Love, love, love, LOVE, LOVE these ladies. Holy moly. So much love.

Originally featured on NOWNESS, this sweet, sharp short by filmmaker Lina Plioplyte is an inspiring glimpse into the lives of senior sartorialists– all of whom photographer Ari Seth Cohen has featured on his Advanced Style blog over the past couple of years.

Cohen’s mission is as follows: to document “men and woman over 50 who are stylish, creative and vital” and to offer “proof from the wise and silver-haired set that personal style advances with age.” For younger clothes horses who view our wardrobe as a medium for artistic self-expression, the short also offers an uplifting peek into one possible future.

The Idiosyncratic Fashionistas! Filmed/photographed by Ari Seth Cohen.

Cohen, speaking with NOWNESS about the Advanced Style ethos:

Walking around New York taking photographs, I noticed how many young girls are appropriating style from older women: leopard print, fur, turbans and hats. In general, the older women wear these things naturally, with more confidence. With the blog I not only want to show that older women are vital and creative, but also to show people [they need not be] afraid of aging—and personal style is a great way to showcase this. […] What is important to me is self-expression and what might inspire others.

(Via Sarah Masear, thanks!)

At this point I’m probably in danger of turning Coilhouse into a Graham Annable repository, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take, lest any of our faithful readers forget or, perhaps, for new readers who may not have had a chance to delve into the archives. His newest is The Smartest Dog in the World which, as the title suggests, is the tale of the world’s most intelligent canine, told with Annable’s Gorey-esque flair for dark humor. If you dig this, you can see more at the links provided earlier and, of course, the Grickle Channel on YouTube. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to resist the urge to post everything he has produced here.

For the past six years, Hazey Fairless and Silky Shoemaker have been opening up their own backyard to Austin’s fierce and vibrant queer community for Gay Bi Gay Gay, an all-day, backyard, totally free mini-festival with an always incredible line-up of queer and queer friendly acts. It has become the favorite event of many – marking the end of South By Southwest, (and at least this year) the true beginning of spring, as it falls right on the vernal equinox, and is doubly blessed by the cool rays of the waning supermoon! How to possibly begin explain the infectious joy and energy this party is filled with? I think Andy Campbell from The Austin Chronicle’s own Gay Place Blog encapsulates it best as:

“a slew of queer folks and bands soaking up the sun and playing for free in an East Austin backyard. The show is all ages (and did we say free? Oh yah, we did.) and includes national and local acts in musical conversation with one another. Gay Bi Gay Gay is a blissful, sweaty, lezbotronic, faggy, lovely, mind-expanding, rump-shaking, heart-breaking, social, special, groovy (in the 1960s sense of the word), excellent (in the 1990s sense of the word), trans-positive, safe, holy, iconoclastic, warped, ripped, blitzed, bodacious, make-out instigating, heat-seeking love missile of a day. It’s the anchor of my year. Gay Bi Gay Gay, I love you.”

Amen to that! Starting at 1pm, patchwork blankets begin to cover the yard and picnics are laid out. Dancing happens on the patches of grass in-between, and the mood is loving and convivial. More than anything else, it feels like a big family reunion – and in a lot of ways, it is.

Shunda K. and Tedra

After the cut are some of my favorite images from last year’s fiesta, which was extra special for featuring a spicy dose of New Orleans queer bounce love from Katey Red, Vockah Redu, Rusty Lazer, Altercation, Ellery and a bevy of talented dancers. With last year’s line-up sporting everyone from Kid Congo Powers to Shunda K. of Yo Majesty, we can only wait with baited breath to see what this year will bring. Happily, Big Freedia will most definitely be performing – she was slated to play last year, but sadly was not able to make it, due to a dislocated shoulder. Expect surprise guests, neon face-paint, giant grins, and loads of magic if you happen to be here in Austin for it.

New Orleans Bounce legend Katey Red with emcee of the evening Rebecca Havemeyer

I’m not sure what you’re supposed to write in regards to a photo you found of Anthony Perkins watching on as Audrey Hepburn offers her pet deer, Pippin, a beer, other than to say, hey, I found this photo of Anthony Perkins looking on as Audrey Hepburn offers her pet deer, Pippin, a beer.

Via who killed bambi? : WHORANGE

From Japan with love: Sexy Sheep, Fucking Poodles, Pink Cow. Don’t let Katy Perry ruin latex. Take it back. [via 3XL]

See also:

• Inflatable Rubber Alien Egg
• Destruction of Mankind: Kawaii Edition
• Kariwanz

Via DJ Dead Billy comes this live 1983 performance of “Designed for Living” by an obscure Brisbane, AU band called The MegaMen. Watch, listen and rejoice as three elegant new romantics take the Bandaged Bear Telethon by storm.

Singer: Xhian Behm. Keyboardist: Mark Love. Duct-taped snare drum tamer: Lance Leopard. [via]

Billy professes to being nonplussed by certain aspects of the performance, namely The MegaMen’s mega-bitchy lyrics. Your mileage may vary: personally, I find their immaculate Nagelesque coifs, perfected sneers and lissome, synchronized dance moves impossible to resist. And really, when you think about it, don’t lines like “I see your pain and find it funny / You gave me love and I took your money” go together with disdainful high-kicks [2:39] and queenly mic-cord flips [2:42] like ebony eyeliner and ivory skin foundation? RAWR. Love.

Street artist Roa does some amazing work, site producing giant images of animals. He recently posted some work he did in Mexico and it is no less stunning. The severed bird head using the swinging gate to expose a skull behind it is particularly clever.

An admission of hypocrisy: Up close and personal, fungi kind of gross me out but put them in a painting and I’m all over them. I know, it makes no sense. It may be that, in a painting, they still portray a a sense of decay and fluidity without the moist, musky, oozing mucilage found in reality. Everything in a painting is blessedly dry, I suppose is what I’m saying. And while I realize that the appearance of a viscous sheen can be recreated I also know that if I were to touch it I would not draw back a hand coated in a vile mucus.

Enter these paintings by Dhear One, portraits of creatures on alien worlds, enveloped by otherworldly fungi, turning everything into a landscape — stalks and tendrils reaching up into the air seemingly in defiance of gravity, if there is any present. They are snapshots of worlds overrun. This is what happens when nature takes back the Fantastic Planet.

Wiki defines “Quirkyalone” as “a neologism referring to someone who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple.”

How To Be Alone by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter, Tanya Davis.

The term was coined by girlzine badass-turned-magazine maven Sasha Cagen while she was standing with several other single, unsmooched friends on a Brooklyn subway platform on New Year’s Eve back in 1999. “She expanded the concept into an essay in the first issue of her magazine To-Do List. When the article was republished in the Utne Reader in 2000, Cagen was surprised by the fervor of responses from readers who felt their lives had been validated by her work. As a result of these responses, Cagen opted to expand her essay into a 2004 book, titled Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics.”

The first International Quirkyalone Day was held on February 14 in 2003 as an alternative to Valentine’s Day, and a more genuine, generous “celebration of romance, freedom and individuality” Eight years on, Cagen has this to say:

The saccharine-sweet quality of Valentine’s Day, that fills us with expectation and often tends to make us feel disappointed whether we are single or in a relationship, struck me 8 years when I launched International Quirkyalone Day with parties in four cities. The flagship party was in San Francisco. In our second year, the party got so big the fire marshalls came, but then they wanted to party, too.

IQD is for everyone, because couples as well as singles needed a liberating alternative holiday to celebrate the joys of connection: to yourself, to your mate (if you have one), to friends, family, passions, and so on.

…I take this opportunity to wish all of you the most alive and fresh Quirkyalone Day ever! I invite you to do something new Quirkyalone Day, shake up your world a bit by visiting a new spot in or outside your town, take a class, take a chance and make a new friend (and I don’t mean on Facebook). Rearrange your furniture, try a new recipe, dance alone in your underwear for an hour. At the least, buy yourself some daisies. Chosen for their natural, sunny quality, they are the official flower of the quirkyalone movement.

And above all, love thyself.

Cheers to all you lovely Quirkyalone celebrants out there. Savor this day.

What better day than Thursday for some marionette flavored nightmare fuel? Behold the mad weirdness of Patrick Sims and Les Antliaclastes’ Hilum. I’m at a loss to properly describe this one, but fortunately the London International Mime Festival website described it thus:

A micro comic-tragedy based on the cycles of the washing machine and set in the basement of a rundown museum of natural history. Orphaned and cut off from the ordered kingdom of curiosities upstairs, the cast of nursery rhyme characters, cartoon images, and mischievous urchins turn playtime into a theatre of cruelty. Whites mix with colours, delicates get hot washed, and a monstrous big toe devours holes in the socks.

So there is that. I’m not sure if that is really very helpful at all. Two minutes, really, is all you need to decide if this is up your alley or not.

Via Wurzeltod : The Medium Of…