34th & Springarden, 2:14 PM today, by DAVID BROWN

So we just caught Reggie Watts‘ Comedy Central special while absently flipping thru the Box Of Lies over the weekend and our first reaction was that somebody must have put angel dust in our dime bag and it was only a matter of time before we’d be naked, sweating, handcuffed and kicking out the back window of a cop car. First there’s the hair, which can only be described as mid-70s Wooly Mammoth. Then there’s the look — like he covered himself in honey and shot himself out of a cannon through the wardrobe closet of Santa’s elves. Finally, there is his act which best be described as ‘There’s a Frank Zappa party in Stevie Wonders’ mouth, and everyone’s invited.’ He’s performing at the Trocadero on Saturday and we have a pair of tickets to give away to the first lucky Phawker reader to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the words REGGIE WATTS MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I’M HIGH ON POT in the subject. That should weed out the pussies. Please include a mobile number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed!

When writer Florence Williams was nursing her second child, she read a research study about toxins found in human breast milk. She decided to test her own breast milk and shipped a sample to a lab in Germany. What came back surprised her. Trace amounts of pesticides, dioxin and a jet fuel ingredient — as well as high to average levels of flame retardants — were all found in her breast milk. How could something like this happen? “It turns out that our breasts are almost like sponges, the way they can soak up some of these chemicals, especially the ones that are fat-loving — the ones [that] tend to accumulate in fat tissue,” Williams tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “Unfortunately, the breast is also masterful at converting these molecules into food in the way of breast milk.” Learning that breasts soak up lots of chemicals made Williams wonder just what else was going on with breasts. A lot, as it turns out. In her new book, Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, Williams offers her take on — among other things — why breasts are getting bigger and developing earlier, why tumors seem to gravitate toward the breast, and how toxins from the environment may be affecting hormones and breast development. MORE

RADIO TIMES

Combat advisors have been vital actors in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as they train indigenous security forces to fight their own conflicts. Our guest, OWEN WEST, a third-generation Marine, says military advising is a task many generals don’t understand, as he led a small group of U.S. reservists, Marines and Iraqi soldiers in 2006-2007, in the city of Khalidya, in the Anbar Province, during a particularly violent peak in the Iraq War. The Ivy League-educated West served two tours in Iraq on leaves-of-absence from his energy-trading job at Goldman Sachs to fight with and train these troops with a varied background of military training. Owen’s personal account of this mission is his third book, “The Snake Eaters,” and his first work of nonfiction.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: That portrait of Lynn drawn from his grand jury testimony — an innocent, inexperienced priest thrust into a job that required the training of a lawyer, detective and psychologist — has been a mainstay of his defense in the landmark Common Pleas Court trial in which he accused of enabling pedophile priests to continue to prey on children. City prosecutors today continued trying to undercut that portrait using documents from the church’s Secret Archives on abusive priests that were turned over to prosecutors in February on the eve of the trial. A 2002 memo from Bishop Joseph Cistone to Lynn, introduced by Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington, refers to the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the church’s lobbying arm in Harrisburg, and its effort to prevent the legislature from extending the deadline for purported victims of sexual abuse by priests to file lawsuits against the church. A 1994 memo calls to Lynn’s attention the special committee created by Bevilacqua and other Pennsylvania prelates trying to come up with ways to safeguard Secret Archives documents from being subpoenaed for use in civil lawsuits filed by victims of clergy sexual abuse. The documents introduced by Blessington were part of a cache of papers — including a list of pedophile priests compiled by Lynn in 1994 — that Archdiocesan lawyers say were shredded on Bevilacqua’s orders. Lynn himself described the list and documents to the grand jury eight years ago but testified that he was unable to find them. MORE

