Every once in a while something so amazing slips past us that we can but weep in mourning of lost time, once the Amazing Thing is discovered at last.
I remember mention of The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello when it was first released in 2005 but it was tragically lost in the rumbling noise of the Internet, before I could watch it. The IMDB synopsis of this gorgeous silhouette animation is as follows:
“Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers, this gothic horror mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his Plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself. The chance discovery of an abandoned dirigible leads Jasper through unchartered waters to an island on which lives a terrifying creature that may be the cure for the Plague. The journey back to civilization is filled with horrors but in a shocking climax, Jasper discovers that the greatest horror of all lies within man himself. “
Today by pure chance I re-discovered this gem of animation on the ol’ YouTube and am about to buy the DVD to finally put an end to my ignorance. Has anyone here seen this?
I’m working on making it possible to upload a little avatar next to your name when you post a comment. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I bring you one of my favorite modern fashion photographers: Eugenio Recuenco. I chose to post about him now to counterbalance my Decline of Fashion Photography post: see, it’s not all doom and gloom!
There’s just so much to see on his site. I love this noir alien encounter story, and this one about matadors, and this creepy hotel shoot with elements of The Shining. I love his nautical themes: there’s one story about shipwrecked passengers who make it to the shore, and another about Titantic, with a gallery each before and after the collision with the iceberg. There’s a sexy story about fencing (the only sport I ever liked!), and tons more. Visiting his site is like re-reading a good book; every time, you find something new.
Mikhail Vrubel is not particularly well-known in the West but he remains one of the greatest and certainly one of the most unique artists Russia’s ever produced. Most of his best-known work is inspired by fairy tales and poetry, and his own life was a sort dark fable in itself.
The Swan Princess (the artist’s wife)
Born in Siberia, Mikhail lost two of his siblings when he was still a child. Their untimely deaths affected him deeply, but didn’t stop him from developing his talent for drawing, among other widely varying interests. His family encouraged his interest in the arts and languages and in 1864 he began to study in St. Petersburg where he was educated in both law and art.
On the left is an image by Irving Penn shot in 1951 for Vogue. On the right is an image from a recent issue of Paper. What happened? In a compelling, troche easy-to-follow “argument in pictures” on Slate.com, viagra Karen Lehrman delineates the decline of fashion photography through the past half-century, arguing that modern fashion photography forgets to create art in favor of commerce (hence the sterile, cataloge-looking images you see in American Vogue), or alternately forgets commerce in favor of attempts at art (above, right). Walking you through 60 years of fashion photography with compelling examples to support her various points, Lerhman discusses how focus groups, misogyny, the changing role of the fashion photographer and other factors have all done their part in bringing about the downfall of the craft.
Shit, I loved that game! One of my happiest memories growing up was playing it with my dad. My favorite colors to play were black and green together; death and replenishment. I thought that red was for boneheads. I liked blue, but was never able to construct the kind of mindfuck blue decks that won you the game. And white was just… blah. Too pacifist. Green-white decks were for hippies. I remember liking artifacts; Magic was where I learned the word “ornithopter” from. Any time I opened a new pack, I prayed to find the coveted rare card Black Lotus; it would be like winning the lottery and I’d be filthy rich. I loved the artwork, which looks more crude to me now than I remember it being. Phil Foglio and Quinton Hoover were my favorite artists.
While I was a card-flopper, I was never a dice-chucker. I never learned how to play RPG’s because I didn’t know anybody else who played. But at the time, tons of card games were coming out right and left; games inspired by Lovecraft like Call of Cthulhu, the Illuminati card game inspired by Robert Anton Wilson, and the Netrunner game inspired by (ripped off without credit, I heard?) the work of William Gibson. This was my official exposure to all these artists and others, making Magic: The Gathering the official source of What Made Me Weird. My dad got me subscriptions to Scrye and Inquest, which had interviews with people like Clive Barker and Brom. In every issue of Scrye, they printed imaginary cards that readers made up, and I even remember submitting some of my own.
It happened well over a decade ago, but the memory is crystal: my best bud Gooby Herms, fellow purveyor of All That Is Wackadoo, leaped up from the threadbare couch bellowing “holy crap, you’ve never seen the Billy Nayer Show?!” With a table top drum roll, he popped his scuzzy bootleg of The Ketchup and Mustard Man into the VCR and pressed play. My jaw hit the floor… repeatedly. I’ve been an idolator at the shrine of BNS ever since.
When bandleader Cory McAbee and company released The American Astronaut in 2001, I knew the world was in for it:
Space travel has become a dirty way of life dominated by derelicts, grease monkeys, and hard-boiled interplanetary traders such as Samuel Curtis… this sci-fi, musical-western uses flinty black and white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier. We follow Curtis on his Homeric journey to provide the all-female planet of Venus with a suitable male, while pursued by an enigmatic killer, Professor Hess. The film features music by The Billy Nayer Show and some of the most original rock n’ roll scenes ever committed to film.
Thanksgiving is a stupid holiday, I’m not going to post anything relating to it! Instead, I bring you the following list of fashion aliens, in which we count down the most fragile, bizarre, unusual specimens of beauty to be found in the mainstream modeling world. The countdown begins with…
# 7: Lily Cole. Lily almost didn’t make this list because she’s more doll-like than alien. I envision her more baking gingerbread cookies than stepping out of a flying saucer. But there is something about her. And she is weird! I look forward to her starring as Alice in the Marilyn Manson-directed horror film Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll.
Just a little something to whet your appetites, help dear readers.
“Many role-oriented fetishes are outgrowths of the simple desire to dominate or be dominated. “The Turkey Man” is an extreme form of such fetishes wherein a man feels sexual pleasure when he is treated like the Thanksgiving turkey. We didn’t make this up.
A Turkey Man usually has a dominatrix dressed as a classic mothering housewife come to his home, sovaldi where he has constructed a large oven out of usually cardboard or plywood. The Turkey Man then strips, clinic leaving only his socks (like the little paper booties on the turkey’s feet), and crawls into the oven. The woman then describes to the man how she will baste, cook and eat him. Lord only knows where the meat thermometer ends up!”
