A quick jaunt through the internet’s collection of blogs reveals a sometimes startling trend toward the spartan life; any number of sites dedicated to ridding one’s self of extraneous detritus like so many folds of fat. While I’m not entirely sure that it is singular to the generation of web connected, chic geek types it does seem to have embedded itself deeply in the collective conscious.

One is inundated with a myriad of ways to de-clutter one’s workspace, thereby improving productivity. How-Tos on creating furniture within furniture can be found in innumerable permutations; helping you create Russian nesting doll contraptions that can transform and unfold from bed to sofa to kitchen sink. Thousands of words are dedicated to hollowing out everything you own to mask, disguise, and camouflage the embarrassing traces of your unsightly possessions. Pages and pages and pages dedicated to those wishing to live in vacuous, tidy, Ikea showrooms; their work-spaces lone laptops seated upon vast expanses of desk.

No doubt this is an admirable pursuit, and I have gleaned very helpful information from such laser-like studies of militant organization. Yet, I am much closer to the other end of the spectrum. That is to say that I am more of a hoarder. I collect; I accumulate. Like Pigpen, my very existence draws stuff to it. My dream domicile is almost the antithesis of the sterile, productive space; lined from wall to wall with items and objects. A familial trait, passed down through a successive line of hoarders on both sides, it is firmly entrenched; oblivious to any and all attempts at change.

In that regard I can watch this short film by Martin Hampton and see some of myself in it. These people, surrounded by their things whose meaning and importance is only known and understood by them, is at once comforting and heart wrenching. The most startling realization may be that these individuals know that something is not quite right. They are aware that this is not “normal” and they are trapped by it. It is the idea of the things you own owning you made real.

Photography can serve many functions. One of the most powerful is open up parts of the world we never see, reminding us that they are as viscerally real as our own lives. Humanity’s a huge thing and there are teeming cultures all around us — universes really — that we rarely glimpse from inside. Day by day, it’s amazing how much of it we file away as alien, content to leave it there.

That’s what struck me when I first saw this image of a slit possum splayed out for dinner in a homeless camp. The photo was unidentified, but the reality was jarring. Turned out it was by Mike Brodie, a.k.a. the Polaroid Kidd (thanks to Jonathan Welch for the ID). Brodie left home at 18 to ride the rails, armed at first with only an old Polaroid SX-70. Over the next three years, he proved an amazing photographer, documenting the travels and lives of his fellow squatters and vagabonds.

Brodie’s work has been justly praised, with exhibitions around the world and ecstatic comparisons to Dorothea Lange. However, he seems to have virtually disappeared during the last year: no new exhibitions, website down, the works.

Erik Lyle, a past squatter and rail-rider himself, writes that Brodie’s work provides glimpses of “a sort-of hobo-topia where packs of grubby kids (and dogs!) play music, share food, and forage in the ruins of post-industrial America together, while traveling together from town to town on freight trains and homemade river rafts.”

Yeah, that’s there. But, I also found his pictures — especially the jarring first image I found — to be an effective antidote to romanticizing the homeless. Yes, there’s vitality, fun and even a sense of grandeur here.

Yet a look at the missing teeth, the Mad Dog and the ever-present grime shows us a different side as well. This is still a group that remains nigh-illegal thanks to many a gentry-friendly law, is extremely vulnerable and are often plagued by mental and physical illness. The knife cuts both ways.

More glimpses below. Have a look.

Be it impossible heels, rib-crushing corsets or extremely tight pants, many beautiful items leave us suffering for fashion. While sadistic sartorial contraptions are a thing of the past for most, those of us from thee Darque Side continue to shun comfort and reason in favor of looking really fucking hot. Sadly, “really fucking hot” takes on a sinister literal meaning with the onset of summer. Only the very brave manage to find the strength to maintain their look in the face of nature’s merciless opposition, and Goths In Hot Weather - a new blog dedicated to “celebrating the Sunshine Goth” has noticed.

With events like Bats Day and costumed picnics popping up across the globe, goths are being continuously lured out and into the cruel, cruel sunshine. Alas, what to do but proudly brandish that parasol, cake on the SPF 75 and face the season in all its scorching ice cream and surfboard glory. I’m currently wishing I had a bit of extra time to dig through my photos for a worthy submission. If your moments of summer fashion victory [or defeat] get posted on Goths In Hot Weather, please link to them in the comments section here!

Vaguely related: Look At That Fucking Hipster

A Tibetan Nomad. From National Geographic Vol.175 No. 6 - June 1989

I don’t want to trivialize the difficult complexities of the Tibetan diaspora by saying things like “this guy is cooler than we’ll ever be!” But - just this once, forgive me - this guy is cooler than we’ll ever be. I mean, look at him. He will hack your system, friends. With his mind.

This arresting National Geographic image of a Tibetan nomad on the Riotclitshave photo blog prompted me to search around for more information and images on Tibetan nomads. I found an incredible series of black and white portraits from 2001 taken by Daniel Miller, a story about the Tibetan nomads’ adoption of motorcycles on the NYT, and a great image gallery on BBC. Here are my favorite quotes from the BBC gallery, accompanied by images:

• “Many of my friends have bought motorcycles instead of using horses. They enjoy decorating the cycle with tassels and carpets like we do our horses.”
• “At night, right before bed, we howl into the dark to remind would-be thieves, wolves and local hungry ghosts to stay away from our herds.”
• “We offer butter and yoghurt to the lama. He hasn’t gone to town for years so doesn’t have much use for paper money.”

This unique community continues to dwindle under the Chinese regime. Government policy aims to settle more and more nomads into these faceless-looking settlements, and according to the BBC, the transition to this lifestyle is difficult for most.

We’re reviving Coilhouse Style Vanguard, a column that spotlights stylish individuals from around the world. Previously, we featured Princest - you can read her segment here.

I met Ryan Oakley in Toronto lat year. It was during my exhibit at the Plastik Wrap boutique - Ryan had just purchased one of my prints and I was oohing and ahhing over his immaculate outfit. It was composed of a suit tailored so precisely it would stop fashion non-believers in their tracks and a shirt, tie, vest and socks all clearly chosen with expert care. He was a pinstriped vision, carefully treading the line between aristocrat and pimp.

Ryan Oakley with his print

The suit-as-hipster-gear has been around for a long time, but this guy looked like someone who truly understood and respected it. There was a certain je ne sais quoi… An air of “that’s right, bitches” about him that I found entirely justified. Last week Ryan put forth his suit expertise in an informative and hilarious post simply titled The Used Suit. In fact, Ryan writes about men’s fashion a great deal in his multi-faceted blog, The Grumpy Owl. From the About page:

Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake, he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur and notorious dandy.  A composer of psychogeographic fictions, he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance, he has also found the time to publicly criticize books, theatre and the beleaguered women in his life. Mr. Oakley reserves some of his misanthropic vitriol for his own blog, The Grumpy Owl.

He’s also part of The Worldwide Culture Gonzo Squad, where he shares the blog-o-stage with several esteemed colleagues, including Coilhouse friend Jerem Morrow and Stylish Gent’s M1k3y. So if Ryan’s masterful dandyism and tailoring insights aren’t enough to convince you that he’s one cool cat, check out some of his other posts, like Dinner With C’thulhu. It’s an instructional post where mister Oakley tells us how to entertain a precarious great old guest. Many topics are covered, from appropriate leather furnishing ["C'thulhu finds this comfortable as it allows ample room for Its tentacles but you will also be able to easily wipe any goo"] to dinner ["Human hearts are dreadfully difficult to obtain in today’s economy and the police tend to frown upon eating even the low quality, though well marinated, meat that can be found in your local hobo population"].

Without further ado, Ryan and his fashion philosophy, in his own words.

Tell us about the history of your look, its evolution.

I’ve been wearing suits since I was a child and, except for an unfortunate period during school, never lost the habit.  When I moved to Toronto I quickly discovered that everyone pays the wrong sort of attention to just another punk kid.  Since I was trying to drink underage and get away with a host of other ills, a suit and tie served me quite well.  These were simple black affairs, stolen from thrift shops, ran into the dirt, covered with blood, then replaced with another.

There’s a lovely mugshot of me wearing a grey pinstripe but, sadly, the police refused to give me a copy. The scum.

When I finally quit drinking and drugging, I discovered that I had money but no real outlet for what’s an obsessive monkey in my mind.   I dedicated myself, in earnest, to the vice of vanity.  Anything worth doing is worth overdoing and the money I may have put to some reasonable use is now going to my tailor.

What is your style philosophy?

Style is philosophy.  And I’m a logician.  I view clothing as being a system of syllogisms, paradoxes and axioms.  Like music or math, it attempts to be a pure expression of platonic reality.  Colours, patterns and textures must harmoniously combine to form an elegant truth.

Because this is my view, I pay no attention whatsoever to fashion.  Nor do I dress to express my office, my personality or my surroundings.  I wear a suit because I’m a western man and the suit is the single best item of clothing we have.

Aside from being a recognizable and well-governed medium, thus an interesting one to innovate in, it also appeals to and combines the fundamentals that every animal uses in its fur and feathers.  That is, the handicap principle, aposematism, cryptis and mimicry.

A suit is not a vulgar symbol of wealth, a display of superiority or an expression of bourgeois respectability.  It is a beautiful thing.  When I put one on, I hope for it to look equally normal and equally weird one hundred years in the past and one hundred years in the future.  That’s the meagre dimensions of the sartorial truth I aspire to.

Click below for the rest of the interview, a video and more photos, of course.

I’ll admit it was my not-exactly-inner lecherous 13 year old that initially prompted me to look up Watchmen the movie’s Silhouette. I’ve always loved this character’s look and story. From the Watchmen wiki:

Ursula Vandt was a Jew who left Austria to avoid the Nazis. In 1939, the Silhouette made the headlines after exposing a crooked publisher who was trafficking child pornography, as told in Hollis Mason’s book Under the Hood. The article stated that she gave a punitive beating to the entrepreneur and his two lead cameramen. Later that year she read the ad in the Gazette asking for other masked adventurers to step forward, and joined the Minutemen shortly after. In 1946, the press revealed that she was living with another woman in a lesbian relationship, as Mason stated. Laurence Schexnayder persuaded the group to expel her to minimize the P.R. damage.

The actress playing Silhouette was so striking with her severe hair, shiny gloves and stiletto boots that I couldn’t help myself. Of course much of the credit for her perfect appearance should go to costume designer Michael Wilkinson, but the feline grace in every second of Silhouette’s brief screen time is definitely the actress’ own.

I suspected Slavic roots - those cheekbones don’t lie! As it turns out, Apollonia Vanova is a Slovakian immigrant currently residing in Vancouver. She’s also an opera singer, sculptor and a… Fitness model? Indeed. You might recognize her as the Wraith Queen from Stargate Atlantis - just one of a string of sci-fi and fantasy roles she’s played. Vanova has a degree in sculpture from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and uses everything from clay to leather, I just wish she had her artwork online! Looking forward for more from this lady, no matter what the medium might be.

Here are a couple of interviews, for those of you who are intrigued: 1, 2. And Michael Wilkinson has a behind the scenes video on his website, here. From the Entertainment Examiner interview:

Silhouette is never seen without a cigarette. While that is totally time and character appropriate, it is not exactly politically correct in this day and age. Any thoughts on that?
I have a cigarette in my hand.

I guess that answers that question.

Super Plenamins via Found in Mom’s Basement

I don’t talk about I much, but I have a sort of ongoing quest to become superhuman on the cheap using only willpower and widely available drugstore products. This is probably not as silly as it sounds. I do believe it’s entirely possible to level up my very being, if I can only find the right combo of stuff to ingest. In this quest, I’ve subjected my body to all kinds of experiments. Most of them have done nothing but I’ve discovered a few things that actually, shockingly, do what they’re supposed to do and make me a better, higher-functioning creature. What do you do to become a more efficient, better human?

B VITAMINS. Know why Red Bull makes you feel so peppy? It’s not just the caffeine, or you’d be getting the same sustained buzz from Coke and coffee. It’s the B vitamins, the lack of which in our systems leads to such symptoms as depression, anemia and sluggishness. While some critics claim the marketing of B vitamins is just a gimmick, I don’t believe it for a second and invite you to draw your own conclusions. Beginning a regimen of daily B complex supplements last year boosted my energy and pretty much kiboshed about 75% of my persistent battle with depression — kicked to the curb, to an astounding extent, a lifetime of feeling too tired and unmotivated to do things. The stuff is water-soluble and all excess B vitamins in your system will come out in the form of neon green urine, so don’t worry about taking “1000 percent of the RDA!” Just take a little and see what happens. THIS SHIT SAVED MY LIFE.

VALERIAN ROOT. I was introduced to this stuff by a Russian co-worker, who calls it “Valerianka” and claimed it made her calm and relaxed enough to deal with screaming clients and bosses, without the drowsiness of other tranquilizers. It’s also a natural product, available cheaply and without a prescription, with no harmful documented side effects. It’s been used to treat everything from insomnia, anxiety, depression and gastrointestinal disorders. I find it takes effect almost immediately, producing a detached, sardonic feeling and leaving me clearheaded enough to work productively without emotion—perfect for the office or working in a distracting environment. MIGHT MAKE ME A BETTER PERSON.

SLIM FAST OPTIMA. Though I’m not trying to lose weight, I thought I’d try this because having to eat when my body decides it’s hungry instead of when I decide it’s convenient is a huge pain in the ass. It claims to control hunger for four hours. Instead, this product removes appetite for about four minutes with its nasty, chalky taste. It is most definitely not food. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

EMERGEN-C. These little packets of magic have been favorites of mine since middle school when we used to pour them straight on our tongues at recess and laugh at the weird bubbly tingly sensation and funny smell. The “champagne of energy drinks” comes in a million flavors and makes me feel nice and peppy for short periods of time. Sometimes I chug a packet with water first thing in the morning so I can make it to the bus stop. After all these years I couldn’t tell you if it’s the placebo effect or not. Maybe I should replace it with pop rocks one week and see if I feel any ill effects. Once I get a grant. FURTHER STUDY REQUIRED.

The quintessence of Lux. (Couldn’t find a photo byline for this. Anyone know?)

Oof. Lux Interior, lead singer of The Cramps, died earlier today of a pre-existing heart condition, aged 62. He is survived by his maximumrocknroll wife of almost 40 years, guitarist Poison Ivy.

The Cramps’ genre-defining “psychobilly” sound was unlike anything else to originate from the late 70s NYC punk scene –sharp, savage, sexy, filthy, campy, goofy, sometimes just plain sick– and Lux retained his gritty, untamed edge until the very end. From their publicist’s official press release:

[The Cramps'] distinct take on rockabilly and surf along with their midnight movie imagery reminded us all just how exciting, dangerous, vital and sexy rock and roll should be and has spawned entire subcultures. Lux was a fearless frontman who transformed every stage he stepped on into a place of passion, abandon, and true freedom.

Oh, Lux, we’re gonna miss you so much. A eyeball martini toast to you and your fiery spirit, with loving thoughts for Ivy during this painful time.

An unforgettable clip of Lux Interior in action from URGH! A Music War.

Click below for more photos, blurbs and video footage of The Cramps from over the years.

Mario, a magician, and his assistant, Katie, have a 1920s-themed wedding. Kate wears a headband bought on Etsy. Photos by Daria Bishop. More images here.