Sparks Street, Olney, Monday night, by JOE KACZMAREK

DAILY NEWS: IN A CITY where justice frequently is thwarted by a no-snitching culture, Rodney Ramseur did what others are too scared or too heartless to do: He spoke up and told what he allegedly saw, fingering a former friend at a court hearing last week as the gunman who shot a neighbor in 2010. But Monday night, someone gunned down Ramseur and his girlfriend as they sat in a springtime drizzle on the porch of his Olney home. Now, police are probing whether a retaliation-minded murderer targeted Ramseur for his role in helping authorities prosecute the neighbor’s slaying. “He was only outside 10 minutes. Somebody had to be waiting for him,” his stepfather, Christopher Hyman, 44, said Tuesday morning, as friends and relatives gathered to grieve at the family’s home at 3rd and Sparks streets. Hyman was inside watching basketball on TV when he heard the explosion of gunfire outside just before 8:30 p.m. Monday. He ran outside to discover Ramseur and girlfriend Latia Jones, both 21, shot multiple times in the head and chest. MORE

We sure hope so. He is easily the second or third most interesting man in the world. He’s so funny he makes milk shoot out of his own nose. He’s the kind of the kind of guy you see at a bar and then turn to the barkeep and say ‘I’ll have what he’s having.’ And the barkeep is like ‘It’s peyote.’ And then you’re like, ‘Bring it, motherfucker.’ And the next thing you know you’re standing on the infinite plain of some Salavador Dali painting littered with burning giraffes and melting clocks and a space coyote with the voice of Johnny Cash is your spirit guide.

NEWSWORKS: It wasn’t that long ago that the term “bioethics” wasn’t well known. But more than any other American scientist, Dr. Arthur Caplan has been credited for bringing this somewhat abstract intersection of philosophy and medicine into to the public discourse. After founding the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics, Caplan is now taking his expertise to New York University. Caplan’s office at 36th and Market streets looks eerily neat: no piles of folders in corners, only a few book in shelves that were once filled to capacity, no photos or awards. It’s all packed away. All this calmness is a stark contrast to the energetic and passionate Caplan. A whole universe of ideas and questions flows effortlessly out of his mouth. It’s this ability to bring clarity to controversial issues that has made him the voice of bioethics in the media. “One of the things I’ve always felt about bioethics is that it should be an academic enterprise,” he said, “but it should also be a public dialogue. Most of the issues that bioethics addresses influence and touch peoples’ lives either when they vote, when they’re a patient, or when they’re trying to figure out why things cost so much in health care. MORE

RELATED: Caplan is the author or editor of twenty-five books and over 500 papers in refereed journals of medicine, science, philosophy, bioethics and health policy. He has served on a number of national and international committees including as the Chair National Cancer Institute Biobanking Ethics Working Group, the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the United Nations on Human Cloning, the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Department of Health and Human Services on Blood Safety and Availability, a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses, the special advisory committee to the International Olympic Committee on genetics and gene therapy, the ethics committee of the American Society of Gene Therapy, and the special advisory panel to the National Institute of Mental Health on human experimentation on vulnerable subjects. He has consulted with many corporations, not-for-profit organizations and consumer organizations. He is a member of the board of directors of The Keystone Center, the National Center for Policy Research on Women and Families, Octagon, The Franklin Institute, Iron Disorders Foundation and the National Disease Research Interchange. He chaired the advisory committee on bioethics at Glaxo from 2005-8. He is on the food advisory panel for Edelman public relations and co-director of a United Nations/Council of Europe Study on organ trafficking. He writes a regular column on bioethics for MSNBC.com.^[2] He is a frequent guest and commentator on various media outlets. MORE

RELATED: Despite the definitive debunking of a 1998 research paper linking vaccines and Autism that triggered a national anti-vaccination movement, many parents still won’t vaccinate their children, even as the rate of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough continues to rise. American’s mainstream media shares much of the blame for this, according to University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan. He’s director of the University’s Center for Bioethics and a nationally-renowned authority on the moral dilemmas in medicine and health care delivery. Speaking at a recent Global Vaccines 202X symposiumat the Franklin Institute, Caplan charged that mainstream U.S. media companies continue to “promote fringe and fraudulent views about vaccine dangers,” because their editors and producers treat the facts of vaccine safety “as if they were still in dispute, fostering fear and confusion on the part of the public.” “The media has goofed up this story and has done a very poor job,” said Caplan. “It’s as if we were having a debate about the Holocaust and demand that we always have a Holocaust denier to represent the ‘other’ side of the argument.” MORE

