It happened well over a decade ago, but the memory is crystal: my best bud Gooby Herms, fellow purveyor of All That Is Wackadoo, leaped up from the threadbare couch bellowing “holy crap, you’ve never seen the Billy Nayer Show?!” With a table top drum roll, he popped his scuzzy bootleg of The Ketchup and Mustard Man into the VCR and pressed play. My jaw hit the floor… repeatedly. I’ve been an idolator at the shrine of BNS ever since.
When bandleader Cory McAbee and company released The American Astronaut in 2001, I knew the world was in for it:
Space travel has become a dirty way of life dominated by derelicts, grease monkeys, and hard-boiled interplanetary traders such as Samuel Curtis… this sci-fi, musical-western uses flinty black and white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier. We follow Curtis on his Homeric journey to provide the all-female planet of Venus with a suitable male, while pursued by an enigmatic killer, Professor Hess. The film features music by The Billy Nayer Show and some of the most original rock n’ roll scenes ever committed to film.
Thanksgiving is a stupid holiday, I’m not going to post anything relating to it! Instead, I bring you the following list of fashion aliens, in which we count down the most fragile, bizarre, unusual specimens of beauty to be found in the mainstream modeling world. The countdown begins with…
# 7: Lily Cole. Lily almost didn’t make this list because she’s more doll-like than alien. I envision her more baking gingerbread cookies than stepping out of a flying saucer. But there is something about her. And she is weird! I look forward to her starring as Alice in the Marilyn Manson-directed horror film Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll.
Just a little something to whet your appetites, help dear readers.
“Many role-oriented fetishes are outgrowths of the simple desire to dominate or be dominated. “The Turkey Man” is an extreme form of such fetishes wherein a man feels sexual pleasure when he is treated like the Thanksgiving turkey. We didn’t make this up.
A Turkey Man usually has a dominatrix dressed as a classic mothering housewife come to his home, sovaldi where he has constructed a large oven out of usually cardboard or plywood. The Turkey Man then strips, clinic leaving only his socks (like the little paper booties on the turkey’s feet), and crawls into the oven. The woman then describes to the man how she will baste, cook and eat him. Lord only knows where the meat thermometer ends up!”
Start the day off right by simultaneously drying your face and contemplating mortality with a little help from the Tyrolean Towel Rack of IMMINENT DOOM. DOOOOM:
This fetching piece of Germanic history can be found in the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck, Austria. The sprawling complex is chock full of similarly bizarre pieces of functional art, like intricately painted antique cabinets, traditional ceremonial costumes, jaunty beast-headed sleighs, embellished tools, and lavishly personalized weaponry. Several historic walk-through “rooms” dating back to the Gothic and Rococo eras have been reassembled, replete with original hand-carved wood paneled walls, stoves, kitchenware and benches on which one can sit for a moment to rest.
My traveling companions and I spent several blissful hours ooohing and aaahing over everything. At one point, Dawn, an accomplished yodeler, was actually moved to song, her joyous yips reverberating up and down the long stone hallways.
George W. Bush’s grandmother, Pauline Pierce, was a remarkable woman known for her “extravagant tastes.” In the 1920s, she adventured in France with writers Frank Harris and Aleister “The Wickedest Man in the World” Crowley; this much, we know, is fact.
During this time period, Crowley was dealing in sex magick – really, when wasn’t he? – and in 1924, possibly with Pauline at his side, he underwent “the Supreme Ordeal,” an important and mysterious rite which, clues from his diary suggest, may have been an orgiastic extravaganza of carnal debauchery. That same year, Pauline returned to the United States. In 1925, she gave birth to Barbara Bush. That’s the short version of the story. Read the long one, complete with diary excerpts from Crowley, here (via Jerem).
I want to believe!
EDIT: Aww, as Mr. Dowson points out in the comments, this was an April Fools’ Hoax! And thus, George W. Crowley-Bush rides unicornback into the Sunset of Too-Good-To-Be-True, where feejee mermaids, Cottingley fairies, and Milli Vanilli wave to him in greeting. Granpaw Crowley is there too; he buys him balloons and together they go to watch The Big Donor Show on the telly. All is well.
While these days everything Disney isn’t exactly perceived as cutting edge, things were different back in the day. Just think of gloriously creepy Fantasia and Pinocchio, both the fruit of Disney’s collaboration with Bauhaus painter Oskar Fischinger.
Disney intended to continue bringing in artists to further expand his studio’s horizons, and Destino was meant to be his next step in that direction. Salvador Dali thought very highly of Disney and cherished the project, completing for it 2 paintings at 135 sketches. A surrealist love story conceived and subsequently shelved in the 40s, Destino was finally unearthed, finished and released in 2003 on orders of Walt Disney’s nephew.
Update! If you’re in LA, you can see Destino for yourselves at LACMA through January 6. Thanks for the tip, 5000!
Though personally I would have preferred Dali traveled in time and worked with Peter Chung, this remains a fine testament to both Dali and Disney’s former glory. One more video beyond the jump.
This picture made me hungry! Gazing upon this delicious image I googled “insect recipes” and believe me, friends, the Internet does not disappoint. At eatbug.com you can find a lovingly-compiled list of recipes, including Mealworm Chocolate Chip Cookies, Ant Brood Tacos and more. This Thanksgiving, surprise your family with a home-prepared meal that they won’t soon forget.
The Engine Theater is a wondrous thing conceived by underground director Burke Roberts and a team of artists. A mechanical screen and projection system, designed to be portable inside a small trailer, described on the official website as a film screening unit with a complex, kinetic sculpture as the centerpiece to hold the screen.
I found out about The Engine Theater only recently, through a series of seemingly unrelated events, people, and emails. This was, apparently, going to be the next Thing but the the lure was in the title itself; “The Engine Theater Global Underground Cinema Series Part 1: Berlin Subculture films from 1977 – 2007” , too curious to pass up, even on very short notice! The night’s schedule read like this:
