Via Slim –who says he was reminded of it when he read this piece by a mother defending her five-year-old son’s Daphne costume– comes this awesome sauce:

This poster can be purchased on the cheap, or downloaded for free at the Crimethinc site as part of their “Gender Subversion Kit”.

“Part poster, part zine, and made to be deployed in an endless number of environments, the Gender Subversion Kit is a 22″x14” two-color poster on the outside and a line art illustrated gender-fuck coloring book road map for both kids and adults on the inside. Inspired by and adapted from the boys will be girls will be boys . . . coloring book by JT and Irit, we took the parts we loved the most, made a few small changes, and mass produced it on the cheap.”

Felled Forest Reliquary, 2010. Oil and egg tempera on shaped panel. 30 x 39 x 2 inches; 76 x 99 x 5 cm.

Madeline von Foerster, whose incredible work we’ve previously featured on the blog, and in Issue 02 of Coilhouse Magazine, has just completed a new series of paintings, called Reliquaries.

“This new series of artworks grows out of the artist’s fascination with reliquaries: the jewel-covered statues and treasure chests where remains of sainted persons – from bones, to scraps of clothing, to vials of blood – are enshrined. Old, beautiful, and mysterious, reliquaries often become objects of worship themselves. The impulse to preserve and make precious seems to represent a common human urge, spanning across many cultures, and not only confined to religion: we create reliquaries for vanquished cultures in our Natural History Museums, and living reliquaries, in the form of zoos, for animals all but extinct in the wild.”

The Red Thread, 2010. 48 x 62 inches. Oil and Egg Tempera on Panel.

Consistently, Madeline von Foerster’s oil and egg tempera compositions are technically masterful and emotionally powerful. And she keeps upping her game, refining her message.  Viewing these most recent works, I’m haunted by something she said a couple of years ago in our interview for the magazine:

“I am incredibly pessimistic about the future of this earth. As E.O. Wilson describes, we are hurtling towards “The Age of Loneliness,” the coming time when half of the world’s species will be extinct, and all the magnificent wilderness denuded and torn. Till my dying breath I will rage and fight against that future, but I am only one person…”

She went on to explain that in spite of everything, she still has hope. In her loving depictions of endangered and extinct wildlife, that message of hope is clearly conveyed, along with urgency, and grief.

As jaw-dropping as these pieces appear onscreen, they must be even more astonishing in person, so German comrades, achtung: The Reliquaries series will be showing this winter at the Strychnin Gallery in Berlin, November 12th through December 18th.

Ex Mare, 2010. Oil and egg tempera on shaped panel. 30 x 39 x 2 inches; 76 x 99 x 5 cm.

It was many years ago when I first discovered the awesomeness that is Vagina Power, an Atlanta-based public access show hosted by the inimitable Alexyss K. Tylor and her often shocked and bewildered mother. Few have done more to empower women than Tylor, a woman whose unique voice shines through in the heated battle betwixt the genitals.

In this particular episode, she uses the holiday of Halloween to focus on a woman’s duty to police her vagina, a valiant call to arms, meant to tame the lawless land below the waists of the Second Sex. In doing so she also explores the wedding ring’s role in binding both the Penis and the Nuts. It is not quite as stupendous as when she explained that “dick’ll make you slap somebody”, but it is classic Alexyss K. Tylor nonetheless.

In honor of Gail Dolgin, a powerhouse filmmaker and activist who passed away earlier this month after a decade-long battle with cancer, here’s Daughter From Danang:

Hat tip to Paige Lawrence.

Co-created by Dolgin with Vincente Franco, this acclaimed documentary features the deeply emotional and conflicted reunion of a Vietnamese mother, Mai Thi Kim, with her Amerasian daughter, Heidi Bub (birthname Mai Thi Hiep), 22 years after the war and Operation Babylift pulled them apart. “The 83-minute film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for best documentary in the 2003 Academy Awards. It lost to Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, but Dolgin and her collaborator, Vicente Franco, shared the stage with Moore until they were booed off amid Moore’s anti-war speech.”

Click here to read a compassionate and comprehensive Q&A by the filmmakers.

One of the fiercest, capsule strangest, cialis sale coolest grand dames of punk rock has left us. Ari Up, free-spirited vocalist for the UK punk band, The Slits (as well as countless subsequent music projects), has died after a long, unspecified illness. She was 48 years old.

Anyone who ever had the privilege of seeing Ari perform –or even just to be in the same room with her and that huge, husky laugh– knows what a tremendous force of nature she was. Her ongoing mission: “to fight for musical expression, women, and cultural freedom.” Love you, Baby Ari. Madussa. True Warrior. The mission continues.

Via The Daily What, “the most moving lip dub of Queen and David Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’ performed by a homeless man holding two Kermit puppets you will see today, guaranteed”:

Currently there’s no solid information listed about the talented puppeteer, just a general link to nonprofits. It’s unclear if he’s homeless, or a performer trying to raise awareness. Either way, I’d love to put some dollars in his hat.

