I Didn't Write That!
23 November 2012
Vladrushka Pin-Up - "Taste" - Final color version (NSFW)
The final version of a sketch I posted some months back. Absolutely for adults only.
Mostly just practice with color and shading. Click on image for larger(and when you get there, click on that image to download a free 14x10 PDF)
___________________
The final version of a sketch I posted some months back. Absolutely for adults only.
Mostly just practice with color and shading. Click on image for larger(and when you get there, click on that image to download a free 14x10 PDF)
___________________
Labels: my art, my comics, nsfw, pin-up, smut, vladrushka
¶ Friday, November 23, 2012 0 Comments
19 November 2012
B.C. The First Thanksgiving (1973)
Behold why you never saw any other B.C. television specials. I did always find it odd that Johnny Hart inserted so much Christian content into a strip whose name means "Before Christ," but eh.
___________________
Behold why you never saw any other B.C. television specials. I did always find it odd that Johnny Hart inserted so much Christian content into a strip whose name means "Before Christ," but eh.
___________________
Labels: 1970s, animation, bad ideas, holiday, humor
¶ Monday, November 19, 2012 1 Comments
17 November 2012
Eurotika: Sex/Horror Films from Europe in the 60s/70s
A recent Channel 4 documentary series about the interesting and unique history of the European 60s/70s sex/horror film. This playlist comprises all 12 parts of the series, including my personal two favorite episodes, about the cartoonist Jose Larraz(director of the amazing VAMPYRES) and producer-turned-director-turned-revolutionary José Bénazéraf. Also pieces on Jess Franco, Mario Bava, Eurocine, the late Michael Reeves, and more, including a whole episode about the women who starred in these films, including and interview with the stunning Brigitte LaHale.
The only real flaw in the series, to me, is they somehow leave out in my view the best and craziest of these filmmakers, former animator Walerian Borowczyk, the maker of IMMORAL TALES, THE BEAST, and the 1980 TV version of LULU, among others.
But anyway: Discover some awesomely weird stuff you could never see in the US.
___________________
A recent Channel 4 documentary series about the interesting and unique history of the European 60s/70s sex/horror film. This playlist comprises all 12 parts of the series, including my personal two favorite episodes, about the cartoonist Jose Larraz(director of the amazing VAMPYRES) and producer-turned-director-turned-revolutionary José Bénazéraf. Also pieces on Jess Franco, Mario Bava, Eurocine, the late Michael Reeves, and more, including a whole episode about the women who starred in these films, including and interview with the stunning Brigitte LaHale.
The only real flaw in the series, to me, is they somehow leave out in my view the best and craziest of these filmmakers, former animator Walerian Borowczyk, the maker of IMMORAL TALES, THE BEAST, and the 1980 TV version of LULU, among others.
But anyway: Discover some awesomely weird stuff you could never see in the US.
___________________
Labels: 1960s, 1970s, comics, Europe, film, horror, italy, my influences, nsfw, smut, spain, UK, vladrushka, weirdness
¶ Saturday, November 17, 2012 0 Comments
SALO (Pasolini, 1975)- My 2000 Review
My review of it written for Hollywood Bitchslap in 2000. One of the first reviews of it on the web, as it happened:
Pier Paolo Pasolini died, as some directors real and fictional(Kubrick-EYES WIDE SHUT, Richard Mulligan in SOB)are prone to do, after having done the Grand High Art Porno Epic, an odd ambition but one held by many directors--to make an erotic film that is art.
Unlike Kubrick, however, this was no meditation on marriage(and Kubrick's is, oddly affirmative of marriage), but, like EYES WIDE SHUT, is deliberately anti-erotic and analytic. And terrifying.
Pasolini had, up to that point, been known by the affirmative tone of his "Trilogy of Life," film approximations of what he considered their civilizations' most central cultural works, and as a good Marxist chose the most vulgar and funny, and therefore most characteristic of the culture, works of the lower classes, such as THE DECAMERON, CANTERBURY TALES(whose cinematography influenced all medieval films after, starting with THE HOLY GRAIL; one can smell the Middle Ages and all its shit just looking at the film), and ARABIAN NIGHTS(the most beautiful and least "vulgar").
These films are, for all their dramatic and sometimes horrifying moments, are true to their sources in being celebratory of sex and bodies, as affirmative of life itself. One odd thing that does crop up is that when sex occurs, Pasolini reveals he thinks straight folk do it without moving.
In fact, Pasolini developed a loathing of straight people, as political disfavor(Pasolini was quite active as a political speaker, writer and poet--indeed, was better known for his poetry in Italy than his films) and enemies began to make him more fearful, culminating, after the release of SALO, with his assassination by a young man who pretended he had killed him in self-defense when Pasolini came on to him(as Pasolini was, in fact, prone to do), but who in fact was in the pay of anti-communist political enemies of Pasolini. In his "self-defense" against the fearsome short gay director, the fellow found it necessary not only to almost beat his head in, but run over, and back over him twice before driving away, leaving a body with a square valley crushed across the chest, much of Pasolini streaked on the road left and right of said chest. And was believed and received a light sentence.
Given this, it's difficult in retrospect to dismiss SALO merely because it is so horrible, and grisly, and it is. One only needs to see it once per lifetime, but it occupies a place nothing else can, in its flawed, hateful way. Pasolini was particularly radical; he did not want gay rights because he enjoyed the outlaw status of the gay man of the time.
It was mentioned in PASOLINI: REQUIEM that Pasolini meant SALO as an attack, pure and; simple, on heterosexuality, as a negation, indeed, of any affirmation thereof that had popped up in his previous films. Just like the other films, it was an attempt to arrange images and narrative in a manner like poetry, but this time it would be of a much more burnt, dark sort. And when I say "dark," I don't mean like goth. I mean like the apocalypse, because that's what it feels like--apocalypse as enslavement, torture, and death. In a way, the film is a glimpse of hell, but as humans make it on earth.
And it cares not one bit whether you like it or not, which should be respected.
On the surface, it is an adaptation of the only work one needs to read by the Marquis De Sade(because it really is nothing but an endlessly repetitive listing, recapitulation, and reworking of all the ideas he ever had; at some point it's nothing but fragments of lists), THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM. The Marquis wrote this as a final expression of every last bit of hatred against his class as he sat in the Bastille.
De Sade was a slimy individual personally, though did not even a little as much as his works would repute him to have. But his works were not simply meant as something to get himself off--though they did serve that purpose too. They were meant as savage satires of the mores of the dying upper class of France prior to the Revolution. Said satire is clumsily expressed by a writer who had little but bile, but there are nuggets in that bile that let us see the essential inhumanity of what that class had become. (The people he slanders are the same people you see, and loathe, in DANGEROUS LIASONS and RIDICULE, among others)
Many, including Peter Brook, Peter Weiss(MARAT/SADE), Grant Morrison(THE INVISIBLES) and Luis Bunuel(L'AGE D'OR) have quoted and reworked it, seeing in its stark excessiveness--it is the most violent pornographic novel ever written; no one would dare top it--an archetype of the real face of power relations in the world, especially in light of the development of fascism. Like them, Pasolini saw in it a metaphor for the basic nightmarish character of fascism--and in some ways society itself.
The basic story(which created a configuration of characters Genet would later use to death) is this: four aristocrats--a president, a bishop, a banker and a judge("president" is "duke" in De Sade) kidnap a number of innocent adolescents, take them to a remote castle where they are told nobody can hear them or will come to help them, for they are believed dead; that they cannot call upon God for help and will be killed if they do; and that the four of them will do anything they like that is devoid of warmth or love(demonstrations of either of which will result in punishment).
The captives are converted into objects for use, and these four children enjoy watching how their toys can break. And they do, till they kill them, after subjecting them to the most horrifying psychological & physical meat-grinder, culminating in making them betray one another.
Pasolini chooses to set this in Salo, the last fortress of fascist Italy which held out for awhile after the rest of Italy had fallen to the Allies. The events didn't happen, but Pasolini is interested in tying the two together to show what he considered the evil of "normal" culture.
It would be difficult to call this film truly pornographic; it makes sex look evil and septic. Someone looking for some SM leather romp will be very surprised. This is the real essence of De Sade(and a view he was not advocating but describing, mostly)--people reduced, basically, to pigs for slaughter.
Having freedom dangled in their face if they eat shit first, only to have it snatched away right after. All for the pleasure of a bunch of upper-class bastards.
One can look at one's place in the work world and wonder how, in principle, the average person's role in life is much different. Except in the actual things one has to do.
In a world where the Yugoslavian Rape Camps have existed, however, an attack like this on that brutal part of human nature has a valuable place in aesthetic discourse. This is an image of that brutality at the base of everyone--that should be controlled, not indulged, and an image of the toilet/abbatoir the world becomes when our worst selves are unleashed.
And fortunately, nobody has to make it again. It is a pure, unforgettable nightmare, and for all its clumsinesses and heavy-handedness, it fits in the progression of Pasolini's worldview up to that time, as misanthropic and heterophobic as that image is.
But as long as CRUISING is still available on video, I sympathize with any gay filmmaker regardless of the hate level--and it is high in this film. Be warned--it is true to De Sade, including a scene of shit-eating. Remember it's chocolate and it almost might be funny, but I can't watch that part myself. Pasolini's anger either limits or focuses his vision.
This occupies a place that needs filling, but only a very small part one doesn't always want to see, nor should one, necessarily. Nevertheless, worth one look. That part of us should be understood. Unseen it begets monsters, like this film, say...
___________________
My review of it written for Hollywood Bitchslap in 2000. One of the first reviews of it on the web, as it happened:
Pier Paolo Pasolini died, as some directors real and fictional(Kubrick-EYES WIDE SHUT, Richard Mulligan in SOB)are prone to do, after having done the Grand High Art Porno Epic, an odd ambition but one held by many directors--to make an erotic film that is art.
Unlike Kubrick, however, this was no meditation on marriage(and Kubrick's is, oddly affirmative of marriage), but, like EYES WIDE SHUT, is deliberately anti-erotic and analytic. And terrifying.
Pasolini had, up to that point, been known by the affirmative tone of his "Trilogy of Life," film approximations of what he considered their civilizations' most central cultural works, and as a good Marxist chose the most vulgar and funny, and therefore most characteristic of the culture, works of the lower classes, such as THE DECAMERON, CANTERBURY TALES(whose cinematography influenced all medieval films after, starting with THE HOLY GRAIL; one can smell the Middle Ages and all its shit just looking at the film), and ARABIAN NIGHTS(the most beautiful and least "vulgar").
These films are, for all their dramatic and sometimes horrifying moments, are true to their sources in being celebratory of sex and bodies, as affirmative of life itself. One odd thing that does crop up is that when sex occurs, Pasolini reveals he thinks straight folk do it without moving.
In fact, Pasolini developed a loathing of straight people, as political disfavor(Pasolini was quite active as a political speaker, writer and poet--indeed, was better known for his poetry in Italy than his films) and enemies began to make him more fearful, culminating, after the release of SALO, with his assassination by a young man who pretended he had killed him in self-defense when Pasolini came on to him(as Pasolini was, in fact, prone to do), but who in fact was in the pay of anti-communist political enemies of Pasolini. In his "self-defense" against the fearsome short gay director, the fellow found it necessary not only to almost beat his head in, but run over, and back over him twice before driving away, leaving a body with a square valley crushed across the chest, much of Pasolini streaked on the road left and right of said chest. And was believed and received a light sentence.
Given this, it's difficult in retrospect to dismiss SALO merely because it is so horrible, and grisly, and it is. One only needs to see it once per lifetime, but it occupies a place nothing else can, in its flawed, hateful way. Pasolini was particularly radical; he did not want gay rights because he enjoyed the outlaw status of the gay man of the time.
It was mentioned in PASOLINI: REQUIEM that Pasolini meant SALO as an attack, pure and; simple, on heterosexuality, as a negation, indeed, of any affirmation thereof that had popped up in his previous films. Just like the other films, it was an attempt to arrange images and narrative in a manner like poetry, but this time it would be of a much more burnt, dark sort. And when I say "dark," I don't mean like goth. I mean like the apocalypse, because that's what it feels like--apocalypse as enslavement, torture, and death. In a way, the film is a glimpse of hell, but as humans make it on earth.
And it cares not one bit whether you like it or not, which should be respected.
On the surface, it is an adaptation of the only work one needs to read by the Marquis De Sade(because it really is nothing but an endlessly repetitive listing, recapitulation, and reworking of all the ideas he ever had; at some point it's nothing but fragments of lists), THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM. The Marquis wrote this as a final expression of every last bit of hatred against his class as he sat in the Bastille.
De Sade was a slimy individual personally, though did not even a little as much as his works would repute him to have. But his works were not simply meant as something to get himself off--though they did serve that purpose too. They were meant as savage satires of the mores of the dying upper class of France prior to the Revolution. Said satire is clumsily expressed by a writer who had little but bile, but there are nuggets in that bile that let us see the essential inhumanity of what that class had become. (The people he slanders are the same people you see, and loathe, in DANGEROUS LIASONS and RIDICULE, among others)
Many, including Peter Brook, Peter Weiss(MARAT/SADE), Grant Morrison(THE INVISIBLES) and Luis Bunuel(L'AGE D'OR) have quoted and reworked it, seeing in its stark excessiveness--it is the most violent pornographic novel ever written; no one would dare top it--an archetype of the real face of power relations in the world, especially in light of the development of fascism. Like them, Pasolini saw in it a metaphor for the basic nightmarish character of fascism--and in some ways society itself.
The basic story(which created a configuration of characters Genet would later use to death) is this: four aristocrats--a president, a bishop, a banker and a judge("president" is "duke" in De Sade) kidnap a number of innocent adolescents, take them to a remote castle where they are told nobody can hear them or will come to help them, for they are believed dead; that they cannot call upon God for help and will be killed if they do; and that the four of them will do anything they like that is devoid of warmth or love(demonstrations of either of which will result in punishment).
The captives are converted into objects for use, and these four children enjoy watching how their toys can break. And they do, till they kill them, after subjecting them to the most horrifying psychological & physical meat-grinder, culminating in making them betray one another.
Pasolini chooses to set this in Salo, the last fortress of fascist Italy which held out for awhile after the rest of Italy had fallen to the Allies. The events didn't happen, but Pasolini is interested in tying the two together to show what he considered the evil of "normal" culture.
It would be difficult to call this film truly pornographic; it makes sex look evil and septic. Someone looking for some SM leather romp will be very surprised. This is the real essence of De Sade(and a view he was not advocating but describing, mostly)--people reduced, basically, to pigs for slaughter.
Having freedom dangled in their face if they eat shit first, only to have it snatched away right after. All for the pleasure of a bunch of upper-class bastards.
One can look at one's place in the work world and wonder how, in principle, the average person's role in life is much different. Except in the actual things one has to do.
In a world where the Yugoslavian Rape Camps have existed, however, an attack like this on that brutal part of human nature has a valuable place in aesthetic discourse. This is an image of that brutality at the base of everyone--that should be controlled, not indulged, and an image of the toilet/abbatoir the world becomes when our worst selves are unleashed.
And fortunately, nobody has to make it again. It is a pure, unforgettable nightmare, and for all its clumsinesses and heavy-handedness, it fits in the progression of Pasolini's worldview up to that time, as misanthropic and heterophobic as that image is.
This occupies a place that needs filling, but only a very small part one doesn't always want to see, nor should one, necessarily. Nevertheless, worth one look. That part of us should be understood. Unseen it begets monsters, like this film, say...
___________________
Labels: 1970s, authoritarian, fascists, film, horror, italy, my comics, my influences, pasolini, satire, smut
¶ Saturday, November 17, 2012 0 Comments
Just Go Away, Mitt
Has there ever been a presidential candidate who whined so much, and so soon, after he lost? His "gracious concession speech"--what a laugh, and how quickly he undid that. After almost salvaging his rep(whatever that is) with that, following a loss for which he only had his own stupid mouth and incompetent campaign to blame, Mitt Romney just can't stop complaining to anyone who will listen that anything but him was responsible for his loss. And not stuff like this. (and this is just SOME of it)
No, it was because Obama bribed voters. It was because voters want "stuff." (you know, like a government that actually meets their needs and runs even a little bit properly, and a president who doesn't constantly call the US a "company") It was because the bad old media made them go through so many debates that one couldn't help but notice how terrible each GOP candidate was; that is his latest whine.
Oh, not just him, Mitt.
Mittens, has it occurred to you that you ran a terrible campaign, and that you're a douchebag? Has it occurred to you that the voters cannot actually be bought, and that no amount of ad money can polish a turd? Has it occurred to you that we just didn't want you as president?
Most losers have the sense to go away at least for a little while after such humiliation, but not you, oh no, because this is the first time in your whole life you were denied something you wanted. Your entitled attitude was obvious throughout the race, in your impatience at having to actually campaign and debate. You seemed to think that you had been named to the post already and you seemed confused that there was more to becoming president than simply saying you wanted the position. You had no vision, no plan, and no tactical intelligence. You and your campaign kept letting loose with the stupidest statements of cynicism(the "etch-a-sketch" line was only a preview of more giving-away-the-game to come). It wasn't even like you couldn't fool the voters; you didn't even know how. Not once did you give anyone any reason that you should replace Obama, apart that you were white and not him. And best of all, you refused to see it coming. You ignored the real polls and preferred to only look at ones that told you what you wanted to hear, and to listen only to Fox--who in fact do better if Obama is in power rather than a GOP president because otherwise where will the GOP base's resentment that drives the ratings of their political pornography come from?
It's not a puzzlement that you lost. What is a puzzlement is how you ever got as far as you did in the first place. We rejected you. Complaining won't change anything. Suck it up, Mitt, and be a man. Even the GOP is disgusted with you and are trying their best to forget you. I hate to repeat myself, but:
The one and only reason anyone wants to listen to you now is to laugh at you more, Romney. But to be honest, we're just tired of you and the rest of us would like to get on with our lives, so just go away. No one, and I mean NO ONE, wants to hear you or see you again.
___________________
Has there ever been a presidential candidate who whined so much, and so soon, after he lost? His "gracious concession speech"--what a laugh, and how quickly he undid that. After almost salvaging his rep(whatever that is) with that, following a loss for which he only had his own stupid mouth and incompetent campaign to blame, Mitt Romney just can't stop complaining to anyone who will listen that anything but him was responsible for his loss. And not stuff like this. (and this is just SOME of it)
No, it was because Obama bribed voters. It was because voters want "stuff." (you know, like a government that actually meets their needs and runs even a little bit properly, and a president who doesn't constantly call the US a "company") It was because the bad old media made them go through so many debates that one couldn't help but notice how terrible each GOP candidate was; that is his latest whine.
"We had 20 Republican debates, that was absolutely nuts," he said. "It opened us up to gaffes and to material that could be used against us in the general, and we were fighting these debates for a year, and the incumbent president just sat back and laughed."
Oh, not just him, Mitt.
Mittens, has it occurred to you that you ran a terrible campaign, and that you're a douchebag? Has it occurred to you that the voters cannot actually be bought, and that no amount of ad money can polish a turd? Has it occurred to you that we just didn't want you as president?
Most losers have the sense to go away at least for a little while after such humiliation, but not you, oh no, because this is the first time in your whole life you were denied something you wanted. Your entitled attitude was obvious throughout the race, in your impatience at having to actually campaign and debate. You seemed to think that you had been named to the post already and you seemed confused that there was more to becoming president than simply saying you wanted the position. You had no vision, no plan, and no tactical intelligence. You and your campaign kept letting loose with the stupidest statements of cynicism(the "etch-a-sketch" line was only a preview of more giving-away-the-game to come). It wasn't even like you couldn't fool the voters; you didn't even know how. Not once did you give anyone any reason that you should replace Obama, apart that you were white and not him. And best of all, you refused to see it coming. You ignored the real polls and preferred to only look at ones that told you what you wanted to hear, and to listen only to Fox--who in fact do better if Obama is in power rather than a GOP president because otherwise where will the GOP base's resentment that drives the ratings of their political pornography come from?
