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“Giving the Finger” to Ronald Reagan

from The LA Times Hero Complex

John Carpenter: ‘They Live’ was about ‘giving the finger to Reagan’

The Hero Complex Film Festival kicked off Friday evening with a 25th anniversary screening of “They Live,” a 35th anniversary screening of “Halloween” and an onstage conversation with the filmmaker behind both movies, John Carpenter.

Carpenter discussed his motivation in making “They Live,” a campy but subversive sci-fi flick that starred professional wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper as the film’s blue-collar hero Nada, who discovers an alien conspiracy to mind-control the people of Earth using invisible messages. Carpenter called “They Live” his most political film and said it was his response to consumerism and class disparity in the 1980s.

“By the end of the ’70s there was a backlash against everything in the ’60s, and that’s what the ’80s were, and Ronald Reagan became president, and Reagonomics came in,” Carpenter told the sold-out theater at the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. “So a lot of the ideals that I grew up with were under assault, and something called a yuppie came into existence, and they just wanted money. And so by the late ’80s, I’d had enough, and I decided I had to make a statement, as stupid and banal as it is, but I made one, and that’s ‘They Live.’ … I just love that it was giving the finger to Reagan when nobody else would.”

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Editor

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“Who the f†ck’s Lenny?”

from EXBERLINER

Tricky of the trade

by Gabriella Seemann

Tricky
Photo by Jarka Snajberk

Tricky was trip hop’s anti-poster boy, first making his mark with his moody sprechgesang on Massive Attack’s “Blue Lines” (Virgin) in 1991.

You must still run into celebrity a lot.

I’ve been next to Kanye West – I stood next to him in a club and I looked at him and he looked at me and he thought I was going to talk to him. That’s never going to happen. You know, I was in a club once in New York and a guy I know came up to me and said, “Hey, Lenny wants to meet you.” And I said, “Who the fuck’s Lenny?” And he goes “Lenny Kravitz.” So I said, ‘What, Lenny Kravitz wants to meet me and he thinks I’m going to get up and go over to him?” I’m not a fan of Lenny Kravitz. I don’t want to work with him. So he comes over, says to me “I love your music.” Then there’s a silence, because he’s expecting me to say something nice back to him. Then he says to me “You should come to Miami, I have a studio there.” “Why would I come to Miami? I live in New York, I have a studio here.” He’s like, ‘We could do some recording together.” I say to him “Why? Why would we record together?” He’s got no logical answer. So if he thinks I’m going to do it just because he’s a massive artist, and it would help me with my record sales – never going to happen.

[ click to read complete hilarious interview at EXBERLINER.com ]

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Editor

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Lady Godiva was a freedom rider / She didnt’ care if the whole world looked.

from The New York Daily News

Bea Arthur topless portrait sells for nearly $2 million, causes Facebook stir

The ‘Golden Girls’ star gives new meaning to the show’s name as the artist-imagined subject of the painting.

BY 

BeaArthurNaked

A 1991 painting depicting actress Bea Arthur baring her — um, golden girls — sold for nearly $2 million at an auction in Manhattan Wednesday night.

The John Currin creation, aptly named “Bea Arthur Naked,” captures the beloved sitcom actress nude from the waist up. According to auction house Christie’s, the provocative work was imagined from a photograph of the actress with clothes on.

Notes on the auction house website describe the portrait as both “nostalgic and repelling.”

[ click to continue reading at NYDailyNews.com ]

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Editor

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9 Circles of Literary Damnation

from Shelf Awareness

Floor Display of the Day: ’9 Circles of Literary Damnation’


“Fired up by the release of Dan Brown’s Dante-inspired new thriller, Inferno,” the staff at BookPeople, Austin, Tex, “put together a massive display on our first floor honoring all nine circles of Dante’s hell: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud & Treachery. From Fifty Shades of Grey (Lust) to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Violence) toThe Vanishers (Fraud, Treachery, actually that one covers a few…) to Garfield Weighs His Options (Gluttony) to Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut was an atheist–Limbo!), you are invited to gleefully descend into the fiery pits of damnation with us. Come on, you’ll like it. It’s warm down here.”

[ click to read at ShelfAwareness.com ]

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Editor

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The Flaming Lips On Fallon

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Editor

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Moroder’s Revenge

from Exclaim.ca

Giorgio Moroder “Racer”

Giorgio Moroder - "Racer"

By Brock ThiessenGiorgio Moroder has received a fair bit of welcomed attention as of late, mainly in thanks to his touching contribution to Daft Punk‘s Random Access Memories. But now the disco innovator is heading out on his own again, crafting the soundtrack to the new mobile game Racer.

The game is part of Google’s Chrome Experiment, and the pulsing electro score comes as part classic Moroder, part modern dancefloor epic.

[ click to continue reading at Exclaim.ca ]

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Editor

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Web-by-Colour

webcolour

 

[ click to visit WebColourData.com ]

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Editor

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Small Town Cinema Gone

from The LA Times

Small-town movie theaters threatened by shift to digital cinema

By Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times

Small theaters turn to the public to raise funds

Robert Neir and Sage O’Connell dance to bluegrass music in front of the Rio Theater in Monte Rio, Calif., as musicians practice before their concert to raise funds for new digital projection equipment. (Peter DaSilva, For the Los Angeles Times/ April 28, 2013)

MONTE RIO, Calif. — On the redwood-lined banks of the Russian River, dozens of local residents and tourists gathered in a grassy field on a hot Sunday afternoon, lining up to buy raffle tickets and $10 plates of barbecued chicken as a bluegrass group rehearsed a number for a Ramble at the Rio concert.

It might have been a church social or a school fundraising picnic. But this event was to raise money to save a centerpiece of the community: the Rio Theater.

Built from a World War II Quonset hut and adorned with murals from local artists, the Rio has been screening films in this town of about 1,200 people since 1950. Located in the wine country north of San Francisco off the Bohemian Highway, a few miles away from the Bodega Bay filming location of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “The Birds,” the Rio has survived fires, floods and multiple owners.

But it may not survive the latest threat — the digitization of the film industry. By the end of this year, Hollywood’s major studios will stop delivering film prints to movie theaters, replacing them with cheaper digital hard drives.

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Editor

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The Mega-rrection

from FORBES

Inside Mega: The Second Coming Of Kim Dotcom

(Photo: Brendon O’Hagan for FORBES)

Kim Dotcom, a.k.a. Kim Tim Jim Vestor, a.k.a. Kim Schmitz, doesn’t act much like a man with a net worth in the negative.

At 11 a.m. on a Tuesday he’s driving me around on a golf cart “safari” of his 60-acre estate outside of Auckland, New Zealand. He weaves among a grove of olive trees with alarming speed–he’s removed the speed regulator in his fleet of electric buggies, and they can clock up to 19 miles per hour. We swing past his 2,000-bottle-a-year vineyard and barrel down a hill toward his $30 million mansion, complete with a hedge maze, a five-flatscreen Xbox room and a 75-foot cascading water display.

Given that he owes millions of dollars to defense lawyers and now has to raise his five children on a $20,000-a-month government allowance meted out from his frozen bank accounts, wouldn’t it be wise to live a slightly simpler life?

“No way,” he says, leaning his massive 6-foot-7, 300-plus-pound body onto the cart’s steering wheel. “That would be allowing them to get away with this stunt. I won’t accept that. By staying here I’m saying, ‘Eff you! You can’t defeat me!’”

The “stunt” Dotcom refers to is the police helicopter raid on his compound that made global headlines 15 months ago, timed to coincide with the U.S. indictment that shut down his ultrapopular constellation of Mega-branded websites under charges of hosting half a billion dollars’ worth of pirated movies and music. Overnight Dotcom went from an underground entrepreneur to one of the most public and controversial figures on the Internet. His site domains, including the flagship Megaupload.com, are now the property of the U.S. government. His servers have been ripped out of data centers around the world and sit in evidence warehouses. He’s had to let go of 44 of his 52 house staff as well as Megaupload’s hundreds of employees. All but 2 of his 18 cars have been seized or sold.

But today Kim Dotcom is putting all of that in his souped-up golf cart’s rearview mirror. His new storage startup, called simply Mega, launched Jan. 20, defiantly a year to the day after the sudden destruction of Megaupload. It’s already exploded to exceed 3 million registered users. His engineers tell me it’s moving 52 gigabits of data per second–that’s nearly half the entire bandwidth of New Zealand–and growing at 30% a week.

[ click to continue reading at Forbes.com ]

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Editor

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THE NUDIE FOODIE by Lauren Sloss

from The Bold Italic

NudieFoodie

The first time I went to a strip club, I was so nervous I spiked my morning coffee with a pour of Baileys. I was anxious because I didn’t know what to expect: Would the clientele be trench-coat-wearing men with slack jaws and red eyes? Would the surfaces be sticky? It was 10 a.m. on a Friday, and I had to go to work. The plan was to hit up the Gold Club for its $5 Friday lunch buffet around noon, which had seemed like a good idea, thanks to its affordability and the obvious street-cred appeal.

Turns out I had nothing to be nervous about. The Gold Club dancers were awesomely talented. My friends and I kept looking at each other, eyes wide, as we mouthed, “How can we learn to do that?!” watching Scarlett or Sierra hang upside down at the top of the pole – toned abs and, yes, boobs, stretched in our direction. And the food… well, the menu had its ups and downs, but $5 for an all-you-can-eat buffet and some skillful pole dancing was a freaking good deal. We emerged from the darkened club into the glare of a SOMA afternoon, deeming the experience one of our better work-time lunches ever.

A few years have passed since my first foray into San Francisco’s tit scene. Since then, I’ve taken a pole dancing class (I bruise too easy to be a pole-star, sadly) and launched into food writing. With a heightened palate and a critic’s sensibility, it seemed like the perfect time to return to the Gold Club and give its Friday lunch deal a once-over. But what’s a good review without context? San Francisco has no shortage of strip clubs, though relatively few serve more than flesh – something I learned as I called about 10 of them, asking after their food menus (I’m guessing it’s a question they don’t often get).

[ click to continue reading at TheBoldItalic.com ]

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Editor

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Fresno Pentameter

from The New York Times

Recognition Grows for Poets of Streets, Main or Otherwise

By 

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

FRESNO, Calif. — This city has long been an object of ridicule. Even seemingly innocuous details like the flatness of the land, reinforced by the sea of ranch-style houses, take on a pejorative hue. Midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the western gateway on Highway 99 to Yosemite National Park, Fresno is not a destination but “a bathroom stop,” in the words of its poet laureate.

Yes, Fresno inaugurated its first poet laureate on April 22, formally embracing a rich poetic history that, though widely acclaimed in literary circles, had received little recognition here.

Fresno joins a rapidly growing list of cities and towns across the nation with their own official bards; in just the past few months, not only have Houston and Los Angeles established poet laureateships but so have Boise, Idaho; Key West, Fla.; McAllen, Tex.; and San Mateo County, near San Francisco.

Ashley Swearengin, the city’s mayor, said Fresno realized that there was “a missing piece” in its ability to express itself. So the city decided on a poet laureate “to express what it’s like to be in Fresno, what life is like on the ground here, and to really capture the essence of our community, to bind us as a community and help to represent to the outside world what our community is like.”

Fresno, which is providing a $2,000 stipend for a two-year term, chose James Tyner, 37, an award-winning poet, a full-time librarian and the author of a chapbook of poetry, “The Ghetto Exorcist.” At his inauguration, Mr. Tyner read from a poem he had composed for the occasion, “Fresno, California. 2013,” which began:

I am Fresno.

I am the high school kid that can’t wait to get out of this town,

there’s nothing to do here, nothing ever happens, waiting

for that last summer, before heading out of town.

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com ]

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Editor

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11,000-square Feet Of Fame

from SPIN

Skrillex Is Building a Warhol-Inspired Bass Factory in Los Angeles’ Chinatown

by Philip Sherburne

11,000-square-foot OWSLA nest will give “in-the-box” producers their wings

After living in hotels for the past decade, Skrillex seems to be settling into his newfound digs in Los Angeles quite nicely. He recently posted a Vine video documenting his recently completed home studio, but that’s just the beginning. In a conversation with Summit Series’ Jeff Rosenthal at last month’s IMS Engage conference in Los Angeles, Sonny Moore revealed that he recently purchased an 11,000-square-foot building in Chinatown where he is building a studio for “in-the-box producers” like himself — that is, traveling laptoppers who could benefit from a high-tech home base for plugging in and jamming out.

