MonthMay 2011

Mondo Vanilli, the Art Prank Band with R.U. Sirius and Others, Releases Album Online

Before the Gorillaz and Deathklok, there was Mondo Vanilli (and before Mondo Vanilli, there was Silicon Teens, but that’s another story). Now the band, consisting of Scrappi DuChamp, R.U. Sirius and Simone Third Arm has released its 1993 album for free online.

David Pescovitz writes at Boing Boing:

In 1993, cyberculture prankster/provocateur/publisher RU Sirius, founder of Mondo 2000 magazine, composer Scrappi DuChamp, and performance artist Simone Third Arm, recorded an album for Trent Reznor’s record label. They had met at Reznor’s Los Angeles rental home, the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate and others. Tim Leary had brought RU along to a housewarming party there and RU gave Reznor a demo tape of his band, called Mondo Vanilli. Reznor quickly signed the band to his then-nascent Nothing Records. Unfortunately, this great work of curious and quirky synth-industrial-pop, titled “IOU Babe,” never made it to the record stores. Almost two decades later, Mondo Vanilli has officially released “IOU Babe” for free online. A CD with bonus material is coming shortly.

Some of this was streaming on Revolting.com in the 90s, and somewhere along the lines I downloaded a couple MP3s of the band’s music (I don’t recall where from), but I think this is the first time the full album has been made available.

Documentary to Examine Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune

In “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” director Frank Pavich intends to get to the bottom of the proposed film and why it fell apart. The doc, half-completed, is currently looking for distribution at Cannes, though interviews with Jodorowsky, Geiger and others have already been recorded. They’ve also released a promo video, obtained by TwitchFilm, which should whet your appetite for what Pavich has in store—check it out after the jump

We hope this is the beginning of a Jodorowsky renaissance. His collaboration with David Lynch’s Absurda Films, “King Shot,” sought financing at Cannes in 2009, but the project was eventually canceled. And we have no idea what happened with “Abelcain,” the long-rumored sequel to “El Topo” that supposedly secured a budget in the fall that same year. It’s just as well, considering Jodo hasn’t been behind the camera since 1990’s “The Rainbow Thief” (which he has since disowned), but we do recommend the excellent two-disc “Santa Sangre” DVD put out earlier this year by the good folks at Severin Films.

indieWIRE: New Documentary To Go Inside ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’

Here’s a whole bunch of stuff about Jodorowsky’s Dune.

And here’s a clip from, I think, the documentary La Constellation Jodorowsky about the Dune project:

Jodorowsky’s ideas for Dune ended up in his comic Metabarons, which is still in print.

Nassim Taleb Interview on His New Book Anti-Fragility

Nassim Taleb

Great new interview with Nassim Taleb by one of his former teachers at Wharton:

Taleb: The events in the Middle East are not black swans. They were predictable to those who know the region well. At most, they were gray swans or perhaps white swans. One of the lessons of “Wild vs. Mild Randomness,” my chapter with Benoit Mandelbrot in your book, is what happens before you go into a period of wild randomness. You will find a long quiet period that is punctuated with absolute total turmoil…. In The Black Swan, I discussed Saudi Arabia as a prime case of the calm before the storm and the Great Moderation [the perceived end of economic volatility due to the creation of 20th century banking laws] in the same breath. I was comparing Italy with Saudi Arabia. Italy is an example of mild randomness in comparison with Saudi Arabia and Syria, which are examples of wild randomness. Italy has had 60 changes in regime in the post-war era, but they are inconsequential…. It is a prime example of noise. It’s very Italian and so it’s elegant noise, but it’s noise nonetheless. In contrast, Saudi Arabia and Syria have had the same regime in place for 40 some years. You may think it is stability, but it’s not. Once you remove the lid, the thing explodes.

The same kind of thing happens in finance. Take the portfolio of banks. The environment seemed very placid — the Great Moderation — and then the thing explodes.

Herring: I would agree that people knew the Middle East was very vulnerable to turmoil because of the demographics, a very young population, and widespread unemployment, the dissatisfaction with the distribution of income and with regimes that were getting geriatric. But knowing how it would unfold and knowing that somebody immolating themselves in a market in Tunisia would lead to this widespread discontent — and we still don’t know how it will end — is a really remarkable occurrence that I think would be very difficult to predict in any way.

