Mer is incapacitated this morning from too much music-making, so it’s fallen to me to deliver you this segment of Better Than Coffee in her stead. What’s going on in the clip above has been described by photographer and Issue 01 contributor Clayton James Cubitt in the following terms: “Champagne, Wii Fit, Love, Cold NYC Nights, Nerds. In no particular order.” Looking at the clip, I recognize a few faces: Siege himself, his muse KT, Molly Crabapple, Ellen Stagg… the clip may be full of talented hotties, but its true beauty is the dizzy, dorky exuberance. Siege may be a brilliant photographer, but as this clip demonstrates, his video-editing prowess is not to be denied.
They say that how you spend your New Year’s Eve is how the rest of your year will go, and if that’s true, it looks like the folks in this clip are set. Has this belief held true for you? How did you spend your last night of 2008?
There is only one Paul Komoda in this world. Our first mention of this artist came back in October of 2007 when we first launched – we featured the piece “Blind Love.” This time, I’d like to share with you Paul’s creepy, emotional take on Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. In addition to being a fantastic artist, Paul also happens to be my best friend in the world. He was there the night that Zoe, Mer and I were all together in the same place, at the same time, for the very first time. ComicCon 2007, Dr. Sketchy’s. Nobody knew each other well at all then, yet. They had us drawing an imaginary George Takei for some reason, in addition to the posing Sketchy’s model. We recognized Mer (whom I’d met only once before) on the street due to her green dreads. Zo was the model, and had a terrible cold. Her usual, high-pitched voice sounded so low that weekend that it was as if she’d been smoking 10 packs a day since she was 2. She was talking to Mer for the first time and I kept saying “this isn’t really what she sounds like!” It was a magical night. Warren Ellis (drink!) was at that ComicCon too, and Molly Crabapple was at Dr. Sketchy’s. That one night had 2 magazine contributors and all 3 editors… before anyone even knew there’d be a magazine.
Anyway, so here’s Paul. Many years ago, we watched David Lynch’s The Elephant Man(see full movie here) together. Now we quote that movie at each other all of the time. Paul just moved to California – 5 minutes away from me! – after living on the East Coast his whole life. The first thing he said when he entered his new room: “this… is my home. I have a home.” Expect great things from this fellow East Coast expatriate, who has finally become one of us, one of us, gooble gobble.
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.
With new alt-fashion blogs Haute Macabre & Stylecunt churning out post after post of inspirational eye candy each week, there are now enough places covering extravagant, dark fashion for me to start compiling little round-ups of my favorite discoveries! These may be weekly, monthly or completely irregular, and the first one is coming at you now:
Mother, I am in love with a robot.
No, she isn’t going to like that.
Mother, I am in love.
Are you, darling?
Oh yes, mother, yes I am. His hair is auburn, and his eyes are very large. Like amber. And his skin is silver.
Silence.
Mother, I’m in love.
With whom, dear?
His name is Silver.
How metallic.
Yes, It stands for Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
Mother…
Thus opens Tanith Lee’s 1981 future inter-being romance, The Silver Metal Lover, a heart-wrenching exploration of romance, tech and yes, love.
It tells the story of Jane, plain by the standards of her future oligarchic city-state (a combination of Privatopia and Somatopia) and firmly under the thumb of her powerful and rich mother. Seethingly comfortable with her existence, she meets Silver, an entertainment robot, playing guitar and singing in the plaza. She’s embarrassed. Then angry. Then hopelessly in love. Before long she’s thrown her old life to the winds.
Short by the standards of most science fiction, with terrifyingly real characters, it packs a punch that’s not to be underestimated. When the The Silver Metal Lover is called a tearjerker, it’s the blunt truth.
Folks, this post is to let you know that Issue 02 is finally shipping out this December 31st. We apologize for the waiting time. Per the tracking number we received from FedEx, the boxes were supposed to be with us last Friday, the day that our “Issue 02 is finally here!” post went live. However, FedEx only delivered the boxes at the end of the day today. There is no good explanation on the FedEx end other than “it was the holidays and things got delayed.” Next time, we’ll know better than to put up a magazine for sale the day after Christmas! But we finally have the boxes, and we’re shipping everyone’s order ASAP. We’ll be mailing them in the order in which they were received, and we’ll try to get through them all tomorrow. Sorry again, and thank you for patience. We promise, Issue 02 will be worth the wait.
Also, we just got a box of mint-condition Issue 01’s. Not the NSWF limited edition version version – that one is gone, gone, gone. This is the “mom and pop” version, the one that was previously only sold in stores. We are offering this version of Issue 01 for a discount to those who order it together with the new Issue 02.
