The Washington Post Editorial Board, under the paper’s collective byline published a scathing take-down of AZ’s idiotically partisan Secretary of State, Gomer Pyle Ken Bennett, who also happens to be the Romney campaigns co-chair in the state.

Think Bennett’s biased or just dumb? Or both?

Look deep into his eyes…

Imagine waking up and reading something like this about yourself as you’re rubbing the sleep from your eyes? It’s not often that a major newspaper chooses to mock someone this harshly, but I think a colossal fuckwit like Ken Bennett deserved it with both barrels.

IF ONE-FIFTIETH of 1 percent of Arizonans demanded that Ken Bennett, the state’s Republican secretary of state, go to work in the nude, would he comply? Not likely. After all, Mr. Bennett, the former Republican president of the Arizona Senate, is planning to run for governor in two years. It wouldn’t pay to pander to crackpots — and humiliate himself in the bargain. Or would it?

The question arises because Mr. Bennett, allegedly in response to e-mailed requests from 1,200 Arizonans, has demanded that Hawaii provide him with verification of President Obama’s birth certificate. If he doesn’t get it, he says, he might strike the president’s name from the state’s ballot this fall.

Never mind that Hawaii has confirmed publicly and repeatedly, since before the 2008 presidential election, that Mr. Obama was born there; that the Hawaii Department of Health has released both the short and long forms of the president’s birth certificate; and that all this information, along with clear-as-a-bell explanations, is available to the public online. Mr. Bennett insists that none of that is sufficient proof for the Show Me Your Papers State.

Remember that the Washington Post isn’t exactly what you’d call a liberal newspaper… They’re still just sharpening the knives at this point:

Mr. Bennett hastens to add that he is no birther. Of course he isn’t: Everyone knows that birthers — the few that remain against the overwhelming facts of documentary evidence — are half-baked clowns who live for their pet conspiracy theory. And Mr. Bennett, an energy company CEO and plausible gubernatorial candidate in a midsize state, couldn’t really be one of those. Could he?

Charity overcomes us, so we assume not. More likely, he is simply throwing a bone to the birthers, who in most states constitute a laughable fringe of the Republican Party.

Hawaii may yet furnish Mr. Bennett with the already-public documentation he wants. So far, in compliance with state law, it has invited him to provide the legal authority under which the request was made.

More on this below.

Fine. Let the buffoonery play through its final act. We’re confident that, in the end, Mr. Bennett will ensure that Arizona’s ballot includes the name of the president of the United States, all the while insisting, disingenuously, that his actions were merely an instance of due diligence.

But by threatening to exclude Mr. Obama from the ballot, Mr. Bennett transformed what should have been a farcical sideshow of the 2012 election into an actual menace to democracy. He legitimized the lunatic leanings of the United States’, and his party’s, most extreme elements. He put it in the minds of radicals everywhere that elected officials, for the shabbiest reasons (or none at all), can float the idea of bending ballot rules and suffer no adverse consequence.

In the process, he shamed Arizona on the 100th anniversary of its statehood, giving it the appearance of a banana republic that’s come unhinged under the influence of partisan fever.

Hilarious and justly deserved. That must’ve hurt.

Here’s how Bennett has responded to some of the more, uh, rabid emails of support his asshattery has received. I wonder if he’s feeling proud of himself now?

With all due respect, the MCSO investigation has not proven anything other than raised probable cause that the birth certificate posted on the Whitehouse website “may be” a forgery. The next lawful step would be for the Sheriff’s office to turn their findings over to the County Attorney for prosecution. Evidence would be brought on both sides and a judge should issue a decision. Whether or not that happens, if Hawaii can’t or won’t provide verification of the President’s birth certificate, I will not put his name on the ballot.

I can tell from the tone and language of your letters that the only acceptable outcome for you is that his name not be on the ballot, period. That may be what happens, but under my watch, it won’t happen based on opinions, petitions, probability or pledges to support or oppose me in the 2014 Governor’s race. My oath of office is to uphold the Constitution and laws of our State and country, and I’m going to do that by following the law. I look forward to continuing to work this issue under those parameters. Otherwise, I will respectfully agree to disagree.

