As Rumproast commenter t4toby summarizes, this scene from 1987′s Hard Ticket to Hawaii has it all:

Skateboarding, off-center ponytails, blowup dolls, pectoralis muscles, rocket launchers, ROCKET LAUNCHERS!!!, gratuitous violence, totally unnecessary second rocket launch attack on aforementioned blowup doll…I challenge you to come up with a better action sequence!

Evidently, B-movie director Andy Sedaris (not to be confused with David Sedaris) directed a handful of these things in a series known as Bullets, Bombs, and Babes:

Sidaris was best known for his Bullets, Bombs, and Babes series of B-movies produced between 1985 and 1998. These films featured a rotating “stock company” of actors mostly made up of Playboy Playmates and Penthouse “Pets”, including Julie Strain, Dona Speir, Hope Marie Carlton, Cynthia Brimhall, Roberta Vasquez, Julie K. Smith, Shae Marks, and Wendy Hamilton. Several of his films were done wholly or largely in Shreveport using many local actors or actors with local ties.

Needless to say, we need to watch the entire series ASAP. Check out the amazing trailer to Hard Ticket to Hawaii after the jump. You gotta love a movie with the catchphrase “This Ain’t No Hula!” [hat tip Rumproast]

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I didn’t think there was anything that could make this song good, but somehow the incongruousness of a tap-dancing David Hasselhoff look-alike and his perky crew paired with Soulja Boy’s suggestion to “Superman that ho” makes this combo so uncomfortably amazing I can’t stop watching it. If only their dance studio was in Williamsburg! I would totes take that class. [Hat tip: Everything is Terrible]

If you know me, you know that I’m a big slut for a good magazine layout. But with prices of specialty &/or foreign mags running at around $15 a pop, websites for Chinese hipster inspired print such as M-Style scratch the itch just as well. Over at the Shanghaiist, they seem to agree:

Hipsters get a lot of flack in the U.S. and Europe for fetishizing elements of fringe movements and regurgitating them into something completely sterile and inauthentic – all of the style and none of the substance, so to speak.
And yet (for us, at least) the cheap beer and great music is a welcome escape from the whisky-and-green-tea, Eurotrash house, everybody clad in some skimpy shade of black scene that’s dominated Shanghai so far.

Bombarded with the now long dead pop culture trends of yesterday’s East, some Hong Kong-goes-Brooklyn gems passed under the radar. These kids might as well be living in my building, no? But we’ve always been fans of the Asian aesthetic. I mean, McDonald’s is giving away Hello Kitty watches in their Happy Meals nowadays (which I know one FREEburg writer is super excited about). It’s no wonder Michel Gondry loves him some Eastern city lights….
(Exciting news & a peek at Gondry’s newest, Tokyo!, after the jump)

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Ezra Pound once referred to the artist as the ‚”antennae of the race.” He insinuated that the artist was able to sense a cultural zeitgeist, critique and present it to an audience prior to it becoming ubiquitous. More importantly, their ability to expose these cultural happenings is an integral contribution to keeping society in check. Antennas of the Race is a series of conversations between two creative camps ‚Äìvisual, music, or otherwise‚Äîthat share a common relationship. They are intended to provide a more revealing look at each’s process and attitude toward creativity.
For the inaugural conversation, we have two experimental music groups: Excepter and Psychic Ills. Known for providing captivating (and sometimes unconventional) live performances as well as challenging records, each group has navigated the competitive New York music scene and come to define the richness of its palette.
Further illustrating their bond, Psychic Ills and Excepter will play a show together at 92YTribeca tomorrow. The show begins at 8pm. In addition, Psychic Ills recently released Mirror Eye on the Social Registry.

FW: Many people in the experimental music scene seem to marry the visuals with a musical aesthetic; you may see this on multiple levels: during a performance or the end product of a record. How do you feel about being apart of this movement?
Excepter: We like to put on a performance and we go out of our way to make videos, so yeah, we’re definitely into the visual. Dance is to music like gesture is to speech; it gives the audience another way to understand what we’re getting across.
We would caution against identifying our visual bent as being part of a movement or scene. If anything, we stand against the influence of the 90s indie stance, which was very anti-image. If there is a common bond between bands, it’s usually a love of records from before our time.
Psychic Ills: There are a lot of bands–there’s probably a lot of ‘scenes’. We just do our thing. We’re not so aware of these qualifiers, but we’re into a lot of things music and non-music related.

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Last night was Big Terrific’s last show at Sound Fix because the lounge is totally closing. For over a year the N. 11th St. venue served as a mainstay of free comedy and music in Williamsburg, and Big Terrific was the weekly keystone thanks to common appearances by acts like Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman, and Eugene Mirman. It was basically the closest you could get to “Adult Swim Live” without blowing $75 on the “Cartoon Network on Ice Tour 2009.” All that past tense, so depressing. Good news after the jump!

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image c/o nickydigital.com (hat tip, Krista)
First the keffiyah, and now this.
Perky homemaker Rachel Ray, best known for annoying millions with her quasi-robotic joie de vivre on Everyday with Rachel Ray, is throwing what may be the coolest party of next month’s SXSW. Confirmed bands for her little soiree include the Hold Steady, the Thermals, Ra Ra Riot, Semi Precious Weapons, and the New York Dolls. The menu (available on the event’s website) looks appropriately awesome in its own right, offering such southwestern themed dishes as seven-layer sliders and smoky chipotle and black bean chilaquiles. Between this and unholy resurrection of Taylor Hanson, 2009′s SXSW is shaping up to be the most wholesome yet.
And to add yet another layer of weirdness to the whole affair, Page Six reports that Ray stormed the stage during her SXSW preview party at Santos Party House on Wednesday (yes, there was a preview party), jokingly tried to steal the boots off of Semi Precious Weapons frontman Justin Tranter, and, as the picture above attests, engaged in some serious glam rock ass-groping. From PageSix:

“Not only is lead singer Justin Tranter the most attractive person I’ve seen, but I also want his high-heeled boots!” Then she jokingly tried to steal Tranter’s boots while grabbing his rear end several times.

Check her out getting dry-humped by Tranter after the jump. What happened to America’s wholesome culinary sweetheart? As a tipster relates:

I was at the show and my favorite part was how Justin kept referring to
her as “Rachel mother f***ing Ray”
She is actually kinda awesome….which is weird.

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Known solely as Solveig — or by her nickname Sol, which often graces her masterpieces — this adolescent artist is making the graffiti community do a serious double take. And if you were to come across her work on the street, her bright, solid colors and cute, childish subjects would make you look twice too.
Though she works mainly on legal graf sites throughout her hometown of Brighton, Sussex, that hasn’t stopped the press from quickly dubbing her the “female Banksy.”
…awfully impressive for someone who’s still in primary school, if you ask me. More examples of her work after the jump.

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Earlier this evening, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz sent out a tweet, saying, “I need to think up some new slogans for Brooklyn. Does anyone have ideas?” Well, do we? Let’s help him out! Throw your best ideas in the comments and we’ll publish ‘em in a memo to Marty.
update: oh dear. could this be an imposter? Brooklyn Based just wrote: “Just learned from a trusted source that @MartyMarkowitz isn’t really Marty. Who’s behind it? Fess up!”
update2: my my my the account is now deleted. twitter sez “That page doesn’t exist!” what’s going on marty man?

Speaking of Obama’s budget, we’re not usually huge fans of David Brooks, but holy Christ did he nail it here:

We’re waiting for a Kenny the Page mash-up [UPDATE: this is close]. Until then, this will do. Leave Bobby Jindal Alone: