Nils Frykdahl, ask Dawn McCarthy, viagra Kirana Peyton and Meredith Yayanos.

Our dear Mer is a bit of a nomad, view which causes her to sometimes disappear and come back with new stories to tell. Last time she got swept away to tour Europe, she brought back bone-chilling photos of the Tyrolean Towel Rack of Imminent Doom. This time, we may see some weird relics of Americana, for Mer is headed North to bring the music of Faun Fables to Oregon, Washington and Utah. If you’re in Albany, Seattle, Portland, Olympia, Spokane (hometown concert!) or Salt Lake City, mark the dates on your calendar and come see a spectacle of songtelling unfold.

In a brief conversation before taking off, Mer told me that Faun Fables has just finished up a new record as well as an EP, and that a video is in the works.

• Faun Fables Upcoming Tour Dates
• Faun Fables MySpace Page
• Official Faun Fables Site

Cat is coming home. No criminal record, his name cleared, and he’s a free man. A poor man, but free! We expecting him on a plane back to London within twenty-four hours. The BBC went to Dubai to cover this story, and interviewed key officials in the case. The reporter and our attorney are saying that damage control is underway: many prisoners are about to be released, and they’re promising reforms which could reduce these sorts of arrests happening to future travelers. Not holding my breath, but if this does transpire, then we’ve basically achieved everything we set out to do from the beginning, and that’s a fair bit of awesome.

You guys have a fucking lot to be proud of. The media attention we’ve drawn from our collective efforts has resulted in not only Cat’s release, but that of other prisoners and the subsequent changes that are under review. That’s a pretty serious accomplishment. Today you can look in the mirror and know you’ve made the world a better place, and I sincerely hope karma gives you the reach-around for your efforts. You guys rock.

I never thought I’d see the day where I said the internet restored my faith in humanity. This is the geek equivalent of an ’80s movie ending. Who’s throwing the prom, then?

How it happens in Dubai.

The Truth About Dubai has posted a critical update on the status of (Diz) Cat Le-Huy, my good friend and the boyfriend of Coilhouse co-editor Mil Von. Here’s the condensed version:

Cat Le-Huy as of the 22nd of February remains in Al Wathba Prison. Currently the decision rests with the Dubai Chief Prosecutor as to whether to charge him or drop the case entirely. It is almost like a pre-trial and the legal fees for this are are expected to be in the vicinity of £50,000. We have raised half this amount already thanks to your donations, and are now making an appeal for people to keep donating to reach the full amount. We have been advised that there is a 90% chance this case will be closed if we can raise the financial assistance in a timely manner.

Cat’s close friends and family have already given up everything that they could, and even his company, Endemol, has made a donation (though he was not there on business). That’s how we raised the first half of the legal fees. But now we need help from you guys. Please donate to the Cat Le-Huy Legal Fund to save Cat.

You don’t need PayPal to use the link below, just a credit card or check card. No amount is too small. Please circulate the donation link to as many people as possible. Thank you!

Diz and Mil.

Friends, one of Our People is in serious trouble.

Mildred’s partner, Diz, has been arrested in Dubai for melatonin, an over-the-counter aid for jet lag. You can read the full story here, on Mildred’s LJ. I quote:

We kind of knew he would be profiled because he has long hair and looks oriental (they are very racist against Asians in Dubai, and ultra-conservative). He knew the score going in: prescription drugs are illegal, dress conservatively and detox for a week (even trace amounts of either illegal or prescription drugs in the urine are prosecuted as ‘drug smuggling’. I’m not joking). They found melatonin on him, which he bought over the counter in the US. Legally, you can even buy it over the counter in Dubai. They arrested him, anyway.

He was strip searched, forced to do a urine test and thrown in jail. In their search they dug into the bottom of his bag and came up with a few fragments of dirt, which they allege is hashish, which is totally outrageous. They also claimed that the melatonin was actually drugs, which was equally, clearly absurd.

The sentence if convicted is a blanket four years, with a minimum of six months in prison in one of Dubai’s squalid, third world facilities.

I can’t think of a less deserving person for this to have happened to, this being the guy who offers shelter to his friends, campaigns for animal rights and subscribes to daily_puppy. Diz’s drug test came back negative and the melatonin has been cleared, but the authorities are still detaining him over the clump of dirt, which they’re still testing. We are all hoping that, in the next week, Diz will be released with an apology and sent home. If not, we are ready to wage all-out media war to bring him home.

Travelers need to know the image of Dubai a safe, modern tourist destination is a mirage. I don’t care if they have The Hydropolis, I don’t want any of you going there. What happened to Diz can happen to anyone, and now we’re just keeping our fingers crossed as we wait for news.

Please see Mildred’s LJ post for further details about this story. Please read the post before asking questions. Thank you everyone for your support! A special thanks to Warren Ellis for helping spread the word.

Thanks to everyone for your responses to the Mix Tape Post. We’ve received some incredible submissions of mix tapes for the print magazine so far – keep them coming! Here’s a great example of what we’re looking for: The Yellow Tape, cialis sale sent by Mishel Cobb. During her first year of college, Michel had a long-distance relationship with an art student from Texas; they sent each other letters, packages and mix tapes by mail. “He’d make them in colours. Each tape had a theme based on that colour, and the music on it suited the colour – at least, in his mind. Even the tape itself would be painted.” Here is The Yellow Tape from this series.

For publication in the magazine, send us scans of tapes with interesting themes, interesting artwork or a story to tell. The deadline for having your tapes in the print magazine is January 20th. The email address to send submissions to is [email protected].

“Wait, he didn’t burn you a CD, he made you a tape? Aww, that is so romantic!” – Lee, Tarantino’s Death Proof

I have nothing left of some people other than a little cassette. This may not seem like much, but for anyone who’s ever engaged in the mating ritual of mixtape-swapping, it’s possible to extrapolate someone’s entire personality out of the mix that they made you. Song pacing and order convey temperament, a sense of humor; tape artwork gives hints about sloppiness/neatness/artistic ability, and so on.

Mix tapes used to be my primary means of flirting; many of my relationships can be measured by the miles of magnetic tape that accumulated between us. There were sad tapes and happy pop tapes; tapes with themes like Seven Deadly Sins; mixes intended to indoctrinate, communicate and seduce.

It was always so ritualized. As you recorded, mulling over every song, doodling around your track list, maybe even collaging together some cover art, you imagined your intended recipient taking the music in for the first time. Would they feel what you had felt when you first heard that song? Would they feel jarred by a certain song combination? The final product involved sound, sight and touch (and smell and taste, if you were really creative!). A gift that was half narcissism and half generosity, it always begged for a response.

Did you make mix tapes too? Did someone give you a tape that changed you? Slap it on the scanner, scan every piece, and send it to us. Or make a brand-new tape, for other Coilhouse readers. But don’t just send a playlist, really make it! Think up a new theme (here’s some inspiration), decorate the the tape/stickers/box/track list, scan the whole thing and submit the images. The most creative mix tape art will be published in Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 1! You don’t actually have to mail a tape, but I will seek out everything on your mix and listen, in the exact order that you intended.

Top Image: “Don’t Take My Word For It Mix” by Jonathan Marx from the band Lambchop. Published Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture by Thurston Moore.

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What a year it’s been! New posts go up on this site, older ones recede into the past. Gone, but not forgotten. This New Year’s Eve, we’re resurrecting the Greatest Hits of 2007 in seven different categories: culture, music, style, art, film, literature and opinion. In selecting which posts to include, we realized that much of a post’s brilliance lies in the responses. From beverage-through-the-nose laughter to stroke-our-imaginary-beard contemplation (or, in Mildred’s case, her actual beard), your responses have informed/inspired/infected us as much as we hope we’ve done the same for you. Thank you for sharing in our obsessions.

What’s ahead for Coilhouse in 2008? More blog posts, of course, but perhaps even more exciting will be the publication of Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 1, which will be available on this site. What’s in the magazine, you ask? It’s a surprise! There will be lots of art and interviews, fun pieces that you can cut out and play with, and original, thought-provoking articles that you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

More news on the print magazine soon! And now, without further ado, the Greatest Hits of 2007. Hit “reload” on your browser to see random articles load each time:

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READERSHIP ADVISORY: The following post contains very subjective opinion, frivolity, and the shameless sexual objectification of highly respectable people. In other words, we are about to go totally alt-Cosmo on your ass. You have been warned.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. – Sir Francis Bacon

Preternatural means out of the ordinary course of nature; exceptional or abnormal. That which appears outside or beyond the natural. Extremity – an ordinary phenomenon taken beyond the natural.

10 Klaus Kinski

Bug-eyed, white-haired, rubbery-lipped Klaus Kinski was by all accounts (especially his own) an insatiable fuck machine. Open his infamously filthy memoirs to any random page and gasp at the depravity. He also happened to be gibbering batshit insane. It has been observed that sociopaths are often very charismatic. Certainly, when Kinski wasn’t foaming at the mouth, he could charm the knickers off any lady in the room. Fans of exploitation cinema adore him as the punishing playboy in Jess Franco’s masterpiece, Venus In Furs. His tumultuous partnership with filmmaker Werner Herzog yielded two of the most compelling antiheroes of all time: Aguirre and Nosferatu. Indeed, even in the most paltry cameo roles, Kinski oozed a certain fetid yet undeniable charm.

Today when you visit Coilhouse, you will see a new feature: the ability to register for the site and upload your own avatar! This avatar will appear next to your name every time you post. We are adding this feature for the wonderful commenters who keep coming back, so that you don’t have to re-type your name/email every time you want to make a new comment. My own avatar comes from Dumbledorepride.com, because I just finished reading Book 7. I always knew!

The great art of films does not consist in descriptive movement of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.
~ Louise Brooks

On this day 101 years ago, Louise Brooks, patron saint of unrepentant flappers, was born. By all accounts, she was a fiercely intelligent and complicated woman who would not suffer fools in an industry that consists of nearly nothing but. She made only 25 films before being blacklisted walking away from Hollywood at the height of her career, and remains one of the most iconic, (in)famous starlets of all time.

Although she is perhaps better known for the trademark black bob that launched a thousand Red Hot Mamas, Brooks also happens to be one of the most remarkable actresses, um, well… EVER. Onscreen, the one-time Ziegfeld dancer carries herself with effortless grace. Brooks understood that great acting was more about reacting than anything else. In stark contrast to many of her mawkish, mugging co-stars, she seems more comfortable, more real, somehow.