So now he’s getting all coy??? Clearly AZ Romney co-chair Ken Bennett is a man of integrity! Why, to even suggest that he’d leave the PRESIDENT OF THE FUCKING UNITED STATES off the ballot in his state for A FRIVOLOUS REASON, is just beyond the pale!

Someone hit this guy on the head with a heavy wrench!

HARD.

Draw some blood!

But equally as good as the total drubbing that WaPo’s editorializer wrecking crew dropped on his dumb ass this morning was the oh-so-polite reply he got over the weekend from Hawaii’s Assistant Attorney General, Jill T. Nagamine, who demanded that Bennett provide his own qualifications before he wastes any more of her time. It’s pretty genius:

From: Jill T. Nagamine
Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2012 3:38 PM
To: Bennett, Ken
Subject: RE: Request from the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office
Dear Mr. Bennett:

I am in receipt of your email dated May 17, 2012. As I have informed you and Mr. Drake, Hawaii law requires that for verification of a vital record the requestor must satisfy the requirements of section 338-18(g), Hawaii Revised Statutes, which provides:

(g) The department shall not issue a verification in lieu of a certified copy of any such record, or any part thereof, unless it is satisfied that the applicant requesting a verification is:
(1) A person who has a direct and tangible interest in the record but requests a verification in lieu of a certified copy;
(2) A governmental agency or organization who for a legitimate government purpose maintains and needs to update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities;
(3) A governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks confirmation of a certified copy of any such record submitted in support of or information provided about a vital event relating to any such record and contained in an official application made in the ordinary course of the agency’s or organization’s activities by an individual seeking employment with, entrance to, or the services or products of the agency or organization;
(4) A private or government attorney who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record which was acquired during the course of or for purposes of legal proceedings; or
(5) An individual employed, endorsed, or sponsored by a governmental, private, social, or educational agency or organization who seeks to confirm information about a vital event relating to any such record in preparation of reports or publications by the agency or organization for research or educational purposes.

I asked you for legal authority that establishes your right to obtain verification, and your email of May 17, 2012 provides me with references to Arizona Revised Statutes 16-212, 16-301, 16-502, 16-507, and unnamed others. These statutes seem to deal with election of presidential electors, nomination of candidates for printing on official ballot of general or special election, form and contents of ballot, and presentation of presidential candidates on ballot, but none, as far as I can tell, establish the authority of the Secretary of State to maintain and update official lists of persons in the ordinary course of his activities. I researched other sections of the Arizona Revised Statutes and was unable to find the necessary authority.

If I have missed something, please let me know. My client stands willing to provide you with the verification you seek as soon as you are able to show that you are entitled to it.

Thank you,
Jill T. Nagamine
Deputy Attorney General
State of Hawaii

Ken Bennett may not have set out to make his name (and dumbshit dipsy-doodle Republican face) the definition of “moron,” but he sure did succeed spectacularly!

Below, Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett sings “Thank God I’m Republican” at the March 17, 2012 Fountain Hills Republican Club meeting:
 

 
From a 1977 issue of High Times. Kinda like finding Fool’s Gold, eh?
 

 

 
Via reddit

 
I prefer Guy Maddin movies in small portions, like an Italian dessert, and his short film Sissy-Boy Slap-Party is just the right amount of deranged fun to keep me satisfied without going into sugar shock.. 

Kenneth Anger meets Jean Genet meets Jack Smith meets The Three Stooges meets White Zombie in this slap happy tableaux that hints at all kinds of debauchery and yet is chaste enough to be shown at a Saturday morning kiddie show or used as an aftershave commercial.
 

 
The title kind of says is all, doesn’t it? Maybe NSFW-ish…

Here’s something you don’t see everyday, Jennifer Rubell‘s art exhibit titled “Nutcrackers” which features 18 full-size female mannequins who are, uh, molded to crack walnuts or something between their thighs.

Inspired by nutcrackers depicting female figures - and in particular one found on the internet of Hillary Clinton - these interactive sculptures embody the two polar stereotypes of female power: the idealized, sexualized nude female form; and the too-powerful, nut-busting überwoman. The work also serves as a prompt to action, encouraging the viewer to transgress the traditional viewer-artwork boundary and complete the work by participating in it.

 
Watch one of Jennifer Rubell’s nut crackin’ mannequins in action below:

 
Via Geekologie

“I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.”

