When they’re not busy getting butthurt by cartoons or teddy bears, radical Muslim-types rather like spending their time suing employers into compliance with their totally voluntary dress-code. Case in point:
Left: Bushra Noah. Right: Sarah Des Rosiers and Wedge staff.
Sarah Des Rosiers, owner of alternative hair salon Wedge, has been ambushed with a frivolous lawsuit by one Bushra Noah on grounds of religious discrimination, after dismissing Noah from a trial position at her hair salon. You see, Noah, a self-described ‘devout’ Muslim, didn’t think it was important to mention in her telephone interview that she wore a headscarf, even though she admits that this is the reason she believes she had been turned down for hair-styling jobs in the past. Needless to say, when she rocked up to work she was requested to uncover her hair while at the salon, but she refused on grounds that it was ‘immodest’.
That’s right. A hairdresser who finds uncovered hair immoral.
Having been turned down by no less than twenty-five other salons, presumably for the same reason, Noah decided she’s had enough and set about destroying the business that Des Rosiers had poured her soul into.
Proto-emcee Slim Gaillard, the great grandaddy of flow.
In 1941, a musical comedy farce called Hellzapoppin’ made the jump from stage to screen. It’s a very silly film (about a film within a play about a film), rather sanitized in comparison to the original anarchic revue (which featured little people, clowns, trained pigeons, and Hitler speaking in a Yiddish accent). There isn’t much of a plot and many of the jokes are corny even by 40s standards. The premise wasn’t nearly as successful on celluloid as it was on Broadway. Still, Hellzapoppin’ has two invaluable things going for it: an appearance by sainted Slim Gaillard, and the most impossibly freakin’ insanely amazing Lindy Hop dance sequence ever filmed, courtesy of a fearless troupe called Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. Behold o’rootey:
A puppet can sometimes express more with a tilt of her head than we do with several sentences. I was introduced to Bunraku when I watched Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls. The film’s storytelling is interspersed with scenes from a Japanese puppet play. The mix of dramatic narration, movement and beautiful costumes of the dolls immediately became a point of interest. Bunraku originated sometime in the 1600s, thought wasn’t called that until the 1800 after a theater in Osaka. It’s a well-loved traditional art form – puppet plays accompanied by shamisen music and fantastic narrations, that use complex life-size dolls operated by three masters.
The music ascends, building to manic excitement and subsides into sparse tranquil strumming in accordance with the play. The narration, performed only by men, aligns its melodies to the shamisen’s and is adjusted in pitch and tone, ranging from guttural to somewhat feminine. The dolls themselves are sophisticated creations of carved wood, the males equipped with expressive facial mechanisms, and the women mask-like and even more expressive through gesture, instead. Sets used in Bunraku are design masterpieces, minimally conveying any location necessary, rearranged throughout the show by fully-masked attendants.
Left: Lucy from Dracula. Right: Ruff by Junya Watanabe.
Ruffs! Why are they so intoxicatingly awesome? It’s just a ruffle of fabric on a drawstring, but whenever I see one, it still evokes an instant Pavlovian response. A ruff turns a person into a character: a creature that’s decadent, aristocratic, maybe even a little tragic. I marvel at ruffs the way I marvel at lush cake icing and delicate origami, and while there’s something very sensuous about the wrapping, ruffs also make people look very strong, armored, untouchable.
“Virginqueen” photo shoot by Viona.
In celebration of my tender relationship with ruffs, I present to you my favorite manifestations of these sumptuous adornments in fashion, photography, music and film. The list is by no means complete, so please feel free to chime with your own ruff finds! One of the images and some of the links below may not be SFW, but most are. The Romp through Ruffs begins with the work of photographer Tina Cassati:
Felt animals! They are so cute! The images above come from Chika Photography, where adorable felt squirrels, doves and elephants await you. You can get your own felt feline and simultaneously help out a person in need over at Kittyaid, and if you want to make one of your own, there’s a great Flickr tutorial that will show you how to make any kind of monster you want. Need more specific instructions? Here are some more little DIY felt projects:
And if text-and-photo instructions aren’t enough, here’s some time-lapse footage from indie/experimental/noise band Deerhoof to help you. Featuring Satomi Matsuzaki, the clip is called “Stuffed” and I love it because she’s just making the weirdest shit. You get to see her create a log, a video cassette, and a nippled jock-wearing bear:
Incidentally, Deerhoof is playing tomorrow (Monday) night in LA at the Avalon (details here), with our girl Mer opening for them as part of Faun Fables, the same band that she toured Europe with last month. See you there?
Perhaps you have wondered what secret agent Yoon looks like. It’s also possible you’ve spent long clammy nights in your bedsacks tormented by questions about the mystery man behind the lens. Today your dreams come true as the tables turn with me as the photographer while Yoon does his thing. Now a word from our model.
