Thousands of people hold their breath as they watch a gleaming white spacecraft descend. It touches down in a cloud of steam and the door drops to reveal a beautiful shiny humanoid, chrome helmet and armor. He emerges, reserved, as the screaming swells all around him. Is this the Second Coming? Holy fuck-christ, is it Xenu!?
No, little ones. Look on in awe as rows of marching helmeted men line up all around. Look and know that you’re about to let Michael Jackson rock your very asses. And know that you’re lucky, because there will never be another tour in the history of music like the Dangerous tour.
Good morning. Get back to work. Oh, by the way, GIANT UNDERPANTS!
How could even the most veisalgic or seasonal affective disorder-suffering among us remain mopey after viewing this?
As a matter of fact, Paul Reubens always said that Pee-wee’s Playhouse wasn’t written for children so much as for hungover college students. Nonetheless, back in the day I was about as big a Pee-wee fan as any pre-pube could get. That clip’s got to be one of my top ten most cherished all-time TV moments. No, seriously.
We all know what happened to that poor man back in 1991. Got caught in an adult movie theater –apparently with his pants down– was arrested for “indecent exposure” and immediately vilified by the media. Reruns of his recently canceled show were quickly yanked off the air. Overnight, our beloved Pee-wee was reduced to a sniggering punchline. Does anyone else remember Reubens’ first public appearance afterwards on the MTV music awards? His sad-eyed “heard any good jokes lately?” delivery prompted cheers from the supportive crowd, but watching at home, I was in mourning. We all knew a death knell had been sounded.
To be more creative is to get closer to childhood.
-Sarah Moon
“Impressionist photographer” Sarah Moon has spent her entire career dancing down the high-wire tension line strung between fine-art and fashion photography. To my knowledge, she has yet to falter or repeat herself.
Her phantasmagoric vision, though often imitated, would be impossible to duplicate. Most anyone with the time and resources can become a darkroom wizard, and Moon certainly is, using capricious techniques like sepia coloring on matte paper, toned silver gelatin printing, solarization, monochrome Polaroid pack, etc. Much of the trendy work made through these means can seem a bit stale or derivative, lacking a certain sense of playfulness, don’t you think? The mischievous gut level allegory found in Moon’s most memorable compositions sets her apart.
Take a stroll through her dreamy fairy tale world beyond the cut.
I’m working on making it possible to upload a little avatar next to your name when you post a comment. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I bring you one of my favorite modern fashion photographers: Eugenio Recuenco. I chose to post about him now to counterbalance my Decline of Fashion Photography post: see, it’s not all doom and gloom!
There’s just so much to see on his site. I love this noir alien encounter story, and this one about matadors, and this creepy hotel shoot with elements of The Shining. I love his nautical themes: there’s one story about shipwrecked passengers who make it to the shore, and another about Titantic, with a gallery each before and after the collision with the iceberg. There’s a sexy story about fencing (the only sport I ever liked!), and tons more. Visiting his site is like re-reading a good book; every time, you find something new.
Mikhail Vrubel is not particularly well-known in the West but he remains one of the greatest and certainly one of the most unique artists Russia’s ever produced. Most of his best-known work is inspired by fairy tales and poetry, and his own life was a sort dark fable in itself.
The Swan Princess (the artist’s wife)
Born in Siberia, Mikhail lost two of his siblings when he was still a child. Their untimely deaths affected him deeply, but didn’t stop him from developing his talent for drawing, among other widely varying interests. His family encouraged his interest in the arts and languages and in 1864 he began to study in St. Petersburg where he was educated in both law and art.
It happened well over a decade ago, but the memory is crystal: my best bud Gooby Herms, fellow purveyor of All That Is Wackadoo, leaped up from the threadbare couch bellowing “holy crap, you’ve never seen the Billy Nayer Show?!” With a table top drum roll, he popped his scuzzy bootleg of The Ketchup and Mustard Man into the VCR and pressed play. My jaw hit the floor… repeatedly. I’ve been an idolator at the shrine of BNS ever since.
When bandleader Cory McAbee and company released The American Astronaut in 2001, I knew the world was in for it:
Space travel has become a dirty way of life dominated by derelicts, grease monkeys, and hard-boiled interplanetary traders such as Samuel Curtis… this sci-fi, musical-western uses flinty black and white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier. We follow Curtis on his Homeric journey to provide the all-female planet of Venus with a suitable male, while pursued by an enigmatic killer, Professor Hess. The film features music by The Billy Nayer Show and some of the most original rock n’ roll scenes ever committed to film.
Start the day off right by simultaneously drying your face and contemplating mortality with a little help from the Tyrolean Towel Rack of IMMINENT DOOM. DOOOOM:
This fetching piece of Germanic history can be found in the Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum in Innsbruck, Austria. The sprawling complex is chock full of similarly bizarre pieces of functional art, like intricately painted antique cabinets, traditional ceremonial costumes, jaunty beast-headed sleighs, embellished tools, and lavishly personalized weaponry. Several historic walk-through “rooms” dating back to the Gothic and Rococo eras have been reassembled, replete with original hand-carved wood paneled walls, stoves, kitchenware and benches on which one can sit for a moment to rest.
My traveling companions and I spent several blissful hours ooohing and aaahing over everything. At one point, Dawn, an accomplished yodeler, was actually moved to song, her joyous yips reverberating up and down the long stone hallways.
The Engine Theater is a wondrous thing conceived by underground director Burke Roberts and a team of artists. A mechanical screen and projection system, designed to be portable inside a small trailer, described on the official website as a film screening unit with a complex, kinetic sculpture as the centerpiece to hold the screen.
I found out about The Engine Theater only recently, through a series of seemingly unrelated events, people, and emails. This was, apparently, going to be the next Thing but the the lure was in the title itself; “The Engine Theater Global Underground Cinema Series Part 1: Berlin Subculture films from 1977 – 2007” , too curious to pass up, even on very short notice! The night’s schedule read like this:
