Kishka is a Slavic word, meaning gut or intestine.
Eastern European kishka is a blood sausage made with pig’s blood and barley or buckwheat, with pork intestines used as casing. Ashkenazi kishke, on the other hand, is traditionally made from kosher beef intestinal links stuffed with matzo meal, schmaltz, paprika and other spices.
For no readily apparent reason, the trials and tribs of this venerated dish seem to have inspired a YouTube trend: scores of youngsters (and the occasional strong-armed adult) are shooting homemade music videos (of varying degrees of complexity) for versions of the classic polka tune, “Who Stole the Kishka?” It’s inexplicable, ridiculous, and totally friggin’ adorable. As of this moment, some of the videos are even stealthily linked to (hurr hurr… link… geddit?) on the kishka Wikipedia page.
Folks, this is just a courtesy post to let you know that our closing date for receiving Small Business ads has been moved from September 15th to September 30th. So all you stragglers who have been meaning to get your ads in, but haven’t gotten the chance to – you have one more week! Please email us to reserve your ad space. No ads will be accepted after September 30th, because we have to get Issue 04 out the door.
For those of you hearing about this opportunity for the first time, this is Coilhouse’s way of promoting small businesses in our pages by providing prominent, full-color ad space for as low as $99-149 a pop, depending on how many issues you commit to in advance. In addition to our returning advertisers from Issue 03, our new crop of Issue 04 advertisers is looking very eclectic already: it includes a swimsuit calendar inspired by Butoh, an Etsy seller of vintage-inspired capelets and scarves, and a music label of genre-crossing electronica. Join them in getting the word out about your endeavor!
“It was a terrible, indescribable thing… a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light.” – H. P. Lovecraft
Many thanks to Paul Komoda, ever the friend of Coilhouse, for pointing out the eerie similarities between this 1952 advertisement for vegetable-flavored salad Jell-O, spotted in a SocImages post discussing “how tastes are shaped by history” (see also: “The Social Construction of Prunes“), and this 1936 cover of Astounding Stories for Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness.”
There’s just something about golden era Kaiju that sends me, I’m not sure why. Other girls may swoon over a kitten in a teacup, or a ginchy pair of boots, but for me, happiness is a wonky rubber suit monster that goes “RAWR” and breathes fire.
RStevens showed me a random image last week that made my innards all floopy:
“Family reunions were always tense after cousin Toshiro married an illegal alien.” (Via Neatorama.)
He had no idea where it came from, and neither did I. Oddly compelling, innit? Without context, it looks like an old snapshot of an intergalactic exchange student taken for Mom & Pop Kaijin back home. Our friend Ariana used her formidable web-sleuthing abilities to try to track down its origins. This was as far as she got. But I had to know more… MORE… MOOAARR! I sent out a mass email to all of my most knowledgeable, righteously nerdy friends, imploring them to share any info they might have concerning this mysterious beast. Within 24 hours, Gooby had an answer, bless him:
Mystery solved! Captain Ultra was a short-lived, much-loved tokusatsu program that aired on the Tokyo Broadcasting System in 1967. It’s an invigorating world of primary-colors, rubber suit monsters, brave jetpack-wearing/raygun-wielding heroes, scrappy robots and beautiful space cadets. YouTube user Tokusatsugod26 has uploaded scores of clips from the show to his channel for our enjoyment. Click on Ghostler’s face to get there:
Quickly, in honor of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, here’s George Harrison on the BBC’s beloved Rutland Weekend Television show back in 1975, demonstrating why he’s my favorite Beatle:
OK, it’s official. For the first time since relocating my base of operations to the southern hemisphere, I’m homesick:
Right now just about all of my talented fabricator/maker/builder chums back in California are gearing up (hurr hurr) for the second annual Santa Rosa Handcar Regatta, which takes place Sept 27th. That’s exactly a week from now. From the Handcar Regatta’s “Philosophy” page:
The railcar races at the center of the Regatta highlights Innovation and Human-Powered Ingenuity to devise cheaper, viable, and hitherto undreamed of methods for bizarre transport beyond the standard notions of today. Additionally, commuter rail transport is highlighted in our era of rising fuel costs. Together with an emphasis on biking, the Regatta provides a platform for playfulness and sustainable concerns within the realm of human-powered alternative transportation.
Tinkerers, artists, and eccentrics both young and old are invited to participate in Artistic and Mechanical Innovation upon a playful and inspired mixture of fond remembrance for a stylized industrial railroad past remixed with progressive styles and technologies of today.
The elegantly feisty Hennepin Crawler, winner of the Erasmus P. Kitty Honorary Award at the 2008 Handcar Regatta.
If you live in the area and appreciate thoughtful, gonzo DIY fun on a massive scale, you will not want to miss this. Indie vendors, circus and dance performances, yummy foodstuffs, live music and multiple geekgasms await you. More info here. Have fun at the races, comrades.
Meredith Dittmar’s fantastic sculpture boxes are at once instantly familiar and refreshingly new. Certainly there is no lack of clean, minimalist, cartoon artwork on display across the internet, but it’s interesting to see how far a little physical depth can go in keeping the idea from being stale or redundant. Simple and fun, they have a dream-like quality I find irresistibly charming and engaging, inviting the viewer to look deeper and search out every little detail.
Our issue 02 cover girl – 3’10” spitfire, comedienne and burlesque sensation Selene Luna – is celebrating her birthday this weekend! There’s no big party, but Selene is asking fans and friends to come and see her new one-woman show, which runs for only two nights, titled Chiquita!. In addition to Selene’s stand-up routine, the show also features a dance hit premiere written by actress/transgender activist Calpernia Addams, a video premiere by legendary alt-culture portraitist Austin Young, and much more. A brief description from Brown Paper Tickets, where you can find showtimes and ticketing information:
Luna pushes the envelope through dark humor and camp, weaving together a lifetime of adversity from her roots in Tijuana, Mexico to humorous tales of Hollywood that can only be told by a little person. Chiquita! is hilariously straightforward as Luna addresses topics most are too embarrassed to ask a little person. Luna has carved a niche for herself and continues to break the stereotypes of little people in entertainment. She continues to bring her magnetic appeal to broader audiences and plans to shake things up in a big way!
Even if you can’t be there, there’s tons of new Selene Luna hilarity to enjoy since we last blogged about this gutsy performer. Selene has recently teamed up with comedienne Nadya Ginsburg to co-write and release some short videos, which can be found on Selene’s YouTube channel. My favorite is their turn as Madonna and Lourdes, below:
When I look at Ewelina Ferruso‘s art, one thing pops into my mind: “this is what lowbrow art is supposed to look like”. Like Nadya, I’ve grown a little weary of the pre-teens in distress and bloody bears barraging the genre over the past few years; my brain simply doesn’t respond to spooky imagery as it once did. Ewelina stands apart because she manages to capture the very essence of childhood’s dreamy, happy haze and fears alike without dipping into that same old collective symbol pool. And let’s not forget her keen technical skill – I’ve seen a couple of these pieces in person and have to say that hers is some of the most impressive workmanship I’ve encountered this year. What I especially dig about Ewelina’s painting style is the way she integrates textures with smooth gradients – each shiny little blob carefully considered and attended to, each stroke blended to perfection.
Above, likely my favorite of Ewelina’s pieces. When I look at this I see yellow flowers pictured from below, as they would look to a child lying in a sunny meadow on a warm summer afternoon. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the enchanted wonderment most of us don’t indulge in nearly enough.
Below, Ewelina describes her evolution and the direction of her new work to Coilhouse.
EF: “My intention is to chronicle a personal spiritual journey. We are the storytellers, fable fibbers, truth seekers, elaborators of dreams and embracers of muses and magical things that others are consciously or unconsciously drawn towards. As artists, we are the magnets of beauty. We bring unlikely particles together in orgasmic connections. Thus, it is in a sense, fireworks in the making as I see it.
I work on a deep inner plane coming from a place of an accumulation of experiences, meditations, mid-night visions, psychic revelations, appreciation of the unseen and a profound passion to evolve. The earlier pieces were centered in childhood and express a certain innocence in play and discovery. I allow myself to be immersed in mystery and often find that the work reveals to me what the mystery is in due time. And so, I expand and demand more mysterious phenomena. The current revelation of work is unraveling itself now as a thorough digging within the denied realms of this soul. I pose the question, ‘How can one fully share their lightness, if one does not embark on a quest to know their darkness?’ It is within this yin and yang that a true woman unfolds. There will be a shedding of old skin and an unlocking of doors.”
Behold: my dream lair. Unfortunately, being located in Brooklyn, this loft probably costs a gazillion dollars. Still, one can dream!
The furnishings in this image, however, are far too benign. You all know that I’m decorating-challenged, but even I can see that the tremendous potential of this space been wasted. I’m not saying that we need to completely goth it up in here with coffin furniture and I.V. bag-styled lamps – love that stuff, but not for this. Still, I’d much rather see this space looking like it belongs to a dignified shut-in taxidermist, and not someone’s rich aunt.
So, Coilhomeboys and girls, how would you design this space if it were yours? For more jealousy inspiration, see below. For some reason, though, I’m tempted to skip out on the cabinet-of-curiosities thing altogether and make it totally disco.