Occasionally, while exploring the wild untrammeled frontiers of the world wide interwub, you’ll stumble across something so revelatory, so mind-bogglingly exquisite, it knocks you back several feet, clutching your head and speaking in tongues. Today I had just such an experience. Like Nietzsche who gazed too long into the abyss or Icarus who flew too close to the sun, I shall never be the same, for I have seen the cruel, implacable face of G*d:
Three examples of finely crafted deer butt alien head taxidermy, a.k.a. “assquatch art.”
For centuries, families have enjoyed the camaraderie and joy of making alien heads from deer butts. Join the fun! Once you know the secrets, it’s easy to transform an ordinary deer butt into a work of redneck fine art. Let’s take a closer look at this ancient and noble craft…
All you need to create your own deer art is a styrofoam mannequin head, a fresh deer butt, a sharp knife and some glue and you are ready to get started making your own deer masterpiece.
This is indeed a disturbing universe.
Many people say that the real red neck art is the shaping of the deer anus to look like a mouth. This is the true test of the artists loving hand.
The anus can be made very simple, or you can stretch the anus for realistic effects such as smiles and frowns. In general, the leading deer butt artists concentrate on the details of the mouth.
Thank you, Mr Burleson, for exposing an ignorant city mouse like me to this rustic art form. Not since 1996 –when I fished a homemade hunting video called Mostly Squirrels out of the bargain bin at Poughkeepsie Video Barn– have I known such divine ecstasy.
“The only real depression is a depression of individual ingenuity.” -George Daynor
The exploits of George Daynor read like the synopsis of a Coen Brothers flick. As the story goes, Daynor was a former gold prospector who’d lost his fortune in the Wall Street crash of 1929. Hitchhiking through Alaska, he was visited by an angel who told him to make his way to New Jersey without further delay. Divine providence had dictated that Daynor was to wait out the Great Depression there, building a castle with his bare hands.
Daynor had only four dollars in his pocket when he arrived in Vineland, NJ. He used the money to buy three swampy acres of land that had once been a car junkyard. For years he slept in an abandoned car on the mosquito-infested property, living off a steady diet of frogs, fish and squirrels while he built his elaborate eighteen-spired, pastel-hued Palace of Depression out of auto parts and mud. His primary objective? To encourage his downtrodden countrymen to hold onto their hope and stay resourceful, no matter what. Daynor opened his homemade castle to the public on Christmas Day, 1932, free of charge (he started charging an entrance fee after someone made fun of his beard), and proved an enthusiastic, albeit eccentric tour guide.
“The Palace Depression stands as a proof that education by thought can lift all the depressed peoples out of any depression, calamity or catastrophe; if mankind would use it. The proof stands before you my friends. Seeing is believing.”
Daynor held back his wild red hair with bobby pins, wore lipstick and rouge, and enjoyed dressing alternately as a prospector or a Victorian dandy. Legend has it he kept his common-law wife, Florence Daynor, locked up in one of the Palace’s subterranean chambers during visiting hours. He offered his “living brain” to the Smithsonian for experiments (they declined). His Palace of Depression, a.k.a The Strangest House In the World, quickly became a popular tourist destination for folks on their way to Atlantic City.
It’s been an eventful day, hasn’t it? If you’re like me, you have trouble winding down after so much hullabaloo.
So here’s a wistful lullaby to sing you to sleep, courtesy of the brilliant innovators behind Creating Rem Lazar. You’ll be calling Child Protective Services drifting off to slumberland in no time. May you dream sweetly of infinity mullets and oddly bulging blue spandex.
Storyteller du jour Si Spurrier just introduced me to the Mayor of Nightmare Town. Would you like to meet him?
Usually I have a lot of trouble finding common ground with the average YouTube commenter, medicine but in this case, sovaldi sale I concur wholeheartedly with dud8112084:
“If i ever see that thing ima blow its brains out with a 12 gauge.”
In the name of all that is good and wholesome, ed will someone please tell me who was working in ads and marketing over at Ferrero for the Kinder Surprise line in the 80s? Leprechauns? Crackheads? Seriously. I am confounded and terrified. Can anyone out there tell me where these demonic puppetmasters have gone? I must know.
Send any and all pertient information regarding the unholy Eggmaster to [email protected].
Please help. Please. The kinder eggs grow restless. They rustle and mewl in the dark oh please god help me I may never sleep again.
In the times of psychic creeps like Chris Angel and John Edward, it’s nice to reflect on the olden days of paranormal research. Back when invention ruled and tools of the trade had names like Telekinetoscope and Shadow Apparatus, and mad genius Harry Price was causing waves of awe and skepticism with his unorthodox methods in the field.
Harry Price’s Telekinetoscope
One his greatest discoveries was Stella Cranshaw, later called The Electric Girl. She earned this title by occasionally producing strange flashes of light and underwent 5 years of study by Price, demonstrating extraordinary abilities in which she, oddly, showed little interest. His seances, which he called “sittings” exhausted her and after 13 of them she refused further study, got married and soon disappeared entirely.
