Look, ye, upon the 80s wonder that was the Music Vest. Take in its gorgeous exterior, available in metallic silver or jet black. Let your eyes trace the fine, angular, Flash Gordan-esque lines. The next step in personal audio entertainment; marvel at its water proof speaker technology which facilitates musical enjoyment in any situation whether it be jogging, fishing, or simply break-dancing in your parents’s driveway in Secaucus.
Obviously the result of many hundreds of dollars of research and development and worn by one entire family, the Music Vest represents the ultimate in auditory rape. There was a time that the only way to forcibly expose the unwilling public to your own, personal soundtrack was to carry a heavy boombox. This led to shoulder strain; also, it made you look like a tool. Not so with the Music Vest. The Music Vest is light, slimming, and stylish and leaves both your hands free to receive high fives. Imagine looks you’ll get when you emerge from your DeLorean, swathed in space-age material, blasting the latest Duran Duran album. So do yourself a favor, pick up that phone and order yours today.*
* Requires use of time machine. Perhaps the aforementioned DeLorean. Time machine not included.
Help us clear room for Issue 03! Out of 1,000 copies of Issue 02 that we had up for sale, there are only 30 left. These will be on sale for another week (or less, if they sell out faster), and then Issue 02 will officially be sold out forever. Many of you have asked if we’re ever going to reprint our issues. We don’t really have an answer to that, except to say that if it does happen, it probably won’t be for another few years, if ever. So get it now, before it’s gone! Click here to buy Coilhouse Issue 02. Thank you for everyone’s support thusfar.
Deep down we allknewthis; didn’t we? We all had our suspicions. How else could we reconcile the putrid taste of that colorless powder, requiring as it did pounds of sugar in order to dispel that fetid flavor which so offended the palate, and transform it into the toothsome elixir so beloved by children? A flavor which we can now pin upon the lingering stench of death.
More important queries, however, concern the Man itself. Whatever qualms we may have had in reference to its violent behavior, its insatiable need for destruction, are finally confirmed. “There is no reason,” we said to ourselves, “that someone should constantly smash through walls if their intentions are pure.”
Now all those questions and concerns have been answered. Now, thanks to Jon Vermilyea, we can say with absolute certainty that we were right. Now we can say that Kool-Aid is people.
Let it never be said that I am fashion conscious. That is not to be taken in the traditional sense, that I do not take care in my appearance for, while this is true — a fact to which my various burlap and sack cloth ensembles attest — I mean “not fashion conscious” as in I am almost unaware that people design clothes in a way that would be pleasing to the eye. I am fashion comatose. I am fashion regressive.
This fact was probably not immediately aware to my new colleagues but it was not long after I arrived at the Catacombs, wearing a newly acquired potato sack, that it began to dawn on them that something might be amiss. Escorted into a deceptively large and well lit boardroom I was seated at a large table. Here Nadya, in what I assume was a generous act of good faith, laid out an impressive spread of photographic content which would be appearing in the third issue of their magazine. Obviously anticipating a thoughtful reaction I made an effort to appear knowledgeable. Picking up one of the photos I scrutinized it fastidiously, pursing my lip and nodding in what I hoped was a convincingly savvy manner. Finally, after a seemingly endless forty seconds I placed the photo down, leaning back and tenting my fingers I said, with absolute authority “These are beautiful. That dress makes her bosom look really impressive.” I need not tell you that the silence in that room was deafening.
You must then take my enthusiasm for these reading glasses with something approaching a brick of salt. It is all together possible that my enthusiasm for these glasses from Filao — which are being distributed on this continent by French Melody — stems from a shameful fantasy of them hanging round the lily-white neck of a svelte, Alt-librarian. This is a bad reason to like something, especially considering that there are no Alt libraries near me, nor in existence. Still, there’s something about the masquerade aesthetic and the ability to fold them away that is undeniably appealing, even to someone as fashionably brain-dead as yours truly.
Top of the morning to you! Although it’s noon here in partly-cloudy Los Angeles, the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet, which can only mean one thing on a Monday: an installment of Better Than Coffee! This week, we have sexy Marlene on the musical saw. Whatever goofy shenanigans were taking place to elicit audience laughter when Marlene finally starts playing the saw at 1:25 have been lost to time, for only the audio survived in the clip above.
From Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier, whose previous efforts include hanging Björk and pimping Nichole Kidman, comes Antichrist starring Willem DeFoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. IMDB’s synopsis runs thusly: “A grieving couple retreats to their cabin ‘Eden’ in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.” So it seems that a couple had a child, who died. Overcome with grief the mother succumbs to the overuse of mood-altering prescription drugs. Seeing their marriage falling apart the husband convinces her to get rid of them and join him in their cabin in the middle of the woods. There, crazy shit occurs.
