According to Fall On Your Sword, stuff Captain James T. Kirk wants nothing more than to make love to the mountain. (This, after ingesting too much LSD and wrapping his penis in pure alcohol.) Thanks, internet.
(Via Neil Gaiman. Cheers.)
You see that title? Do you? Have a good look at. Study it. Let it roll around in your mind. That right there is but a small glimpse into my process. This is how I got to where I am today, folks; making up words that make me chortle. One day, with enough practice, maybe you to can be paid to make up silly words. Until then, leave it to the professionals. Moving on!
Surely we are all familiar with the congruences between The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. A favorite pastime of the connoisseur of illicit substances, it is guaranteed in such circles to blow one’s mind. Having experienced the monumental coincidence that is this pairing I must admit that it can be fairly impressive. Still, even devotees must admit that the act has become a bit stale. Certainly, in this wondrous, fast-paced digital age our culture must have produced another strange, random fusing of disparate works in different media? Rest assured that such a vacuum has been filled by the unholy coupling of a dance number from 80s roller-skate sensation Xanadu and “Teamwork” by poet laureate Ludacris.
I usually do not deal in the trafficking of memery. It is an unsavory business, rife with dirty dealings and nonsense; a labyrinth of obtuse, Dadaist humor and Surrealist reasoning understood only by the hive-mind. The dank corners and fetid intricacies of such a world are no place for the upstanding lady or gentleman. No, this is the habitat of the unwashed; a city whose denizens walk the streets stinking and hunched.
Still, on occasion I have allowed myself to glimpse into this dreary plane of existence. Unable to contain my curiosity I have fallen prey to weakness of mind and spirit, like a common voyeur, hoping to glimpse the pale, smooth topography of a woman’s bare ankle.
One of the more recent memes to emerge has been that of Keyboard Cat, the now deceased feline Fatso, who appears appended to clips in order to accentuate the misfortunes of the individuals therein. It is, at the moment, a fairly popular meme, spawning dozens of videos, clogging the Intertubes like so much exuviated pubic hair.
With that in mind, I present the above clip to you as it offers a unique glimpse into the demise of such a meme. This is the ultimate, the crowning achievement in the brief career of Keyboard Cat. The day has been won, this particular contest is now over. With the help of Helen Hunt, a small dose of cocaine PCP, and the musical stylings of Hall & Oates a crescendo has been reached. The curtain can now close and the participants may now take their final bow. This show is over.
The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls . . . Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
-Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The late, great Thompson’s masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has been a favorite of mine ever since my father gave me his battered, paperback copy to read in high school. All these years later its magical lunacy is still just as powerful as when I first found Duke and his attorney in the desert.
No surprise then that I am enamored of Jonathan Baldwin’s Rauol inspired, narcotics themed board game. A worthy display piece for anyone with a yen for H.S.T.’s particular brand of mayhem.
[via jwz]
Here is one of the holy grails of interviews, with visionary writer Kathy Acker quizzing the legendary William Burroughs.
They talk about many things: Word as Virus, Scientology, Jesus and the legion of apocryphal stories that followed Burroughs around like carrion crows. This took place in the late ’80s, and both had less than a decade to live, passing away within a few months of each other in 1997. We will not see their like again.
A particularly telling moment, at least to my eyes, comes early on when Burroughs talks about the power of “shotgun” methods — the cut-up method in writing or a spray blast in painting — that introduce a random factor. Yet at the same time, they don’t take away the importance of “careful brushwork.”
It’s an important point: it illustrates how false the line between inspiration and discipline is. Acker and Burroughs grasped that instinctually and their works put the lie to that division. I think many people wrongly draw the lesson from both that simply spewing up one’s subconscious visions makes for good writing or art, while missing the considerable craft they put into honing those thoughts into glistening brain-gems.
Lessons aside, the prime pleasure in watching this interview comes from witnessing two keenly unique minds in a fascinating conversation. The rest is below the jump. Enjoy.
J. G. Ballard died today. He was 78 years old.
There’s not much I can say about Ballard that hasn’t already been said. He was definitely a Coilhouse patron saint. Because so much has been written about Ballard’s influence on everything from cyberpunk (check out this rich article, which buzzes with the excitement of the genre’s earliest memories of itself) to modern music (as this article asserts, Ballard could be credited for having “inspired the entire genre of industrial music”), I’m going to make this obituary very subjective and leave you with my favorite Ballard memories.
The first one was watching Empire of the Sun with my parents. I didn’t know at the time that this movie, starring a 13-year-old Christian Bale, was actually based on Ballard’s autobiography. But I remember that even then, watching that film, I wondered: how would this kid, with his confused Stockholm Syndrome identification with the Japanese who kept him prisoner, his fetishization of aircraft and explosions, turn out later in life? Later, a friend helped me put 2 & 2 together, and I found out exactly how he turned out. He wrote Crash. And it all made perfect sense. Here’s Young Ballard in Empire of the Sun; haunting to re-watch on this day:
My second favorite Ballard moment is actually a famous quote of his. This was his response to a question in Re/Search 8/9 on October 30, 1982:
I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again… the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.
Suburb of the soul. It still makes me shudder.
Post your favorite Ballard memories/impressions/quotes in the comments. We honor his influence, and we will miss him.
Ah, New York Public Access TV. Nothing quite like it. You got your mimes on skates, your free “math and educational skills” and everything in between. One day, there’s going to be a huge Coilhouse feature celebrating the golden age of pre-Internet Public Access. Today is not that day.
No, today, a Public Access treasure from the current century: the psychic show of one CB Walker. Real or fake, it doesn’t matter; whether CB is a comedian, a performance artist or a true crackpot visionary, the result is still hilarious. CB uses his psychic abilities to heal, comfort and advise. Suspicious of your lover’s fidelity? He’s got some advice for you. Do you have a deep, dark secret that you’ve never revealed? He knows what you did. Are you 19 years old? Do not call!
The best C.B. Walker clips appear on his YouTube channel, and above is my favorite one of all, in which C.B. gets accosted by non-stop prank callers. Whether CB is “fake,” the prank callers are definitely real. It gets funnier every time you watch! [Thanks, Kelly]
Egads, the Butthole Surfers…
Via Laurenn McCubbin, a post at The Rumpus recounting one of the most hilariously entertaining rock n’ roll stories I’ve heard in years: An Oral History of May 3, 1987: The Day The Butthole Surfers Came to Trenton, New Jersey. Not too surprisingly, it involves Gibby Haynes setting himself (and others) on fire. A choice excerpt:
Randy Now: We had this big on/off breaker switch that fed the power to the stage. It was gigantic; it looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie from the ’20s it was so huge. He’s yelling, “Pull the plug! Pull the plug!” And that thing just cut the power to the stage and so we pulled it.
Tony Rettman: Gibby set his arm on fire and he was waving it at people. When things got crazy, I was too young to be scared, I didn’t know enough to know that things like that aren’t supposed to happen.
Tim Hinely: Everyone realized the plug got pulled and was pissed. People were yelling, “Bouncers suck!”
Mickey Ween: And that set off a whole series of events. The lights came on and the PA went out, and the whole place was filled with smoke, either from a smoke machine or his burning arm, and when the house lights go up, you could see everyone for the first time. The two drummers kept going and Gibby had the bullhorn and it turned into this tribal hell. That’s what was so great about seeing the Buttholes, it was like you were in Hell, especially if you’re on drugs.
The entire transcript is fucking golden. It’s taken from the upcoming book No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving: How a Seedy New Jersey Club Defined an Era, “an oral history of ’80s and ’90s-era alternative/punk music told through the portal of one club-Trenton, New Jersey’s legendary City Gardens.” (Someone should really expand that Wiki stub!)
Do you hear that weird, wet fluttering noise? No, it’s not an intergalactic death squid. That is the sound of the buttholes of approximately 6 million nerds palpitating in dewy anticipation. Watchmen must be opening today.
Anyone else need a drink? Yes, I realize it’s only 8am here. Hey, we all cope differently. Dave Gibbons, Zack Snyder et al are very likely bathing in solid gold jacuzzis filled with dom perignon. Meanwhile, somewhere in Northampton, Alan Moore, having chugged a quart of psilocybin tea out of the gilded skull of a medieval pope who secretly worshiped Glycon the snake god, is now levitating three feet above the ground, muttering a curse of warts and incontinence upon anyone who dares to attend opening weekend.
I figure I can have a morning cocktail if I like.
Left: a “Full Frontal Manhattan” (hurr hurr!) Right: the “Black Freighter” (let’s drink ourselves direct to DVD!)
James Sime and the other kind folks over at the Isotope Comic Book Lounge understand:
The End is Nigh! Ladies and Gentlemen, the day has finally arrived! After over a decade of waiting, speculating about the cast, and debating whether it should even be attempted, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic graphic novel, WATCHMEN, is finally a major motion picture. And whether you feel that this is cause for no end of celebration or you believe you will need to drink yourself into oblivion to make it through this bastardization of a pure artistic vision, the Isotope is here for you! Serving up a bevy of Watchmen-inspired cocktail recipes to suit all your boozing needs!
Bless you, Isotope. I’m going to fix myself a “Silk Spectre” right now… with added Rohypnol.
Folks, feel free to use this thread to rant, rave and runteldat about Watchmen Babies or whateverthefuck to your heart’s content. Please, just try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, and remember, I have to mop up the booth when you’re done. Cheers.
Last time in latex, Coilhouse showed you how to re-enact that deleted scene from Alien using a thousand-dollar inflatable rubber alien egg. But that was child’s play compared to the great opus of short cinema above, in which MAC Cosmetics obviously takes a cue from our post to re-enact the Sanrio version of Alice in Wonderland (itself a brilliant re-interpretation of the 1971 classic novel), in full rubber gear. Want to really fall down rabbit hole? Complete the circle. Re-enact the re-enactment. Our guide to making it happen, below.
Before you even buy the first bag of cotton candy, memorize the Necronomicon. Otherwise you’re going to be wasting thousands of dollars on mere cosplay folly, and that’s not what this is about. This sacred ritual requires the aforementioned 900 bags of cotton candy (dollar store!), one anorexic virgin (dollar store!), one black cat (use Clairol Silken Black only), Grace Slick (dead or alive; it’ll work better if she’s dead, though), 25 kilograms of LSD (or 5 YouTube hours of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Good Job, if you’re broke), the most racist golf course you can find, and one giant inflatable vagina. Before the ritual, purify yourself with thrift store douche under the full rose-fingered moon and sprinkle the shimmering dust of a crushed Katy Perry CD in a circle around yourself and your 12 naked, glistening, totem-headed disciples. Shit’s about to go down.
Of course, none of this will work without proper ritual garb. The catsuit in the MAC Masterpiece was created by Atsuko Kudo, and they’re willing to replicate this sacred garment to any Initiate seeking to penetrate the soft parts of the world. But the real trick here is the animal heads, and that’s where MAC failed to bring about the destruction of mankind. They thought they could bring humanity to an end merely with the force of Hello Kitty… and though Hello Kitty is strong, the Great Old Ones will only listen if Pikachu, Astro Boy, Duracell Bunny and the great Callisto all call out ot them in union. That is the secret that we open to you on this great night. Now go. Go with haste. Make us proud.