One of my pet peeves, as they say, or most annoying facets of human behavior, is what I call the “drive-by”, or instant expert. It is, frankly, infuriating to spend hours trying to understand photo trickery, as seen above, and then to be told by someone only glancing at the same photo that I am all wrong about it. Karen Carpenter is an amazing drummer/singer who supposedly died in 1983 after having run, with her brother, an amazing string of hits. In this photo I suggested she had her head placed on the body of a marathon runner or some such thing. I thought the red and white top looked like a jersey, and anyway, why the placard saying “1”?
No, I was told, the clothing is a chiffon dress, and the award is some sort of musical thing. OK, fine. I don’t know about such matters, and that was not the point. Two things were going on: Karen was being retired from music, and she was said to be suffering from anorexia nervosa. That was a thing back in the 1980s and thousands of young girls were said to be in jeopardy, one more thing for parents to worry about.
I met with some guys in 2016 in Taos, New Mexico, and we discussed photo fakes at great length. I had this photo in mind, and passed it around the room for viewing on my iPad. The man who hosted the gathering looked at it, and asked us to take one more look. Then he talked about perspective. You have to gaze at this photo for a while, but it will sink in. While the two bodies are seemingly two feet apart, the hands are nearly touching. But Karen’s head and that of the other person holding the trophy seem far more distant. The woman smiling and looking off to the right (our perspective) seems more like four or five feet away, while Karen’s head is very close to us.
That is a sign of a fake photo. The other matter is the red arrow I inserted, the sharp line under the chin separating it from the body. The skin tone of the head is different, and the head does not belong on that body. It is too big. Karen’s head was superimposed on another body. They must have looked hard for a body to use, one that seemed under-sized, which is why I initially thought marathon, or track, where women athletes can be very small in size, even unhealthy. Since they were pushing anorexia as Karen’s cause of death, I concluded they had chosen the most depleted body they could find for a new head.
There are other photos of Karen around that look as grotesque as this one. Seek them out for yourself, be your own judge. They are all fake. Karen did not die in 1983. She is still alive somewhere. She was retired from music. Why? We discussed this at length, and it is important to understand that while musical talent is abundant, musical fame is handed out only to selected performers. The type of music that is in vogue is allowed by power of suggestion. It is a tribal drumbeat used to control the masses, and Karen and Richard Carpenter, with their silky soft pop romantic songs did not fit. Karen had an amazing voice, and naturally became a sensation, and so had to be retired young to make room for grunge and heavy metal and whatever other perversion would follow.
So it’s been seven years now since that meeting in Taos, and a lot of research and thinking behind my contention that this and other photos of Karen around the time she left the scene were fake, and that Karen was sent packing with an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) and lifetime wealth with the understanding that she never again appear in public. How painful for her! She was in perfect health. At one time (she and I are one-month apart in age) I found, using a search engine, that there was a Karen Carpenter living in Fort Myers, Florida, who was my age. I thought if we could get a hold of that driver’s license we could find her height, 5’5″. She was very small in size, another reason to suspect the photo above. No such luck.
Do you see all the work and thought that goes into this? Miles Mathis wrote about her fake death in 2016, not too long after our gathering. I wrote about her too in 2021, but his piece was more thorough. I am still troubled by her departure, and have quite a few of her and Richard’s songs on my Iphone. (Richard Carpenter is as talented, but had to take a back seat to her voice.)
Along comes a guy, a Brit whose name will not be mentioned, who glances at the photo atop this post and declares that I am wrong about everything. That is what I set down to write about. The instant expert. I am not going to allow it anymore.
This is a montage of photos gathered from various sources, the top three Mike McCartney, currently known as Paul or Macca, and the bottom being original Paul, who made a brief appearance some years back as John Halliday. I have spent tons of hours and have built up a lot of sweat equity in this project, and have instant recognition of the McCartney twins as a result. I am not going into it here again, so please relax. Again along came the Brit whose name will not be mentioned to tell me I am wrong about there being twins, about Halliday, and about Paul and Mike even as I can clearly see two people.
