Tonight! John Sinclair LIVE at the Frenchy Gallery

FATTENING BLOGS FOR SNAKES 2013

Amsterdam Studio Panorama

In January 2013 John Sinclair recorded with steve fly in Amsterdam. While on a short coffee break from recording 20, yes 20 poems in one day, i snapped this panorama, love, steve
John Sinclair and the Viper session in The World FATTENING BLOGS FOR SNAKES 2013

Cannabis Counsel, P.L.C. Law Firm hosts John Sinclair & Guests May 2013.

Cannabis Counsel, P.L.C. Law Firm hosts John Sinclair & Guests May 2013. FATTENING BLOGS FOR SNAKES 2013

Orion Fest Includes Gary Grimshaw, Detroit's Iconic Concert Poster Artist

Like, Wow: Orion Fest Includes Gary Grimshaw, Detroit's Iconic Concert Poster Artist

Alan Stamm alan@astamm.com

June 6th, 2013, 6:48 AM

Gary Grimshaw, 67: You know his vivid and iconic work.

One rock music legend at this weekend's Orion Music + More festival won't be on stage.
Gary Grimshaw, an influential poster designer whose career began with the MC5 in the mid-1960s, will sell and sign his flowing, vivid graphics Sunday at a Rock 'n' Roll Emporium tent on Belle Isle.
You know his iconic work, even if you don't recognize the 67-year-old local artist's name. Think psychedlia meets silk-screening -- a trippy mix of fluid fonts, unnatural colors and optics that seem to vibrate. 

Grimshaw, 67, still creates gaudy graphics to promote events such as a concert last month at MOCAD in Midtown Detroit and a University of Michigan Dearborn performance-lecture in April by John Sinclair, another local legend who managed the MC5 from 1966-69. Grimshaw shows those new posters and vintage ones in a Facebook album and his sales website.

He hooked up with the MC5 (punk rockers before it was called that) through Lincoln Park High classmate Rob Tyner, the band's late vocalist. The artist went on to Wayne State in 1963 and moved into a Cass Corridor apartment -- staying in that neighborhood through 1989, as he reminisces at a Tribes of the Cass Corridor discussion forum.

"Plunging into the Cass Corridor was like an ice-cold shower, a wake-up call," he recalls. "My entry into the culture of the Cass Corridor was a revelation of the diversity of humankind. I began to learn how little I knew."

In addition to working with the MC5, Grimshaw was "Minister of Art" for the White Panther Party, a political collective founded in 1968 by Sinclair, his wife Leni and Larry Plamondon, and was active in the Rainbow People's Party and the Detroit Artists Workshop, Last year, Grimshaw and Leni Sinclair published a paperback titled "Detroit Rocks! A Pictorial History of Motor City Rock and Roll 1965 to 1975."

Part of Grimshaw's poster for an earlier Belle Isle event -- 46 years earlier.

His Wikipedia page, a terse two paragraphs that understate his impact, notes:

Dring the heyday of Detroit's Grande Ballroom, Grimshaw was one of the two primary psychedelic poster artists contracted by promoter and DJ Russ Gibb.

He designed the Grande's first poster, promoting inaugural shows by the MC5 on Oct. 7-8, 1966, A 2005 reproduction is $15 at Grimshaw's site.

Another design from that Age of Aquarius, done when the artist was 21, shows that his Belle Isle appearance Sunday represents a neat 46-year career arc for this figure in Detroit rock history.

The poster, excerpted above, is from an island gathering April 30, 1967 -- "Detroit Love-In -- Bring Food & Music to Share." Unlike now, a "Picnic for People" was free back then.  



http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/5131/like_wow_orion_fest_includes_gary_grimshaw_detroit_s_iconic_concert_poster_artist#.UbPbCdhafrw

FATTENING BLOGS FOR SNAKES 2013

Robert Anton Wilson and Karl Hess: Subversion for Fun and Profit (video)

Robert Anton Wilson and Karl Hess: Subversion for Fun and Profit

Published on 17 May 2013

Dr. Robert Anton Wilson was the co-author of the popular Illuminatus! trilogy, which won the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for science fiction in 1986. Wilson has been described at various times throughout his life as a novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and agnostic mystic.

Karl Hess was a noted speechwriter (for Barry Goldwater among others) and author, and later in his life became known as a tax resister, welder, and market anarchist.

In this video from the Libertarian Party's Nominating Convention in 1987 Wilson and Hess team up and field questions from the audience in a humorous, frequently witty, and occasionally irreverent dialogue on everything from early 20th century European and American literature to politicians' inflated egos to pranking the government, yuppies, jaywalking tickets, what the average American should know, and covert operations in Cuba.

Download the .mp3 version of this talk here: http://bit.ly/110323U

FATTENING BLOGS FOR SNAKES 2013

Sorting out the confusion over local marijuana laws, Ann Arbor's experience

By Mark Brush

Enlarge image

Credit courtesy of Leni Sinclair

Poet and activist John Sinclair was arrested and jailed for giving marijuana to an undercover police officer. The controversy over his arrest led to decriminalizing marijuana in Ann Arbor in 1972.

It starts this week in Grand Rapids.

As of May 1st, 2013, if you celebrate 4:20, you’re less likely to get jail time.
Instead, you’re subject to a $25 fine for your first offense ($50 for your second, and $100 for three or more).

WKZO reports Grand Rapids police have issued tickets already:

The first tickets were issued Wednesday when the voter-approved ordinance took effect.  The first one went to a 28-year-old man from the northwest side of Grand Rapids, who was cited around 3 a.m. Wednesday.

The marijuana law in Grand Rapids mirrors the one in Ann Arbor. The only difference is “selling marijuana” is not listed as a potential civil infraction in Grand Rapids as it is in Ann Arbor (organizers felt Grand Rapids voters wouldn’t be THAT lax).

Voters in Grand Rapids approved their charter decriminalizing marijuana last November. But because of arguments and lawsuits and confusion over how to enforce the new law, it’s only now going into effect (for more on that legal battle, see Lindsey Smith’s coverage).
And so it goes. Society is changing.

It seems in every election cycle, there are laws passed that seek to loosen restrictions on marijuana use.
Grand Rapids did it. And last November, voters in four other cities in Michigan approved local ordinances aimed at lessening the penalties for possession of marijuana.

But there's a complicated legal landscape around these new laws.

Local laws that “decriminalize” marijuana possession can only go so far.
The ordinances do not affect state and federal drug laws.

Through the lens of the federal government, marijuana is in the same category as heroin, LSD, and ecstasy, with no accepted medicinal use, and a high potential for abuse.
Similar to the way it was viewed in the 1930s?

Credit americansforcannabis.com

Image from the 1936 film 'Reefer Madness.'

And Michigan law says “a person shall not knowingly or intentionally possess a controlled substance… A person who violates this section as to:”

(d) Marihuana is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than 1 year or a fine of not more than $2,000.00, or both.

In the eyes of the state and the U.S. government, marijuana is still illegal. So it remains to be seen how local police will enforce new local laws that attempt to make marijuana possession equal to something like a parking ticket.

So how will cities in Michigan use these local laws?
Who decides how they are enforced?
And where do police take their direction from?
These are some of the questions that come up.

We'll take a closer look at these laws and how communities in Michigan go about enforcing them in a series of posts.

First, we start with the most experienced city.

Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor has long had one of the most lenient penalties for marijuana possession in the country.
Starting in 1972, possession of two ounces or less would get you a $5 ticket.

Ann Arbor’s law was a reaction to the jailing of Detroit poet and activist John Sinclair. Sinclair was sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving two joints to undercover police in 1967.

In 1971, the John Sinclair Freedom Rally was held at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor.
John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger and 15,000 others called on the state to end his sentence.

Organizers felt that people wouldn't believe them when they announced that John Lennon and Yoko Ono were coming to Ann Arbor, so they asked Lennon and Ono to make this recording:

LINK

http://www.michiganradio.org/post/sorting-out-confusion-over-local-marijuana-laws-ann-arbors-experience

FATTENING BLOGS FOR SNAKES 2013