But, rather than constructing an industry hit factory, his vision sounds a lot more like Warhol’s Factory — a multi-disciplinary creative hub where collision and collaboration are at the root of everything. “There’s nothing in L.A. that’s like that for our generation,” said Skrillex. “We have our own team and our label’s going to be in there, building an actual physical infrastructure. Up until a couple months ago my team was all over the world, and everything was by email, but I think people tend to forget that when everyone’s in the same room, everything goes 50 times faster. Ideas keep pouring out, and you get a lot more done. So [I'm] building a home for our culture and our scene and a place to even document it and show people what it is. Because it’s more than what most media thinks of electronic music — there’s so much more behind why it’s there, why it came out of nowhere.”

Early in the conversation, the full video of which was posted to the IMS website last week, Moore talks about his years spent navigating the vagaries of major-label contracts, first with From First to Last and then as Sonny Moore; he attributes much of Skrillex’ success to a DIY-inspired philosophy you might call “DIO” — Do It Ourselves

[ click to continue reading at SPIN.com ]

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Editor

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Ray Harryhausen Gone

from USA Today

Hollywood effects wizard Ray Harryhausen dies at 92

The legendary filmmaker was best known for using stop-motion model animation in movies such as ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and ‘Clash of the Titans.’

Way before movies like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings inspired the imagination of film lovers everywhere, audiences were enraptured by the sword-wielding skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts, the great ape of Mighty Joe Young and the dinosaurs opposite Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

The man responsible for all those and much more, Hollywood special-effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen, died Tuesday in London at the age of 92. His family announced his death via The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation Facebook page.

The legendary effects wizard’s influence was felt both in his sci-fi and fantasy movies as well as in the works of later filmmakers such as George Lucas and Peter Jackson. Beginning his career in the 1940s, Harryhausen became well known for using stop-motion model animation and having them interact with actors in a live-action world.

[ click to continue reading at USA Today ]

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Editor

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Mario Machado Gone

from KSWT

Newsman and “Rocky III” and “Scarface” actor dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A Los Angeles television news anchor in the 1960s and 1970s who also appeared in movies such as “Rocky III” has died. Mario Machado was 78.

KCBS-TV (http://cbsloc.al/10AM106 ) says Machado was of Chinese and Portuguese descent and was LA’s first Asian-American newscaster. Over a decades-long career, he was a newsman, producer, TV show host and soccer commentator. He worked at KCBS-TV, its predecessor and at what is now KCAL-TV.

He also played a newsman in TV shows and movies, including the “Robocop” films, “Oh, God!” and “Scarface.”

[ click to read full article at KSWT.com ]

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Editor

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“[The clitoris has] been ignored, vilified, made taboo, and considered sinful and shameful for centuries because of patriarchal religious values”

from CBS Las Vegas

Human Rights Organization Debuts ‘International Clitoris Awareness Week’

Clitoris Cosmica by HANS DOLLER

LAS VEGAS (CBS Las Vegas) - A group formed to protest and combat female genital mutilation declared the time between May 6 and May 12 of this year to be the first-ever International Clitoris Awareness Week.

The organization, Clitoraid, released a statement Friday about the awareness campaign.

“[The clitoris has] been ignored, vilified, made taboo, and considered sinful and shameful for centuries because of patriarchal religious values,” Gary said. “It’s time to give this beautiful organ the attention it deserves. It’s the only human organ with an exclusive sexual pleasure function!”

According to their official website, Clitoraid endeavors to “celebrat[e] sexual freedom and pleasure for all women in the world.” Since its inception in 2006, the organization has aimed to train doctors in clitoral repair surgery techniques.

[ click to read full article at CBS Las Vegas ]

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Editor

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“The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” Infographic

from Paste

Infographic: Hunter S. Thompson’s Kentucky Derby

BY LAURA MEDINA

KY4KY_Derby.png

Infographic by Kentucky for Kentucky and Rachael Sinclair

In Hunter S. Thompson’s 1970 article, “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,” Thompson described the people and events surrounding the Kentucky Derby in a frenzied first-person account unlike traditional news reports.

In honor of tomorrow’s Kentucky Derby, Kentucky for Kentucky teamed up with artist Rachael Sinclair to create an infographic, with each jockey vest symbolizing descriptions out of Thompson’s famed article—Colonel Quick, Nekkid Horses, Whiskey Gentry, Dust Commander, Old Fitz, Chemical Billy and Inbred Horses—to name a few.

Prints of the infographic are available this week only for $30.

