Saturday, December 31, 2011

FUN FACT #7

Everyone knows Shel Silverstein from his career in children's poetry. But did you know he was a prolific songwriter as well?




Eat your heart out, Afroman.


In addition to recording a dozen or so of his own albums, he also wrote many country songs that you would probably recognize.












If you like this one, Bobby Bare recorded an entire live album of Silverstein material which you can down(and dirty)load here.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

AIRY FAIRY

While America is watching Real Pregnant Pre-Teens of Miami, England is getting quality programming like this. I'm defecting just for the television.

Friday, December 16, 2011

OH, THOSE CRAZY SWEDES!

On May 17, 2008, Ursula and Sabina Eriksson, a pair of Swedish identical twins, were traveling through England for reasons unknown. They were kicked off of their bus near Keele for acting suspiciously and decided to walk the rest of the way to London. They were spotted walking along the median and the highway patrol were called in to escort them out of the road. When the twins saw the police they fled into traffic and Sabina was struck by a car. Amazingly, nobody was seriously injured. Minutes later, as police and paramedics were trying to piece together what happened, the twins fled into traffic again. Ursula was hit by a semi-truck and thrown under the wheels, crushing her legs. Sabina was hit by a Volkswagen and knocked unconscious for fifteen minutes. Both women proceeded to fight off paramedics. Ursula thrashed about in the road screaming, "I recognise you, I know you're not real" and "They're going to steal your organs!" Upon regaining consciousness, Sabina got to her feet, struck a police officer and ran back into traffic. She was eventually restrained and sedated and the two women where finally taken to the hospital.


Two days later, Sabina pleaded guilty to trespassing on the motorway and assaulting an officer. She was released on time served. That evening she struck up a conversation with Glenn Hollinshead and Peter Molloy, two friend on their way home from a pub. She explained that she was looking for her sister who was in the hospital and she needed a place to stay. Hollinshead to pity on her and invited her to come back to his place while they sorted things out. Sabina appeared friendly at first but her increasingly paranoid behavior creeped out Molloy and he eventually split. The next day, for reasons nobody knows, Sabina Eriksson stabbed Glenn Hollinshead five times with a kitchen knife and killed him. She fled the scene and was sighted by a passing motorist covered in blood and hitting herself in the head with a hammer as she ran down the street. The motorist tried to subdue her and she hit him on the head with a roof tile. She was soon spotted by paramedics and she tried to escape by jumping off a 40 ft bridge onto a motorway. She broke both her ankles and was taken to the hospital.

Sabina was sentenced to five years for manslaughter (reduced from murder on account of temporary insanity). To this day, she has refused to make any comment on the events of May, 2008. Ursula recovered and returned to her home in the United States. She is still in contact with her sister.

So what drove these women to this sort of mad behavior? Blood tests showed that neither one were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Was it the result of a government mind control experiment gone awry? Where the Erikssons genetically modified super soldiers? Or was it merely some form of shared psychosis?

POSTER DUMP

Roy G. Biv



Zach Hobbs



Alan Forbes



Michael DeForge



Thibault Huertas

Thursday, December 15, 2011

RED SMOKE

I could do without the vocals but this is a pretty cool-ass video.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

FUN FACT #6




The song we now know as "Mah Na Mah Na" from the Muppets has a less wholesome history than most people are aware. It was written by Piero Umiliani and originally featured in an Italian softcore faux-documentary called Svezia, inferno e paradiso (Sweden: Heaven and Hell).





Now it will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day.


Friday, November 18, 2011

POSTER DUMP

Roy G. Biv



Roy G. Biv



Firehouse


Clara-iris Ramos



Dead Meat Design



unknown

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Have a seat. Have a sandwich

Hi boys and girls, my name is Ryan the Truck and I do a comics blog called Big Loose Comics. Ms. Stonehenge has kindly asked me to contribute to this one as well, so now my greasy tentacles are all over the blog-o-sphere. An alternate title for this 'specially-for-this-site strip could be "The Dangers of Drinking and Drawing."

vm1

vm2

vm3











Sunday, November 6, 2011

THE OCCULT ORIGINS OF NASA

Jack Parsons was born in October of 1914. He never had any formal education past high school but his work in the field of rocket science led to the spaceflight technology we have today. In his early twenties he joined a group of Caltech student who called themselves the Suicide Squad. Using equipment scrapped together from junkyards, the group performed many experiments in the Arroyo Seco canyon as they tested different rocket fuels. Eventually the military got wind of these experiments and asked the group to help them build the first jet propelled plane. The Suicide Squad evolved into Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) and eventually created a jet airplane, making way for the coming space age.



What made Parsons such an interesting character was his interest in magick and the occult arts. For years he studied the writings of Aleister Crowley. It is said that he would invoke Crowley's Hymn to Pan before every rocket test launch. He joined the Agape Lodge of Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis and quickly made his way up the ranks of the organization. He was made head of the Pasadena lodge and selected to be Crowley's successor.

In 1945, Parson was introduced to L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard moved in with Parsons and his girlfriend and started collaborating on a sex-magick ritual in an attempt to contact inter-dimensional entities. A few months later Hubbard conned Parsons into investing in a phoney business venture and split with Parsons' money and his girlfriend. (The church of Scientology claims that Hubbard was sent in by naval intelligence to "break up black magic in America.") Around this time, Parsons was asked to leave JPL because he had a habit of leaking classified information. Parsons and Crowley also began to drift apart and Parsons buried himself in occult studies. He died in 1952 by blowing himself up during a home-lab experiment involving explosive substances (so they say).

