Into the Holes. ALL OF THEM.

In the age of ultra-polished music videos featuring flawless human specimens in various stages of aggressive air-humping, we oft forget the common man. What about that guy behind 7-11, who claims to be a sailor, smells of fish, and gives you the stinkeye? What of uncle Merv, whose gravy-encrusted beard and consistent belligerence have become an almost-comforting staple at family gatherings? I for one, am tired of steely abs and tits on my screen [there are so many, all the time]. In the VonSwank-directed video below, justice is served as Josh Heironymous* represents the intrepid proletarian to the tranquil sound of “Into the Holes” by Lily Fawn. Sit back, relax, get your zen on and enjoy three minutes of a Real Man giving his all to the camera, the way you’ve always dreamed of.

*I note, not without triumph, that Joshua and I shared a Chicago apartment during my one year of college. I got to watch him do this all the time.

Related post: Our Top 10 Most Preternaturally Beautiful Men

Jo Boobs Teaches the Va-Va Voom!


Film courtesy of Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers.

All but her belly buried in the floor;
And the lewd trounce of a final muted beat!
We flee her spasm through a fleshless door…
Then you, the burlesque of our lust — and faith,
Lug us back lifeward — bone by infant bone.
— Hart Crane, “National Winter Garden,” (1930)

“Jo Boobs” Weldon is Headmistress of The New York School of Burlesque, whose home at The Slipper Room is just a few blocks from where Lydia Thompson’s “London Blondes” brought burlesque to America and a stone’s throw from where Minsky’s original National Winter Garden made burlesque part of the American vernacular. Minsky’s notoriously established Gypsy Rose Lee as an icon synonymous with striptease, and launched the careers of Abbott and Costello, Phil Silvers and Robert Alda before being closed in the name of public morality.


Houston Street Burlesque by Mabel Dwight (1928)

Is burlesque – a word which refers to turning things upside down – still able to subvert morals and mores? In a popular culture where the use of sexuality to sell consumer goods is banal, pornography of nearly every stripe is freely and instantly available, and sympathetic gay and lesbian characters are commonplace, is the self-conscious performance of gender merely campy fun or does it still have a liberating capacity? Can sex work, titillation, gender play and masturbation undermine heterosexual monogamy? Whose moralities and identities might they challenge?

Catherine MacKinnon argues that sexualized depictions of women in patriarchal societies reinforce misogyny to the point of constituting a form of violence. Do sexualized performances by women lead to their individual and collective debasement? Is stripping a phenomenon where women who appeal most to men are degraded whereas burlesque liberates women who stand outside the norms of beauty as prescribed by male desire? Considering stripping and prostitution, I ask whether everyone sells their bodies at every job? Further, when men pay a high premium to be with a woman or just to look at one, whose body is exploited? More specifically, does it make sense to import 20th century standards of judgment to a 21st century United States whose educational system produces more female post-graduates than male and whose career women earn 94.2% of the income of their male counterparts? Despite shifts in income and status, why do so few straight males study burlesque or work as strippers?

Jo Boobs and I met at the basement headquarters of her school on the coldest evening in recent years to explore questions of gender, activism, and whether she and her ilk are gender traitors or gender busters. She even stripped down to fighting gear for an intimate performance caught by our unblinking digital eyeball. (See above!) In June 2010, Jo will publish The Pocket Book of Burlesque (with a forward by Margaret Cho), a volume whose slender design can slip under the inspector’s prying gaze. The New York School of Burlesque is in sympathetic affiliation with Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque in Seattle and Michelle L’Amour’s Burlesque Finishing School in Chicago as well as programs in Washington, D.C and elsewhere. When will someone open a campus in Tehran?

COILHOUSE: How does burlesque differ from stripping?
JO BOOBS: To understand the difference, look at it from the audience’s point of view. If someone goes to a strip joint, they usually go in whenever they want, they pick the performer they want, they negotiate how they interact with them, they interact one-on-one, and they leave. When they go to a burlesque show, the show starts at a [predetermined] time, they pay a cover (not the performers), they watch the show, there isn’t usually any one-on-one interaction, and they leave when the performance is over.

Fräulein Ehrhardt: Equilibrium and Elasticity

In the past, I’ve talked about how, with a few bright exceptions, the term “fetish photography” has pretty much become an embarrassment in the past decade, about the pornographic banality that eventually killed risk-taking publications like Skin Two. In an alternate universe, Skin Two No. 64 just came out, and this was the cover. Balanced, graphic, authoritative – not too dissimilar from Irving Penn and vintage Vogue. Image by Fräulein Ehrhardt, modeling by Koneko.

Issue 04, Materialized!

FINALLY. Issue #04 of Coilhouse has taken corporeal form.

It’s haunted, you know. Or maybe it’s possessed. Or it could be we’ve got a grimoire on our hands.

All we know is, at some point during our editorial process—which normally involves very little cauldron-stirring or eye of newt, despite whatever “coven” rumors you may have heard—#04 took on a life of its own, and has since become a small, seething portal of the uncanny. It’s all a bit magic-with-a-k. We may giggle and wink (“O R’LYEH? IA, R’LYEH!”), but that doesn’t change the fact that these pages are spellbound. You will read of channeling and scrying, of shades and shamans, and phantoms both fabricated and inexplicable. You will meet reluctant oracles, occultists, and ghosts from the past.

Issue 04 is now available in our shop. For a limited time, you can purchase Issues 03 + 04 together for a discount price of $23! Click here to buy. Without further ado, the contents of Issue 04, below:

INFORM
This issue’s Inform/Inspire/Infect section headers, crafted by Zoetica, are all about communing with animal spirits. Below: the INFORM header, titled Stork Whispers. The section header below also contains almost all the design motifs that creative director Courtney Riot conjured throughout the issue: smoke, burn holes, aged paper and tattered lace.

The Tarnished Beauties of Blackwell, Oklahoma
In mid 2008, we were captivated by the imagery Meredith Yayanos shared in a post describing her visit to an obscure, careworn prairie museum in a small Oklahoma town. More recently, Coilhouse enlisted one of our wonderful readers, Joseph A. Holsten, to return to The White Pavilion, where he archived dozens of high res portraits of long-grown, long-dead children of pioneer America. They are reproduced here in an extended version of the original Blackwell photo essay.

Bernd Preiml’s Exquisite Apparitions
Bernd Preiml’s photographs describe a world filled with magic and mystery, often coupled with a disconcerting sense that sinister forces may be lurking. Through his dark and shining visions, he weaves haunting tales that encompass violence as well as transcendence, beauty as well as wrath. Interview by longtime Coilhouse co-conspirator, Jessica Joslin.

Children by the Millions Wait For Alex Chilton: A Fractured Memoir of the Counterculture
Joshua Ellis returns to Coilhouse with a whip-smart personal essay examining his experience with alternative culture. Beginning with an endearing description of adolescent initiation-by-music and ranting its way into present day’s monoculture, “Children by the Millions” is an incisive evaluation of the death of societal revolution in our “been there, done that” world. Josh draws parallels between counterculture and ancient mysticism, while eloquently articulating a premise that’s been gestating in all of our minds since we first started discussing the living death of alt culture here on Coilhouse.

Calaveras de Azucar
Courtesy of photographer Gayla Partridge comes this toothsome autumnal fashion editorial inspired by el Día de los Muertos, with a corresponding overview by Mer on the festival’s historical and cultural significance.

Hauntings: The Science of Ghosts
Earlier this year, our Manchester-based correspondent Mark Powell traveled to a “Science of Ghosts” conference in Edinburgh hosted by esteemed psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman and other leading experts. Mark shares what he learned about the history, pathology (and quackery) of hauntings and spiritualism. With fetching spirit photos, daguerrotypes, and other vintage ephemera provided by archivists Jack & Beverly Wilgus.

INSPIRE
Frog Prince

Kris Kuksi: Sculpting the Infinite
A substantial editorial featuring meticulous, hyper-detailed monuments to destruction sculpted by Missouri-born artist Kris Kuksi. In the coming days we’ll be posting an exclusive interview with Kris where he shares his thoughts on time, fixing humanity, and what might lie ahead. Introduction and interview by Ales Kot.

Still In The Cards: Alejandro Jodorowsky on King Shot, Comic Books and the Tarot De Marseilles
An informative, zany dialogue with one of modern cinema’s most iconoclastic masterminds, Alejandro Jodorowsky. The filmmaker who brought us The Holy Mountain, El Topo, and Santa Sangre speaks candidly about his past, present and future… as well as the roles that tarot, spirituality and comics have led in his more recent life. Article by Mark Powell.

Through the Mirror into the Forest: Kristamas Klousch
Our stunning cover girl’s self-portraiture explores a dark, kaleidoscopic array of facets; Kristamas is at once wild forest creature, fetish vixen, tousled witch, Lolita, courtesan, silent movie vamp and Voodoo priestess. Her ethereal photos race to capture each incarnation, just before the next comes out to play. Introduction by staffer Tanya Virodova.

Grant Morrison: Embracing the Apocalypse
Groundbreaking comic book writer Grant Morrison blows our minds with a massive ten-page interview that will gently squeeze your reality’s underbelly until you’re ready to take the future seriously. Grant sat down with Zoetica Ebb and Ales Kot for a three-hour talk covering everything from superheroes and interdimentional parasites to personal transformation and 2012. Featuring new portraits of Grant and his wife, Kristan, by Allan Amato.

Larkin Grimm: Advanced Shapeshifter
In a time when our culture seems to openly scorn –but secretly craves– magic, the musician Larkin Grimm is an unashamed and forthright power to be reckoned with. Interview by Coilhouse collaborator Angeliska Polacheck, as well as a review of the Musicka Mystica Maxima Festival curated by Grimm in NYC last fall.

INFECT
Snake Charmer

Brave Old World
A  collaboration between Chad Michael Ward and  Bad Charlotte, this editorial takes the gorgeous model out of time and space, into a gauzy netherworld. With wardrobe by Mother of London.

CB I Hate Perfume: The Story of an Olfactory Architect
Christopher Brosius has been called “The Willy Wonka of Perfume” and is renowned for his eccentricity and passionate standpoint when it comes to both the art and the industry of scent-building. An intimate and inspiring interview about his work and philosophy, conducted by Angeliska.

Print to Fit: Mavens of Meatcake
What self-respecting, spellbound witchy-pooh magazine would be complete without paper dolls by Dame Darcy?! Featuring beloved characters from the darling Dame’s legendary long-running comic book, Meatcake.

Nadya’s Birthday Beefcake

Happy birthday, comrade Nadya. Can you believe it’s already been a whole year?! So much has happened in that time. You endured intense hardship and celebrated huge victories, moving from LA to London to San Francisco. You collaborated with remarkable people and accomplished admirable feats. Hell, you even manged to stop biting your nails! Congratulations.

Every single day, your efforts and encouragement continue to hold Coilhouse together. You really are our tiny, sexy tube of superglue. We’re stuck on you like clock gears hot-gunned to a cosplayer’s cotton poly-blended bloomers.

Now, we realize it’s not much (certainly not a $53K Lady Yu porcelain action figure), but still, we wanted to  make a concerted effort to celebrate your birth properly this year, with vaguely unsettling Russian animation…

Plenty of cake…

ZoBeefBirthdayCake

…and of course, party hats.

MerBeefBirthdayPugz

Now blow out the candles! (Hint: they’re under the shar peis.)

Love on ya, Lev. Many happy returns.

BTC: Kirk/Spock Morningwood Edition

fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapOH GOOD MORNING COMRADES I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE.

What’s that? Oh, um. I was just, uh, playing with my tribble.

Ariana showed me the following picture last night…

KirkSpockfapfapfapfapfap

…which spurred me to revisit that notorious “Closer” slashup, the gravitational pull of which sent me spiraling down a long, twisted YouTube wormhole of Trekkie aberration and depravity. Woooo!

To help you get your sluggish blood pumping, I’d like to share a bit of what I found with you. Just the tip…

…of the proverbial iceberg, I mean.

See also:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COILHOUSE! Happy Halloween, too!

Today is Goth Christmas. We wish you all happy hauntings.

It’s also the very last day of October and an opportune moment to observe a very important milestone: two years ago this month, the Coilhouse blog officially launched.

Despite being on completely different sleep schedules in three different time zones (hell, in two different hemispheres) we three wanted to make sure we got together to “properly” commemorate  what is, for us, a pretty huge milestone. Drinks were drunk, cupcakes were flambéd, cherry pie plasma was snorted, and lascivious nekkid dancing in the dark may or may not have occurred:


WOOPWOOPWOOP! DING! (“Happy Birthday” song by Altered Images.)

Two years ago, none of us had any idea what we were getting ourselves into. We were relative strangers with tons of enthusiasm and not a whole lot of experience. A little over 24 months and incalculable hours of work later, Coilhouse has published over 1000 blog posts, 3 issues of a glossy bookazine style print mag, and there’s a splendid 4th issue in production unlike anything we’ve yet attempted.

We’ve got an incredible group of brilliant, self-motivated contributors working with us, and our cherished readership has proved itself time and time again to be as passionately in love with fringe media and alternative culture as we are. We’re a community. You know, we might even be some sort of post-nuclear, pre-singularity extended family.

This place is proof that a small, close-knit, somewhat green group of folks can saddle up and ride to all kinds of wonderful places. Thank you, all of you, for joining us. We’re in for the long haul, and we can’t wait to see where this journey takes us next.

Better Than Coffee: Sashimi’s Revenge

Morning, late-risers! To kick things off this week, a simple post with two tags: “Cthulhu” & “Stroke Material.” What more could you ask for in life? This eye-popping drawing, titled Sashimi’s Revenge, was completed in Photoshop by illustrator Serge Birault. In addition to the above, not to be missed on Birault’s site is a charming homage to Lux Interior of the Cramps.

Previously in “Cthulhu & Stroke Material”:

[via monk3y]

BTC: Living Photograph (Chris With Teacup)

On this glorious morn, waiting for a carafe of velvety, life-sustaining double black french roast to steep, this is exactly what I look like:


So wrong, yet so right. Like one of Siege’s exquisite Long Portraits, only in Bizarro world.

Uncanny isn’t it? We could very well be twins, Chris and I– separated at birth, but forever bonded on some bone-deep, intuitive level by our mutual love of awkwardly protracted silence and sensual mouth-breathing. The only real difference is, my tits are hairier.

X Planes: Spend a Day in the Troposphere

Hey, Jean
This is Henry McClean
And I’ve finished my beautiful flying machine…

tumblr_kpd35xLzmO1qzsgg9o1 copy
Via xplanes: The Magnus Spherical Airship prototype, 1982.

Don’t let anybody steer you different; Andrew B’s x planes Tumblr is straight-up anachro-airship porn. Andrew has been posting scores of “weird and wonderful aircraft pictures and stories found both on the web, and in print” over there for the better part of a year now. You can get lost in the archives for days:

experimental aircraft. exotic aeromachines. oddities. sleek silver cigars. pedal-o-trons. soviet hive-mind bombers. aerial joy. the olden days. action shots. propaganda posters. etc.”

Where’s your fucking jet pack? You don’ need no steenkin’ jet pack when you’ve got a Gyrodyne Model GCA-55. While you’re dreaming, have some Convertawings. How about a Switchblade jet? Check out the wingless jet WASP, the Bat-Winged Cantaliver jet plane, the steam-powered Giffard. MmmnnggmpfffssSPLOOOOOGE.

07-b-2
1909 Aviation Show, France.

Some more choice excerpts from x planes after the jump, but seriously, if you have a few minutes (or a few hours) to spare, just get over there and explore. Motherload.