http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjAflu2aWO4&feature=youtu.be&t=38s

True. Apart from the Michael Jackson bit.

— By Akira The Don on Friday, April 20th, 2012

I’m going to LA next month too, woo-eeh!

— By Akira The Don on Friday, April 20th, 2012

Not as definitive as the title suggests, but dope regardless.

I humbly suggest this to be the real deal.

— By Akira The Don on Friday, April 20th, 2012

Jail then, for the Scorned Woman who nicked a load of Len’s dough while he was up a mountain drinking whiskey with his guru. Personally I am very thankful to this crazy lady, as she forced Len out of retirement which meant I got to see him play live three times, once in a castle in Scotland. And he seemed to be having a wonderful time also. Everything in its place.

From Pitchfork:

Last week, Leonard Cohen‘s former business manager was found guilty by a Los Angeles court of harassing the 77-year old singer. Kelley Lynch had violated restraining orders, and deluged Cohen with a litany of threatening emails and phone calls. The Guardian reports that Lynch has now been sentenced to 18 months in prison, five years’ probation, and is banned from owning weapons for the next 10 years. She will also be subject to a psychological evaluation at the end of next year.

According to the Guardian, Cohen said, “It gives me no pleasure to see my one-time friend shackled to a chair in a court of law, her considerable gifts bent to the service of darkness, deceit and revenge… I want to thank the defendant Ms Kelley Lynch for insisting on a jury trial, thus exposing to the light of day her massive depletion of my retirement savings and yearly earnings, and allowing the court to observe her profoundly unwholesome, obscene and relentless strategies to escape the consequences of her wrongdoing.

He continued, “It is my prayer that Ms Lynch will take refuge in the wisdom of her religion. That a spirit of understanding will convert her heart from hatred to remorse, from anger to kindness, from the deadly intoxication of revenge to the lowly practices of self-reform.”

For her part, Lynch admitted, “I do believe that I have engaged in excessive and unauthorised rambling,” according to the Guardian.

Judge Robert C. Vanderet stated, “No person should be subject to that kind of targeting by anyone.”

Watch the video for Cohen’s “Show Me the Place” below:

— By Akira The Don on Thursday, April 19th, 2012

From Disinfo:

Introducing my hero. The retired ex-photographer lives, naked and alone, on Sotobanari island, cut off from the rest of the world by typhoons and dangerous currents. Reuters has photos and philosophy from a man forging his own lifestyle:

76-year-old Masafumi Nagasaki has made this kidney-shaped island in Japan’s tropical Okinawa prefecture his retirement home. He braves lashing typhoons and biting insects as a hermit in the buff. “I don’t do what society tells me, but I do follow the rules of the natural world. You can’t beat nature so you just have to obey it completely,” he said.

The wiry Nagasaki, his skin leathered by the sun of two decades on the island, worked briefly as a photographer before spending years on the murkier side of the entertainment industry. When retirement came, he wanted to get far away from it all.

He chose Sotobanari, which is roughly a 1,000 meters across and means “Outer Distant island” in the local dialect. It lies off the coast of Iriomote island, far closer to Taiwan than to Tokyo.

His staple food is rice cakes, which he boils in water, eating whenever hunger strikes – sometimes four or five times a day. Water for bathing and shaving comes from rainwater caught in a system of battered cooking pots. Each day is conducted according to a strict timetable, starting with stretches in the sun on the beach. The rest is a race against time as he prepares food, washes and cleans his camp before the light fails and insects come out to bite.

“It hadn’t really occurred to me before how important it is to choose the place of your death, like whether it’s in a hospital or at home with family by your side. But to die here, surrounded by nature – you just can’t beat it, can you?”

— By Akira The Don on Thursday, April 19th, 2012

This shit is FLY.

— By Akira The Don on Wednesday, April 18th, 2012