TURBLIMINAL BLOG

Got a Head and a Foot in a Garbage Can…

Double Talkin’ Jive is a song that appears on Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I album. The song wasn’t a hit. But it was popular enough that the band regularly played it at their live shows between 91′ and 93′.

In this post, we’re going to take a closer look at the very first line in the lyrics, and the real event that inspired it.

Found a head and an arm in da garbage can
Don’t know why I’m here
Livin’ on the run for oh so long
I gotta go collect
Double talkin’ jive
Get the money motherfucker
‘Cause I got no more patience
Double talkin’
-I got (lies)-
No more patience man

Here’s Slash’s account, from his autobiography:

One event that got everyone talking during the recording of Illusions I and II was the day there was a huge commotion in the alley. It turned out that the cops found a dismembered arm and a head in the Dumpster behind the studio. All I know is that we didn’t do it, but Izzy turned the event into a lyric on “Double Talking Jive.”

Drummer Matt Sorum:

So…just who was this unfortunate soul?

As far as I can tell, there’s nothing on the net that explicitly connects the event mentioned by members of the band, with a documented real-life event.

But, maybe we can figure it out? First, let’s try to establish a location.

The band utilized several different L.A. recording studios in the making of the Illusions records. A&M (now Jim Henson Studios), Record Plant, and Studio 56 (now defunct), among others.

Green markers from bottom: Record Plant, Studio 56, A&M.

A zoomed in shot of Record Plant and Studio 56. As you can see, they’re just a stones throw away from each other, and share a back alley.

In 2010 Sorum appeared on the show “Celebrity Ghost Stories”. He discussed a series of creepy encounters he and an associate had late one night in the mid-nineties, at Studio 56. Sorum attributes them to the person who’s head and arm(s) were found outside in a dumpster, a few years earlier. So, it would seem, he’s talking about the same event. He was there with GNR when the body parts were discovered. Then, a few years later, at the same location, he and a friend have their strange encounter, and he connects the two in his mind.

So, we definitely now have a firm location – Studio 56. Now let’s try to pin down the year.

In the Ghost Stories clip, Sorum mentions the original event happening in “about 1991”. As I’ll propose in a minute, I believe the event in question happened in 1990, so I’m going to disregard Sorum here.

Guns’ played just two shows in all of 1990. They were busy working on Illusions. The bulk of the recording work for Illusions was completed in 90′, and starting in January of 91 at Rock in Rio II, they began touring again, and generally getting on with the business of promoting a record.

So for now, let’s go with that. Year: 1990. Location: Studio 56, located at 7000 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Let’s see if we can find anything that matches up.

Not having access to police records, the obvious thing to do would be to check the L.A. Times. The crime, and especially the murder rate, in L.A., in the early 90’s, was a lot higher than it is today, but you’d think something as gruesome as a human head and arms showing up in a dumpster would still be worthy of a paragraph or two, even back then, wouldn’t you? But, maybe not?

The entire archive of the Times going back to 1881 is available, and searchable, on the site newspapers.com. I spent hours and hours searching for something even remotely connected to the details we’ve established: location, time period, the loose specifics of the event, etc., but got nothing…nada. And as far as I can tell, the OCR used on the scanned newsprint is near flawless. Super-computer-like. It’s really remarkable.

Maybe I’m overlooking something, but I think the truth of it is, is that this event didn’t even make the paper.

Dumpster in the back alley, directly behind the old Studio 56. Perspective: standing on N. Orange Drive, facing west. The tree and 2nd dumpster in the distance are approximately where Record Plant is.

But what if it wasn’t a head and an arm? What if instead, it was a head and a foot?

William Arnold Newton, A.K.A. “Billy London”. A bit of a resemblance to a young Axl Rose, don’t you think?

Sometime between October 28th and October 30th (sources vary – s. 1, 2, 3, 4 – #1 and #2 nsfw), the head and feet of gay adult film performer William Newton were found in a garbage dumpster in an alley behind Santa Monica Blvd., in West Hollywood. His murder remains unsolved to this very day.

What are the odds that this is the guy? How many human heads and feet (or arms for that matter) showed up in back alley dumpsters, in West Hollywood, right behind Santa Monica Blvd in 1990 or 1991?

I think this might be the guy.

Interestingly, October 30th, 1990, and the days leading up to it, were rather eventful in the world of Guns N’ Roses.

First though, let’s see if we can pin down the exact date of the discovery of Newton’s remains a little tighter. Of the sources I linked, the most trustworthy I think would have to be this one. The author spoke directly with Newton’s father. Presumably, he was able to double check the dates with him.

So let’s go with the 29th being the day Newton goes missing, and the 30th being the day his head and feet were discovered in the dumpster. Now moving on to those interesting GNR related events:

1 – With Newton’s head and feet either sitting in the dumpster behind Studio 56, or about to be deposited there, Axl Rose was getting into an altercation with a neighbor in his apartment building, in which she accused him of hitting her over the head with a wine bottle (1, 2).

This dust-up with the neighbor, and the general situation leading up to to it, were the inspiration for the Axl penned song Right Next Door to Hell, the opening track on Use Your Illusion I.

2 – Just a few days earlier, according to a Rose interview conducted on the 30th (video below), Rose’s wife Erin Everly (Sweet Child O’ Mine) suffered a miscarriage. In his book Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N’ Roses, Stephen Davis says the miscarriage was on exactly the 29th. Davis can be an entertaining read, but I don’t know how much importance he places on facts.

Strangely enough though, on the front page of the October 29th Times (1,2), there’s a story about miscarriages – scientific advances to prevent them, etc.

Six years later…Can’t help but mention this…

October 31, 1996. With wildfires around the hills of his Malibu home having been extinguished just a day or two prior, Axl fires off a fax to MTV, letting the world know that Slash is no longer a member of Guns N’ Roses.

Wrapping things up, for now anyway….I suspect it indeed WAS the remains of William Arnold Newton that Sorum, Slash et al., have been unknowingly referencing all these years; the real life event that lives on forever in Double Talkin’ Jive. But I might be wrong. I guess the only way to know for sure would be to get those police reports.

(Likely) to be continued…

Back to the Future II: The Part Where Biff Likes Incest Porn

We’re likely all familiar with the 1989 hit movie, Back to the Future II.

Marty McFly and Doc. Brown travel to the future – 2015 to be exact (Hey, that’s the same year we live in!). While there, McFly family nemesis Biff Tannen, steals the time machine, goes back to 1955, and gives his younger self a sports almanac, allowing young Biff to place wagers on games, and never lose.

Young Biff does just that. He becomes very rich, and turns into a sort of debauched, power mad overlord of Hill Valley.

The gaudily adorned penthouse apartment atop his casino hotel (“Biff’s Pleasure Palace”), where he lives with Marty’s now breast-augmented mother, is something else.

In this post, we’re going to take a closer at it. There are some interesting things lying around! Specifically: non-fictional, real life, porn VHS tapes!

Click on the images for full-size

Can you read backwards? This is Black Taboo (link nsfw) a 1984 incest themed porn movie. Here’s a zoomed in shot:

Here’s an image of the front and back cover of the original VHS tape. You can see that the font is the same:

Now, this perhaps gets even more interesting when you consider an earlier scene in BTTF II. The scene where Marty goes to what he thinks is his house, and finds that there is a now a Black family living there.

As the father is chasing Marty away, he says “…and you tell that real estate company that we ain’t sellin’, you hear! We ain’t gonna be terrorized!“. As he does, we see that other houses on the block have “BiffCo Realty” for sale signs on them.

So why exactly does Biff want to buy up all the houses? Does he have a motive beyond profit and control? I don’t know. But we do know that he wants the McFly house (where the Black family is now living), and that the Black family does not want to sell. He’s tried, but they ain’t havin’ it.

Now back to Black Taboo. This is the plot summary:

“Sonny Boy” Richardson has finally come home from Vietnam where he has spent the last ten years as a “Missing In Action” statistic. Anxiously awaiting his arrival, are his Mother Veranda; his Father Cleotus; his two sisters Valdesta and Theodora, who were just babies when he went away; his Uncle Elston; and his Uncle’s extremely attractive daughter Samantha. The Richardsons are a very close-knit family, but little do any of them realize just how close they really are until it comes time for them to welcome “Sonny Boy” back into the fold.

Perhaps Biff was browsing for some new porn – saw Black Taboo – remembered the Black family that wouldn’t sell him their house – then bought the movie.

Maybe. I’m going to say “yes”. You can say whatever you want.

Black Taboo is not the only porn Biff has. There are several, but just one more that I can identify. It’s another incest themed porn, and with it too, we can use it’s premise, and apply our speculative powers to fill in more of the BTTF II backstory.

A few different zoomed-in shots. The second one has had the colors tweaked a bit to try and bring out the lettering…

It’s harder to make out than the first one, but I’m fairly certain what we’re looking at is a copy of Playing With Fire (1983) (link nsfw).

Here are the front and back covers of the actual video:

The text on the video box in the shots from BTTF is not 1000% clear. It looks like it says “Playing With Fire” though, doesn’t it? Also, the colors (yellow lettering on a blue background) match up, as does the font. It has to be it.

