Written & Directed by Anna Rodgers & Aoife Kelleher. Produced by Zlata Filipovic. (via Sarah Forrester, thanks!)
This moving short was “created as part of BeLonG To Youth Services annual Stand Up! LGBT Awareness Weeks. The campaign promotes friendship amongst young people as a way to combat homophobic bullying. For more information on the campaign please visit BeLonGTo.org.”
Bravo, BeLonGTo. You’re doing it right!
Tomorrow, April 21st, at 11:59pm PST, our PDF Download Launch Sale concludes. Thank you to everyone who purchased a PDF of Issues 01-05 this month. The sale was a huge success for us, and we’re so grateful. Issue 06 will be bigger and better than ever because of you!
In the next few weeks, we’ll be reinstating the PDFs in our shop. However, the current special introductory price for our back issues – $5 per issue, and $20 for all five – is only available until tomorrow at midnight. We’ll post an announcement about when the PDFs will be returning to our shop, as well as what their regular price will be, in the weeks to come.
The PDF Shop is still open for a little more than 24 hours. Thank you, everyone, for your support!
Before we close the shop, one more free article for your enjoyment. This is our Neil Gaiman + Amanda Palmer interview from Issue 05:
British actress Elisabeth Sladen has died at the age of 63, after battling cancer. Sladen played Sarah Jane Smith on the cult classic BBC television series Doctor Who. Over time, her character grew to become one of the most beloved of all the Timelord’s companions.
Sladen was on a short list of people who became deeply involved with the new Doctor Who program in addition to the old one, so much so that Sladen eventually starred in a multi-season, award-winning spin-off series of her own, a program geared towards teen audiences called the Sarah Jane Adventures, which introduced a new generation of viewers to Sarah Jane and her darling robotic sidekick, K-9.
An adorable and windblown Ms. Sladen bounds through the opening credits of the 1981 pilot for a proposed BBC series, K-9 and Company. “Sometimes good television doesn’t depend on money. It depends on imagination and good people directing, casting and doing the job with talented people. Then you’re forgiven a great deal, I think, if sometimes something doesn’t look quite on the money.” ~Elisabeth Sladen
Earlier this evening, in England, Sladen’s friend and fellow Doctor Who revivalist, Russell T. Davies, paid tribute to the woman and her character in conversation with the BBC:
“We found ourselves with a new friend… as we shot that episode I remember thinking ‘I’m not letting her go’.”
R.I.P.
Clipping via C. Presley.
Singing, healing dancing, sovaldi sale contortionist/acrobat sibling sensations of stage and screen, The Ross Sisters, Aggie and Maggie and Elmira Ross (real names: Veda, Betsy Ann and Dixie), have been internet legends for years, thanks to gunked up, third generation bootlegs of their astonishing act from the 1944 Technicolor musical, Broadway Rhythm, circulating on YouTube. But here, at last, is a crisp, clear, DVD quality upload of the girls in all of their wildly contorted, three-part-harmonized-and-grinning-all-the-while glory:
Via E. Stephen, who says, “Their facial expressions are priceless… even before they all exhibit unnervingly inhuman capabilities.”
The draw of Lucas Camargo’s work, I think, is its density. Packed into each drawing is a cacophony of tiny details, jostling to make themselves known. They’re almost like those once ubiquitous Magic Eye images, at first they’re a mess of lines until, suddenly, their long-faced subjects unveil themselves.
Via Siege, thanks!
“Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, was a New York city freelance news photographer from the 1930s to the 1950s. Here he talks about his career and gives advice to those wanting to become news photographers.”
Weegee’s a phonetic version of Ouija. The cigar-gnawing Fellig earned his nickname “because of his frequent, seemingly prescient arrivals at scenes only minutes after crimes, fires or other emergencies were reported to authorities.”
Crassly manipulative at times, and an unapologetic opportunist, Fellig also claimed (as heard in the interview above) to be a humanist at heart. As questionable as some of the paparazzo’s methods might have been, the human pathos of his imagery, whether it features tenement fire survivors, public drunks, murdered gangsters or smooching space cadets (seen below) is unquestionably powerful indeed.
© Weegee
Other great Weegee related stuff:
EDIT: Dangerous Minds just posted an update on this story, clarifying a few things. It included this response from the Kiss-In organizer, Paul Shetler:
“Hey I just saw this. Before it goes too far, I just want people to know that FB have NOT removed the kiss-in event page; it’s still there, but _I made the event private after the event_ was over and only visible to those who had been invited as there were starting to be trolls posting abusive nonsense on it.”
(Thanks for the heads up, Kevin!)
While it’s already a well established fact that Facebook is ethically bankrupt, this particular example of arbitrary heinousness is the worst in a while. The story’s already gone viral; just doing our part to ensure it disseminates as widely as possible. Reposted verbatim from Richard Metzger over at Dangerous Minds:
This is perplexing. And annoying. And infuriating.
I woke up this morning to an email from Facebook with the subject “Facebook Warning”:
“Hello,
Content that you shared on Facebook has been removed because it violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Shares that contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content, are not permitted on Facebook.
This message serves as a warning. Additional violations may result in the termination of your account. Please read the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities carefully and refrain from posting abusive material in the future. Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.
The Facebook Team”
Ah… yeah… it seems that the sight of two fully-clothed men kissing was too much for Facebook, or too much for some closet-case asshole (Hi Jerry! Remind me why you and I are “friends” again? I sure didn’t ask to be yours, pal…) who complained about it. The photo appeared here on Dangerous Minds in the context of Niall’s post about the “kiss in” demonstration that was cooked up, ironically ON FACEBOOK ITSELF, in London to protest against the rude treatment two gay patrons experienced at a pub called The John Snow. The two men, Jonathan Williams, 26, and Jamie Bull, 23 were sitting in a corner kissing when the owner asked them to leave. Over 750 people signed up for the protest.
Oh, WAIT A MINUTE, I went to check on the Facebook page that organized The John Snow pub protest… and it’s gone, too.
WTF, FB?
I’ve written to Facebook asking them why this content was removed, but have at this point received no reply. I’ll update this post when I do. In the meantime, why not share this photo on FB as much as you can? I’m hoping they’ll restore the post as it was so everyone can pile on the jerk who wrote all the homophobic stuff on my FB wall. I think that’s the best outcome here, Jerry getting a taste of his own medicine…
In any case, the protest went off last night against The John Snow pub, with protesters chanting “We’re here, we’re queer and we won’t buy your beer.” You can see the BBC News report here.
Nadya, Zo & Mer as the Star, the Moon and the Sun Tarot cards illustrated by Bethalynne Bajema
The Coilhouse editorial team is honored to be part of the beautiful Black Ibis Tarot Deck, conceived and illustrated by artist Bethalynne Bajema (previously on Coilhouse here and here).
The Black Ibis Tarot Deck is a companion to Bajema’s Sepia Stains Tarot Deck, and both decks exist to accompany a nine-book graphic novel series that Bajema is currently working on called The Black Ibis. Book I, The Secret London, will be available on May 27th. More about this project, from Bethalynne Bajema’s Kickstarter page:
The Black Ibis is a graphic novel told in nine books. Each book takes you a little deeper into a dark fairy tale that is based upon my own love of the idea that there exists a world beneath the world. This idea that sometimes a door is not just a mundane door but an entrance to someplace we reserve for our dreams. The story, at its heart, is a simple one. It revolves around one sister trying to find her sister who has become lost. She must follow the same path her sister has set out on going a little farther into this underground world of dark cabarets and strange theaters as she attempts to catch up to her sister, who is falling faster down this path in her desire to finally find a performer known as the Black Ibis. The story is absurd at times, illustrated in my particular style and filled with my legion of wonky characters and enigmatic performers.
Bajema has launched a Kickstarter project to support the printing of the first book and the Tarot Deck. Although Bajema has already reached her modest goal of $2K, the fundraiser still has 3 days left to go. Pledge rewards include signed metallic prints, graphic novels, decks, original sketches, handmade deck boxes, pages of artwork from the novel, and even a chance to appear in one scene in a cabaret scene in the final chapter of the graphic novel.
As the fundraiser continues, Bajema has been revealing more and more cards from the deck on Twitter. Follow her for the latest!
“Puppets always have to try to be alive. It’s their kind of Ur-Story on stage– that desperation to live.” ~Adrian Kohler
“[…] It only lives because you make it. An actor struggles to die onstage, but a puppet has to struggle to live, and in a way, that’s a metaphor for life.” ~Basil Jones
In 1981, partners Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler co-founded the Handspring Puppet Company in Cape Town, South Africa, with two other graduates of the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Thirty years later, the two of them continue to run the company, staging theatrical collaborations in theaters worldwide with a cadre of downright empathic puppeteers.
The concerted group effort that goes into designing, building and performing these puppets ensures that they do live. In fact, the illusion is so complete at times, it would be almost frightening, were the creatures not presented so lovingly.
Via Lara Miranda, thanks!
The Handspring Puppet Co.’s inspiring TED talk brings “the emotional complexity of animals to the stage with their life-size puppets.” Their horse, in particular, is a miracle of engineering, art, and soulful expression.
The company’s latest production, War Horse, opened in New York at Lincoln Center last week. Are any of our New York readers going to go see it? Please, by all means, report back in comments!
Oh, HAI, gorgeous!
Our Creative Director, the indelible, unstoppable Courtney Riot, is a quarter-of-a-century old today. It’s been an eventful and revolutionary year for the Most Badass Graphic Designer of Her Generation, so let us take a minute to mark the occasion of her birth with solemnly raised fists, and this animated panda gif:
Should ye be feelin’ extra sinister, you can continue to celebrate Courtney’s relentless Reign of Amazingness with a Coilhouse-curated collection of Riotcentric YouTube clips, embedded below.
We love ya, Art Star. Can’t wait to show the world what you’ve got in the works for Issue 06. Have a fantastic day.