The folks over at A Journey Round My Skull were so kind as to scan a 1923 copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, illustrated by Harry Clarke. Clarke, an accomplished turn of the century stained glass artist and illustrator, relished anatomy and minutiae, obsessively rendering every refined cheekbone, elongated toe, hair follicle and fabric fold. I spent at least an hour poring over this Flickr set in wonderment, pausing to view each hyper-detailed image at high resolution.
Though Clarke was Aubrey Beardsley’s contemporary, and they share a fondness of stylization and monochrome, I think he surpasses mister B. not only with the amount of detail packed into his illustrations, but also with the darkness radiating from each plate. There is something inherently unhinged about these characters and a certain demonic unrest dances behind their thin, sallow faces, even in moments of outward tranquility. These haunted faces, fragile silhouettes, and rich patterns have earned Harry Clarke a spot among my top favorite illustrators of all time, right next to Von Bayros and, of course, uncle Vania. Hit the jump for a few more.
At the risk of offending the Soviets in the audience I present this gentleman to you with limited commentary; instead allowing his melodious singing voice and terrifying rictus to speak for themselves.
I’ve been on a bit of a North Korea kick, if one can call wanting to learn about a impoverished, starving nation under the heel of a totalitarian dictatorship such a thing. Having recently completed Barbara Demick’s excellent book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea I’ve since moved onto Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, making for an interesting, though not particularly uplifting, reading marathon.
Along with that I have been trying to find as much as I can watch about North Korea as well, and thus far the most interesting, especially in relation to one another, have been 2001’s Welcome to North Korea by Peter Tetteroo and Raymond Feddema and Vice’s unsurprisingly slightly irreverent, The Vice Guide to North Korea. Both are fascinating separately but also in what they reveal as being the same. In the seven years separating them little to nothing has changed except, perhaps, the erosion of North Korea’s building and, of course, its people.
Little changed is the North Korean government’s control over information leaving the country. Tetteroo and Feddema perhaps have the upper hand here, relying less on anecdotal evidence and more on their surreptitiously shot footage. Vice, on the other hand, gives a more complete idea of the showmanship here and a detailed look at the facade erected to impress the few visitors allowed inside its borders. The images of Vice’s Shane Smith, alone in a banquet hall, set for hundreds who will never arrive, each plate carefully arranged with what he describes as “fried matter”, might be laughable but watching the workers carefully put away all the uneaten food and unused tableware, to be presented to the next, state-authorized guest, renders it terrifying.
The fascination, should there be any doubts, lies firmly in the lack of information, the mystery of this place. We live in a society that is awash in information. Right now you have, at your fingertips, more of it than you will ever be able to consume. Yet this country, it’s public image so meticulously (if futilely) preened, its infrastructure so decimated that at night it is seen by satellites as a great black pit above the glowing affluence of South Korea, allows only the smallest drips and drabs to escape, and then only under duress. The reality of North Korea is one that must be stolen. It must be secreted out of the country. It must be extracted from those who have escaped its sphere of influence, and having done so have banished themselves from their homeland. I hope that, in time, this will change. In the meantime I am thankful to those brave people have allowed me this glimpse into what is effectively a nation of shadows.
The 1935 edition of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) by the Italian illustrator Carlo Farneti. There’s nothing that says crazed fever dream like a dejected figure facing a gauntlet of monstrous, crimson-eyed owls or a crowd, their faces twisted in fear, gathered around a towering casket.
“Rad Anthem” by Rad Omen. Directed by Nicholaus Goossen.
Gack! What a disgustingly perfect, perfectly disgusting piece of work. Very “Dick in a (Happy Meal) Box”. One of those indelible wee slices of cultural tongue in stripper cheek that makes ya want to spit, laugh, cry, vomit, and masturbate all at the same time.
The four reigning icons of American fast food (Ronald, Jack, The Colonel and The King) get together for a boy’s night out and proceed to rampage up and down Sunset Strip like the douchiest of all popped collar, Entourage-aping broheims, gorging on drugs/booze/casual sex before retiring to Carney’s for late night refueling and condiment abuse. (The only thing missing is a cameo from the “yo quiero Taco Bell” chihuahua. Thankfully, comedian Nick Swardson‘s appearance as Wendy the stripper more than makes up for that omission.)