A summary:

Acclaimed director Kirdy Stevens, creator of the Taboo series, does it again. In PLAYING WITH FIRE the subject is step-daughters. See what happens when Catherine (long-legged Cynthia Taylor) marries stud Danny (Randy West) and their teenage offspring get obsessed with wicked thoughts.

So…Biff, after killing George McFly, marries Lorraine and becomes step-dad to her children. Marty, Dave and Linda. On another trip to the adult video store, he sees Playing With Fire and is like “Hey, that’s hot! I wonder if Linda would ever…“

Did someone who worked on BTTF II (the set designer, or whoever) know the plots of these porn flicks? Or, while decorating Biff’s pad, where they just like “Hey, we should put out some porn movies!” (which is interesting in itself), and the ones they picked just happened to be somewhat congruent with what Biff’s character might be into?

It’s interesting either way, I think.

Why Soundgarden’s video for Black Hole Sun is even weirder than you thought – Part 3: Salamanders and the Czech Connection

So. Pool-babe.

On the surface level, the character of pool-babe fits in with the video’s theme of vanity and superficiality. There’s a fake, plastic-y vibe about her. She’s almost too perfect – like a barbie doll. She’s relaxing by a pool, perhaps working on a tan. And as we saw in part 2, lying next to her are bodybuilding magazines filled with more people, who like her, are obsessed with their physical appearance.

Then rather suddenly, revealing a lizard-like tongue, she snags a bug out of the air.

I believe we are meant to see pool-babe, in part, as a salamander. The very long tongue, and using said tongue to grab food, seems to be more of a amphibian thing, than a lizard (which is a reptile) thing.

An ectothermic (“cold blooded”) organism (like the salamander) is an organism that relies primarily on it’s external surroundings to regulate it’s body temperature.

For some ectotherms, a perfect “home” might be a big rock that gets lots of sun exposure, right next to a pond, right next to a bluff of trees for shade…

No visible shade, but you get the idea. And yes, that appears to be a heat lamp.

Pool-babe, ice-cream-girl, and the Barbie on the barbie. There’s a message here, obviously. A connection. Maybe ice-cream girl is burning pool-babe, in effigy. Setting her dolly on fire in a rebellious act against the ideals of pool-babe? That seems reasonable, and may be a part of what we are supposed to grok…but, I think there’s more to it than that.

The salamander is an amphibian of the order Urodela which, as with many real creatures, often has been ascribed fantastic and sometimes occult qualities by pre-modern authors (as in the allegorical descriptions of animals in medieval bestiaries) not possessed by the real organism. The legendary salamander is often depicted as a typical salamander in shape, with a lizard-like form, but is usually ascribed an affinity with fire, sometimes specifically elemental fire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamanders_in_folklore_and_legend

—-

The third group of elementals is the salamanders, or spirits of fire, who live in that attenuated, spiritual ether which is the invisible fire element of Nature. Without them material fire cannot exist; a match cannot be struck nor will flint and steel give off their spark without the assistance of a salamander, who immediately appears (so the mediæval mystics believed), evoked by friction. Man is unable to communicate successfully with the salamanders, owing to the fiery element in which they dwell, for everything is resolved to ashes that comes into their presence.

The Secret Teachings of All Ages – Manly P. Hall.

In Part 1, we took note of the obvious suggestiveness of ice-cream-girl, and beard-man’s seeming preference for her, over braces-girl.

Now, the salamander connection:

The association of the salamander with fire appeared first in Ancient Greece, where Pliny the Elder writes in his Natural History that “A salamander is so cold that it puts out fire on contact. It vomits from its mouth a milky liquid; if this liquid touches any part of the human body it causes all the hair to fall off, and the skin to change color and break out in a rash.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamander#Myth_and_legend

In reality, many Salamanders DO emit a white, sticky substance when threatened.

Because salamanders can be an important food source for many reptiles, birds, and mammals, it is not surprising that they have defense mechanisms to help them avoid predators. Most salamanders produce sticky, distasteful, or poisonous skin secretions that deter these predators. The slimy salamander (Plethodon glutinosus) is well known for smearing attackers with a sticky secretion, and the large tail of the tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) can flip harmful secretions onto a predator’s face.

https://www.dnr.illinois.gov/education/Pages/WASalamanders.aspx

Let’s refocus for a moment. What we are really trying to do here is figure out what the connection is between the hidden audio in the video, and the video itself.

Is the hidden audio indeed from a kid’s TV show? If so, why? What show? Was it a real show? What is being said?

