Everything is Interesting
Big Kahuna Burger is a fictional chain of Hawaiian-themed fast food restaurants that appears in the movies of Quentin Tarantino including ‘Death Proof,’ ‘Four Rooms,’ ‘From Dusk Till Dawn,’ ‘Pulp Fiction,’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs.’
The packaging was created by Tarantino’s old friend Jerry Martinez. The Big Kahuna Burger is also seen in ‘The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D,’ directed by Robert Rodriguez.
Victor Moscoso (b. 1936) is an artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters/advertisements and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Spain, Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists of the 1960s era with formal academic training and experience. After studying art at Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University, he moved to San Francisco in 1959. There, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he eventually became an instructor. Moscoso’s use of vibrating colors was influenced by painter Josef Albers, one of his teachers at Yale. He was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage in many of his posters.
Professional lightning struck in the form of the psychedelic rock and roll poster for San Francisco’s dance halls and clubs. Moscoso’s posters for the Family Dog dance-concerts at the Avalon Ballroom and his Neon Rose posters for the Matrix resulted in international attention during the 1967 Summer of Love. Within a year, lightning struck again in the form of the underground comix. As one of the ‘Zap Comix’ artists, Moscoso’s work once again received international attention. Moscoso’s comix and poster work has continued up to the present and includes album covers for musicians such as Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Herbie Hancock, Jed Davis, and David Grisman.
The Avalon Ballroom is a music venue, in the Polk Gulch neighborhood of San Francisco. The space operated from 1966 to 1968 and reopened in 2003. Large events include ‘Pagan Fest USA,’ that is held in May. The building that housed the Avalon Ballroom was built in 1911 and was originally called the Colin Traver Academy of Dance. The Avalon was founded by Robert E. Cohen, impresario Chet Helms and his music production company, Family Dog Productions, which had offices on Van Ness. Extraordinary posters advertising each event were produced by psychedelic artists, including Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelly, and Victor Moscoso.
Many local bands, such as Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Steve Miller Band, served as backup bands, as did the early Moby Grape and headliners such as the The Doors, 13th Floor Elevators, The Butterfield Blues Band, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, which Helms organized around singer and performer Janis Joplin in spring 1966. The Grateful Dead recorded two live albums, entitled ‘Vintage Dead’ and ‘Historic Dead,’ here in the autumn of 1966. In 1967, it hosted the ‘Mantra-Rock Dance’ musical event, organized by the local Hare Krishna temple, which featured Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, along with Allen Ginsberg, The Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, and Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin.
Bruce Conner (1933 – 2008) was an American artist renowned for his work in assemblage (artistic compositions made by putting together found objects) and film, among other disciplines. He attended Wichita University (now Wichita State), and received his B.F.A in Art at Nebraska University in 1956.
He then attended the University of Colorado on scholarship; also there was Jean Sandstedt, whom he had met at Nebraska and who would become his wife. In 1957 the two married and immediately flew to San Francisco. There, Conner quickly assimilated into the city’s famous Beat community and founded the Rat Bastard Protective Association, an underground, arts organization. His first solo shows in San Francisco, in 1958 and 1959, featured paintings, drawings, prints, collages, assemblages, and sculpture.
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Wayne White is an American artist, art director, cartoonist, and illustrator. He started his art career working as a cartoonist and illustrator for a number of publications including ‘The East Village Eye,’ ‘Raw,’ ‘The New York Times,’ and ‘The Village Voice.’ In 1986 he worked on ‘Pee Wee’s Playhouse’ where his work for his set and puppet designs won three Emmy awards; he also supplied a number of voices on the show.
Other television credits include production and set design for ‘Shining Time Station,’ ‘Riders in the Sky,’ ‘The Weird Al Show,’ and ‘Beakman’s World.’ He art directed two seminal music videos, Peter Gabriel’s ‘Big Time’ in 1986, and in 1996 he designed all the Georges Méliès inspired sets for the award-winning video for the Smashing Pumpkins, ‘Tonight, Tonight.’
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It Couldn’t Happen Here is a 1988 musical film starring the British pop duo Pet Shop Boys and based around their music. It was originally conceived as an hour-long video based around their album ‘Actually,’ but it turned into a surreal full-scale feature film directed by Jack Bond and co-starring Barbara Windsor, Joss Ackland, Neil Dickson and Gareth Hunt. The original idea of making a film emerged from the band’s immense reluctance to go on tour.
