Remember the groovy little Air Force Academy cadet who was caught on hidden camera by his roommate releasing his inner black girl to C & C Music Factory? Cadets First Class Brian Stoops (camera man) and Jeff Pelehac (dancing cadet), are now proud graduates of the class of 2007. Defense Secretary Robert Gates mentioned to the nearly 1,000 graduates at Falcon Stadium about Second Lieutenant Jeff Pelehac’s now infamous YouTube video.”To learn about the dangers of dancing in your dorm room (laughter) and yes, I’ve seen the video,” joked Gates. “So the next time your mirror beckons you to bust a move, remember the dancing cadet.” In case you haven’t see it, or if you need a refresher, watch original video.

You love the paintings; now buy the action figures! Hieronymus Bosch Action Figures that depict sin and moral failings as pictured in the infamous Garden of Earthly Delights 1504. Bring on the playful and portable images of demons, half-human animals and machines to evoke confusion and fear in evil men. The action figures are highly original pieces, imaginative symbolic figurines/iconography, that might inspire you to start your own surrealist movement. Like Bosch, you too will soon realize that human beings, due to their own stupidity and sinfulness have become prey to the devil himself, you might even be tempted to dream up fantastic punishments for various types for sinners. C’mon, confuse the hell out of that special neice or nephew by planting one of these in their Barbie Dreamhouse or game console.

The Young Punx – Dance With Someone Else (Phunk Investigation Remix)
The Young Punx are a UK based electronic dance music act whose eclectic and energetic style encompasses filtered french house, nuskool breaks a bit of drum and bass, mashed up with elements as diverse as late 70′s soft rock, 1980s pop music, hard rock, synth-pop disco and glam. Dance With Someone Else (Phunk Investigation Remix) reworks an earlier Punx record that sampled the hell out of Madonna and reworks it into a summery yet breezy dance pop chugger. This tune rides a funky bassline under choice 80′s electro chords and Madge (or Madge sound-a-like) belting out a sample from ‘Get Into The Groove’. Pleasant house number sure to pack any dance floor. Check out the Punx myspace page for playlists, and links to the occasional podcast.

The Fur Free Alliance held it’s fifth-annual Design Against Fur poster competition, they invited design students and teachers from around the world to participate in this important contest with a conscience. Mission, to Design a creative, compelling poster that delivers this year’s message that innocent animals are Fashion Victims, the goal is to envision a world where no animals are killed or exploited for their fur, on the basis that it is morally repugnant to utilise any animal for such frivolous purposes. Top five winners can been seen on the French site Etapes, all of the winning designs can be found/downloaded here on Infurmation.

Gay.com reports that American support of gays up significantly. “American acceptance of gay rights is at its highest level in 30 years, according to a national poll released Tuesday. A Gallup Poll shows that 59% of Americans believe that ‘homosexual relations between consenting adults’ should be legal. This question, which is part of the Gallup Poll’s annual Values and Beliefs survey carried out each May, has been asked every year since 1977, when only 43% responded affirmatively.” Yep the little image to the left does pop, it’s a hot photo from Chris Jepson.

Unlike back fat, there are manboobs and there are manboobs. This advert on Adweek caught my attention, “Hey, get your hands off my man-ary glands…My friend Cait found this ad on a bus shelter in Bolton, England. Good thing it shows the outline of a guy working out, or the message would just be disturbing. Of course, in the U.K., man boobs can be a point of pride“. Yes, you guessed it, a manboobs site, which proudly proclaims it’s pride before quickly putting it’s shirt back on. I much prefer the term pec-shelf, i.e. solid pecs peaking over a nice set abs.

The L.A. Times reports that CBS has picked up on of my favorite social networking sites Last.FM, “CBS Corp. is buying a popular social-networking website organized around musical tastes for $280 million, combining a traditional broadcast giant with an early leader in online radio. CBS is expected to announce today that it has acquired London-based Last.fm, which claims more than 15 million monthly users, including more than 4 million in the U.S.The initial payout is well beneath that paid by rivals in the last two years for video-sharing site YouTube Inc., now owned by Google Inc., and for MySpace, the top social destination on the Web, bought by News Corp. The final price for closely held Last.fm could rise substantially if performance targets are met.” Last.FM blogs about the acquisition, while the BBC has the low down, “As part of the deal, Last.fm’s managing team will remain in place and the site will maintain its own separate identity.” I thought Apple picked this one up?

What’s that you say, you could rule the world if you only had the parts? Transport back in time and marvel at the promise of tomorrow, today. Modern Mechanix website creates a visually compelling experience from retro articles in the realms of science and technology, with a heavy dose of sports, home improvement, practical tips, war, women, animals, radio and more. Return to the simpler times of robotic cows and cavemen, huge gorillas were preserved through something called sculpturdermy, and nicotine was not only good for you, it was required. Don’t forget the coming record revolution: digital discs (Nov, 1981). The cover gallery is pretty damn stunning, I need to learn to paint and illustrate like this, I’d make a bundle.

Today Google launched Google Maps Street View, a new Google Maps feature that shows a 360-degree view from the streets of select cities. “With Street View, you can virtually explore city neighborhoods by viewing and navigating within 360-degree scenes of street-level imagery,” said Stephen Chau, product manager for Google Maps, in a blog post. “It feels as if you’re walking down the street!” They’re launching with imagery in San Francisco, New York (check out Times Square), Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. Watch a video of Street Views in action.

For years I’ve lived a double life, in the day I do my job, I ride the bus, roll up my sleeves with the hoi polloi, but at night I live a life of exhilaration, of missed heartbeats and adrenaline, and if the truth be known, a life of dubious virtue. I won’t deny I’ve been engaged in violence, even indulged in it, I’ve maimed and killed adversaries and not merely in self defense. I’ve exhibited disregard for life, limb and property and savored every moment. You may not think it to look at me, but I have commanded armies and conquered worlds, and though in achieving these things I’ve set morality aside. I have no regrets, for though I’ve lead a double life, at least I can say I’ve lived.

The Guardian U.K. reports, “Riot police used violence to break up a gay rights demonstration in Moscow yesterday and arrested several European parliamentarians in what critics say is the latest violation of human rights in Russia. A group of gay rights activists came under attack from neo-Nazi thugs when they tried to present a petition asking Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, to lift a ban on a Gay Pride parade. He has previously dubbed gay rallies ‘satanic’. Witnesses said riot police watched as far-right skinheads chanting ‘death to homosexuals’ beat up several activists.” Right Said Fred singer Richard Fairbrass and gay rights activist Peter Tatchell were attacked during the march in Moscow, more from Sky News.

A Web site operated by the Alabama Department of Homeland Security identified gay rights organizations and anti-abortion groups among those that could include terrorists ABC reports. That Web site has been removed from the Internet after the agency received complaints about the site. It had listed different types of terrorists, including ‘single issue terrorists’, which it said can come from groups that rally behind specific causes. Those listed as possibly spawning terrorists: Environmentalists, Anti-genetic activists, Animal rights advocates, Opponents of abortion, Anti-war activists and Gay rights supporters.

Compelling animated video of Mark Twain’s War Prayer posted on The Grist. The short story is a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war. A Wikipedia entry notes “The piece was left unpublished by Mark Twain at his death, largely due to pressure from his family, who feared that the story would be considered sacrilegious. Twain’s publisher and other friends also discouraged him from publishing it. Twain instructed for it to be published after his death, however, and is said to have quipped ‘I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.’

Not that anyone is ALLOWED to put a face on the dead siting the military’s coercive and unworkable 11(a) of IAW Change 3, DoD Directive 5122.5: “Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member’s prior written consent.” This means that memorials for those courageous that have lost their lives in Iraq can no longer be shown, even when the unit in question invites coverage.

