Famed German/American composer Kurt Weill was born this day in 1900. He’s best remembered for Threepenny Opera and other collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht.
A clip from the excellent September Songs tribute, shot in the early 90s:
September Songs includes some great interpretations from Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, William S. Burroughs and others, but this scene in particular slays me. Charlie Haden’s bass is just dripping with feel. The couple depicting Weill and his wife Lotte Lenya are dancing to a sublime old recording of “Speak Low” sung by Weill himself.
C.F. Wick, Berlin, Theater des Westens, 1987
Weimar culture flat out refuses to die. There’s still a freshness and an urgency to the stuff that keeps generation after generation coming back. So many of us cut our teeth on either Liza and Joel or Alan in Cabaret and that damned Doors’ cover of “Alabama Song.” Without Brecht and Weill, there could be no Rocky Horror Picture Show. I must’ve played “Pirate Jenny” with the band Barbez a thousand times, and even after all these years, the sight of my friend Amanda battering her Kurzweil keyboard (altered to read KURTWEILL) still makes me grin from ear to ear. We have yet to tire of the cabaret. Why should we, with its immortal pledge to sexual freedom, inclusion, and playful rebellion? I think so long as there are perverts and revolutionaries in the world with a taste for whiskey and melodrama, Weill’s music, and its filthy little children, will have relevance.
The bald, glistening pate of Telly Savalas has always stirred unutterable longings deep within me. I’m having trouble deciding which video for his cover of “If” I love more. This first version, where Kojak’s officially the shy one at some orgy…
It’s been an eventful day, hasn’t it? If you’re like me, you have trouble winding down after so much hullabaloo.
So here’s a wistful lullaby to sing you to sleep, courtesy of the brilliant innovators behind Creating Rem Lazar. You’ll be calling Child Protective Services drifting off to slumberland in no time. May you dream sweetly of infinity mullets and oddly bulging blue spandex.
Waaaaugh! Why didn’t anyone tell me about Skywhales? This is incredible. Have you seen it? What about you there, in the back, wearing the Dragonriders of Pern tee shirt? Ever heard of Skywhales? Yeah?
DAMN it. I’d never even heard of Skywhales until just now. What a huge, unsightly gap in my nerducation.
My old friend Adam Lamas and I were just wasting many precious hours of life watching catshavepsychoticepisodes on Teh YooToobz when suddenly he asked “wait, time out, have you seen Skywhales?” Nope, never heard of it. He made with the clickies and I promptly spilled bongwater wine all over myself.
My manta ray is all right.
Completed in 1983, Skywhales is an animated short about a race of green-skinned humanoid aliens who live on a floating island in the upper layers of a gaseous planet’s atmosphere. To survive, they hunt enormous manta ray creatures in pedal-powered airships. As this fansite author puts it, Skywhales “is a window onto an alien way of life–language, culture, taboos… as complete a picture as a short film has ever painted, and its final revelations are nothing short of haunting.”
And how! The “boo bee boo boo bee” stuff is a bit grating at first, but hang in there. It’s epic, as Nadya would say. Uber, even. Circle of life. See it! Skywhales! (Sorry, I just really like saying that. “Skywhales!” While making jazz hands.) But seriously. It’s gorgeous and poignant and disturbing. Like your mom. With a mohawk.
Skywhales!
Skywhales! Directed by Derek Hayes and Phil Austin and produced for Channel 4.
Storyteller du jour Si Spurrier just introduced me to the Mayor of Nightmare Town. Would you like to meet him?
Usually I have a lot of trouble finding common ground with the average YouTube commenter, medicine but in this case, sovaldi sale I concur wholeheartedly with dud8112084:
“If i ever see that thing ima blow its brains out with a 12 gauge.”
In the name of all that is good and wholesome, ed will someone please tell me who was working in ads and marketing over at Ferrero for the Kinder Surprise line in the 80s? Leprechauns? Crackheads? Seriously. I am confounded and terrified. Can anyone out there tell me where these demonic puppetmasters have gone? I must know.
Send any and all pertient information regarding the unholy Eggmaster to [email protected].
Please help. Please. The kinder eggs grow restless. They rustle and mewl in the dark oh please god help me I may never sleep again.
“I have a fairly adequate knowledge of satanic forces, and I was interested to find out if this girl was obsessed with such a force.”
– James Dean, on befriending Maila Nurmi
Finnish-American actress Maila Nurmi, famous for having created the character Vampira, passed away yesterday in her sleep at age 86. Born in Finland and raised in Ohio, Maila moved to LA at age 17 to pursue modelling and acting. As a model she appeared in numerous pin-up magazines, and her photographers included Man Ray and Alberto Vargas. At age 35, Maila made her most notable appearance as The Ghoul’s Wife in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space – the clip can be seen here. For $200, Ed Wood got Maila to stalk around a graveyard as a glamorous, wasp-waisted zombie. The mute portrayal was Maila’s idea, as she reportedly couldn’t abide the dialogue that Ed Wood had written for her. In subsequent years Maila was the first horror movie hostess in television history, and in later life she made jewelry and clothing, which she sold though a shop on Melrose that she called Vampira’s Attic.
As one fan writes over at her obituary at LA Metroblogging, “I hope her, Ed, Bela and Tor are havin’ a coctail somewhere.” Maila may be gone, but Vampira will live on.
Left: Maila, the golden pin-up star.
Right: Maila in recent years, by Gabrielle G.
When I returned to Moscow after 14 years things had changed. A lot. My Russian slang was suddenly dated, most older women had fire engine red hair and there were superior coffee shops everywhere. To adjust and get a better feel of the Motherland I spent my evenings watching television.
Moskva Instruktsiya, or Moscow Instruction, is a program claiming to be a guide to Moscow’s growing subcultures. Conventionally attractive (and somewhat condescending) hostesses serve as the viewers’ chaperones to the underground. While the show is informative and uses now edgy propaganda art-inspired titles it does feel like the reality TV exploitation we’re used to here in the States. Interesting nonetheless is this piece of Instruktsiya gold YouTube so generously provided. I give you Russian Emo, Punks and Cyber Goths on Moskva Instruktsiya.
Good morning. Get back to work. Oh, by the way, GIANT UNDERPANTS!
How could even the most veisalgic or seasonal affective disorder-suffering among us remain mopey after viewing this?
As a matter of fact, Paul Reubens always said that Pee-wee’s Playhouse wasn’t written for children so much as for hungover college students. Nonetheless, back in the day I was about as big a Pee-wee fan as any pre-pube could get. That clip’s got to be one of my top ten most cherished all-time TV moments. No, seriously.
We all know what happened to that poor man back in 1991. Got caught in an adult movie theater –apparently with his pants down– was arrested for “indecent exposure” and immediately vilified by the media. Reruns of his recently canceled show were quickly yanked off the air. Overnight, our beloved Pee-wee was reduced to a sniggering punchline. Does anyone else remember Reubens’ first public appearance afterwards on the MTV music awards? His sad-eyed “heard any good jokes lately?” delivery prompted cheers from the supportive crowd, but watching at home, I was in mourning. We all knew a death knell had been sounded.
I realize the fog machine/polyester armpit vapors of my last post are still fresh in your nostrils. Apologies if the following clip is officially too much of a good thing. Then again, can’t everyone can use one more reason to love this man?
Yep. That’s Richard Pryor fronting a deadly funk/metal band that looks like Sunn O))) on national television in 1977. This is indeed a strange and glorious universe.
The nineties cultural vacuum had barely kicked off when Eerie, Indiana adopted the corn-fed TV formula of the day and injected it with a healthy dose of DARQUE. What resulted was something along the lines of Blossom meets Twilight Zone.
This television artifact was first aired in 1991, and quickly won its place in cult history, despite it’s brief life on the air. For an example of what you’re in for look no further than the first episode, featuring man-size Tupperware put to unnatural use:
