Again, medicine it is the legend.

Rage, rage! Against the frying of the… oh, nevermind.

It’s only the end of the first full day of SDCC 2008. I’m already shattered. Pray for me.

If you can’t judge a magazine by its cover, it’s not doing its job. This month, major magazines work hard for the money:

1. Rolling Stone released a very iconic Barack Obama cover. Just him and his flag pin. No name, no slogan and no eye contact. Pure faith and devotion. Compare to their last Obama cover, which made him look like a wax dummy of a superhero.
2. Again Obama, this time as an illustrated character on the cover of The New Yorker, sporting his Al-Qaeda gear and giving his sidekick, Angela Davis Michelle, the fearsome terrorist fist jab. The best comment on the controversy surrounding this cover comes from Gawker: “this obvious and heavy-handed satire has enraged Democrats and liberal media critics because now they are pretty sure this nation of child-like imbeciles will believe it to be an un-retouched photograph from the FUTURE.”
3. Predictably, this cover of Psychology Today caught my eye. Some nice use of type, but guess what? She’s wearing the corset backwards. How could something like be allowed to happen in 2008?

See, we’ve been thinking about magazine covers a lot over the past few months. Deciding together as a group on the cover of Coilhouse Issue 1 was a very intensive process. That decision’s been made, but to help myself think about what makes for a good cover in the future, I’ve started compiling a personal list of favorite covers, which I now share with you. I’ve excluded the undisputed heavyweight champions (John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol in a Campbell’s Soup Can, etc.) from my list. It’s going to be a Top 9, with the first 3 being posted today as part of a series. Enjoy!

9. Russia! Magazine, Winter 2008

This cover of Russia! Magazine is sexy, sexy, sexy. It’s also a cheeky remix of a controversial banned photograph titled An Era of Mercy. Two of Russia’s top male models were employed for this shoot, with real spacesuits on loan from the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics. The hip new Russian culture magazine also does a great job with its cover lines: Issue 2 has a bear dancing with Marilyn Monroe on the cover and entices you with the promise of “Eight More Bears Inside.”

Call of the Wintermoon Lemon Curd Cookies. “These are best enjoyed while basking in the self-righteousness of your own obscurity.”

You know, there’s really nothing I enjoy more than banging my head to relentless black metal. Unless it’s making and consuming baked goods. Fucking A, dude, I love cookies. In some parallel universe, a far more brutal and satanic Mer than I is seated on an obsidian throne atop a baronial mountain built from the bones of her enemies, gorging on bottomless trays of red velvet cupcakes and snickerdoodles while truly epic tremolo-picked riffs reverberate through the charnel canyons. Occasionally she pauses to issue forth a soul-rending shriek. Dark chocolatey death spews from her corpse-painted mouth. HAIL.

Yet even this nightmarish Mer incarnation would grovel in terror before a certain gastronomical overlord known to worshipful initiates as All-Devouring Megan the Bae Korr. Megan currently resides in this world (in Oakland, California, no less! I must find her and become her minion!) and recently started a baking recipe blog called The Black Oven. It is kvlt as fuck. An excerpt:

Frostbitten Molasses Cookies Entombed with Ginger

Boiled down to its very essence, metal is nothing more than a mixture of molasses and alienation. By that definition, these cookies are black fucking metal. Packed full of grim and evil spices, they will leave you feeling despondent and isolated within their stronghold of flavor.

Make it:

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/8 cup honey
1 egg yolk
1 cup crystallized ginger pieces
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 1/2 tblsp cinnamon
1 to 2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cream together butter, sugar, molasses, and honey. Beat in egg yolk and ginger pieces.
Sift together flour baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices.
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in thirds.
Chill for an hour.
bake 8-10 minutes
DO NOT OVER BAKE. To do so would not be brutal.

Enjoy, and sacrifice one to Space Odin.

I’ve just made a batch of her “Where the Chocolate Beats Incessant” brownies. Doom never tasted more delicious. Megan, I raise my fist and my flour sifter to you!

Immortal, in the throes of a grim sugar rush.

Many of you will have already heard tell of the Edison Lounge, a new nightclub built around the remnants of an Edwardian era power plant in downtown Los Angeles. Located in the basement of the 1906 Higgins Building, this 10,000 square foot industrial space lay under several feet of flood water for decades, until owner/designer Andrew Meieran (along with business partner Marc Smith) undertook the Herculean task of resuscitating it.

photo from Eeecue.com

From its art deco-decked cabaret space The Lab, to the Generator Lounge and Boiler Room (literally an enormous brick-lined boiler, carved out to create a cozy, candlelit cave), to its delicious Tesla Fries and absinthe drinks, the Edison is thematic aesthetic perfection.

Unsurprisingly, it’s been Coilhouse staff meeting headquarters since the very beginning. I’ve often gotten chills just imagining Rachel Brice, Jill Tracy or the Lucent Dossier troupe in that dreamy environment. Picture my joy when I discovered that Lucent Dossier actually has been performing there!

“Reminiscent of Paris and Berlin of the ’20’s, Wednesday nights the venue is transformed into an exploration of the past – a peek into the decadent, sensuous underbelly of historic LA.”

These people are almost unbearably beautiful, both inside and out, and they put on a great show. If you happen to be in the neighborhood tomorrow night, you won’t want to miss what’s sure to be a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.* Nadya, Zoetica and I will all be there to document the event, so check back to see some photos from Incandescence very soon.

Vaudevillian aerialist troupe Lucent Dossier, performing at the Edison tomorrow night!

More images of the Edison and Lucent Dossier after the jump.

Being mettul is hard on the joints, and no one understands our needs better than German agricultural marketing firms.

Number of the beast (er, cow?)

With a tag-line like “Hard types need hard bones… drink milk!”, beer is now officially relegated to Trivium fans, folks. The campaign was developed by Hamburg Technical Art School, who will hopefully not be sued by Metallica for using their font.

Advertisers are becoming increasingly metal-friendly, although admittedly the genre is used largely as a vehicle for some ill-conceived punch line. But who can blame them? Metallers look like wankers and write shittier lyrics than Mariah Carey. Everything they touch turns into comedy GOLD:

Esteemed reader Tanya Vrodova says, “I love cabbage. I will do anything to spread the word about how awesome cabbage is.” To that end, she just introduced me to Chinese multidisciplinary artist Han Bing and his mischievous Walking the Cabbage (2000-2007) series.

Walking the Cabbage in the Subway Beijing, 2004 © Han Bing

Born in 1974 in an poverty-stricken village, Han Bing spent his childhood helping his parents farm the land and was the only student in his class afforded the chance to attend university. There he studied oil painting before moving on to less conventional mediums. His post-university work has focused on creating spontaneous, open-ended discourse that includes members of society who are often excluded or dismissed. He, like many other young Chinese artist, seems compelled to confront the dubious side effects of his nation’s obsession with urbanizing and modernizing at whatever cost.

From Bing’s website:

Walking the Cabbage (2000-2007) series of social intervention performance, video and photography works, Han Bing walks a Chinese cabbage on a leash in public places, inverting an ordinary practice to provoke debate and critical thinking. Walking the Cabbage is a playful twist on a serious subject—the way our everyday practices serve to constitute “normalcy” and our identities are often constituted by the act of claiming objects as our possessions. A quintessentially Chinese symbol of sustenance and comfort for poor Chinese turned upside down, Han Bing’s cabbage on a leash offers a visual interrogation of contemporary social values.

The Cabbage Walking Tribe in Harajuku I, Tokyo, Japan 2006 © Han Bing

Angel City is a strange place, a concrete sprawl with hidden oases of wonderful things not found anywhere else. These things are what makes this city worth inhabiting and tonight my favorite of all closes its doors forever.

Nova Express, presumably named after a William S. Burroughs book and decorated accordingly, opened its doors in the early 90s, the same year, in fact, that I landed in this country. It knew all the ways to my heart – excellent food, spectacular space-decor, low lights and late hours. I’ve now been going to Nova ever since my pre-teens, celebrating, mourning and meeting for, yes, fifteen years. In fact, the very first official Coilhouse staff meeting was held there, over some cosmic pizza and alarmingly powerful martinis.

I’ll miss the vintage anime projections, the hundreds of old plastic robots, the all-seeing Cthulhu in the corner, my favorite amoeba-shaped table in the window with its lava lamp askew, every last bit of the place, damn it. Cary Long is the owner and artist behind the awesome SciFi decor, to whom I tip my hat and say “Well done”. This was the first place I would name when asked about the best spots to visit in LA, the only place of its kind and it will be missed more than Cary may ever know. Please don’t go, Nova.

• Nova Express official website
• More photos I took tonight at the closing
• A friend’s thoughts on the situation and fate of unique venues

From Side-Line:

The launch of Marilyn Manson’s own brand of absinthe is not exactly being positively embraced by critics. Most compared the drink’s odour to sewage water and one even described the taste as being “as bad as piss”. One wonders how this critic would know this… The beverage, launched under the name ‘Mansinthe’, has also been receiving negative comments by a panel at the gourmet food website www.epicurious.com: the smell of the beverage can be compared to sewage water, swamp mud and rubbing alcohol. And one taster added: “If a smell could speak, this absinthe is saying: ‘Do not touch.'”

Grey pearlescent flesh winds falls across warm skin. Secrets are exchanged.

Photographer William Springfield and dedicated model Sarah showcase exquisite lines and textures of an octopus, while exploring the harsh realities of love between woman and cephalopod. Love consumes, sometimes.

Nom.

Admittedly, I’d rather see a model interact with a virile creature, not mere sushi – and I don’t mean in the hentai sense. Though these images are successful in making me hungry!

• Related article about the mysteries of tentacle love.