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Memory Wound: Photos Of The Sublime Tribute To Anders Behring Breivik’s Victims
THE victims of mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik are to be remembered with a beautiful monument. Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg says designed Memory Wound. It, says he, “reproduces the physical experience of taking away, reflecting the abrupt and permanent loss”.
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Posted: 6th, March 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
May 25 1951: The Story Of The Day Traitors Burgess and Maclean Left Town
Composite of library files of the famous intelligence ‘whistle blowers’ (top from left) Harold “Kim” Philby, Peter Wright, Guy Burgess (bottom from left) Sarah Tisdall, Clive Ponting and Donald Maclean. British intelligence officer Katharine Gun has had a charge under the Official Secrets Act dropped at the Old Bailey, London, after the prosecution said it would offer no evidence against her. Miss Gun, 29, from Gloucestershire, had been accused of leaking a memo on an alleged American ‘dirty tricks’ campaign. She was charged under the Official Secrets Act of 1989, accused of disclosing security and intelligence information.
GUY Burgess woke at around 9.30 on the morning of Friday, 25 May 1951 in his untidy, musty-smelling bedroom. Next to his bed was an overflowing ashtray and lying on the floor was a half-read Jane Austen novel. Since his return from Washington DC three weeks previously, where he had been second secretary at the British embassy, he had been rising relatively late.
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Posted: 6th, March 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
British Women Have More Leisure Than Most In Europe
THIS is a fun little finding about how much leisure time people seem to have. It rather gives the lie to those complaints of ever greater working time that we hear so often:
It is a statistic likely to raise eyebrows in more than a few households but an international study has crowned British women among the “queens of leisure” of the western world.
A new comparison published by the OECD found that women in the UK have – or at least admit to having – more leisure time than their counterparts in any other EU country and second only to those in Norway among the world’s leading economies.
It claims that British women clock up an average of 339 minutes a day relaxing – almost 70 per cent more than those in Portugal enjoy and 61 per cent more leisure than Chinese women have.
Who would have thought it, eh? Especially when we’ve every damn columnist in the land demanding that we do something about the work life balance?
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Listen As The BBC Broadcasts Cries Of A Screaming Woman’ Over Oscar Pistorius Murder Trial Report
BBC Coventry and Warwickshire blames a “technical” error for adding screams to a report on the Oscar Pistorius murder trial.
A BBC spokesperson said: “There was a technical mistake where sound effects being prepared in another studio for an unrelated item were accidentally broadcast over the news bulletin. We apologised for the error immediately afterwards.”
Posted: 6th, March 2014 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment
Three Chick Discs: Disco Era Threesomes For Your Listening Pleasures
IN the disco era there began a phenomenon of immense historical insignificance: the emergence of all female musical trios. Sure, there had been The Supremes, and there were various disco/soul trios that genuinely kicked ass (etc. The Three Degrees, Labelle), but these bands were different. This new breed was basically talentless, and exuded an overt sexuality (i.e. they couldn’t sing, but at least they were hot). Every song in their entire catalog (with 0.00 exceptions) was about sex, and every performance and music video operated unflinchingly to the “sex sells” approach.
The trend extended into the 1980s, paving the way for groups like Destiny’s Child (who were less one-dimensional). Largely forgotten in the annals of pop history, all that remains are the vinyl relics which I hereby dub “Three Chick Discs”. Here are a few examples
“Make Love Whenever You Can” by Arabesque
Make love: Do it today, don’t wait until tomorrow
Make love: The only way to wipe away your sorrow, love
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Posted: 6th, March 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
The World in My Window: A Select Filmography of the Space Shuttle
ALTHOUGH Alfonso Cuaron’s blockbuster film Gravity (2013) earned a whopping seven Academy Awards last Sunday night, one crucial supporting player didn’t pick up the Honorary Oscar it so clearly deserved: NASA’s space shuttle.
For thirty-five years now, this durable “space truck” — known officially as the “Space Transportation System” — has appeared in many space movies of the contemporary or realistic variety.
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Posted: 6th, March 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (3)
The Idiots In LA Are Banning Vaping And E-Cigarettes Now
John Hartigan, right, proprietor of Vapeology LA, sits behind an array of electronic cigarettes at his store in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles City Council voted 14-0 to approve an ordinance to ban e-cigarette use, or “vaping” at public places where tobacco smoking is restricted.