To be honest I’m quite unsure as to this latest effort from von Trier. The idea that he would feel the need to make a genre film of this sort is a strange one. After all, the man has been making horror movies in one form or another his entire career, and the instances where he has succumbed to the need for traditional horror have been tedious affairs (see The Kingdom). It could merely be that von Trier wants to join the ranks of directors who have filmed sex scenes featuring Willem DeFoe.
Still, a von Trier/DeFoe pairing, in spite of the aforementioned Gollum-esque sex scene, is intriguing and lately I’ve been feeling perhaps a bit too upbeat so a dose of unyielding, soul crushing angst would probably go a long way in bringing me down a few pegs.
OK, so about that interview with Ross the other day. Despite the fact that some of you seem to have found it amusing, we don’t do that sort of thing for shits and giggles. When we ask a man if he prefers sushi or tacos, we mean business. That, friends, was a Coilhouse job interview. And he’s hired. Ladies and gentlemen, put your tentacles together for our newest guest blogger, Ross Rosenberg!*
Few subjects are as tiresome to discuss in a public forum as politics. It is an arena which I make a concerted effort to avoid whenever possible. Indeed, should I have the urge to debate matters of a political bent I do it alone, in the privacy of my own cave. So devoted am I to the idea that I have cultivated a rather well-conceived alter ego; a personage of conservative persuasion who I merely call Dermot. This personality, combined with the hand-puppet I fashioned in secret just for these occasions, provides the perfect foil for my decidedly liberal views and many times I have debated, long into the night after everyone has retired for the evening, in a dual toned, hushed and angry whisper, subjects ranging from stem-cell research, to corn subsidies, to what I should have for breakfast.
The reason for disclosing this tedious and potentially embarrassing information is to assure you, dear readers, that I do not dwell wistfully on this area of our society; that I do not haunt the same vicious corners of the internet as the detestable and frail “political junkie”; and that I certainly do not watch C-Span.
One of my favorite artists, Bethalynne Bajema, has a new book out! The book is called Bajema’s Web Collection II: Etta Diem and features art and writing by Bajema’s new alter ego, Etta:
My second collection of work introduces my character Etta Diem with new artwork and writing all done in Miss Diem’s somewhat antique and eccentric style.
This collection includes Etta’s encyclopedia of Harmful Sensation, her mostly true stories of the strange and quirky (like the tale of the prostitute popular during the Jack the Ripper times, who was singled out by her chattering teeth… that didn’t happen to be in her mouth) and a variety of other dark humor tales from Victorian times. The collection also includes a new series of steampunk/dark fantasy styled art that had not been seen as of yet.
Bajema also has an Etsy store, where you can buy some gorgeous handmade prints from the book.
Yesterday, we published a sneak peek from our exclusive interview with Ross Rosenberg, one of the most mysterious bloggers on the web. The wait is finally over, and we’re publishing the full interview below. Sadly, the interview had to be cut short because the smell coming from beneath the floorboards at Ross’ apartment got to be too much for us to handle. At least now we know why he wears that creepy respirator all the time. Without further ado!
Who’s a pretty, pretty princess? Ross, are you a pretty, pretty princess? What I do on the first Friday of the month is my business alone, thank you very much.
Boxers or briefs? Boxer briefs. My delicate yet horrifically disproportioned scrotum requires the support of briefs without the horrid, mankini effect that they bring to the occasion.
Chocolate or peanut butter? I’m glad you asked this question. There was a time, before 1928, when the Flavours were kept separate, as it had been for centuries, and rightly so. It was only with the invention of Harry Burnett Reese’s devilish Cup that segregation was overturned, leading to the current climate of Hedonism, Lawlessness, Toucherism, and Moral Decay. Indeed, it is with such fervent vigor; such unscrupulous ferocity that the Leftist Elite push the Liberal Chocolate/Peanut Butter Agenda that we have entire generations of young people, their minds innocent and unfettered by the horrors of this world, these young people have had their virgin minds viciously raped by the idea that the mixing of Flavours is okay and, indeed, natural; and when I say that I mean it. The Leftists are raping our young people with giant, Chocolate and Peanut Butter cocks and we are allowing it. It’s being taught in our schools and sold in plain sight in every supermarket and bodega and we are allowing it into our homes. We are inviting these filthy Leftists to rape our children with their candy cocks; spreading the delicate, pillowy folds of their frontal lobes with our own ignorance, and it has to end!
Also, chocolate.
Sushi or tacos? This question is rendered moot by the fact that sushi is merely a Japanese taco. Look it up.