Taleb: Definitely, and it actually taught us to try not to predict the catalyst, which is the most foolish thing in the world, but to try to identify areas of vulnerability. [It’s] like saying a bridge is fragile. I can’t predict which truck is going to break it, so I have to look at it more in a structural form — what physicists call the percolation approach. You study the terrain. You don’t study the components. You see in finance, we study the random walk. Physicists study percolation. They study the terrain — not a drunk person walking around — but the evolution of the terrain itself. Everything is dynamic. That is percolation.

And then you learn not to try to predict which truck is going to break that bridge. But you just look at bridges and say, “Oh, this bridge doesn’t have a great foundation. This other one does. And this one needs to be reinforced.” We can do a lot with the notion of robustness.

Wharton: Nassim Taleb on Living with Black Swans

(via Chris Arkenberg)

New BBC Short Documentary on The Shaggs

Mike Skrtic turned me on The Shaggs just last weekend – and today I happened to find this new BBC short documentary on them. It’s only 11:43 seconds, and well worth watching.

For more background, here’s Susan Orlean’s piece on the band from The New Yorker.

When Pamela Anderson Read Neuromancer (But Not Really)

Kummer

The Guardian on a documentary about Tom Kummer:

He discovered hidden depths in Bruce Willis, who revealed a particularly bleak philosophy when he said: “I understood pretty early on that we do not advance through morality, but immorality, vices, cynicism.”

In one of Kummer’s early hits, Pamela Anderson shared her thoughts on William Gibson’s Neuromancer, a radical and difficult work which has become the set text of the cyberpunk sci-fi genre.

There was only one problem with Kummer’s exclusives. He had made them all up.

The Guardian: Journalist who faked celebrity scoops stars in film about his life and lies

(via William Gibson, from whom I swiped the headline)

How Osama bin Laden Used E-Mail Without An Internet Connection

According to the Associated Press’ sources, Osama bin Laden routinely typed e-mails on an Internet-less computer in his compound, saved them to a USB thumbdrive and had a courier e-mail them from cybercafes in nearby towns. Apparently this went on for years, undetected. According to the AP, Navy SEALS found about 100 flash drives that apparently contain series of these e-mail communications.

This is what’s referred to as a sneakernet, and as Internet crackdowns occur all over the world, it may become an increasingly popular way for people to communication.

A couple years ago, in these very pages, Trevor Blake wrote:

Now is a good time to establish lines of electronic communication that are not entirely (if at all) reliant on the Internet as it currently exists. Hand delivery of a stack of media is still one of my favorites. At a certain point it the best bit-per-second value known, it has certain privacy features that can’t be beat and it requires very little technical know-how or fancy equipment or money. For all the gnostic freakout of The Matrix, the scene where a disreputable character knocks on Mr. Anderson’s door and passes him a data disc might be the most prophetic.

Learning about cryptography, fidonet and the postal system won’t do anyone any harm. Nothing beats trusted person-to-person connections established in many only-partially overlapping social / professional circles.

Farewell Greylodge

I just received this e-mail from the Greylodge e-mailing list:

Greylodge.org has now officially and we’re pretty sure, finally closed. After almost 10 years of serving the indie book/music/film community,. being covered on MSNBC, written up in the Wall Street Journal and blogged on Boing-Boing and countless other blogs, we have finally caved under the pressure of countless legal threats, religious hackers and finally the tragedy of losing Doctor Grey. Maybe someday we’ll start something new, but for now, we leave it to someone else to step up and fill the void.

It’s been a pleasure serving you.

Peace,

-Pale Rider

Video: Vegan Black Metal Chef

(Thanks Ian!)

Cicadas Wake-Up from 13 Year Slumber, Prepare to Swarm

Cicada

After a 13-year nap, cicadas are waking up in the South, and with them comes an ear-splitting mating call that will soon fill the air across the southern U.S.

The 13-year cicadas of what is known as Brood XIX (the 19th brood) have been living underground since 1998. That was the last time they held their famous two-month, above-ground mating frenzy.

Brood XIX, also known as the Great Southern Brood, is the country’s largest group of 13-year cicadas, stretching across 12 states, including Missouri, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Illinois. Already rising in some parts of Georgia, they should all be hatched by mid-May.

Mother Earth News: 13-year cicadas wake up, prepare to swarm

I’ve been using cicadas sounds in my live performances. Here’s my favorite site for cicada recordings.

Trailer for Bassweight, a Documentary About Dubstep

Bassweight from The SRK on Vimeo.

Bassweightthis short documentary on dubstep, and several more on YouTube.

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