In an effort to make Jesus more appealing to young audiences, the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn recently came up with a new ad campaign that identifies Jesus as "the original hipster." Maybe I don't fully understand the word 'hipster,' but I didn't think it was necessarily a compliment to call someone that. [theweek.com]
Who knew Japan boasted such guitar wizards? A weird disjunction with the common conception of "J-pop."
The fellow in the black tee-shirt, who appears to be the host of this show, is Char. The guest in the black leather is Rolly Teranishi. There's about a dozen other episodes of Char's show on YouTube.
Gather around, children, and you shall learn of an ancient time, before the internet. A day of paper fanzines and weird information obtained only via books delivered by snailmail.
The main purveyor of such good stuff was the Loompanics catalog. Alas, they were driven out of business in 2006. The current website using their domain name is a shell and a scam by cybersquatters.
Over one hundred Loompanics books have been tagged as a Goodreads collection. You can get a small sense of what they were all about there.
Hippies need dentists too, and back in 1973, Larry Gross (pictured) was their man. He lived in a house in Mt. Vernon, Maine without electricity, running water, or central heat. His dental office was a converted cow shed.
He was reportedly a good dentist, except for one problem. He often forgot appointments and wasn't there when patients showed up. Because keeping to a schedule was "such a hassle, man." From the Bangor Daily News, Mar 26, 1973:
With Dr. Gross, it's usually the dentist who breaks the appointment. It's not too unusual to see patients standing in the knee-deep snow in the farmhouse yard, waiting for him to show up for the appointment.
"It's such a hassle, man, trying to get back into some kind of schedule," he said...
Larry, 31, likes doing something that people need, and charging low prices for his services. It is the schedule, the hours that he has trouble with.
"You know, one of the teachers brought up 15 kids for dental work yesterday, and I wasn't here. I just forgot all about it. I really felt terrible."
Category: Religion, Advertising, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers