I Didn't Write That!

Vile Komen Foundation: You Didn't Go Far Enough

2012-02-01T17:44:00.000-08:00

Say, Komen Foundation: how courageous of you to cut poor women off from breast cancer screening by cutting off your connection to Planned Parenthood.

Hey, now that you've got the gushing reptilian love of the pro-lifers, you do realize you're being inconsistent.

See. cancer research relies on stem cells these days, which they're now allowed to use again. Like Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, a great organization I used to work for, and who get a substantial amount of their money for their pioneering research(they invented the bone marrow transplant) from Komen. (speaking of which, just give to FHCRC directly here. They do fine pioneering work--they invented bone marrow transplants, for one thing--and they have nothing to do with Komen's sins.)

And where do those stem cells--the useful undifferentiated ones--usually come from again? What was the reason the pro-lifers want stem cell research wiped out?

Basically, if you're going to curry the favor of the pro-lifers, you'll have to abandon ALL funding of any useful cancer research institutions. You fucking vile idiots.

But I guess your new VP, the failed (and Palin-endorsed)pro-life GOP gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel, had an agenda and got what she wanted, eh? Funny how you would hire someone in such a position that stands for an anti-woman cause .

Despite Komen's attempts to the contrary, though, they are not the only foundation funding cancer research. There are many, many other worthy foundations that do not hate women and fund vital science toward actually curing the disease. Who care about women's lives, not political agendas. Give them your money, not Komen. Abandon Komen. Let it rot.

And give to Planned Parenthood because they really need it now, and our country needs them.
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Brian Eno: Thursday Afternoon (14 video paintings 1981-1984)

2012-01-31T23:13:00.000-08:00

Early video art crossed with early ambient music. Here's Thursday Afternoon for you, complete.(sorry, no embed code)

Not so much to be listened to as inhabited.
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Previously Unpublished: UNCLE CYRUS 2- "Cyrus at the Con" (2001)

2012-01-31T00:52:00.000-08:00

This is a story written, and with breakdowns, by John E. Williams and drawn by me, that would have been in PLASTIC 9 in 2001, had there been one. It's the continuation of the adventures of comics' favorite hack, Uncle Cyrus. Here we see him at the San Diego Con, though a version none would recognize nowadays. To be honest, I'd only been to APE in San Francisco, so this probably looks a lot more like that as far as the venue. The art's early and rough, but it is what it is. Click to read. (and both Cyrus stories can be read here) If you look closely you'll find my attempt at numerous cameos, including Trina Robbins, Dave Sim, Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell, Scott McCloud, Julie Strain, Rick Veitch, Dean Haspiel, Dan Clowes, Steve Leiber, Gary Groth, R. Crumb, Grant Morrison, Danny Hellman, Archie Goodwin, Harvey Pekar, Neil Gaiman, Chris Ware, Steven Weissman and Austin English, with a speaking guest appearance by Fantagraphics' Kim Thompson.

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League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-Century 1910: Mack the Ripper, or Lulu Never Gets A Break

2012-01-29T04:15:00.000-08:00

When League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1910 came out, I happened to have just started working on my comics adaptation of Frank Wedekind's "Lulu," which had already been brewing in my mind for ten years, and poring over every version of it I can find. I even found the rare 1980 Borowczyk version that had Udo Kier in it, as he always seems to be in everything.

As Alan Moore has over the years instilled in me a serious awareness of weird coincidences, I was pleasantly surprised and a little weirded out to see that, in the midst of his restaging of The Threepenny Opera(which he and O'Neill do as though born to it, but Moore has always had a serious Weill influence), he brought in--nearly precisely--the ending of the play "Pandora's Box," and made what is in the play, literally, Jack the Ripper, Macheath in the midst of Moore's new version of that song we all know well. And this Lulu is of course based on Louise Brooks. Anyway, I liked the sequence so here it is(though the new twist to "Pirate Jenny" is pretty awesome, but that would be too many pages):

Basic setup: It's London, and Macheath has returned, and Lulu is walking the streets, having gone through(fatally) a number of husbands, and ended up from wealth and status to this. (Not really through any fault of her own exactly. Men just destroy themselves around her)

And here we have an altercation with the first lesbian in Western fiction, Countess Geschwitz, obsessed with Lulu and rejected by her, and getting a bit tired with only having an old painting of her to cuddle. But Mackie's not having that.

And we say farewell to Lulu. Though there is this back cover, and there are any number of paintings just like this from the turn of the century. Depictions like this of women were very popular with middle-class salongoers.

(all three images (c)2009 Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill)

I would add that an even stranger additional coincidence was the recent release of the "Tales of the Black Freighter"(which I liked) which has the "Pirate Jenny" song, quite central to LOEG, playing over the credits. But the imagery in that song is something that goes deep in Moore.

By the way, for fans of "the Ruling Class"--which I am--the 14th Earl of Gurney also plays a central part in this. Also Iain Sinclair's Billy Pilgrimish Norton from "Slow Chocolate Autopsy," who can travel in time but not in space and is trapped in London, flashing between eras, and Moore does a great pastiche of Sinclair. It also has Crowley, sort of, as usual with Moore these days. And in retrospect Orlando turns out, in our first good look at him/her since the bits in BD, to be a real douchebag, and the only thing I really dislike about the series, except his origin story in Black Dossier, which should have been the last of him. He's stayed awful, really--he's just an annoying namedropping twat who they've literally spent a century with.

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LULU Chapter 3, p. 50

2012-01-29T01:02:00.000-08:00

A bit of an argument this week between Lulu and the endlessly emo Schwarz.

Chapter 3, p. 50. Click and read!

Also: original art for chapters 1 & 2 now for sale at Sketchmaven! Don't forget: chapters 1 and 2 available in THIS SICKNESS 6-7 at Amazon and Createspace. (now for Kindle as well)
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My First Smut Comic: October Surprise - online (Eros Comix/Fantagraphics, 2003)

2012-01-28T05:39:00.001-08:00

Unavailable for a long time, here for your reading pleasure is "October Surprise," my first professionally published work, my first comic drawn entirely in pencil, and my first work in the erotic genre is now available online here in its entirety. I kept this one offline--though it did run on adultwebcomics.com 2006-7--because I was a little self-conscious about how the art style looks to me now; part of the reason I originally did this in 2002(which was actually just for fun without publication in mind) was I was working on finishing Vitriol and was tired of all the work. I wasn't sure if I could even draw something just for the fun of it anymore, being at p. 210 of an eventual 252 of Vitriol at the time and sick of it. (it took me from 1997-2003)

For just the sake of fun, I wanted to draw something fast in a sketchy, simple style in pencil. I chose this, which is based on a real incident in October 1991, hence the name. I wanted to pick a memory enjoyable enough to draw three pages a night of. Which was the pace. I will say no more of its backstory except that "Rosa & Annalisa" were not their real names, nor were they actually meant in this story as "Rosa & Annalisa" yet; they grew into it. In this silent story, there are no names along with any other words. This was just supposed to be the real women.

However, on that this is subtitled a "memory," yes. It was the early 90s and things occurred. One of the characters has had their appearance changed to a totally fictional one, but mainly because the real person's looks I cast as a different character in Vitriol already.

Anyway, once I finished OS, later at the behest of my former wife when she read it--and to my surprise that she encouraged me to submit, because I still think it's drawn terribly(whatever our other troubles, she was always very supportive of my work, I have to say that)--I submitted it to Eros Comix/Fantagraphics and to my even greater shock, it was published, along with a number of stories afterward for the next three years. I also had the great fortune of a supportive and wise editor, Michael Dowers.

This one went into MENAGE A TROIS #3(July 2003), normally an anthology comic, but this got all 24 pages. I always thought it funny it was the third issue. It took up the whole of the comic(in fact is listed as a "spotlight issue") but I did not do the cover, which was by one "Kovik." If you ever try to track a copy down, this is what it looked like.

I'm...not that keen on the cover, truthfully. It's not terrible, it's just not that reflective of the contents. I was glad when I later did get to do the cover for the last full-length one Eros published, Gulag Gangbang. My pencil style was more refined by then. I hope.

So, if you'll excuse the roughness of the drawing, enjoy the story.

There is now also an index page for all three Rosa & Annalisa stories. I'll be changing the icons on the Comix page later when I get to it. Bookmark it(and Reddit or Digg it if you can).
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In Memoriam of Michael Hutchence (1960-1997) - INXS & Max Q

2012-01-27T02:02:00.000-08:00

In memory of a reminder that sometimes "pop" and "good music" coincide, some Michael Hutchence and what INXS once was. Pop can be good, it's hard to recall these days. It's just that most of the time they don't try.

Here they are live in Melbourne in 1983.

See? Fuck Autotune and anyone who uses it. Just TRY to keep your butt still with an INXS song on. And nobody could say INXS did not work their asses off to get where they got. These were not prefabricated pop stars, it was a band that put sweat into making pop its own.

And this was one of his better performances. It's difficult to take one's eyes off him. If you were a straight girl back then, you wanted him, and if a straight boy you wanted to be him, or kill him for being so much more interesting to your girlfriend than you could ever hope to be. Look, I'm straight and even I know he was killer sexy. Don't believe me? Okay, well, there is this with the band kicking ass on "Original Sin" at Wembley in 1991.

See, good pop IS possible. And good pop stars.

As the great Molly Kiely(a far better erotic artist, or just plain artist period, incidentally, than I am) said, "Hutchence was a masterful rock star: unconventionally handsome, with sexy phrasing and swagger." And immensely likeable. If we admire Freddie Mercury for his charisma and ability to take a stage, while never acting like he was better than his band, then Michael Hutchence has to be given his due in the generation that followed Mercury. Or Bryan Ferry, along with David Sylvian a very obvious influence on Hurchence.

I guess, besides just that my generation was INXS' audience, another reason I feel a little nostagically sad and personal when it comes to Hutchence is my birthday was last Sunday(Jan. 22). And it would have been his too. A waste. RIP, Hutchence. We could use good frontmen now. Poor guy though. It's a shame he had to die so stupidly.

"Disappear" Live in 1991.

A bonus: two songs from his underrated solo project with Ollie Olsen(and an album I somehow managed never to tire of), Max Q. "Buckethead"...

...and "Ghost of the Year".

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My Stuff at Eros Art: Vladrushka, Story of OH!, Lulu, Martha (all NSFW; updated)

2012-01-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

A number of my pieces of "art" had the honor in the past few days of being displayed at the Eros Art blog. These included Vladrushka, Lulu and Story of OH! Have a look! (and check out the other art featured, some really good stuff) Click on any image to go to each post, with a much bigger image.

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LULU Chapter 3, p. 49

2012-01-20T22:06:00.000-08:00

And Dr. Goll's still dead, while Lulu thinks it might be time to get dressed.

Chapter 3, p. 49. Click and read!

Also: original art for chapters 1 & 2 now for sale at Sketchmaven! Don't forget: chapters 1 and 2 available in THIS SICKNESS 6-7 at Amazon and Createspace. (now for Kindle as well)
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Newt Gingrich Ex-Wife: "He Left Me When I Got MS"

2012-01-19T23:47:00.001-08:00

Watch the interview with Marianne Gingrich here.

He left his first wife when she was dying of cancer. Know why he decided to leave wife #2? Because she had MS. And he called her and said he "loved" her while being blown by the CallistaDroid. Who, he said to his wife when he requested an open marriage(saying, "you want me all to yourself"--well, yes, Newt, that's what marriage is, correct?) "doesn't care what I do."

HUH.

Some of you may know that before my mom died of cancer, she suffered MS for years. (the MS drugs in fact, because of their immunosuppressive effect, were what led TO her getting cancer) And my mom's name was Mary Ann.

So you may imagine that this feels very weirdly personal now to me.

Here's the thing: Newt Gingrich is a fucking pig who should not be president of a neighborhood association.

He said tonight at the debate his private life should be respected. That would be less hilarious coming from someone who did not crack the nation in half to impeach an effective president because of HIS private life. And who defends "traditional marriage" every time he opens his piehole and would deny marriage rights to gays.

Newt, Your private life is the fairest game there is, and if your stated fascist intentions (he plans to ignore the Supreme Court as president, for one, he stated yesterday) and your barely-veiled wish to re-enslave impoverished African-Americans are not enough to flush you, this may do. There is nothing about you that is presidential. And if this country makes you president, and it will not, it deserves what it gets.

Newt Gingrich's daughters excuse it by saying "it happened a long time ago." I wasn't aware that ever mattered to elephants. Are they forgetful? They seem to still go on about the 60s and a lot more that was a long time ago. In fact the GOP seems to go on a lot about things that have nothing to do with the present day. And frankly, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, I'll shut up about it when YOU shut up about the crucifixion. Seems that was a long time ago too.

Newt Gingrich is the sleaziest living fuckpig in US politics. That takes some doing. But this nominal "man" is soulless on a level I simply thought unimaginable. Sleazy in freaking IMAX.

South Carolina, I was born and raised in you and got away from you as soon as I could. We've never been friends. But if you never did a decent thing before, surely Mark Sanford should have taught you something. I implore you, do not give this pig a primary win tomorrow. Show me you have some sense of decency. Take out the trash.

If you support this pathetic thing that calls itself a man, shut the fuck up about "traditional marriage" forever and ever.

But they won't. Here's Maddow on how Jon King fucked up the question in such a way that Newt could appear to be the persecuted hero. It's not his sex life, it's the multidimensional hypocrisy it represents.

What happened last night was that CNN immunized Gingrich against this question. The manner they asked it made it seem it was just sleazy gossip, not proof of his intense and multidimensional hypocrisy.

And Gingrich is now relying on the very open-mindedness that ultimately saved Clinton in the public mind that he raged against when trying to impeach him for the very things--and WORSE--he was doing at exactly that time. And that he babbles about traditional marriage whenever he opens his piehole on Fox.

And...we could go on and on. It's not that his sex life is so sleazy, it's not that he has always been a bad husband, it's that he has the balls to judge others when his feet are soupy clay. And that he's running in a party that presumes to tell others how to live their lives and would deny rights to people on these very issues, that claims to be the "moral" ones.
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Seattle's Snow: No, You ARE Wimps.

2012-01-19T22:29:00.000-08:00

"OH NOES, SNOW! WHATEVER SHALL WE DO?" -Seattle, every goddamn winter

Only Seattle would react to a snowstorm like it was Katrina.

The LA Times called Seattleites "wimps" for the reaction to its (by Chicago standards rather laughable) snowstorm. Said reaction is basically, even after the 2009 storm, to be crippled. This is a major city, they claim, and yet right now half Seattle is without power and they're begging citizens to stay in after dark. In a "major city."

Now, granted, that's coming from LA. The news asked if a "wimp" would wear short sleeves in this weather.

No, but an idiot would. Chicago laughs at you, Seattle. Chicago(a place I haven't much else good to say about, granted, but did survive 12 winters in) is used to snow and rain, but they also wear coats and use umbrellas because they're not completely dense. This is a city where they can barely drive in this weather, but don't wear coats because they're supposedly tough. And then they get the flu and give it to everyone else, which is why this is the only city I have EVER lived in where they actually have PSAs on the buses, every bus, reminding people to cover their mouths when they sneeze. Because people here are so stupid (and rude)you actually have to tell them to do that.

They say also on the news, "If you haven't been to Seattle don't knock it." Well, that might make sense for LA.

But if that's the standard?

As I've lived here over 4 years, I GUESS I CAN THEN.

So then--SEATTLE: NO, THEY'RE RIGHT. YOU ARE WIMPS. AND NOT JUST WITH SNOW.

What's wimpy? Your response. A real city is NOT crippled by a snowstorm, especially one they see coming. It's the kind of place it is. It's barely a city and they KEEP it that way. Because they like to think like it's a small town. While wanting the respect of a big city. They are only a major city up here in the same way gas stations on the highway in Wyoming call themselves the best service station because the next one is 100 miles away. It's only that there are so few things you can even call a city in the Northwest, that's all.

What kind of a city is it that cannot deal with weather that's not uncommon here?

They pretend that snow is rare here. Not for the last four years, it hasn't been. And the last mayor is no longer the mayor because of just as much of a pathetic response to a snowstorm. McGinn should realize this.

Now, an ice storm is on the way, and I'll bet they won't use salt, because they don't here; they fear environmental problems. Pollution is fine in Puget Sound and there's plenty of it, but oh no, not SALT in SALT WATER. Pathetic.

The rich are thrilled about the snow because they can now ski, and they have the kind of cars to get them up there. The working class are not, because they have no power and getting to work is now three times harder. And the poor? As usual in Seattle, they will just die.

If I could afford to, not only would I leave here tonight, I would have done it within my first year here. Seattle is a terrible excuse for a city. They can stay as quaint as they like. I just want out.
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Something the Big Corporations Have Not Considered About SOPA

2012-01-19T02:31:00.000-08:00

I have been studying copyright law on my own since I was in HS. And it just hit me: Under post-1978 copyright law, anything you create is copyrighted by law whether you register it or not as soon as it is in final "fixed form." So if someone uploaded something to Youtube they shot themselves, that's theirs, registration or no.

Yet networks take people's footage from the web all the time. Mostly without permission.

So that means that any of THOSE people could take NBC, FOX, CBS, CNN, ABC, all of them, right offline under SOPA as well. No court fight, no nothing. Poof, just like that.

Corporations may believe that only they have copyrights.

Not so. Media giants: the same gun is to your head.

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While You Weren't Looking: SCOTUS says Public Domain Works Can Be Re-Copyrighted

2012-01-18T23:58:00.000-08:00

...which personally affects me as you can see just above, as I'm adapting Frank Wedekind's LULU, which is over 100 years old and in public domain.(not my version, but the two original plays)

Read more here and wonder: what the living fuck. Obviously this is only of benefit to corporations. And I have to wonder--if the authors are dead and the estates are defunct, WHO GETS THE RIGHTS?

(Hat tip: Chris P. Reilly)

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Protesting SOPA is All Well And Good, BUT...

2012-01-18T00:15:00.000-08:00

...you gotta write your members of Congress too and let them know--politely--that there will be consequences if they let this heinous bill pass.

If you somehow don't know what SOPA is, click here.

As a quick intro, what the Daily Oatmeal has to say on it:

And here is what it could do to comics.

Also, little indie cartoonist guys like me would never have had their work seen if not for the free and open internet. I make my own content, but I would be crippled if SOPA passes because much of the infrastructure I depend on would be gone, and the corporate guys would own the playing field.

And the web would end up something you have to pay for, every time you use it, on your phone. At best. DC and Marvel support this bill precisely for this reason.

And given the shit Hollywood already tries to cram in your every orifice, just imagine what would happen if they controlled the internet and had say on what is and is not there.

Lots are protesting or blacking out their sites. That's great. But you also need to write your senators and representatives. And do so in a firm, but CIVIL way. You're looking to persuade, not give yourself catharsis.

So click here to be guided to where you can find and contact said members of congress. You can't go on Wikipedia today, so you've got the time.

CENSORTIVITY, 1988, Steve Bissette, from TABOO.(c)1988 Steve Bissette .
All rights reserved.

UPDATE: There was a massive response and many, many members of Congress withdrew their support; the Senate version is basically crippled now. But that doesn't mean you should stop the pressure, not until SOPA and PIPA are stone cold dead. Here's Rachel Maddow finally reporting on it(I honestly can't recall her bringing it up till now, which to her credit she mentions):

I must admit though her rah-rah-power-to-the-people schtick gets old fast. I like her, but Maddow has a habit of falling too easily into cheerleader mode.

HOWEVER. It should also be pointed out that mostly the Congressional scum sponsoring & backing the bill she mentions by name are Republicans.

Now, you know I am no friend to the GOP, whatever my criticisms of the Democratic Party and Obama may be. But she gives the impression this is a Red-Blue issue. It is not. It is a Corporations vs. The Rest of Us issue. Lots of right-wingers are against this bill just as much as left. We all have much to lose if it passes.

And plenty of Democrats support this bill too, despite Obama's claim he would veto it, which means little if they can overturn the veto. Another reason to keep up the pressure.

And I have to wonder: she frequently has Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) on the show. She is a prime co-sponsor of the bill. Also head of the DNC. Now, why doesn't Maddow ever ask her about this bill?

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"Pandora's Box" (Adam Curtis, 1992)

2012-01-17T00:17:00.000-08:00

An Adam Curtis documentary on the pitfalls of trusting society to technocratic planners.

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Vladrushka: "Forward! FORWARD!" (1981 film poster, sketch)

2012-01-15T18:27:00.000-08:00

A sketch for a film poster I'll complete later for Vladrushka's 1981 follow-up to Comfort Girl NKVD.
(Click to enlarge)

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The Nude Paintings of Lev Tchistovsky | 1902-1969

2012-01-15T18:22:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Maria Laterza at Tutt'Arte. Here are a few examples; go here for much more.

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LULU Chapter 3, p. 48

2012-01-14T19:46:00.000-08:00

Yes, back on schedule...

Chapter 3, p. 48. Click and read! Also: original art for chapters 1 & 2 now for sale at Sketchmaven!

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CHAPTERS 1 & 2 in THIS SICKNESS 6-7!

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Guido Crepax: "Historie D'O" Excerpt (1973)

2012-01-14T18:00:00.000-08:00

As an addendum to the 2008 parody of Dominique Aury's(aka Pauline Reage) classic STORY OF O that I did with Charles Alverson, and because you don't read enough Eurocomics, here is an excerpt from the opening scene of the late, great Guido Crepax's famous adaptation of the book that I was paying homage to. Whatever your feelings about the novel, his adaptation is exquisitely drawn and had a major impact on my own work when I discovered it. Basically, it hadn't occurred to me to make these kinds of comics till I looked at how beautifully he did it. My parody is very much a tribute to him, if a poor one.

Unfortunately, I do not have scans of the English version, and don't want to scan my own copy for fear of the binding, so hope some of you know French. (I don't)

Utterly filthy but beautifully so. Crepax also did adaptations of JUSTINE, VENUS IN FURS, EMMANUELLE, and DR. JEKYLL, but this is the best one. In fact, he did a sequel to this--where O has come to be in charge of Roissy--and later a film came out based directly upon it, meaning Crepax was (along with the Valentina film BABA YAGA, which you can get at Neflix and which he's in), along with Robert Crumb, one of the first major comics artists to get his work made into films in the Bronze Age.

This is a pretty exact visual equivalent of the novel and its tone, which was--at least the first half--written by Aury as a love letter initially to her married lover, the editor Jean Paulhan. Essentially, it's an extreme type of romance novel, despite appearances.

This is 17 out of 116 pages. To read the whole thing you can buy it here. Click any image to see Crepax's art in its full, creamy, inky and larger glory.

Brief setup: O here(the one based on Louise Brooks, who Crepax also based his character Valentina on--surprising he never did a version of LULU) is taken by her lover Rene(the guy in the car) to a place out in the country called Roissy. To prove her love for him(in...some odd mid-20th century way), she has freely given her consent to everything you see below.

(c)1973 Estate of Guido Crepax.
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"The Old Maid of Smallville"

2012-01-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

From SUPERBOY #83. God help you in the 50s and 60s if you didn't look like Marilyn Monroe, according to DC.

For its weirdness and pure cruel sexist evil--which, by the way, even Lana gets in on--few DC stories top this one.

Why exactly did DC push marriage so much back in the 50s? You don't see it nearly as much in other companies' comics of the time, to my knowledge. But DC couldn't shut up about it throughout the 50s and 60s.

Personally, I always thought Miss Finch was kinda hot. What's interesting here is that Superboy doesn't attack the kids for their stupidity(and what does it matter what her STUDENTS think of her hotness? That's...a little suspect), but assumes that Miss Finch isn't happy how she is and forces a makeover on her. Which results, by the way, in her getting married and giving up her career. As DC believed one should. Great message for the kids there, Weisinger.

And I love how Superboy takes moon rock, turns it into contact lenses, and places the no doubt dusty and certainly dry things in her eyes without even knowing her prescription. Even when I was 6 and first read this(as a reprint), I knew there had to be something iffy about that. Not to mention that his shattering her glasses could have blinded her with the fragments. Superboy is a dick.

And you just know that they didn't give that a second thought and probably wrote it after a drunken spat with a girlfriend or wife. Sigh. Gotta love that Silver Age.

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One of the first graphic novels: Max Ernst's "Une Semaine De Bonte" (1934)

2012-01-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

From the greatest of all the surrealists, the disturbing collage novel(the title translates as "A Week of Kindness") which is also one of the first graphic novels. They are pictures in sequence telling a story, however opaque and irrational that narrative may be. One of my favorites.

This was also Ernst's act of revenge upon the Edwardian world in which he grew up, an act of violence against the dreamlife of the pre-World War 1 culture. All pages are collages of several illustrations cut out of novels of that period, almost perfectly composed. It's not as easy to see that it's collage printed, but I've seen a few in the Art Institute of Chicago; one can see there in the way the different components are browning with age at different rates. Anyway, here it is, enjoy.

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"Cartoons of Our War With Spain" by Charles Nelan

2012-01-12T05:20:00.000-08:00

In its entirety at Google Books.

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Deconstructing Comics on Fear Itself & Other Events: Tim Young & Me Discuss.

2012-01-09T12:35:00.001-08:00

I spoke to Tim Young at the Deconstructing Comics podcast again. Last time was about Theatre and Comics. This time, somewhat more mainstream talk--We discuss comics "Events," what's annoying about them, when they have a justification(and not) and mainly talk about FEAR ITSELF and FLASHPOINT. I say very critical things of Matt Fraction, who I emphasize I normally like(partly because he lives in this city I think, and may send drones after me), but also say very complimentary things about JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY by Kieron Gillen, which I believe is pretty much the best series Marvel has at this time. FEAR ITSELF is justified if only because it created an excuse for that book to exist.

Anyway, have a listen. Here's the talk. Feel free in the comments(which are moderated, so if yours doesn't go in immediately don't fret) to tell me whatcha think. Also: my voice is rather muffled, so be prepared.

Art by Doug Braithwaite from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #626

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Harmonia- "Watussi"

2012-01-08T21:13:00.000-08:00

For Sunday night, a nice spacey track from the Krautrock supergroup with a pretty cool video made up of Space Age public domain footage. (yes, that's right, I refer to "space age" in the past tense)

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New Vladrushka Pinup: Invest In Russia 1996 (Color Version)

2012-01-08T07:21:00.000-08:00

Finally got around to finishing it.

So here is the full-color version of Yuri Myshkin's poster for his proposal in 1996 for an investment campaign aimed at US and British corporations.
(Click to enlarge)

It wasn't quite what the Russian Federation had in mind, and a drunk and displeased Yeltsin told them so with tanks. They barely escaped to America with their lives.

Other scandalous pinups with the very famous Siberian porn empress can be found here.
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LULU Chapter 3, p. 47

2012-01-06T14:42:00.000-08:00

A little late thanks to New Year's. I do apologize. But anyway...

Chapter 3, p. 47. Click and read! Also: original art for chapters 1 & 2 now for sale at Sketchmaven!

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CHAPTERS 1 & 2 in THIS SICKNESS 6-7, NOW ALSO FOR KINDLE!

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The Republican Carcasses - IOWA: LIVE BLOG (Updated)

2012-01-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

8:30 am It turns out you can't get water from a caucus. Now I just feel silly. Professional, I press on.

8:58 am Romney tells little boy there's no Santa Claus, chuckles.

9:15 am Rick Santorum personally impregnates woman, chains to his wrist with a nine-month time lock so he can make sure.

9:20 am Annoyed at another question on his white supremacist past, Ron Paul personally shoots elderly questioner in the face, screaming, "I AM NOT THIN-SKINNED! FUCKERS! FUCKERS!" Rumors he keeps teeth as trophies still nag at the campaign.

9:45 am Somewhere in Idaho, Buddy Roemer now walks into empty room, ready for a fight. His fist shakes.

10:30 am John Huntsman said something, I'm sure of it.

1:20 pm Rick Perry sees man with beard in audience, can't stop giggling and waving.

2:30 pm To think Michele Bachmann promised she'd kiss Sarah Palin right on the lips if she lost. She was never a good bettor because God likes her to lose, much like Pat Robertson.

4:30 pm Some electrical troubles. An aide warns Ron Paul there might be a blackout. He gets his gun out till they explain.

4:41 pm Oh no, Rick Perry finally found an axe.Don't like the look he's giving Huntsman, who's still trying to remain on message as Perry circles.

5:07 pm Ron Paul has started shouting at the crowd. Well, he says there's a crowd. His aides point out it's just the bathroom. "GUMMINT!" he yells.

5:31 pm The MSNBC reporters on site are actually masturbating right there on camera as Republicans just cry.

5:45 pm Mitt Romney's just sitting there, having a sandwich and reading Vogue.

5:51 pm Rick Santorum is now desperately offering free blow jobs for votes, which I think is just trying too hard. Not to be outdone, Marcus has Michele offering "rim jobs," which he told her were janitorial positions. She offers one to every man in the room.

6:15 pm Everyone from Fox is drunk tonight as they try to get through it. MEAN drunk. Sean Hannity forgets himself, does two lines right there on camera.

6:20 pm Now Marcus Bachmann is offering free blow jobs for votes. Michele Bachmann is asking him to quiet down. "They don't know you like I do," she reminds him, but the poppers have him giddy.

6:21 pm John Huntsman remains true to his principles and offers nothing for votes.

6:45 pm Newt Gingrich now realizes crying was unwise show of weakness, is biting off head of a kitten on-camera, not missing a word of his speech. All leading up to Gingrich proving he's hip by bringing a confused, lost Ozzy to the podium as his VP candidate. He heard kids these days like him, on that Music Television channel.

7:01 pm Wow, Mitt Romney sure likes sandwiches.

7:42 pm Say, now something strange is--DID RICK PERRY's EYES JUST POP OUT? OH NO! THE HAIR! IT'S BURSTING FROM INSIDE! IT ATE HIS BRAIN! Yet he's STILL TALKING. "BROTHER," he says in a newly silky voice to a man's beard. "My eyes are up here," the nervous man says.

7:48 pm The horrible yet thick and lustrous tentacles of hair have now locked in a kind of crown around what once was Rick Perry's face.Now IS the hair. Molly Ivins should be alive to see this vindication. "I WILL ABORT BABIES WHO ARE BALD" says the Rick Perry Hair Zombie Abomination thing. Ow. That'll cost him.

8:24 pm Throughout the whole thing, Rush Limbaugh sits eating deepfried Cheetos dipped in 7-up at home, while making love to a ferret. While Rush is married, her throwing up every time was putting him off. But Arnie was there waiting as always. Rush watching LOST DVDs.

9:15 pm Holy shit, did Newt Gingrich just bite off Romney's nose? Now he's swallowing it. But why?

9:16 pm Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann finally make out. So do Rick Perry & Rick Santorum, despite his mouth being full of froth. People express little surprise.

9:18 pm Now: nothing but blood and baby arms.

9:32 pm Mostly still dismemberment. They're all taking turns with Ron Paul 's intestines. While he still lives.

9:47 pm Wow, Rick Perry just tore down Rick Santorum 's pants and mounted him. Perry is laughing, sure, but is Santorum...smiling?

9:58 pm Through all this, I don't know how Jon Huntsman can keep making Kurt Cobain allusions. But they don't seem to notice him.

10:00 pm Violent as it's all been, I just don't understand how anyone can do that to children. Yet Michele just licks the tears off her lips and keeps going.

10:30 pm Romney 26%, unsurprising. Santorum 24% is "what is wrong with people." At least another year before Rick Santorum can finally let the world know of his and Spot's love. The love that dare not lick his face. Michele Bachmann now a greasy spot, though. Looks like she's kissin' Palin. that really was an unwise bet. I would wonder if tongue would be involved, but maybe Michele Bachmann doesn't know it ever is.

10:35 pm Now SANTORUM is mounting PERRY. Except he doesn't know the hair has taken over. He looks so happy, but with his eyes closed doesn't see the tendrils.
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Flushing 2011: Some Bests, Worsts, and Predictions Sure to Fail

2012-01-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

Baby New Year has killed that crazy old man with his own scythe. He crushed his head with an enormous ball in Times Square, then cut out his liver and ate it raw for the old man's power. Making him the only child who will voluntarily eat liver. But it's laced with a 365-day time release poison.

In the meantime, let's sweep the last of that hideous year away before we all agree it never happened. We were asleep or drunk or something will be the cover story.

Some best ofs, worst ofs, and predictions, in comics, politics, and others. I am not bothering with links because I don't feel like it right now, so there. No particular order.

Predicted DC Event 2012 Once People Start Liking What They're Doing Now Long Enough: WE WERE KIDDING, where everything goes back.

Geoff Johns Prestige Project 2012: His dream project, planned for years, in which every single character in the DC universe has their arm cut off on the high seas. To be titled ALL HANDS ON DECK, it will of course star Aquaman. "Oh no, not again," he'll mutter on the promo poster, the caption reading: "But this time...he's not alone." Should be a hit among amputee fetishists.

Predicted Marvel Event 2012: LUST ITSELF. Just one, long, massive linewide orgy, something like HEROGASM but...no, that's all. Just that.

Adult Product Apple Will Introduce Now That Steve Jobs is Dead 2012: iSuck. At last the secret wish of every iPhone owner will happen.

My Prediction for Invention of 2012: Robot murder pigs. This time, you will be the bacon.

Best Comedic Video Thing: "I Threw It On the Ground", by Andy Samberg/Lonely Planet

What Is Wrong With People 2011: Charlie Sheen, and all that entails.

Best Film of 2011: Lars von Trier's MELANCHOLIA. In a happier year it might not have been my pick for Best, but MELANCHOLIA expresses perfectly the flavor of this year.

Most Flawed Yet Passionate Film of 2011: RED STATE, though I'm no Smith fan; the second half feels like another movie rudely walked in, but the first 45 minutes are horror gold.

It Didn't Happen 2011: Harold Camping's Rapture. Well, for him in a way, he had a stroke soon after the date didn't come.

Best Tweet from a Comics Pro: Matt Fraction, who later removed it but unfortunately for him, I saved it because it kept making me giggle:

"HOLY SHIT! ACE is the place with the helpful hardware man and OFF THE CHAIN NYE ORGIES! I just nutted on this wrench! #sponsoredtweet"

I believe he was angling for a free hammer. Fraction, as we know, has a thing for hammers. Oh, and CASANOVA resumed this year, so buy it because it's really fucking good.

Oh God What Is That KILL IT Mainstream Comic 2011: Almost all of FLASHPOINT, hands down. Burn it from those parts of your brain. And...

Worst comic from FLASHPOINT-LEGION OF DOOM. Besides that I just happen to love Jack Cole's, and Martin Pasko & Joe Staton's, PLASTIC MAN, FLASHPOINT: LEGION OF DOOM was an obscenity. A violent, badly drawn, badly written prison snuff comic. Yes, DC, I was really waiting to see the Atom's head squished & Plas to erupt in a bloody mess from a human body like the Alien. Even if an alternate universe(whose whole purpose was both to keep the New 52 on schedule for September--most of the artists were actually from the DCU Online, i.e. games, division--and to apparently make you really beg for the relaunch), what the living fuck.

Why Did You Do That Comic Gail(You're Better Than That) 2011: FIRESTORM THE NUCLEAR MEN (52 reboot) written somehow with Ethan Van Sciver. It's kind of like a premature baby whose mom was bathing in plutonium. Thankfully Simone's BATGIRL is far better.

Most Obvious Fascist Thuggery 2011: the fine work of Pepper Spray Cop.

Asshole of the Year 2011: Donald Trump, but that's like nominating Meryl Streep for an Oscar.

Favorite Underground Comic 2011: LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: CENTURY 1969. Dig it.

Favorite Indie Comics Company 2012: Fantagraphics, because they're the only company(apart from possibly Top Shelf) with the guts to publish Dave McKean's erotic graphic poem CELLULOID. Which also my pick of best "art" comic of 2011.

Favorite Excuse 2011: But I was earlier than you thought I'd be.

Worst Political Figure 2011, Elected Division: Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois, the noted deadbeat dad and rage addict, who knows nothing & yells.

Worst Political Figure, Candidate Division 2011: Herman Cain, who else? The perfect storm of sleazy, incompetent, hubristic, embarrassing and stupid.

Best Humor Comic 2011: Still Kate Beaton's HARK, A VAGRANT. "Clara. I don't do that thing anymore. With the nuts." SPECIAL MENTION: Her strips based on Nancy Drew covers. Nancy, as it turns out, is fucking insane.

Favorite Awful Thing To Haunt Your Dreams: Popsicle Pete by Seanbaby. Or is it the other way around? "None of you are safe."

Best Reboot (Superhero) 2011: Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang's WONDER WOMAN. Second place, but only because unlike Wonder Woman, I liked the character BEFORE the reboot(which is so soft I do not even think it is really one) to Scott Snyder & Greg Capullo's BATMAN, which is developing nicely.

Best Horror Comic: HELLBLAZER, Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli & Simon Bisley occasionally. A perennial favorite, both Milligan and Hellblazer, for me, but I had actually not read the series from the Ellis run till his.
Honorable mention: Scott Snyder/Yanic Paquette's SWAMP THING & Jeff Lemire/Travel Portman's ANIMAL MAN. Both are pretty soft reboots as well--ST seems to be perfectly following in a line from its predecessors, but most especially Moore and Millar, and William Arcane is my nominee for creepiest kid character presently in comics. AM seems to mostly follow in the same ballpark as Jamie Delano & Steve Pugh's excellent run on the series in the mid-90s, which DC really should reprint. But both are only to their 4th issues at this writing and are still setting up their stories so I can't fully judge except that I like what I see so far, a lot.

Stupidest Prediction I Made 2011: Cranial tattoos did not in fact become widespread fashion, except I think in Nebraska.

It's Bad But I Forgot Because It's Barely a Comic Anyway 2011: HAWK & DOVE, with Rob Liefeld. Next, he writes it too. I see.

Favorite Comics-Oriented Site (News): I guess it's Comic Booked.

Ugliest New 52 Reboot 2011: JUSTICE LEAGUE, New 52 version. You see, they all really ARE on steroids now and have a lot of rage. Except Barry, who's boring. Highlights: Superman is not just a dick, he's a thug who kills without a second thought. And watch a dainty little supermodel Wonder Woman completely contradict everything they've built her into over in her own comic, walking around in city streets waving her sword about like someone who doesn't know how to hold one, and being amazed by ice cream. Geoff Johns writes her like he just saw SPLASH. There is a good Geoff Johns who right now has also turned AQUAMAN into a joy to read, perfect entertainment which is warm, sometimes funny, action-packed, intelligent and beautifully drawn by Ivan Reis(and whose Aquaman is nothing like the one in JL). Then there is the bad Johns who reduces every character into a pitch repeated like a nervous tic and here in Justice League, seems to think there's some untapped jock audience out there. I wish the good one would kill the bad one. Geoff Johns is frustrating when he writes badly (See also: FLASHPOINT) because you know he knows better.

Announcement That Makes Me Want to Send Some Guys But I'm Not in Chicago Anymore 2012: Tie: PEANUTS (Kaboom!)/ WATCHMEN 2 (DC) Jesus wept.

Saddest Downfall of a Major Talent, 2012: Frank Miller's HOLY TERROR and that strange publicity campaign for it he did drunk one night.

Predicted Comics Controversy 2012: Emboldened by success in denying Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette and the rest of the 1963 team the right to reprint the work, Alan Moore denies publication rights to self. "That bastard's been making bad business decisions and ripping me off for years," Alan Moore will say of self.

Most Batshit Insane Comic of 2011: Still Neal Adams' BATMAN: ODYSSEY. I don't even know what this is.

Favorite Comics-Oriented Site 2012(non-news): the Scans Daily Collective. If you want to gauge the true voice of fans, that's it. No trolls.

Least Crappy Mainstream Company 2011: On balance I'm forced to say Marvel. Overall their line is more fun and that's all the mainstream's for.

Favorite Mainstream Series-Marvel 2011: Kieron Gillen's JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY. There appears to have been no other constructive purpose in FEAR ITSELF than to bring this consistently excellent comic into the world.

Worst Movie of 2011: ATLAS SHRUGGED, part 1 they threaten. Uncompromisingly awful. Yes, I did track it down and watch it, via altruistic means. I want more of my life back than that took. They should understand that. They're into profit.

Favorite Comics/Book That Didn't Come Out This Year But That I Finally Got One of: art spiegelman's BREAKDOWNS, which I can't stop reading.

Best Groundlevel Indie Comic of 2012: THE LAST BATTLE by Tito Faraci & Dan Brereton, who writes in the sketchbook section at the end he hadn't thought himself up to it, but boy was he. I recommend this especially to fans of ROME.

Favorite movie I rediscovered this year: Nicholas Roeg/Donald Cammell's "Performance"(1970) "Putting the frighteners on flash little twerps" is now my goal this year.

Best Eye Candy Site For Adults: The Things That Excite Me.

Worst TV Show of 2011: I don't know, I didn't see it.

Worst TV Moment of 2011: Deb falls in love with her brother Dexter.

Favorite album of 2011: David Lynch 's "CRAZY CLOWN TIME."

Worst Version of Frank Wedekind's LULU: Lou Reed & Metallica's. Oh, Lou.

Best Comedic Troupe 2011: The GOP Primary Candidates.

Most Poorly Thought-Out Political Strategy 2011: The GOP taking an intractable & adamantine stand against a tax cut.

Most Ideologically Calcified Commenters 2011: Huffington Post, either political side. It's like watching an endless programmed war between Ann Coulter & Bill Maher robots.

Babe of 2011: Helen Mirren.

Oh No,I'd Hoped You Were dead 2011: Newt Gingrich. This is also a rash newts get. And every now and then, elephants.

Best Self-Inflicted Mortal Wound 2011: John Galliano

Predicted Comics Adaptation 2012: ED THE HAPPY CLOWN with Russell Crowe.

Bank Prediction for 2012: They will charge you for not having your account at their bank.

Best Work Going Into Public Domain As of 2012: James Joyce's ULYSSES. Eat it, Stephen Joyce. Eat it raw.

New Trend Prediction 2012: People will look at things sometimes.

You'll Never See It Coming Till It's Too Late 2012: That thing behind you.

Music Trend Prediction 2012: Silent music videos.

Movie Remake Prediction 2012: THREE STOOGES by Eli Roth.

The Kids Will Be Doing It Prediction 2012: Anal piercing. Oh yes, that does sound like it hurts.

Hottest Food Trend Prediction 2012: Free soup.

Hipster Trend Prediction for 2012: Ironically enjoying corporate training videos.

Wish for 2012: Less politics, more art.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! And remember, this year, don't get caught holding the sodding baby.

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The Army (poem/lyric, 1993)

2011-12-28T23:34:00.000-08:00

Before this 25th anniversary year of my father's suicide due to his Vietnam War PTSD (you'll read more about this in a lengthy piece I wrote for MartianLit that will go live in Feb. 2012) is out, I thought I should share this. It's actually a song I wrote in 1993 and has music, but I probably won't ever get around to recording it.

So here at least is the lyric. In absolute and unrelenting hatred of Nixon, Johnson, McNamara and Kissinger, and all the other best and brightest bastards who cost me my dad. And the ones from since that have cost so many theirs.

All of you war pigs: burn in hell forever. And all who still defend the politician scum who send our young people into the pit.

Now the piece.

THE ARMY

I want someplace that I can belong
I want discipline & purpose
I want my life to mean
Something before I die
I want to go to exotic lands
I want to meet the people there
And look them in the eyes
As I kill them, kill them all

CHORUS
Be all that you can be
And take away all they will ever be
Better than retail
Better than McDonald's
The Army's the place for me

Taking orders and marching songs
Now I feel like I belong
A gun in my hand feels better than sex
And it never, ever goes limp
This is the life for a man
It's just like a movie to me
And I won't feel guilty, I won't feel scared
Orders erase responsibility

This is so cool, yeah, this is so cool
I'm so glad I finished high school
I'm wearing ammo just like Rambo
I dreamed of this fucking day
And I'm alive, and they're just meat
Spoiling in the sun
Bang rat-a-tat
And die you loser
I'm number one, I'm number one

They scream as they die
In a language I don't know
Like I give a shit
Like I'd care if I did

Marching out with my buddies
We've done a good job for today
And we never sleep till no enemy's left
Except for peace
Except for death
I've never felt so fucking alive
This is, this is the ultimate high
Lock and load
Fire at will
I'm never going to die

(repeat chorus)

Written 5-9-1993
(c) 1993 John Linton Roberson. All rights reserved.

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LULU Chapter 3, p. 46

2011-12-25T12:49:00.000-08:00

Oh, Dr. Goll, you really shouldn't let yourself get worked up like that...

Chapter 3, p. 46. Click and read! Also: original art for chapters 1 & 2 now for sale at Sketchmaven!

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CHAPTERS 1 & 2 in THIS SICKNESS 6-7, NOW ALSO FOR KINDLE!

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Happy Christmas Yer Ass! - The Pogues - "Fairytale of New York" (live, 1988)

2011-12-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

The greatest Christmas songs and stories are not the religious ones, nor about miracles, nor the ones talking about how warm and cozy the holiday is, nor about gifts. It's about the way the season brings out what you lack in sharp relief.

It's a little midlife crisis every December, where you cannot help but take stock of everything you lost or fucked up in the previous year, and think, Christmas should be better, but it's like this instead. But like Camus' Sisyphus, you realize the absurdity of it, say "fuck it" and go on with Christmas anyway. Because what else are you going to do? The one day a year you absolutely have permission to just say, "fuck it, life goes on." And that's what the best Christmas stories and songs are about.

Being Scots-Irish I'm biased, but I've always thought this one the best of those. So--The fucking Pogues, with the sadly late Kirsty McColl, "Fairytale of New York," here live in 1988.

I find this especially poignant looking at Shane McGowan, for this week a very skillful and generous dentist saved my teeth from a horrible fate.

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"The Year Without a Santa Claus" (1974)

2011-12-24T21:40:00.000-08:00

Also including "The Miser Brothers Christmas." MERRY CHRISTMAS, MY PRETTIES!

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George Bailey In Jail

2011-12-24T20:44:00.000-08:00

So, after the end of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, you know George would still go to jail, right? I mean, just because George got the same town he'd stolen the money from to give him more doesn't change federal bank regulations.

"Fucking Clarence," George muttered during the daily sodomy. "Fucking fucking angels." Then at night he would scream "YOU USED ME FOR YOUR GODDAMN WINGS!" till his cellmate beat him to sleep. They all thought he was insane. But he was fine to pass around for cigarettes. And his stutter only got worse and worse each day.

When no one was around, "There is no escape, George," a disembodied voice would giggle to George in his cell.

Mr. Potter was his only visitor. But he didn't speak; he would merely chuckle for 5 minutes, then left.

The following Christmas Bailey cursed life and all the pain it brought. But at least there was his memory of that wild night with Violet to comfort him. All those awful things she had to do for that wad of money.

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BONUS: The lost ending.

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Blackadder's Christmas Carol

2011-12-24T17:42:00.000-08:00

And now, the greatest Christmas TV special of all. Merry Christmas, everyone!

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Alan Partridge: "Knowing Me Knowing Yule"

2011-12-22T00:36:00.000-08:00

And now, a reprise from last year--the Alan Partridge Christmas Special(click here), with the Day Today veterans Steve Coogan, Rebecca Front, David Schneider and Patrick Marber(who, incidentally, is the man who wrote Closer).

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Sean T. Collins on Hitchens: "It was poison all along."

2011-12-20T16:22:00.001-08:00

An excellent piece on now-deceased slimebag Christopher Hitchens by Sean Collins that says what I thought of him(click the tag with Hitchens' name below and you'll see what I thought of this "public intellectual" who had his balls waxed--no, really--while Iraqi and Afghan children were slaughtered) better than I could, or care to. Money quote:

In the end, life isn’t a fucking Authority comic book. I can’t, as a person who found himself thrilling to the burning of the churches in Homage to Catalonia, say that Hitchens’ infamous delight in cluster bomb fragments that will tear right through a Koran on the way to some benighted al-Qaeda fuck’s heart is alien to me. But those bombs found a lot of other people as well. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them. And in dropping them we also unleashed an atavistic tide of brutality, torture, state surveillance and oppression, and endless global warfare waged by an unaccountable executive branch; those bullets tore through not just Korans, but nearly every document we enlightened Westerners hold dear back through the Magna Carta. I’m no longer capable of performing the elaborate mental arithmetic necessary to excuse all this, and to excuse the deceptive and criminal way it was ushered in, because other people are bad. This is bad! When you’re primarily animated by hatred, as Hitchens was — and even though he generally hated genuinely hateful things — making the bastards pay is paramount. But the bastardry gazes also.

So Hitchens went to his grave quite literally praising endless war — a morally shameful philosophy that if adhered to would basically ruin civilization. But you don’t need to take my word for it. You can take the word of Hitchens’ hero, George Orwell, who wrote a book you may have heard of in which perpetual war was the core evil. Or you can take the word of Hitchens himself. I remember vividly his definition of terrorism: Demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. How else to describe Hitchens’ call for a state of unceasing violence as some sort of curative for the other, wrong kind of violence?

I would only add that those who laud him now seem to mostly be those who got drunk with him, members of his own profession and class who have their own callowness in regard to Iraq & Afghanistan to justify and are doing so via him, as though Hitchens' own slime justifies their lack of journalistic integrity--indeed, embosses it in dignified stone. And anyone who calls him out as just what he was, a career character assassin who made money off of slaughter, gets attacked. A lot of the ones who object do so on the basis of Hitchens' atheism.

Which is what Hitchens wanted, I think: by flattering the egos of left-wing atheists he somehow made them forget how he betrayed them in every other respect. Between Clinton and Bush, and his frequent appearances on Fox, Hitchens, like, strangely, many former Trotskyists, found the right a more convenient home than the left, and did more to help them than anyone else. He was throwing the left a bone, while giving cover to right-wing neocons, who could say, "Here's this left-wing intellectual, and HE loves our war!" No more left than Dick Morris and exactly the same kind of Fox tool.

And on his atheism: so what? If you've read God Is Not Great, you realize: neither is this book. The entire thing, like Dawkins' God Delusion, is merely calling believers stupid and preaching to the choir in a way that only makes believers double down; it's a totally useless book except for atheists who want to feel smug. It changed no minds not already inclined to. And frankly, atheists who spend their lives obsessed with religion are no better than any religious fanatic. Same waste of time on a pointless idea but from a different angle, that is all. (I mean here just the subject of God's existence; religious institutions, which DO exist and many of whom DO harm, are totally legitimate targets for criticism) If you're done with God, be DONE with him. How sad he wasted so much of what remained of his life on this subject, along with trying to justify his support of the wars. But how appropriate he died the same day as his beloved Iraq War.

But more than that, Hitchens spent his whole career as a character assassin. And now people are supposed to canonize him? This is the man(and I agree with him here) who on the day Falwell died said that if he was given an enema you could bury him in a matchbox. True. And you could say the same of Hitchens. Cruelty begets cruelty.

Do not praise Hitchens. Just bury and forget him.

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Eating Your Hubris: Newt Gingrich's Polls Drop Like Hanged Men

2011-12-20T00:44:00.000-08:00

Specifically, from 27 to 14%. He is now behind Ron Paul by nine points, Romney by six.

He is still ahead among the Iowa Tea Party contingent, 31%. Wow. 31% of 30%. THAT'LL get you elected.

How does it feel to be Newt, who defines hubris by his very being(he IS Aesop's Frog), and be almost ten points and falling behind Ron Paul? And just think, so recently he was measuring drapes for the Oval Office. But as I've said many times, the GOP's fatal flaw is their tendency to celebrate victory before it's won.

And then they lose.

And Newt's entire career follows, in cycles, this arc. I was so happy the moment Gingrich started talking like he'd already won. Like Herman Cain, for instance.

And it looks like showing himself so willing to kiss the ass of Trump when every other candidate but the frothy Santorum(who's always happy just for someone to listen to him) had the sense to refuse this ridiculous debate (now cancelled) did him no favors. The debate was going to be a reality show straight up: the purpose of the debate was for Trump to decide who to endorse. I would have loved to see Gingrich up there with only Santorum. Then his true standing would have been revealed in all its tacky, low-rent glory.

But that's not the only way Newt got drunk on his brief and now vanished peak. his pathetic amateur fascist doesn't think people know that THE PRESIDENT CANNOT ABOLISH COURTS. Nor can he arrest people from other branches of government when they decide things he doesn't like. Both of which he promised to do when elected. (not "if" in Newt's ever-expanding head) Promising to scuttle democracy and seize absolute power: by him, this is "positive campaigning?"

But what he was actually doing, I think, was relying on the GOP base's misunderstanding of presidential power. The same misunderstanding that allows them to call Obama a "dictator." And that the GOP base hears about the fights on Fox but not the resolution, which is why they don't know the CA Pledge of Allegiance case(where they decided "God" in the Pledge was unconstitutional) was actually overturned. If they knew they actually won, how could they continue the resentful, paranoid, persecuted state of mind that is all that drives them?

But the truth is simple. The GOP base WANTS a dictator. It's the only model of executive power they comprehend.

It's just they want their dictator to be white. Well, and Republican.

But he won't be dictator, nor will he be president, and if the GOP are stupid enough to nominate this walking repository of attack ad material, they deserve to lose(though they probably will anyway). The GOP will, as I've said, have to eat their Romney. And Newt Gingrich will never be president.

We can all be thankful Newt cannot, ever, shut up.

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VLADRUSHKA "Gulag Gangbang" Artwork For Sale at Sketchmaven (NSFW)

2011-12-19T00:59:00.000-08:00

The best-known Vladrushka story "Gulag Gangbang" (published by Eros/Fantagraphics in 2006) was done a little differently than many other of my stories.

The cover art too.
It was composed of single tightly shaded full-pencil drawings done out of order(like footage in film), then edited together(and slightly modified, but not inked) into comics pages in Photoshop. So for 24 pages there were 49 drawings.

Drawing 18

I explain this so the order you'll see the original art for the story for sale here at Sketchmaven will make sense, because the drawn order differs drastically from the printed. What this also amounts to is that, rather than looking like comics pages, this is straight-ahead erotic art, suitable for framing if you're so inclined.

Drawing 7

Anyway, all 49 pieces of it are up and for sale right now! None of the disappointment or uncertainty of an auction, just straight-up purchase.

Drawing 3

And as mentioned, all the art for STORY OF OH, MARTHA, and LULU that Ebay won't let me sell is there as well, for purchase with credit card or Paypal. Click here to browse & buy now!

Drawing 49

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My Original Art at Sketchmaven and Ebay!

2011-12-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

I already mentioned the Vladrushka & Lulu pieces ending soon for bidding(and Buying, which gets you free shipping within the US) at Ebay.

More art for sale, though. I have just uploaded to the original art site I just discovered, Sketchmaven, one hundred pieces of original art from MARTHA, STORY OF OH!, and LULU (with more to come), many of them pieces with explicit content that I am not allowed to put up on Ebay.

UPDATE: And now I've uploaded Vladrushka art as well.

None of these are auctions; you can simply buy them outright, and Sketchmaven takes Paypal and credit cards.

Have a look and buy! And also: I am happy to consolidate shipping.

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LULU Chapter Three Begins

2011-12-13T08:09:00.000-08:00

Chapter Three of my adaptation of Frank Wedekind's sex tragedy starts.

And now we return to the catastrophe in progress. When last we left our Schwarz & Lulu, our young artist had at last succumbed to the torturous flirtation of this married woman much too young for her geriatric husband. Who was only going to be away for a few minutes. And returned. As you can see, not at a good moment. Read more here...

Chapter 2 is now offline, but now in print in This Sickness no. 7, also featuring Sam Henderson & Ashley Holt.

It's the holidays, so--This episode is premiered early & will run through this Saturday into next; subsequent will be weekly.
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AVAILABLE AT AMAZON & CREATSPACE

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HEY LOOK-Vladrushka & Lulu Art for Sale!

2011-12-12T01:14:00.000-08:00

Original art up this week:

All 20 pages of LULU Chapter One, and p. 21-32 of Chapter Two, plus art for the cover of THIS SICKNESS #7
"Encourage Literacy" and "Orgasm" with Vladrushka, now re-categorized per Ebay's prudish wishes.(you'll have to go through a content warning page or two, that's all)

Bid or buy now and own some excellent art! Which makes a truly unique present, by the way. Also a number of comics & NATIONAL LAMPOONS for sale. Help a struggling cartoonist defray some of his medical costs.

In case you're not familiar with these two very popular pieces(probably the most viewed images I've ever done), view them here as well:

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News From the Future: The Death of President Gingrich

2011-12-09T04:09:00.000-08:00

And now, an installment in my new series, News from the Future.
Our motto: you can't sue me for predictions.

Feb.14, 2013-Pres. Newt Gingrich was found dead today of a massive coronary due to an overdose of Viagra after locking himself in the Oval Office with 20 hookers.

"I can do whatever I want now! I'm the president!" he had been heard to say before he shut the doors. Aides reported that Pres. Gingrich had last been seen only wearing a pink thong with a Valentine heart covering his crotch.

Vice President Trump is scheduled to be sworn in at noon, promising to make America a super-classy nation.

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Do I Need To Justify Helen Mirren in a Tub? (NSFW)

2011-12-08T17:07:00.001-08:00

No, no, I do not think I do.

From around 1974 or 1975. I'm not certain what this is from--please let me know in the comments, if you know. (click to enlarge)

Also, Dame Mirren is to play Mrs. Hitchcock. Read more here.

Yes, that was a very long bath, and she's very bored with you staring now.

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"Lulu Dramaturgy" Mention

2011-12-05T23:54:00.000-08:00

Kendra Lee, the dramaturg for Carnegie Mellon University's production this year of LULU, back in March gave my own version of LULU a mention. Have a look. Hadn't noticed till now. I wish I had discovered this blog before, because there are some useful things I hadn't considered in Ms. Lee's examinations of the play. Including this one on Schwarz (the painter) whom she describes as the "creepiest fucker in the show." I'd actually been thinking of him more as a nebbish, but I might explore that angle when I get to Book Two. (by the way: I am one penciled page away from finishing the current book. ONE.)

And if Ms. Lee reads this: thanks for the kind mention, Kendra. Hope you like Book One when I collect it into one volume next year.
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LULU in Progress-Pencil p.55-59

2011-12-04T22:54:00.000-08:00

Some new pages(pencil) of LULU in progress. Very close to the end now of book 1, I think. I don't usually thumbnail more than a page or two in advance, so, hard to say...However, it won't be long now before I take down chapter 2 and start serializing the final fully inked/greyed version of chapter 3 online, so go read it while you can! (and buy chapters 1-2 in print here)

Click images to expand

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New Vladrushka Sketch: Kneeling, Water

2011-12-02T02:00:00.001-08:00

Just a little thing I might later build into something more solid.
Click to enlarge.

By the way, did you know you can stalk Vladrushka on Facebook? She encourages it. Tell her you like her by pushing her buttons.
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Andrew Graham-Dixon: "Art of Russia" (BBC)

2011-11-25T14:03:00.001-08:00

A documentary on something that my own education(having studied Soviet art & film, along with history and theatre) and work (Vladrushka) have familiarized me with, but perhaps you don't know much about, because it's not much talked about. Well, here's a really good introduction to the fascinating history of Russian art by Andrew Graham-Dixon(who also did the excellent Art of Germany). Enjoy.

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Patti Smith "You Light Up My Life" on "Kids Are People Too"(1979) --No, Seriously

2011-11-24T15:54:00.000-08:00

Found utterly randomly, and that's why Youtube is one of the greatest things ever. Happy Thanksgiving!

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Erich Von Stroheim's "Greed" (1924)

2011-11-20T21:32:00.000-08:00

The silent and studio-eviscerated classic by Erich Von Stroheim, in the four-hour "restored" version, though there never will be a truly restored version, as the deleted footage was all destroyed.

Bonus: the film's source, Frank Norris' McTeague, complete.

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Detour (1945, Edgar Ulmer)

2011-11-20T21:21:00.001-08:00

Watch and compare to much of David Lynch's work, especially Lost Highway.

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Liquid Sky (1982, Slava Tsukerman/Anne Carlisle/Nina Kerova)

2011-11-19T19:54:00.000-08:00

Complete, the nearly unavailable science fiction cult film of heroin-saturated New Wave New York, written by and starring the remarkable Anne Carlisle, who appears in both female and male leads. Whatever happened to her anyway?

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Oscar Wilde - "Salome"

2011-11-19T16:46:00.000-08:00

A relatively recent production of the Oscar Wilde classic.

Text here.

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Arthur Miller/Henrik Ibsen-"An Enemy of the People" (1966)

2011-11-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

A 1966 TV production of Arthur Miller's adaptation of the Ibsen tragedy of the eternal fate of whistleblowers.

And here's the original Ibsen script.

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Monsters

2011-11-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

Is there a single person anywhere near the Sandusky scandal at Penn State who could ever be clean again?

Yesterday, cowardly assistant coach Mike McQueary, the fellow who walked in on Sandusky raping a child in the showers and later testified to that effect(how willingly is in doubt), claimed he "made sure it stopped, not physically." We can presume, since he says nothing in his sworn grand jury testimony about Sandusky and his 10-year-old victim leaving--but that McQueary did--that he means the fact he was seen by them seeing them was enough to presume it ended.

So McQueary does not at least get the child out of there, even if he does not beat Sandusky to death? No, he left him there with him. Left a helpless child with someone he was being raped by. As he goes to tell who knows who. Sandusky had every reason to think McQueary was going to security or the cops, because that's what any even marginally responsible adult would do. Because when caught, no criminal kills and hides their victim to cover it up, ever, when given the opportunity. Like here. That could easily have happened. Terrified guilty people can do crazy things.

If McQueary in fact did go to the cops, as he now claims--though not under oath-- why not take the kid along, coward? There is no way to squirm out of this.

But he did not.

Investigators later made McQueary come forward. But McQueary at the time only ran to his dad, and once his dad said it was okay, he went to Paterno, who covered it all up. That's what his sworn testimony says, no matter what this disgusting coward says now. I say "disgusting coward" because I do not care how many excuses I see people making about this. He saw a man raping a child. McQueary's a big strong football guy. Sandusky was a 58-year-old man. There was no reason at all for him to not stop Sandusky physically. Shut up with all your rationalizations.

What I don't see McQueary's dad saying to him in the grand jury testimony-"Wait, you left the kid there with him?"

The interview he did with Costas has been much discussed. Like how any lawyer could be so fucking stupid as to let his client destroy himself right on TV--with his lawyer sitting right there, next to Bob Costas, as Costas practiced some pretty harsh and professional journalism.

But given that when 49, his lawyer got in trouble for impregnating a teenage client, I think he thinks the more we hear Sandusky, the more we will start to empathize with him. I think his lawyer, like Sandusky, thinks on some level there's nothing wrong with what he did. And if that's the case, the move makes sense. It's insane and will destroy Sandusky, but you can see the insane logic behind it.

The interview itself reminded me of Michael Jackson's defenses of his sleepovers with little boys. Truly scary is Sandusky's little story of the shower, which...you know, there's places even my mind won't go. (I'm not posting any links with this. Go look all this up yourself; I'm not helping put that picture in your minds) The manner, the tone, the phrasing in which he describes it...his tone is a wistful one. Not a guilty one. I mean that in his mind, not guilty. You can tell that he's barely hiding that this is a fond memory for him.

Jesus Christ. I think Sandusky thinks it's romantic.

In regard to this when I mentioned it on Twitter last night(out of which this piece was consolidated) Jeff Chon said, "That's why Humbert Humbert is the most compelling monster in literature." And that's correct. Nabokov, certainly, knows Humbert is a monster. But Humbert hasn't the slightest idea he destroyed lives, that he's killing a little girl's soul. He thinks he means only the best. And that's Sandusky here.

Possibly worse: There must have been a moment Paterno & Sandusky had a private talk, Sandusky right there possibly saying at least as bad as that interview, "explaining." And sounding all the guiltier for it.

This is your (depending what year you mean) present or former assistant coach. And a man you know also works with children.

Imagine yourself with that right in front of you, someone you know saying that kind of thing. Then imagine your decision is to ENABLE this.

What the hell kind of person is Paterno. Wonder about that.

I'm just glad Sandusky considers that sort of thing in the shower "horseplay." Prison will be easier for him. (And what the fuck IS "horseplay" anyway?)
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Robert Hughes: "American Visions"

2011-11-12T23:57:00.000-08:00

The great Robert Hughes series on the history of American art.

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Rage Addict/Deadbeat Dad Rep. Joe Walsh Decides Yelling At His Constituents Is Good Politics

2011-11-08T18:46:00.000-08:00

...and when you see this, it's not hard to understand what he must have sounded like as a husband and father. He yells impatiently at his own constituents within less that two minutes in this clip. Whenever I've seen him on any news but Fox, he always has that biting-my-lip-waiting-to-talk look like he could break out into a yelling fit at any time. That he cannot STAND to be disagreed with.

Well, all I can say is: his opposition now has their ad. He's scary and pathetic at the same time.

Walsh: these are not your children, whom you refuse to pay child support for. These people can, and now probably will, vote your ragey ass out of office.

I'm so glad the current crop of GOP that came in last year are mostly complete idiots. Walsh is simply the loudest one. And he's...not bright.
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Goldfrapp-"Koko" (live in Germany)

2011-11-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

A big huge magnificent song(with music that reminds me a bit of Suicide or Gary Numan) by Alison Goldfrapp, live in 2008, from her album Supernature.

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Slowdive-"Souvlaki Space Station"

2011-11-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

A beautifully spacy song I never seem to get tired of. From 1994's Souvlaki.

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Krautrock - The Rebirth of Germany (BBC Documentary)

2011-11-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

An excellent recent documentary on one of my favorite music genres--which isn't really a "genre" at all--Krautrock. If not familiar, this will give you a good basic training in the subject.

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"The Hills Have Eyes" (Wes Craven, 1977) -Hollywood Bitchslap Review, 2000

2011-11-02T01:12:00.001-07:00

(Not one of my better-written reviews, but eh.)

Wes Craven is maddening. I really cannot stand the SCREAM films--except the first. After that the postmodernism becomes an excuse for one more fucking slasher series but one that can sell itself to those too smart for such things. Along with Romero, Cronenberg, Carpenter and Hooper, Craven helped create the very rules of the modern horror film, and now he's killing it. This film was one of the most important horror flicks of the past 35 years, and stands quite in contrast to his current, smirking work, but is of a piece with it too.

The others of this sort would be best exemplified by Night of the Living Dead (1968), most of all, because it broke every conventional rule of horror till then, and since. Barbara goes inside the car, always the "safe place" in horror films till then. The attacker simply smashes the window with a brick. They hide someplace safe. But no place is safe. The threat has no cause, nor can it be reasoned with; it comes and comes and will not only kill you but(yuck!) eat you. Family ties mean nothing; a man's daughter dies and, re-animated, kills and eats him. Everyone you ever loved will now seek you out to kill you. And in the end everyone is dead but one, who is then killed by those who in another movie would've been the rescuers, and his body is tossed with all the other corpses on an anonymous bonfire.

Basically, kneecapping your psyche. This film ushered in the idea of horror as absolute, irrational, dionysiac chaos, unreasoning destruction that can only overwhelm in the end; the good guys do not win in these sorts of films, at least not while remaining good. One can see in these films the pain of the Vietnam era, the idea that one could be sent to die for nothing simply because some arbitrary authority said so; in a way "Night..." is a nightmare encapsulating the fear of that era, as Invasion of the Body Snatchers reflected its own--both versions did, really; I was shocked when I moved to the Bay Area how accurate its depiction of the Bay Area of California is. (Particularly toward the end.) The Bomb would be, in a way, another anxiety tapped here, indirectly--just the idea death can come for no reason, for reasons you cannot understand, that anything can happen, and you only have the illusion of control and safety. After Romero, after Hooper's weirdly restrained Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wes Craven upped the actual violence, savagery and gore, not to mention the sadism. He'd show you what Hooper was actually not showing--there's less actual blood in Texas than it feels, less than in Psycho, even. Craven instead gave you the film you'd heard the former was. But sometimes he made a good one.

I've never seen Last House on the Left, but I understand it's not worth the bother. (note: I have seen it since, and it's even worse than that--it is one of the worst films I've ever seen and worse, it's based on THE VIRGIN SPRING, which I love)

Eventually Craven's films became steadily more cartoonlike, more distanced and tongue-in-cheek, culminating in the near-theory that is the SCREAM films. Indeed, it was he who came up with most of the rules he's so fond of quoting, so he ought to know what he's talking about. But they don't scare. I miss horror films that do. Blair Witch Project scared the bejesus out of me, I'm not ashamed to admit, and fuck anyone who calls it overrated. It was frightening, and it's been a long time since a horror movie scared me; damn slasher films, and damn Wes Craven for making the whole genre look silly. But recently Steve Bissette of Swamp Thing fame (ironically, since Craven did the film adaptation of that work), a virtual expert on the genre who teaches a class in the subject and has written and drawn(and written and spoken)about it for almost 30 years, quite cannily recommended this film to me, and I have to say, it was gripping and I simply must tell you about it a bit, though how much I can say without ruining it, I'm not sure.

The fun in this film is the unexpected extremity of the activities(but nevertheless, the odd restraint of their depiction.) So since I want to write freely, SPOILERS A-COMIN'! It's very loosely based on a true historical story. In the medieval era, there was a family of cannibals, the Sawney Beane clan, living in a cave on the Scottish coast, who lived for decades in an incestuous, primitive state with masses of kids and grandkids, robbing, killing, and eating anyone who happened past--eventually all caught and brutally executed. By the time they were caught the clan exceeded 48.Transpose this to the southwest a-bomb-testin' part of the desert in the present day(well, early 70s), reduce the clan to about 10, and make it the story of one family's victimization, and that's this movie. Oh, and they have walkie-talkies.

Essentially, a family who has been given a silver mine as an anniversary gift is stranded out in the desert among just such a tribe of cannibals, who stay out of sight till dark, then move in and pick them off one by one, starting with the middle-aged, haughty father, who is exploded and cooked by an incendiary explosive stick inside him. One can almost hear, "That'll teach you to send me to Vietnam, you fucker!" in the sadism of this scene; Craven makes the father rather authoritarian and an unlikeable asshole from the start, so his death is made rather a joke, particularly in one relatively restrained, visually, but emotionally wrenching scene where the clan(most of which have the names of planets, or gods if you prefer) is munching down on his now-flayed, barbecued body. We see his boiled face, that's all, but it's enough. Like David Cronenberg says, some things cannot be suggested.

But more strikingly here, the "Sawney" figure, the father & leader of this bunch of cannibal desert rats, Jupiter, rants at the body of the father, making it quite clear he is eating him out of contempt for his defeat. "How dare you come out here and stick your life in my face!" he shouts defiantly at this dead man. Jupiter is a striking and well-acted, magnificently dreadful and somewhat cartoonish villain, with a bizarre but fascinating "x" scar across his face(his nose split in two halves), caused by his father hitting him in the face with a tire iron when young. It almost resembles, in its stylization, some ritual tribal scarification, and indeed there are some that resemble this. He wears bits of his enemies as trophies. He looks like a Neanderthal dressed in bits of modern clothes, and people.

But more, it's almost presented as a class thing--nice perfect middle-class little blond family destroyed by desert hillbilly cannibals. This fear of "primitives," whether hillbillies or hippies(in the case of, say, Helter Skelter ), was prevalent in that time (cf. Deliverance ), almost like controlled, white, Imperial America was scared shitless of losing control even for a second. These films exploited and mocked their paranoia that for all their assumed sophistication they were still just monkeys like us all. They showed the nightmare you get if you scratch the fears of that time, which I'm not sure anyone much younger than me(31, just old enough to recall at least the tail end of that era properly)It's also bizarrely professional for what appears to be a low-budget production all the same, and the acting (particularly Susan Lanier and Robert Houston, who are frighteningly plausible as brother & sister) is first-rate. I must go on about Houston's performance a bit more. It's rare sarcasm works when deliberately in a script, particularly a horror script.

Houston's sarcasm is not only still warm, and convincing anyway, but the range of terrors he goes through is nothing short of astonishing. At one point, when telling the others he found his beloved dog gutted(the mate of this, a German Shepherd, exacts the most brutal revenge in the end, BTW)--before anyone else has died--he cries so genuinely he loses control; a tiny bit of snot even flies out his nose--because that's what happens when you really, really cry, after all. Craven does encourage you to care about the characters--which makes the deaths of many of them all the scarier. In a way, Craven is far more the traditional horror filmmaker than the relatively punk attitude of a Romero.

There are brutal parts to this movie. A gutted, skinned dog is, as I said, found at some point(interestingly, the credits very specifically state "No animals were killed or treated inhumanely in the making of this film"--and considering the extensive use of the two dogs as actors, that's a relief--but interesting they thought to say this before they legally had to). The father is burned alive and quite clearly eaten. There is a particularly brutal(but not really graphic, nor presented as at all titillating) rape scene. The revenge is quite vicious, but considering what's gone on till then you certainly don't mind. And the ending is very abrupt.

All in all, a true classic of the genre. Have a look. But caution--not for the easily-made-paranoid. Bon appetit!

03/04/00

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Do Look Now-"Don't Look Now" (Nic Roeg, 1973)

2011-11-02T00:50:00.000-07:00

More Nic Roeg for you, the classic psychic-horror film starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. Besides just being eerie as hell, it also has one of the most explicit, and well-done, sex scenes ever, of a sort that seemed not to be possible outside 1969-1974. (And hot married sex at that.) It was rumored they were actually fucking, but in fact it was just incredibly good acting. Besides, Roeg almost alwats has a sex scene like this one.If you can get past Donald's mustache; it was the 70s.

I don't know who's posting these, but watch while you can. (See previous post with Roeg's Performance here)

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"The Hobbit" (Rankin-Bass, 1977)

2011-11-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

The animated TV version by Jules Bass, from 1977. I remember watching this when it aired. Didn't make me like Tolkien, but I liked the way this movie looked.

...Say, what exactly does a dragon need with treasure anyway?
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Horror From the Monster's Point of View

2011-10-31T23:45:00.000-07:00

As randomly sputtered on Twitter. I take no responsibility; see title of blog above.

DADDY DON'T dir. David Lynch, starring Jack Nance

I'LL TEACH YOU TO CRY: a guide to infant care - dir. Paul Morrissey

MY GODDAMN HUSBAND, starring Willem DaFoe and Charlotte Gainsboroug dir. Lars von Trier

INVASION OF THE HUMANS starring Charlton Heston

RECYCLING starring Charlton Heston

MY GIRLFRIEND starring Terence Stamp

SNOOPY NEIGHBOR dir. Michael Powell

MEAT dir. Steven Spielberg

GODDAMN HIPPIES directed by Wes Craven

GODDAMN HIPPIES part 2 dir. Tobe Hooper

BRAINSSS dir. Dan O'Bannon

HORRIBLE CHAINSAW MONSTER dir. Sam Raimi

THAT NURSE WON'T SHUT UP starring Liv Ullmann

DANISH SCUM, dir. Lars von trier

ALL OF US ARE ONE starring Kurt Russell

FRANK BOOTH: the Tragedy of Love dir. David Lynch

I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU KNEW IT WAS ME: One Man's Heartbreak dir. David Lynch

I CAN SEE YOUR DIRTY PILLOWS starring Piper Laurie

I'M IN YOUR HOUSE RIGHT NOW: A Guide to a Tidy Home- starring Robert Blake

HUMAN INGRATITUDE directed by the Wachowski Bros (okay,

that's not horror, but)

THEIR STUPID MINDS! directed by Ed Wood

MY ABUSIVE CHILDHOOD starring Vincent Price & Barbara Steele

I NEVER SANG FOR MY GRANDMA starring Tom Noonan

THE GENTLEMAN starring Kurt Russell, dir. by Quentin Tarantino

I HATE BABYSITTERS directed by John Carpenter

VIDEO KILLED THE PERVERTS AND THE WEAKLINGS starring Peter Dvorsky, directed by David Cronenberg

I CORRECTED THEM starring Jack Nicholson

Happy Halloween!
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Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3

2011-10-31T23:30:00.000-07:00

Some timewasting. If you're one of the 70,000 pairs of eyeballs that have been enjoying the new Vladrushka pinups(NSFW)so far, after checking out the new stuff, go to these places that I like. (click on images)

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THE DEVILS (1971) -Hollywood Bitchslap Review, 1999 + Film

2011-10-31T22:51:00.000-07:00

The only Ken Russell film you ever need to see. That is, if you want to avoid the steaming mounds of shit he's turned out, which tend to distract one with stench & volume from the few perfect roses hidden within. Some have their favorite films by a director; most I know have instead with Russell a LEAST favorite they recall quite well. But oh, what a fantastic film this one is.

(NOTE: And for as long as it stays up, watch it for yourself here)

Ken Russell, when you think about it, is one of the weirdest figures in the history of Hollywood; certainly one of the most idiosyncratic talents ever. One can always tell it's old Uncle Ken--the fast shouting, the amazingly inappropriate sets, the obligatory sexual hallucinations like something dreamt up in an opium haze after falling asleep reading D.H.Lawrence poetry, the great clashes of avant-garde classical music to let you notice when you're supposed to be shocked, and you often are at those moments anyway; the music just makes it more unpleasant. Even his most commercial films bear his mauve stamp. If one were to sum up Ken Russell's style in a single incontrovertible word, it would probably be "tacky." It's no wonder the 70s were his heyday(a decade in my mind that was the golden age of British & American film, a time of freedom killed by STAR WARS); in no following decade would he have been allowed to lodge himself so firmly, and now there's no getting this embarrassing uncle out of film history. Glaring and glittering like a disco queen from hell, Ken Russell has left his mark. God help us all. There's nothing that can be done now.

And yet, here is a director ferociously in love with the classics, and not just any; the often-ignored--in cinema, at least--20th century classics. D.H. Lawrence, whose work I violently detest on the printed page(perhaps he's just too dated; his Victorian sense of what is naughty I find laughably prudish), turned to gold the twice Russell's adapted him--WOMEN IN LOVE and THE RAINBOW. He fell most magnificently on his face in tributes to his favorite classical composers(including the what-the-hell-was-that? LISZTOMANIA and the incredibly vulgar MAHLER)--you can't deny they were works of love.

And then there's the time he did Aldous Huxley's non-fiction bit of historical journalism, THE DEVILS OF LOUDON, as a film. And this time, he was wholly in his element as he would not be again till the wholly different ALTERED STATES, which with this stand as his wildest and most artistically successful films.

There's nothing wrong with excess. It's when the idea of excess is in fact corny that the problem occurs. The trick, I think, is to keep it escalating at a gradually sliding level, and not to vomit baked beans up at me on the screen when things get slow(TOMMY, 1975).Story in short: Urbain Grandier, a priest, is made governor of the fortified, and mixed(Protestant, but loyal to the crown, and Catholic)town of Loudon shortly after France's 17th century religious wars, in the wake of the death of the town's governor, who just happened to be a friend to the king. The Church won, and Cardinal Richelieu wants all fortifications across France pulled down--so that any place that gets out of hand can be easily razed to the ground. Grandier will not allow this, and invokes an old promise of the king to leave it untouched. Immediately the authorities set about finding an excuse to remove him. As Grandier doesn't take the vow of celibacy at all seriously(even marrying a girl, himself both groom and priest simultaneously, in a ceremony that oddly doesn't seem at all blasphemous) this isn't difficult. But the killing testimony comes from a hunchbacked, bitter nun from a convent of girls who were simply put there by their families to keep them out of the way; the convent is a pressure cooker of bitterly repressed ids. The hunchbacked Mother Superior claims Grandier molested her(which she wants him to, very badly, but he never even noticed--or met--her), and possessed her with demons. She is taken eagerly at her word. Grandier is tortured, tried, and burned, the entire town--whose death his death assures--against its only protector because of an irrelevant scandal and madness about witchcraft.

Oliver Reed makes this film. Vanessa Redgrave and the others, they all do their part, but Reed sinks all his teeth into this part and will not let go till he's burnt out. The film is a remarkably good dramatization of the facts presented in Huxley's book--and keep in mind when watching: all this really happened.

Reed presents Grandier as he was described by both himself and others: brilliant, urbane, clever, handsome, and courageous as a man who believes in God but indulges in private vice can. When watching I was reminded of what, at least, people would like to think of Bill Clinton: if we let him indulge himself, he'll be twice as good a president for the guilt. Grandier attempts to make up for his private vices by protecting the town selflessly and firmly till he is killed for doing so. Of course we do not care about his vices, nor, really, do the other characters; everyone seems to understand it's a lie, but a deadly formality that still has real power. As a study of what true integrity is, this film has a thing or two to teach A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. What he is killed for is being good where it really matters. As so often in church history, killing in Christ's name is much easier than loving in it, and takes up about as much time. This is the greatest attack on the church ever devised by a filmmaker, vicious and unsparing as the church has always been when threatened, after all, just as is described here.

The sets are totally, loopily anachronistic; perfect shining white bricks with blue shadows everywhere, the doing of Derek Jarman. It is not accurate, but works as a stage set would, making of the whole frame a fanciful but dark and effective pictorial composition, perfectly reflecting the delirious thick atmosphere, which fumes from each frame of the film like the humidity of a swamp in summertime.The acting is absolutely over-the-top and works beautifully, each actor breathlessly trading lines rapid-fire with the other as though Russell had told then he only had 30 seconds of film stock left(or perhaps nostrilfuls of cocaine supplied right before the shoot). There isn't a boring moment in this buzzsaw-paced maniacal, giggling film. There isn't time to breathe. More "historical films" should be as energetic as this; the actors should appear to be having as much fun with it as this. This is historical filmmaking by those who understand it enough to be justified playing around, exuberantly; done not out of reverence but to ram the original source's message home.They definitely don't make movies like this anymore. Or ever will again.

See it. That's all, Just see it.

Originally at Hollywood Bitchslap-09/21/99

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Count Dracula (BBC, 1977)

2011-10-30T00:26:00.000-07:00

And now a treat for Halloween--My favorite version of Dracula, by Philip Saville & Gerald Savory, which I first saw when I was 8(as mentioned here), starring Louis Jourdan. Any adaptation of Dracula will always be one removed from the original, because the original is an epistolary(told through journal entries, letters, and that kind of thing). This one however manages to be closer to Stoker than any other version. And is quite scary. Also kind of hot. This film has been somewhat of an obsession for me since I was a kid.

It's BBC 1970s, which means it's film outside, video inside. But like many, I think horror works better when it looks cheaper, and in any event they do a fantastic job with the means they have. And I actually like the video effects. Also excellent are Frank Finlay as Van Helsing, Judi Bowker as Mina, Jack Shepherd as the best Renfield since Dwight Frye--and maybe better--and my first movie crush, Susan Penhaligon as Lucy Westenra. Quincy is played with the worst American accent you've ever heard, but try to look past that. Check it out!

'

And here's the whole Stoker book. Happy Halloween!

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Vladrushka : New Page! Pinups & Other Artwork

2011-10-29T17:27:00.000-07:00

All Vladrushka pinups to date, plus other art, now have their own page at Vladrushka's site.

And almost all are utterly filthy, naturally. (though a couple actually have Vladrushka in clothes) Keep checking back, because I still have more to upload, and will be doing so.

Click here !

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Murnau's NOSFERATU (1924) + Dreyer's VAMPYR (1931)

2011-10-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

Two classics of vampire horror to also watch online, following up on my Count Dracula post: F.W. Murnau's silent NOSFERATU (I also recommend Herzog's 1979 version, which is just as good in its own way) and Carl Theodor Dreyer's virtually-silent, eerie and deeply weird VAMPYR.

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Black Tambourine + Come + Live Skull: Great Bands You Never Heard Of

2011-10-28T23:11:00.000-07:00

Three of the best alternative-era bands you've never heard of. And nothing like goddamn Nirvana(no offense), which anniversaries have given me the chance to wish they'd blow their heads off all over again so I can relive seeing nothing but the same documentary all day, every day, if I turned on fucking MTV for over a year. I think that's what killed people's appetite for music on that channel. As for the fine but always overhyped Nirvana: they ended more than they ever started, and that's all I want to say about them. Back then, by the time I warmed to them, about two months later he went down on death. (Bands are much better off if I embrace them after they end; I can be a jinx)

Anyway, some of the stuff people stopped noticing because of them.

First, a band that only ever had almost one album, Black Tambourine, from about 1990-91. (Playlist by Videomixtape)

And another, from 1993-on, Come, headed by the great Thalia Zedek.(also previously of Live Skull, who are also represented on this playlist: check out "5-D," "Circular Saw," and their cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman" especially) Some of her solo stuff is included in this playlist, which was assembled by myself. I recall their album ELEVEN: ELEVEN(which features "Submerge," a magnificent song you will want to replay) as being my favorite of '93, otherwise a pretty lonely and dark year for me. Not long before I got it I'd finally switched away from tapes to CDs, and not destroying something just by playing it over and over was a wonderfully new experience. (Back then, the music industry kept itself alive through three things: nostalgia, planned obsolescence, and mechanical failure.)

Our music was better than yours. Deal with it.
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HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Time of the Great Pumpkin + Pumpkin Boy (1991)

2011-10-27T00:56:00.000-07:00

From Robot Chicken.

And a bonus: one of the very first comics I ever wrote which was drawn by the great genius Emily Kaplan(then aka Ophelia the Creep), from 1991 and very nearly a Single Page (and ten more, if we'd followed through, sigh) in Dave Sim's Cerebus Bi-Weekly except I think we chickened out(I can't really recall), PUMPKIN BOY!

Who is not happy on Halloween, a time of love and family for most.

I've drawn the work of other writers many times, but to date Emily's the only artist who's drawn me. Love to work with her again someday. She taught me a lot, just looking at her drawing, about what I do now. What she could do with a simple ballpoint puts every one of you, and me, to shame. This was her with proper ink. At the time. She's quite an accomplished painter now.

(Click to enlarge)
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"The Yellow Book" (Vol. 13, 1897)

2011-10-27T00:49:00.000-07:00

Also at Google Books. (and here) And probably NSFW. They were much more indecent in the good ol' days.

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Hard core: power, pleasure, and the "frenzy of the visible" By Linda Williams

2011-10-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

A (rather large) excerpt from Williams' classic, which has been a big influence on how I approach the genre. Again from Google Books.

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Vulgarity is the Least Effective Way to Disturb People

2011-10-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

...because they grow to enjoy it.

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Karl Marx-"Capital: a critical analysis of capitalist production" Vol. 1

2011-10-26T21:24:00.001-07:00

Via Google Books.

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"Gimme Shelter" (Maysles, 1970)

2011-10-24T08:13:00.000-07:00

The documentary of the Rolling Stones' disastrous 1969 Altamont concert. Complete.

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Vladrushka, Berlin, & London Pinup: FIXATIONS (color, NSFW)

2011-10-24T00:18:00.000-07:00

As threatened: The inked and colored version of this sketch from a week or so ago.

Click image to enlarge. And also to see a bigger version of the picture.

More pinups and comics with Vladrushka and her (adult) daughters, that are absolutely and inexcusably filthy, can be found here.
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"Pearl Harbor" -Anti-Review. From Hollywood Bitchslap (2002)

2011-10-23T01:23:00.000-07:00

PEARL HARBOR (2001)

SCENE: INT. Nighttime at the home of Jerry Bruckheimer, candles lit at each point of a pentagram chalked on the table, Bruckheimer sitting, sort of fidgety for some reason, at the east end of it, holding a 2-pound sack of what looks like sugar till he does his gums with it.

BRUCKHEIMER(smiling): Proper.

(He dumps the contents in the center of the pentagram, stealing a tiny snort for himself.)

BRUCKHEIMER: Snrk!

(After the head rush, he raises his arms and begins the incantation.)

BRUCKHEIMER(nasal, without feeling): Mammon, Asmodeus, and Moloch, thy faithful servant invokes thy mercy. Please release thy most favorite prisoner for five minutes of conference with me, and I shall grant thee points in my next production, and 5% of the Coca-Cola tie-in. O, lords of hell, please hear my-

(The furiously changing face of ASMODEUS appears in a slick in the air of inky-black smoke, looking nauseous. Imagine voice of Geoffrey Holder.)

ASMODEUS: ALRIGHT already. Hk!--BLUH-GAGHHH!

(Vomits up the ghost of DON SIMPSON, encased in a layer of brimstone-scented phlegm.)

ASMODEUS: Goddamn it, anything to stop your girlish whiny voice.

(He disappears. SIMPSON staggers to his feet, shaking the phlegm off onto everything. It carbonizes everything it touches with an icy flame that neither goes out nor spreads.)

SIMPSON(sleepy-eyed): Ohh...sorry about your curtains, man.

(The chains made of tiny spoons laced around every inch of his body jingle as he staggers forward with the gait of a penguin who's had too much beer.)

SIMPSON: So what can I--(spots the coke) --do---for---I---I--(runs at it feverishly) IIIIIIAAAAA! (lands face-first in it; does not get up)MMsnkMMsnkMMsnk...

BRUCKHEIMER: Um...(drums his fingers politely on the table for a moment, trying to look away, whistling for five seconds.) Don?(knocks on Don's head) DON?

SIMPSON(muffled): Mfffuhwfhhh--(Bruckheimer grabs the ghost by the hair, lifts up its head. It's barely conscious, and has a coke mustache.)

BRUCKHEIMER: I've only got two minutes left now, Don. Please. The backers are demanding to know the idea of the next movie, Don. You've got to give me something. You know ideas aren't what Jerry Bruckheimer is all about. Only you know what fat, lazy, entertainment-hungry cheeseburger America likes in its trough. Cheeseburgers you once said; MOVIES ARE LIKE CHEESEBURGERS. GIVE ME GOOD BEEF TO GRIND UP, DON! Something. ANYTHING.

SIMPSON(audibly blinks thrice; clouds of dust clear around his eyes): mmmmUhhhhh....Pearl Harbor or something?

BRUCKHEIMER: Pearl what?(Suddenly ASMODEUS reappears, swallowing SIMPSON's damned soul once more, sucking him in legs first.)

ASMODEUS: TIME IS UP! NYAHAHAHAHA!

SIMPSON: AAAAAAAAAAAAA (takes one last desperate snort) Snrk!---heh. Far out...AAAAAAA!

BRUCKHEIMER: That was never five minutes!

ASMODEUS: BLARGH! (vomits pea soup on BRUCKHEIMER, blinding him temporarily.)

BRUCKHEIMER: YAA!

(He wipes it off his eyes; when he opens them again, the candles are out, all the lights are on, and the demon and his toy are gone. BRUCKHEIMER gets a determined, positive look on his face.)

BRUCKHEIMER: Yes! I have my idea! Bay! Get out from under the table, zip up my trousers again and warm up the Porsche! We've got a MOVIE to pitch!

MICHAEL BAY(rising, wiping chin) Cool! What's it about, Mr. Bruckheimer sir?

BRUCKHEIMER: Pearl Harbor.

BAY: What's that?

BRUCKHEIMER: Who gives a rat's ass. If I haven't made a movie about it yet, then nobody's heard of it. Let's just make something blow up.

BAY: Wow, Mr. Bruckheimer, are you the bestest producer ever?

BRUCKHEIMER: I just may be, Mikey. I just may be.
01/29/02
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"Fucking dog," Charlie Brown would mutter to himself every day. "Fucking, fucking dog."

2011-10-23T00:31:00.000-07:00

THE HELL BEAGLE
Wrong thought fragments about PEANUTS(repost from 2010):

The worst part of owning Snoopy was getting him to agree to toilet training.

When Snoopy learned to read before he did, Charlie Brown decided then and there, the dog must die. But Charlie was just that feckless. Even when he put ground glass in the accursed thing's food, something in its eyes made him eat it instead. They all called him so stupid at the hospital. He thought somewhere he heard his dog laugh. Great, he thought, now I'm crazy, too.

Lucy hated when the dog would lick her face. Never be clean. Never. Dog germs. Yuck. She could feel them crawling.
Really feel them. Stupid beagle.

For the first four years of her life, Sally thought Snoopy was her brother, and avoided that creepy bald kid staying there.

The night Schroeder finished his symphony was dark & stormy, so he knew the dog would come, & he did, eating it before his pleading eyes.
"Where's your Beethoven now?" Schroeder...HEARD the dog thinking AT him as it left. Snoopy's eyes, a deep burning crimson, smiled. "The deal was only that you would write the greatest symphony ever." Schroeder wept. They found him swinging softly the next morning, his Beethoven bust tied to him to quicken the end.

Lucy actually wanted to hold the football, but then Snoopy's voice would burn in her head at the last minute, "Pull it away from the boy."
Then...It pulled the muscles in her face. Made Lucy SMILE. A double indignity. And put pithy thoughts to gloat over him with in her mouth. Never, never be clean of the germ.

Snoopy had plans. Plans for them all, his child puppets, as he laughed with his little yellow familiar. "They thought they'd caged Crowley. But now 'Snoopy' is off his leash FOREVER." And the Hell Beagle did whatever dogs do instead of laughing, as he cursed the Boy on Valentine's Day again.
Till the stars were right to free him, the Hell Beagle Snoopy was hungry for sorrow and disappointment. The boy had to be soaking in the sadness and guilt, full to bursting like a ripe orange. Making him lose all his hair was only the start, those years ago.
The Little Red-Haired girl. He'd bite her again. He'd wonder why she wouldn't come near. The boy never knew she'd tried to answer each Valentine. The Hell Beagle and his bird snickered together, like always.

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Ren & Stimpy- "Naked Beach Frenzy"

2011-10-22T23:13:00.000-07:00

Classic censored John K. episode of everyone's favorite cartoon starring a skinned chihuahua.

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The Inertia of Herman Cain, As Time Ticks Away for the GOP

2011-10-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

The problem with lightning in a bottle is that you then have to do something with it or it just dies. Herman Cain has been playing to what the crowd applauds, and thinks he says the right things to push the buttons of the great American consumer, but when he actually has to explain anything he means, it breaks into pieces. It's much like a manager who hasn't actually read his Powerpoint, just had an assistant prepare it, and then has to answer questions. They can usually only keep repeating the bullet points, clinging to that in hopes that they are magic, or at least tiring enough that the questioner loses interest and accepts.

His utter incoherence on abortion is just the latest example. He believes it should be illegal, but it's up to the woman, but he supports life from conception, but the government should not get involved, but he is utterly pro-life, what part do you not understand?

And what this all breaks down to is Herman Cain is pro-choice, even if he does not believe in abortion. That's the funniest part of it all. Hey, I'm pro-choice too. But I'm also not running for the presidency as a Republican. Apparently Cain thinks the GOP is anti-government in all things. No, they very much believe in the power of the government to stop women having abortions, and to execute the ones that become criminals later.

Or maybe he's just tossing out what he thinks people want to hear and not thinking at all?

Who in the world would have thought John Stossel would be the one to take Herman Cain down, though? It does look accidental.

Here's a collection of his greatest hits I made for you, starting with the money quote from the Stossel interview, followed by the whole thing, and then so much more. Have a look and tell me if you see a serious candidate here.

What was his appeal for Republicans, especially since their most obvious motivator against Obama was that they could not abide a black president? This is true, but they love a black performer who plays to their prejudices and flatters them. Where I grew up, South Carolina, they loved the show Good Times. Oh, not for the story of a Chicago project family trying to survive. Not for John Amos, and his believable portrayal of a poor but strong family man beaten every day and still trying to survive. No. They loved JJ, the minstrel character.

This is a man who called black people "brainwashed," and has said he's pproud to literally have gone to the back of the bus. Do you think he is playing to black voters? No, he's playing to white, and quite obviously. Do you think he'd choose the nickname "Black Walnut" otherwise?

Bill Maher remarked on Friday that Herman Cain is, for white Republicans, that one black guy they know who says derogatory things about other black people, so they think it gives them permission to say these things too. He plays to this, he flatters them, and he knows well his act.

When you hear things like his ridiculous "999" plan--which in fact increases taxes, on everyone but the rich, not that he realized this--you realize this is a man who is thinking according to what would look good on a flyer, with coupons. This is the level he's playing to. He's not even intending to think things through. Like many CEOs, he thinks slogans are brain-clouding magic. Sometimes they are. But his are very clumsy, too.

His CEO experience is touted. As though in today's America being a CEO should inspire anything but wondering what you haven't been caught for yet. But Herman Cain has not been an active CEO for a decade. He is that most sincere sort of person, a motivational speaker. Motivational speakers are about ego over logic, will over sense. They teach you to take what you want and not to think, but do--as though the two were different things. They are, though, when you do something very risky without preparing and simply talk yourself into magical thinking, which is reportedly what killed noted closet conservative anti-union CEO and marketer Steve Jobs in the end.

And Herman Cain has either gone into this without thinking--much like Sarah Palin--or has used it as a vehicle to build his own celebrity where he had none before. Much, again, like Sarah Palin. And I think the latter is the stronger possibility. Palin, Trump, and now Cain have, with the GOP's collusion, turned their presidential race into the lamest reality show ever.

The GOP has spent too much of its time and energy trying to be the Bizarro party, only there to block any policy that might aid American recovery--or indeed, any policy whatsoever--in an effort to stall till the next election and break Obama down in the process. And till very recently, Obama has been quite their punk, so no points on his side either, but unlike them he does not mean evil to the US. If they were not an American political party--and I think at this point to call them one is being too broad with the term--we would have labeled them a subversive group out to destabilize the government. They define themselves only by what they are not.

And now they have nothing. It's too late for them to get any candidate that might have stood a serious chance. And in their debate process, their candidates who express anything resembling human decency--Neanderthal Rick Perry in his one good moment, regarding the HPV vaccine the Christian right hates so much because they think it turns girls into sluts for some reason--suffers, hard, for it. Thus any candidate that could make it in the general election, where there are swing voters to alienate, is knocked out of the process. Or like Chris Christie, are too smart and sane to even step into the pit with today's national GOP yet, at least till "the crazies" are burned out.

So what are they left with? Unusable and withering candidates like Bachmann or Perry, or being used as a host body, a vehicle to celebrity. Trump increased his own. Palin and Cain built theirs and never will be president, but didn't intend to be. If Cain were serious, he'd be in Iowa, but it's a book tour he's doing. He has books to sell, and again, so do I, but I'm not pretending to run for president to do it. This is hype. And hucksters like he and Palin have been making, and will make, a lot of money off their higher profile, because it no longer matters if they actually do anything. And more--by this time next year, Herman Cain will be on Fox, that's a promise.

Meanwhile the GOP has wasted valuable time on these wasters of their resources. By next year, they will be left with no choice but to eat their Romney and like it. And then he will lose.

The GOP has no idea what they're doing anymore, and eventually will implode. Perhaps we're seeing it now. It looks like there's energy, with all those bubbles rising to the top, some getting quite big till they pop. And then it goes flat.
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Autoarchaeology: Thoughts Looking At A Book About Horror I Had At...Six

2011-10-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

Every now & then I recover relics from my childhood, as is the habit of my sad generation. Found this for instance. My parents gave me this below, Horror Movies- Tales of Terror in the Cinema, by Alan Frank. It's a fairly basic but enjoyable picture book from 1974 about horror, and much of it has to do with Hammer films and related sorts of material. They gave me this on my birthday.

My 6th birthday.

Looking at this now puzzles me. It brings back a horde of memories, but I already could remember a lot from then. (I was born in 1969, and my memories stretch back to this moment on TV with John Dean) But I notice in this are a huge amount of pictures from Hammer Films. This means that the image you see above, of Christopher Lee, is the first image of Dracula I ever had. I could never take Lugosi seriously as a result, by the way, and became quite a Dracula snob, admittedly.

This means there are bare breasts. In one case, with a stake going in between them. Here. This is probably the first image of anything like nudity I had ever seen, from Satanic Rites of Dracula, a film that turns out to be so dreadful I've never finished seeing it. But what an image.

Tame to us, but this was 1975, and I was just then six. This was not just the first film book I ever had, but the first images of horror I ever saw. And for a while, the only ones, because I certainly didn't get to see the films. Not on TV, and we didn't have them VCRs or cable then neither, in the ole days. I don't think I actually saw any horror films till I was about eight, when I accidentally saw M and CALIGARI back to back one afternoon on SCETV; I think they were college film telecourses. Then shortly after, the greatest non-NOSFERATU version of Dracula ever, the BBC one with Louis Jourdan.

It occurs to me that one reason I am so fond of the more extreme films from 1969-1974, besides that so many are just plain cool(taking advantage of a permissive window era in culture beautifully), is that to me, from an early age, this is what horror looked like. Much like my first Superman & Batman comics were O'Neil/Adams and the huge treasury reprints of the Golden Age stuff--that's what I saw first and it shaped my perception of everything after. So these were formative images, at least aesthetically.

I recall that I understood to some basic degree what I was looking at, at the time--that these were a woman's naked breasts. I also recall not thinking there was anything odd about it, because no one had ever said there should be--it never came up, because after all, I was just turning six. I mean, there was no feeling of looking at something forbidden, of something I should hide, or of any particular excitement thereof, as you might expect. Like when some people as kids found a PLAYBOY in the woods or something. It just seemed completely normal. I do remember not looking much at some of the tackier images though.

I also had a copy of the Grimm Fairy Tales. (I was reading from a strangely early age.) Mine was maybe different from yours. Mine had the versions where, for instance, Snow White's stepmother is forced to dance in iron shoes in a fire till she dies; where Cinderella's sisters cut off pieces of their feet to fit in the slipper(and even the blood trail doesn't tip off the prince, by the way--birds do); and where an illustration of Fala's severed, weeping head hung over the gate in The Goose Girl haunted my dreams. We owned horses and my parents took me every year to see the Lipizzan stallions, so that in particular hit little kid me on a gut level.

I grew up with these. To me, these were the normal versions of the stories. No wonder I seemed like an alien when I started going to school proper, now that I think of it.

I don't feel I was warped or damaged by any of this. If anything, it shows me that kids are pretty sharp till we start telling them this or that word or image is bad. They can tell what's real and what's not. Well, except the stupid ones. But it wasn't like I had liberal, freewheeling, enlightened parents, like they were hippies or something. This was South Carolina. They weren't religious righties or anything, thank Cthulhu--I don't think I went to church regularly till I was about 8, when my dad wanted to look like a good Christian for his boss-- and they were educated people. But I was six. Now that I think of it, they also let me read Gerber's HOWARD THE DUCK, not a comic for little kids, quite young. I wonder if they looked past that it was a duck, or that they were fairy tales.

But this is really odd. Like I said, it's fairly tame stuff by most standards. But it's graphic. Much of it's sexual. And it's horror. I loved horror, it's true, and still do(though I loathe the torture porn calling itself horror now--except maybe MARTYRS--as much as I hated the slasher genre in the 80s). And come to think of it, they did too. Judging by what they went to see, and what they read, they loved horror. I recall them loving NIGHT GALLERY, KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER, the Jack Palance TV DRACULA (which I saw recently, and sadly it's really awful), THE EXORCIST, ALIEN, and JAWS for instance, but then, who didn't? Horror was very "in" in the 1970s, and was also very good then. And then there was my mom's obsession with, and frequent referencing of, the "Time Enough At Last" episode of Twilight Zone.

But me? I was into Star Trek and Batman about then, as I recall. And tornadoes for some reason. (doodles of them cover everything paper I had then) This book--and a couple of others my dad gave me later on--is what made me interested in horror in the first place. I saw these stills long before I ever saw the films. Some I still haven't, and experience has taught me in many cases I should leave it that way--sometimes stills imply a much cooler film than the real thing turns out to be.

But what I wonder is: did they ever actually look inside the books they gave me? Or were they actually trying to introduce me to this?

I guess it makes me wonder how much I actually understand my parents, both dead now. I always thought of them as reasonable, but mildly repressed. Compare this. In the late 1970s there was a huge Dracula and vampire boom. I recall getting one of those quick-buck b/w pulp film-still magazines, this one on the subject of, of course, vampires. It had Frank Langella on the cover. There were some articles, which I devoured, as I did anything right then on vampires. I must have checked out more books on vampire folklore from the library than any other kid. (I wonder why all their titles were set in Nouveau, though)

One of these articles was about the possible basis for vampire myths. It got into the subject of succubi. These, the article said, came about because of a misunderstanding of wet dreams.

"MOM, WHAT'S A 'WET DREAM?'" I shouted across the house. She demanded to know what I was reading.

Then she saw, inside, a still from Daughters of Darkness. With, yes, breasts. This image, cropped to just from the navel to the right in the magazine, basically just topless. But so poorly printed that, to be honest, what was in the picture were more just general shapes than anything. But Mom certainly knew what she was looking at.

Soon after they asked me if I wanted the back cover picture of Bela Lugosi. But I never gave a fuck about Bela Lugosi, so I said, confused, "No," not realizing they were going to throw it away. Up to that point they'd never exercised that kind of restriction or told me there was something I couldn't read.

Right after that my father gave me the clumsiest birds-and-bees talk I ever got(yes, more than one--he forgot he'd done it and later repeated it when I was 12). I was a bit weirded out--where was this coming from? It's a good thing I didn't listen hard. He tried to explain it by way of its being similar to something I saw the dogs doing once. "But it can sometimes be fun," he assured me, like that helped.

I also remember he made me stop reading MAD when a parody of "Three's Company" prompted me to ask what a "homosexual" was. He told me to never, ever say that word. Especially at school. That's inspired much speculation in me over the years.

As I found out later, at least as my somewhat mentally healthier mom knew him, sex wasn't something he was very relaxed with, one reason it became such a sad marriage. She once told me, once I was an adult, they'd only had sex four times. I have a sister, and the marriage lasted 13 years, so you do the math on how miserable that made my mom.

It was only two years later he left her. And not long after, his first suicide attempt, planned in such a way(despite that there was never NOT a full gun rack--he hunted ducks--in any place he lived: using pills, which worked the third time, in 1986, less than one year older than I am right now) my mom was sure to find him. And soon after, the divorce. He was not in a happy place. I think he felt if he became strict and rigid on these matters he'd be able to quiet the Vietnam nightmares that were starting to overwhelm him. This was a man whose best friend's head was blown into his lap by a booby trap, after all.

It's hard to jibe these two versions of my parents. I wonder if the change had to do with them starting to go to church regularly. I'm glad it took them so long, otherwise it might have stuck.

Memories are such complicated tangly nets. Influences even more so. And you will never truly understand your parents. It's like trying to point to the angles of the fourth dimension--if you were outside it enough to see its shape you wouldn't be what you are.
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Vladrushka & Berlin: "Encourage Literacy" Now In Lurid Color

2011-10-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

For some reason, this is the most viewed image of Vladrushka I've done to date. Anyway, finally got around to doing it up in color, and you can see it here in all its eye-frying glory(the b/w version is also still there). Also, buy the artwork here!

Click to enlarge.
Color version (c)2011 John Linton Roberson.

And like last time, another classic image of her inspiration (along with Georgina), the goddess-like Joan Severance, meant in total shameless flattery.

Click to enlarge.
Image (c)1990 Playboy Enterprises Inc.

And also her other inspiration, Georgina Spelvin, here in a very cute cheesecake pinup from her youth.

Click to enlarge.
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Vladrushka Pinup #3: Orgasm (1) & Other Recent Pinups (Very, very NSFW)

2011-10-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

(Updated post)
More art while you wait for "Let Running Dogs Lie":

Pinup #1 can be found here, #2 here. In this brand-new one, Vladrushka enjoys...well, just enjoys.

Click to enlarge.

Also zero digital, save scanning. This is all india ink, grey wash, and graphite, on heavyweight Crescent board and done with crowquill, pencil and brush.

Buy the original here at Sketchmaven!

UPDATE: Also, let's not forget her equally lecherous daughters: another starring London, and another with Berlin. All complete filth you really shouldn't be looking at. (click images to enlarge)

And once again, some Joan:

And some Georgina:

BUY MY BOOKS OR CATS WILL EAT YOU

Vladrushka Online! (NSFW)

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