December 17, 2010
Oscar Zeta Acosta (1935 – disappeared 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and minor novelist, perhaps best known for his friendship with the American author Hunter S. Thompson, who characterized him as his Samoan Attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in his novel ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.’ In 1967, Acosta began working as an antipoverty attorney for the East Legal Aid Society in Oakland, California. In 1968 he moved to East Los Angeles and joined the Chicano Movement as an activist attorney. His controversial defense earned him the ire of the LAPD, who considered the ‘Brown Pride’ movement more dangerous than the Black Panthers.
In the summer of 1967 Acosta met Hunter S. Thompson, who would write an article on Acosta and the injustice in the barrios of East L.A. for ‘Rolling Stone’ in 1971 titled ‘Strange Rumblings in Aztlan.’ When working on the article, Thompson and Acosta visited Las Vegas (inspiring Hunter’s later novel on the city). In 1972, Acosta disappeared while traveling in Mexico. His son, Marco Acosta, believes that he was the last person to talk to his father. In May 1972, Acosta telephoned his son, telling him that he was ‘about to board a boat full of white snow.’ Marco is later quoted in reference to his father’s disappearance: ‘The body was never found, but we surmise that probably, knowing the people he was involved with, he ended up mouthing off, getting into a fight, and getting killed.’
Posted in Drugs, Humor, Politics |
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December 14, 2010
Simo Häyhä (1905 – 2002), nicknamed ‘White Death‘ by the Soviet Red Army, was a Finnish sniper. Using a modified Mosin-Nagant rifle in the Winter War of 1939 he tallied 505 confirmed kills, the most in any major war. Häyhä, born near the present-day border of Finland and Russia, was a farmer before entering combat. He joined the Finnish militia at 17, and his farmhouse was reportedly full of trophies for marksmanship.
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Posted in Death, War, World |
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December 13, 2010
Stanley Mouse (b. 1940) is an American artist, best known for his 1960s psychedelic rock concert poster designs and Grateful Dead album cover art. He got his start in the Kustom Kulture scene working for Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth in 1958. The posters he produced were heavily influenced by Art Nouveau graphics, particularly the works of Alphonse Mucha and Edmund Joseph Sullivan.
Material associated with psychedelics, such as Zig-Zag rolling papers, were also referenced. Producing posters advertising for such musical groups as Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Grateful Dead led to meeting the musicians and making contacts that were later to prove fruitful. Mouse and artist Alton Kelley are credited with creating the skeleton and roses image that became the Grateful Dead’s archetypal iconography, and Journey’s wings and beetles that appeared on their album covers from 1977 to 1980.
Posted in Art, Drugs |
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December 10, 2010
Ferruccio [fer-root-chaw] Busoni [byoo-soh-nee] (1866 – 1924) was an Italian composer. His philosophy that ‘Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny,’ greatly influenced his students Percy Grainger and Edgard Varèse, both of whom played significant roles in the 20th century opening of music to all sound. In 1907 he published Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, which discussed the use of electrical and other new sound sources in future music.
He deplored that his own keyboard instrument had conditioned our ears to accept only an infinitesimal part of the infinite gradations of sounds in nature. He wrote of the future of microtonal scales in music, made possible by Cahill’s Dynamophone: ‘Only a long and careful series of experiments, and a continued training of the ear, can render this unfamiliar material approachable and plastic for the coming generation, and for Art.’
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December 9, 2010
Cyriak Harris is a British freelance animator better known by his first name Cyriak, or by his pseudonym Mutated Monty. He is known for his surreal short web animations. A regular contributor to the British website B3ta since 2004, Cyriak displays a surreal and often disturbing animation style with a distinct British theme. He uses a combination of Adobe Photoshop and After Effects for his animation and visuals along with FL Studio (formerly known as Fruity Lookps) for original music pieces alongside his videos.
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December 7, 2010
Dan Deacon (b. 1981) is an American electronic musician. Dan was born and raised in suburban Long Island, New York. After high school he attended the Conservatory of Music at State University of New York where, in addition to performing his solo material, he played in many bands, including tuba for Langhorne Slim and guitar in the improvisational grindcore band Rated R. He completed his graduate studies in electro-acoustic and computer music composition.
In 2004 he moved to Baltimore, Maryland and moved into the Copycat Building and, along with friends from SUNY Purchase, formed Wham City, an arts and music collective.
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December 7, 2010
Green Boots is the name given to the corpse of Indian climber Tsewang Paljor (1968 – 1996) on the North face route of Mount Everest. There is little doubt that the body is that of Paljor, who was wearing green Koflach boots on the day he and two others apparently summited. On the way down, he fell victim to exposure in the storm of 10 May 1996 that killed seven others. Since the cave his corpse lies in is on the popular northern route, his body is encountered frequently and came to be known as ‘Green Boots.’
