Rise and shine, comrades. Time to face another Monday morning. You know what might help? A hot shower. With Stephen Shellen. In a pair of tighty-whities:
“Oh gawd I’m getting all tingly.”
Gimme An ‘F’ was the slimy, raw Meatballs-textured afterbirth that slid out of the ass end of 1984 while Footloose and Flashdance were still showing at drive-ins. Kudos to Katrina Galore for toilet-plunging its most memorable scene up from the depths. (Katrina, delightful pervert that she is, just made it known that she’ll be co-editing an upcoming anthology of Dystopian Erotica. They’re currently calling for submissions. Go git ’em!)
Tonight, I can’t stop thinking about one of the more influential, yet relatively obscure artists at work during the post-Happenings decade. Ana Mendieta:
From Ana Mendieta’s “Body Tracks” series, 1970s.
It’s all too easy to scoff at raw, bloody, chthonic feminist performance art these days. Hell, it’s all too easy to scoff at just about anything that whiffs of pussy power. After all, this is 2010! No need for histrionics, right? We’ve been liberated, reborn. We’re fierce and comfortable, right? We’ve seen it all a hundred times before… rrrriiiiiight?
Then again, what Alice Miller said about scorn holds a lot of sway: “Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one’s own despised and unwanted feelings.” In light of that assessment, whether one chooses to roll their eyes or not, Mendieta’s (earth-)body of work, and the circumstances under which she died, resonate as much right now as they did in the 1970s and early 80s. (Although, come to think of it, there were plenty of eye-rollers then, too.)
In any case, on the 15th anniversary of her mysterious death, I’m lighting candles for Ana Mendieta and wondering what comes next.
An animated short of MAXIMUM MEMEWORTHY ADORABLENESS, directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp. (“I am a director and an editor. And I literally got a college degree in making movies! You believe that? A COLLEGE DEGREE. College for movies? Hah! Can you beat it? I don’t think so– movies are the best!”) He is made of awesome. Go check out his website RITE NAO.
Marcel the Shell is voiced (“untreated and unenhanced”) by Jenny Slate– yes, the very same Jenny who dropped an F-Bomb during the live taping of her SNL debut. Prepare to squee your pants.
These are stills from a clip of one seriously wackypants “Japanese punk rock Exorcist homage” called (appropriately enough) The Exorsister. It comes to us courtesy of the ever-terrifying and wondrous Weird Shit Magnet that is Dogmeat, who says “I’m laughing, because this is one clip where even I ask myself ‘Where do you get these?’ Stick around for the octopus attack… as if you would turn this off!”
Definitely not safe for work. Click the collection of stills above… IF YOUR DARE.
Quick heads up! Tomorrow, Sir Richard Branson and Imogen Heap are spearheading “a very spontaneous ‘get together‘ with live music and open discussion […] to raise funds to benefit the victims of the recent devastating floods in Pakistan.”
Hosted by Ze Frank, the webcast will feature intimate musical performances by Coilhouse faves Zoë Keating and Amanda Palmer, as well as Heap, Kaki King, KT Tunstall, Ben Folds, (Zoetica’s old high school chum) Josh Groban, and others. Conversations with Sir Richard Branson, Mary Robinson, Cameron Sinclair, Mark Pearson (live from Karachi), Gary Slutkin and Anders Wilhemlson. Heap says:
As you know, Monsoon rains have caused extensive flooding throughout Pakistan. Around one fifth of the country was hit, causing over 14 million people to have been affected, 900,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed and the death toll is rising.
The future of Pakistan and its region are at risk . Our global and connected communities can help today by coming together and showing solidarity.
Firstly and most importantly, we’re looking to fund raise for a group of charites on the ground. A further aim is to stimulate a debate between you and the speakers perhaps generating lifechanging ideas and solutions which could address the long lasting social and geopolitial consequences.
So, this is about the disaster relief and also how life copes after the flood.
Find out when the live event begins in your time zone, and tune in to see how you can help.
Tracy Widdess is currently accepting custom orders for her sublime horror and sci-fi inspired knitwear, but queue up quick! Undoubtedly, she’s about to be inundated with weirdos clients.
All hail the caterwauling Carmen Orange. Venerated demigod of public broadcasting, mesmeric and disturbing in equal measure, she haunts the collective memory of multiple generations of Sesame Street-watching children. According to a couple of unconfirmed reports online, she was animated by Jim Henson himself.
An Armenian woman in national costume poses for Prokudin-Gorskii on a hillside near Artvin (in present day Turkey), look circa 1910.
This series of exquisitely beautiful images from southern and central Russia is already all over the web via the Boston Globe, no rx but Coilhouse has to post a heads up in case anybody missed them. Absolutely stunning. Boston.com editor-in-chief, buy viagraAlan Taylor, says:
“With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.”
A man and woman pose in Dagestan, ca. 1910.
“The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948.”
The full gallery is viewable here, high res. Previously on Coilhouse:
Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (Khiva, now a part of modern Uzbekistan), full-length portrait, seated outdoors, ca. 1910.
Close on the heels of the announcement that filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki may be preparing a sequel to his 1992 animated film Porco Rosso, Roger Ebert posts some well-deserved, effusive praise of Miyazaki and his first masterpiece, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind:
Much of anime in the past 20 years has concentrated on a utopian future, filled with technological wizardry and innovation, which is abundant in Japanese culture. But Miyazaki tends to look back instead of looking forward, inward instead of outward, looking at treasures of futures past that might have been. Like most of his films, his timeline here isn’t technological, but pastoral, with people relying more on each other and the Earth. He favors gorgeous green panoramas usually near blue bodies of water. He is in love with flight with his heroes soaring through the sky, representing our dreams of breaking through our limitations. We sense his hope in women more than men, believing them to be the key to humanity’s progress as opposed to man’s history of violence. These creeds and themes are held dearly and instinctively by the young and hopeful, and its Miyazaki’s ability to convey these naturalistic ideas through his visual imagination, which makes him unique.
Only Pixar has been able to rival Miyazaki’s creative energies in forming entirely new sights, sounds, and stories with each subsequent film. But Pixar is a collection of talent (all of whom pretty much worship him), while Miyazaki is a singular force. While even the greatest of directors have to rely on cast and crew to carry out their visions, Miyazaki pretty much IS the film. He might be the closest thing to the idea of an “auteur” which filmdom has.
Ebert has pointed his readership in the direction of Google Video to watch Nausicaa for free –and apparently guilt free– online. Hooray!
