My parents tried so hard to protect me from the Internet. In my early years online, my dad installed CyberPatrol, a program that changed all my curse words to “****”.  Fortunately, the program wasn’t too ASCII-savvy, and my exclamations of “shít!” and “fück!” echoed loud and clear across IRC. Then there was the time limit: after 2 hours online, a little dialog box would pop up and say to me, “Your Time is Up! Click OK to Sign Off” or something to that effect. Upon clicking OK, the net connection would shut down until the next day. But I found my way around that, too: I just never clicked OK, so the internet stayed on. And thank God, because otherwise I might’ve actually developed an interest in sunlight and fresh air in my teens. Fück that!

Sometime later, Bell picked up on the fears that compelled my dad to install that poorly-programmed piece of shít, and ran the ad above to promote its own version of a web-based parental control tool. You’ll note that the page that looks like the game board from Operation is actually an anatomical textbook, with the breasts, the ovaries, and – inexplicably – the stomach removed. What exactly is this ad saying – about women’s bodies, sex education, the intelligence of the parents they’re marketing to, and/or quality of the software?

Via the venerable SocImages, where commenter pcwhite notes: “I remember the controversy over this ad from several years ago. Bell trotted out the predictable non-apology stating that what they were really doing was *satirizing* the over-protective parents who would censor their kids’ anatomy illustrations. I think that’s a weasely batch of bullshit, but there you are. I also love how this ad is unintentionally truthful: filters routinely deny access to websites about sex education as well as porn.”

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.

“Garland is a superb, crazily imaginative songwriter. Singing through a synclavier or banging on a piece of Styrofoam, he’ll sing about how insane the nightly news is, how painful true love is, how scary getting to know other people is, and it all quietly creeps up and hits you right where you live.”
—Kyle Gann, Village Voice

Upon first meeting David Garland a decade ago in NYC, what moved me most was the man’s remarkable voice. David has what I’ve often referred to as an “NPR voice”: calm, gentle, assured, reflective of a deep and kindly intelligence. I could happily listen to him recite the phone book, or Goodnight Moon, or Nietzche’s “Wahnbriefe” for hours on end. It’s no coincidence that he hosts and curates one of my all-time favorite radio shows, WNYC’s Spinning on Air. (If you have any interest in off-the-beaten-path, non-commerce-driven music, you should bookmark that link immediately.)

Photo by Anne Garland.

David’s also a gifted singer/composer, infusing his “control songs” with all of the qualities mentioned above. He’s been keeping busy recording new material with everyone from Sufjan Stevens to Greg Saunier to Diane Cluck. Catching up with me by phone recently, he said he’d just finished shooting his first music video with none other than Amber Benson and Adam Busch. (SQUEEE!!) Here’s what David had to say about the events leading up to their collaboration:

My wife Anne Garland and I had been introduced to the joys of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by our son Kenji in the summer of 2007. Anne and I were happily working our way through the many seasons of Buffy, and had just recently seen Amber’s character Tara killed by Adam’s character Warren. We went out to an Indian restaurant for lunch and waiting in line just ahead of us were Amber and Adam. We got talking, learned of Adam’s band Common Rotation, and enjoyed one another’s company. We’ve done a few projects together since, and now this video. Adam and Amber are creative, generous people, apparently willing to get involved in a project just for the fun and love of it, and I’ve really enjoyed hanging out and making stuff with them. Amber really likes Anne’s Luminous Playhouse photos, and suggested the effective idea of mixing and comparing the miniature and full-size scenes as a visual theme for my song “Diorama.” We borrowed a super-8 camera from Ken Brown and in two intense afternoons shot the footage, Amber and Adam co-directing and filming.

David, it’s an honor and a pleasure to premiere that video here on Coilhouse. Thank you, as always, for your wise and beautiful voice.

Diorama from David Garland on Vimeo. Directed, filmed and edited by Amber Benson and Adam Busch. David Garland’s songs “Prelude” and “Diorama” from the album Noise In You on Family Vineyard. Featuring Anne Garland’s Luminous Playhouse Theater Company. Singers: David Garland, Diane Cluck, Sufjan Stevens, and Mira Romantschuk. Appearing in the film are David Garland, Kenji Garland, his friend Aurora Cobb, Viking Moses (Brendon Massei), Golden Ghost (Laura Goetz), and Anne Garland.

More Garland-related clips, links and images after the jump.

A spectrogram of the mysterious “Bloop.”

Y’all know about “The Bloop”, right? Via Wiki:

The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency underwater sound detected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration several times during the summer of 1997. The source of the sound remains unknown. The sound, traced to somewhere around 50° S 100° W (South American southwest coast), was detected repeatedly by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array, which uses U.S. Navy equipment originally designed to detect Soviet submarines. According to the NOAA description, it “rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km.” According to scientists who have studied the phenomenon, it matches the audio profile of a living creature but there is no known animal that could have produced the sound. If it is an animal, it would have to be, reportedly, much larger than even a Blue Whale, the largest known animal on the earth.

OMG, R’YLEH?! But seriously. That is some mind-rending, scary-ass, dont-think-about-it-too-hard-or-you’ll-shit-a-squid kinda stuff, people! Forget about alien invasion from outer space. Our destruction shall come from the depths. I’m telling you.

Some kooky Thelemite going by the humble title of Frater Tanranin Uhcheek Gozaknee, 222 has composed the following “Cthulhu Meditation” using original Bloop sound files (as well as what sounds suspiciously like a human left-cheeky-sneaky thrown in for lulz) and put it on YouTube. Quite mesmerizing, actually! I recommend popping some ‘luudes and listening to it in the bathtub. With the lights on.

Favorite Youtube comment: “Maybe it’s Cthulhu farting!” Second favorite: “Maybe it’s Amy Winehouse!”

Kathy Acker, 1986. Photo by Robert Croma.

Some of the most brain-scramblingly brilliant clusterfucks in the English language come to us courtesy of the late novelist Kathy Acker. She was a small and potent leather-clad, post-structuralist prose-styling, sex-positive slip of a woman who, according to loving friends and resentful exes alike, moved through the world with the social delicacy of a class F5 tornado.

I bring her up partly because some retrospectives and conferences celebrating Acker’s work have started cropping up in NYC and London, but mostly because I’m having such a blast revisiting her books lately. Grove Press released Essential Acker a while back, along with some of her previously unpublished early novels: Rip-off Red, The Burning Bombing of America, and Girl Detective. It’s chewy, nourishing stuff, and her tales of rejection and redefinition are hitting me even harder the second time around.

2009 is a fresh, raw, hopeful year… the perfect time for an Acker revival! It’d be lovely to chat about her with anyone else out there familiar with her work. (I suppose I could drive over to UC Berkeley and try to ingratiate myself with a few of those scowling pomo lit profs, but I’m afeared. I’d rather gab with you guys.)

Jonathan Webster: “The most enjoyable thing about having a conversation with the gorgeous, post-punk, post-feminist, pierced and tattooed American novelist Kathy Acker, is that her answers to interview questions take on an elliptical quality. Just as in her novels, you are simultaneously thrown off balance and yet riveted, never quite knowing whether she is going to give you a straight answer or about to go off at a bizarre, but somehow connected, tangent”. (Photo by Kathy Brew.)

She was an obsession of mine as a teenager. Auntie Acker, the mentor I never had, the one who would have bought me beer and beadies and spoken to me candidly about orgasms and revolution when none of the other grown-ups took me seriously. A comics pal of mine insists that Neil Gaiman based his famed Endless character Delirium as much on Acker as he did on Tori. That would make a lot of sense, given her spaced-out, million-places-at-once style, and the giddy arc of her life story…

Kanye West does a lot to bridge cultural gaps, which I’ve always found admirable. This is a man not afraid to say “Balenciaga is one of the illest lines right now”. Between his multi-genre music, popular blog, and innovative videos he’s practically on a holy mission to bring art, fashion and literature into the lives of his fans. However, change is not always easy.

Owens model channels Laibach

A few days ago the rapper blogged about the new Rick Owens collection. Owens is known for extreme tailoring, using a lot of black materials and being generally spooky as hell. He’s also known for hand-picking divinely alien specimens to showcase his work. This time around at Paris Fashion Week his choices were especially exotic, and Kanye’s fans noticed. Some of the comments his blog post received:

Ahh, growing pains.

As far as I’m concerned, Owens has impeccable taste and these models are top-notch, with potential to fit nicely into both our Preternatural and Alien beauty posts. I adore his clothes and consider him to be one of the best high fashion designers of our time, up there with Gareth Pugh, C.C. Poell and a few select others. It pleases me to see someone with as much much influence as Kanye West sharing this sentiment to some extent. I’m sure he expected a bit of a backlash when he presented images of all those pale, black-clad gentlemen to his public. But do you think he was prepared for this?

Clearly, user gdzhulakidze’s mind was blown to the point of incoherence. He seems genuinely scared and his disdain is palpable. I’d almost say Kanye might have done better with an introductory post before unleashing the Rick upon his followers, but there is plenty of positive feedback to counter the bad. For instance: “No one does black better, except 4 obama… ;)”. Mm. Change is here.

A special thanks to StyleZeitgeist for bringing this matter to our attention.

Who else here has a list (I mean an actual, tangible, ink-on-paper list) of places they want to go and things they want to do/see before they kick the bucket? Anyone? Care to share?

Near the tippy top of my own list is a visit to England specifically to witness massive flocking formations of starlings over the moors in the West Midlands. Hundreds of thousands of them gather each year to tumble together through the air at dusk, swerving suddenly, veering arbitrarily, always in perfect unison, never colliding, sometimes for hours before coming down to roost for the evening. Birders travel from all over the world to observe the phenomenon. Scientists have been studying their swarming behavior to develop artificial technology:

Before I die, I must see this with my own eyes. International Coilhouse field trip, anyone?

What would you want to do?

(More flocking clips after the jump.)