to continue reading at SETI ]

from USA Today

Summer’s civil war: How did pop culture get so negative?

By Brian Truitt

Kanye West jumped onstage after Taylor Swift won for best female video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. (Photo: Christopher Polk, Getty Images)

The biggest civil war of summer was supposed to be Captain America and Iron Man facing off in a superhero popcorn movie. But in the past few months, battle lines have been drawn all over pop culture, with tempers flaring, cooler heads not prevailing and hate spewing everywhere, mostly on the Internet.

There was DC vs. Marvel as fanboys and fangirls hotly debated comic-book franchises. Old-school Ghostbusters fans vs. the new reboot’s female stars. Kanye West and Kim Kardashian vs. Taylor Swift in a he said/she said war involving lyrics and Snapchat videos. Those who were excited to see Suicide Squad vs. the critics who reviled it, with RottenTomatoes.com becoming ground zero for trench warfare.

And then there’s the presidential race, where two weeks of conventions featured political parties calling each other out and cable news coverage showcased surrogates of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton sniping at one another 24/7.

“What I see right now is the whole world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, and that’s creating a lot of tension and anger,” says Devin Faraci, editor in chief of film site Birth.Movies.Death. “That stuff leaks out into every possible direction. We’re in that weird position where everything sort of seems terrible and so as a result, people become negative and combative.”

It’s not as much people hating things as it is feverishly defending what they like, figures Mike Ryan, senior entertainment writer for Uproxx.com. “And if something or someone gets in the way of what they’re defending, watch out.”

[ click to continue reading at USA Today ]

from The Guardian

Same old, same old. How the hipster aesthetic is taking over the world

Industrial furniture, stripped floors and Edison bulbs: why must we aspire to such bland monotony?

By Kyle Chayka

The Fortitude Coffee shop in Edinburgh. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Observer

Go to Shoreditch Grind, near a roundabout in the middle of London’s hipster district. It’s a coffee shop with rough-hewn wooden tables, plentiful sunlight from wide windows, and austere pendant lighting. Then head to Takk in Manchester. It’s a coffee shop with a big glass storefront, reclaimed wood furniture, and hanging Edison bulbs. Compare the two: You might not even know you’re in different spaces.

It’s no accident that these places look similar. Though they’re not part of a chain and don’t have their interior design directed by a single corporate overlord, these coffee shops have a way of mimicking the same tired style, a hipster reduction obsessed with a superficial sense of history and the remnants of industrial machinery that once occupied the neighbourhoods they take over. And it’s not just London and Manchester – this style is spreading across the world, from Bangkok to Beijing, Seoul to San Francisco.

It’s not just coffee shops, either. Everywhere you go, seemingly hip, unique spaces have a way of looking the same, whether it’s bars or restaurants, fashion boutiques or shared office spaces. A coffee roaster resembles a WeWork office space. How can all that homogeneity possibly be cool?

In an essay for the American tech website The Verge, I called this style “AirSpace”. It’s marked by an easily recognisable mix of symbols – like reclaimed wood, Edison bulbs, and refurbished industrial lighting – that’s meant to provide familiar, comforting surroundings for a wealthy, mobile elite, who want to feel like they’re visiting somewhere “authentic” while they travel, but who actually just crave more of the same: more rustic interiors and sans-serif logos and splashes of cliche accent colours on rugs and walls.

[ click to continue reading at The Guardian ]

from CNBC

A start-up’s race to harvest the moon’s treasures

Lori Ioannou | @LoriIoannou1

In a race against global superpowers, Moon Express — a private venture founded by billionaire entrepreneur Naveen Jain, space technology guru Dr. Barney Pell and space futurist Dr. Bob Richards — has cleared a path for private U.S . companies looking to explore and commercialize space.

Today the company is the first private enterprise in history to receive U.S. government approval to travel beyond Earth’s orbit and undertake a deep space mission. The goal: to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon’s surface in 2017 and analyze and explore its valuable resources that can be used on Earth.

The landmark ruling issued by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation provides for interagency approval of the Moon Express 2017 lunar mission under the authority of the Secretary of Transportation, NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies to review and license commercial payloads missions in outer space. It adds a series of voluntary disclosures to help the federal government fulfill its supervisory obligations under the Outer Space Treaty and ensure U.S. national security.

Moon Express required this special ruling because the U.S. government has no standard method in place that would authorize and license private commercial mission operations to outer space, including the moon.

“This is as much a giant leap for government as it is for private enterprise,” said Charles Chafer, CEO of Space Services Holdings and co-founder of Celestis, a space burial service.

Millions are at stake for Moon Express. As part of Google’s Lunar XPRIZE competition, the company stands to be awarded $20 million if it successfully lands a commercial spacecraft on the moon, travels 500 meters across its surface and sends high-definition images and video back to Earth.

[ read full article at CNBC ]

from DSI

The Prospector-1 spacecraft will survey and land on an asteroid

Deep Space Industries announced today its plans to fly the world’s first commercial interplanetary mining mission. Prospector-1™ will fly to and rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid, and investigate the object to determine its value as a source of space resources. This mission is an important step in the company’s overall plans to harvest and supply in-space resources to support the growing space economy.

“Deep Space Industries has worked diligently to get to this point, and now we can say with confidence that we have the right technology, the right team and the right plan to execute this historic mission,” said Rick Tumlinson, chairman of the board and co-founder of Deep Space Industries. “Building on our Prospector-X mission, Prospector-1 will be the next step on our way to harvesting asteroid resources.”

Recently, Deep Space Industries and its partner, the government of Luxembourg, announced plans to build and fly Prospector-X™, an experimental mission to low-Earth orbit that will test key technologies needed for low-cost exploration spacecraft. This precursor mission is scheduled to launch in 2017. Then, before the end of this decade, Prospector-1 will travel beyond Earth’s orbit to begin the first space mining exploration mission.

[ click to continue reading at Deep Space Industries ]