San Francisco Opium Den Photos circa 1889 (Thanks, Jeff!)

... and he hated it. by Crys

How many of the kooky military research projects featured in The Men Who Stare at Goats really happened? Reality is more complicated than the movie (or the book), reports David Hambling at Wired's Danger Room blog. But reality may also be weirder. Hambling's post examines, Snopes-style, the truth or bogosity of such purported American military projects as:

• Psychic Spies
• Drug experimentation
• Killing animals with telepathy
• Sound weapons
• An army of hippies who can smite you with the sheer force of their BO.

Oh alright, I embellished the last one a bit. Read: Psychic Spies, Acid Guinea Pigs, New Age Soldiers: the True Men Who Stare at Goats (Danger Room, thanks Noah Shachtman)

Image: the First Earth Battalion manual (PDF) from the movie, which was based very closely on the original manual created by Lt. Col. Jim Channon. He "dove deep into the New Age movement, and came back to the military with a most alternative view of warfare -- one in which troops would carry flowers and symbolic animals into battle."

Worst and weirdest Beatles cover ever. A choir of ventriloquistic monstrosity, from Hungary. Nabbed from Robert Popper's newfangled webble-site.

"Before the fanny packs and Andrea Bocelli concerts, your parents (and grandparents) were once free-wheeling, fashion-forward, and super awesome."

myparentswereawesome.tumblr.com [via Dangerous Minds, thanks Tara McGinley!]

He reveals to Dinah Shore that his mom worked at a military technology company that made bombs and missiles, and his dad ("Mister Pop") taught media communications at a local high school. At the time, brothers Tony and Hunt Sales, sons of the recently departed comedian Soupy Sales, were playing in the Stooges in Iggy's band. Iggy Pop on the Dinah Shore show.

The clip stops right as Iggy gets ready to launch into a performance, but I believe this is the stupendous performance that followed, with some guy named David Bowie on the keyboards! Looks like this was another performance from the same show.

[YouTube, thanks @EuclidAlone, via @bbsuggest]

Previously: Alice Cooper on the Soupy Sales show, 1979.

Pink Tentacle has found several great images of what a 1969 edition of the Japanese comic magazine Shonen Sunday called Computopia — a future in which computers will teach our children, perform surgeries, and infiltrate our lives in otherwise useful and fun ways.

(click for larger image). Sweet baby Jesus and biscuits, I can't hardly believe my eyes. Above, the truly awesome cover of a 1980 issue of Wild Mook, one of many fanzines produced in the early 1980s by the late Haruo Mizuno. "Mook" refers to a type of publication that's kind of halfway between a magazine and a book. Matt Alt (who I reached out to for comment in this BB post today) says

[Mizuno was] so obsessed with American cops that he actually managed to talk the NYPD and LAPD into letting him ride along with officers. This amazing book is but one of dozens he authored on the topic. None sum up the Japanese fascination with the American power aesthetic as much as this fetish-like pastiche of uniform, hamburgers, weapons, and mountains of french fries, though.

A spectacular specimen of traditional Japanese yokai (mythic "monster") art has popped up on eBay. Wow, talk about where the wild things are! From what I can tell, this scroll may be a vintage copy of a centuries-old original, and really ought to be in a museum.

I hope the auction stays up for a while, and someone takes some time to copy the images elsewhere -- each one of these detail shots is so full of personality and mischief! The "Buy it now" price? $15,000.

I asked Yokai Attack author Matt Alt to tell us what we're seeing in this monstrous tableau, and he kindly obliged. His analysis below (with more after the jump).

The Haykki Yako (百鬼夜行), literally "the night parade of a hundred demons," is one of the most famous tales in Japanese folklore. It first appeared in a Buddhist text in the 13th century, and is the story of a nightmarish evening during which legions of yokai, oni, and other fearsome creatures erupted from their usual hiding places to openly terrorize the world of the living. According to one version, they paraded down Kyoto's Ichijo-dori avenue in the late 1100s. The Hyakki Yako (also spelled "Yagyo") inspired countless generations of Japanese artists, including Toriyama Sekien, who penned an influential series of yokai guides in the 1770s; woodblock artists of the 1800s; and manga masters such as Mizuki Shigeru in the 20th century.

A handful of illustrated scrolls depicting the event are known to exist, mainly from the early Edo period (1603 - 1868). They weren't created as fine art but rather as entertainment, passed around and scrolled through together with friends, just as people enjoy comic books, television shows, or video games with friends today.

MIT's Technology Review ponders a 17th century CE painting that depicts a telescope not invented at the time the painting was made...

It's hard to find an invention more emblematic of the birth of modern science than the telescope. And yet surprisingly little is known about its early development. The inventor of the telescope remains unknown to this day.

Now, one of Brueghel's works appears to show a Keplerian-style telescope in a painting dating from 15 years before this design was thought to have been built.

Twitter pal Enth says, "Here is a photograph of several extremely serious men programming an animatronic bear."

And so it is.

Original link from Hey Okay

Norman McLaren is well-known to Canadians as the creator of the Oscar-winning anti-war animation Neighbours (which seemed to air every hour past midnight on public TV when I was a kid). But the NFB's extensive and amazing archives contain a wealth of other McLaren creations- including the following piece of terrifying WWII propaganda: Were there Nazi spies in Canada during WWII or was McLaren a paranoid propagandist? I am completely ignorant about this period of Canadian history- can some BoingBoinger educate me?

Amazing demo of Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad computer design program, which he developed in the early 1960s.

"John, we're going to show you a man actually talking to a computer..." (via Tinsleman)

Over at the WIRED "Underwired" pop culture blog, Hugh Hart has an extensive post up about cheesy, low-budget Mexican science fiction movies from the '50s and '60s. Above, a scene from Santo vs. the Martians (1967), which features the famous Mexican wrestler defending nuestra planeta against space-aliens. Snip:

These unsung heroes of vintage Mexican cinema mesmerized south-of-the-border moviegoers for a decade in low-budget pictures that threw together science, sex and action with low-budget abandon.

"Part of the charm of these films is that they are so atrociously underbudgeted and the effects are so cheesy," said UCLA Film & Television Archive programmer Shannon Kelley, who curated the upcoming free film series "Aztec Mummies & Martian Invaders: Mexican Sci-Fi Classics."

"To make something seem supernatural, they'd just add a strange warble sound effect in the background," she said. (...) "The aliens all wore these very simple Mylar costumes," she said. "Plus you have the posturing by the actors."

And if you're in Los Angeles, every Friday in August there are screenings of these films over at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. Looks like an amazing lineup, I hope to catch at least one of them: ¡ AZTEC MUMMIES & MARTIAN INVADERS !: MEXICAN SCI-FI CLASSICS

BB pal and periodic guestblogger Richard Metzger has an amazing blog post up about the off-Broadway musical Man on the Moon. The play was conceived by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and his third wife, South African actress, Genevieve Waite, as a potential film or stage production originally entitled "Space."

The stage performance was produced by Andy Warhol. Long-lost video footage of the play is embedded above. More video over at Metzger's blog, too, amazing stuff.

The following text was written by Chris Campion and Jeffrey A. Greenberg from the liner notes of the CD release of Andy Warhol Presents Man on the Moon.

I'll post a snip here, but you have to read the whole thing to hear about the part Philips wrote for Elvis, and all the weird little factoids about Warhol's work, and allegations that George Lucas stole the idea for Star Wars from this offbeat project. Snip:

Space was born the day Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. Like millions of other people, John watched the 1969 moon landing on TV. He was living, at the time, on the Malibu property rented by British film director Michael Sarne, who was under contract at Fox to direct the adaptation of Gore Vidal's novel, Myra Breckenridge, with Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch and Mae West. Sarne had commissioned John to write songs for the film.

The Apollo 11 moon landing became an obsession. John would watch a recording of the TV transmission made on an early video tape machine over and over. The idea of exploring this new frontier - and particularly Neil Armstrong's scripted aside as he stepped onto the lunar surface that it was, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - fired John's imagination, and he began to piece together ideas for a mythical space opera set to music. "He loved myths," says Genevieve, who was first introduced to John by Sarne that summer. "He liked Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey."

(...) Genevieve bemoaned the fate of the show to her friend, Andy Warhol, who offered to find a backer, and did. Warhol also agreed to serve as a producer, and provided a director in the form of Paul Morrissey, who had made a series of avant-garde exploitation films under Warhol's aegis (Flesh, Trash, Heat, Chelsea Girls, etc.). John expressed his bemusement about Warhol's involvement in the song, "Oh Andy My Assistant": "Oh Andy, my assistant/your mind is so consistently blank/that I'm banking on you now/so please so don't try to comprehend/the reason why I have to send/ you up or else, I'm sure that we, shall have a terrible row/It's either you or I must save the race/ So bye-bye Andy and off you're goin' to Space."

