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“The Revolution Will Not Give Your Mouth Sex Appeal”

April 24, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Any revolution that lasts longer than five minutes will be televised (with limited commercial interruption) on every screen the size of a pocket or a pin. But I would guess media is as bad as ever at anticipating protest signs going up and walls coming down. (Image by Adam Turner.)

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gil Scott-Heron

You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip out for beer during commercials, because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in 4 parts without commercial interruptions. The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary. The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia. The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal. The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run, or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance. NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32 on reports from 29 districts. The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting downbrothers on the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay.

There will be no pictures of Whitney Young beingrun out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process. There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving for just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and women will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day. The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose. The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth. The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people. You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl. The revolution will not go better with Coke. The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath. The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised. The revolution will be no re-run, brothers. The revolution will be live.


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“Cigarette Burns Me…I Wake With A Start..My Hand Doesn’t Hurt…But There’s Pain In My Heart”

April 24, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Trumpeter Chet Baker, who had the angels scared from his face by heroin.

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Just A Guy With An 800-Pound Pet Grizzly Bear

April 24, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Adorable, until someone gets eaten.

The Thrill Of Victory, The Agony Of Defeat

April 24, 2011 in Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Wide World of Sports, ABC’s great anthology program that introduced closed-in Cold War Americans to cities around the world, from Moscow to Monte Carlo, and made Muhammad Ali and Evel Knievel even bigger stars. And where else could you see frog jumping and drag racing and wrist wrestling in the same 90-minute span?

From ABC’s anniversary program in 1978:

“Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport… the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat… the human drama of athletic competition… This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports!”

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Touring Olvera Street In Los Angeles (1937)

April 24, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From the color newsreel, “A Street of Memory.”

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Short Humanoid Robot Listens, Speaks

April 22, 2011 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Robonova-1 at your service. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)

Classic Film: Being There (1979)

April 22, 2011 in Film, Politics, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Not so long ago in America, when privacy was still an option and TV was the dominant medium, we feared that maybe this box could prove us idiots, that it could be used to dupe us at the highest levels, that Trilateral Commissions could fool us with Manchurian Candidates, that we could elect a President who was a propped-up simpleton or even an enemy among us. Now, of course, with the Internet’s constant flow of information and crowdsourcing vetting each candidate, all of those fears should be banished. But, of course, they’ve just been heightened. Hal Ashby’s picture-perfect realization of Jerzy Kosinski’s rich 1971 novella, Being There, written during the era when television was considered the problem with us, provides some clues to this phenomenon, though probably not the ones it intended.

Chance (Peter Sellers) is a mentally-challenged gardener who’s worked his entire life at the Washington D.C. home of man who has just passed away. Chance, who’s never left the grounds or learned to read or write, has learned all his life lessons from watching television. (“I like to watch,” he tells all he meets, often having has mantra to passivity misunderstood.) Since he’s not mentioned in the old man’s will, he’s evicted by lawyers. Forced into a spinning world he’s previously encountered only on the static tube, the bewildered man has unlikely good luck when he is hit by a limo carrying the wife of a political power broker. His injury is slight, but Eve (Shirley MacLaine) takes Chance in, and she and her sickly kingmaker husband (Melvyn Douglas) are enchanted by him, mistaking his opacity for wisdom, believing through a series of misunderstandings that he is a financial hotshot named “Chauncey Gardner.” Soon, Chance has met with the President (Jack Warden) and been quoted on TV by the beleaguered Commander in Chief. A lonely nation turns its eyes to Chance, and in addition to advising the President, he is soon being considered a potential candidate himself for the nation’s highest office.

George W. Bush was essentially the final TV candidate, so why have conspiracy theories been trumped up in an age when so little can be hidden? Perhaps if there is no unknown to fear we create it. Perhaps, like Chance, we like to watch, but what we really love is to see what we want to see.•

 

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Buying Cakes And Pies At The Automat (1936)

April 22, 2011 in Photography, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

This classic photo by the great Berenice Abbott was taken in 1936 at the 977 Eighth Avenue Automat, a cafeteria-like restaurant which sold food and drink from coin-operated machines. From a 1991 New York Times article:

“Automats were a home away from home for New Yorkers who did not have money to burn — songwriters waiting for a break on Tin Pan Alley, actors dreaming of Broadway. ‘The Automat! The Maxim’s of the disenfranchised,’ the playwright Neil Simon wrote in 1987. But people who did have money to burn ate there too: Walter Winchell, Irving Berlin’s socialites, celebrities.

‘You used to have movie stars who were poor there, making it their home base,’ said Michael Sherman, an executive vice president of Horn & Hardart, the company that owned the Automat. ‘But then things changed. It was more successful for its catering and its parties. It was losing money as an Automat.'”

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Adam buys his own meal at the Automat, during the eatery’s obsolescence:

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

April 21, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"We do it the WTF (What The Fuck) way!" (Image by Paul E. Reynolds.)

Promote Your Business On MISSILES – BLOW THEIR F*&KEN MIND OFF!! (Bay Shore)

No Joke – We do it the WTF (What The Fuck) way! – no one will forget your name or product!

We have the largest collection of Fighter Jet Cockpits and Missiles all mobile on trailers –
We do it with the WOW effect. Check it out – you will be surprised – I guarantee it!

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“Didn’t We Meet In 5th Street in New York, You Sold Me That Dope?”

April 21, 2011 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Jerry Rubin had morphed from Yippie to Yuppie by the time he was struck by a car and killed in 1994 while jaywalking near UCLA. Here he is in all his mad glory in 1970, sassing Phil Donahue.

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“At First, ‘Hacker’ Was A Positive Term For A Person With A Mastery Of Computers”

April 21, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"The members, who adopt handles 'Berkeley Blue' (Steve Jobs) and 'Oak Toebark' (Steve Wozniak), later go on to found Apple Computer." (Image by rebelpilot.)

In 2000, Robert Trigaux of the St. Petersburg Times put together a timeline of communications hackers, who apparently began to do their voodoo the second the telephone was invented. An excerpt:

“Hacking has been around for more than a century. In the 1870s, several teenagers were flung off the country’s brand new phone system by enraged authorities. Here’s a peek at how busy hackers have been in the past 35 years.

Early 1960s

University facilities with huge mainframe computers, like MIT’s artificial intelligence lab, become staging grounds for hackers. At first, ‘hacker’ was a positive term for a person with a mastery of computers who could push programs beyond what they were designed to do.

Early 1970s

John Draper makes a long-distance call for free by blowing a precise tone into a telephone that tells the phone system to open a line. Draper discovered the whistle as a give-away in a box of children’s cereal. Draper, who later earns the handle ‘Captain Crunch,’ is arrested repeatedly for phone tampering throughout the 1970s.

Yippie social movement starts YIPL/TAP (Youth International Party Line/Technical Assistance Program) magazine to help phone hackers (called “phreaks”) make free long-distance calls.

Two members of California’s Homebrew Computer Club begin making ‘blue boxes,’ devices used to hack into the phone system. The members, who adopt handles ‘Berkeley Blue’ (Steve Jobs) and ‘Oak Toebark’ (Steve Wozniak), later go on to found Apple Computer.”

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Historic Victorian Home In Haight-Ashbury With Hidden Four-Car Garage

April 21, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Not ruining the facade was an architectural marvel. (Thanks Reddit.)

“You Know Your Neighborhood Better Than Anyone Else”

April 21, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From Aaron Saenz on Singularity Hub: ” In a quest to bring high-quality digital maps to every corner of the globe, Google produced Map Maker, a crowd-sourced cartography project that allows users to fill in the blanks on Google’s digital atlas of the world. With Map Maker, Google claims that the amount of the Earth’s population with detailed online maps of their regions went from 15% to 30% (with 187 nations and territories included). Now, Google is bringing Map Maker to the US, with an emphasis on making the existing digital maps better and more detailed. Make an improvement to Google’s maps, and it could be seen by billions of users around the world.”

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“New York Is The Greenest Community In The United States”

April 21, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

David Owen’s excellent 2004 New Yorker article, “Green Manhattan,” convinced the masses of something that many urban planners already knew: Large cities are more environmentally sound than suburban and rural areas. It’s common knowledge now, but it was contrary to the prevailing wisdom just a few years ago. An excerpt:

“My wife and I got married right out of college, in 1978. We were young and naïve and unashamedly idealistic, and we decided to make our first home in a utopian environmentalist community in New York State. For seven years, we lived, quite contentedly, in circumstances that would strike most Americans as austere in the extreme: our living space measured just seven hundred square feet, and we didn’t have a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, a lawn, or a car. We did our grocery shopping on foot,and when we needed to travel longer distances we used public transportation. Because space at home was scarce, we seldom acquired new possessions of significant size. Our electric bills worked out to about a dollar a day.The utopian community was Manhattan. (Our apartment was on Sixty-ninth Street, between Second and Third.) Most Americans, including most New Yorkers, think of New York City as an ecological nightmare, a wasteland of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams, but in comparison with the rest of America it’s a model of environmental responsibility. By the most significant measures, New York is the greenest community in the United States, and one of the greenest cities in the world. The most devastating damage humans have done to the environment has arisen from the heedless burning of fossil fuels, a category in which New Yorkers are practically prehistoric. The Average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid-nineteen-twenties, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. Eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That’s ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank fifty first in per-capita energy use.”

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David Owen speaks to NYC’s environmentally sound nature:

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Sebastian Thrun On Autonomous Automobiles

April 20, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The Stanford and Google genius gives a TED talk. (Thanks IEEE Spectrum.)

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The World’s First Computer Explained

April 20, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Charles Babbage’s 1840’s Difference Engine, which was never actually built during his lifetime. (Thanks Reddit.)

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“Asshole!”

April 20, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I interviewed Werner Herzog once and asked him if Klaus Kinski was his muse. “No, we were collaborators,” he answered immediately. Considering that their turbulent relationship might have ended in a doube homicide, I wasn’t surprised with the director’s response when I asked if he missed Kinski. “No…only very rarely,” he answered calmly. Peter Geyer’s Jesus Christus Erlöser is a chronicle of Kinski’s crazed and doomed 1971 attempt at a spoken-word performance about Jesus Christ. (Thanks Documentarian.)

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California Woman Gets Hand Transplant

April 20, 2011 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Amazing job by UCLA and Emily. Someday it will be routine.

The First Low-Cost Personal Robot

April 19, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The TurtleBot from Willow Garage. Priced at $499.99. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)

Renting Newspapers In Ethiopia

April 19, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Tree-papers are going and gone in the United States, but Ethiopians still require newsprint to find work and lodging. For those too poor to buy papers, so-called “newspaper landlords” have the solution. They rent periodicals at a penny for about 20 minutes. From a CNN report:

“Garum Tesfaye is one of Addis Ababa’s ‘newspaper landlords,’ a group of entrepreneurs in the Ethiopian capital who rent out papers to people too poor to buy them.

Surrounded by worn-out copies of old newspapers, stacks of gossip magazines and the crisp print of the latest news, Tesfaye sits attentively, checking his watch every now and then.

Near him, a pedestrian bridge provides shelter from the sun to dozens of avid readers who quickly, albeit meticulously, get their dose of the latest news.

For 20 to 30 minutes, these readers can get their hands on a newspaper for a fraction of the price of having to buy it. If they keep the paper longer than their allotted rental time, they have to pay extra.

A newspaper in Addis Ababa costs about six birr (35 U.S. cents) to buy. In contrast, it costs only 50 Ethiopian cents (less than one U.S. cent) to rent one.” (Thanks Marginal Revolution.)

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Rolling Stones Rice Krispies Jingle (1964)

April 19, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Brian Jones apparently wrote this tune. (Thanks Reddit.)

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“They Initially Hoped To Sicken Public Officials Standing In Their Way, But Then Pursued A Grander Scheme To Attack Innocent Citizens”

April 19, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

While still located in India, Rajneesh, far right, receives his followers. (Image by Redheylin.)

Using access to newly declassified government files, Les Zaitz of Oregon Live has written “Rajneeshees in Oregon: The Untold Story,” a chilling account of the mad American experience of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru who relocated to the Beaver State during the 1980s, invited 2,000 of  his followers to live on his land, incorporated his parcel into a city, ran afoul of local authorities and became involved in bio-terrorism and assassination plots. An excerpt:

“From time to time, Puja retreated to a laboratory hidden in a cabin up a canyon on the ranch to secretly experiment with viruses and bacteria. Sheela wanted something to sicken people.

In summer 1984, Puja field-tested her work, handing unlabeled vials to those on the secret teams.

The operatives knew, or suspected, the brown liquid was salmonella, which produces severe diarrhea and other symptoms. Over months, they were dispatched to spread the poison in The Dalles. They initially hoped to sicken public officials standing in their way, but then pursued a grander scheme to attack innocent citizens.

Swami Krishna Deva, mayor of Rajneeshpuram, smeared Puja’s mixture onto fixtures in the men’s restroom at the Wasco County Courthouse in The Dalles.

Ma Dhyan Yogini, also known as Alma Peralta, went to town with vials in her purse. She stepped into a local political rally and took a seat. She secreted some of the contaminant on her hand, turned to an elderly man sitting next to her and shook hands. She also made her way into a nursing home in The Dalles, but her plan to contaminate food was disrupted by a suspicious kitchen worker.

Sheela tried her hand at contamination as well, taking a half-dozen Rajneeshees, including Puja, to a grocery store in The Dalles.

‘Let’s have some fun,’ Sheela said.

The group spread across the store with Sheela targeting the produce section, pouring brownish liquid from the vial she had hidden up her sleeve.

When there were no public reports of anyone getting sick, Sheela pushed Puja to find a more toxic solution.

About that time, Hulse and two other Wasco County commissioners arrived at the ranch for a tour. They parked Hulse’s car outside the commune’s welcome center and loaded into a commune van for their visit. When they got back, Hulse’s car had a flat. The Rajneeshees arranged a repair on the spot that would cost Hulse $12.

As the commissioners waited in the hot August sun, Puja approached, offering each a glass of water. Her gesture was odd, for Puja was in her medical whites and had no role as a greeter.

The thirsty men took the water.” (Thanks Longform.)

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Completely Autonomous DogBot Climbs Rocks

April 19, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

LittleDog, from the University of Southern California.

“Suppose He Is What He Sounds Like, The Most Important Thinker Since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, And Pavlov”

April 19, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Marshall McLuhan entertains Tom Wolfe in the backyard of his Toronto home in 1970. (Thanks Documentarian.)

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From Wolfe’s 1965 essay about McLuhan in the New York Herald Tribune, “What If He Is Right?“: “There are currently hundreds of studs of the business world, breakfast food package designers, television net work creative department vice-presidents, advertising ‘media reps,’ lighting fixture fortune heirs, smiley patent lawyers, industrial spies, we- need vision board chairmen, all sorts of business studs who are all wondering if this man, Marshall McLuhan … is right…. He sits in a little office off on the edge of the University of Toronto that looks like the receiving bin of a second-hand book store, grading papers, grading papers, for days on end, wearing-well, he doesn’t seem to care what he wears. If he feels like it, he just puts on the old striped tie with the plastic neck band. You just snap the plastic band around your neck and there the tie is, hanging down and ready to go, Pree-Tide.

But what if-all sorts of huge world-mover & shaker corporations are trying to put McLuhan in a box or some thing. Valuable! Ours! Suppose he is what he sounds like, the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and Pavlov, studs of the intelligentsia game suppose he is the oracle of the modern times – what if he is right? he’ll be in there. It almost seems that way. An ‘undisclosed corporation’ has put a huge ‘undisclosed sum’ into, McLuhan’s Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto. One of the big American corporations has offered him $5000 to present a closed- circuit-ours!-television lecture on-oracle!-the ways the products in its industry will be used in the future. Even before all this, IBM, General Electric, Bell Telephone were flying McLuhan in from Toronto to New York, Pittsburgh, God knows where else, to talk to their hierarchs about . . . well, about whatever this unseen world of electronic environments that only he sees fully is all about.”

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“I Had Hoped He Would Die. I Had Hoped He Would Be Hung”

April 19, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Art Linkletter’s daughter plunged to her death from a six-story window in 1969, perhaps influenced to suicide by LSD. Timothy Leary was the most famous proponent of LSD. Talk show host Stanley Siegel thought it would be a good idea in 1977 to have Linkletter and Leary talk by phone on live TV.

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