[ click to read full article at Paste ]

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Editor

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Jeff Hanneman Gone

from Terry’s Diary

TR-Hanneman

[ click to view at Terry's Diary ]

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Editor

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Eggs Derby with Sweetbreads

from AZCentral

Eggs Derby with Sweetbreads

From chef Lee Hillson

2 large sweetbreads
1 1/4 teaspoons salt, divided use
1 cup sweetbread stock (from cooking the sweetbreads)
1 cup plus 1 to 3 tablespoons heavy cream
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
8 ounces fresh morels
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons finely chopped country ham
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
4 to 6 tablespoons bourbon
6 poached eggs
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup sharp Cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Place sweetbreads in small saucepan and cover with cold water. Stir in 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until sweetbreads are plump and feel slightly firmer to the touch, about 3 minutes. Transfer sweetbreads with slotted spoon to a bowl of ice water and set aside until cool enough to handle. Discard all but 1 cup of cooking liquid to use as stock.

Drain sweetbreads. Cut away any fat and pull away as much of membranes and connective tissue as possible without breaking them up. Cut sweetbreads into thumb-size pieces. Place in a bowl, add 1 cup of cream and set aside.

[ click to continue cooking sweetbreads at AZCentral.com ]

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Editor

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Inventor Of The Second Coolest Instrument Ever Inducted Into Hall Of Fame

from The Los Angeles Times

Robert Moog, EDM pioneer, inducted into Inventors Hall of Fame

By Randall Roberts \ Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

An early invention of Robert Moog, the Moog synthesizer

If you’ve listened to any music in the last 48 years, chances are you’re familiar with the Moog Ladder Filter, whether you know it or not. Idiot savants might know the invention by its government identifier: Patent No. 3475623.

But to the majority of Americans, the Moog Ladder Filter is known for the electronic tones it generates — warm, humming, quivering sounds that have been ubiquitous in rock, pop, disco, hip-hop, electronic dance music and more since the invention was introduced to the public in 1965.

Invented by the late electronics pioneer Robert Moog and used in both his Moog Synthesizer and its compact follow-up, the Minimoog, the filter and its creator were inducted into the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office National Inventors Hall of Fame on Wednesday. The honor is bestowed upon “men and women whose work has changed society and improved the quality of life,” and anyone who’s ever sweated and danced to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” can testify that the invention has done so.

Artists ranging from Diana Ross to Deadmau5 have harnessed its power, and EDM especially has relied on its cosmic tones to launch tracks and dance floors into orbit. Techno and house couldn’t have existed without the filter. If you’ve ever lost it to Stevie Wonder’s “Boogie on Reggae Woman,” the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” or various Daft Punk, Kraftwerk or Stereolab jams, you’ve climbed on or around the Moog Filter Ladder.

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Editor

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Dainty Drone Detector Warns When To Put Down The Bong, Stop Putzing Around In The Buff – and Draw Your Blinds

from US News & World Report

Tiny Device Will Detect Domestic Drones

Worried about an unmanned plane looking into your window? This small detector could alert you when robot planes buzz past

By 

The company's founder says he thinks people will attach the Drone Shield to their fences or roofs to protect their home from surveillance.

The company’s founder says he thinks people will attach the Drone Shield to their fences or roofs to protect their home from surveillance.

Worried about drones spying on you? Soon, a device might be able to send you text and email alerts that let you know when a drone is nearby.

[ALSO: Domestic Drone Arrest Database Being Built by Defense Lawyers Group]

A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the “Drone Shield,” a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone’s “acoustic signatures” (sound frequency and spectrum) when it’s within range.

The company’s founder, John Franklin, who has been working in aerospace engineering for seven years, says he hopes to start selling the device sometime this year. He is using the Kickstarter-like Indiegogo to finance the project.

The device will cost $69 and will be about the size of a USB thumb drive. It will use Raspberry Pi – a tiny, $25 computer – and commercially available microphones to detect drones. He says he imagines that people will attach the Drone Shield to their fences or roofs to protect their home from surveillance.

“People will get the alert and then close their blinds,” Franklin says.

[ click to continue reading at USNews.com ]

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Editor

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Stop-action Carbon Monoxide

from AP via Pioneer Press

IBM makes tiny movie by pushing molecules around

Associated Press

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—Scientists have taken the idea of a film short down to new levels. Molecular levels.