(EDIT 5/9/10: More information on this clip has surfaced! Read all about it at NY magazine. The puppeteer’s name is Sky Soleil, and the director of the video is Brian Maris. Thanks for the tip, alumiere!)

As many of you already know, it’s been a heartbreaking month in the US for the LGBTQIA community. The tragic story of 18-year old Rutgers student, Tyler Clementi, who jumped off the George Washington Bridge to his death, is the most high profile in a series of suicides in recent weeks of young people believed to have victims of anti-gay bullying and outright hate crimes. There was Billy Lucas, 15 years old, who hanged himself in a barn in Greensburg, Ind. Asher Brown, 13, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in Houston, TX. Seth Walsh in Tehachapi, CA, also 13, hanged himself from a tree in his backyard. Of course, those are only recent deaths we’ve heard about.

Writer, educator and activist Dan Savage wrote this for his Savage Love column late last month:

Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids.

“My heart breaks for the pain and torment you went through, Billy Lucas,” a reader wrote after I posted about Billy Lucas to my blog. “I wish I could have told you that things get better.”

I had the same reaction: I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better.

But gay adults aren’t allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don’t bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don’t have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

So here’s what you can do, GBVWS: Make a video. Tell them it gets better.

Since September 23rd, when Savage posted that initial video of himself and his husband Terry telling their stories and urging kids to hang in there, the “It Gets Better” video outreach project has been growing in leaps and bounds, gaining coverage, support and involvement from all over the place, including NPR, the ACLU, and hundreds of vloggers on YouTube. On Thursday, Ellen Degeneres aired her own “It Gets Better” segment and updated an End Bullying page on her website.

This wonderful project was launched specifically to help LGBTQI youth get through the hard times, but as many participants have noted, it’s a sentiment that can be applied more broadly to freaks, geeks, weirdos, outcasts and oddballs of all stripes. Hang in there, kittens. It really does get better. Meantime, there are tons of resources to tap into: The Trevor Project, Scarleteen, We Give a Damn, We Are The Youth, I’m From Driftwood, PFLAG, We’ve Got Your Back, and a wide assortment of National Crisis Hotlines, for starters. You are not alone.

To share your story of how you got through the rough shit and how life really, truly did get better, create your video, post it to YouTube, and send the URL to mail (at) savagelove.net. They’ll review it and post it to their FAVES section. Bless you, Dan Savage. You’re a mensch.

Mona Shores High School student Oakleigh Reed.

Here’s an incredible story about Oak Reed, a transgender high school homecoming king candidate who would have won by a landslide had the school board not disqualified him, and the ensuing outcry from his majesty’s peers. These kids are NOT having it, and now the story’s getting national attention. Via the Daily Kos:

If the kids of Mona Shores High School in Muskegon, Michigan are a harbinger of the future…I have some hopes that our world is going to get geometrically better and more sane with each passing generation. They had elected one of their friends to be homecoming king, a fellow who happens to be registered as a female with the school system. A transgender teen, honor roll student, and well liked guy was elected by the school body to the honor… which of course was stripped away by the school:

Then, last Monday, the principal called him into her office.

“They told me that they took me off, because they had to invalidate all of my votes because I’m enrolled at Mona Shores as a female,” Reed said.

Asst. Superintendent Todd Geerlings said the ballot gave two choices: Vote for a boy for king and a girl for queen.

And now the kids are raising holy hell.

Right. Freaking. ON. Oak’s friends and family have started a Facebook page, Oak Is My King, and they’re selling shirts internationally to raise money for his upcoming sex reassignment surgery. The SF Chronicle has picked up the story, and now the ACLU wants to get involved. Way to go, y’all! Huge love and support is heading your way.

A wee bit o’ cheer, courtesy of Marlon Riggs and the Institute of Snap!thology…

… that’s spurring me to write up an overview of something far deeper and more complex. This “Snap Diva” sequence is one of the more lighthearted scenes from Tongues Untied, a powerful independent film by activist/educator/filmmaker/author Marlon Riggs. The clip was sent to me earlier today by an old friend as an offhandedly affectionate “haaaay”, but it ended up triggering intense memories of watching Riggs’ films on PBS over a decade ago. I was bowled over by them at the time; I’m overjoyed to be reminded of them again.

Riggs died of AIDS in 1994 while still struggling to complete his final film, Black Is…Black Ain’t. An intensely personal, well-researched examination of the diversity of African-American identities, Black Is…Black Ain’t was completed by Riggs’ colleagues after his death, and released posthumously in the mid 90s. “His camera traverses the country, bringing us face to face with Black folks young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight, grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contested definitions of Blackness.” [via]

Riggs was a giant of public television during the late 80s and early 90s, and a truly inspiring force for positive change. Via glbtq:

Riggs’ experience of racism began in his segregated childhood schools but continued even at Harvard, where he studied American history, graduating with honors in 1978. He then earned an M. A. in 1981 at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he later taught documentary film courses.