Lord Bertrand Russell’s famous (or infamous if you prefer) 1927 essay “Why I Am Not A Christian” is one of the “classics” of “atheist literature” and one that is still likely to be read to this very day by budding unbelievers trying to inch themselves out of the church pew (It was just such a rite of passage for me, a religious skeptic by the age of twelve).

Russell felt that religion itself was “principal enemy of moral progress.” Saying something like that took a lot of guts back them!

In part, due to his reputation as a “freethinker” and for his controversial positions on matters of sexual morality, Lord Russell, who is today regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest minds and humanitarian activists, was judicially declared “unfit” to teach philosophy at the College of the City of New York in 1940. The great philosopher was defended by a host of intellectuals, including John Dewey and Albert Einstein (Einstein’s famous line that “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds ... ” came from his open letter in support of Lord Russell).

In the clip below, taken from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s archives, Bertrand Russell gives a short but sweet answer to the question he posed himself over 80 years ago, in what is probably today his best-known popular work.
 

 
A simply stunning B&W masterpiece directed by Yoann Lemoine for Woodkid’s (who is synonymous with Yoann Lemoine, btw) “Run Boy Run.”

Every childhood fantasy is right here, folks. Good stuff indeed.
 

 
Via Boooooooom!

 
“The Actuel Rock Festival,” sponsored by the fashionable Parisian magazine Actuel (along with the BYG record label) was to be the first ever major rock festival in France, and was heralded as Europe’s answer to Woodstock. French authorities, still smarting from the riots of May 1968, forbade it and the festival, which was originally going to take place in or near Paris, was held just a few miles beyond the French border, in Amougies, Belgium.

The festival took place over the course of five freezing cold days in late October (24-27) of 1969. The audience numbered between 15-20,000 people who were treated with performances by Pink Floyd, Ten Years After, Colosseum, Aynsley Dunbar (this is allegedly where Zappa met his future drummer), former Yardbird Keith Relf’s new group Renaissance, blues legend Alexis Korner, Don Cherry, The Nice, Caravan, Blossom Toes, Archie Shepp, Yes, The Pretty Things, Pharoah Sanders, The Soft Machine, Captain Beefheart and many more.

From the notes of the 1969 The Amougies Tapes Zappa bootleg:

Frank Zappa was present at the festival in a twofold capacity. First, as Captain Beefheart’s road manager; secondly, as M.C., assisting Pierre Lattes, a famous radio/TV presenter at the time (and the pop music editor for Actuel magazine). The latter task proved problematic given Zappa’s limited French, the prevailing language among the audience, who themselves didn’t seem to understand much English. Instead, Zappa relinquished his M.C. job for one of occasional guest guitarist. He plays with almost everybody, especially with Pink Floyd, Blossom Toes, Archie Shepp and Aynsley Dunbar, a fabulous drummer he will hire shortly thereafter. He introduces his friend Captain Beefheart and provides a powerful stimulant to all the other musicians. Most legendary, of course, is Frank Zappa’s jam with Pink Floyd on a very extended “Interstellar Overdrive”. The festival was filmed by Jerome Laperrousaz, and the film was to be called MUSIC POWER. Due to objections from various bands (most notably Pink Floyd) whose permission hadn’t been properly secured, the film was never officially released.”

Simpsons creator Matt Groening asked Zappa about the festival in a 1992 interview, but he doesn’t mention Pink Floyd:

Frank Zappa: I was supposed to be MC for the first big rock festival in France, at a time when the French government was very right-wing, and they didn’t want to have large-scale rock and roll in the country. and so at the last minute, this festival was moved from France to Belgium, right across the border, into a turnip field. they constructed a tent, which was held up by these enormous girders. they had 15,000 people in a big circus tent. this was in November, I think. the weather was really not very nice. it’s cold, and it’s damp, and it was in the middle of a turnip field. I mean mondo turnips. and all the acts, and all the people who wished to see these acts, were urged to find this location in the turnip field, and show up for this festival. and they’d hired me to be the MC and also to bring over Captain Beefheart. it was his first appearance over there. and it was a nightmare, because nobody could speak English, and I couldn’t speak fFench, or anything else for that matter. so my function was really rather limited. I felt a little bit like Linda McCartney. I’d stand there and go wave, wave, wave. I sat in with a few of the groups during the three days of the festival. but it was so miserable because all these European hippies had brought their sleeping bags, and they had the bags laid out on the ground in this tent, and they basically froze and slept through the entire festival, which went on 24 hours a day, around the clock. One of the highlights of the event was the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which went on at 5:00 a.m. to an audience of slumbering euro-hippies.