The band hoped that a film would satisfy the fans’ demand to see them in live action. Neil Tennant subsequently commented that making the film made him realize one thing, that he couldn’t act. When the film premiered in London’s West End, a crowd of fans were standing outside the cinema, waiting for the duo to arrive. However, as both Neil and Chris approached the crowd, they went completely unnoticed thanks to their anonymous appearance, and managed to walk past them.
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A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects (preparations) between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers. The idea of altering an instrument’s timbre through the use of external objects has been applied to instruments other than the piano, including the guitar and harp. Richard Bunger wrote a book ‘The Well Prepared Piano’ in which he explains how John Cage prepared his pianos and even which pianos are suitable, because of the deviation of string lengths within different brands.
Bunger also clarifies why the preparations were done in such ways; in other words, which adaptation creates which sounds (harmonics obtained, timbrel effects, etc.). The timbre of the instrument changes dramatically when preparations are introduced. Much of the technique is related to the harmonic positions of the strings. For instance a preparation on 1/2 of the string length causes a different sound than on 1/3. The preparations don’t cause a random sound, as is often assumed.
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Inherent Vice is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, originally published in 2009. The term ‘inherent vice’ as a legal phrase refers to a ‘hidden defect (or the very nature) of a good or property which of itself is the cause of (or contributes to) its deterioration, damage, or wastage. Such characteristics or defects make the item an unacceptable risk to a carrier or insurer. If the characteristic or defect is not visible, and if the carrier or the insurer has not been warned of it, neither of them may be liable for any claim arising solely out of the inherent vice.’ The phrase appears often in William Gaddis’ ‘The Recognitions,’ a novel that influenced American post-modern literature and Pynchon. Gaddis’ novel uses the term to refer to defects in works of art.
In a generally favorable review, Michiko Kakutani of ‘The New York Times’ called it ‘Pynchon Lite,’ describing it as ‘a simple shaggy-dog detective story that pits likable dopers against the Los Angeles Police Department and its ‘countersubversive’ agents, a novel in which paranoia is less a political or metaphysical state than a byproduct of smoking too much weed.’
‘The Recognitions,’ published in 1955, is American author William Gaddis’s first novel.
The novel was poorly received initially, but Gaddis’s reputation grew, and the novel received belated fame as a masterpiece of American literature.
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Rodney Greenblat (b. 1960) is an American graphic artist known best in the United States for the visual style of the computer games ‘PaRappa the Rapper’ and ‘UmJammer Lammy,’ and in Japan for his comic ‘Thunder Bunny.’
He was also the character designer for the ‘PaRappa Rappa’ anime that was released in Japan. He also designed They Might Be Giants’ self-titled debut album in 1986. He is currently an abstract painter in New York.
Gitaroo Man is a 2001 rhythm video game developed by iNiS and published by Koei for PlayStation 2. The game features visual design by pop artist 326 (Mitsuru Nakamura) and an original soundtrack by Japanese band COIL. The player character is U-1, a young boy who finds out he is the last legendary hero of Planet Gitaroo, and the possessor of the Last Gitaroo, a legendary guitar.
Despite a number of positive reviews, the North American and European versions of ‘Gitaroo Man’ were produced in very low quantities by Koei and, as a result, have become somewhat rare; it is regarded as a cult video game. Around 2005 in North America, copies began popping up in GameStop game stores. This was due to a reprint by GameQuestDirect, similar to their previous reprints of PlayStation RPGs ‘Persona 2’ and ‘Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure,’ both of which were previously very rare.
Die Antwoord (Afrikaans: ‘The Answer’) is a South African rap-rave group whose style draws from the Zef counter-culture movement. Its lead vocalists are Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er. DJ Hi-Tek is commonly referenced as a third member of the group, although the band blends reality with fantastical elements for artistic effect and they do not acknowledge whether DJ Hi-Tek is a real person or a character played by a variety of musicians and actors.
Die Antwoord lead vocalist Ninja was part of the South African hip-hop scene for many years, fronting acts such as The Original Evergreens, MaxNormal.TV, and The Constructus Corporation. Ninja told ‘Rolling Stone,’ ‘Everything I did before Die Antwoord was me experimenting, messing around and trying to find die antwoord… Everything before it was disposable. It was all throwaway.’
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The Daily Omnivore 