As Steven Gottlieb at Video Static puts it, “why wouldn’t fast food mascots live fast? After all, if they actually subsist on the shit they’re selling, it only stands to reason that they’d be just as tasteless with other aspects of their lives.” He goes on to state that the video “dry humps the line between parody and defamation” and I’d have to agree. It’s not as full-on chaotic neutral as “Smack My Bitch Up” or as viciously intelligent as “Windowlicker“. I’m giggling, but also left feeling the same vaguely irked “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG” sentiment that I get watching a mindless sausage-baster like “Country Girl“. Displays of entitled douchebaggery + vapid disco shitbeats + the unbidden, deeply personal olfactory memory of being accosted with the stench of other people’s McDonald’s = INSTINCTIVE WRATH.
So. Is this conscious social commentary, or just another music video that –more cleverly than most– panders to the lowest common denominator? Either way, it got a strong response from me (I sure didn’t intend to ramble on this long about it)! Kudos. Now I’m off to alleviate this emotional hangover by fixing myself a huge, healthy salad.
Remember those mind-blowing Heather Parisi clips we were all gaping at a few months ago? Well, it’s time for Heather to scooch her bedazzled Mickey Mouse-clad tush over on that giant Rubik’s Cube pedestal we built for her.
Make room on the throne, and in your hearts, for another star of numerous 80s Italian television variety shows, the inexplicable Miss Sara Carlson:
I’m just gonna give your guys a minute to process that clip. Deep cleansing breaths, people. Zalright? Zalright.
The commentary on Carlson over at Nobody Puts Baby in a Horner is sharper and better than anything I can come up with at this late hour, with the fabric of my reality in tatters:
I recognize that, in the era of YouTube clips, what probably made sense in a particular time to a particular group of people is reintroduced to the world in a contextual vacuum. Without meaning, these videos become a veritable playground for camp, a place where the indecipherable message is the first language of ironic detachment and surface aesthetics the currency of visual pleasure. As such, perhaps I’m inherently biased towards this Fellini meets Lady Gaga pinnacle of unadulterated, uninhibited batshit insanity.
Several more clips and further spot-on commentary from Benjamin after the jump.
New Yorkers with a taste for the deeply weird and gorgeous and ridiculous, you owe it to yourself to go see Hausuplaying at the IFC Center this week. Actually, y’know what? Correction– you owe it to ME to go, since I live thousands of miles away and won’t be able to.
Comrades, we’re talking about something unprecedented: a high-end screening of an actual print of what was long considered one of the most legendary horror bootlegs in existence. As far as I know, this fantastical film has been nigh-impossible for Westerners to view any other way. Until now.
Kudos to comics/film guru Ben Catmull for turning me onto this raging brilliant nutterfest.
Shot in 1977 by experimental Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi (and based on a story written by his 7 year old daughter), Hausu is one of the most riotously demented movies ever committed to celluloid. There’s plenty I could tell you about it (and there are tons of rabid, frothing film geek reviews online if you want to go exploring) but my instinct tells me it’s best to go unprepared, and just give yourself over to being repeatedly tit-slapped by the technicolor Japanese KRAY ZAY. My own virgin viewing experience was similar to seeing The Forbidden Zone or Eraserhead or The Billy Nayer Show for the first time– mindblowing, seminal, beautiful, and fucked up as all hell. Seifuku Koo Koo!
Come to think of it, there are a lot of wonderful things happening in New York imminently: Throne of Blood (a completley different flavor of Japanese cinematic genius) is showing at Film Forum, BAM is celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King on Tuesday, and tomorrow there’s the Knickerbocker Orchestra’s WFC performance of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, with Neil Gaiman narrating. Plus, two ultra high-concept Coilhouse Issue 05 photo shoots that have been in the planning stages months are finally happening. We’ll divulge more about those shortly.
Meanwhile, seriously, DO NOT miss seeing Hausu in the theater. GO, GO, GO. If my fervent urging hasn’t yet convinced you jaded bastards that this screening is not to be missed, click below for several more clips and stills.
The video for You Look Familiar, the single from Belgian’s Team William, featuring — as DRAWN!’s John Martz points out — some fantastic and decidedly Fleischer-esque visuals by the directing duo Joris Bergmans and Michélé De Feudis. The song’s not bad either.
Saved for a rainy day or, decease in this case, cheap one in a long line of bitterly cold days, thumb I present for your inspection, these animated promos for two Parliament-Funkadelic albums, the surprisingly literal The Motor Booty Affair and Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome. P-Funk always had a great sense of mythology in their music, meaning that both Dr. Funkenstein and his arch-nemesis Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk are in attendance here; more like the chapters of a sci-fi serial than albums. They appear almost alien in contrast to the slick, overproduced (and quite limited) promos that are shown on, say, MTV between episodes of People Acting Awful Towards One Another.
