Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner. For many of us, these two holidays represent an opportunity to give thanks for the many blessings in life with creatively stuffed bird carcasses and to observe the sacred, immaculate birth of baby Jesus with hemorrhagic spending sprees, respectively. For others, they’re merely an excuse to go see schlockbuster matinees and pig out on massive quantities of Chinese buffet food.

[via Whittles]

No matter how you choose to celebrate T-Day and JC’s B-Day, your experience can only be improved by Cookie Misfortune:

For too long, the world of fortune cookies has been nothing but banal platitudes and generic hopes for a brighter future. That’s all over now. Cookie Misfortune is making it possible to blow minds and ruin dinners everywhere.

[The cookies’ messages] range from the quotidian (Fuck you) to the particular (You will die alone and poorly dressed) to the classical (Life is nasty, brutish, and short). You’ll never get two of the same in any given box of ten. Furthermore, our Misfortunes will be changing frequently, according to our whimsy.

I have to admit something– I’ve fantasized about doing EXACTLY what Cookie Misfortune has done for years, but could never quite muster the funds (or the vitriol) to follow through. Three cheers for Russell and Jason and their fang-ed wee upstart. I hope you guys sell a fuckload of these as white elephant gifts for the holidays.

Other choice Coilhouse-sanctioned stocking stuffers:

• Snarky McFuck Buttons (shown above)
• Snake & Bacon’s Cartoon Cabaret
• Diesel Sweeties goodies
• NifNaks
• Zoetica Ebb fine art prints
• Warren and Ariana’s Electrophonic Empire
• Matt Jones’ “Get Excited and Make Things” tee
• Wil’s “Tea, Earl Grey. Hot.” mug
• And of course, Coilhouse #03. (Not to mention #04, which you’ll be hearing more about very soon!)

Scrappy teensy indie vendors, have you got holiday wares you’d like to promote? Add your link in comments. (Please, just keep it short and sweet. A brief description and a URL, thanks!)

This one goes out to Nadya, Zo, and especially Courtney Riot, our beloved creative director. Hang in there, babies.

Well hello there!

Do you lack healthy boundaries? Are you guilty of the compulsive overshare? All-too-eager to share gory, palpating details with complete strangers that no one besides your own mother and/or proctologist would ever want to know?

Non-consensual boner anecdote-telling. Tactical uterus hurling in lieu of real intimate contact. The “I wasn’t breast fed enough so now I need to publicly air my personal anguish to feel properly nurtured and validated” power point presentation. “Cry For Help” cutting (across the street, not down the road). Cloaking references to life-shattering trauma in Obfuscating Yet Ominous Faerie Singsong™ (a Tori Amos patent).  “Fuck You Daddy, I’m a Suicide Girl Now!” blog posts. Spontaneous primal scream therapy in the supermarket. If you have ever attempted one or more of these maneuvers, chance are, you’re a TMI Avenger.

Relax. You’re among friends. And you’re gonna loooove Body Memories. A squirm-inducing, low budget film directed by the same fella who brought us one of the most fabulous independent documentaries of the decade, Body Memories is…

…one man’s journey inward to find meaning in his life. He becomes an archeologist of the soul, digging through the layers of his past. Evocative images blend with a riveting performance that uncovers family secrets and buried traumas.

Enjoy.

(More clips under the cut.)

Many of you will recall our Issue 02 interview with Andy Ristaino, a brilliant comics artist/writer based in San Francisco. His visual style is extremely dense, textural and multi-layered, drawing inspiration from Japanese manga and ’60s head shop comix. Both the art and the text are rife with secret codes, cross-referenced visual puns, and painfully funny non-sequiturs. At times, the inked pages look almost like bas relief, or woodcut sculpture.

Detail of the cover art for Escape From Dullsville by Andy Ristaino.

It’s challenging, kaleidoscopic work– certainly not “skimmable”. As Andy would put it, his comics just aren’t the kind of thing you pick up and read in a matter of minutes, then never look at again. “So much time and effort goes into making comic books, but for the most part, they’re still a disposable medium. [I have always wanted] to create books where you couldn’t just skip ahead and read the last panel to find out what happens.” (Mission accomplished. I’ve read his oversized graphic novel The Babysitter three times now, and I’m still discovering  delightful new details.)

When I first met Andy well over a decade ago, he was hard at work on a demented, epic title for SLG Comics called Life of a Fetus. The premise:

A claustrophobic fetus grows tired of its surroundings and decides to make an early exit, setting an avalanche of bizarre happenings in motion. Soon the fetus becomes embroiled in the plots and schemes of the likes of little green men, mad scientist puppets, government cover-ups, jet-packed babysitters, strange cults, anarchists, beatniks, psychotic magicians, truckers, and crazy mothers, as it goes on the most wigged-out of road trips through the good ol’ U.S. of A.

About a week ago, he finally finished the 288 page book collecting all 7 issues of L.O.A.F. The collection, titled “Escape from Dullsville” also contains over 80 pages of new material, including the previously unpublished L.O.A.F. #8. Unfortunately, pre-orders have not been high enough for SLG to justify printing the book. (That can’t have been an easy decision for a publisher so dedicated to supporting industry underdogs.) Unless Andy can raise enough pre-order sales quickly it may never be printed. That, my friends, would be a crying fucking shame. To say the least.

You need to look at Andy’s art at higher res to even begin to comprehend how insanely awesome it is. Click here, here, here and here for larger jpegs.

Andy’s hoping to get everyone who would normally buy the book when it came out to preorder it from Amazon ASAP. (For less than 14 bucks! 6 dollars less than the official cover price). If SLG receives enough pre-order sales, the book will be printed. Folks who go through Amazon will not be charged until the book is shipped. Even more amazingly, Andy is offering a personalized original sketch of one of his book’s characters to anyone who emails him a photo of themselves holding the book when it comes out. He’s taking requests, even.

I just ordered two copies.

Is it just me, or is today full of uncertainty and hormonal angst? It’s probably just me. I hope it’s just me. But surely, we could all still use a good laugh. Here’s an OBG (Oldie But Goodie) that never fails to bring on schadenfreude-laced tears of hysterical laughter:

Via Kevin, thanks. Click here to see the letter itself embiggened.

See also:

• Passive Aggressive Notes
• Fake APStylebook
• Apostrophe Abuse
• My Very Worst Date
• The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks
• Texts From Last Night

fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapOH GOOD MORNING COMRADES I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE.

What’s that? Oh, um. I was just, uh, playing with my tribble.

Ariana showed me the following picture last night…

…which spurred me to revisit that notorious “Closer” slashup, the gravitational pull of which sent me spiraling down a long, twisted YouTube wormhole of Trekkie aberration and depravity. Woooo!

To help you get your sluggish blood pumping, I’d like to share a bit of what I found with you. Just the tip…

…of the proverbial iceberg, I mean.

See also:

• Shatner of the Mount
• Nixa: The Kirk/Spock of Our Generation
• Belgian Trekkie Weirdness, Parts One & Two
• Infinite Khan (also, unsurprisingly, Ariana’s fault)

[Good morning, dear comrades. I’m chugging redbull and running to catch a ferry in a few minutes, so please forgive the sloppiness of this edition of BTC!]

Last night, I and ten other curious folks took a guided nocturnal hike through the Karori Sanctuary. A dense and verdant square mile of forest located mere minutes from downtown Wellington, the preserve is surrounded by a predator-proof fence (specially designed to keep out invasive species like hedgehogs, possums, cats and dogs), and has become “a safe haven for some of [New Zealand’s] most iconic and endangered native animals, including tuatara, little spotted kiwi, saddleback, hihi and giant weta.”

Our lovely tour guide, Tracy, told us that there are approximately 100 little spotted kiwis living in the sanctuary. They’re extremely shy and elusive critters, so there was no guarantee we’d get to see one. But we lucked out and encountered one foraging in the underbrush mere feet from the trail. He was one of most adorable, lovable creatures I have ever seen. I will cherish the memory of his fuzzy rump bounding off through the twilight for the rest of my life.

There are hundreds of different factoids I could share about his species. Perhaps when I return from my travels in a few days, I’ll add some of them in comments. Hopefully some of Coilhouse’s more knowledgable NZ and/or birding readership will chime in as well?

For now, here is the Maori legend of New Zealand’s beloved hairy little whiskered flightless bird, imparted by Ben, Hayden and Gavin, three young storytellers from Mangakahia Area School in Titoki, Northland:

The Maori Legend:

Why Kiwi Lives on the Forest Floor

One day the king of the forest, Tanemahuta, was walking through the forest. He looked at his trees and noticed that they looked sick. They were being eaten by the bugs that lived on the forest floor. Tanemahuta told his brother Tanehokahoka (King of the sky) what had happened to his children the trees.

Tanehokahoka wanted to help his brother so he called all the birds together for a meeting. Tanemahuta said to them all
“The ground bugs are eating the trees. I need one of you to give up your life in the sky and come and live on the forest floor so the trees will be saved. Who will come?

Tanemahuta and Tanehokahoka waited and listened – but everything was quiet, and not a single bird spoke. Tanehokahoka turned to Tui…

[Story continues after the jump]

As longtime readers will have surmised by now, Coilhouse has an excruciating artcrush on the entire Joslin clan. Gah! Hurts so good!

Just a quick head up to our readers in California: Jared Joslin’s latest exhibition, The Illusionists, opened tonight at George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles. Channeling 1930s circus and carnival imagery, the ghostly allure of abandoned amusement parks, and the dusty stillness of velvet draped parlors, Jared’s series of new paintings conjure the conjurers.

The Illusionist © Jared Joslin. (Another stunning portrait of his wife and muse, artist Jessica Joslin!)

Jared’s wife, Jessica, whose own work was our biggest feature in Coilhouse Issue #01 (and who has since joined our staff roster, YIPPEEEEE) has been raving about this series for a while now:

This man is a magician. I’ve watched as each of these images has emerged, piece by piece, out of a pure white canvas. Once the eyes appear, they seem to take on a breathing life of their own. When they are finished, I can almost smell the air. In Shooting Gallery, it’s candied apples, popcorn, sawdust and the sharp tang of gun powder. In Fortune Teller, it’s incense and fading flowers, with a whiff of hay from a distant circus on the wind. Each piece brings you to a world that is seemingly of the past, yet so vividly rendered that it is timeless in its emotional resonance.

Mmmrrr. I’d give anything to see these in person. The Illusionists show also includes Carol Golemboski’s dreamy black and white photographs, and the mysterious photo montages of Liz Huston’s. Catch it between November 7th and December 19th at George Billis Gallery. Congrats, Jared!

Two more gorgeous paintings after the jump.

The always inspiring Rinpa Eshidan collective just posted a new video on YouTube, entitled CUBE:

(Via William Gibson and Pink Tentacle.)

Watching these guys do their thing is like drinking a beaming cup of liquid joy! Many of you will recall their video, 1 WEEK (which went ultra-viral back in 2006), and subsequent video offerings. R.E.’s creative philosophy seems to be one of cheerful detachment and organic/anarchic teamwork. They favor process over result, flux over permanency:

Instead of focusing on the finished project, we believe the process of creation itself is where art comes to life and our videos and live art aim to engage our audience in that process. Many people ask us how we can stand to erase the artwork we have worked so hard to create, but our focus is on the process of making art, not the end result. The good news is that the videos we make become a permanent record of the spontaneous artworks created during the filming.

This emphasis on non-permanency is reminiscent of Andy Goldsworthy‘s “nature sculptures”, Julian Beever‘s sidewalk trompe-l’oeils, the SRL/Black Rocky City ethos of building epic artworks and destroying them upon completion, any number of public “temp installation” programs cropping up worldwide, and every perfect sandcastle ever built at the beach during low tide, only to be destroyed by the rising breakers.

A still from ROOM.

Rinpa Eshidan now offers a full DVD of their various time-lapse performance pieces available at high res, just email them for purchase info. Several more video clips after the jump.

It’s early. It’s dark. There’s a fish in the percolator. Brain not working yet? That’s okay. Use your butt.