IBM says it has made the tiniest stop-motion movie ever—a one-minute video of individual carbon monoxide molecules repeatedly rearranged to show a boy dancing, throwing a ball and bouncing on a trampoline.

Each frame measures 45 by 25 nanometers—there are 25 million nanometers in an inch—but hugely magnified, the movie (http://bit.ly/17ZmHIt ) is reminiscent of early video games, particularly when the boy bounces the ball off the side of the frame accompanied by simple music and sound effects.

The movie is titled “A Boy and His Atom.”

[ click to continue reading at Pioneer Press ]

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Editor

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Lorien Legacies Publication Order @ GoodReads

from GoodReads.com

click to view at GoodReads.com

[ click to peruse Pittacus at GoodReads.com ]

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Editor

Filed under Bright Shiny News, Literary News, Projects | | No Comments »

When Toby Ate Mice And Men

from BuzzFeed

20 Literary Facts To Impress Your Friends With

8. John Steinbeck’s original manuscript for Of Mice and Men was eaten by a dog.

John Steinbeck's original manuscript for Of Mice and Men was eaten by a dog.

Steinbeck’s puppy, Toby, was left alone one evening and effectively ate some really important homework. Steinbeck wrote of the incident to his agent and said, “I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically.”

Source: martin-olsen.com

[ click to read full list at BuzzFeed.com ]

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Editor

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West Hollywood Pole Dancing

from The LA Times

Pole art popularity outstrips its origins

By Mikaela Conley

Pole dance as art form

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times / April 22, 2013)

Sergia Anderson climbed high up a pole as Bjork‘s “Hyperballad” blasted through Circus Disco, a West Hollywood nightclub. Spinning and twirling, legs straight and toes pointed, she hung perpendicular to the ceiling, holding the pole with just her hands. Anderson then dropped quickly, catching herself just inches above the floor.

The crowd gasped, then applauded.

So goes the National Aerial Pole Art championship, in which 10 amateur pole dancers and 11 professionals competed on April 7. The stage included two floor-to-ceiling poles — one that spun and one static — against a glittery backdrop for competitors. Receiving the biggest applause was Greta Pontarelli, a 62-year-old amateur competitor, as she held herself, still and taut, upside down on the static pole.

Anderson, a 30-year-old competitor and owner of the Vertitude pole fitness studio in Woodland Hills, began dancing when she was 4, but it wasn’t until she discovered pole at 27 that she found an art that spoke to her.

What was once a dance that was synonymous with strip clubs, pole art has become an underground community that is finding its way into mainstream dance, fitness, art and culture.

[ click to continue reading at LATimes.com ]

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Editor

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100 Landmark Cameras

from Pop Chart Lab

A Visual Compendium of Cameras

click to view in detail

A meticulously illustrated catalog of 100 landmark cameras, culled from over a century of photographic history, depicting both professional and consumer models and tracing photography’s history from the first models to today’s digital wonders.

18″ x 24″

Each print is signed by the artists and numbered from a first printing of 500, and comes packaged in a custom Pop Chart Lab Test Tube.

[ click to view in detail and purchase at PopChartLab.com ]

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Editor

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Bleecker Bob’s Gone

from The Hollywood Reporter

The Record Store Day After: New York’s Iconic Bleecker Bob’s Closes

by Mitch Myers

Bleecker Bob's vinyl L
Paul Familetti

What becomes of the vinyl faithful now that the Greenwich Village mainstay — in business since 1967 — has shut its doors?

File under: just another nail in the coffin.

Downtown New York City’s Bleecker Bob’s Golden Oldies Record Shop closed on Saturday, April 13 — just one week shy of Record Store Day. I didn’t get there before its unceremonious final hours, but I did stop by on Sunday, and, with the door unlocked, there was plenty of activity.

“Are you open?” I asked the guy inside.

“No, we closed yesterday,” he said. “But if you want to come in and browse and buy something, you can. I’m just busy taking care of things.”

As I examined the depleted bins of plasticware, a slow trickle of middle-aged men came into the dilapidated store asking the same thing and getting the same answer.

Bob’s “cleaner,” as it were, is Chris Wiedner, and he helped every person who walked in while struggling to tie up a multitude of loose ends and take care of his own personal business. Chris, along with John DeSalvo, JK Kitzer and a small cadre of others, have kept Bleecker Bob’s going since namesake Bleecker Bob Plotnik suffered a crippling aneurysm in 2001. Bleecker Bob and friend Broadway Al first opened Village Oldies Records in late 1967. They moved a few years later and then again, and by that third time, Broadway Al and Bleecker Bob had parted ways, and Bleecker Bob’s could be found in Greenwich Village on West 3rd Street between MacDougal and Sixth Avenue.

[ click to continue reading at THR ]

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Editor

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“Walking & Stalking” the Squalid Underbelly

from The New York Observer

A Tour of New York’s Squalid Underbelly, at the Tip of Your Fingers

By Matthew Kassel

image courtesy of the very cool site OnTheSetsOfNewYork.com

On any given block in New York, it’s safe to assume that you are walking past the scene of some former crime–a murder, a beating, a robbery. And if you like knowing about New York’s squalid underbelly, a new app that came to our attention today, called “Walking & Stalking,”may be worth your time.

The app, which costs $1.99, is a geographical and historical guide to the sensational murders and drug deals and other illegal incidents that have gone down in our fair city through the years. Though it’s by no means exhaustive, “Walking & Stalking” has a lot of juicy information crammed into it.

“I tried to make it super thorough, very exact,” said Stephanie Hughes, the writer and photographer who created the app. “It’s for people interested in stories, people who tend to dig around for info and details.”

Now, if you didn’t know already, you can find out when and where, exactly, Norman Mailer drunkenly stabbed his second wife, Adele Morales, with a penknife (November 21, 1960, 5 a.m., 250 West 94th Street). You’re familiar with Frank Serpico from the eponymous Sidney Lumet movie starring Al Pacino, but the app will lead you to the apartment building where Mr. Serpico was shot during a heated narcotics raid in 1971 (778 Driggs Avenue, in Williamsburg).

[ click to continue reading at The Observer ]

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Editor

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Amish Sex Pistols Reality Show of “a pivotal moment that changed everything”

from SPIN

Watch the Sex Pistols’ Most Notorious Interview (Reenacted By the Amish)

by Chris Martins

Comic Kevin Eldon’s remake offers 100 percent more beard

On December 1, 1976, one television host’s career was ruined just as a band’s was being launched. When Queen were suddenly unavailable to visit London’s Today show with Bill Grundy, the Sex Pistols were subbed in. But as band guru Malcolm McLaren later explained, “We all gathered in the green room and drank ourselves stupid [before the appearance].” Seconds into the live, unedited broadcast, Steve Jones dropped the f-bomb. Then Johnny Rotten said “shit.” Grundy wasn’t impressed, so he began to antagonize the band, and at one point hit on Siouxsie Sioux, who was there as a member of their entourage. The host never recovered from the backlash, and the Pistols became a household name — the anti-heroes of the new punk movement.

… English comedian Kevin Eldon and his crew have done such an incredible job recreating the scene that one almost forgets they’re decked out head-to-toe in Amish duds. They nailed the set, the dialog, the quality of the video and the sound — even the movements of the band and their friends.

[Above] you’ll find the source material for Eldon’s short, and a word from McLaren, printed in the Guardian in 2007 three years before his death: “As simple and harmless as it seems today, that interview was a pivotal moment that changed everything. Punk became the most important cultural phenomenon of the late 20th century. Its authenticity stands out against the karaoke ersatz culture of today, where everything and everyone is for sale. Punk’s influence on music, movies, art, design and fashion is no longer in doubt. It is used as the measurement for what is cool. And we all know you cannot sell anything today if it is not cool. The only problem is that punk is not, and never was, for sale.”

[ click to read full article at SPIN.com ]

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Editor

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Storm Thorgerson Gone

from AP via The San Jose Mercury News

Storm Thorgerson dies; album artist for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Phish

By Raphael Satter / Associated Press

image courtesy of A&Gallery

LONDON (AP) — English graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, whose eye-popping album art for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin encapsulated the spirit of 1970s psychedelia, died Thursday. He was 69.

Even those who not familiar with Thorgerson’s name will have seen his work gracing vinyl collections and CD racks. He was best known for his surreal Pink Floyd covers, which guitarist David Gilmour said had long been “an inseparable part of our work.”

