This week, let’s take a look at a highly questionable bit of “ambient” advertising, as it’s been dubbed in my buzzword happy industry. La Hacienda, tagline “The Hottest Food In Town,” is a chain of 37 Mexican eateries dotting the heartland of America. They are known for the spiciest, south-of-the-border specialties. To totally ram that point home, they’ve apparently installed mini refrigerators filled with rolls of chilling toilet paper into their restroom stalls. Erm. I guess we could give them brownie points (sorry) for their brutal no-shit honesty? Maybe they should hire attendants to hand out mini-tubes of Preparation H cooling gel, too? What do you think of this south-of-the-waistline stunt? Me, I think it might have put me off of mole poblano sauce for life. (images via: scary ideas)

So… Zo, Mer and I are in Issue 02 Deadline Hell. Posting’s slowed down until Issue 02 is sorted, with many thanks to our guest bloggers for keeping the fort. Later today, a very special post from copyranter involving Mexican food and toilet paper. For now, a quickie that I’ve been wanting to post for a long time: one of our paper dolls from the magazine’s back page (a tradition that will be carried over to Issue 02), fully dressed. For those of you who didn’t want to cut out the paper dolls but are still curious about how they look in their outfits, here’s 1 of 2, the lovely Juniper Fusion by artist Paul Komoda:

In every Italian railway terminal there is at least one newsstand. Invariably, physician its stock breaks down like this: half of everything is daily papers—Communist-leaning, Northern Separatist-leaning, Social Democrat-leaning, ten flavors of Berlusconi-leaning, et al.; of what remains, one third is sports-related, a third is girlie magazines (wherein the pneumatic risk pneumonia), and a third is Dylan Dog. Old issues in piles—sold and re-sold, bindings mostly broken, costing a few Euros apiece for a hundred black and white pages. This long-running horror comic, which reportedly sells half a million copies per month in Italy, is like plaque accumulating in the arteries of their national transit system.

Every issue is commute-sized: fifteen local stops long at most. First you can’t put them down, and then you throw them away. They’re like episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker by way of Arthur Conan Doyle and Dario Argento. But with a light touch. Despite all of the Jungian unpleasantness, there are plenty of wisecracks and visual gags to go around.

In the almost three hundred issues published since Tiziano Sclavi created the character in 1986, a dozen writers and illustrators have tried their hands at the series. There have been fat years and lean years creatively, but throughout it’s been the confection of choice for a whole generation of Italians with a sweet-tooth for the macabre. No less of a gray eminence than Umberto Eco once declared, “I can read the Bible, Homer, or Dylan Dog for days without being bored.”

In the non-limited, non-vaggy version of Coilhouse that’s available in stores, we replaced the offending material with a mini-editorial about piercing. The shoot was a big collaboration: Mildred was the evil genius behind this shoot’s concept (from the preliminary sketches right down to crafting that fan, along with Scar’s phallic flower-skewers in the other photo), I took the photos, Melanie Manson did the makeup, Holly Jones did the hair, and Pia Kaamos was the lovely model in the image above. Alongside the images, there’s an interview with Jenn Rose, the prosthetics artist who made this gory magic happen.

We certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from wanting to own both versions, but those of you who happen to spot Coilhouse at a store but aren’t buying, could you do us a huge favor? Move it where people can see it, so that someone new can discover it. My parents found it on the very top shelf in the somewhat messy Art section of the Deptford Barnes & Noble and moved it, snapping the picture below. Lo and behold, the next time they visited the store two days later, one copy from the stack was gone.

Just don’t put them in those stand-alone special display cases – magazines pay a lot of money to be there. Just find a nice, prominent spot for it, ideally without displacing anything good. It would help us out a lot, and hopefully bring interesting new people to this blog. Thank you!

This past Friday, October 10th, was our 1-year anniversary of going live with Coilhouse. What a year it’s been! 555 posts, 6,470 comments and one print issue later, here we are. We were going to post something on the day of, but we completely forgot, and this is why: October 10th also happened to be the final deadline for all Issue 02 content. That’s right! Issue 02 is absolutely, positively, 100% a go. Thanks, primarily, to you lot. GROUP HUG!!!

We have a lot of other fantastic news to share, as well. First off, we’d like you to know that Coilhouse Magazine Issue 01 is now available in a wide variety of wonderful independent shops across the United States, including Quimby’s, Atomic Books, Trident, and Chicago Comics. Please click here to see the growing list of businesses.* Secondly, we are very, very proud to announce that our feisty wee upstart has landed distribution in the three largest bookstores in the United States: Borders, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. This means a vast majority of our US readers will be able to go into a local store and find Coilhouse (minus these two NSFW pages, which were only in our limited edition) on the shelves. Including Issue 01. Today. For a complete listing of Borders/B&N locations, click here.

This website is changing, too. The Staff Page has been updated with new bios and photos to showcase our growing family of contributors, and we’ve finally written up a proper Coilhouse FAQ. The following questions, among others, are are covered:

• How often is the magazine published?
• Is it possible to subscribe?
• Who should I contact if there’s a problem with my order?
• I want to carry Coilhouse in my store. Is this possible?
• Can I submit to Coilhouse Magazine?

One final announcement we’d like to make: there are very limited quanities of the website-only limited edition Issue 01 left. 800 are gone, 200 remain. If you’ve been thinking about getting a copy but haven’t made up your mind yet, now is the time.

Looking to the future, we can say with confience that Issue 02 is going to be amazing. We learned a lot from Issue 01, so the bar’s been raised a notch or two. Many of you had positive things to say about the print quality; for this issue, we’re going even glossier. The paper will be of a thicker stock, and we’re implementing some surprise touches to further enhance your tactile experience. Best of all, the content in Issue 02 –which should be out before the end of the year– is incredible. Just you wait!

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for being here. Your continuing support and participation in this endeavor has meant the world us.

Photo by Lou O’Bedlam.

*Additionally, Wildilocks in Melbourne, Austrialia has some copies for sale! (Rest assured, we’re actively exploring more extensive international sales options for all forthcoming issues.)

G’morning! Prepare to be speechless:

Miss Tandi Iman Dupree, ladies and gents. Is that an entrance or what?

No doubt, many of you will have already seen this invigorating clip, shot at the 2001 Miss Black America pageant in Atlanta, Georgia. It was Tandi’s dream to become Miss Black America, and for years she hustled her butt off, giving memorable performances at drag events across the continental U.S.  Shockingly, her rendition of “Holding Out for a Hero” did not win Miss Dupree the crown, and she passed away (from AIDS complications, according to the Associated Press) before achieving her goal.

I’m just grateful to have the footage, especially on a cold, murky morning like this one. For many of us, Miss Dupree will always be a reigning queen.

On May 1, 1947 Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Photographer Robert Wiles took a photo of McHale a few minutes after her death.

I will never forget this image, which I discovered on the found-image photo blog riotclitshave. In fact, I’ve found many unforgettable images there. A little bit of everything: humor, horror, beauty, ugliness, joy and everything in between.  Sometimes, the blog curator, Bean Noneya, will go through phases. One week, she’ll be obsessed by the texture of old people’s skin. Another week, she’ll be taken by Islam. Preceded by: cute piglets! Another perennial RCS fixation is the interaction between people and animals. There is also a wealth of incredible black-and-white gems from bygone eras. If you’ve never seen this blog before, start looking. It’s a blog you can get lost in for hours; by the time you finally close the browser, the world will seem infinitely stranger.

When I told my roomate that I interviewed Bean for this blog, she didn’t seem that excited: “it’s just a popular photo blog where someone reposts images that they found elsewhere! It’s not like she takes them herself or anything.” But I’ve seen many photo blogs, and none impact me as strongly as RCS. In order to assort images so profoundly, one has to have a good eye, a sense of humor, a degree of subtlety and a unique perspective of the world. I’m constantly impressed by how the blog makes strong points simply by posting images in a certain order – a good example of that is the day she decided to post only images of female couples.

So who is the person behind riotclitshave? Why does she do this every week? Full interview after the jump.

Why “riotclitshave”?
It’s called riotclitshave as a play on “right click save” and the three words just felt rather lovely together.

Where do you find the images that you post?
I search for my images in a handful of ways. I watch a bunch of photo posting communities on livejournal, which include some Russian photodump blogs RSS’d into my LJ, I search terms on Google that I’m interested in and think will garner good pictures. I use the Flickr and LJ random image grabbers too. The Russian sites really give me some great stuff. It’s SO random and has so many pictures.

Have you ever posted an image that you later wish you hadn’t?
I have definitely posted pics that I wish I hadn’t. I don’t like posting photoshops- but I won’t usually delete them if I find they are. I get very annoyed with the comments whenever I post a skinny girl- people just can’t seem to help themselves. After the hundredth “sammich” comment I just want to delete the post. Which is why you’ll never see me post a picture specifically pointed at making fun of a fat person. People are cruel and I don’t want my journal to be a place for people to get hurt.

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…

Does your skull feel like it might shatter in a million pieces at the slightest movement of your head? Are you on the verge of vomiting into your valenki? Is a little too much weekend boozing to blame? Take the advice of Russian punk pioneers Sektor Gaza and try a more natural method next time.

Formed in the wake of 1980s glasnost Sektor Gaza was the first band to take full advantage of this newfound freedom of speech. Combining extreme vulgarity with elements of folk they quickly gained a distinct sound and a devoted audience. In a rare display of modesty, this song resists mention of sex and murder in favor of opium and marijuana. Sactor Gaza urge their listeners to give up nasty Vodka, toss that old samogon and indulge in Mother Nature’s own hangover cures.

I apologize right here up front for this post, which will absolutely put this fucking song in your head for days. Here, as part of a new print campaign out of Belgium for Love brand condoms, the head (sorry) of Microsoft makes yet another embarrassing ad appearance, this time minus Jerry Seinfeld’s dickiness. I guess Love figures Bill won’t sue. And when you (or at least I) think about it, the scenario of someone seemingly as asexual and powerful as Bill Gates suing a condom company is pretty ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as this ad! Dressing up penises like beefy finger puppets? How 6th grade! Belgian ad agencies sure have some crazy-ass notions about what effective condom advertising looks like, yes? This disembodied dick-work was created by Brussels shop Troy — ha, they have a Trojan horse on their landing page. Jump for a second ad featuring a tattooed theoretical Arnold Schwarzenegger schwanz. You can view the rest of the campaign, including a super-tasteless John Lennon execution, here.