I THINK we’re all aware these days that smoking is bad for us. That it’s probably something we shouldn’t do for the sake of our health but then again, it is our health to use or abuse as we wish.
I think we’re all also aware that vaping, or using electronic cigarettes, is an alternative to smoking. Gives people the nicotine hit but without that cloud of toxic carcinogens to go with it. So, all other things being equal we’d probably think it’s a good idea for people to switch, from one to the other. To stop smoking, or at least smoke fewer, cigarettes and to suck on some steam containing nicotine instead.
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A Few Home Truths About Richard Littlejohn’s Daily Mail Column That’s Made In The USA
“YOU couldn’t make it up.” The reviews of Richard Littlejohn’s only novel, 2001’s Hell In A Handcart, suggest he was right. He couldn’t make it up, not really. Instead, finding true fiction to be beyond him, he has committed to a life of half-truths and pseudo-fiction pumped into the open sewer of his Daily Mail column. The Britain that Littlejohn writes about is pieced together from bits of right-wing doggerel, half-watched police procedurals and his own fevered imagination where the gays and the foreigners ruined his green and pleasant land. In fact, Littlejohn is so patriotic he had to move to Florida to accurately pursue his commitment to Britain.
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Posted: 5th, March 2014 | In: Reviews | Comment (1)
Janet Street-Porter Presents The Clash And The Sex Pistol’s First TV Show To Londoners In 1976
British punk rock band the Sex Pistols are seen in 1977. From left to right: Paul Cook, Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten and Steve Jones.
IN November 1976, The London Weekend Show, introduced by Janet Street-Porter, took punk to the masses.
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Remembering Mike Parker Creator Of The Helvetica
MIKE Parker died on Sunday. He was 84. He created the Helvetica font.
He began his career with the Mergenthaler Linotype Company in 1959 and ended with the Font Bureau.
Said Parker in 2007:
When you talk about the design of Haas Neue Grotesk or Helvetic, what it’s all about is the interrelationship of the negative shape, the figure-ground relationship, the shapes between characters and within characters, with the black, if you like, with the inked surface… I mean you can’t imagine anything moving; it is so firm. It is not a letter that bent to shape; it’s a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space. It’s… oh, it’s brilliant when it’s done well.
15 Things Mad Magazine Gave The World
MAD publisher Bill Gaines, 1970.
MAD Magazine is an American institution. It’s been going since 1952 and is still funny, but it’s given the world more than just gags…
THE FREEDOM TO TAKE THE PISS
In 1961, a group of composers including Irving Berlin (writer of White Christmas) tried to sue MAD following a series of parody songs they’d published, to be sung to the tunes of the originals. The case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled in MAD’s favour – they basically ruled that it was clear these songs were jokes, that they weren’t intended to be mistaken for the originals, and that they weren’t damaging. This was seen as a landmark case in terms of making parodies legit, and is still regularly cited in courts.
ULTRAVIOLENCE WITH A SUBTEXT
Antonio Prohias’s Spy Vs Spy strip was a wordless ongoing saga of a black-clad spy and a white-clad spy trapping, bombing, shooting and blowing each other up in contrived-but-amazing ways using good old-fashioned big round bombs with “BOMB” written on them. As well as needless violence, though, it’s an allegory of the Cold War, the thirty-year period of general global tenseness that led to the revolution in Prohias’s native Cuba. So it’s well clever, innit, with its explosions. Prohias died in 1998, but the strip continues in airbrush-and-stencil form by Peter Kuper, still bearing the credit “By Prohias” in spy-esque Morse Code every time.
A GAP-TOOTHED CHAMPION
The grinning, gap-toothed idiot on nearly every cover of MAD, Alfred E Neuman has become a beloved American icon despite rarely if ever showing up in the magazine itself – his appearances are limited to the cover and a quote on the contents page. On the covers, though, he’s been everyone from King Kong to Justin Bieber to Jabba The Hutt to the baby from the Nevermind album. He and his catchphrase (“What, me worry?”) have still become enormous – Jimi Hendrix introduced his Woodstock set with “What, me worry?”. Barack Obama, arguably the most powerful individual in the world, once described himself as having “the politics of [former Presidential candidate] Alfred E Smith and the ears of Alfred E Neuman”.