ART CAPLAN: Vaccines were the biggest losers in Monday’s GOP presidential candidate’s debate, specifically those that are intended to prevent cervical cancer. Republican hopefuls Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania piled on Texas Gov. Rick Perry about the alleged horror of the government doing what it can to help vaccinate young women. The opponents of front-runner Perry think they have traction on the issue of whether he should have issued an executive order in 2007 mandating that girls entering sixth grade in Texas be vaccinated against cervical cancer. Bachmann, whose presidential dreams hinge on knocking off Perry, has been talking for the past few days about Perry’s irresponsibility in requiring the vaccine: “To have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection …is just flat out wrong,” she said during the debate. On NBC’s TODAY Show Tuesday Bachmann said she was approached by a woman after the debate who said her daughter was harmed by the vaccine. “She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter,” Bachmann told TODAY. Bachmann insists that the only reason Perry would have ordered girls to get this dangerous vaccine is that he was in the pocket of the vaccine’s manufacturer, Merck. Perry did get a $5,000 campaign donation from Merck. But, he responded to Bachmann’s charge of ‘crony capitalism’ by saying that he certainly cannot be bought for a mere $5,000. How much it takes to buy Perry is a different issue. I simply want to rescue the HPV vaccine from harm at the hands of politicians willing to hurt girls to gain political advantage. MORE

BLOOMBERG NEWS: The U.S. House voted to cut food stamps, federal workers’ benefits and other domestic programs to avoid scheduled reductions in defense spending. The chamber today passed, 218-199, a plan to cut about $310 billion in spending to replace automatic defense-spending reductions that lawmakers in both parties agree shouldn’t be allowed to take effect in January. “This plan ensures that we maintain our fiscal discipline and commitment to reducing out-of-control government spending, while making sure our top priority is national security,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican. Democrats lined up against the measure, H.R. 5652, saying it would put too much of the deficit burden on the needy. The proposal goes to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it is doomed to failure. The Republican plan is one that “asks nothing of Mr. Exxon, that asks nothing more of hedge fund managers, but asks those who are most vulnerable in our society to share more pain,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat. No Democrats supported the plan; 16 Republicans opposed it. The automatic spending reductions set to begin in January are triggered by the so-called supercommittee’s failure last year to come up with a plan to reduce the $1.2 trillion federal budget deficit. About $55 billion would be subtracted next year from the Pentagon budget, with an equal amount coming from non- defense programs. MORE

RELATED: It’s no secret more Americans are relying on food stamps, but host Michel Martin looks at why those applying for government aid with master’s and Ph.D degrees have more than doubled in recent years.

RELATED: The U.S. is the world’s largest aerospace and defense market, and also home to the world’s largest military budget. The growth of the Aerospace and Defense industry depends largely on the spending outlook of government departments, with the U.S. defense budget being the primary driver. The industry largely depends on U.S. government contracts. Given the uncertain macroeconomic environment, not just in the U.S. but also globally, the industry faces the risk of fewer new orders as customers are more likely to postpone or cancel contractual orders and/or payments.Defense spending is the major source of revenue for the top nine global aerospace and defense companies, with the US accounting for more than 40% of total global defense spending. MORE

RELATED: In most opinion polls, Americans appear reluctant to cut defence spending. Of course, in most opinion polls Americans appear reluctant to cut everything apart from foreign aid. Despite all of the hand-wringing over the federal budget, the truth is most people don’t have a firm grasp of how their money is spent. [...] Most participants were surprised by the level of America’s defence spending when it was held up against the rest of the discretionary budget, historical levels of spending, and the defence spending of other nations. A previous poll showed similar results—support for defence cuts—when participants were informed about the comparable size of the 31 largest categories in the federal discretionary budget. The potential cuts to the Pentagon contained in last year’s budget deal are actually less than those proposed by the PPC study group on average. So it may seem odd that America’s politicians are now scrambling to avoid those reductions. Instead, Republicans have proposed cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, social services and other programmes for poor Americans, while Democrats have proposed raising taxes on the rich. Few have pushed back against the military spendthrifts, who argue that America would swiftly decline were it to return to the level of funding George Bush laboured under at the end of his peaceable presidency. MORE

RELATED: If Congress doesn’t stop $1 trillion in automatic budget reductions set to begin unrolling in January, Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia will see such dramatic cutbacks that a statewide recession is likely, a public policy expert warned Monday night. Professor Stephen Fuller of George Mason University told more than 500 people at a congressional listening session that the deep cuts, including about $500 billion in defense cuts, would be “devastating,” given that 10 cents of every defense dollar is spent in the commonwealth. “These would be enough to drive the economy into a recession in 2013,” Fuller said, noting that 20 percent of all the jobs in Virginia are dependent on military spending. MORE

RELATED: Even in today’s straitened fiscal climate, with all the talk of government austerity, Congress feels obliged to trump an already generous president by adding yet more money for military appropriations. Ever since the attacks of 9/11, surging defense budgets, forever war, and fear-mongering have become omnipresent features of our national landscape, together with pro-military celebrations that elevate our warriors and warfighters to hero status. In fact, the uneasier Americans grow when it comes to the economy and signs of national decline, the more breathlessly we praise our military and its image of overwhelming power. Neither Obama nor Romney show any sign of challenging this celebratory global “lock and load” mentality. MORE

RELATED: In so many ways, Romney is a blank-slate candidate: He has no strong ideological filter; his issue priorities are determined more or less by poll testing; his policy plans are frequently vague or incomplete, intentionally designed to leave him flexibility to adjust his position down the road. But there’s at least one issue on which he’s made a very clear commitment: defense spending. And he wants it to go up. Way up. The defense budget is already scheduled to increase from current spending levels. Yet Romney wants it to rise higher, faster. In fact, he wants to set a floor for defense spending relative to the size of the economy: Romney says the defense spending should consume at least 4 percent of America’s total GDP. MORE

RELATED: The twenty-first century hasn’t exactly been America’s greatest moment. Still, there remain winners, along with all the losers you might care to mention. If, in fact, you were to sum up the first decade-plus of the next “American Century” in manufacturing terms, you might say that — Steve Jobs aside — this country has mainly been successful at making things that go boom in the night. Start with Hollywood. Its action and superhero films — the very definition of what goes boom in the night — continue to capture eyeballs and dominate global markets in ways that should impress and that have left national movie industries elsewhere in the proverbial dust. And then, of course, there’s that other group of winners, the arms-makers of the military-industrial-homeland-security complex. They’ve had the time of their lives these last boom years (so to speak), with national security budgets soaring annually beyond all imagination.Even now, in the toughest of tough times and despite the headlines about gigantic Defense Department spending cuts, President Obama recently reassured arms-makers (and the rest of us) that the Pentagon budget would, in his words, “still grow, because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership. In fact, the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration.” In response, his Republican opponents lambasted him as weak on defense for promising so little. Which tells you just who the winners of the last decade were and who the winners of the next one are likely to be. MORE

RELATED: Here’s the essence of it: you can trust America’s crème de la crème, the most elevated, responsible people, no matter what weapons, what powers, you put in their hands. No need to constantly look over their shoulders.Placed in the hands of evildoers, those weapons and powers could create a living nightmare; controlled by the best of people, they lead to measured, thoughtful, precise decisions in which bad things are (with rare and understandable exceptions) done only to truly terrible types. In the process, you simply couldn’t be better protected. And in case you were wondering, there is no question who among us are the best, most lawful, moral, ethical, considerate, and judicious people: the officials of our national security state. Trust them implicitly. They will never give you a bum steer. You may be paying a fortune to maintain their world—the 30,000 people hired to listen in on conversations and other communications in this country, the 230,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security, the 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, the 4.2 million with security clearances of one sort or another, the $2 billion, one-million-square-foot data center that the National Security Agency is constructing in Utah, the gigantic $1.8 billion headquarters the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency recently built for its 16,000 employees in the Washington area—but there’s a good reason. That’s what’s needed to make truly elevated, surgically precise decisions about life and death in the service of protecting American interests on this dangerous globe of ours. MORE

GEN. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER: “Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of ploughshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. [...] This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. MORE

