Dennis Hopper, dynamite death chair

In 1983 Dennis Hopper went to Rice University in Houston, Texas ostensibly to screen his latest film Out Of The Blue. But little known to anyone other than Hopper and a handful of his buddies, Hopper had another agenda entirely. While he did indeed screen his movie, Hopper had actually come to Houston to blow himself up.
After screening Out Of The Blue, Hopper arranged to have the audience driven by a fleet of school buses to a racetrack on the outskirts of Houston, the Big H Speedway. Hopper and the buses arrived at the speedway just as the races were ending and a voice was announcing over the public address system “stick around folks and watch a famous Hollywood film personality perform the Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act. That’s right, folks, he’ll sit in a chair with six sticks of dynamite and light the fuse.”
Was famous Hollywood personality Dennis Hopper about to go out with a bang?
Hopper apparently learned this stunt when he was a kid after seeing it performed in a traveling roadshow. If you place the dynamite pointing outwards the explosion creates a vacuum in the middle and the person performing the stunt is, if all goes according to plan, unharmed.
After bullshitting for awhile with the crowd and his friends, a drunk and stoned Hopper climbed into the “death chair’ and lit the dynamite.
Rice News correspondent describes the scene:
Dennis Hopper, at one with the shock wave, was thrown headlong in a halo of fire. For a single, timeless instant he looked like Wile E. Coyote, frazzled and splayed by his own petard. Then billowing smoke hid the scene. We all rushed forward, past the police, into the expanding cloud of smoke, excited, apprehensive, and no less expectant than we had been before the explosion. Were we looking for Hopper or pieces we could take home as souvenirs? Later Hopper would say blowing himself up was one of the craziest things he has ever done, and that it was weeks before he could hear again. At the moment, though, none of that mattered. He had been through the thunder, the light, and the heat, and he was still in one piece. And when Dennis Hopper staggered out of that cloud of smoke his eyes were glazed with the thrill of victory and spinout.

motorcity moron

Bonehead rocker and borderline (?) psychopath Ted Nugent is in the news again for making racist statements onstage in Dubuque, IA. No surprises here. None whatsoever:

Musician Ted Nugent made racially tinged remarks throughout his show Thursday night at the Mississippi Moon Bar in the Diamond Jo.
Within a few minutes of starting, Nugent commented on the race of his audience and the city of Dubuque.
“There’s a lot of white people in this crowd—I like that! (Dubuque) is a white town.”
Nugent also pointed out at least one audience member and questioned his race.

Harold Lloyd rocks....

8 foot 7-inch-tall George Auger, 29-inch-tall Princess Wee Wee and an unidentified three-legged performer, all of the Ringling Brothers Circus, pose with 5 foot 9-inch-tall Harold Lloyd on the set of Safety Last. C. 1923.

I am sure this was all covered by private insurance

I'm not making a tired funny! Dick Cheney's new implant—a ventricular assist device—needed 'cause his heart is screwed, "leaves most recipients without a pulse because it pushes blood continuously instead of mimicking the heart's own pulsatile beat."

Of course, this presumes he had a pulse in the first place. (I know, I know, that's the bad punchline you were waiting for.)
I'm not making a tired funny! Dick Cheney's new implant—a ventricular assist device—needed 'cause his heart is screwed, "leaves most recipients without a pulse because it pushes blood continuously instead of mimicking the heart's own pulsatile beat."

Of course, this presumes he had a pulse in the first place. (I know, I know, that's the bad punchline you were waiting for.)

coolest sign ever

Not that it matters, but it is a fact...

Federal Tax Burdens for Most Near Their Lowest Levels in Decades

With April 15 approaching and many people focusing on what they owe in taxes, Americans may be surprised to learn that federal tax burdens for most income groups, particularly middle-income households, are near their lowest levels in decades — and were low by historical standards even before the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.
Most income groups paid a smaller share of their income in federal taxes in 2006 than in any year before 2003 for which we have data. The drop in tax burdens was driven largely by a pronounced fall in individual income tax burdens that, for most income groups in 2006, approached their lowest levels since 1979

right on!

ahh, yeah....

Are liberals smarter than conservatives?

By COLIN HORGAN


A story making the rounds in the last few days has a fairly contentious assertion: that liberal-minded people have higher levels of intelligence than those who identify as being conservative. It’s not an entirely new suggestion, but this time, Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics has tried to tie the theory to evolution.
He posits that, “We are designed to care only about people we associate with.” In other words, we have a kind of default setting that, at a base level, makes us associate with family and friends, or those in our immediate community. Fair enough. It continues:The ability to think and reason, he says, evolved to deal with occasional but serious problems such as fires caused by lighting strikes, flash floods or severe droughts that threatened starvation. He terms these phenomena as evolutionarily novel.

As time passed, more of the elements of our lives fell into the “evolutionary novel” category, Kanazawa says. People who are more intelligent, he argues, are better able to consider these novel elements and decide, for example, that liberalism, atheism or monogamy are things they want to subscribe to.

Liberalism, caring about millions of total strangers and giving up money to make sure that those strangers will do well, is evolutionarily novel,” Kanazawa says

something heroic about this

08.13.2010


02:47 am



Topics:

Music

Wayne Cochran was the baddest motherfucker to sport a platinum blond pompadour in the history of rock and roll. He was the honky doppelganger to the hardest working Black man in show business. But, the booze, the pills, the nightsweats, the trembling heebeegeebees and soul twisting demonic machinations of the Devil’s music drove him into the cold stiff arms of suicidal despair. Some men cannot handle the Hermetic heaviness bestowed upon them, the alchemical fire scorches and blinds them

If I only had the time...

Steampunk Stilt Walker at Labyrinth of Jareth
Guestblogger Liz Ohanesian is a Los Angeles-based journalist who covers music, manga, art and more for LA Weekly.
Photo: Josh "CuriousJosh" Reiss/LA Weekly, Labyrinth of Jareth 2010
Labyrinth of Jareth is an annual two-day masquerade ball in Los Angeles. The theme revolves around faeries and goblins. Costumes, or formalwear and a mask, are required. I wrote about Shawn Strider, who organizes LOJ, for LA Weekly's LA People issue, and have blogged about the event on Style Council a few times (most recently, today).
LOJ has a massive cast and crew. All throughout the night, there is a DJ spinning on the dance floor, stage shows and interactive performances throughout the venue. There's a storyline that links everything together, but if you're going as an attendee you won't know exactly what's happening. If, however, you're following LOJ on Twitter throughout the event, you might get some clues.
This year I went to LOJ on the first night of the masquerade, called Goblin Clockworks, with photographer CuriousJosh.There were a lot of people who stood out at the party, but the stilt walker in the above photo—dressed in what looks like a steampunk giant robot costume—

If you have ever been to Buffalo. You would understand.

Weird
Gary Korkuc Found Marinating Live Cat In Oil, Peppers: Cops
Email Comments 64 BUFFALO, N.Y. — Police say a traffic stop led to animal cruelty charges after they found a live cat "marinating" in oil and peppers in the trunk of a car.

Buffalo police say officers heard the cat meowing when they stopped 51-year-old Gary Korkuc of Cheektowaga to ticket him for running a stop sign Sunday night.

They say they checked the trunk and found 4-year-old Navarro in a cage, his fur covered with oil, crushed red peppers and chili peppers.

Police say Korkuc told them he did it because Navarro was ill-tempered. Korkuc was charged with cruelty and released; his phone number isn't listed.

ha ha hahahahaha

GQ: Woman claims to have been kidnapped by Rand Paul, forced to take bong hits


GQ quotes an anonymous woman who claims to have been kidnapped and forced to take bong hits during her college years by Tea Party spokesdouche and segregation apologist Rand Paul (famously humiliated a few months back by Rachel Maddow):

He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no

A different time.

yikes.....

The Apocalypse is Near: Justin Bieber's 3D Biopic Announced

I as a rule don't speak through the blog. I don't traffic in clever musings or inspired insight.
But, there is going to be a biopic published that will sell easily five hundred thousand copies about a young man whose claim to fame is a swept forward hairdo.
 When Herman Melville who wrote longhand arguably the first great American novel died. They had him listed in his obiturary as "Henry".He suffered a mental breakdown, caught pneumonia, and died broke in 1832.
I'm just saying.

i don't like this.

Telenoid R1 minimalist humanoid robot

Researchers from Osaka University have teamed up with the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) to develop a minimalist humanoid robot that recreates the physical presence of a remote user.
Named “Telenoid R1,” the teleoperated communication robot measures 80 centimeters (31 in) tall and weighs 5 kilograms (11 lbs). The portable machine features a soft silicone body that is pleasant to the touch, and it uses 9 actuators to move its eyes, mouth, head and rudimentary limbs.
Data is transmitted between the user and robot via Internet connection
The Telenoid R1 robot is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of the remote user. The robot’s actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user’s computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot’s embedded speakers.

Telenoid R1 with Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University)
The Telenoid R1 is endowed with only the most basic human features — just enough to recreate the physical presence of the remote user, according to robot’s creators. The robot’s androgynous and ageless look makes it suitable for a wide range of users, whether they are male, female, young or old.

I find this strangley attractive.

Food company Morinaga has a new product on the market: a canned milkshake drink that tastes like their famous pancakes! Yum.