NEW FERSCHLUGGINER WORDS
You know that impossible-to-colour-in optical illusion of a trident that might be a bident? MAD named it – it’s called a poiuyt (which is a very satisfying word to type). They also enjoyed popularising obscure German or Yiddish words, like potrzebie, veeblefetzer and furshlugginer, which became ingrained enough in American culture to recently pop up in Boardwalk Empire.
FOLD-INS
One of the trademark features of any issue of MAD is Al Jaffee’s Fold-In, an image on the inside back cover that starts off as one thing and, by folding a section of the page into another, reveals a hidden message – like the one Marge’s cellmate has tattooed on her back when she goes to prison in The Simpsons. They’re ridiculously clever, and the now 91-year-old Jaffee does them with no help from Photoshop or computers at all, preferring to paint on a stiff wooden board and only seeing the folded-in image when he’s sent the magazine. Try making one. You can’t. It’s just too HARD.
MARGINS BETTER THAN WHAT THEY SURROUNDED
Most magazines feature loads of dead space in the margins. At MAD they decided to make them a bit more interesting, by getting Sergio Aragones (owner of a badass moustache and known as the fastest cartoonist in the world) to doodle in them. He’s been doing this since 1963, only missing one issue when the Post Office lost his mail.
Bill Gaines being understated, London, 1971.
THE BEST PUBLISHER EVER
MAD founder Bill Gaines was the son of Max Gaines, who had been instrumental in the success of Action Comics in the 1930s before setting up his own company, Educational Comics (EC). After Max’s death, Bill took over and started publishing first romance, then horror comics. These comics – including Tales From The Crypt and Weird Science – were really successful but led to the Comics Code Authority, essentially a censorship board. Gaines responded by transforming the two-year-old MAD from a comic into a magazine. When MAD became successful, Gaines became known for his eccentricities and simultaneous cheapness and generosity. Every year he would take the whole staff on an overseas trip – one year, he found out MAD had one subscriber in Haiti, whose subscription was about to run out, so he took the whole staff to visit him and persuade him to renew it. He also once paid twice the market value of really low-grade paper because he felt MAD shouldn’t be printed on nice stock. Until his death in 1992, he was greeted by staff members with a cheery “Fuck you, Bill”.
A BUNCH OF SHORT-LIVED IMITATORS
A lot of pretenders to MAD’s throne stepped up over the years, of varying degrees of quality. Cracked (which survives as the genuinely excellent Cracked.com) was an unabashed poor-man’s version of it that nonetheless lasted forty years, while Crazy, Sick, Flip, Whack, Nuts (not that one), Wild, Riot, Bughouse, Eh, Unsane, Get Lost and Panic all bit the dust pretty quick.
THE WORST MOVIE EVER
After the success of the amazing 1978 film Animal House, produced in association with the magazine National Lampoon, MAD became attached to a similar college-set film called Up The Academy, starring former Bond girl (and later wife of Ringo Starr) Barbara Bach. It was by all accounts a complete dog-egg, leading MAD to disown it, and Bill Gaines to pay $30,000 to remove MAD’s name from it and offer handwritten apologies and refunds to anyone who’d sat through it.
Mad Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones, left, Jack Davis and Al Jaffee, right, speak with Savannah College of Art and Design professor John Larison, second from the left, during an event hosted by SCAD and the National Cartoonists Society, Friday, Oct. 11, 2011 in Savannah, Ga.
THE USUAL GANG OF IDIOTS
Before the switch to magazine format, founding editor Harvey Kurtzman created the majority of the magazine, but after the switch, freelancers known as “the usual gang of idiots” came in and made the magazine their own. Regular readers of MAD learned to look out for certain names on features – if Dick DeBartolo had written a Mort Drucker-illustrated film spoof, you knew it was going to be good. One of their strangest but best-loved contributors was Don Martin, known for his incredibly unusual way of drawing feet and ridiculous sound effects – like Wonder Woman undoing her bra being soundtracked with “Snap ploobadoof”. Both loved and hated was Dave Berg’s The Lighter Side Of…, a long-running, severely inoffensive feature which featured probably the worst-dressed characters ever drawn.
Cover by Drew Struzan.
BIG, BIG ART NAMES
As well as influencing a ton of big names (there’d be no Daniel Clowes without MAD, Robert Crumb cites it as a huge influence, and Alan Moore has claimed that MAD’s Superduperman spoof was a direct influence on Watchmen) some properly big deals have passed through the doors of MAD. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman, of Maus fame, was a regular contributor, Drew Struzan and Frank Frazetta both did covers, and one issue a few years ago contained contributions from no less than ten Pulitzer-winning cartoonists. Plus “Weird Al” Yankovic once wrote for them.
A BETTER VIZ
Viz editor Graham Dury, creator of the Fat Slags, tells us “MAD magazine had a massive influence on me when I was little. The two blokes on earth I would most like to get stuck in a lift with are Don Martin and Sergio Aragones, so long as they had a big stack of paper and some pens with them. I loved the way everybody Martin drew had that fantastic self-confident strut and shoes that flopped over at the end. And Aragones’s scribblings were probably the best bit of the magazine. They showed that the editors really cared about it and wanted to just pack it with stuff. But I doubt I’ll end up in a lift with either of them. Well certainly not Don Martin anyway, as he’s dead. If any of your readers see Sergio Aragones getting into a dodgy looking lift, could they let me know?”
SUPER-CHUFFED CELEBS
Much in the same way that Nirvana only really felt like they’d made it when they got a call from “Weird Al” Yankovic, being spoofed in MAD is kind of like a badge of honour. MAD’s letters page regularly features notes from celebrities proudly holding up magazines taking the piss out of them. When asked about big moments in his career, Slash from Guns N’Roses said “The magazine cover that has meant the most to me was probably when I appeared in MAD magazine, as a caricature of Alfred E. Neuman. That was when I felt I’d arrived.”
AMERICA IN A NUTSHELL
If there was an alien race out there that had only ever been exposed to MAD, they’d have a pretty decent grasp of modern American history. You can trace wars, leaders, politics and technology through it, as well as the history of entertainment, from issue #4’s Superduperman to last issue’s Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus cover. MAD’s first cover after 9/11 nearly didn’t happen – the initial cover story was on the New York Marathon, and showed corpse-laden NY streets. They wisely decided to pull it, and replaced it with an image that was simultaneously funny, respectful, patriotic and… excuse us, there must be dust in here.
HEALTHY CYNICISM
Comics in the 50s didn’t encourage people to question anything – everything was more about being pleasant and not rocking the boat. MAD came along and started picking holes in the American Dream, suggesting the products Americans were buying were crap, their leaders were clueless and that the people were being treated like dicks. These days everyone’s a cynical bastard, but MAD invented it.
Posted: 5th, March 2014 | In: Books, Key Posts, Reviews | Comments (2)
1970s Irish Text Book: ‘Draw A Circle Around The One God Loves Most’
THIS photo is from an actual Irish school textbook in the 70s. Readers are invited to identify God’s pecking order:
Draw a circle around the one God loves most
God can’t draw his own circle because he’s using his right hand as a clue and the left hand only does the Devil’s work.
Spotter: Rubber Bandits @Rubberbandits
Classic Photo: April 29th 1962 – Norwich City Celebrate Winning The Second Division Championship
FOOTBALL flashback to April 29th 1972: Norwich City celebrate winning the Second Division Championship in the dressing room: (l-r) Graham Paddon, trainer, Doug Livermore, Kevin Keelan, Terry Anderson, Duncan Forbes, manager Ron Saunders, Trevor Howard
Paper plate: model’s own.
Posted: 5th, March 2014 | In: Flashback, Photojournalism, Sports | Comment
The Top 15 Scariest Dolls of Cinema and Television
THERE is just something inherently creepy about a doll coming to life. I think it falls into the same category as clowns, kids and the elderly. Because they are supposed to be so benign or innocent, it becomes all the more warped and vulgar when they take a bloodthirsty bent.
The devil doll trope didn’t start with Chucky. In fact, you could go back centuries via fairy tales and the golem mythology. In terms of cinema, you could start with The Devil Doll (1936) or Dead of Night (1946). However, we’ll concentrate on films from the 1970s and adjacent decades.
So, here are the top demonic doll movie moments from the 1960s through the 80s. If there’s any egregious omissions, please fill me in, and let’s make this list grow!
15. CHILD’S PLAY (1988)
Woefully cheesy, this film just doesn’t do anything for me. However, I recognize it’s earned its place on the list of evil dolls, so here’s Chucky. Moving right along….
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Posted: 5th, March 2014 | In: Film, Flashback, Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comments (7)
In 1942 The Nazis Trained Malaria Carrying Mosquitoes At Dachau To Attack The Enemy
Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert, camp commandant at the notorious concentration camp at Dachau between 1941 and 1945, reads in his prison cell, in Germany, on Oct. 27, 194,5 while awaiting his trial.
IN Jan 1942, the Nazis opened an entomological laboratory in the Dachau concentration camp. One aim was to combat the parasites living on soldiers. One other aim was to see if mosquitoes could be trained to attack enemy soldiers and infect them with malaria.
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Posted: 4th, March 2014 | In: Flashback, Technology | Comment
Surprise! Men In Pubs Target The Drunk Women! And Shirley Temple Smoked!
DEAR God this is one hell of a surprise, isn’t it?
The more drunk a woman looks in a bar, the more likely she is to be targeted by predatory men, a study has claimed.
Nine out of ten aggressive incidents in bars involved men approaching women because they look ‘easy’.
The research, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, investigated sexual aggression in bars.
Well knock me over with a feather and all that.
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Clinton Inhales: Washington DC Decriminalizes Marijuana Possession
Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, London, became a smoker’s paradise when London’s flower children converged to take part in the Happening. The crowd gathered to support a campaign to legalise hashish and marijuana.
The term ‘flower children’ has been given to devotees of mind-expanding drugs in California, USA. Date: 16/07/1967
BILL Clinton never inhaled. He just held his breath and blew. But now a few politicos in DC who did make a sharp intake of breath, can finally exhale:
Dear Supporter,
Moments ago, the Washington, D.C. City Council voted to decriminalize marijuana possession!The bill, which goes into effect this summer, replaces criminal penalties of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine with a civil penalty (similar to a parking ticket) of $25 for possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. It also decriminalizes marijuana paraphernalia.
This means that, outside of Washington and Colorado, marijuana penalties are now less punitive in our nation’s capital than anywhere else in the country!
This kind of work — in D.C. and across the country — is made possible thanks to generous contributions from institutions like MedBox and from MPP’s dues-paying members. According to our records, you have not yet made a donation this year. Would you please consider making your first donation of 2014 to help us achieve more victories this year, and help us meet all the goals outlined in our 2014 Strategic Plan?
Sincerely,
Dan Riffle signature (master)
Dan
Dan Riffle
Director of Federal Policies
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.
Westminster…over to you.
Charlie Chaplin Is Knighted: March 4 1975
ON March 4 Charlie Chaplin was knighted.
He had met The Queen in 1952.
Queen Elizabeth II shakes hands with actor Charles Chaplin during meeting in Empire Theatre, London, for the Royal Film Performance, a benefit performance to aid the Cinematograph Trade Benevolent Fund. At left in background is Princess Margaret and at extreme right is Mrs. Oona Chaplin. Others are not identified. The movie shown was “Because You’re Mine,” marking first time that a musical from Hollywood had been chosen for this top British movie event. Chaplin, who was in London for recent premiere of his own new film, made a short appearance during hour-long stage show accompanying the movie presentation.
Date: 27/10/1952
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Posted: 4th, March 2014 | In: Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
1972: Jennie Jaconello From Weybridge Relaxes In A Peter Banks Stereo Chair
FLASHBACK to February 5 1972: the Stereo Chair.
Jennie Jaconello from Weybridge relaxes in a Stereo Chair on show at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London, Feb. 5, 1972. The chair designed by Peter Banks is the theme of the display by Banks Heeley Plastics Ltd., at the furniture show, which opens at London’s Earls Court on February 6. The chair permits a stereo and radio unit to be fitted on to one of its arms. The addition of a pair of headphones enables the occupant of the chair to recline into his on her private world of music-and ignore the television, radio or record-player that may be operating in the same room.
Posted: 4th, March 2014 | In: Flashback, Photojournalism, Technology | Comment