Charles Nelson Reilly, best known for his appearances on game shows such as Match Game and Hollywood Squares, died Friday due to complications from pneumonia, the L.A.Times reports. The Tony award winning actor did voice work for many animated projects during the last two decades of his life. He appeared in the films All Dogs Go To Heaven, Rock-a-Doodle, and A Troll in Central Park and the TV series’ Goof Troop, All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Series, Hercules, and SpongeBob SquarePants. He also played Mr. Toad in Rankin/Bass’ The Wind in the Willows. His last project was the direct to DVD Tom and Jerry in Shiver Me Whiskers. He won his Tony playing Bud Frump in the original Broadway production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” See Laughing with Charles Nelson Reilly.

The Peel, one of Melbourne Australia’s biggest gay nightclubs, has successfully obtained the right to ban heterosexuals and lesbians from entering its premises. Generation Q reports, “The club was granted the right last week from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, becoming exempt to the Equal Opportunity Act in the process. Attempts to ban women and straight men from entering the club were made to prevent “sexually based insults and violence” towards homosexual patrons. Cate McKenzie, Deputy President of VCAT, said in her findings that if large groups of heterosexual men and women entered the club, gay patrons could ultimately be swamped; ‘This would undermine or destroy the atmosphere which the company wishes to create.’

One of my favorite and for a long long time my only favorite painter, Neo Rauch has a snazzy new show up at the Met. I’ll defer to something I posted earlier about The Leipzig School; the evolution of the New Leipzig school is surely the first art world phenomenon of the 21st century. Hardly a regression to the idioms of the past, this is real painting, painting as an end in itself, gritty, highly idiosyncratic, graphic, reflecting the coolness of an ever evolving technocentric world. The New Yorker has a run down of the goods, “Rauch has also said that his subjects often derive from his dreams, and that the recurrent character types—sensitive young man, bearded older man, chunky young woman, and proletarian, military, or fire-brigade squad—all represent him…In terms of narrative content, the work is maddeningly coy—unless you fancy Jungian woolgathering about archetypes and suchlike—but it is so well designed and painted that, once you have started looking, resistance gives way.”

Donald Kuspit (Flak From The Radicals: The American Case Against Current German Painting/Expressions:New Art From Germany) offered as a defense to their peers (Leipzig school) in 1983: “To bring into question the artificiality of art and technological society-is a major critical aspect of the new German painting. A kind of artificial natural expression is used to lay bare the artificiality and abstractness of all expression, particularly our own modern abstractness, subtly devaluing and distancing us from the world of experience.”

Magnum Photographic Cooperative celebrates it’s 60th birthday this year. The cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices located in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo. According to co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson, “Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually.” The photojournalistic cooperative provides photographs to the press, publishers, advertising, television, galleries and museums across the world and have done so for 60 years, forming a living archive with one million photographs in both print and transparency in the physical library, and 350,000 images available online. Celebrate 60 Years of Documentary Online or head over to Wallpaper where their photography director Claudia Donaldson has chosen ten photos from each of the six decades of Magnum’s life.

The United States could use some design humor, the NYTimes reports on the new Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision building by Neutelings and Riedijk in Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, Encased in Glass, “Willem Jan Neutelings and Michiel Riedijk stand out from the usual Koolhaas clones. Still relatively unknown in the United States, their firm has steadily built a reputation in Europe for bold designs that draw on everything from primitive temples to comic-book illustration and the decorative ephemera of Andy Warhol. They also have something as rare in architectural circles as raw talent: a sense of humor.” What you don’t see in the photograph is the work, in collaboration with the 65-year-old artist Jaap Drupsteen, the structure’s panels are imprinted with famous images from Dutch television: the justice minister riding his bicycle, say, or Johan Cruyff scoring a goal. Using computer technology, Mr. Drupsteen ran the images together and baked them into the glass. A Flickr photoset dives further into the design.