joenolan
Joe Nolan was born under a bad sign on June 13th in Detroit, Michigan in the last Metal Year of the Dog. Polymath, provocateur, inter-media artist, his tell-tale signs have turned up in music, visual art, journalism, poetry, fiction, video and film. A double Gemini, his interests range from the pharmacology of phenomenology to fly fishing; from mysticism to mixed martial arts; from Chaos to counting angels on the heads of pins. He has finished recording his third CD, "Blue Turns Black"in Nashville, Tennessee and is a regular contributor to Fortean Times magazine as well as the Disinformation World News podcast.
Blue Jean Missing Link Discovered!
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.
This just in…
So it seems that it sometimes takes a number of arty types to explain something as fundamentally proletariat as humble, timeless blue jeans.
I’d love to go off on this subject, but I couldn’t do a better job than The Vancouver Sun:
Workaday staple and fashion favourite, blue jeans have conquered the planet. But were they born in the textile mills of New Hampshire, on France’s southern coast or the looms of north Italy?
Art historians believe they have found a piece of the centuries-old puzzle in the work of a newly discovered 17th-century north Italian artist, dubbed the “Master of the Blue Jeans”, whose paintings went on show in Paris this week.
Nothing comes between me and my…oh well…you know…
Running through his works like a leitmotif is an indigo blue fabric threaded with white, with rips revealing its structure, in the…
Pulitzer Prize Winning Photos Capture The War On Terror
Can an army make war on a concept? Tyler Hicks’ photography exhibit Histories Are Mirrors: The Path of Conflict Through Afghanistan and Iraq, doesn’t offer any answers where the contradictions of the War on Terror are concerned, but his images chronicle the soldiers and civilians who’ve been cast in the almost-decade-long tragedy. Hicks’ vivid photos show markets and massacres, heroes and hostages, every image taking its place in a sweeping drama presided over by a smiling villain: Saddam Hussein.
In Histories Are Mirrors, Hicks, a Pulitzer-winning New York Times staff photographer, documents the wreckage of the World Trade Center and the early years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, through 2004. Many of the wall labels offer only dates and locations, but the exhibit isn’t merely a timeline. Hicks’ best photographs capture the eternal features that crop up in the emotional landscape of wars everywhere: fear, pain, pride, rage, hubris, hope…
Joy Division Documentary Now Online
Last night I discovered a documentary about the band Joy Division. In a recent post about the post-punk chronicle Totally Wired, I mentioned the films 24-Hour Party People and Control. Both movies cover the rise and fall of Joy Division and their troubled leader Ian Curtis. While both films have their virtues, it seems the strange tale of Joy Division is best met head on, and this exhaustive doc does the trick.
(Joy Division cover the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray”.)
After Punk: The Story of What Came Next
Simon Reynold’s acclaimed first volume of post-punk memory sifting — Rip it Up and Start Again — went a long way toward exploring and explaining the various flowerings that bloomed from the bruised and bloodied blossom that was ’70s punk rock. If you thought one volume of exhaustive, evocative reconstructing of the period would suffice, you would be wrong, and Reynolds proves this point with Totally Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews. The project is a bookend to the first volume and it completes an impressive cartography of that time and that music.
Totally Wired is largely an oral biography; the story of a place, a time and a music told by the people who listened to it, created it and lived through it. Serving up 32 interviews with everyone from David Byrne to Jah Wobble to James Chance, Totally’ (Along with Rip’) must certainly qualify Reynolds as the definitive chronicler of the period. The later chapters of the book practically constitute a project unto themselves, allowing Totally’ to deliver an even clearer, deeper explanation of just what came after punk.
The interviews begin with Ari Up, the lead singer of The Slits. The delightful miss Up is a fantastic storyteller and her remembrances of being the only dread-headed white girl step-dancing at Reggae parties are spellbinding — as are her recollections of a time when Punks, Rastas, Sticksmen, John-Travolta-disco-sadists and neo-Teddy Boys all collided on the street and on the stage as a new music attempted to rise from the ashes of punk.
Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig Live Happily Ever After in New Zine
The good people at Microcosm Publishing have sent me a few interesting packages lately and I’ve been sifting through the goodies picking out a few shiny treasures to share with you Disinfonauts.
The crown jewel is an almost-too-good-to-be-true comic/zine starring buff icons Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig – as gay lovers.
When we first saw this book among Microcosm’s up-coming releases, we anticipated a kind of tongue-in-cheek fan-fiction romance in which the macho-rockers put their tongues in one another’s cheeks – oral or otherwise.
While Henry and Glenn’ wasn’t what we’d expected, we’ve fallen in love with this warm wonder of sweet insanity.
Henry and Glenn’ consists of a number of barely connected cartoons, comic strips and journal entries created by the Igloo Tornado art collective. Rollins is clearly “The Man” in their relationship and some of the book’s best bits find Danzig decked out in various accoutrements, inquiring whether a given get-up makes “my butt look fat?”.
While the…
Korean Artist Imagines a Tomorrow of Sentient Machines
Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two predicted this was the year when humanity would make contact with an alien intelligence. But if you’ve seen the work of U-Ram Choe, you know the shocking truth: They’re already here.
The brainchild of the South Korean sculptor, “New Urban Species” is an art show disguised as a natural history exhibit from the future, and it’s one of the most engaging displays on tour this year.
U-Ram Choe builds art that comes from a not-to-distant-tomorrow, where organic life and mechanized objects have become one. His kinetic sculptures are not only creepy-fun marvels, they also create a compelling dialog about machine consciousness and the coming Singularity.
In his book Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology, brain researcher Valentino Braitenberg demonstrates how human beings invest the increasingly complex behaviors of mechanical devices with a range of values and abilities including aggression, creative thinking, personality and free will, and how we project…
Rare Hunter S. Thompson Documentary Surfaces on YouTube
It’s been nearly 5 years since The Good Doctor said adiós and pulled that silver trigger, bringing Gonzo to an end for good – or so one would think.
Since his suicide at his Colorado ranch, Thompson seems more present than ever. A number of competing biographies have filled the stores, several new films about the man have flickered into the theaters, DVD shelves and bit torrent sites, and nary a week goes by that we don’t stumble across some bit of news regarding the troubled production of the Johnny Depp film of Hunter’s first novel, The Rum Diary.
In the midst of all the hubbub, I overlooked a grimy little treasure: The Crazy Never Die. Crazy’ is an odd film with a strange provenance that gives the viewer a front-row seat at a rather lucid 80’s-era university lecture by Thompson.
Legendary Showman Turns Shaman
Psychomagic is the newest book by the legendary surrealist filmmaker, comics author, Tarot expert and therapist, Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy is the brand new English translation of Jodorowsky’s poetic-action therapy techniques. The book first appeared in Spanish in 2008. It’s published by Inner Traditions and was released on June 18, 2010.
The book is separated into 3 sections, keeping Jodorowsky’s wide-ranging ramblings carefully collected. Writer Gilles Farcet interacts with the author in the book’s first chapters which are written in a Q&A format.
An introductory essay by Farcet makes it clear that their “interview” consisted of his enduring an expansive, multi-layered monologue from Jodorowsky which was only later recast in the Q&A structure. The “knowing teacher vs. baffled student” feel of this section is absolutely delightful, and the disarming approach allows the deeper implications of Jodorowsky’s ideas to take the reader by surprise. In…
A Fun New (Old) Game to Play While Drinking
While the readers — and writers — on this site are no strangers to a good time, even the heartiest of partiers can find themselves stranded in a rut caused by lack of novelty. We’ve all known the soul-crushing boredom that results from having the same conversation with the same people in the same place again. It can transform one’s imbibing from recreational to medicinal. We can all use a shake-up every now and then, and it often seems that the best way forward can be found by reaching back.
The next time your good times are more boring than blaring, why not introduce an Exquisite Corpse?
Wikipedia explains:
Exquisite corpse (also known as exquisite cadaver or rotating corpse) is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. “The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun”)…
Let’s Get Lost With Dennis Hopper
Since the death of Dennis Hopper, I’ve been searching and scratching in the lesser known spots of his career trying to get a better feel for the man. YouTube is currently home to a couple of beautiful treasures that have had me reading and viewing for weeks now.I finally got around to creating a new Sleepless Film Festival to showcase this bizarre double-feature.
The Last Movie is Hopper’s follow-up to Easy Rider. It won him the Golden Lion in Venice and promptly ended his career as a director when he got back to America. The other film is a documentary called The American Dreamer. ‘Dreamer archives the strange days that Hopper lived through as he tried to edit The Last Movie in the midst of an ongoing, hedonistic orgy at his New Mexico ranch.
With this episode, we are looking back on the career of the late, great Dennis Hopper. While we can’t resist re-visiting highlights…
Sexual Healing: Paschal Beverly Randolph
Following up on the latest Disinformation World News Podcast, here are a number of links to more information about Paschal Beverly Randolph: the subject of the last installment of Insomnia, included in the latest Disinformation World News podcast.
Including a number of books available through Google and several fascinating articles about one of the Western magical tradition’s bright, shining lights- explore these links and get wise to this fascinating cat.
The Gray-Haired Graffiti of L.A.’s Oldest Street Artist
From Ian Fortey at Asylum.com:
“Cops in L.A. have spent months tracking down a vandal who has caused thousands of dollars worth of damage by slapping “Who is John Scott?” stickers on buses, bus shelters and any other flat surfaces he could find.
Typically this is the domain of teenagers putting up ads for their garage bands, but this time, it was the work of a senior citizen. 73-year-old John Scott is officially the oldest person ever arrested in L.A. for street vandalism, beating the previous record holder who was 36.”
Attack of the Giant Jellyfish
From MICHAEL CASEY, AP
“KOKONOGI, Japan — A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.
The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 200 kilograms (450 pounds), marine invaders that are putting the men’s livelihoods at risk.
The venom of the Nomura, the world’s largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day’s catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan’s Wakasa Bay.
“Some fishermen have just stopped fishing,” said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. “When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed.”
Read…
Vanished Persian Army Finally Found?
From Rossella Lorenzi at MSNBC:
“The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archaeology’s biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian researchers.”
Pow-Wow: Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Magic
Read this entire book at the sacred-texts.com site…
“Written by a Pennsylvania Dutch healer in the 1820s, this book is a rambling collection of rural home remedies and folk invocations. Pow-wow is a unique creole of Christian theology and a shamanistic belief system. It is still practiced in some rural areas of Pennsylvania. In spite of the name, it is not of Native American derivation. It is believed to have been brought over to America by German immigrants who practiced folk-magic.”
Here is a cure for warts: “Roast chicken-feet and rub the warts with them; then bury them under the eaves.”
Your Very Own Hex Sign
Pennsylvania hex sign painting is a type of traditional folk art that is alternately viewed as a decorative tradition and as talisman fashioning. The symbols and designs on the signs may represent a family line or locality or they may have magical power to protect a barn from lightning or ensure a bountiful harvest. Check out these great images of Hex Signs and follow the links to eBay to find one of your own.
Lady Gaga’s Occult Powers on the Rise
Perhaps Austin Gandy’s recent Invisible College segment on the Disinformation World News Podcast was more prescient than we expected?
By Allie Pruitt at Weekly World News
NEW YORK, NY – A paparazzo dropped dead after taking a photo of Lady Gaga!
Lady Gaga is a pop star who has become as famous for her outfits as she has her music. She wears a new and often bizarre outfit for every single event she attends, making her a prime target for celebrity photographers.
On Monday night, Lady Gaga attended the ACE Awards in New York City. Photographer A.J. Solkaner immediately took a photo of the singer, her face obscured in a spooky black veil.
[continues at Weekly World News]
More Hollow Earth for Podcast Listeners
As promised, here is a new post offering up some more goodies that spilled over
the edges of my latest installment of Insomnia for the Disinformation World News podcast.
Links, vids, ‘casts and images abound – with a few, extra, subterranean-themed Tom Waits
and Patti Smith songs thrown down the well for good measure.
Thanks to Raymond and Joe for putting up with two rather lengthy segments on a subject
that is as vast as the Planet itself. The Hollow Earth has long been a favorite
crypto-myth-consmology-theory of mine. Enjoy surfing these links as much as
I’ve enjoyed burrowing into this strangeness and sharing my notes.
The Art of Death
During the past weekend’s festivities, many of us decorated ourselves and our surroundings in the trappings of the dead. Sometimes, the dear and deceased return the favor, allowing their bones and belongings to be transformed into sacred, artistic installations that remind us of our own fleeting days.
All things must pass…
The WebUrbanist offers this handy countdown of the world’s most gorgeous (ghastly?) ossuaries.
New PKD Box Finds the Canon Getting Cukoo
At Amazon:
I wonder if this thing can shoot a pink beam of light?
PKD fans, start your Christmas lists early. This might be the best Philip K. set ever.
“The most outré science fiction writer of the 20th century has finally entered the canon,” exclaimed Wired Magazine when Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s was published in May 2007. Now The Library of America has gathered all three volumes of Jonathan Lethem’s definitive Philip K. Dick edition in a boxed set sure to be a must for collectors and sci-fi fans.
