Courtesy Dorian Cope, who blogged this today:
3rd August 1966 – the Death of Lenny Bruce
“Take away the right to say ‘fuck’ and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government.’” – Lenny Bruce
Genius comic and social critic/agitator Lenny Bruce died, ignominiously, forty-three years ago today on 3rd August 1966.
During our “wilderness years” cocooned in an all-black room in Tamworth, Julian and I watched Lenny’s “Thank You Mask Man” over and over and over and over again …
Joseph Campbell on Grof’s work: “I know of no work that so well incorporates the findings of Freud, Jung and Rank, adding fresh insights, which the methods of those psychotherapists could never have achieved. I do not doubt that many others working in this field would find Dr. Grof´s discoveries a basis for a whole new strategy of research.”
More: Stan Grof’s website
Author Jeremy Narby (The Cosmic Serpent, Intelligence in Nature) was interviewed in Arthur No. 22 (available from Arthur Store here).
Above: The Entrance Band (pictured: Guy Blakeslee and Paz Lenchantin; not pictured: drummer Derek James) in electric power trio formation at the Arthur Magazine benefit at Cinefamily in Summer, 2007. Photo by JENNIE WARREN
Here’s the opening psych-blues jam off The Entrance Band’s loonnnnng-awaited new LP, set to finally arrive September 1, 2009 from our friends at Ecstatic Peace! Records+Tapes of Massachusetts. Tomorrow, the Entrance Band embark on a North American barhopping tour supporting Nebula. Dates here.
Dina Kelberman just released a book of new comics and illustrations! It’s called Important Comics and it will make you think and laugh. What else is Dina up to? I’ll let her tell it:
I am an illustrator comics and drawings and website. I enjoy blue, red, yellow and green when used correctly. I got to: go to Purchase College; found Wham City; show work in lots of places and publications; tour the east coast with my friends. Please email me at dina@whamcity.com immediately.
New projects I gots on the burner include: going to SPX in Sept., a book of my Citypaper comics, illustration for the next Nuclear Power Pants album, comics in Friends With Benefits (ltd. edition handmade art book by Impose Magazine) and Fakeheads Anthology, video on Baltimore vs. The World DVD by Current Gallery, & ISBN numbers!
August 3– WAHHAB AL-BAYYATI
Urbane Iraqi left-communist writer, exile; he revolutionized modern Arabic poetry.
The dictator hides his disgraced face in the mud.
Now he is having a taste of his own medicine,
and the pillars of deception have collapsed,
his picture is now underfoot,
trampled by history’s worn shoes.
The deposed dictator is executed in exile,
another monster is crowned in the hapless homeland.
The hourglass restarts,
counting the breaths of the new dictator,
lurking everywhere,
in the coffeehouse, the brothel,
in the nightclub, and the marketplace.
Read the rest of Bayyati’s poem The Dragon (with commentary).
August 3, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Feast of Caligo, mother of Chaos.
ALSO ON AUGUST 3 IN HISTORY…
1821 — Knights of Labor founder Uriah Stephens born, Cape May, New Jersey.
1922 — “The Wolf,” world’s first radio play, presented, Schenectady, New York.
1931 — Chicago eviction riots leave 3 dead; 60,000 march for anti-eviction laws.
1954 — French novelist Colette dies, Paris, France.
1971 — Golf… on the Moon!
1999 — Modernist Iraqi poet Abd-al Wahhab al-Bayyati dies in exile, Damascus.
Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective
Céline Guichard just sent over some new images to share. She lives and works in Angoulême, France where she has participated in various exhibitions and artist residencies. Her new monograph, De L’ Amour was recently published in a limited edtion by Strane Dizioni, and she is currently working on a new graphic novel.
I asked about her process and influences and this was her reply (translated from French):
My pictures always born of a first stage of simple design, mostly in pen and ink, on very white paper. Then I reworked my drawings in photoshop, collage, color, filters …
I rarely draw from nature. I have in my head a bank of images and forms that I transcribed so distorted and it is precisely this transcription, these deformations, which interest me. I like the asymmetry and imbalance, the monstrous, grotesque …When you asked me about my tastes, I mention Toshio Saeki, the canvas “Mr and Mrs Andrews’ by Thomas Gainsboroug, the “Caprichos” by Goya and Lucien Freud, which have in common have nothing to do with my world vision. But my real references are made in literature, film and personal. I draw on my memories of childhood in the countryside, in my obsession for the human and animal biology, the abnormality, the world of dream, transgression …
“…a labyrinthine, Kafka-esque halfworld of chambers and baroque, macabre characters, all connected by a central staircase.”
Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of L’Ange, it managed to stay off my Cinema of the Weird radar for decades. The emergence on DVD of Patrick Bokanowkski’s extraordinary feature film should go some way towards raising its profile among those who know that cinema as an artform doesn’t begin or end with Hollywood. Anyone excited by the early work of David Lynch, or the hermetic visions of the Brothers Quay, needs to see this.
Available via mail order (PayPal accepted) from British Animation Awards who also have an additional disc for sale, Bokanowski: Short Films/Courts metrages.
“A 2001 produced under the same conditions as Eraserhead”—Cahiers du Cinema
“A prolonged, dense and visually visceral experience of the kind that is rare in cinema today. Difficult to define and locate, its strangeness is quite unique. That its elements are not constructed in a traditional way should not be a barrier to those who wish to cross the bridge to what Jean-Luc Godard proposed as the real story of the cinema—real in the sense of being made of images and sounds rather than texts and illustrations.”— Keith Griffiths, film producer
“Magisterial images seething in the amber of transcendent soundscapes. Drink in these films through eyes and ears.”—The Brothers Quay
August 2– JAMES BALDWIN
Suave, gay proponent of the fire this time
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Of0Abi10A&feature=related
August 2, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Australia: Picnic Day.
ALSO ON AUGUST 2 IN HISTORY…
1776 — U.S. Declaration of Independence signed.
1876 — Wild Bill Hickok killed in poker game, Deadwood, South Dakota.
1924 — Black, queer American writer James Baldwin born, New York City.
1931 — Albert Einstein urges scientists to refuse military work.
1972 — Anarchist cultural critic Paul Goodman dies, North Stratford, Connecticut.
1976 — Filmmaker Fritz Lang dies, Beverly Hills, California.
1997 — Experimental Beat writer William S. Burroughs dies, Lawrence, Kansas.
Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective
August 1– HARKISHAN SURJEET
Indian communist leader, prisoner, independence fighter.
August 1, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Southern California: Laughter Day.
*Ghana: Homowo, or “Hooting at Hunger,” in which the Ga people feast and mock famine.
*Lammas, a Druid Harvest Feast. First-baked bread of new harvest blessed, effigies of corn spirit, called maiden corn, carried in procession.
ALSO ON AUGUST 1 IN HISTORY…
1744 — Naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck born, Bazentin-le-Petit, France.
1819 — American novelist Herman Melville born, New York City.
1916 — Indian communist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet born, Jalandhar, Punjab.
1942 — Grateful Dead ‘Captain Trips’ Jerry Garcia born, San Francisco, California.
1983 — U.S. resumes making chemical weapons after 14-year suspension.
Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective
Arthur Magazine 