This person was convinced that Paul (the lower middle photo) had died in 1966 and was replaced by a character called “Billy Shears”. There is a book out there to that effect, and it is nothing more than a shiny steaming pile of bullshit. But take note: The book came from the same place as the Beatles themselves, a project backed by some of the most talented artists and musicians of the 1960s, and whose names were not John, Paul, Ringo and George. What catches my interest is this: When Intel wants to capture the public mind, they capture it and hold it. Their resources are unlimited, and the public is utterly naive and suggestible. Whatever fanciful tale they spout, it sticks. There is a guy, Mike Williams, the “Sage of Quay” who is relentlessly pushing Billy Shears. Why? Is he a hire, or just stupid? I do not know.
New rule: I’ve been doing this sort of work for years, and find instant experts who happen by and so quickly know me to be wrong about this or that to be infuriating. I am not going to allow it anymore. If by chance you think me wrong about Karen or Paul or Mike or anything else I have advanced (and there are hundreds of posts and projects I have done) I won’t chase you away or delete your thoughts if you do the following:
- Replicate my work. I don’t care how you do it. You don’t have to do face splits, as I do. There are apps out there that achieve the same purpose, though I have never found one that works as well as my chops. You can use any technique that you like. Ideally, in the attempt to replicate what I do, you show me to be wrong in my conclusions. Then we can talk. (It is not easy, and takes time, effort and judgement no matter your course of action. It takes some substantial work on your part.)
- Falsify. This is the essence of scientific inquiry. Anything done that cannot be falsified is either accepted science or pseudoscience. What I do is not accepted by any save one or two people, and me. As I told that annoying Brit who happened by and ridiculed both me and my work, I stand alone in this field, I believe in myself and my product. I am possessed of moral courage, which means that while I care what other people might think, I cannot let it change my judgment. I stand by it.
I’m not going to take it no more. I am not going to let people who drive by, glance, and then shoot at me to have the floor any more. I won’t ban you, as I don’t like doing that to people.
But your comments will disappear, along with a suggestion that you fuck off.
Piece of Mindful 
“It is important to understand that while musical talent is abundant, musical fame is handed out only to selected performers. The type of music that is in vogue is allowed by power of suggestion. It is a tribal drumbeat used to control the masses.”
Very well explained.
“Karen had an amazing voice, and naturally became a sensation, and so had to be retired young to make room for grunge and heavy metal and whatever other perversion would follow.”
I think they first used disco / Donna Summer / reinvented Diana Ross to bench Karen to the sidelines. Then when it was time, even before heavy metal and grunge (and rap, hip-hop…), to full-court press us with the (eventual-)sub-music and (eventual-)degeneracy of Prince, George Michael, Michael Jackson, and especially Madonna, they put Karen out to pasture.
P.S. Awesome McCartneys analyses!
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You know A.D. I’m a rocker, but somehow Mark and I agree that Paul & Art were magical. I have a large appreciative repertoire. I get tired of those that lump all more current music and musicians (not all are talentless hacks on the dole) into the very large cesspool of depravity. I am able to set aside any controlling affects and negative associated attributes of Prince, for example, and listen to whomever is playing that guitar and singing. YES, trash abounds. If you do not like the general genre, fine, but try his Purple Rain title song, if you can bear it. Scott Weiland, heroin and all, is a fine, emotional, hurting and beautiful singer out front of Stone Temple Pilots… there are DOZENS producing soul-searching lyrics and heartfelt wonderful LOUD AND POWERFUL music. Throw away the negative, and keep the positive… yes?
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Long before I fell deep down the rabbit hole of how thoroughly and insidiously we are deceived, I came across a picture of Amelia Earhart with her flight navigator, Frank Noonan, that was so obviously fake, I thought it must have been an early attempt at photo “illustration” of the type now commonly accepted in “news” magazines and websites. The badly pasted-together photo purports to show Amelia and Frank holding a map of her fateful last flight. I’ve never seen anyone in our community call out the fakery of this photo, which is so egregrious that it attracted the attention of my then-unwary and easy-to-fool eye. Check it out:
https://abc7ny.com/amelia-earhart-aviation-mystery-fred-noonan-around-the-world/372749/
Those hands! Lol!