In my research, I spent some time looking at Howard Greenhalgh, the video’s director. The band has stated that the video was all his idea. So maybe clues can be found in his other work, his background, his stated beliefs and opinions, etc. etc. But, nothing much of anything came up, and certainly nothing connecting him with a children’s TV show.

So who else worked on the video?

A guy named Ivan Bartos ‘shot’ the video (according to wikipedia). The Music Video Database, has his as the sole name under ‘photography’. Presumably this amounts to his being more than merely a camera operator. Perhaps his input was not just limited to how things were shot. Maybe he had some say over what was shot?

He has roots in Czechoslovakia, which connects my earlier idea of an eastern european influence/tinge on things.

He has a background in cinematography, special effects, and…children’s TV.

His work in children’s TV seems to have often been with a woman named Hannah Kodicek. An actor, author, puppeteer, and creator of several kids shows. He even illustrated her children’s books.

Kodicek, at one stage of her life, had a nickname, or, at least a name she went by online.

The nickname? Salamander.

…to be continued.

Why Soundgarden’s video for Black Hole Sun is even weirder than you thought – PART 2: More Adventures in Pareidolia

In Part 1, impelled by the discovery of previously unheard audio content (posted below), we began a close, slightly paranoid investigation into Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun music video.

None of what follows will make any sense without reading Part 1 first, so be sure to do that.

Also, if you’re unfamiliar with the video itself, it is posted below. There are different versions of the video (all “official”) – the nuances of which, and a brief explanation behind their existence, can be found in Part 1.

The “Mystery Voices”:

Let’s begin.

In Part 1, we took note of a slightly creeping painting(?) hanging on a wall.

I haven’t been able to find out more about it – who made it – or where it comes from – but I’ve since noticed another shot of it, from a different spot in the video. A short, half-second shot @3:49. The shot only appears in the 2nd version of the video.

Note the giant decorative key to the right.

Is there information in, or about the painting/image, that will unlock…something? Is the painting/image key?

But again, just who made this image? Reverse image searches reveal nothing.

Margaret Keane is a well known artist who is famous for her big-eyed (sometimes black-eyed) images of children (often girls). She was popular in the 1960’s, which would fit in to what may be the intended setting of the Black Hole Sun Video (the wardrobes and interior design seem to be indicating this). But, the eyes in our image are more alien/slit-like.

More alien talk shortly.

Let’s turn our attention to lizard-tongue-pool-babe for a moment. What is she reading? Magazines? Let’s find out!

Cropping, rotating, and zooming in…

A bodybuilder?

There’s another shot later, with what looks to be a different magazine on top of the pile.

Another bodybuilder? Must be bodybuilding magazines. That’s some high attention to detail. It fits in with the theme of vainness, and more directly, with push-up-bodybuilder-guy and lipstick-vibration-excercise-equipment-woman.

Speaking of which:

What is that on the left, on the bed?

A sex doll? An alien corpse?

Another couple of shots from different frames:

This shot reveals…ears? Neck-bolts?

This next one may very well be completely unintentional, and it is completely subjective. If you’re reading this blog though, hopefully you don’t let little niggles like that diminish the importance you might apply to it.

What’s that in the window?

Moving on, let’s look at this very short segment. Companion of dog-make-out-lady, hair-combing-guy, getting sucked into the black hole vortex.

Click on image for the html5 gif

The man, and a spiral of…junk…or something, is in motion, but notice the buildings and houses that are stationary, which are most visible on the perimeter of the frame.

Is this a real aerial shot of a real neighborhood? It kind of looks like a miniature scale model, which are often used as special effects in film and video production.

But either way, the architecture is interesting. Weird jangly and jutting lines. Some Spanish Colonial looking stuff (I had to look that up) – like the domed building on the middle far right. A steeple. A spire. And only really apparent in the gif: a sort of sunken in park or courtyard in the middle.

Now let’s really get wild and crazy. Are the shards of ‘junk’ accompanying hair-combing-guy into the black hole just that? Just bits of cgi nothingness? Or might they be something else? Enhance!

Take a few moments to gaze and let your brain do what it wants.

Now, zooming in on the area within the yellow rectangle…

Now a different shot…

zooming in…

Let’s do one more…

looking closer…

What did you see? What! That’s sick. I guess Rorschach tests really do work. Or, something else is going on.

Finally, for this installment, let’s go back to those buildings in the gif – that architecture. Why the church-y looking buildings? Why that configuration? If it’s a real, physical location, or a scale model, someone designed it; it came from the brain of someone either way.

