“boy·taur \’boi-tawr\ n 1 : a guy with four (or more) legs 2 : a guy with any of a variety of multilimb or other transformations 3 : a guy who enjoys the company of boytaurs, and is thus a boytaur in spirit”
“There’s something wildly, almost primally, attractive about a guy with four legs: the crowding of long, sculpted thigh muscle, the four calf muscles bobbing and working in rhythm with his four-legged walk, the four strong male feet supporting his powerful boytaur body. Boytaurs know this attraction well, and it is our constant joy, both to have and to share.”
“Of course, many boytaurs don’t stop with four legs. Some add more legs, going six-legged or more. Some add extra arms. And many, enjoying all their boytaur feet, decide to go wristfooted as well.”
“Other boytaurs have completely different transformations, or none at all, but are still boytaurs in spirit, enjoying their augmented bodies, and sharing that joy freely. boytaur.net is dedicated to helping that sharing go on across the internet, all around the world.”
“Dead Poet Borne by Centaur” (1890) by Gustave Moreau
The French Symbolists were hella weird and wonderful. (Andre Breton was obsessed with Moreau in particular, cialis and considered him to be a kind of grandaddy to Surrealism.)
(un)Naturally, we can’t have Centaur Week without posting one of Joel-PeterWitkin‘s most famous works, riffing off the classical Greek “Kentauros & Eros” motif…
“Cupid and Centaur” by Joel-Peter Witkin (1992)
(Preaching to the choir, here, but) Is there another photographer living whose sublime darkroom necromancy conveys quite the same level of beauty, horror, ferocity, compassion, grace and grotesquerie as Witkin’s? Doubtful.
When I initially saw Nadya’s “Hot Human-on-Centaur Action” post in drafts, I just assumed she’d beat me to the punch with this gloriously (and mysteriously) perverted silliness:
Via Douglas, with thanks. And a vague, yet all-pervading sense of awe.
How delightful to realize, no! Apparently, there’s just some redolently centauromachian vapor riding the air currents right now.
This week, he has stepped up to urge a sneering admiral and a provoked princess to put aside their petty differences and join forces to battle a looming, sparkly vampiric threat. (All while standing in front of a mysterious oil-painted, pleated-khaki-pants-clad crotch.)
“The Sinister Game of Paperface” by Richard A. Kirk
Artist and author Richard A. Kirk (who we’ve mentionedtwice before on the blog) has just put a bunch of very reasonably priced prints of his recent work into his Etsy store. If you’re shopping for darkly whimsical holiday gifts for your more fae or macabre friends (or just for yourself!) you’ll definitely want to take a look at these intricate, elegant pieces.
Kirk’s phenomenal illustrated novella, The Lost Machine, is also worth checking out– a bleakly beautiful weird fiction story that features ghosts, witches, crows, and enchanted automata. Kirk’s prose is as delicate, finessed and strange as his drawings. Highly recommended.
“The Unaccountable Absence of the Wastrel” by Richard A. Kirk
Today, many of us were appalled and saddened (though not terribly shocked) by the tone and content of (former Texas Governor, presidential hopeful, LGBTQ-damnator, and corndog-gnawer) Rick Perry’s most recent campaign video.
Let us strive to find the strength, through humor, to turn the other cheek:
“I had some kind of epiphany about not chasing something in the above-ground world. Something happened in me that I no longer wanted to be in a band that wanted to be famous and go on tour. I just wanted to do something that was ours. I guess it was firmly planting myself in the underground, not after some kind of success that my parents would like.
…In the olden days of New York they had bands and dancing. Dancing and performers of every kind — spoken word, circus, whatever — in the same venue. Places like the Mud Club or Danceteria had a lot of different spaces and a lot of different installations and all kinds of different people went.
And then this weird thing happened when it suddenly became all giant discos and little rock bars. And those people never went to the same place anymore. It seemed like when we started doing Rubulad that people really wanted to be in the same space. They wanted to watch a band and go dance. And be happy.”
~Sari Rubinstein, co-founder of Rubulad, interviewed by Nonsense NYC
Oh, loves. We cover a lot of micropatronage drives on da ‘Haus, but the Rubulad Kickstarter project is especially near and dear. They have been an indescribably huge inspiration to many, many people involved with Coilhouse.
What is Rubulad? Back in 1993, two lovely souls named Sari Rubinstein and Chris Thomas took out a lease on a 5,000 square foot basement in south Williamsburg. Maybe a dozen other people got in on that initial deal, mostly artists and musicians in need of a cheap communal space where they could spread out and work. They all started building up and decorating the space communally. Soon, it became a fun, subterranean hang-out location that drew all sorts of kindred spirits together for dinners, readings, rehearsals, etc.
After a while, Sari, Chris, and their cohorts started throwing parties to cover each month’s rent. Over the course of the next few years, Rubulad (cleverly named with touch-tone letters that corresponded to the space’s phone number)’s space began to evolve, to literally bloom (with vibrant paper flowers, glittering murals, rope vines, colored glass, paper mache sculptures), and the parties developed into these elaborately themed bohemian blow-outs. They. Are. Fucking. AMAZING. For seventeen years now…
(Hang on, let’s take a moment. Seventeen. YEARS.
Yeah.)
…Rubulad has been instrumental in planning and throwing all kinds of events. They’ve already had to move their main warehouse space twice, but their warm, inviting DIY ethic has never faltered or changed; it’s only grown stronger.
Good morning, good morning, good moooorrrrrrniiiing! Have some warm (creeping) fuzzies:
Yes! It’s ye olde “Donkey Rhubarb” video! One of musician Richard D. James’, director David Slade’s, and Canary Wharf’s finest moments.
James called these charming creatures his “Rhubears”, and toted them along to several live Aphex Twin shows in the mid nineties. Via wiki: “James has also admitted to having his friends dress up as them to terrorise line-ups outside of clubs.”