An area along the northeast route to the summit has earned the unassuming nickname of ‘Rainbow Valley,’ simply because of the multicolored down jackets of the numerous corpses littering the hillside. In the harsh conditions of lethal altitudes, corpses can remain for decades, some appearing frozen in time with climbing gear intact. Despite the snow and ice, Everest is as dry as a desert and the sun and wind quickly mummify human remains. In the 56 years since the first men in history reached the top, 216 people have died and 150 bodies have never been, and likely can never be, recovered. They are all still there, and located, almost without exception, in the Death Zone, where oxygen is only one third of the sea level value.
Posted in Death, Games |
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December 7, 2010
Ub Iwerks (1901 – 1971) was an American animator and special effects technician who created several of Walt Disney’s early characters including Mickey Mouse. Iwerks was considered by many to be Disney’s oldest friend, and he spent most of his career working for Disney in some capacity. The two met in 1918 while working for the Kansas City Art Studio, and would eventually start their own commercial art business together.
He was responsible for the distinctive style of the earliest Disney animated cartoons, and was also responsible for creating several early characters including Mickey Mouse, Clarabelle Cow, and Horace Horsecollar. The first few Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies cartoons were animated almost entirely by Iwerks. Disney and he had a falling out over the credit for the characters success. Their friendship and working partnership was severed when Iwerks accepted a contract with Disney competitor Pat Powers to start an animation studio under his own name.
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December 6, 2010
Rick Rubin (b. 1963) is an American record producer and the co-president of Columbia Records. Rubin was the original DJ of the Beastie Boys, and co-founder of Def Jam Records with Russell Simmons. He helped popularize a fusion of hip hop and heavy metal music, and he has worked extensively with hard rock groups, notably Linkin Park, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Slipknot, System of a Down, and Rage Against the Machine, but has produced for artists of all different genres including Shakira, Run-D.M.C., The Dixie Chicks, U2, and Green Day.
Rubin’s biggest trademark as a producer has been a ‘stripped-down’ sound, which involves eliminating production elements such as string sections, backup vocals, and reverb, and instead having naked vocals and bare instrumentation.
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December 3, 2010
Issey Miyake (b. 1938) is a Japanese fashion designer. He is known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances. Miyake was born in Hiroshima; as a seven year-old, he witnessed and survived the nuclear bomb. He studied graphic design at the Tama Art University in Tokyo, graduating in 1964. After graduation, he worked in Paris and New York City. Returning to Tokyo in 1970, he found the Miyake Design Studio. In the late ’80s, he began to experiment with new methods of pleating that would allow both flexibility of movement for the wearer as well as ease of care and production.
This eventually resulted in a new technique called ‘garment pleating’ and in 1993’s ‘Pleats Please’ in which the garments are cut and sewn first, then sandwiched between layers of paper and fed into a heat press, where they are pleated. The fabric’s ‘memory’ holds the pleats and when the garments are liberated from their paper cocoon, they are ready-to wear. He had a long friendship with Austrian-born pottery artist Dame Lucie Rie. She bequeathed to him her substantial collection of ceramic and porcelain buttons, which he integrated into his designs and presented them in new collections.
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December 3, 2010
Carl Gustav Jung [yoong] (1875 – 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker, and the founder of analytical psychology. Jung is often considered the first modern psychologist to state that the human psyche is ‘by nature religious’ and to explore it in depth. Though not the first to analyze dreams, he has become perhaps one of the most well known pioneers in the field of dream analysis. Although he was a theoretical psychologist and practicing clinician, much of his life’s work was spent exploring other areas, including Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts.
He considered the process of individuation necessary for a person to become whole. This is a psychological process of integrating the conscious with the unconscious while still maintaining conscious autonomy. Individuation was the central concept of analytical psychology. Many pioneering psychological concepts were originally proposed by Jung, including the Archetype, the Collective Unconscious, the Complex, and synchronicity. A popular psychometric instrument, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), has been principally developed from Jung’s theories.
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November 28, 2010
Thomas Wesley Pentz (b. 1978) better known by his stage name Diplo, is a Philadelphia-based American DJ, producer, and songwriter. Together with DJ Low Budget, he runs Hollertronix, a club and music collective. He also founded and manages record company Mad Decent, as well as the not for profit organization Heaps Decent. Among other jobs, Pentz has worked as a school teacher in Philadelphia.
During his rise to notability, Diplo worked with and dated British musician M.I.A., an artist who is credited with helping expose him in his early career. Later, Pentz and fellow M.I.A. producer Switch created a Jamaican dancehall project titled Major Lazer. Since then, Diplo has worked on production and mixtape projects with many other notable pop artists. Pentz’s alias, short for Diplodocus, derives from his childhood fascination with dinosaurs.
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