Flash forward to 1957. The Cold War was heating up and the USSR was ahead of the US in the space race after launching Sputnik. The army hired JPL to build and launch the first American artificial satellite. The following year, JPL was taken over by NASA and became the agency’s primary planetary spacecraft center. The JPL is still part of NASA today. Jack Parsons is often regarded as the father of the American space program and even has a crater on the moon's dark side named after him.

These are all facts. But if you want to dig deeper, there's a lot of interesting speculation. Some conspiracy theorists believe that occultism is still guiding NASA to this day. There does seem to be a lot of sacred geometry utilized when NASA decides when and where their landings should take place and many high ranking astronauts (including Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong) are Masons. If you want to travel further down that rabbit hole I recommend you start with the works of Richard Hoagland.

BONUS FEATURE: Check out what Robert Anton Wilson has to say about it!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

POSTER DUMP

Roy G. Biv



C. M. Ruiz



Brian David Downs



Erin Klauk



Gorgon



Gorgon

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

THE MONEY PIT OF OAK ISLAND

In 1795, 18-year-old Daniel McGinnis noticed strange lights coming from Oak Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. When he went to investigate, he didn't find the source of the lights but he did discover a strange circular depression in a clearing in the woods with a block and tackle hanging from a tree overhead. He a few friends returned soon afterwards with tools in hand and started digging. The first thing they found was a layer of flagstones. They hacked their way through and soon found a layer of oak logs. Ten feet further down, they found another layer of logs. Ten feet after that...another layer of logs. After about 30 feet, they gave up but were determined to return and solve the mystery.


Eight years later, they returned to the pit with the help of a group called The Onslow Company and started digging. They dug and dug and still kept coming across wooden platforms (sometimes oak, sometimes birch) every ten feet. At sixty feet, they found a layer of coconut fiber. At ninety feet, they dug up a stone tablet inscribed with mysterious symbols. Some people claimed that the writing indicated that there was buried treasure 40 feet below. Others claimed is was religious writing. Whatever the case, the stone was lost so we may never know. Shortly after discovering the stone, the tunnel began to flood and excavators were unable to pump the water out. They tried digging another pit parallel to the first one and tunneling over but that one flooded as well.

It was later discovered that flooding was caused by a long underground tunnel that stretched all the way from a cave on the beach to the pit. When excavators poured red dye into the pit, the dye surfaced at least three different places around the island. It is debated wether these waterways are naturally occurring or part of some elaborate booby trap built to protect whatever is at the bottom of the pit.

In 1849, a group called the Truro Company began taking core samples. They discovered more layers of wood and what they described as "metal in pieces" but not much else. Many different groups tried to dig further and failed, sometimes resulting in death. Six people have died in excavations of the pit.


Over the years, excavators were able to dig deeper and deeper into what is now called "the money pit." Core samples turned up a piece of sheepskins parchment with writing on it, a cement chamber sealed in clay, and a stone fragment with inscriptions similar to the tablet found before.

To this day, no one has been able to dig or sample past 170 feet. Some scientist claim that the whole thing is just a naturally occurring sinkhole. Others think that there must be treasure at the bottom, hidden by Captain Kidd or Blackbeard. Many theorize that the pit was dug by errant Knights Templar to hide the Ark of the Covenant. We just might never know.

Monday, October 24, 2011

POSTER DUMP

Stacie Willoughby



David D'Andrea



Firehouse



Jake Kelly



Robignole


Austin James



Steuso



Zeloot

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

HEAVY METAL IN MORDOR

AG bros, Huntress, just dropped their new music video yesterday. I believe the word you are looking for is "epic."


Click Here To Watch The Video

Thursday, October 13, 2011

POSTER DUMP

Allison DeWilde



Alan Forbes and David D'Anrdea



Alan Forbes



Stacie Willoughby



Zeloot



Shawn K. Knight



Sohale Kevin Darouian

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

I MAKE BOMBS IN THE CELLAR

This doc has been hanging out on the net for a few years already but someone finally had the great idea to upload a good quality version. Enjoy.


Saturday, October 1, 2011

POSTER DUMP

Burlesque of North America



Bongoût



Thomas Perrodin



Nagawika



Marian Bodenstein



Stacie Willoughby



Neil Ofsteel



Michael Hacker

Thursday, September 29, 2011

AMERICA'S BEST KNOWN UNKNOWN

You've never heard of Jesse Frederick but you are well aware of him. Chances are, you could sing at least one (probably even two) of his songs all the way through.


In the early 70's, Frederick was just another aspiring songwriter. He cut his first album (self-titled) in Nashville in 1971 with a little help from Todd Rundgren. It's decent singer/songwriter boogie rock, but ultimately forgettable and didn't sell much. He cut two more albums over the next few years but neither of them were ever released. He started acting and writing soundtracks for film and television and eventually scored a minor hit on the Flamingo Kid soundtrack.

But success didn't truly strike for Jess Frederick until he teamed up with a composer named Bennett Salvay. In 1985, the duo was commissioned by ABC to write the theme song for a new sitcom called The Greenhorn. The show aired a year later under a new name and became a hit, lasting eight seasons.


Youtube won't let me embed most of these songs. Click on the image to take a trip back in time.


The show and it's theme were such a hit that Frederick and Salvay were invited back to write another theme.



And another.


And another.


So there you have it. Next time you and your buddies get drunk and someone starts a TGIF theme singalong, you know who to blame. Thanks, Jesse.