 

 
Although Frank Zappa himself had apparently forgotten that he had once jammed with the Floyd, the photos don’t lie and neither does the recording. Who else could that be on guitar at approx 4:15 in? Clearly it’s not David Gilmour:
 

 
Asked about jamming with Zappa, Nick Mason has this to say in 1973:

Frank Zappa is really one of those rare musicians that can play with us. The little he did in Amougies was terribly correct. But he’s the exception. Our music and the way we behave on stage, makes it very hard to improvise with us.”

The really frustrating thing about all of this is that the visual documentation (as well as superior sound recordings) MUST exist. Below, you can see (what I presume) is some of Jerome Laperrousaz’s B&W footage from the Actuel Festival that never made it into his Music Power film (Pink Floyd forbade him to use the footage of their performance altogether) intercut with another color source (???) to yield up just under twelve minutes of Pink Floyd’s set, but where’s the footage of Pink Floyd with Frank? Were there TWO camera crews filing Pink Floyd’s set?

As the audio recording didn’t really show up and circulate until 2006, there is still hope. One of the groups who Zappa sat in on with at the festival were British psych rockers Blossom Toes, who released a CD in 2009, Love Bomb: Live 1967-69, that included Zappa’s participation in their Amougies set.
 

 
This image of a “solar eclipse proposal” is making rounds on the Internet today with the quote below.

A man in Japan effectively used the solar eclipse to propose to his girlfriend.

I couldn’t find the original source for it, I just kept getting led back to Japanese Tumblrs.

I hope it’s real. It’s really lovely.

Via Like Cool

 
Breaking With the Mighty Poppalots is a totally hipnerdical instructional video from 1984. An all time favorite of mine, I picked up a VHS copy years ago at a store in New York City that sold close-out merchandise. I had no idea that two decades later it would be selling for $100 a pop (get it?) on Amazon, but over time it has developed a rep among aficionados of pop culture artifacts and B-Boy esoterica.

So grab some cardboard, push the sofa and cocktail table up against the wall, and let The Mighty Poppalots (Breakin Bett, Crazzy Leggs, Sly C, Red Rooster) guide you through the arcane arts of the electric boogie, popping, locking and moonwalking. 

Here’s “four guys just having fun and bringing fun to everyone.”

I love the intro of the video with the Poppalots exiting a limo to throngs of screaming fans. It’s so Spinal Tappish.
 

He’s back?

Imagine some rightwing billionaire buying this and then spending millions having the Gipper cloned.

He vill be raised in a monastery in upper Bavaria, jah, until he is ready to be unveiled and take his rightful place on da vorld stage.

Quick, someone alert Alex Jones!

Via The Washington Times:

The bids are lofty for a vial that once held Ronald Reagan’s blood, now up for grabs at an online British auction house. At the moment, the leading bid is $5,081 for a 5-inch glass vial with “dried blood residue from President Reagan,” drawn from him at George Washington University Hospital after a 1981 assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. A separate hospital form is also included in the package from Guernsey-based PFC Auctions, which also is selling celebrity autographed guitars and a slice of royal wedding cake from Prince William and Kate Middleton’s nuptials, among many other things.

And the vial? The slender glass tube with green stopper once belonged to a relative of a Maryland-based laboratory technician who actually analyzed the contents more than three decades ago. The mysterious keeper-of-the-vial held onto it, and eventually informed officials at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library of its whereabouts.

After some back and forth, the vial keeper got the green light to sell it, assuring the auctioneer that “everything was OK, National Archives was not interested in what I had, nor was the Secret Service, the FBI and other agencies … it was simply something that was of no importance at this time, and that I was free to do with whatever I wanted with it.”.