RELATED: U.S. Military Spending, 1946–2009

In celebration of Adam Yauch and his iconic contributions to life, music, and independent film, The Awesome Fest & Trocadero Theatre are honored to host a screening of the Beastie Boys concert film, AWESOME; I FUCKIN’ SHOT THAT!, on Thursday, May 17th at The Trocadero Theatre. This a Free, 21+ event with a suggested charitable donation of $5 to an as-yet-to-be-determined benefit of the Yauch family’s choosing. Doors open at 7pm, with the film beginning at 8. The event is general admission with limited seating available. In addition to the screening, there will be a DJ spinning old skool hip-hop before the film, and an anthology of Beastie Boys videos, to follow shortly after the screening. “Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That!” is a 2006 concert film of the Beastie Boys, directed by Adam Yauch. It was created by giving camcorders to 50 audience members of a sold out concert at Madison Square Garden on October 9, 2004.  Advance donations can be made online HERE or in person at the Trocadero box office located at 1003 Arch St. For more information, please visit www.thetroc.com . Donations will also be accepted day of show at event itself.

RELATED: In the teaching of the Buddha, all of us will pass away eventually as a part in the natural process of birth, old-age and death and that we should always keep in mind the impermanence of life. The life that we all cherish and wish to hold on. To Buddhism, however, death is not the end of life, it is merely the end of the body we inhabit in this life, but our spirit will still remain and seek out through the need of attachment, attachment to a new body and new life. Where they will be born is a result of the past and the accumulation of positive and negative action, and the resultant karma (cause and effect) is a result of ones past actions. This would lead to the person to be reborn in one of 6 realms which are; heaven, human beings, Asura, hungry ghost, animal and hell. Realms, according to the severity of ones karmic actions, Buddhists believe however, none of these places are permanent and one does not remain in any place indefinitely. So we can say that in Buddhism, life does not end, merely goes on in other forms that are the result of accumulated karma. Buddhism is a belief that emphasizes the impermanence of lives, including all those beyond the present life. With this in mind we should not fear death as it will lead to rebirth. MORE

Explains a lot. As long time Fresh Air listeners we sorta suspected something like this was going on ‘off mic.’ She’s a little too good to be true if you know what we mean. From This American Life LIVE.

The Wandering gathers five traditionally-minded artists from Memphis and North Mississippi and features the string work of Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars, Black Crowes) and a quartet of distinctive female voices—Shannon McNally, Amy LaVere, Valerie June, and Sharde Thomas, erstwhile leader of the Rising Star Fife and Drum band. A more detailed CV of each member follows below. They perform tomorrow night at The World Cafe. We have a pair of tickets to give away to the first lucky Phawker reader that can tell us what Rolling Stones song Luther Dickinson’s dearly departed father, Jim Dickinson, played piano on. Email your answer to FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the THE WANDERING in the subject line. Please include a mobile number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed!

Luther Dickinson is best known as the lead guitarist and vocalist of the North Mississippi Allstars (NMA), which he formed in 1996 together with his younger brother Cody. As the son of legendary producer, session pianist, and recording artist Jim Dickinson, Luther grew up listening to and playing a wide array of Southern music, something that’s reflected in the broad range of projects that he’s taken on. In addition to his work with the NMA, Luther’s involvement with the unique music of the north Mississippi Hill Country includes producing two albums by Sharde’s grandfather, the late fife legend Otha Turner, and touring with R.L. Burnside. His recent projects include the South Memphis String Band, which also features Jimbo Mathus and Alvin Youngblood Hart, and the Grammy-nominated album Onward and Upward, recorded just days after his father’s passing in 2009.

Shannon McNally was a member of “Sons of Mudboy” band that recorded Onward and Upward, and has been an integral part of the North Mississippi music scene since she relocated to Holly Springs in the wake of Katrina. A native of Long Island, Shannon moved to New Orleans not long after releasing her first album, Jukebox Sparrows, on Capitol Records in the early 2000s. She’s since released multiple albums and has collaborated as a vocalist and songwriter with artists including Dr. John, Charlie Sexton, John Hiatt, Bobby Charles, Dave Alvin, and Son Volt. She worked with Jim Dickinson on her own material, appeared on his album Killers From Space, and recorded her album Windswept Moon at Zebra Ranch. Her most recent album is Western Ballad. Her husband, Wallace Lester, plays drums on three tracks here—Sentimental Blues, In the Pines, and Lovin’ Him was the Easiest Thing

A native of Louisiana, Amy LaVere began fronting an aggressive art-rock/experimental band at 14 in and around Detroit and in the mid-‘90s a move to Nashville inspired her to start playing traditional country and rockabilly slap-style upright bass. She moved to Memphis in 1999, and since 2005 has released three solo albums for Memphis’ Archer Records. Anchors and Anvils, her second album, was produced by Jim Dickinson, whom she credits as “the one who really got me to believe in my own voice.” Amy’s music, albums, performances, and songwriting continue to reflect a broad musical sensibility. Her latest CD, Stranger Me, for instance, includes a cover of a Captain Beefheart song, offbeat instrumentation, and ethereal sounds. As an actress Amy has appeared in films including Black Snake Moan and Walk the Line, in which she played rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson, and, in between a full touring schedule for 2012, will film her second leading role this year in film maker Brian Pera’s Only Child.

Sharde Thomas is the youngest member of the group here, but arguably the one most steeped in traditional music. Her grandfather, Otha Turner, was a legendary figure in north Mississippi’s unique African American fife and drum tradition, whose roots stretch back to before the blues. At Otha’s encouragement Sharde made her first public performance on the fife at age seven at the annual fife and drum picnic and goat roast he hosted in Gravel Springs. Following her grandfather’s death in 2003 Sharde—then just 13—inherited the leadership of the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band. She’s taken the group as far as London and Notodden, Norway, and recently recorded her debut solo CD, What Do I Do?, which includes fife and drum music, blues, and contemporary R&B. On The Wandering Sharde plays the fife on two tracks and a drum kit on many others.

A native of Humboldt, Tennessee, located about ninety miles northeast of Memphis, Valerie June plays what she calls “organic moonshine roots music.” A self-taught performer, she began appearing at regional blues festivals in the mid-2000s, turning heads with her unique mix of country and blues, Medusan tangle of locks, and banjo. She gained broader attention in 2009 when she was featured on the Craig Brewer-directed MTV webisode series $5 Cover, a fictionalized take on the Memphis music scene that also included Amy LaVere. Currently a resident of New York City, Valerie June has recorded with hip-hop artist John Forté and appeared at last year’s Bonnaroo festival together with Dr. John and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, who is coproducing her next album. Her most recent CD is Valerie June & The Tennessee Express, produced by Ketch Secor of the Old Crow Medicine Show and featuring members of that band.

It’s called Centipede HZ. DEVELOPING…

RELATED: At turns disturbing, confusing, disgusting, hilarious, mesmerizing and stone cold beatific, Oddsac is perhaps best explained by clarifying what it is not: it is neither a rock documentary nor a concert film, nor is it the kind of film you would see at the cineplex. There are no stars, no car chases, no dreamy romantic interests who meet cute and live happily ever after. In fact, there is no plot, no linear narrative arc. Instead, there is a series of hallucinatory vignettes: a girl attempting in vain to stanch the flow of black goo oozing out of the walls of her home; a sad-sack vampire (played by AC’s Josh Dibb) slowly disintegrating at sunrise after preying on a young boy; an ominous procession of fire spinners led by a gibberish-spouting demon (played by AC’s Dave Porter); a wigged-out drummer boy (played by AC’s Noah Lennox) maniacally beating on his kit in the middle of an eerie boulder field; a bearded blue-hued muscle man (played by AC’s Brian Weitz) harvesting mysterious eggs from beneath a waterfall; a nuclear family sitting around the camp fire suddenly projectile vomiting foamy marshmallow goo; and it all ends with a food fight. These images are buffered by Perez’s arresting visual abstractions and framed by an untitled set of Animal Collective songs created for the movie. As for the music, Oddsac finds the band continuing to move away from the rhomboidal Fugsian folk-rock of their early albums while eschewing the iridescent dance music of Merriweather. It is a song cycle cued and composed to the visuals, and as such it is both darker and brighter, more heaven and hell, than anything they have released to date. As cinema, Oddsac is nothing short of remarkable—a mind-fucking eyegasm for people who like that kind of thing. As for what it all means, well, you are at odds with the film’s purpose by even asking. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: Back in college, which was longer ago than I care to admit, so let’s just say some time after the Earth cooled but before the Internet, I lived in an old Victorian house that the college owned and subdivided into separate apartments. It was a gathering house for all the freaks and geeks who didn’t quite blend in with the frat-boy-cheerleader-chug-a-lug-date-rape ethos of the main campus. Across the hall my neighbors had set up a de facto commune of 24/7 hacky-sack drum-circling and druggy bird-dogging. Most of the guys living there weren’t even enrolled. They all had sophomoric stoner-rific nicknames — Andy Crack, Stinker, Wild Bill, Bleep — and they all looked like they lived underwater.

