Via Jo Weldon‘s fascinating Formspring page comes this lo-fi snippet of Dada neo-burlesque, courtesy of the cheekily brilliant “reigning Cheese Queen of Coney Island” a.k.a. “The Girl With The 44DD Brain”, Miz Nasty Canasta:

(NSFW, and if hysterical cackling and/or car alarms set your teeth on edge, better skip it.)

The Brooklyn-based Canasta, who’s an inveterate pop culture geek, first came to my attention when io9 covered one of her gigs as a co-producer and performer in the whip-smart Pinchbottom Burlesque, which regularly features theatrical nudie shows based on sci fi to Biblical to classical literary references from Doctor Who to Dickens to Star Trek. Whenever she takes the stage, Canasta strives to “create a dazzling spectacle of perplexing proportions.”

Perplexing to say the least! And irreverent, and sexy, and hilarious. If you think the car alarm steez is outre, wait until you get a load of her signature Groucho routine! (For the sake of our darling worker bee readers, it’s after the jump.)

A treat for this, the 16th of April, in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Ten. Today the FAM presents the 2004 BBC documentary Tetris: From Russia With Love at the risk of offending the beautiful yet cruel Nadya by forcing her to relive the traumatic events that led to the loss of her family and her subsequent immigration to the States. Even now as I sit here writing this, I strain my ears, listening for the tell-tale tapping of her limping gate, the staccato rhythm of cane and wooden leg working in lurching concert upon the stone floors and metal walkways of The Catacombs.

My editor’s sordid past aside, the BBC did a terrific job of examining the story of quite possibly the most addictive videogame ever made. A model of simplicity there are probably few of my generation that don’t remember their experience with Tetris; and I’m willing to bet that more than a few can relate stories of falling asleep and dreaming of falling tetrominoes or of being unable to expunge the home console version’s music from their brains.

The life of Tetris — created deep within Soviet Russia and leaked through the iron curtain, leaving a trail of in-fighting, threats, and questionable copyright law in its wake — is one of the great, epic tales in videogames. It encapsulates a time in the industry when games were just beginning to implant themselves as a cultural force and, in a broader sense, was a portent of things to come, arriving at the same time that the Soviet Union was beginning to dissolve.

In fact it’s easy to take Tetris as metaphor entirely too far. In it’s plainness and restraint it opens itself up to any number of meanings. It is perhaps best then to acknowledge it as a great game and leave it at that, lest one be tempted to sum up the end of the 20th century in terms of falling blocks.

Download the media kit here!

After weeks of streamlining, updating, researching and grooming, our media kit is finally done. We’re so proud of it, comrades! It might seem a little strange to get the warm fuzzies over something intended for cold, hard commerce, but we feel that this is a respectful and elegant representation of Coilhouse and its readers. We’re excited. Especially when we think back to 2007 and realize just how far this good ship has traveled. For those interested in learning more about advertising in Issue 05, as well as in future issues, the 2010 Coilhouse Media Kit is available for download here. In addition to that reveal, we have three more bits of very interesting information to share:

1. Our biggest news is that we’re dropping the magazine’s price to $12.99 in stores. We’re doing this to give back to all the readers who’ve supported us through the years, and for everyone who wishes the magazine was slightly more affordable. The quality of the magazine (number of pages, paper stock) will remain the same. In fact, the overall quality of Issue #05 is going up, as we’ll be trying out a dazzling special effect on the cover, and including a large fold-out poster inside. For the time being, the mag will remain at $15 in our online shop and will include a special surprise (to be divulged at a later date), for those readers who buy directly from us. We’re committed to making the magazine more affordable both in stores and on the web, but we need to take it one step at a time. This is the first step.
2. We’re more than tripling our distribution in Barnes & Noble stores across the country. It will be in more stores than ever before! A list of locations will be posted. In addition, Issue 05 has been accepted into the Barnes & Noble Endcap Display Case – you know, the one that you see when you first walk into the magazine aisle, under the heading “Featured Titles” or “Just Arrived.” Issue 05 will be there for four whole weeks. This is a huge win for us, as we hope that we’ll be able to introduce more readers to Coilhouse than ever. Especially with such an intense cover, which we can’t wait to reveal to you. Eeee! We’re sitting on our hands to keep from spilling the beans. Soon. SOON.
3. Issue 05 will be appear in more independently-owned shops than ever before. We just got picked for distribution by Last Gasp, a respected distributor of all things alt, who recently celebrated their 40th birthday. They’re amazing. In addition to its history of publishing underground comix, Last Gasp is known for distributing items such as the RE/Search books, the Gothic & Lolita Bible, Hi-Fructose, Fantagraphics titles, and a lot of other more obscure counter-culture stuff. They can get us into a lot of cool mom and pop shops that other distributors don’t have access to.

Issue 05 will have more reach than any issue we’ve ever done, and it’s our most ambitious, colorful output to date. It’s so hard to keep the content of this issue under our hats! We’re sitting on our hands again. But there’s some beautiful stuff. You already know about the Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer piece, and some of you may have heard online whispers of Chet Zar and Zoë Keating and Gibbous Fashions and Crabapple illustrations… babies, that’s barely the tip of the iceberg. Just you wait.

For small businesses looking to advertise in Coilhouse, this is the issue. We considered putting that sentence in flashing, grunting, neon porno marquee lights for emphasis, but we are classy ladies. (Besides, we couldn’t figure out the HTML coding.) If you’ve been on the fence about taking out an ad, please note that this is probably the best issue to start. With the lower cover price, more people who haven’t heard of the magazine will be inclined to buy it. Combine that with special display promotion at Barnes & Noble, and it’s a guarantee that more folks will be picking up and leafing though it than our previous issues, which were often relegated to the back shelves of periodical purgatory.

We’d much, much, muchly much rather survive with the help of small independent businesses than large corporate sponsors. We cannot overstate that. Which is why we’ve kept the Small-Business Ad Format rates the same as they were before. It’s still possible to advertise in Coilhouse for as low as $99 per issue. We’ve hired a kick-ass Ad Manager, longtime Coilhouse reader Samantha Chin-Wolner, to help small businesses get their ads squared away. Sam will assist you with every step of the process, and she’s a total sweetheart.

For those interested, please contact Samantha for details.

For everyone else, thank you, as always, for your support and kinship on this journey. We remain gratefully and giddily yours. Up, up and away we go!

A sneak peek at some original artwork by Greg Broadmore, created expressly for Coilhouse #05.

These astonishing macros of snoozing insects covered in dew were shot by amateur photographer Miroslaw Swietek, ask between 3am and 4am in a forest near his home in the village of Jaroszow, Poland. Swietek only took up photography two years ago, at 35 years of age. Using a flashlight, he “hunts out the motionless bugs in the darkness before setting up his camera and flash just millimetres from them.” More beautiful images of diamond-like, dewy bugs at MailOnline.

Self-taught graphic designer Courtney Riot is celebrating her whelping day. At 24, she’s the baby of the Coilhouse family.

Rascally Riot.

Courtney joined us on Issue 02 as the magazine’s Creative Director, and she’s been rocking our world ever since. Normally, someone in this position oversees a full staff of graphic designers. When she set about to work on Issue 02, Courtney handled everything from the overall design themes to the minutia of kerning and tracking on every single page. She didn’t just lay the magazine out; she gave it a personality. Suddenly, each article had a life of its own: hand-drawn lettering, intricate scrapbook-style collages, angular Soviet poster sensibilities, layouts constructed from cityscapes and mushroom clouds, type overgrown with weeds or shrouded in smoke… an article that looked like a pharmacy… an article that tasted like sugar skulls. Courtney brought them all to life.

This woman has become the invaluable fourth core member of Coilhouse’s editorial team. She’s a vital force in our production, and our evolution. As we head into the final production weeks of our next print issue, we want to shout something from the rooftops: THANK YOU, COURTNEY RIOT.

Photo by Lou O’Bedlam.

Our secret weapon. Our powerhouse. You never cease to amaze us. Without you, we were a knock-kneed, three-legged endtable that wasn’t quite sure of its aesthetic, or direction. With you, we’ve become an elegant, streamlined, galloping banquet table. We can’t wait to share what you’re working on right now for #05. Jaws are gonna drop.

Happy birthday, beautiful.

The act of “sweding” a movie — creating an amateur version of a feature film — was coined by Michel Gondry in his film Be Kind Rewind and it is something that you may have seen popping up on the internet in the film’s wake. I can assure you that you have not seen anything approaching the surreal sensibilities of this version of Blade Runner filmed by “The Dokkoi Company”. Beginning simply with the words “2026. The Replicant ran away. The Bladerunner chases it.” what follows is a crazed, whirlwind tour of Ridley Scott’s film, replete with a strangely evocative score that sounds like it was created using kazoos, a toy car hanging from string, and the copious use of crude, paper masks. It’s a tour de force of interpretive reenactment, and they even went so far as to create a version for the more recent Final Cut. Worth it for the penultimate rooftop scene alone; not unlike the film it apes.

There can be no doubt that the fine folks at The Asylum are fans of the special breed of 50s era science fiction; an era in which the mysterious atom reigned supreme. So intrinsic to the conclusion of WWII, viagra a symbol of American dominance and ingenuity, healing and a portent of The Future the atom was also viewed with fear, and whole oeuvres were built around the concept of atomic energy run amok, creating vast, horrifying menageries of over-sized, irradiated monsters. What else but fanatical love for this bygone age could explain the existence of films like Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus or the soon to be classic Mega Piranha starring former pop icon Tiffany and former Brady Buncher Barry Williams? How else would one explain the decidedly sub-par visual effects except as a desire to retain the essence of those films? This, dear readers, is devotion. This is love. Now to patiently await the remake of Them!.

The Floria Sigismondi wet dream that is iamaiwhoami (Jonna Lee?) has finally taken the next step in her personal YouTube evolution, from feral avant garde video antihero to fully-fledged electro chanteuse, and she is lovely.

It’s fairly straightforward –albeit spooky– electronica. The song’s driving melody is even a bit reminiscent of those daffy chugging synths Limahl used for the Neverending Story theme song, with an added dash of Deep Breakfast. And yet? “o” is putting the same loamy glow in my bones that initial exposure to Goldfrapp, Julia Frodahl, Karin Dreijer Andersson, Björk, Julee Cruise and female surrealists like Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington once did. I remain intrigued as ever.

How about you?

Okay, you know the 2010 Media Kit and Big Coilhouse News that we’ve been promising you since last week? Well, turns out we’re going to have to make you all wait one more day (this news is worth the wait, though, we promise!). Tabulating the survey results has taken more time than we anticipated. Here’s a screenshot of what the process looks like in Excel.  While we finish up the media kit, allow me to entertain you with six graphs and pie charts that we’ve created so far. Some of this will be in tomorrow’s media kit, some of it is a blog exclusive!

This was in response to the question “what country do you live in? Some fun facts:

• Six respondents included their state in the answer. Two of them were from California, and the other four were from Texas. No one else indicated a home state.
• Six respondents wrote in “USA! USA! USA!”  Three respondents wrote in “USA! USA!”
• The eight readers who wrote in from The Nertherlands are highly encouraged to attend the OK Festival that we just blogged about.
• Other top countries included Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, China, Croatia, Finland and Singapore

This was in response to the question, “do you have a creative pursuit that you’re extremely passionate about?”

• 116 creative pursuits were listed
• The chart above indicates the Top 16 creative pursuits. The next most popular pursuits, in order of popularity, were: knitting, sewing, animation, blogging, singing, costume design, jewelry, videography,  acting, electronic music, guitar, sculpture, baking, web design, book binding, cloth design, digital art, gardening, printing, theatre and aerials
• Some of less popular creative pursuits included: ceremonial magick, spinning poi, papercraft, math (“pure mathematics is eminently creative”), hardware engineering, typography, haberdashery and swimming

This was in response to the “What are your favorite magazines?” question:

• Most indicated that Coilhouse was their favorite magazine. Aww, you guys! *squish*
• The graph above indicates the Top 12 favorite magazines. The runners-up that didn’t make it into the chart, in order of the number of people who indicated that they were favorite magazines, were: Filament, Adbusters, Edge, Esquire, Fortean Times, Zink, Cabinet, Der Spiegel, Dwell and Elegy.

Leeds-based musician Brett Domino and his buddies have been up to YouTube shenanigans for a while now, but this Justin Timberlake medley performed by Domino and Steven Peavis takes the cake, especially in terms of video editing and complexity of arrangement. Instruments featured: Stylophone Beatbox, iPod Touch (using the DigiDrummer Lite app), kazoo, thumb piano, egg shaker, stylophone, cowbell, recorder, ukulele, theremin, spoons, and Roland AX-Synth. NERD UP.