In Junior High, our Health class had a unit about “basic adult life skills”: how to pay your bills, how your car works & why you really do need health insurance, despite the fact that you think you’re indestructible. One of the final projects we had that quarter was to budget out $30,000 in one of two ways: it was to be either your funds for one year of single living, or your budget to plan a wedding. The teachers assigned this without irony, and kids took it very seriously: it was not a lesson to show us how excessive the average wedding seems when you consider how else the money could be spent, but a lesson in how a proper American wedding was to be done. I was horrified. Years later, the following passage from The Commitment, Dan Savage’s gay-marriage memoir, summed up my perception of The Great American Wedding perfectly. In the scene below, Savage and his boyfriend Terry find themselves at a wedding expo:

Each and every vendor, from the lowliest florist to the highest-end caterer, was selling the fairy-tale princess wedding, the wedding that almost all straight girls grow up fantasizing about. For the women in the room, this was their one and only chance to be the princess in the Disney movie and they were determined not to fuck it up - and “it” refers to the ceremony and the reception, not the choice of a mate, as divorce rates would seem to indicate. (The wedding industry rakes in billions annually at a time when one out of every two marriages ends in divorce. Isn’t it about time some trial lawyers slapped Brides magazine, Vera Wang, and the rest of “big marriage” with a class action lawsuit modeled on the ones filed against big tobacco?)

Back to the boys: As we worked out way up and down the rows of vendors, I caught sight of the same guys again and again. Every time their fiancées or future mothers-in-law looked away, the boys would send out subtle distress signals, like a kidnap victim in a ransom video, blinking messages in Morse code. “Oh my god, what have I done?” As they were dragged from florist to caterer to limo, they looked like pawns. No, it was worse than that: They looked like hostages. No, worse still: they looked like afterthoughts. You don’t need men to have weddings! You need women and their mothers and sisters and their best friends and container ships full of machine-made lace from China and towering ice sculptures and enormous white canvas tents and karaoke machines and stretch Hummer limos and bouquets and chocolate fountains and cover bands and garter belts and veils and trains and engraved champagne glasses and sterling silver cake knives and on and on and on … you need a boy at a wedding like you need a stalk of celery in a Bloody Mary: It looks nice, and it makes things official, but it’s not crucial and probably wouldn’t be missed if you left it out. But a wedding - as currently understood, practiced, and marketed in America - without a bride? Unthinkable.

Clockwise from left: pink-haired bride, casual Arkansas wedding, Lucifire & Dave Tusk’s bright red circus wedding, Han Solo & Leia cake topper

There are, of course, other ways to go, especially this year. More and more people are opting for crafty, creative weddings that either twist around the tired tiara-and-lace tropes, or toss them out altogether. And on the site Offbeat Bride, the Wedding Porn section chronicles the most unusual, inspiring weddings ever to be documented on the web.

These are the weddings of our generation: pixelated 8-bit wedding invites, space helmets, brides as officants, a special category on the blog just for black wedding dresses, a San Francisco bike wedding, and, of course “Wedding! The Musical.” There’s enough love and joy on this site to make you queasy if you’re in a “only stupid people have good relationships” kind of mood, but even then, something on the site will make you smile.  Like these Lego cake toppers, for instance.

We here at Coilhouse are enthusiastic proponents of body mods. Be it through hair, fashion or tattoos, we’re all about the power of transformation! Sandy Paws Grooming Shop feels the same way.

If you’re in California and possess a large curly canine, you can call up Sandy Paws for a transformation of your pets’ very own. A cut, a color and a bit of vision go a long way, as these images prove. Why settle for a pedestrian poodle when you can have a blue peacock? Or, how about a camel, a ninja turtle, or even a dragon?

Don’t let your furry friends protest! After all - what do they know about beauty? Here is their chance to transcend their earthly shell and be born anew. This is no time for reservation, so don’t be shy. Let your fantasy run wild and they’ll thank you in the end. ..Right? You decide, while you check out some of my other favorites under the jump.