Some of Thorgerson’s covers — the disturbing image of burning man in a business suit featured on Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” or the stark prism on the band’s “Dark Side of the Moon” — have become icons in their own right.

Thorgerson also made covers for Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Phish, Styx, and Muse. His art tended toward the unsettling or the bizarre. One particularly weird CD front for The Cranberries’ “Bury The Hatchet” featured a monstrous, disembodied eye staring at a crouching, naked figure in a desert. Another Pink Floyd album cover — which Thorgerson said had left the record company “completely berserk” — featured nothing more than a picture of a cow staring out from a field.

[ click to read complete obit at The Merc ]

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Editor

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The Power Of Six also for Audi

from The New Indian Express

Audi presents special power of six

By Ammar Alvi

Latest to hit the road is a very special edition of its flagship premium sedan A6 which celebrates the sale of 6,000 cars in India since its launch.

Latest to hit the road is a very special edition of its flagship premium sedan A6 which celebrates the sale of 6,000 cars in India since its launch.

To commemorate the sale of 6,000 A6 models in India, German auto giant Audi has launched a special edition of the car with extra features that make the A6 a special treat for premium sedan lovers.

German auto giant Audi always surprises its loyal customers with new offerings. Latest to hit the road is a very special edition of its flagship premium sedan A6 which celebrates the sale of 6,000 cars in India since its launch. The company has packed it up with features to stand out and maintain its exclusive status.

[ click to continue reading at The New Indian Express ]

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Editor

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Less Than Zero Tolerance – Bret Easton Ellis Banned by GLAAD

from The Hollywood Reporter

Bret Easton Ellis: ‘I’ve Been Banned by GLAAD Media Awards’

by Seth Abramovitch

UPDATED: GLAAD responds to the author’s claims that he was told he couldn’t come to the swanky event honoring Bill Clinton.

There will be stars galore on Saturday evening at the Los Angeles GLAAD Media Awards, a swanky Hollywood event attended by 5,000 guests where PresidentBill Clinton will receive the Advocate for Change Award — but Bret Easton Elliswill not be among them.

The novelist and provocateur took to his medium of choice — Twitter — to announce that the gay rights organization had “banned” him from entering the premises after learning a guest planned on bringing him as a date.

“As a gay man in a domestic partnership who plans to get married I’m sad to hear I’ve been banned byGLAAD from attending tomorrow’s event,” the American Psycho author wrote. “GLAAD is supposedly ‘furious’ about my tweets. And I’m guessing not the ones concerning my boyfriend or how sexy I think Adam Driver is.”

[ click to continue reading at THR ]

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Editor

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THE FALL OF FIVE (Sneak Peak)

from Entertainment Weekly

Sneak peek at the next ‘I Am Number Four’ novel ‘The Fall of Five’ — EXCLUSIVE

by 

Get ready to count backwards from 9 to 5.

The Fall of Five is the fourth novel in the best-selling I Am Number Four series by Pittacus Lore. In the upcoming book (Aug. 27), the Garde are finally reunited, but do they have what it takes to win the war against the Mogadorians? John Smith — Number Four — thought that things would change once the Garde found one another. They would stop running. They would fight the Mogadorians. And they would win.

But he was wrong. After facing off with the Mogadorian ruler and almost being annihilated, the Garde know they are drastically unprepared and hopelessly outgunned. Now they’re hiding out in Nine’s Chicago penthouse, trying to figure out their next move.

The six of them are powerful, but they’re not strong enough yet to take on an entire army — even with the return of an old ally. To defeat their enemy, the Garde must master their Legacies and learn to work together as a team. More important, they’ll have to discover the truth about the Elders and their plan for the Loric survivors.

[ click to continue reading at Entertainment Weekly ]

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Editor

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Ray Bradbury Enters The Digital Age

from Media Bistro’s GalleyCat

Ray Bradbury Classics Finally Coming as eBooks

By Jason Boog

16 classic Ray Bradbury books are coming to digital booksellers for the very first time.

We’ve posted the complete release schedule below, but the list of new eBook releases includes beloved books likeDandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes andThe Illustrated Man.

William Morrow, the longtime publisher of the late, award-winning writer and cultural icon Ray Bradbury, announces the release of 16 of Bradbury’s classic backlist titles in ebook format for the very first time. An additional seven titles will be released in e-book format over the next several months.

[ click to continue reading at MediaBistro.com ]

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Editor

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