Meet the Beetles! The Bee-Gees! Adam Ant! W.A.S.P.! (sorry, x4.) Any entomologists in the Coilhouse? How ’bout Cosmetologists? Prints ads, via Munich ad agency Saint Elmo’s, for Amboss precision scissors. Showing an asymmetrical, Christian Siriano-like haircut on the wig of a bug is certainly a new visualization of the concept of precision. But, wigs on bugs? Putting aside the coolness/creepiness of this look for a sec, is this sell believable? I guess this is a trade campaign targeting pro stylists. Some of the Amboss shears have three finger holes, which maybe allows one to cut hair with more exactitude, I’m assuming. But, simply claiming the “precision” advantage so phantasmagorically may be enough to get a discerning (and offbeat) beautician to change brands. I love the imagery, doubt the selling power. But the last word is yours—what do you think? Two more hipster arthropod below (images via adsoftheworld).
Adagio is legendary animator Garri Bardin‘s 10-minute stop motion masterpiece in origami, set to Remo Giazotto’s Adagio in G minor. The events of this stark fable about ignorant intolerance among shadowy bird-creatures unfold [huhh huhh!] against a minimal backdrop in a variety of expert shots. The famous string score [used in the 1962 adaptation of Kafka‘s The Trial, and 1998 film Show Me Love just to name a couple] imparts a melancholy tension throughout.
The camera work is astounding, as is the vast range of expressions Bardin is able to assign these pieces of gray paper. He’s something of authority on bringing everyday objects to life, his famous earlier works being Conflict, where a war erupts among matches and Banquet, in which an entire dinner party plays out without people. Though most of Gari Bardin’s repertoire consists of embittered social commentary, Adagio stands apart in its sheer elegance. Enjoy, below.
Adagio is loosely based on one of my favorite short stories, Maxim Gorki’s legend of Danko and his burning heart. A part translation, part summary by E.J. Dillon, under the cut.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Argh, I know, I’m really late with this one. Slept ’til noon, then had to hop on a train. Fuggit. Let’s consider it a special midnight BTC edition for folks who are working the graveyard shift or traveling/packing/wrapping for the holidays and in need a pick-me-up of the non-denominational, demonic variety, shall we?
Hellhounds are mythical demon dogs from HELL. (Say it wiff meh… HEEEAAGGHHHHHLLLLLLL.)
Video by Brian Boyce, who also made this and lots of other brilliant crap.
Hellhounds carry themselves in an aggressive or baleful manner. They may have glowing red eyes, supernatural abilities, or even the giftof humanspeech. They’re associated with fire (say it wiff meh… FIIIGHHYAAAAAHHHHHH) and endowed with flaming fiery blowtorchy powers or/or appearances. Hellhounds are often designated guardians to the entrance to the world of the dead. Or, in this case, designated guardians of the filthy, dog-hair-encrusted couch you slept on all night after passing out in a puddle of regurgitated egg nog.
(Oh, wait, sorry, that was me. I’d better go wash my hair now.)
EDITOR’S NOTE PART DEUX, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: Hmm. Just noticed that Better Than Coffee is a bit pooch–obsessed lately. Apologies to all (especially Warren, who loathes dogs even more than I loathe Anne Geddes photos). Just to make sure I get it all out of my system, I’m including twenty-five clips of dogs eating peanut butter after the jump.
The spectacle above was The Pointy Shoe Factory – a Texan ensemble whose turbulent sound I fell in love with 7 years ago, while working a shpooky retail gig. I discovered them behind the shop stereo on a scratched-up, home-made CD. Dramatic and dirty, the album felt almost like a film score. If in his 20s Angelo Badalamenti himself had a doom band that played in smoky Lynchean lounges it would sound like this. I looked for more, but the band had broken up for all the classic reasons: money, women, drugs and backstabbing. Daron Beck – TPSF vocalist and, as it turned out, the one who abandoned that CD at my old job – had apparently lost his mind. He was busying himself with a stint on American Idol, sitting in with various bands and playing strangely affected solo shows under the name “The Passion Of Daron Beck”.
The Great Tyrant 7″ album art by the talented David D’Andrea
This unseemly behavior halted when The Great Tyrant was formed. The band has now been together for three years, with Beck as crooner, wailer and keyboardist, Jon Teague on drums and Tommy Atkins on bass. Both Teague and Atkins are formerly of Yeti – a space-prog band TPSF performed with regularly. The three site a long and erratic list of influences, among them Scott Walker, Il Baletto di Bronzo and Swans. While this configuration is smaller than The Pointy Shoe Factory, the sound is not. Still thoroughly theatrical and doomy, The Great Tyrant drowns the senses in expert noise and takes the brain for a stroll along the edge of pandemonium. Have listen to Candy Canes, the A side of TGT’s 7? while you watch the video, made for the band by Nouvelle Mode Films.
A seemingly sane Daron reports that being part of The Great Tyrant has been a tremendous learning experience, and that playing with Jon and Tommy is everything he could wish for in a band. Feel the love! They have finished their first full length album and are looking for a label to put it out on vinyl – any takers? There is a plan for a West Coast tour in the fall [wheee!] and a split 12? with Human Anomaly [ex-Noothgrush] that should be out by early fall. As we wait for hard copies of an album to become available [or an official website, for that matter], I suggest you keep a close eye on The Great Tyrant myspace page. And if you’re in Dallas, you can see them live on December 28, 9pm at Double Wide.
Laughter, careful consideration, disbelief and finally reluctant desire are the steps my brain took in reaction to these unique Bed Shoes. Endowed with whips at the tips, they would make a great addition to The Pervert’s Guide to Etsy! Custom handmade by the talented Isabelle Chiariotti a.k.a. Etsy seller Isakaos, these bad puppies are good for one thing only, and that ain’t walking.
Unlike the majority of fetish footwear out there, the heel itself isn’t that high. I assume this is to lower the already-lofty risk of the brave owner’s collapse. I suggest pretending you’ve got a pair on your feet right now, and all the ways you could make use of them. For extra fun, imagine you are trying to actually walk in them and all the elegant ways you’d smash your face as a result.
Seriously, though – if anyone here buys these and learns to walk, dance or [especially] do gymnastics in them, we want video. And a dark part of me still wants a pair.
New research has uncovered the origins of Earnst Haeckel, the turn-of-the-century German biologist/artist revered to this day by both scientists and designers alike for his awe-inspiring biological engravings (if you’re unfamiliar with Haeckel, click here immediately). His surprising origin: greeting card designer! Historian John Holbo elaborates:
Ernst Haeckel’s 1904 “Kunstformen der Natur” [Artforms of Nature] is a classic of biological illustration. What is less generally known is that the artist started as a Christmas card designer. The book was originally simply an album of holiday designs.
“All the sweet things that the Squiddies/Twittering in the dewy spray/Wish each other in the springtime/I wish you this happy day.”
During the Victorian era Christmas was indeed regarded as a ‘happy’ day, but one of uncanny terror; accordingly, cards and ornamentation featured strange creatures with too many tentacles. But then Santa Claus became popular, and many of these older designs ‘fell out of fashion’.
Commercially marooned, unable to draw anything except tentacles and congeries of pustules/bubbles, Haeckel wandered into natural ‘science’ – almost as an afterthought – when he discovered that the stuff he had been drawing actually existed, give or take a tentacle. Isn’t that interesting?
Welcome back to All Tomorrows, dear reader, where we weekly comb possible futures from science fiction’s glorious deviant age (circa mid-’60s to mid-’80s). This time, we’ve got the late Michael G. (for Greatrex, best sci-fi middle name ever) Coney’s 1982 novel Cat Karina, as strange a tomorrow as you’re likely to see.
At some unspecified (by our time scale, at least) point in the future, humanity’s starfaring civilization has collapsed, leaving True Humans and “Specialists” (human animal-hybrids originally engineered for colonization) in an uneasy peace. On top of it all, the entire damn planet’s converted en masse to an alien religion called the Kikihuahua Examples, forbidding metal working, fire and killing. In all this, a young “felina” named Karina gets tied in with an immortal race of sorceresses, the Dedos, trying to manipulate possible futures to release their alien god from a reality bomb prison laid by clones of Hitler.
Got that?
The result of all the above could have, should have been a complete and utter mess. Instead, Coney pulls off a future shock fairy tale (and parable) for the ages. More about why vegetarian bat aliens will doom us all, after the jump.
The images above and below are just a few from JeongSee Yoon’s Pink And Blue Project, an ongoing set of images dealing with gender, consumerism, and globalization. Dozens of surreal, hyperdetailed images of mostly Asian boys and girls with their blue and pink things appear on Yoon’s page. The girls’ images are what strike me the most. “It looks like these little princesses vomited fairy-floss all over themselves,” observes Katie Olson at Lifelounge, then adds: “Fabulous.” Indeed!
It wasn’t always this way. The color pink, Yoon notes, was once considered the color of masculinity, a watered-down version of the virile color red. He quotes a 1914 American newspaper that advises parents to “use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention.” The reversal of colors for boys and girls occurred only after World War II. Writes Yoon, “as modern society entered twentieth century political correctness, the concept of gender equality emerged and, as a result, reversed the perspective on the colors associated with each gender as well as the superficial connections that attached to them. Today, with the effects of advertising on consumer preferences, these color customs are a worldwide standard.” This is the first time I’ve ever heard the claim that the feminist movement is somehow even indirectly responsible for “pink for girls.” Some quick “say it ain’t so!” Internet research reveals that historians have been unable to pinpoint the reason for the post-WWII color reversal. Reasons for the reversal have been pinned on everything from the Nazis (who labeled the homosexuals in their camps with pink triangles) to a cultural desire on post-war America’s part to bury Rosie the Riveter and replace her with Susie Homemaker. A plausible theory – and I think I uncovered the missing link!
With stores like nANUFACTURE in Spain marketing to parents who wish to avoid the pink/blue dichotomy, it’s clear that color-coding your child’s life is increasingly being seen as unfashionable, even a bit creepy – though, as SocImages points out, this expensive store’s “Save the Babies” campaign may be “more about ‘saving’ kids from things these young, hip parents think are lame or uncool.” Even without the aid of hipster-kid clothing boutiques, parents have a myriad of choices for dressing their kids. As Yoon shows us, some skip out on the pink/blue thing altogether.
For parents of transgender children, on the other hand, the choices today are more complicated than ever. If your soninsists, every day, for years,since the moment he can talk, that he’s a girl and not a boy, what kind of clothing do you buy? What kind of toys do you give them? A fascinating article in the current Atlanticexamines this issue, focusing on the growing culture of parents who wish to honor their children’s wishes – and the difficulties that accompany such a decision. Delving into everything from children’s rights to Freudian therapy resembling scenes from But I’m a Cheerleader to the heartbreaking story of David Reimer (from the book As God Made Him), the article compassionately examines families on both sides of the fence, chronicling the paths of families who decide to go with their children’s wishes, and those who decide to fight against them.
When I first heard about Sita Sings the Blues, my initial reaction was one of near-disbelief. “No, wait, you’re telling me that someone made a feature-length animated version of the Ramayana focused on much-put-upon Sita and if that wasn’t enough, it’s filled with musical numbers set to Annette Hanshaw’s inimitable jazz vocals? With sarcastic shadow puppets?! You’re kidding, right?”
No, Nina Paley‘s Sita Sings the Blues is very, blessedly, real. My next reaction was that something this eclectic and experimental in concept was going to either crash and burn or succeed brilliantly.
The result? Well here’s a glimpse:
After attending a sold-out showing at the Asheville Film Festival a two weeks ago, I was blown away. It is, without a doubt, like nothing I have seen on screen. There are very few movies anymore where one can gleefully proclaim, mid-way through “Wow, I’ve got no fucking clue what’s going to happen next!”
Sita‘s magnificence is a testament to the tireless hard work and innovative vision of Paley, a longtime alternative cartoonist, who made the whole film on her home computer over five years. The ideas for the movie stem from a particularly harsh break-up (that story’s also told in the movie). Her struggle still isn’t over either: her creation still faces numerous hurdles, both from Hindu fundamentalists and corporate music juggernauts. This thankfully hasn’t stopped it from tearing up the festival circuit across several continents, getting much acclaim at big name fests like Berlin and Tribeca.
So how did something like this come about? Paley was kind enough to talk about the movie’s genesis, its challenges and why audiences these days are doing more than just buying tickets.
COILHOUSE: Why make a feature movie out of the Ramayana, of all things?
NINA PALEY: Well, I was moved by the story and it seemed to speak so much to my life at the time, my problems at the time. It was cathartic to retell the story.
The tagline you use in the movie is “the Greatest Breakup Story Ever Told” Which is a nod to the Bible movie, the Greatest Story Ever Told.
A friend and I were deep in the tunnels of late-night Internet mining when he sent me a link to the image above. Accidental discovery! Ten minutes later we were scraping our jaws off the floor while perusing Patricia Piccinini’s website. “Young Family” is part of a series devoted to genetic engineering, tradition and our potential metamorphoses as result of rapid scientific and social change.
These creatures are designed by Patricia and created by teams of sculptors, painters and upholsterers. Beyond the mind-boggling technical aspects of her mixed media installations, Piccinini focuses on questioning science, humanity’s fading sense of acceptable reality and the discrepancies between physical and emotional beauty. From the essay about this pieces:
The sculpture puts on public display all the physical attributes denied in the days of plastic surgery, airbrushes and full-body waxes – fat, wrinkles, moles hairs and bumps. Their owner has her hands and feet curled up on themselves and lies in a semi-fetal position of defense and vulnerability, suggesting a kind of withdrawal from this display. At the same time, her humane demeanor and maternal generosity make these fleshly imperfections [for that is how we are socialized to see them] seem less important than acceptance and inclusiveness. Piccinni calls her “beautiful”, saying “she is not threatening, but a face you could love, and a face inlove with her family.
For all its grotesqueness, this sculptural tableau focuses on the loving, nurturing relationship of mother and babies that is fundamental to life This unifying quality – emphasized by the kidney-shaped enclosure of the group as a family unit – is at odds with the composite heterogeneity of the creature.
What I thought to be concept art for the Dark Crystal Pt. 2 turned out to be touching social commentary. I do still enjoy these sculptures on a purely visual level and come back to Patricia’s website to study every pore, fold and mystery orifice. A few more below the jump.
