One of my problems with runway shows is that they’re often too sterile; there’s not enough of a story being told. You know what to expect; some dance music, some walking, some turning, some clapping. I wish that runway shows were structured more like plays; heroes and villains, gags and surprises. So I commend the fashion world’s recent efforts to incorporate more technology and atmosphere into their runways, like McQueen’s famous Kate Moss ghost two years ago and more recently, Diesel’s flying jellyfish fashion show.
L: McQueen’s famous McQueen “hologram”. R: Target’s ghost bride.
Even though the prolific “holographic technology” fashion spectacles of the past two years actually rely on a technique that’s been around for almost 150 years, the effect is still as fragile and ethereal as ever. The great potential of combining this type of projection with CGI effects is already apparent. I’d love to see some of those techniques used for something more interesting than Target’s goofy effort, however. Can you imagine what Torture Garden would do? I’d also love to see this effect in concert. I’d do anything to see a transparent Liz belt out Song to the Siren in this manner.
Gamers everywhere are mourning the loss of Gary Gygax, godfather of RPGs. After recovering from the initial shock, my thoughts turned immediately to an old friend, author Wayne Chambliss, who knew the man personally. I’d like to thank Wayne from the bottom of my polyhedral heart for taking the time to share some of his memories of Gygax here on Coilhouse. ~Mer
E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died on Tuesday. He was 69.
I can’t say I was surprised to hear the news. Last July, Gary told me he was already a year over his “expiration date”—the six months doctors gave him upon diagnosing his abdominal aneurysm. So, I wasn’t surprised. But I am hurting.
I don’t know why I miss him so much. I didn’t know him well. I spent maybe sixteen hours with him altogether. Sixteen hours on the porch of his house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Two long, summer days. Even so, Gary was an easy guy to like. He looked like a cross between Gandalf and Stan Lee, with a Lucky Strikes voice and a big laugh. He was a marvelous storyteller, an autodidact with wide interests, and, of course, the developer of an incalculably influential game system millions of people have been playing all over the world since 1974—including myself and at least 33% of this blog’s masthead.
The original Dungeon Master.
There are plenty of obituaries online right now that cover the basic facts of his life. The one in the New York Times seems representative: it contains no misspellings, but also very little of the man I knew, however slightly.
My friend Paul La Farge does a much better job. In a 2006 issue of The Believer (“Destroy All Monsters”), he tells the story of our first trip to Lake Geneva in a way that gets Gary Gygax right. For anyone even vaguely interested in Gary’s biography, Dungeons & Dragons or TSR, I strongly recommend Paul’s article. In my opinion, it is the last word on the subject. Moreover, its postscript is a more fitting eulogy for Gary than anything I could write myself—or have read anywhere else about him.
Maybe it’s simple. Maybe losing Gary is simply part of losing something even larger I will not, cannot, get back.
If you see this snowy picture hanging on your new friend’s wall, watch out: you’re hanging out with an art thief! Someone had the gall to swipe this drawing, part Lori Earley’s Fade to Gray Exhibition, right off the wall at her solo show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC last Wednesday.
If you do happen to see it, feel free to swipe it back and make a daring escape. There’s a reward being offered for its return, but I know that any Coilhouse reader would return it simply out of the goodness of their heart. The painting wants to be reunited with its sister creations on walls of the gallery space:
Even if you don’t find the painting, you should stop by the gallery, which has been completely transformed to provide the right atmosphere for Earley’s work, on display until March 22. The ghostly paintings, in their intricate china-white frames, hang on walls which have been covered by white damask-motif flocked wallpaper designed by Lori herself. You can see the transformed interior, along with all of the images in the exhibition, on the gallery site.
23 years ago, twelve strange children were born in England at exactly the same moment. 6 years ago the world ended. This is the story of what happened next.
Thus kicks off Freakangels – comrade Warren Ellis’ new webcomic. Wonderfully illustrated by Paul Duffield, this much-anticipated creation reared its rusty, dusty post-apocalyptic head today and I couldn’t be more pleased. The teaser art looked promising and I’m happy to see the style, color and detail carried over into the actual comic.
The imperfect heroine, her tiny steam-chopper, and an eerily silent London are introduced in cold muted colors of early morning light. It’s satisfying to see the steampunk aesthetic carried over into a future rather than past, and I’m digging the plot, as well. Not to mention – telepathy! Well done, gentelmen.
Hooo boy. I’ve been sitting on my hands for weeks, not knowing if/when I’d be allowed to say anything, but I just got the go-ahead from Nils. NOW IT CAN BE TOLD.
“Look out, you’re dead like us. Dead like candy.”
photo by Katherine Copenhaver
For really and truly. The four core members of one of the most unclassifiable, unbelievable underground bands of the 80s/90s met up in Oakland late last month to get reacquainted and talk shop. They’re currently in the studio recording the final tracks needed to complete an album left unfinished since 1998, and they have tentative plans to do some live reunion shows as well. A bit of background on the band from the Idiot Flesh wiki entry:
Known to tour the US in a converted city bus with [member] Rathbun as the driver/mechanic, with the windshield destination banner of “HELL.” Besides their “rock against rock” attitude, they were also known to defy classification with marching band routines, performing puppet shows, and playing household items as instruments (in tune).
“Idiot Song” video directed by Annmarie Piette
If you’re already a rabid cult follower, chances are you are doing an exuberant wiggle dance right now. If you’ve never heard of Idiot Flesh, try to place their sound, guerilla theater tactics and spookylicious attire in the context of the 80s and early 90s, before Tim Burton’s aesthetic became quite so zeitgeisty. While they often draw comparisons to Mr Bungle (and there’s merit in that, seeing as both groups formed in 1985, wore obfuscating costumes and displayed frenetic, mathrock/metal/funk shredder chops), Oingo Boingo, Crash Worship and other unhinged California weirdos from that time period, Idiot Flesh and their roving pack of Filthy Rotten Excuse Chickens inhabited a world all their own. Their influences range from the Residents and Zappa, to SWANS, the Art Bears and Henry Cow, to T.S. Eliot and John Kane. The band’s live act –which places emphasis on audience participation and non sequitur antics– is the stuff that Dadaist wet dreams are made of.
We’ve never met, and your ashes have long since been scattered above Manhattan, so I guess it’s pretty weird for me to be writing you this letter. Then again, everyone always says you seemed to hail from another planet. Let’s pretend for a minute that you didn’t die alone in a hospital bed in 1983. It’s comforting to imagine that you simply returned to your home world and maybe, somehow, you can read this.
If you were still here, you’d be 64 years young today. No doubt your friends would be gathered around you at the piano to sing Kurt Weill and Chubby Checkers tunes. Perhaps you’d share some of your delicious homemade pastries with them and spend hours reminiscing about those hazy, crazy post-punk days in NYC.
Ruff and ready.
I wish I could fold time and space to sit in the balcony at Irving Plaza the night your brief, bright star ascended during a four night New Wave Vaudeville series. It was 1978. Up until then, you’d been supporting yourself as a pastry chef for well-to-do Hamptons types. They say that you emerged from the fog machine vapors like an alien from another planet, stiff and somber in a silver space suit and clear vinyl cape. My old friend Jim Sclavunos was there, manning the spotlight. He once told me that when you opened your Clara Bow mouth and sang, no one believed it was really you. The MC had to keep assuring the audience that you were not lip-syncing…
Enzo & Donato (detail), 6″ x 6x 6″ each (12″ x 18″ x 10″-Mounted), 2004
Brass, bone, fur, cast/painted plastic, glass eyes
You may have already heard tell of Jessica Joslin‘s enchanted bestiary via the esteemed Wurzeltod, Brass Goggles or Boing Boing. If not, it’s a joy and an honor to introduce you to her work. In Jessica’s loving hands, delicate one-of-a-kind creatures are born of brass and bone, buttons and leather, glass eyes, mother of pearl, filigree, taxidermy, antique mechanical flotsam, scientific process, nostalgia and GENIUS!
From the Lisa Sette Gallery Newsletter:
Jessica Joslins’s odd menagerie begins with her penchant for collecting: “I find things anywhere that I find myself…in obscure junk shops, flea markets, attics, taxidermy supply houses, specialty hardware distributors… or walking through the woods.” Joslin seeks out and puts to use those bright odds and ends that might catch one’s eye in a box full of orphaned fixtures, or glinting up from the sidewalk. While each piece she employs in her eerie animal reliquary is delicately beautiful, it is also the detritus of human engineering and design: old brass buttons and gold braid, glass beads, clockwork cogs and velvet ribbon. Such items are reminiscent of the whimsical technology of a century past, one’s grandparents’ house, the dark interiors of old fashioned movie theatres – and as such they have an intriguing, wistful quality. In other words, Joslin collects the things that all of us secretly want to, the shiny pieces that we might comb through, handle and admire, but ultimately force ourselves to put down; what would we do with such things?
Flora, 4″ x 2″ x 3″, 2006
Brass, bone, sterling, painted wood, grommets, cast pewter, glass eyes
Jessica, who lives in Chicago with her commensurately brilliant husband, painter Jared Joslin, recently took time out of her busy schedule to answer several questions for the upcoming Coilhouse print magazine. You can read excerpts from this interview and meet a few more of her creatures under the cut. Also, anyone who happens to be in LA through the 23rd can take a closer look some of her work at the Los Angeles Art Show in Santa Monica.
Have you ever been filled with the burning desire to see your favourite ’80s rocker step out of a massive, glowing vag and use his tongue to make sweet love to another man’s eyeball?
I knew it. You people disgust me.
I give to you the 1993 tour-de-force of homo-erotic gluttony that is Seth et Holth. Set to the backdrop of some actually rather wicked industrial rock, the 43 minutes of beautiful confusion that follows is staged by one Hide (X-Japan) and Tusk (Zi:Kill) as Angels who communicate with their blood, struggling after being cast out of heaven and eventually executed by earthlings. It’s kinda like a less pretentious Cremaster Cycle done in the style of a New Wave music video but with cooler-looking dudes.
Don’t make too much of an effort to ‘get’ this movie — seriously, it would make David Lynch cry — as it presents itself to be more of a visual and musical experiment. It’s worth a look as an unusual piece of rock nostalgia alone.
“A Louis XIV confection or occasional Nancy Sinatra-esque chanteur/chanteuse in gold glitter boots with world-class vocal talent. No lip-syncing for Mr. Quale, who is a true artist and transforms himself Klaus Nomi style once he graces the stage. Nina Hagen would be proud, as would Diamanda Galas.” – Roy Rogers Oldenkamp for WeHoNews.com
I’m surprised to have wated taken this long to mention the luminous Prince Poppycock. I’ve been amused, enamored and confused by this marvelous creature ever since the pleasure of sharing the stage with him last spring in La Belle Époque.
Part randy dandy, part rock star, part drunken courtesan, Poppycock instantly owns the audience with but a glance and a wiggle of bedazzled pantaloons, and that’s just the beginning. His operatic prowess, glamourous costumes and ostentatious prose leave not a heart unstirred. A masterpiece of self-transformation, the Prince is also recording artist John Quale, but I’m secretly hoping Poppycock will take over completely one day, to reign supreme in a glittery victory of feathers and gold spandex.
The women of NY-based painter Colette Calascione‘s world are the most luscious and enigmatic lot you’re likely to encounter in modern classical painting. Inspired by Victorian portraiture and Surrealism, Calascione is gifted with an Old Master’s hand for technique, a fevered imagination, a wicked sense of humor and a reverence for the feminine form rivaling that of Vargas himself. The resulting work is whimsical, provocative and elegant in turns. Demure masked nudes entice viewers with smoldering eye contact and slight, come-hither smiles. Grand dames of the parlour consort with beastly Ernstian suitors. The rosy aura of myth and allegory that surrounds these ladies is a fetching as their silken lingerie… maybe more so.
Scrupulous attention is paid to everything, and the color and contrast she imbues in each form — powdery decolletage, folds of drapery, the riotously rococo backgrounds — is exceptional.
Truly, Calascione knows that Goddess is in the details.
