Why Jeff Bridges is Really ‘The Dude’
As one of the millions of people affected by the ABC-Cablevision pow-wow on Sunday night, yes it is actually true…
The Dude Abides.
Here is evidence why Jeff Bridges is actually “The Dude”… as The Big Lebowski showed us — the viewing audience — in this Dude’s heart, the man behind the character, said in his own words raising his statuette to the heavens he said:
I want to thank my mum and dad for turning me on to such a groovy profession. My mum and dad loved showbiz so much. This is honoring them as much as it is me.
Glenn Beck: The New Abbie Hoffman?
Glenn Beck at CPAC 2010. Photo: Gage Skidmore CC
That’s what Michael Lind claims, in Salon.com:
Street theater. Communes. Manifestoes. Denunciations of “the system.” The counterculture is back. Only this time it’s on the right.
Political factions that are out of power have a choice. They can form a counter-establishment or a counterculture. A counter-establishment (a term that Sidney Blumenthal used to describe the neoconservatives in the 1970s) seeks to return to power by reassuring voters that it is sober and responsible. A counter-establishment publishes policy papers and holds conferences and its members endure their exile in think tanks and universities.
In contrast, a counterculture refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the rules of the game that it has lost. Instead of moving toward the center, the counterculture heads for the fringes. Like a…
‘Operation Titstorm’ Hackers Have Declared Cyberwar on Australia
ASHER MOSES writes in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Groups opposing the government’s internet censorship plans have condemned attacks on government websites, saying it will do little to help their cause, while Communications Minister Stephen Conroy called them “totally irresponsible”.
Hackers connected with the group Anonymous, known for its war against Scientology, this morning launched a broad attack on government websites.
No Joke: South Carolina Now Requires ‘Subversives’ to Register
Yes, the South is as messed up as you though it was. This new law from the birthplace of secession is utterly ridiculous, and it will be used as an excuse to arrest and imprison activists of all stripes. Also, I want to drive over to Columbia and pay five dollars to have the South Carolina Republican Party registered.
From The Raw Story:
Five-dollar registration fee for persons planning to overthrow U.S. government.
Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina’s Secretary of State and declare their intentions — or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.
The state’s “Subversive Activities Registration Act,” passed last year and now officially on the books, states that “every member of a subversive organization, or an organization…
How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt writes on the Daily Beast:
As the executive director of NORML, the leading lobbying organization for pot smokers’ rights, Allen St. Pierre gets asked a lot of strange questions. But the one he’s been getting lately is, “What is that metal thing they use on Weeds?”
The answer is the Volcano Vaporizer, a smokeless inhalation device that has recently shown up on both the Showtime series and HBO’s Bored to Death, in which a sexy stoner played by Jenny Slate lures Jason Schwartzman into her bedroom to test one out. (“Just squeeze down on that nipple and suck in the vapors,” she coaches him.) It’s even used at the renowned Chicago restaurant Alinea, albeit unconventionally, to pipe aromas of nutmeg and coffee to diners as they eat dessert.
The Volcano is affectionately known as the “Mercedes Benz” of toking up.
“If you live in Ohio, or if you’re a baby boomer who has no problem with cannabis, and you see them using that, you’re asking, ‘What’s going on?’” says Pierre. “There’s a veneer of sophistication to it. This is not your daddy’s bong.”
Celebrity Portraits Made From Hundreds Of Prescription Pills
Another interesting drug-mosaic artist. Via IncredibleWorld.net:
It is well known that lot of celebrities have problems with using drugs. American artist Jason Mecier decided to speak about this problem in his own way. He created a number of celebrity mosaic-portraits out of colored prescription pills.
There you can find portrait of Heath Ledger who has lost his life because of drugs overdose. The Michael Jackson portrait is pretty interesting too. If you look those photos from a distance or resize them to a tiny images, you’ll see that those portraits are pretty realistic.
Jason Mecier is a mosaic portrait artist who has worked for a years in creation of amazing mosaic portraits using beans, noodles, yarn and similar inexpensive materials. He claims that there’s no any ‘fooling’ about his artworks and that he is not…
William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (Documentary)
Via www.burroughsthemovie.com:
The film investigates the life of legendary beat author and American icon, William S. Burroughs. Born the heir of the Burroughs’ adding machine estate, he struggled throughout his life with addiction, control systems and self. He was forced to deal with the tragedy of killing his wife and the repercussions of neglecting his son. His novel, Naked Lunch, was one of the last books to be banned by the U.S. government. Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer testified on behalf of the book. The courts eventually overturned their decision in 1966, ruling that the book had important social value. It remains one of the most recognized literary works of the 20th century.
William Burroughs was one of the first to cross the dangerous boundaries of queer and drug culture in the 1950s, and write about his experiences. Eventually he was hailed the godfather of the beat generation and influenced artists for generations to come. However, his friends were left wondering, did William ever find happiness? This extremely personal documentary breaks the surface of the troubled and brilliant world of one of the greatest authors of all time.
Merry Mayhem: Rampaging Santas Take to the Streets for SantaCon
Just happened this past Saturday in NYC, according to Santarchy it’s actually worldwide:
Every December for the last 16 years, Cacophonous Santas have been visiting cities around the world, engaging in a bit of Santarchy as part of the annual Santacon events.
It all started back in 1994 when several dozen Cheap Suit Santas paid a visit to downtown San Francisco for a night of Kringle Kaos. Things have reached Critical Xmas and Santarchy is now a global phenomenon.
Enjoy the pics:
Chronic Art: Making Amazing Mosaics From Roach Papers
Steve Elliott writes on Toke of the Town:
Cliff Maynard of Pittsburgh has blazed a unique trail on the stoner art scene. The 37-year-old creates amazing mosaics using the humble medium of used roach papers from smoked joints.
Amazingly, this is just something Cliff does in his spare time. He’s one of Pittsburgh’s finest tattoo artists at his day job. But it’s his roach paper Chronic Art that has captured the imagination of folks nationwide.
As a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Cliff had the opportunity to take inspiration from the great mosaics of the past. “I was studying mosaics in school,” Maynard remembers. “I just remember sort of making this connection in my head between the tiles and roach papers.”
His roach paper portraits include iconic rock star stoners like Jimi Hendrix,…
Counterculture Comics Hero Grant Morrison Gets a Biopic
Scott Thill writes on Wired:
Now that the comics industry has overtaken film, its outstanding writers are starting to step up to the biopic bar. Subversive brainiac Grant Morrison is up next, with a dedicated documentary due in time for next year’s Comic-Con International.
“He has an uncanny ability to tell stories that are both accessible and progressively avant-garde,” explained indie director Patrick Meaney, whose untitled Grant Morrison documentary, previewed in the exclusive clips above and below, will analyze the writer’s storied run for Marvel and DC Comics on standout titles like The Invisibles, X-Men and Final Crisis as well as more esoteric series like The Filth and Flex Mentallo.
The relative obscurity of the latter two may not last long, as Hollywood roots around for comic books to follow those from Alan Moore and Frank Miller into cinematic life.
“Most ‘civilians’ that I talk to about the project still don’t know who Grant Morrison is,” Meaney told Wired.com, “but Moore is definitely a name they recognize, as is Frank Miller. I feel like we could soon be seeing a bunch of Morrison film projects in the not-too-distant future.” (Read More: Wired)
Josh Harris: The Warhol of the Web
Andrew Smith writes in the Guardian:
I couldn’t have been more surprised to find Josh Harris in Ethiopia. In Manhattan in the mid-1990s, he had been “the Warhol of the Web” — one of the first internet multimillionaires, who took the $80m fortune he’d made and started to explore the possibilities and implications of this new technology, to the point of self-destruction. In the process, he became the focal point of the downtown New York scene that, for heady extravagance, rivalled anything from the 1960s or 1970s.
His Millennium Eve party, called Quiet: We Live in Public, ran for over a month, during which an ad-hoc community of human subjects lived in pods in a six-storey Broadway warehouse, each pod wired up and effectively functioning as a TV channel, streamed live to the web via Harris’s online TV portal at Pseudo.com. It was 1,000 times more vital and acute than the still-nascent Big Brother. “Don’t bring your money,” Harris said. “Everything here is free.”
Quiet featured a shooting range you could hear from the street, a banquet hall, theatre, temple, club, giant game of Risk, and a public shower area, all covered by cameras. But more than anything, it offered its residents complete freedom. There were drugs and public sex — at one point, Harris, in the guise of a clown called Luvvy, attempted to coordinate simultaneous orgasms between three couples.
Just about anything that could happen did happen, and many people have called it an experiment. But Ondi Timoner, director of We Live in Public, a Sundance-winning documentary about Harris that opens in the UK next week, shrewdly calls it a metaphor. My feeling is that Harris wasn’t saying, “This could happen” but “This will happen”. This is where the technology is taking us; and what’s more, it’s where we want to go.
More in the Guardian. Here’s the trailer:
Hipster Countercultures Through the Decades
Zana Faulkner writes on DivineCaroline:
Hipster, Beatnik, Hippie, and right back around to Hipster. Hip, cool, groovy, dope, deck. The terms used and names given to each generation’s “it” crowd seems to be as ingrained in history as they are in the present, but who were these groups and how did their slang come about? And how is it that we’ve had two generations of hipsters?
The 1940 Hipster: The original hipsters were so named because of their awareness and openness to a certain attitude toward life. In fact, the words “hep” and “hip” are both derivations of the African word hepi — meaning to open one’s eyes. Early jazz musicians used the word “hep” for anyone in the know, especially with regard to the black world of jazz; the musicians and their fans…
Was Manson A Political Tool For Destroying Counterculture?
On KPFA’s Guns and Butter, Bonnie Faulkner plays a broadcast from 1971 revealing links between the Tate murders and government actions aiming to sow fear and paranoia of the growing counter-culture of the 60’s. Originally aired on Mae Brussells’ radio show, the segment explores Charles Manson’s life before the infamous murders.
Turn Off Your Mind with Gary Lachman – Disinformation: The Podcast
Disinformation: The Podcast – Turn Off Your Mind with Gary Lachman
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This episode features an interview with occult author and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Gary Lachman. We discuss the history of the Western occult tradition and how it became a major influence on the counterculture of the ’60s. Gary also shares a few stories from his days with Blondie and discusses the future of the occult movements. Turn off your mind, this week on Disinformation: The Podcast.
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