This really isn’t that interesting, and is just barely noteworthy, but I see connections to Russia or Eastern Europe, for reasons solely based on the following images:

Looking at the doll…

That red on the cheeks…is that a purely Russian, Ukrainian or Eastern European thing? Or do you see this sort of imagery/art style in the West too?

Looking at the opening few shots of the video (click on the image for the html5, fast loading gif)…

…the terrain is very unique. Is this a real place somewhere? It’s like another planet.

Dog-make-out-woman has a kinda Eastern Europe/circus performer vibe, not that the two are connected. What’s with the eyebrows shaved in half?

And finally, primary religious posse member, “I think symbolic cum gurgling pre-teen girl is way hotter than braces-girl”, hereby dubbed: “Beard Man”.

He’s got the beard. Sort of Russian Orthodox-y. There’s also the obvious Jewish Rabbi possibility, which kind of makes sense if you notice there’s a Catholic looking guy, and maybe a Baptist/Evangelical guy (the one in the white suit); I’m not sure what purple-suit-man would be in this arrangement.

But then you see that he’s wearing a crucifix, just like the other three. So who knows.

That’s all for now.

…to be continued.

Why Soundgarden’s video for Black Hole Sun is even weirder than you thought.

It’s perhaps the strangest music video of all time.

The common understanding seems to be that it’s about bunch of easily hoodwinked, superficial suburbanites going about their day, unaware till the very end that they’re about to reap what they’ve sown. A satire on modern existence…or something.

I think that’s all very boring and clichéd. Two things that the video most definitely is not.

I don’t know if the band, or director Howard Greenhalgh were consciously trying to convey anything. Sometimes in life, dots of information will connect and there’s no apparent reason for them to. Nor was there any intent by any party to put certain dots in certain places. No overarching “message” someone was trying to get across.

But, it’s worth mentioning that the idea of obscuring messages and making the audience do at least a little work, is not an idea entirely foreign to Cornell and the band.

It’s widely known that The Beatles were a big influence on the lead singer, and writer of the song.

“When I was maybe nine years old, I listened to the entire Beatles catalogue, non-stop, for about a year.” http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2005/09/30/pf-1242978.html

The Beatles, in their song “Rain”, famously included a section of backmasked vocals. On their track “665”, Soundgarden did something very similar.

Anyway, let’s get cookin’ on this…and put another Barbie on the barbie.

It may come as a surprise to know that there are actually two versions of the video.*

Why this is, is not entirely clear. The second version has more, and more sophisticated, special effects. Perhaps MTV was in a hurry to put the video into rotation, and thus went with the rough cut until the “final” version was complete.

Some have wondered if the second version, with its added effects, bumped the surrealness factor up a little too high and so MTV decided to play it only at night, while saving the original cut for the daytime. But as far as I can tell, this is just speculation.

What I do know, and what led me to investigate all this in the first place, is that the second version contains for lack of a better term, hidden “talking”, that is not found in either the first cut of the video, the album track itself, nor the remastered audio version released sixteen years later in 2010.

Alright, so just what is going on here?

I think that the hidden voices come from a children’s television show that, in between live action segments, played cartoons. The first section is from a cartoon. The section at the end, is a live action segment of the host and the studio audience.

If there is indeed a bit of an actual mystery to the Black Hole Sun video, maybe it can be uncovered by figuring out what is being said in the first clip, and the origins of both.

I don’t know why, but I feel that this picture on the wall…

..and the person on the couch wearing a cat suit, playing with the tail, might be clues.

But why a children’s show?

Could it have something to do with ‘bearded rabbi looking guy’ beckoning over ‘jump rope and braces girl’, and overtly suggestive ‘ice cream/ejaculate girl’?

Click on the images for HQ, bandwidth optimized gifs.

Note the increased excitement on his face for ice cream girl:

Sexual taboos are a theme. Here we have ‘dog make out woman’:

And finally (for now) we have Cornell’s t-shirt. It looks to be the logo of comic book hero The Punisher, albeit with the bottom section missing. That is until you notice that the necklace Cornell is wearing, a twisted kitchen fork given to him by the late Shannon Hoon, is draped over the shirt in such a way as to almost perfectly recreate the logo.

The significance being (perhaps) that in the comics, pedophiles were frequent recipients of the Punisher’s wrath.

…to be continued.

Notes:

*There might actually be three. The third version is like version one, except it has the “1-800-TRUTH” text removed from the TV the man is watching – just like version two. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31wDXDvqVNU

Pee-Wee’s Playhouse – Innuendo-dex

Part Uno:

It’s an innuendo overflow. Part Dos: