Pay no mind to the occasional tumbleweed blowing across you screen, comrades. The three of us are neck-deep in Issue 02 deadlines right now. Come Tuesday or so, postings should pick up again.
Meantime, please enjoy a rare clip of David Bowie speaking on behalf of his fellow nelly boys back in 1964. This was our reigning Preternatural Beauty King‘s first ever television appearance. He was 17 years old.
Aw, darlin’. I’ll carry your handbag any time.
Here’s an even more delectable baby Bowie tidbit, via Siege:
Getting busted for pot with Iggy Pop in NY, 1976. (Frank Sinatra, eat your heart out.)
And since Halloween draws ever nearer and you’re (hopefully) not at work, there’s one more for the road under the cut…
Ganked from the excellent Nightchillers site, thanks.
If you’ve never seen this campy Corman-produced adaptation of Lovecraft’s famous tale, you might want to Netflix it in time for your pumpkin-carving party.* Produced and shot in 1969 in the immediate wake of Manson Family shenanigans, it’s often pooh-poohed by Lovecraft purists for being too cornball. But in my opinion, Dunwich Horror is actually one of the better adaptations of old Howard P’s oeuvre** with its sumptuous matte paintings, capable-if-hokey performances from the cast, a beautiful score by Les Baxter, and a couple of genuinely creepy moments. Lovecraft stories lend themselves really well to the pyschedelic era.
Yes, he really did just say “horrendipity.”
Starring Dean “Uh Oh, Sam” Stockwell in his most brooding role short of Yueh in Dune, a rather weary-faced-but-supposedly-virginal Sandra Dee, and the even wearier-faced Ed Begley (his final role, R.I.P.), Dunwich Horror is worth renting for the gorgeous animated title sequence alone. Other highlights: the sight of young, yog-sothothelytizing Stockwell’s torso covered in pseudo-runic sharpie scribbles, Sam Jaffe’s “GET OFF MY LAWN” geezerdom, and Gidget clenching her butt in the throes of orgasm on the altar at Devil’s Hopyard.
*Or if you’re really cheap, you can watch the whole thing on YouTube.
**Not that that’s saying much, really. Other than ReAnimator, what’ve we got that’s not just crotch-punchingly horrid? Hmmm, let’s see… actually, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at any of these: The Resurrected, Die Monster Die, The Unnameable, that Night Gallery episode Pickman’s Model, and the amazingCall of Cthulhuindie movie that came out recently. Can you guys think of any others? A great suggestion from commenter Jack: Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness.
There’s not much more infromation than that. We know that in the mid-90s Itsuki put out a comic called Yoso no Himitsu (“Secret of the Worm”), based on a Cthulhu mythos story by Robert Bloch, the H.P. Lovecraft protégé best known penning Psycho. That’s where the trail grows cold – at least on the English-speaking Internet. Brown notes that the artist “is (and maybe was) pretty much unknown and unpopular and now forgotten” and that it is now almost impossible to find his manga.
If I never see the manga, I hope that at least the other 8 images from Itsuki’s bot-bondage set make their way onto the web. They’re creepy and hot and haunting all at once. Don’t know if the images’ lilac tone was the way they were printed or an effect added to the scans in Photoshop, but it adds just the right mood, like it’s all happening at dusk, the most magical time of the day. Please, whoever has these, scan more!
UPDATE: Trevor Brown has graciously scanned three more for everyone’s viewing pleasure. See them on his blog. Thank you kindly!
To the casual observer, Etsy.com is a cutesy realm of craft hipster chicks and middle American stay-at-home moms; a twee repository of homemade flowery jewelry crafts, popsicle stick and Fimo clay sculptures and hand-sewn terrycloth baby bibs. I am here to tell you that I have spent the week spelunking Etsy’s dark side and my friends, there is so much more. It’s a pervert’s treasure trove waiting to be discovered. It’s almost October, which means it’s almost Halloween, which is basically Goth Christmas (oh yeah, I said GOTH CHRISTMAS and I’ll say it again). Here are my gifty picks for the special perverts in your life.
1. Road Kill Squirrel Neoprene Mask. Hand made from neoprene rubber, reinforced with leather, padded inside for comfort, with three straps to ensure it won’t slip off during moments of necro-furry Valentine/Halloween passion.
2. Latex Cage Dress. High quality latex is always pricey and this is no exception. But for this kind of detail and quality you expect to fork over the cash. HMS Latex features pieces that hit the holy trinity of sexy, tough, and ladylike with this dress, these adorable latex gloves and this to-die-for elegant shrug.
The WEAM. Does the name ring a bell? No? No, probably not. But it’s one of the more captivating gems I found on a recent visit to Miami, Florida. Buried within that pastel deco tourist wasteland is an unassuming glass entryway with a small sign and a nude statue in the window, a table with some brochures, and an elevator. I happened to see the statue and sign as I was walking by on my way to somewhere else, and was just intrigued enough to drag my companions into that elevator for a peek.
What we found was an unattractively-lit foyer and a high entry fee. Too curious to back down now, I insisted on checking it out so pay we did and in we went. The place was enormous and filled with art and artifacts. “Curated” would not be the right word to describe this haphazard cacophony of objects, arranged on shelves, in glass cases, on pedestals and hanging on every inch of wall space. There were some two dozen rooms and nooks, sort of arranged by place and theme but not really. There are French caricatures, offensive “African primitive” cartoons, horrible paint-by-number nude portraits, serious carvings and phallic sculptures, paintings by many amateurs that seem to be included only because they feature boobies, fetish posters from the ’80s, glass dildos, naughty mechanical sex-themed snuff boxes, a giant four poster bed whose four posts are GIANT PHALLI OVER A FOOT IN DIAMETER… I could go on.
The real treasure, totally unexpected and unadvertised, is located toward the end of the museum. We’d plodded through each of the 20 or so rooms, examining the motley collection of objects erotic, repulsive, curious and hilarious… we were starting to feel fatigued and pressed for time… and then there it was.
The fibreglass rock-a-penis. The very same gleaming white sculpture,
called “The Rocking Machine” featured in A Clockwork Orange. I was
standing face to balls with it. Literally six inches away from it in
all its smooth, shiny glory.
Total. Wholesale. Nerdgasm. Meltdown.
…It’s not for sale. I asked.
(Dejected by this, I turned to the internet, which had happier news for me: Herman Makkink’s famous kinetic sculpture has been recast in a “limited edition” (of a reproduction?) and can be had via his website. I know you’ll sleep better knowing this.)
How does one raise their flag in the flickr ocean and have it be seen in the midst of all those images? There is just so much to sift through in this ever-growing collection of work! Nature photography, self portraiture, explicit sexual imagery, thousands of kitten photos [403,430 at the moment, to be exact] and more, always more. There are a few streams I’ve been following since joining the site two years ago, and I believe they deserve your attention, starting with Vorfas.
This young photographer’s experiments in digital are endlessly entertaining to watch. On parade are mermaids, noir vixens, a circus you’ll want to run away with and a vast collection of self portraits. The platinum-haired beauty captures herself as silent starlet, dominatrix, bubbly pinup and disgruntled nymphette among a long cast of characters. It has been fascinating to see Vorfas’ work progress from portraiture to the surreal and narrative. Perhaps an overactive imagination can be blamed for some of my reaction, but nothing looks like just a pretty picture anymore. There’s a little universe behind each of these frames that beckons to keep watching.
I imagine a young Brian coming face-to-face with the cover of Tank Girl: Apocalypse, and just being scarred (in a good way) for life. Or an alternate-universe, born-50-years-too-early Viveros going off to war and ignoring the pinups that the other soldiers were so crazy about, jacking off to the U.S. Department of Public Health-issued pamphlets instead. Inspiration is where you find it!
“I paid for a lap dance, not a desk dance.” Caption/image via Pop Sensation.
Faux lesbianism – yet another value that this great country has lost. Just look at Katie Perry’s disgrace of a music video, “I Kissed a Girl.” As heyguysitsthebible points out, “Katy Perry is no fake lesbian. She’s fake questioning. She’s fake experimenting. And that’s not good enough.” Indeed. The author proceeds to dolefully recount the good old days, back when this country still had some backbone, in which bands like t.A.T.u had to actually make out with each other to prove that they were indeed true fake lesbians. The depths to which this nation has sunk! Not only does Katy Perry fail to lock lips with a single female in her music video, but to add insult to injury, in the end she actually wakes up next to her boyfriend, realizing that her super-safe, bowdlerized lesbian fantasy (or was it a fantasy about being in an ad for Claire’s Accessories?) was just a dream. Damn it, we are better than these last eight years.
Jill Sobule, whose catchier, wittier “I Kissed a Girl” video became a controversial hit in the pre-Ellen mid-90s (to be fair, her video doesn’t have a kiss in it either, though it does have Fabio in uniform, which somehow makes it extra-gay), isn’t bothered: “I don’t feel precious about the title, but I’ve gotten tons of e-mails from annoyed fans,” she recently told EW.com. “Maybe I’ll write a third ‘I Kissed a Girl’ for fun… it will be about how I kissed her, left the dull boyfriend, got gay-married in California, and really no one gave a shit.”
Meanwhile, real lesbians continue to make music! Uh Huh Her just released a new music video. The luscious Leisha Hailey looks oddly like Cylon Six in it, but the real star is still the hipster unicorn.
A comely consortium of Slave Leias gathered at Gentle Giant‘s booth this morning to pose with GG’s larger (and droolier)-than-life Jabba statue. Not pictured: legions of mouth-breathing Frito-eaters with cheap instant cameras and sweatpants boners.
Like every other sentimental mooncalf who watched too many Merchant Ivory flicks as a young girl, I continue to allow the actor Julian Sands to occupy a very special place in my heart, despite everything. Never mind Warlock. Or Harem. Forget Boxing Helenaand Biker Mice From Mars. Put these sundries from your minds, my dears. Recall only A Room With A View, and Sands’ convincingly heterosexual ravishing of Helena Bonham Carter in a field of poppies.* It remains, to this day, one of my top picks for Most Romantic Moment in Cinema (seconded only by this tender scene from Myra Breckenridge).
I also happen to be a HYOOOGE fan of the Italian horror director, Dario Argento, so when I heard that he and Sands worked together ten years ago on an adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, I was quite curious! Why had I never heard about this movie before? Why?! I promptly Netflixed it.
“I gotta be MEEEEEEE.” Julian Sands in Il Fantasma.
Why, oh, why, indeed. Yes, Sands and Argento work seamlessly together… in a So-Bad-it’s-a-Festering-Masterpiece kind of way, their combined efforts cradling the budding psychosexual genius of Asia Argento like two slices of moldy sourdough bread wrapped around a generous dollop of indeterminate ooze in a rat salad sandwich.
The movie is quite long, and something tells me few of you will appreciate the full length version as much as I did. Luckily, Genevieve, a brilliant columnist over at Defenestration Magazine, has provided us with this MST3K-worthy “abridged version”. I laughed, I cried, it was better than… that other Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. Enjoy:
