Finland, treatment once again, you are FULL OF WIN.
Via Ariana Osborne, who is also full of win.
This is Munamies (Finnish for Eggman), from the comedy show Putous. He is here to make you feel bouncy… or maybe just mildly KILL-IT-WITH-FIRE-y. Consider him the benign little brother of the Kinder Surprise Eggman animatron.
Munamies by Chisaku.
Check out these amazeballs:
Happy birthday, old friend.
That’s musician Sxip Shirey, doing something beautifully strange to a paper-clipped guitar (all live, no overdubs), followed by several more clips from various other performances and collaborations. Sxip’s been a pillar of strength in the NYC countercultural circus/vaudeville/music world for many years, not just as a composer and performer, but as a storyteller, a tireless nurturer of up-and-comers, and as an instigator of unexpected and wondrous happenings.
In addition to implementing “prepared” alterations of traditional instruments and piping their sounds through various effects pedals, he often crafts songs out of junkyard found objects, vintage toys, rusty noisemakers, and sometimes, just by breathing.
His albums are unlike anything you’ve heard. You can buy them here. If he ever comes to your town (and the man travels a lot!), either solo, or with his traveling show, Sxip’s Hour of Charm, or the lovely Balkan-laced Luminescent Orchestrii, or with Gentlemen & Assassins (his new trio with the comparatively strange and beautiful s(tr)ongmen Elyas Khan and Brian Viglione), do not miss him.
Sxip Shirey, appropriately representing The Magician in Katelan’s Foisy’s Tarot Deck.
Photo: Allan Amato. Clothes: Plastik Wrap. Models: Zoetica Ebb and Ulorin Vex. Hair: Adriana Mireles.
via Haute Macabre:
After months of excruciating antici…pation, decease Zoetica Ebb and Plastik Wrap have released a preview of their collaborative effort.
Titled GHST RDR, health the tailored top and square skirt combo is inspired by strict riding jackets of the Victorian era, clinic Anime and the dark punk aesthetic. Classic tailoring and details such as pleats, draping and structured sleeves are vivified with modern materials and adjustable straps.
The mini collection, made entirely in Canada, will be available for custom orders at PlastikArmy.com on May 9th.
There ain’t been this much testosterone in a BTC since our Sweaty, Burly, Stubbly, Groiny Manslice Edition!
RIP IT. DIP IT. SIP IT. RRAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHH.
Anybody remember this breathless 2007 Coilhouse post about Dutch kinetic artist Theo Jansen and his awe-inspiring Strandbeests? Eeee! So incredible.
Animaris Geneticus Parvus
Jansen’s kinetic creatures have evolved quite a bit since then, and as of this month, the wonderful 3D printing company Shapeways has made a small version of Animaris Geneticus Parvus, available for purchase through their site.
These wee baby Beests, born from one of Jansen’s original behemoth windwalker designs, are “printed already assembled and [work] right after birth from the machine! No other production method can do this!” (Is 3D printing technology trippy, or what?) Apparently there are more Beests in development as well.
Watch and squee:
Via DJ Dead Billy, thanks!
Designed and built by the architecture team of Tonkin Liu and completed in 2006, this award-winning sound sculpture called The Singing Ringing Tree stands atop a plateau in the Pennine mountain range overlooking Burnley in Lancashire, England. It’s one of a series from the Panopticons arts and regeneration project.
Galvanized steel pipes of various sizes are bound together in a nine-foot-tall, spiraling configuration. Depending on where and how the wind strikes it, The Singing Ringing Tree creates discordant choral sounds over a range of several octaves. Tonkin Liu tuned the pipes “according to their length by adding holes to the underside of each.” The eerie music created as a result is capable of ringing out across great distances.
Photo by Felix Spencer
Via Sean Dicken.
You know, ladies, you can never be too proactive about sagging facial musculature. (Or too enthusiastic about Placido Domingo, apparently.)
*shudder*
Other workout clips that belong in the Well-Intentioned Yet Squirm-Inducing category:
“You remember that old song ‘Que Sera Sera, Whatever will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see’? I’ve always felt that. It’s been a rollercoaster ride, but I wouldn’t change a thing.” –Poly Styrene
Marianne Joan Elliott-Said, best known as Poly Styrene, legendary singer for the short-lived, seminal punk band, X-Ray Spex, has died at the age of 53.
This sad news comes to us mere weeks after Styrene officially released her final solo album, Generation Indigo, shortly after revealing to the press that she was fighting for her life. (Oh, cancer, up yours.)
Young Poly Styrene wore braces and bright Technicolor dream coats. She looked and sounded nothing like Crystal Gayle or Karen Carpenter. Instead, she hollered jagged lyrics from the bottom of her heart with all of the raw strength and fire of her male contemporaries in the ’77 UK punk school, plus a bit of something extra: full on, straight-up, unapologetic female outsider outrage, and a ferocious personal philosophy of anti-consumer culture environmentalism the likes of which punk would not see again until the Dead Kennedys.
In fact, Billboard would one day call her the “archetype for the modern-day feminist punk”. She certainly was, to put a point on it, “one of the least conventional front-persons in rock history, male or female”. [via]
NME writer James McMahon:
We live in an age where Jarvis Cocker and Beth Ditto are long established alternative icons, where Lady Gaga dressing head to toe in offal barely raises a shrug. Within the reign of Olivia Newton-John, like all the best popstars of their time, Poly Styrene must have seemed like she’d fallen to earth from another – most likely day glo daubed – world. She was to the spirit of individuality what Christopher Columbus was to having a wander.
Rest in Peace, badass woman. You broke the mold.
Press release photo for Generation Indigo.
The fine people of Cinexcellence have toiled countless hours to bring us the most comprehensive compilation of “Wilhelm Screams” to date:
Even if you don’t know it by name, chances are you’ve hear the Wilhelm Scream more than once! A film/television/video game stock sound effect first used in the ’51 Western film Distant Drums (during a fatal alligator attack scene), its use has continued to grow in popularity over time. At this point, the Wilhelm Scream’s got to be of the most persistent in-jokes in pop culture history. We should all buy Ben Burtt a drink; he’s the brilliant sound designer who got into the habit of sneaking Wilhelm into various action flicks he was working on, like Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
Via Wiki:
The sound is named for Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 western in which the character is shot with an arrow. This was believed to be the third movie to use the sound effect and its first use from the Warner Brothers stock sound library.
Research by Burtt suggests that actor and singer Sheb Wooley, best known for his novelty song “Flying Purple People Eater” in 1958 and as scout Pete Nolan on the television series Rawhide, is likely to have been the voice actor who originally performed the scream. This has been supported by an interview in 2005 with Linda Dotson, Wooley’s widow. Burtt discovered records at Warner Brothers from the editor of Distant Drums including a short list of names of actors scheduled to record lines of dialogue for miscellaneous roles in the movie. Wooley played the uncredited role of Private Jessup in Distant Drums, and was one of the few actors assembled for the recording of additional vocal elements for the film. Wooley performed additional vocal elements, including the screams for a man being bitten by an alligator. Dotson confirmed that it was Wooley’s scream that had been in so many westerns, adding, “He always used to joke about how he was so great about screaming and dying in films.”
In 2010, a Wilhelm Scream App was released on the Apple iPhone. As of 2011, it is still free to download.
Screaming Private Wilhelm from The Charge at Feather River, 1953. (Third known example of the scream’s use, from whence it gets its name.)
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Arizona desert, it’s… NIGHT OF THE LEPUS.
Bunnies have risen! (Truly, they have risen!)
MGM laid this rotten egg in 1972 to a flurry of bad reviews and barely stifled laughter. Based on the 1964 science fiction novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit by Australian pulp writer Russell Braddon, the film depicts the valiant struggle of Arizona townies who are unexpectedly forced to defend their homes against an onslaught of deadly, gargantuan, carnivorous fwuffy wuffly bunneh wabbits. Daawww:
Shot on location in Bumblefuck, Nowhere, Arizona, the best/worst scenes from Night of the Lepus show soft, cuddly domestic rabbits “rampaging” through miniature model sets with what appears to be ketchup liberally smeared on their muzzles and paws. There are also some golden moments featuring shrieking, ensanguined bunny hand puppets, and several instances of human actors dressed in matted shag-rug rabbit costumes flailing their way through poorly choreographed attack scenes. Plus? Janet Leigh reading off cue cards. And? DeForest Kelley with a sexy porn ‘stache. Yusss.
Happy Ēostre, everybody!