Almost nobody knew how to play an instrument, but these guys were gonna start a band. ‘Whatever you say, Hippie Pants,’ I thought to myself. They were gonna call themselves the Gooney Birds after the sheet of primo blotter they’d scored at a recent Dead show. While I went to classes, these guys woodshedded day and night, nourished only by an Evian bottle filled to the brim with liquid LSD. By the end of the semester the bottle was empty and these guys were making some of the most jaw-droppingly mesmerizing folk-based psych I’d ever heard. They sounded like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey looks. Fuck me, I thought. It’s like they mutated a couple steps up the food chain.

I can’t help but think something similar happened to the men of Animal Collective during their formative years. They’ve known each other since high school. They all have stoner-rific nicknames: Panda Bear, Avey Tare, Geologist, Deaken. From the sound of things, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they too had a private stock of that Evian elixir when they first took up instruments. Nine albums into their career, Animal Collective have become a cause celebre among the freak-folk meritocracy, creating some of the most stunningly original and indescribably otherworldly music since, well, the acid hit the punk rock some time around the Meat Puppets’ Up on the Sun and Husker Du’s Flip Your Wig.

When it comes to pedigree, Animal Collective cover their paw tracks with six degrees of sonic separation, mutating sound over and over again until it sounds quite ordinary — if you live on Neptune. And they have two great tricks that can’t be easily dismissed: First, they somehow make music that continues to morph even when it’s set in stone on CD. (I’ve listened to Feels about 18 times, and I swear to God not one nanosecond of it ever sounds the same twice.) Second, their unwavering refusal to be serious is what makes them so profound. – JONATHAN VALANIA

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Horst Faas, who captured several iconic moments during the Vietnam War, died May 10. He was 79. Haas was the chief of The Associated Press’ Southeast Asia bureau from 1962 to 1974, where he covered the fighting and mentored dozens of young photographers who were sent out across Vietnam to capture images of the war’s terror and inhumanity. “There were no bad photographers around,” Faas told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in 1997. “There was nobody who was [in a] second category. There’s no room for mediocre talent in situations like this.” Faas’ own images of wounded U.S. soldiers and a blindfolded Viet Cong suspect helped bring the war into American living rooms. He spent much of his time in Vietnam out in the field, following troops and Vietnamese civilians who were caught in the middle of the conflict. “That means I would go out for five days and then stay in Saigon for five days and play the editor for the others, and then go out myself again and leave another photographer in at the editing desk,” he said. “We took turns. So we all had our experiences there.” It was in Vietnam where Faas was severely wounded by a rocket fragment in 1967. A medic and a tank driver helped load him onto a helicopter, where he was dispatched to a medical facility. “The only decision I made at that time was not to go to Honolulu or New York or anywhere, but to stay in Vietnam,” he said. “One reason being that I had total trust in military surgeons who were dealing with these problems day in, day out. And secondly, I tried to avoid having my legs broken again at the New York head office and being made a photo editor at headquarters, ’cause that would have ended the great days of photography, eh?” MORE

RADIO TIMES

Historian ROBERT CARO published his first book about Lyndon B. Johnson 30 years ago.  Volumes two and three were published in 1990 and 2002 and the fourth volume, “The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” was released several weeks ago.  Caro begins the new book in 1958 as Johnson contemplates a run for the presidency,  takes us through his years as vice president, and concludes with Johnson in the White House as president shepherding through Congress the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legislation that was considered doomed from the start. In this hour of Radio Times, Caro will discuss Johnson’s role in what is considered to be one of the most tumultuous periods of American history, as well as Caro’s own remarkable literary achievements. MORE

[Artwork by DAVE PLUNKERT]