Music CD: Andy Warhol Presents "Man on the Moon" (Amazon.com)

Image above: "Two Girls And a Space Crab: Simpatici alieni invadono le cartoline del nonno." From Invading the Vintage, a photoset of space alien invaders 'shopped onto old tourism postcards, uploaded by (posssibly created by?) a Mr. Franco Brambilla. From BeDifferent magazine N.5: MUTATIONS (Italy).

(thanks, KodakCB)

(Download MP4, or watch on YouTube)

Boing Boing Video proudly presents this newly rediscovered gem: The Texas Strip, a 1944 "Soundie" which inspired the Devo song and video "Whip It." Watch as a singing cowboy flirts with cowgirls sitting on a a fence, then strips one of them with his whip (oh my).

The WWII-era down-home striptease comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film + Video, a San Francisco stock footage company that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings in San Francisco.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)

(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)

Today's episode of Boing Boing Video, via Oddball Film + Video, is a 1966 Scopitone that tells the romantic tale of a Spanish bullfighter, with help from an Amy Winehouse lookalike and mustachioed Flamenco dudes bearing overwrought facial expressions. The song is "Olé Cordobes," the credited artist is Miguel Cordoba.

Wait -- what's a Scopitone, you ask? Well, basically -- 1960s video jukeboxes. As Pesco blogged earlier this year on Boing Boing, "Scopitones and Cineboxes were first introduced in Europe in 1959-1960 and came to the US a few years later. The coin-operated machines were quite popular but were swept into the dustbin of dead media by the 1970s."

More required reading, if you're interested in the history of these primordial music video jukeboxen:

* Scopitone Archive
* Wikipedia entry
* NPR: Rise and Fall of the Scopitone Jukebox
* Scopitone of the Day

The video comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film + Video, a San Francisco stock footage company that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings in San Francisco. BB Video will be bringing you more from their superbly surreal collections in the weeks to come.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, , subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)

Today's episode of Boing Boing Video is a vintage 1970s television ad for a brand of jeans called "Big Yank." When I first watched it, I was immediately convinced that this ad was all about the giving of wedgies -- to one's self, to others, no matter! Wedgies, wedgies, wedgies. Or maybe the ad was about something even more inappropriate. At any rate, I thought it was funny.

The video comes to us as a special courtesy of Oddball Film and Video, a San Francisco-based firm that maintains a truly amazing and extensive archive of weird old moving images. They do regular screenings, too. BB Video will be bringing you more from their superbly surreal collections in the weeks to come.

Where to Find Boing Boing Video: RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video.

(Thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Robert Chehoski and Stephen Parr of Oddball Film + Video)

(Download this video: MP4)

So, what is it like to see industrial music legends Throbbing Gristle perform live?

"Next closest thing to an internal organ massage standing next to [SRL's] V1 pulsejet engine," said BB pal Karen Marcelo, after one of the dates on the band's 2009 reunion tour. "It was like my diaphragm resonated until my lungs became a subwoofer while words once from a man's mouth sprung from the same woman's mouth," twittered TG trufan T.Bias.

Before we shot the Boing Boing Video interview which is today's episode, above, Richard Metzger and I spoke to Throbbing Gristle's sound technician backstage, and asked what we should expect in the way of sub-bass frequencies -- rumored to be so powerful during performances that cameras can't hold a steady shot, and bowels sometimes can't hold their contents. Charlie Poulet, TG's sound tech, cracked up and flashed an evil grin.

"Oh, we got some frequencies," he laughed, "Yeah, we definitely got some frequencies ready for you people tonight."

Those "frequencies" are part of what make TG's music so transcendental and disturbing, and in the BB interview with Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, we explore their technical and creative underpinnings.

We learn about the hacked-together synth and sound modification machines built back in the early 1970s, like "Thee Gristleizer," shown below.

We hear TG members talk about the sort of mind-meld trance they all fall in to while performing, and we learn about the early days of recording work like "Hamburger Lady" to cassette tapes, then walking down to have a hamburger together at a corner sandwich shop down the street from their old studio in what was then a really shitty part of London.

Gen talks about her first time with Twitter, and we hear what it's like for the band once called "wreckers of civilization" to be celebrated, more than 30 years later, as living legends.

Information on TG's remaining 2009 tour dates here. Industrial Records just released a special limited edition framed vinyl LP to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the release of Throbbing Gristle's debut album, "The Second Annual Report" -- more info here. More recordings (digital and otherwise), t-shirts, and other merch are here.

RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic, and to Target Video, who shot some of the archival clips shown in this episode).

Previously on Boing Boing: Throbbing Gristle: What A Day. (Boing Boing Video shoot notes)