Sophie Lancaster memorial at WGW. Picture by Tania Taylor.
Two teenagers aged 15 and 16 were sentenced to life in prison yesterday for the murder of Sophie Lancaster, age 20, last summer in Bacup, England. The teenagers, along with three others who received shorter sentences, singled out Lancaster and her boyfriend Robert Maltby for the way they dressed. They initially attacked Maltby, but turned their aggression on Lancaster as she tried to protect him. The gang “punched, stamped and jumped” on Maltby and Lancaster’s heads until both were unconscious. Robert Maltby survived, and Sophie Lancaster died a few days later.
Sophie, Robert, and the two principal attackers
I’ve been following this story ever since it broke, and its tragedy really hits me with the following 5 quotes:
“Shall we batter him?” - One of the attackers, right before the attack began
“I’m not going to get done for reporting this am I? Because all the Bacup lot will hate me because I’ve reported it.” - Girl who called the police to report the incident
“At least wild animals, when they hunt in packs, have a legitimate reason for so doing, to obtain food. You have none and your behaviour on that night degrades humanity itself.” - Judge Anthony Russell QC, passing the sentence
“I really just like to think I’m now only eight-months-old. I’m finding the whole world a terrifying place.” - Robert Maltby, who has no memory of the incident
“Justice can never be done because it will never bring her back.” - Sophie’s mother
Are you sick of being victimized by the overly confident and spoiled women of America?
Are you intrigued by the exotic yet vulnerable women of Eastern Europe?
Do you want to feel like a Big Powerful Savior Daddy-Man?
If you answered “yes” to one of more of the above you are part of a growing demographic. A demographic that’s ever-expanding, cheerfully bubbling to the surface of the internet like a pot of boiling baby feces. Yes, legions of xenophiles are uniting in one common goal - to meet and wed a Russian Woman - the perfect blend of dignity and modesty wrapped up nicely in a blanket of historical misfortune. And they’re doing it on Russian Women: The Real Truth.
Here you are led by the brave American-born blog admin through the finer points of kindling Russian romance on the Web. He unveils the complex secrets of the Russian woman’s psyche, the way brute Russian men treat the ladies as a commodity and insightful tips on avoiding the scams of “mail order bride services”. How does he know so much about Russia, you might be wondering to yourselves. Well, that’s because he lives there now! Yes, living in Russia has granted him unique access to Russian intricacies the rest of you non-Russians aren’t privy to. Just look at the way he describes his inspiration behind the blog:
“Russian women are like heroic characters because they are always dealing with dirty situations and environments but somehow they still manage to stay beautiful and out of trouble. I am like most Americans in that I love a good underdog story where the hero faces incredible odds but still comes out as the champion. This is a labor of love because it is an opportunity to bring the true story of these women into the light.This is especially important since their own modesty would never allow them to do it themselves…Russian women are looking for manly leaders who have a clear direction and purpose in life and from a historical and survival perspective this makes a great deal of sense”.
When I first followed Beth’s suggestion and looked over Jeremy Harris’ website, my love of portraits naturally drew me to that section of his portfolio. The style there didn’t appeal to me at all - not stylized enough for my taste. But it turns out that’s precisely what makes his photos of asylums so spot on.
With somanyphotographers using lights and Photoshop to accentuate spookiness when capturing old hospitals and decaying buildings, Jeremy’s plain, day-lit images stand apart. There is a simple honestly that allows us to not dwell on various effects, however pretty they might be, but instead reveals the heart of these spaces. The result is more brutal and attractive than one might expect.
Before Val Lewton died of a broken heart (a figurative and then literal one), he produced a string of nine films for RKO Pictures from 1942 to 1946. None of them cost more than $150,000 to make. None ran longer than 75 minutes. All of them were saddled with lurid, focus group-tested titles like Isle of the Dead, The Curse of the Cat People, and The Ghost Ship. “They may think I’m going to do the usual chiller stuff which’ll make a quick profit, be laughed at, and be forgotten,” he told writer DeWitt Bodeen, “but I’m going to fool them…I’m going to do the kind of suspense movie I like.”1
The kind that I like too. Atmospheric2, stylish, literate—I might squeeze two of his films onto an all-time Top Ten list of horror favorites. So the news that Twisted Pictures (the people responsible for the Saw franchise) is in the process of re-making four of Lewton’s RKO classics—including my favorite, I Walked with a Zombie—makes me nauseated. I’m finally old enough to appreciate why critics bemoaned the oversexed Cat People remake in 1982. That film, at least, had a twenty-year-old Nastassja Kinski going for it. All we have to look forward to now is snuff porn. So, rather than look ahead, I thought I might take a look back—at Lewton’s meteoric career, and at a few scenes from his movies that still haunt me. The past is no vaccine for the future, to be sure, but in the here and now it can act as a topical salve.
Ahh, do you smell that, citizen? Scientology’s in the air! The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a Scientology-funded organization and I’d been meaning to investigate their ominous Psychiatry Kills exhibit for years. A sunny Friday morning one day past L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday seemed as good a day as any for this mission. My roommate, who happens to be 2 quarters away from an M.A. in Clinical Psychology came along.
The lobby felt like a movie set - huge CCHR emblem above a reception desk, lots of white, another CCHR crest inlaid into the floor. We were greeted by an unblinking curly-mopped cherub, signed in with fake names and explained we brought no purses when asked if we minded a bag inspection. The entrance to the exhibit itself was special-effects-rusty with random metal chunks protruding and overall very Silent Hill. The “Abandon all hope…” quote from Dante’s Inferno above completed the look, which the cherub politely asked us to read while thinking about entering the final level of hell. Charming.
Through the doors, a padded room and introductory video featuring doctors and professors, edited in the same sensationalist Fox network style as other Scientology media, statistics and numbers flashing in a rusty and blood-stained font, culminating in the words “Psychiatry - an industry of DEATH”. A wave of blood washed over the screen and it went black. The mood was set.
The museum past the padded room has several sections, each with LCD screens showing 15 minute videos, which I will describe in an almost entirely opinion-free virtual mini-tour beyond the jump.
Thus opens visionary Béla Tarr’sWerckmeister Harmonies. The innocent hero Janos orchestrates a model of the solar system inside a bar. With this hypnotic scene the viewer is pulled into the frozen [though snowless] terrain of a poor Hungarian town. Based on The Melancholy of Resistance - László Krasznahorkai’s 1989 novel, Werckmeister Harmonies is a journey through the bleak lives of some rather unhappy people among whom a romantic has the misfortune of existing. People whose sadness, suppressed anger and animal nature need but a trigger to explode into a hurricane of frenzied destruction.
When a circus claiming to have with it a whale carcass and a prince arrive in town square, suspicion and hysteria emerge. As if on queue, townspeople gather around like a pack of hungry dogs, no one daring to actually see the show, their collective agitation growing louder. Curious Janos is the first to enter the exhibit which turns out be no more than an enormous crate just big enough to hold the whale. He’s enthralled by the sight of the sea creature, enamored with its construction. We see his continued attempts to expose his cantankerous neighbors to the mystery and beauty of the world and be treated with patient condescension in return. Rumors about the prince spread, tension inflating until the unforgettable breaking point.
If you see this snowy picture hanging on your new friend’s wall, watch out: you’re hanging out with an art thief! Someone had the gall to swipe this drawing, part Lori Earley’s Fade to Gray Exhibition, right off the wall at her solo show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC last Wednesday.
If you do happen to see it, feel free to swipe it back and make a daring escape. There’s a reward being offered for its return, but I know that any Coilhouse reader would return it simply out of the goodness of their heart. The painting wants to be reunited with its sister creations on walls of the gallery space:
Even if you don’t find the painting, you should stop by the gallery, which has been completely transformed to provide the right atmosphere for Earley’s work, on display until March 22. The ghostly paintings, in their intricate china-white frames, hang on walls which have been covered by white damask-motif flocked wallpaper designed by Lori herself. You can see the transformed interior, along with all of the images in the exhibition, on the gallery site.
Yeah, okay, I know. Everyone and their granny has already blogged about this, but I just gotta chime in to quickly say that Garfield Minus Garfield is the most unexpected laff riot this side of Cthulhu Family Circus. Some sage old fart once said something along the lines of “the greatest truths are the simplest, so likewise are the greatest men” and that tenet definitely applies here:
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.
It’s a shame that any attempt to make a Garfield Minus Garfield day-to-day calendar would be cockblocked by copyright litigation. Hey, I freakin’ loathe day calendars. They’re pointless, inane, a waste of trees. But seriously, I’d consider running out and getting some soul-destroying cubicle day job just to have an excuse to purchase and read the paper version of Garfield Minus Garfield every gosh darn day. Suck it, Dilbert!
I’m more than halfway through The Bad Popes by Eric Russell Chamberlin. Oh, it’s a knee-slapper, to say the least. Plenty of illicit sex, violence, greed, avarice, conspiracy, etc. Chamberlin denudes the nasty personal habits and dirty professional deeds of various popes throughout history. Short of The Name of the Rose and Memoirs of A Gnostic Dwarf*, it’s the most earthy and entertaining book I’ve read relating to the papacy.
Ever heard of The Cadaver Synod? Pope Stephen VI, consecrated in 896, ordered the rotting corpse of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, be exhumed and put on trial for various crimes against the church. Poor bastard was nine-months dead when they dug him up. Stephen dressed the ripe stiff in papal robes, propped it up in a chair, and proceeded to scream unintelligibly at it for several hours in front of a rapt audience. Afterwards, Formosus was declared guilty and his body was dragged through the streets of Rome, then thrown into the river Tiber. Not suprisingly, the morbid spectacle turned public opinion against Stephen. Rumors spread that the dead pontiff had washed up on the banks of the Tiber and was performing miracles. Stephen VI was eventually deposed and strangled to death in prison.
Left: Early tarot card depiction of Pope Joan. Right: La Papesse as Antichrist, wearing a jaunty tiara.
Chamberlin also addresses the origins of good old “Pope Joan“, that legendary, likely imaginary Papesse who supposedly reigned from 855 to 858 (Protestants used to loooove bringing her up as proof of their moral superiority to Catholics). As the story goes, she was an Englishwoman who fell in love with a Benedictine monk, disguised herself as a dude and joined his order. Eventually she moved to Rome where she impressed everyone with her vast knowledge, becoming a cardinal, and then pope. (In earlier, juicy versions of this fable, Joan was already knocked up at the time of her election, and actually squeezed one out during the procession to the Lateran!) Chamberlin hypothesizes that these tall tales stem from accounts of The Rule of Harlots: a period of the papacy where various popes were either the progeny of dastardly, influential aristocratic women, or boinking them. In doing so, he has introduced me to my favorite new word… Pornocracy.
Chamberlin eschews a bland professorial style in favor of fairly plainspoken writing, and his dry sense of humor about the subject matter reminds me of Alice K. Turner’s approach to The History of Hell, yet another well-researched, highly entertaining read that deals with some of the sillier and more political aspects of Christian dogma. Highly recommended.
*Incidentally, Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf gets my vote for Most Jaw-Droppingly Disgusting Opening Paragraph Ever Written. Even better than the ejaculatory beginning of The Dirt. Must read.
As a follow up to this post, here’s a bit of Saturday morning listening as we build our own machines, courtesy of Studio 360. They cover some interesting lesser known aspects of Tesla’s life, his life in New York and more. Direct download link is here: direct download link. Enjoy!
