Bourdain and the Beats 
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River Phoenix Rises Darkly
Actor and musician River Phoenix died from drug-induced heart failure in 1993. Only 23 years old, Phoenix had delivered intense, emotional performances in movies like Stand By Me, Running on Empty, Dogfight and My Own Private Idaho, and he was working on a film called Dark Blood when he passed away. That film will…
Wallace Berman: Aleph to Z
Wallace Berman was born in Staten Island, New York in 1926. While he was still a child, he correctly predicted that he would die on his 50th birthday. He was hit by a car in 1976.
During those five decades, Berman became a pioneering assemblage artist as well as one of the cornerstones of the post WWII California art…
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My Pleasure
The Book of Pleasure (Self Love): The Psychology of Ecstasy may be the cornerstone of Austin Osman Spare’s written output as the book includes his first mentions of his groundbreaking ideas regarding sigil work and invocations.
Originally published in 1913, facsimile editions of this book have been released as…
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Early Erotic Cinema
“As soon as moving cameras were invented people began using them to make pornographic films…”
So starts Taboo: The Beginning of Erotic Cinema – a one hour documentary that examines the earliest days of the dirty movie biz, tracing the industry up to the age of the VHS tape. As the quote…
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Spend a Day with HST
I couldn’t find a date on this AP article (above) which chronicles a day in the life – and in the cups – with Hunter S. Thompson. His love of Chivas on full display, Thompson also stresses the importance of a big breakfast – what else would one expect from a proud son of the Bluegrass State?
I…
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Hell Yes
I’ve sang the praises of Withnail and I on the blog before, but I was recently reminded of another, great, bizarre British comedy that also debuted in 1987. I’m not sure what was in the water that year, but it was something compellingly strange and relentlessly absurd.
Looking at DVD’s online, I…
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Rise of the Killer Robots
Is the world destined to embrace a self-fulfilling prophecy that finds us sealing our own fate, making a deadly pact with soldier robots that will eventually turn on their own masters? According to this report at Democracy Now, we’re already much closer than you might think.
Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams…
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Brother Seekers: Terence an...
I haven’t read this new book yet, but after hearing this Coast-to-Coast interview with Dennis McKenna, I can’t wait to read The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss – Dennis’s new memoir about his psychedelic adventures with his brother Terence.
Is there a more eloquent spokesperson for the…
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Boys will be Boys
Hollywood usually blows it when it comes to conspiracy theory movies, but in 1978 they got it right. Here is Wiki’s take on The Boys from Brazil:
Young, well-intentioned Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) stumbles upon a secret organization of Third Reich war criminals holding clandestine meetings in Paraguay and…
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Truffle Trips
This is a travel piece about Amsterdam’s banning of psychedelic mushrooms in 2008 and the resulting rise of a new industry offering truffles inoculated with psilocybin.
Meeting with the affable and opportunistic “Truffle Brothers,” this HAMILTON’S PHARMACOPEIA episode traces the recent history…
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