“Hello all you fine people. Drew Yoon here. Firstly, apologies, all you fervent fans of teh Zoetica. We’re digressing from your regularly scheduled blue bombshell for a spicy kimchi break. Unlike the consistently dapper Zoetica, I’m often rather shabby-looking in my obey beanie, t-shirt and generic jeans. However, on occasion, a brother needs to look fly for the ladies, am I right?
“This is a new secret science, to master the emptiness and turn it into something that is filled with sound and visual images.”
– Karlheinz Stockhausen Stockhausen has died, aged 79. Depending on who you talk to, he was either one of the most revered or reviled composers of the 20th century. A student of Olivier Messiaen with little interest in conventional “classical” modes of composition, Stockhausen’s sonic innovations range from the sublimely understated (Mantra, 1970) to the grandiose (Spiral, 1968) to the bombastic and beautifully absurd (Helikopter-Streichquartett, 1993).
Throughout his life, Stockhausen was obsessed with the concept of flight. As early as the 1950s, he was already discussing his desire to “liberate musicians from the constraints of gravity.” He even consulted with recording technicians to see if there was a way to harness performers in specially rigged chairs that could be swung through the studio on ropes. The aforementioned Helikopter Streichquartett was in many ways a culmination of his lifelong dream to see music truly take flight. Many people have said, will undoubtedly continue to say “I don’t get it.” Indeed, not long ago the entire world shouted in disbelief at the aging iconoclast when he dared to refer to the attacks on the World Trade Center as “the greatest work of art imaginable.”
Regardless, even Stockhausen’s harshest detractors can never argue that he was not a swashbuckling pioneer of sound and vision. A relentless seeker, he never allowed the circumscriptions of others to stand in his way. Somewhere in the expansive aleatory of the cosmos, an echo of Stockhausen’s voice speaks with more conviction than ever: “I no longer limit myself.”
Mer mentioned the Roadside Picnic podcast here a few weeks back. Hosted by a gentleman named Joshua Zucker, this podcast’s chewy contents are some of the best brain fuel I’ve had the pleasure to absorb in quite some time. The past couple of episodes were especially fitting with the belated arrival of rain in Angel City, and I must take a moment to reflect.
Each installment has a somewhat melancholy-sounding theme, but I’ve so far found this to be the ideal multi-purpose station. It’s marvelous for letting the sound flood and take over just as well as having it as low ambience while painting, writing, reading, or whatever sinister activity you choose to engage in. I suggest you try the former, first.
Roadside Picnic is a blend of ambient drone, atmospheric distressed instrumental, and occasional vocal tracks. At full volume the experience is akin to drifting through walls of dense noise, sometimes falling into pools of melody and being pierced with emphatic shrieks. Like tuning a radio in a radiation apocalypse; faint signs of life puncturing the static of a scorched world. Listen.
Hey guys, I’m back from my super-secret Coilhouse mission to Belgrade/Ljubljana. I can’t tell you what I did there; I’ll only mention that it has something vaguely to do with stags and light beer. You will love it!
My jet-lagged brains really got a good rattle when I read Abstraction by Shintaro Kago, sent to us by Lucylle. Not safe for work! Don’t click it, mom! Lucylle describes Abstraction as “a short story in manga style, featuring an extremely creative approach to panel division/story continuity.”
I didn’t think I’d like it at first – the first few panels seemed so flat, so sparse, so lifeless. I thought, “this is why I think most manga is so boring.” But before I could finish thinking that sentence, my eye scrolled down to the page and something happened. The panels got weirder and weirder, and began to take a shape of their own. I felt like I’d been sucked into some sort of bizarre, claustrophobic fishbowl of dysmorphia, sex, awkwardness and pain, and most unsettling thing I felt as I kept on reading this was horror at how many of the completely anatomically-impossible, disjointed panels gave me an “oh shit, been there” kind of feeling. Ah, young love.
Musician Carla Kihlstedt never fails to astound me. She’s always got her nimble fingers stuck in multiple pies, all invariably delicious. Right now a Kihlstedt taste sensation I can’t get enough is 2 Foot Yard, her independently produced trio with cellist/vocalist Marika Hughes and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. Their new album is entitled Borrowed Arms and the title track is as scrumptious a slice of swingin’ dream pop as you’ll hear this year. Click over to 2 Foot Yard’s MySpace page and give it a listen. From their latest press release:
Borrowed Arms is scheduled to be released in the US on March 4th. Help us finish the CD by pre-ordering now and in return you will receive a signed copy in your hands before everyone else. Pre-ordered copies are available for a limited time.
In the spirit of community and paying it forward, we’ll be donating $.50 from every copy of Borrowed Arms sold in the US both to Food Change in Harlem, NYC and to the Canyon School organic gardening project in Canyon, CA to help promote community-based education and awareness of sustainable agriculture and nutrition as well as daily free meals to those in need.
These are people of the highest integrity. I love them dearly. Go say hello.
