PORT CHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A theater manager says a stuffed armadillo that was stolen from Willie Nelson's band after a show in suburban New York has been returned unharmed. He says the band isn't pressing charges.Who steals from Willie Nelson? And what's in that armadillo?
During a triumphant three-hour show on the latest leg of his world tour, Cohen said:
"I hope I stay on the road a little bit longer - but you may not be so enthusiastic when you hear my reason.
You see I want to start smoking next year when I'll be 80. It's been a long barren time. I think it's the right age to recommence. I'd like to do it on stage and I'd like to be standing here like this, in front of sympathetic people like yourselves.
A nurse would come onto the stage with a silver tray. On that tray would be an open pack of cigarettes - the little cylinders gleaming like the pillars of a great temple.
She would approach me in her white pleated uniform, her little stockings and tiny white shoes. I'd take one of those cigarettes and tap it on that silver tray and she would light me up.
I'd say 'nurse before you go, would you mind tapping out a few of those bubbles in my IV'. Then I'd take my first drag and I'd feel extremely relaxed and I'd be able to review some of the disasters of my shabby past, especially my relationship with a certain woman I regret having disappointed."
Funny because it's true. Will I buy a 5s? Absolutely.
NPR says ...
Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world. Now thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time. It's part of what Lomax envisioned for the collection — long before the age of the Internet.
Lomax recorded a staggering amount of folk music. He worked from the 1930s to the '90s, and traveled from the Deep South to the mountains of West Virginia, all the way to Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. When it came time to bring all of those hours of sound into the digital era, the people in charge of the Lomax archive weren't quite sure how to tackle the problem.
"We err on the side of doing the maximum amount possible," says Don Fleming, executive director of the Association for Cultural Equity, the nonprofit organization Lomax founded in New York in the '80s. Fleming and a small staff made up mostly of volunteers have digitized and posted some 17,000 sound recordings.
"For the first time, everything that we've digitized of Alan's field recording trips are online, on our website," says Fleming. "It's every take, all the way through. False takes, interviews, music."
The archive can be found here. I dipped my toe in and found this ...
"Come Out the Wildnerness," performed by Boyd Rivers and his wife Ruth May. Preceded by introduction of themselves and their music. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long, August 30, 1978, at the Rivers' home in Canton, Mississippi.
Wikipedia says:
Martin Arnold (born 1959 in Vienna, Austria) is an experimental filmmaker known for his obsessive reworkings of found footage. He is also a founding member of the Austrian film distributor Sixpack Film. Arnold studied psychology and art history at the University of Vienna. He has taught filmmaking at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt, the Kansas City Art Institute, Bard College, and at SUNY Binghamton. His films are distributed by Canyon Cinema in the United States and by Sixpack Film in Austria.
Arnold's films are intensely cut sequences in which several seconds of found footage are taken and stretched out into much longer works. The figures on the screen flip back and forth between frames, as the motion is repeated, reversed, and numerous single frame cuts are made. His intent is to create, or possibly unearth, narratives concealed within the mundane films from which he samples. Passage à l'acte (1993) uses several seconds of the film To Kill a Mockingbird to create a bizarre story of aggression and tension within a traditional American family.
Martin Arnold is representative of the generations of artists making the transition between experimental film and video art. Pieces such as Passage à l'acte (1993) were composed on film, with Arnold writing an edit decision list (EDL) for a film editor, who then recreated the choppy and intense works from the found source material. In the mid-1990s, Arnold was given access to an Avid digital editing machine, which allowed him to work directly with the footage and cut it into the intensely repetitive sequences himself. His first digitally cut project, Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998), made use of footage of Mickey Rooney's character Andy Hardy from the popular film series.
I'll take his Vintage Pinup Friday. Submitted for your approval, Lillian Parker (AKA Adrienne Stoute). Miss Parker was an innovator. If you Google her - and you should - you'll quickly notice that she was trimming the infield 40 years before that was an acceptable practice.
Bonus!
Exclusively Released on iTunes for 4 weeks only
The Rolling Stones are pleased to announce the exclusive iTunes release of 'The Rolling Stones - Hyde Park Live' album, following their two successful sold out concerts in London's Hyde Park on 6 and 13 July.
Highlights of both Rolling Stones concerts, which took place almost 44 years to the day since the Stones first played Hyde Park on 5 July 1969, is available to download from today exclusively from the iTunes Store (iTunes.com/TheRollingStones ) ensuring that concert-goers, and fans new and old, can re-live their memories and experiences of these historic hometown shows.
The two Hyde Park concerts saw Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood do what they do best: performing foot-stomping, crowd-pleasing sets packed full with hit singles and anthems including Brown Sugar, It's Only Rock'N' Roll, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Sympathy for the Devil and Paint It Black , all of which feature on the limited edition iTunes release. The Rolling Stones 'Hyde Park Live' is available exclusively on the iTunes Store through August 19.
TRACKLISTINGFortuitous Timing, Perhaps?
Pulled in its entirety from The A.V. Club (because it's hilarious) ...
Morrissey has cancelled his upcoming South American tour, citing a lock of proper funding. The mope rock singer posted an open letter lamenting the tour’s tanking and the state of his life in general, saying, like only Morrissey can:
“In a year when far too many disappointments have been buried this really is the last of many final straws, and I am not alone in feeling this. The future is suddenly absent, and my apologies are now so frequent as to be somewhat ridiculous, and it is I who apologize because no one else would bother. It is agonizing to be responsible for imparting such news - especially when it springs upon me unexpectedly and inexplicably. But the collapse of South America rings the curtain down with a colossal thud, and the major problems remain as insoluble now as they were in 2009. The obvious conclusion stares back at me from the mirror, and the wheels are finally off the covered wagon. Cancellations and illness have sucked the life out of all of us, and the only sensible solution seems to be the art of doing nothing.”
The singer ends his by saying, “I shall see you in my dreams,” whatever that means. If you see Morrissey, give him a hug.
If I ever make it to the San Diego Comic Con, I'm fairly certain I'll need to seek medical attention for an erection lasting longer than four hours.
"America is maybe the most unhealthy nation in the world because they live on crap,” Player said. “They’ve got the best food in the world, the best farmers and the best food but they live on crap. When [British chef] Jamie Oliver went to America he went to areas where children never had cabbage or broccoli or spinach or vegetables in their life. People giving their children a soft drink and a doughnut to go to school. No wonder academically they’re affected."77 year old South African golfer Gary Player is lettin' us have it! I think the crystal meth keeps Joe and Dave pretty lean, but the rest of us have to work for it. What's your summer workout regimen?
"You don’t have to be a Christian to practice domestic discipline, although many of its practitioners say they believe that domestic discipline goes hand in hand with their faith. Specifics of the practice vary by couple, though CDDers all seem to follow a few basic principles. Foremost, that the Bible commands a husband to be the head of the household, and the wife must submit to him, in every way, or face painful chastisement.
My recent acquisition of a Record Store Day copy of the Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me soundtrack came with a Dropcard code. Feel The Power of Big Star's pop I say. Feel it!
“When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.”
- Stephen King, Joyland
This surreal lost Dragnet episode was made by Frank Conniff of Mystery Science Theater and former Mr Show and Chris Rock Show writer Mike Upchurch as a presentation pilot for Adult Swim. They’ve digitally inserted popular alt-comedians into the 1967 cop show Dragnet, and turned it into a story about bad cops trying to eradicate a powerful strain of medical marijuana. It’s technically stunning, exceeding Forrest Gump and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid in both ambition and outcome, while being produced in a living room for only $200.00.
Paramount’s bid to draw in more foreign ticket buyers even extended to casting decisions and the script, which turns on a more terrestrial story. "Into Darkness" finds the Enterprise crew called back home, where a terror force has infiltrated the Starfleet organization.Praise be. I was beginning to worry that all my films weren't focus-tested in Asian markets.
"The team has really been in the weeds, so to speak, going country by country and looking at every possible opportunity," Brad Grey, Paramount’s chairman, said of the studio’s marketers in particular. "On a profit level, focusing on your shareholders, this is now how detailed you have to be on pictures of this scope and scale."
It's the event Joe's been waiting for his entire life: the ABBA Museum is finally OPEN.
And before you laugh, just remember that members of both Elvis Costello & The Attractions and The Sex Pistols have admitted to ripping them off.
The Room is widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made. (See above clip for proof.) Now, one of the actors, Greg Sestero, has written a book about the experience. The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made won't be out until October, but boy, does is sound like a fun read.