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Is this the photo you refer to? Please take us through what makes it fake, in your eyes.
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Yes. The first thing stands out is how dark Amelia’s left and arm and Frank’s right arm are compared to the rest of the photo. Amelia’s left hand is especially jarring, since its shadows do not match up with the lighter area of the paper it is supposed to be touching. Once my eye is drawn to that, I realize that none of the hands are actually holding the paper or pressing it against the airplane. The paper should have creases and indentations as a result of being held up. The fingers of Frank’s right hand are curled in a way that does not conform to the angle, perspective or circumfurence of the rolled-up section of map it is meant to be securing. Additionally, that hand’s position looks completely unnatural. Better eyes than mine could no doubt spot subtler problems, but those are the glaringly obvious ones to me.
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Oh, I suppose I should also note the lack of shadow underneath the map, especially on Frank’s side. When you look at the shadow under Frank’s left arm, it seems obvious that the map should be casting a shadow as well, since the underside is raised up away from the airplane, but there is no shadow.
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That black effect is interesting. A commenter pointed it out on a photo of Barbara Walters I used, an entire leg blackened in this manner. I don’t have an explanation.
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Also, look at Amelia’s neck–how most of it matches the lighting and skin tone of her face, but it suddenly gets blackened in the back in a way that isn’t justified by shadows at all. Her head is pasted on to another body. And Noonan’s is, too. It’s a little less obvious because the collar of his shirt covers it, but his head looks way too big for his body and the positioning is weird. It has taken me a while to notice these things because those hands–all four of them–are so glaringly fake that it distracts me from seeing all the other evidence of fakery.
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Thanks for inviting me to put my problems with the pic into words. Identifying specific problems (and reading specific problems others may see) sharpens me, I like to think.
That right hand of Noonan’s, in addition to being lit all wrong, looks like it’s resting on something substantial rather than holding or pressing against paper, don’t you think? It also looks like the body attached to it should be in a completely different position than the one Noonan is standing in.
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Well said Mark.
For a start we all should ask ourselves why are almost all celebrity photos fake, and from there everyone can make their own conclusions after some research and analysis of the material available on the internet or old magazines that many libraries keep in their archives.
Scott is right about the Amelia Earhart photo. I’ve seen it before but overlooked it, and now looking at it closely, I can tell he’s right about the hands, they look absolutely ridiculous, and the pristine state of the map that should at least look creased or cut in the angles- mine back in the pre google map days used to end up being all torn and dirty- but it doesn’t. It’s as good as new, which it’s strange.
The Karen photo on top is even more ridiculous. The proportions between the two women are all wrong, one is wearing a dress and the other a sport suit, they’re looking in different directions, Karen’s head is way too big for the body, I mean anyone with a working neuron can tell it’s as fake as a 3 dollar bill.
What professional photographer would take such a ludicrous picture where they can’t even get both girls to pose for the camera?
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Also, it appears that Noonan is holding the paper down with the middle finger of his left hand. Perhaps that is a big “fuck you” to The Masses who he thinks all believe everything they see?
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Elaine, ha, I noticed that to. The way the hand is so tightly clenched and the position of the middle finger, it seems like he’s poking the map rather forcefully… yet the map is just floating there without a dent or a crease.
I did a search of other images of Earhart with Noonan. Most of them appear to be paste-ups, some of them as obvious as this one. Weird.
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Story goes Amelia was gore vidal’s father’s side piece. Gore also shared a stepdad with Jackie o of course.
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DSKLAUSER: Did I mention Simon & Garfunkel somewhere?
Also, I called-out the “(eventual-)degeneracy” of Prince et al. I said nothing about the songwriting or performances or whatever else you’re trying to scold me about.
I like much of the early work of Nelson, Panayiotou, Jackson, and Ciccone. But they were all clearly major players in a massive psy-op.
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