Month: March 2005

I do love the pulps

elvisLeave a comment

Again, what would we do without BoingBoing.This is from a gallery exibit on the pulp work of Norm Eastman.Take a look here, at pages one, two, three, four, five and six.It’s a festival of nazis and women in torn clothing. I guess we add this to the Sick and Wrong Art category.

Again, what would we do without BoingBoing.

This is from a gallery exibit on the pulp work of Norm Eastman.

Nursebikerssm-1

Take a look here, at pages one, two, three, four, five and six. It’s a festival of nazis and tormented women in torn clothing.

I guess we add this to the Sick and Wrong Art category. Me likey.

Body Snatchin’

elvis6 Comments

Ok, so I blogged about this Body Worlds last summer in my Fiji journal.But you see this story and you wonder — what the fuck they gonna do with it?

Ok, so I blogged about Body Worlds last summer in my Fiji journal.

But you see this story and you wonder — what the fuck they gonna do with it?

LOS ANGELES – Police are searching for two women who they believe made off with a preserved 13-week-old fetus from an exhibit at the California Science Center.

The fetus, infused with polymers in a process called plastination to prevent decay, was part of a traveling display entitled “Body Worlds 2: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies.”

The whole story is here.

Fifties Jazz Essentials

elvis4 Comments

Art Pepper – Meets the Rhythm Section Art Pepper is an alto sax player; the rhythm section here is the above mentioned band from “Kind of Blue”, sans John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Cannonball…. It’s the best rhythm section of the era playing at peak, and a man who is pouring his pain and fear and love out, un-filtered, though his alto sax.

I wrote this up a year or so ago for a friend who wanted to know what jazz albums I would suggest for someone who doesn’t know jazz but wants to get started with it.

The jazz I know and love is all late fifties to early sixties. So this is a list from that era only. This isn’t a complete list. This is the albums I consider must-haves from the era, but there are, certainly, many others that I’ve missed. I’m still discovering artists I don’t know.

First – the album I consider to be possibly the best album ever made, in any genre, by any artist. “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis. No collection should be without it. If you get it and like it, there’s a fantastic book by Ashley Kahn that disects the album – what lead up to it, who’s on it, how it was recorded, and then track-by-track notes that open up some of the songs in an incredibly vivid way. I read it with the album, on head-phones, went though the tracks over and over as I was reading the descriptions. It’s fascinating, but only if one already has explored the album.

Read more “Fifties Jazz Essentials”

A little tail

elvisLeave a comment

I have to take a moment here to love on both Doxy and The Artist who does her cartoons (same lovely lady who did my Cartoon Karl Elvis).There’s my easter bunny, right there!

I have to take a moment here to love on both Doxy and The Artist who does her cartoons (same lovely lady who did my Cartoon Karl Elvis).

There’s my easter bunny, right there!

Queen sans Freddy?

elvis4 Comments

In the so fucking wrong department, we have:o Freddie, But for Queen the Show Must Go On:British rock band Queen has kicked off its first tour since the death of Freddie Mercury in 1991, hoping that the strength of the songs makes up for the absence of the charismatic frontman. Two of the original band members strutted the stage at a south London venue late on Monday accompanied by Paul Rodgers, the man handed the unenviable task of filling Freddie’s shoes.Um.Ok…So let me say, I was one of Queen’s biggest fans.

In the so fucking wrong department, we have:

No Freddie, But for Queen the Show Must Go On:

British rock band Queen has kicked off its first tour since the death of Freddie Mercury in 1991, hoping that the strength of the songs makes up for the absence of the charismatic frontman. Two of the original band members strutted the stage at a south London venue late on Monday accompanied by Paul Rodgers, the man handed the unenviable task of filling Freddie’s shoes.

Um.

Ok…

So let me say, I was one of Queen’s biggest fans. I’ve lost count of how many times I camped out to get good tickets. I’ve seen Queen many, many times. I absolutely worshipped this band when I was a teenager. And I’m a fan of Brian May and Roger Taylor; I always thought they were the real creative force behind the band, still today think they wrote almost all the great songs (Freddy wrote a few, but pretty much all of Deacon’s songs sucked balls, never mind that they were hits).

So it’s not that I think Freddy was Queen. Freddy was the face and image of Queen, sure, but Queen was the music of Taylor and May along with Freddy.

But… Paul Rodgers?

I just ain’t feelin’ it, fellas. Really.

Mate Care-For

elvis3 Comments

Not the pin-cusion dolls and zombies of hollywood, but the wild, earthy, intense religeon practiced by a people ripped out of many places and pulled together in a gumbo of different influences and cultures…. There are times I want to be able to reach out and ask for advice, not from a friend, who has an aegenda or knows too much, yet too little.

Mate Care-For, protect me.

There’s a book by Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides. It features, among other things, Black Beard, Stede Bonnet, Calico Jack and his wenches Anne Bonny and Mary Reed, Voodoo, and the Fountain of Youth. It’s typical Powers, which is to say, not typical at all. It’s an insane, inspired, possibly brilliant piece by one of the most inventive SF/Fantasy writers working today. It threads a fictional story into real historical events, fictional people in a fictional story side-by-side with real people from the pages of history books. Powers is an obsessive researcher so when he tells a story this way, it’s spot on with the details.

This is also clearly a book that inspired a lot of the Pirates of the Carribean movie. I mean, the lead character is Jack Shandy, his lady is named Elizabeth, there’s a ship crewed by zombies, there are curses. Too many similarities to be completely accidental. Published in ’87, it predates Curse of the Black Pearl by a good fifteen years.

The beauty of Powers’ work is that he peels back the cover and shows us the magic – sinister, dangerous, dark magic – hiding behind ordinary reality. He shows us a world where everything has a meaning, and everything that looks sinister actually is. Of course Blackbeard was a sorcerer, we think. How could he not be? Of course pirates practiced Vodun. How could we not already have known this?

The pirates in Powers book call on someone, a protective saint, a person, a protector. Mate Care-For, they call him. They summon him for luck, for protection. They carry charms to suppon his attention and thus summon his protective presence.

Only, he’s not just that. He’s someone else. He’s someone more.

Maître Carrefour. Master of the cross-roads.

Read more “Mate Care-For”

H O L D – F A S T

elvis5 Comments

Hold Fast.(see the extended entry for photos)Getting the design laid out correctly: Klem at work…. Not really painful, as tattoos go, but man, annoying: Right hand done: HOLD fucking FAST: The green stuff is sharpie, it’ll wash off.

 

Hang on tight, it means. Stay steady. Don’t give up.

Sailors used to tattoo it on their knuckles, as a charm and a reminder. Don’t let go the rigging, lest you be swept out to sea. Certain death, that meant, when you had sailing ships and men who could not swim. Hang on tight, or it’s Davy Jones Locker for you.

Bikers used to wear it. Hang on tight, keep the rubber side down.

To me, it means, simply, don’t ever give up. Strive for what you want, for what you believe.

Hold Fast.

(see the extended entry for photos)

Read more “H O L D – F A S T”