If you ordered Issue 02 already, you may still be able to add Issue 01 to your order for just $9.99 if you email our Shipping Mistress, Gretta, within the next 12 hours. She will let you know whether or not your package has been shipped yet, or if it’s still possible to add the extra magazine. For those of you who haven’t ordered yet:
Veteran mashup architect DJ Earworm deserves a friggin’ Grammy for this one:
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Via Ponnie, thanks.
Sublime, poetic, and menacing in equal measure, “United State of Pop” is the most beautifully presented –not to mention addictive– musical riff off MTV monoculture I’ve heard since Plunderphonics. As the friend who showed me this puts it:
This video is an example of what’s being called the “legofication” of pop music…[songs] so generic and standardized in [their] structure (not to mention pop videos in their imagery) that all the parts are interchangeable. DJ Earworm mashes up the top 25 on the billboard charts for 2008 to illustrate this point.
Go to djearworm.com to download the audio, and click below to see the full tracklist.
“I got hair on my chest. I look good without a shirt.” – Tom Waits
I had this ridiculously hot friend in high school who looked like a punk rock, flannel-clad version of Fabio. Big, built, rustic, hairy, unrepentant manbro. He’d come swaggering into 2nd period economics class reeking of Pabst and cigarettes, start an argument with the teacher over the ethics of business regulation or the Coase theorem (did I mention he was brilliant to boot?) and all the weird girls would just swoon.
“Goin’ Out West” – Tom Waits
This guy regularly favored me with bonecrushing hugs that blotted out the sun. As I recall, even freshly showered, he had a musky, vaguely goat-like odor. Being slammed face-first into his armpit should’ve been off-putting, but somehow wasn’t. In fact, I think I must have imprinted on the gent and his scent, because all these years later, there’s still a very special place in my crotch heart for brawny, unshaven, man-stinky lumberjack types with big hands and lantern jaws.
“Lumberjack” – Jackyl
This testosterone-injected morningwood edition of BTC goes out to all of the big, built, rustic, hairy, unrepentant manbros of the world… and the loincloth-sniffing perverts who love them.
Click below for more Beorn porn (and please do add your own in comments)!
2009 is almost here. It’s resolution time. We here at Coilhouse Magazine & Blog resolve to keep working our pert little patooties off to keep this train chugging rapidly along. We’d like to ask you to consider making a CH-related New Year’s resolution of your own: pick up a beautiful, fresh-off-the-plane copy of Issue 02 today, tomorrow, or in early Aught-Nine.
The first difference you’ll notice between Issue 01 and Issue 02 is the design. To replace Cecilia, who returned to Italy upon completing design of Issue 01, we invited the talented Courtney Riot to join our crew. Courtney’s adventurous design sensibilities leave their mark on every page, giving each article a voice completely of its own. To further enhance the tactile goodness, starting with this issue, all issues of Coilhouse will have rounded corners. Yum!
The 96-page Issue 02 kicks off with an illustrated history of cyborg hands by David Forbes in our first section, INFORM. Then there’s an extended remix of the Mark Mothersbaugh interview we posted earlier this year, followed by “Oases Between the Freeways,” a love letter to the magical and secret places of Angel City, complete with a colorful Zo-illustrated fold-out map. Joshua Ellis makes a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the atomic bomb. A Coilhouse-exclusive photoshoot takes Margaret Cho and Selene Luna to a desert, a vintage hotel and magical theme park, where Margaret steals a horse from a carousel. In the section INSPIRE, we interview and showcase artists Madeline von Foerster, Stephane Halleux and Stephen Kasner. In the photography/fashion department, slick irodu perfection by Gustavo Lopez Manas and Kate O’Brien’s vintage portraits of women, followed by an escapade through the trials and tribulations of vintage clothing with some familiar faces. In our last section, INFECT, we catch up with Mondo 2000 creator R. U. Sirius and comics creator Andy Ristaino. In Issue 02’s edition of Print to Fit, our regular paper doll column featuring a rotating set of guest artists, Molly Crabapple brings sexy back with a set of Rococo-inspired paper dolls – in full color.
Just a quick goodbye air kiss to glamourpuss Eartha Kitt, who passed away today at the age of 81. It’s nice to picture her sitting on some sparkling, inter-dimensional yacht this evening, having scintillating conversation over moon martinis with Harold Pinter. Bye bye, beautiful. You always were my favorite Catwoman.
Here’s Kitt’s decidedly materialistic rendition of “Santa Baby” to send us off to dreamland. Mmrrrrrowl.