A letter of provenance is included with the listing from the seller:

“These articles have actually been in my family’s possession since 03/30/1981, the day that President Reagan was shot in Washington D.C. Back in the 70’s and 80’s, my mother worked for Bio Science Laboratories in Columbia, Maryland. Her laboratory was the laboratory contracted by Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well as the George Washington University Hospital to handle blood testing as well as other types of testing. Her lab did the blood work and testing for President Reagan. The test tube and the lab slip that I have are for his blood work to be tested for lead on [Monday] 03/30/1981. The testing was completed and the test tube was sitting on my mother’s desk. At the end of the week, she asked the director of her laboratory if she could keep the paper work and the test tube. The director of the lab told her no problem and really never gave it a second thought. It has been in my family ever since. My mother passed away back in November last year [2010] and my father passed away in January 2009. Prior to their passing, they knew that it was the only thing that I wanted with regards to their personal property or money that they accumulated over the years…

“About 3 to 4 months ago, I contacted the Reagan National Library and spoke to the head of the library, a Federal Agent. I told him what I had, how I came across it and so on. We spoke for about 45 minutes. The reason that I contacted the Reagan National Library was to see if they would like to purchase it from me. He indicated that if I was interested in donating it he would see to it that he would take care of all of the arrangements. Prior to hanging up the phone, he said to me, do me a favor, don’t move from where you are, I will call you back within 30 minutes but I have to make a couple of phone calls to seek legal counsel, consult with National Archives, the FBI and other three or four letter agencies that I have heard of. I said am I in any kind of trouble or will there be some black cars/suv’s or helicopters hovering above my home and he said not yet but possibly in the very near future depending on what he learned from the phone calls he had to make. I told him alright, I will not move from where I was sitting and would await his return call. He called back in 25 minutes and said that everything was ok, National Archives was not interested in what I had, nor was the Secret Service, the FBI and other agencies. Since 30 years had passed by, he thought that it was simply something that was of no importance at this time and that I was free to do with whatever I wanted with it. He then stated that he felt the family would be interested in it being returned to them and if I was interested in doing so to contact him and he would make all of the arrangements. I told him that I didn’t think that was something that I was going to consider, since I had served under Pres. Reagan when he was my Commander in Chief when I was in the ARMY from ’87-’91 and that I was a real fan of Reaganomics and felt that Pres. Reagan himself would rather see me sell it rather than donating it.

Classic!
 

 
Johnny Depp doesn’t float my boat. There is something too mannered, too knowing, dare I say, too cartoonish, about him. His performances seem plastic and make me think of Ken’s Barbie, or G.I. Joe, or Palitoy’s Action Man. The worrying thought that should any fan ever get Depp’s knickers off, would they be confronted by a Ken’s lack of genitals?  Of course, Depp is probably hung like a horse with balls down to his knees, but his performances often seem to lack any. It’s perhaps why so many young girls like him.

His recent portrayal of Barnabas Collins may have been well meant but it left me cold, and he looked more like an updated Dr. Orlando Watt, than any cursed vampire. Indeed, the whole film was, as Kim Newman wittily noted, almost a Whitespoiltation version of Blacula.

When Jonathan Frid played Barnabas Collins he brought a depth of emotion and experience Depp is either afraid, or unable, to emote. Listening to Frid on these recordings, taken from the first Dark Shadows soundtrack album, only confirms the quality of Frid’s Barnabas.
 

 
More from Barnabas Collins, after the jump…
 

 
Frank Zappa lecturing at the Gifford Auditorium of Syracuse University on 23rd April 1975, along with George Duke and Captain Beefheart. The talk is about how he first discovered music, the economics of the music business, shooting 200 Motels (and getting paid from the movie industry) and his creative process. It opens up to questions after about 15 minutes.
 

 
You think just because you’ve seen one totally insane, batshit crazy 70s Italian TV production number that you’ve seen ‘em all?

Guess again. This 1978 clip features the eternally popular Raffaella Carrà (now pushing 70) singing Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” as bald, mustachioed eye-patch wearing sci-fi weirdos, um, assist her.

That’s only the “night” part,  just wait until “day” comes around and the troupe of caped, dancing “Aladdin Sane” clones show up to strut their stuff!

“Gotta make way for the homo superior,” I suppose… Don’t ask what it all means, just luxuriate in the unabashed weirdness of it all…
 

 

 
Via Lady Bunny Blog

 
Traffic cops are like Honey Badgers: they don’t give a shit, even when confronted by Darth Vader.

YouTuber silverpeak24 makes a good observation:

“Who knew the Death Star had a dashboard?”