Riggs first gained recognition for writing, producing, and directing the Emmy-winning, hour-long documentary Ethnic Notions (1987), which explored black stereotypes and stereotyping. The film helped establish Riggs’ career as a contemporary historical documentary producer.

But most of his later films and writings probe the dichotomy Riggs perceived between the strong, “Afrocentric” black man and the black “sissy” gay man. As a “sissy” himself, Riggs felt deeply his status as a pariah within the black community.

Tongues Untied (1989), Riggs’ most famous film, is an extensively reviewed and critically acclaimed documentary that met with controversy in conservative circles when it was aired on public television. Funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant, it figured in the cultural wars over control of the NEA and the Public Broadcasting System.

Paleokostas being taken to prison. Captions by Teacher Dude’s BBQ.

Here at Coilhouse, we’ve covered all manner of crackpot visionaries: mathematicians, authors, filmmakers, taxidermists, conspiracy theorists, culture jammers and other cognitive dissidents. But you know what we’ve been missing in this category? Straight-up hardcore CRIME. And thus we present the tale of Vassilis Paleokostas, a well-intentioned Greek bandit who kidnapped politely, gifted ransom generously, and accomplished the miraculous double rainbow of prison breakouts: two escapes from Greece’s toughest penitentiary, spaced three years apart, by helicopter both times. Take the highly entertaining Badass of the Week write-up excerpted below with a grain of salt, but note that most of the facts below have been confirmed by multiple news sites:

Vassilis’ story starts back in the early 90s, when he went on an insane crime spree of delicious armed robbery, blackmail, extortion, and kidnapping.  Basically, his modus operandi was to kidnap a super-rich bastard, hold him for a ridiculous ransom, and then sell him back to his stupid family in exchange for giant piles of cold, hard cash.  Then, he’d take that bling, keep a small percentage of it for himself, and distribute the rest of his newly-acquired wealth to impoverished farmers of the tiny rural province in which he grew up.  The dude quickly made a name for himself as the Robin Hood of Greece, and was beloved by fans of badassery, the people of the lower classes, and pretty much anybody else he wasn’t in the process of robbing or extorting for money.  Shit, even the fucking people he kidnapped came out later and said that he was very polite and respectful to them while they were in captivity, and that it was pretty much the most pleasant kidnapping they’d ever experienced… he also made a vow never to harm a member of the public in his criminal escapades.  He’s been true to his word.

Paleokostas was eventually caught, arrested, and hauled off to a “federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary known as Korydallos Prison,” one of the harshest prisons in Greece: “a mix between Andersonville, Oz, and that stupid plastic box they keep Magneto inside in the X-Men movies.” No one who went inside Korydallos ever came out, except for Vassilis Paleokostas:

In June 2006, Paleokostas’ older brother (another pathological criminal who is now serving jail time on 16 counts of armed robbery) commandeered a helicopter, and landed it right in the middle of the fucking exercise yard of the prison in broad daylight. The armed guards at Korydallos, not expecting to be subjected to such an unbelievable display of gigantic steel-plated testicles, assumed that this chopper belonged to the warden or the Chief of Prisons or something, and instead of investigating it they all decided to make sure their shoes were appropriately spit-shined so as not to incur a citation from their wrathful bosses. Vassilis (who had orchestrated the entire operation from the beginning) … simply walked up to the helicopter, hopped inside, and lifted off.  By the time the guards got their heads out of their asses and started firing their guns at the bird, it was already too late. Paleokostas had escaped.

After his escape, a nationwide manhunt was declared. Paleokostas evaded the law for two and a half years, hiding in the mountains and orchestrating another high-profile kidnapping, “snatching a powerful jackass CEO industrialist, ransoming him for a huge wad of cash, and once again distributing the loot to local farmers and families.” He was then caught by the Greek police, and once again sent to Korydallos prison, where he awaited trial. Except that the second day that he was at Korydallos…

ANOTHER FUCKING HELICOPTER showed up in the skies.  It flew over a large tower of the prison, lowered a long rope ladder, and Vassilis Paleokostas and Alket Rizai climbed up into the chopper.  As the helicopter flew off into the sunset, the prisoners of Korydallos cheered. Greek police opened fire on the chopper as it flew off, but a woman returned fire with an AK-47 assault rifle… the police eventually tracked down the helicopter, and found that it had ditched on the side of the road outside Athens with a bullet hole in the gas tank.  According to the pilot, Paleokostas and his associates left the chopper and drove off on totally sweet motorcycles to an undisclosed location.  They also popped some totally bitchin’ wheelies while doing so.

After this incident, the Greek authorities fired the country’s Chief of Prisons, the Inspector-General of Prisons, the warden of Korydallos, and three prison guards. Paleokostas remains at large.

[via raindrift]