Dorothy Stella Cranshaw
Stella’s telekinetic powers were significant nonetheless, at least to Harry, who took great pride in his work with her. During his meticulously orchestrated sittings room temperature lowered, furniture levitated, and much more. Every outrageous detail was documented and later published as “Stella C – A Record of Thirteen Sittings for Thermo-Psychic and Other Experiments”. These studies are online in full – I’ve been reading them in pieces all day here. His methods, tools and prose are fascinating and endearing, if not always awe-inspiring and make for excellent entertainment. An excerpt and links, below.
“They can say that I couldn’t sing, but they can never say that I didn’t sing!” – One of Florence Foster Jenkins’ releases
Ah, the glory days before computer software, when only the very talented, or wealthy eccentrics such as Florence Foster Jenkins could have access to recording facilities.
At sixty years of age, and a lifetime of fantasizing about becoming a singer, Miss Jenkins struck gold when her mother croaked and left her a free woman with a small fortune. In 1930 she set about making her mark in history, albeit inadvertently, as one of the worst recording artists in history.
She was almost an instant comedy sensation. Sporting a sensationally flamboyant wardrobe of her own design and accompanied by a hapless pianist who hilariously compensated for her tone-deaf-ness, her live performances were so coveted that scalpers would sometimes fetch ten times the price for a ticket. For what she absolutely lacked in pitch, rhythm, tone, or what is otherwise known in this dimension as ‘singing talent’, she made up for in stubborn confidence, insisting until the very end that she was a master. That end came a month after a sell-out show at Carnegie Hall in 1944, topping off a paradoxical career.
Behold, the genius of Florence Foster Jenkins in the form of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s ‘Queen of the Night’ aria from The Magic Flute:
Florence Foster Jenkins, beyond being the subject of popular ridicule, actually leaves us with a unique legacy. She set out to do the very difficult, with very little ability, very late in life and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. There’s also a nod to be given to the concept of contentment, a state of zen rejected by most true artists, regardless of their achievements. Her bewildering success lies as much in primitive hilarity as it does her balls to look inevitable failure in the face and say ‘I don’t give a fuck, I’m having this’.
I’m not sure how to explain what makes Death Bed: The Bed That Eats so special, or if I should even try. I certainly didn’t know anything about the film when it was first recommended to me (by some hairy-palmed weirdo lurking near the Jess Rollin section of Kim’s in NYC a few years back). Completed in 1977, this “forgotten horror classic” was never officially released. Legend has it that director George Barry had no idea anyone had even seen the picture until he Googled himself and found a bunch of websites raving about it. After 25 years, Cult Epics finally put it out on DVD.
Death Bed is definitely rave-worthy, but again, I’m at a loss to explain why without taking away some of the mystique. Here’s the overview from Cult Epics:
“At the edge of a grand estate, near a crumbling old mansion lies a strange stone building with just a single room. In the room, a four-poster bed waits to absorb the flesh, blood and life essence of unwary travelers…”
It’s Monday morning again. Drag yourself up from that Ambien fog with some wholesome, manly arena rock:
(Broken link updated.)
Fuck a bunch of Flashdance. 1984 belongs to Billy Squier and his no-holds-barred performance in the “Rock Me Tonight” video.
In all seriousness, I give this man infinite kudos for venturing waaay out of his comfort zone. Shame on all the repressed homosexuals who renounced him at the time. Take into account the concupiscent gender confusion of those hazy days. Times were a’changing for classic stadium rockers. Let no one cast a stone at Budokan Billy for trying to scramble aboard big hair metal’s bandwagon, for who among us has not been seduced by some unfortunate 80s trend, either in their unquestioning past, or the ironic now? (Not I, says the girl clad in fluffy mohair legwarmers.)
This dance is a good dance. A dance of reckless abandon, vulnerable and radiant. On this dour Monday morning while the coffee brews and the sun beats down upon my satin sheets, I will do your dance, Billy Squier, and do it right.
(Wearing elbow pads, of course. With the shades drawn.)
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.
Breaking news! I realize this is very last minute and only applies to our brethren in Northern California, but tonight Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is hosting a “Disco Extravaganza” at the gorgeous Castro Theater in SF. They’ll be showing prints of The Wiz, Staying Alive, and best of all, everyone’s favorite futuristic spiritual disco rock opera cult classic,The Apple.
Wait, what’s that you say? You’ve never seen The Apple before?
Mister Boogalow disapproves.
The Apple is a steaming Midas turd of a film baked in massive amounts of tin foil. It’s a glitter-encrusted, mylar-ensconced acid trip. It’s Jem and the Holograms’ flea market jamboree. It’s… it’s…. oh I have no idea what on earth these people were thinking, but the result is utter crackpot genius.