 
Via Submitterator

 
It’s amazing to consider that Steve Winwood was not yet even 19 years old when he formed Traffic and they recorded Dear Mr. Fantasy in 1967. Of course, he had been playing professionally since his early teens, along with brother Muff Winwood in various bands and was the lead singer of the Spencer Davis Group when he was but fifteen, but Traffic’s sound was especially sophisticated coming from someone so young. (Before Winwood left the SDG they had two worldwide hits with “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m a Man.” Talk about precocious!)

So many groups of the 60s and 70s are woefully under-documented on film. I’m not aware of an Allman Brothers concert film, for instance and I’ve never seen more than a small handful of Frank Zappa and the original Mothers of Invention clips that capture what I always imagined their shows must’ve been like. There is only one sync-sound document of the Velvet Underground. Even David Bowie doesn’t really have that much concert documentation footage of his first decade.

Except for a few pop shows in the US and Britain (and The Beat Club in Germany), many groups would have fallen through the cracks of visual documentation altogether. Full concert films were expensive to mount back then and very rarely green-lighted. There were simply few places to exhibit them and get a return on the investment.

A group like Traffic, with their jazz/rock fusion sound and 12-minute epics like “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” would have been a difficult band to book on most TV variety shows of the day, so it was nice to watch the concert video of Traffic live at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on February 21, 1972 and see them in all their jammy, muso glory. It’s insanely great stuff. If you like Traffic, these performances are simply stunning:

Personally I found the highlights in the first number and the outstanding rip through “John Barleycorn” but wait for the final two numbers, a delicate “40,000 Headmen” and a powerful take of “Dear Mr. Fantasy” featuring an awesome guitar solo from Winwood. The whole set is scorching from start to finish. This 64-minute long performance is the only extended live footage of the group. Good thing it’s so incredible.

Set list:
“The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys”
“Light Up or Leave Me Alone”
“John Barleycorn”
“Rainmaker”
“Glad”
“Freedom Rider”
“40,000 Headmen”
“Dear Mr. Fantasy”

Traffic were at this time: Steve Winwood, vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass; Jim Capaldi, percussion, vocals; Chris Wood, flute, saxophone; Rebop Kwaku Baah, percussion; Roger Hawkins, drums; David Hood,bass.
 

 
Via Exile on Moan Street

 
Not as sensationalist as its title, The Beach Boys and Satan is actually a pretty good documentary on the The Beach Boys, and Brian Wilson in particular.

Made by a German film crew in 1997 as part of the Pop Odyssee TV series, The Beach Boys and Satan includes interviews with Kenneth Anger, Kim Fowley, Dick Dale and members of The Beach Boys. It covers some familiar ground, including the Charles Manson connection, while still managing to offer a few new insights. Well worth a watch for the archival footage, Kim Fowley’s brief performance of “1965” and interviews with Brian Wilson.
 

 
Yet another example of why no self-respecting young person with a lick of sense wants anything to do with American-style Christianity as North Carolina “Christian” minister Charles L. Worley, of the Providence Road Baptist Church provides the latest reason to flee the faith:

“I figured a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers,” he says in his sermon, delivered on May 13. “Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there, [drop some food down] … Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out… And you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out.”

Pastor Worley apparently isn’t bright enough to know where gay people come from, and yet this fucking fool seems to think his opinion is important enough to share with the rest of us…

There will be a peaceful protest against Worley’s hate-mongering by the Catawba Valley Citizens Against Hate on Sunday, May 27.

Regardless if you are gay or straight, Christian or not… this rhetoric is dangerous and harmful. Taking a peaceful stand for our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is paramount.

More details about the protest will be posted to this page soon. Please, only RSVP if you plan to come. If you are out of town, and support our cause but will not be coming to the event, please do not RSVP. In lieu of participating in this event, you can email Pastor Worley at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), to let him know what you think of his rhetoric. Remember, making threats against Pastor Worley will not help our cause and may result in criminal charges against you. Keep your message clean, clear and peaceful.

Here’s how crazy old fuck Worley responded to the new of the protest:

We offer NO apologies in believing the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. If you live in this area or are ever passing through, I invite you to come visit with us at Providence Road Baptist Church.

Don’ ever change, Rev, you’re doing your cause so much more harm than good…

If you’d like to have a chat with Pastor Worley you can call him on 828-428-2518.
 

Via Towleroad

 
Photographer Cory Poole made this spectacular video of Sunday’s solar eclipse by using 700 photographs from a telescope with “a very narrow bandpass allowing you to see the chromosphere and not the much brighter photosphere below it.”

Outstanding! 
 

 
Via Kottke

 
Bill Moyers continues to make astonishing television with his truly great new PBS series, Moyers and Company. It’s unmissable, the most intelligent hour of programming on American TV today, bar none.

In the latest episode, Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello—a man I have a lot of admiration for—joined Bill Moyers for a particularly moving and inspiring conversation. From the show’s website

Songs of social protest—music and the quest for justice—have long been intertwined, and the troubadours of troubling times—Guthrie, Seeger, Baez, Dylan, and Springsteen among them—have become famous for their dedication to both. Now we can add a name to the ranks of those who lift their voices for social and economic justice: Tom Morello.

Morello is the Harvard-educated guitarist who dabbled in politics, then chose rock music to make a difference. He played guitar for the popular band he co-founded—Rage Against the Machine—and then for Audioslave. Rolling Stone chose his album “World Wide Rebel Songs” as one of the best of 2011, and named him one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

As likely to be spotted at a grass-roots rally as he would at a concert hall, Morello was in Madison, Wisconsin last year, braving bitter winter weather to sing on the steps on the state capitol in support of public service workers. Morello defended their collective bargaining rights against Republican Governor Scott Walker.

He was in New York City at the May Day demonstrations, an honorary commander of a battalion of musicians they called the “Occupy Guitarmy.” That same night, Harry Belafonte presented Morello with the Officers’ Award from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, honoring his “advocacy for and support of working people across the world.”

Tom Morello shares his music, his message, and mission with Bill Moyers, who’s all ears.

Two badass motherfuckers in conversation….
 

 
I had already seen the famous footage of a drunk, clumsy and obnoxious Norman Mailer feuding with Gore Vidal on The Dick Cavett Show (see below), registering it as a glimpse of a great character at their worst, but have just been enjoying Mailer’s own account, both of the occurrence itself, and the preceding controversy, in the essay “Of a Small and Modest Malignancy” (which can be found in his Pieces and Pontifications).

Shortly before their appearance on the show, Vidal had written a piece attacking Mailer for misogyny and equating him with Henry Miller and Charles Manson (the three male attendees of my ideal dinner party scenario, as it happens), referring throughout to these three personalities with the moniker “M3.” Mailer had already retaliated with the following tacitly spiteful letter:

Sirs:

It has come to my attention that Gore Vidal has been speaking in your pages of my hatred if women. Let me present the following items.

Number of times married: Mailer 5 Vidal 0

Number of children: Mailer 7 Vidal 0

Number of daughters: Mailer 5 Vidal 0

Of course, Mailer arguably omits the most significant scoreline: “Women stabbed: Mailer 1 Vidal 0.”

Regardless, after including this letter in his essay, Mailer goes on to detail the following tête à tête with Vidal in the Dick Cavett dressing room shortly before filming began.

At this moment, alone in the Green Room, he [Mailer himself, who tended to write such accounts in the third person] felt a tender and caressing hand on the back of his neck. It was Vidal. Vidal had never touched him before, but now had the tender smile of a man who would claim, “It doesn’t matter, old sport, what we say about each other – it’s just pleasant to see an old friend.” Mailer answered with an open-handed tap across the cheek. It was not a slap, neither was it a punch, just a stiff tap. To his amazement, Vidal slapped him back. Norman smiled. He leaned forward and looked pleasantly at Gore. He put his hand to the back of Gore’s neck. Then he butted him hard on the head.

Stormin’ Norman goes on to watch Vidal manage his solo interview with Cavett with begrudging admiration – the only sign Vidal betrays of having been very recently head-butted being his hand occasionally drifting up to the point of contact. As such, Mailer (who had been drinking cocktails earlier that evening, somewhat unsurprisingly), enters the fray feeling he still had a point to prove. Which hardly ends up working in his favor.

Vidal’s pained and slightly nervous expression, meanwhile, makes especial sense when you keep in mind the swift and unexpected head-butt he’d only quite recently received…