Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Raw Data: Armed Drone Prototype

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This comes from Norman O. Mustill’s “raw data” pile. It appeared during World War II in an ad for Good Housekeeping Magazine, warning against “A Dictator’s Newest Dream.” According to the text that accompanied the ad, “The army has specified that it must be able to carry 4 soldiers with full equipment or a machinegun […]

‘Democracy Now!’: Riveting Look at the Terror Courts

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Wall Street Journal journalist Jess Bravin reports on the controversial military commissions at Guantanamo. Describing it as “the most important legal story in decades,” Bravin uncovers how the Bush administration quickly drew up an alternative legal system to try men captured abroad after the Sept. 11 attacks. Soon evidence obtained by torture was being used […]

Unbeatable Sinclair Beiles Tells It As It Was

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He talks about William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Tangiers, the Villa Deliria, the Thousand and One Nights, Naked Lunch, cut-ups, Minutes to Go, the Beat Hotel, Jean Fanchette, Ian Sommerville, the Dream Machine. It’s an unbeatable discovery. Gary Cummiskey, co-editor of Who Was Sinclair Beiles? and the publisher of Dye Hard Press, tipped me to this […]

‘The Green Man Is a Green Terrorist’

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My blog staff of thousands didn’t have to do much to persuade me that Heathcote Williams’s newest dissident poem, a rhymed marvel of CAT-scan clarity, will be seen one day as a YouTube classic. Here are the opening lines transcribed from the video in four-line stanzas: Tangled vegetation sprouts from each orifice From his mouth, […]

Selling the Earth … ‘No Return, No Exchange’

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A poem by Heathcote Williams, narration and montage by Alan Cox. The print edition of Selling the Earth is coming soon from Cold Turkey Press. The poem begins: After someone had sold their virginity on the Internet And made a hundred thousand pounds, Another entrepreneur would decide that he’d try To put Planet Earth itself […]

Way Ahead of My Time in 1969

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Where would the blogworld be without blogger self-promotion? So indulge me. Anneke Auer, webmaster for Rotterdam-based Sea Urchin Editions, has designed a classy presentation of General Municipal Election, a “collectible” action-art book of mine. I published it in San Francisco way back in ’69 under the Nova Broadcast imprint. Ben Schot, the artist who founded […]

‘Harry Patch: Anti War Hero’

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If journalism is the first draft of history, Heathcote Williams’s poetry is the CAT scan. Text by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox.

Who Is Heathcote Williams? Not for Sale, That’s Who

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“He is one of a few of genius who did not sell out and who peaks in (relative) old age. That’s quite something nowadays.” — Gerard Bellaart +++ “Fame is the first disgrace because God knows who you are.” — Heathcote Williams, “The Local Stigmatic” +++ The videos comprise Parts 1 and 2 of a […]

‘The Lord of the Drones and the White House Fly’

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My staff of thousands reminds me there’s an election coming up in the U.S. of A. For all the voters going to the polls, here’s a poem to cheer them on by the British poet Heathcote Williams. Part two … enter the realm of litrichur, narrated and montaged by Alan Cox. And here’s part three, […]

Viral Reading

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More than two million YouTube viewers have watched this woman read a book. Imagine that.Update: Dec. 30, 2015 — That number is now 18.86 million. Yes, you read that right. Further Update: Oct. 2, 2024 — Viewers now number 30 million. The woman is Stoya, and she’s a porn star. The book is Necrophilia Variations, […]

Into the Toilet: NYT Has Fun on the Front Page

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Was an online editor for the New York Times being cute? Have a look at the photo of a woman sticking her head in the toilet. It sat like an illustration from The Onion next to the headline “Putin Says Clinton Incited Protests Over Russian Vote.” Here it is on the digital front page of […]

L’artiste Lui-même

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Norman Ogue Mustill in his desert lair. [Self-Portrait With Collage] In 2007, at my request, he took a photo of himself with several of his collages from the mid-’60s. This is one of them. Blogs are personal (in case you hadn’t noticed).

Cue ‘Ah POOK,’ ‘THE UNSPEAKABLE MR HART’

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“Watchmen,” the movie, caused a stir at the box office when its opening weekend nabbed $55 million, the highest opening gross of the year and third-highest March opening ever. It’s a shame that none of the money will trickle down to the artist Malcolm Mc Neill, whose image of the Mayan Death God (right) in […]

Boris Lurie, R.I.P.

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The epigraph on “NO!art MAN,” a major 2001 documentary about Boris Lurie, who died earlier this month, says it all: “In a time of wars and extermination, aesthetic exercises and decorative patterns are not enough.” Those are Lurie’s words, and now they might as well serve as his epitaph. obit by Colin Moynihan in The […]

Mad Magazine + Tom Hayden = SDS

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“Students for a Democratic Society, A Graphic History,” a new book due out in January from Hill and Wang. “My own radical journey began with Harvey Pekar and comics and politics at The Graduate Center, CUNY, on Monday — Dec. 10 — which also marks International Amnesty International Global Write-a-Thon. Pekar is best known for […]

John Bryan, RIP

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They left 12 roses on his doorstep along with half of their kidnap victim’s California driver’s license. He was grateful for the roses. “They could have been 12 bullets,” he said. The kidnappers were the Symbionese Liberation Army. The license belonged to Patty Hearst. The year was 1974. The roses were both a warning and […]

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