It's not a puzzlement that you lost. What is a puzzlement is how you ever got as far as you did in the first place. We rejected you. Complaining won't change anything. Suck it up, Mitt, and be a man. Even the GOP is disgusted with you and are trying their best to forget you. I hate to repeat myself, but:
The one and only reason anyone wants to listen to you now is to laugh at you more, Romney. But to be honest, we're just tired of you and the rest of us would like to get on with our lives, so just go away. No one, and I mean NO ONE, wants to hear you or see you again.
___________________
Labels: bad ideas, bastards, election 2012, HA ha, obama, right wing
¶ Saturday, November 17, 2012 0 Comments
12 November 2012
Is It Our Job To Be Nice to the GOP Now?
SLATE says yes. SLATE thinks we should be magnanimous to the Republicans and sympathetic to the loss they brought upon themselves. That we should not gloat after years of psychological abuse and stalling of national progress because of them.
Well, fuck that, is what I say.
Seriously, it's not our job to suddenly be sympathetic to people who spent every minute of every day saying how much they hated us and looked forward to fucking up our lives, who called us either damned, traitors or parasites, and who deluded themselves they were winning when they were not. These are scum, these are villains, they are beneath contempt, and they richly earned each sneer that goes their way as they crawl back under the earth like the cold, spineless worms they are.
Fuck them.
Because our gloating is not even a tenth as bad as what they said, straight out, they planned to do to all of us had they won. They should feel lucky as hell that we are not them. If they can't deal with a bit of gloating, who cares? Who cares how Republicans feel? They don't care how any of us feel. It's not us that hung empty chairs in our yards. Frankly, in my opinion these people deserve no part in governance or political discourse at all till they grow up and cease being an engine that runs solely on hate and fear. And they certainly have earned no respect.
___________________
SLATE says yes. SLATE thinks we should be magnanimous to the Republicans and sympathetic to the loss they brought upon themselves. That we should not gloat after years of psychological abuse and stalling of national progress because of them.
Well, fuck that, is what I say.
Seriously, it's not our job to suddenly be sympathetic to people who spent every minute of every day saying how much they hated us and looked forward to fucking up our lives, who called us either damned, traitors or parasites, and who deluded themselves they were winning when they were not. These are scum, these are villains, they are beneath contempt, and they richly earned each sneer that goes their way as they crawl back under the earth like the cold, spineless worms they are.
Fuck them.
Because our gloating is not even a tenth as bad as what they said, straight out, they planned to do to all of us had they won. They should feel lucky as hell that we are not them. If they can't deal with a bit of gloating, who cares? Who cares how Republicans feel? They don't care how any of us feel. It's not us that hung empty chairs in our yards. Frankly, in my opinion these people deserve no part in governance or political discourse at all till they grow up and cease being an engine that runs solely on hate and fear. And they certainly have earned no respect.
___________________
Labels: election 2012, HA ha, obama, right wing
¶ Monday, November 12, 2012 0 Comments
11 November 2012
New Vladrushka Sketch: Fixations 2 (NSFW)
New sketch also featuring Berlin, to be later inked and colored. Click image to expand.
___________________
New sketch also featuring Berlin, to be later inked and colored. Click image to expand.
___________________
Labels: my art, my comics, smut, vladrushka
¶ Sunday, November 11, 2012 0 Comments
09 November 2012
Rout of the Rapublican Rape Boys
No one who campaigned on the strange Republican pro-rape platform won. Except Paul Ryan, who did, sadly, win his House race, as he hedged his bets in this election. But every single other one lost.
___________________
No one who campaigned on the strange Republican pro-rape platform won. Except Paul Ryan, who did, sadly, win his House race, as he hedged his bets in this election. But every single other one lost.
___________________
Labels: bastards, election 2012, HA ha, right wing
¶ Friday, November 09, 2012 0 Comments
04 November 2012
Bob Roberts (Robbins, 1992)
Vote on Tuesday and ruin Mitt Romney's holidays. And now, this to remind you why. Amazing how little changed in 20 years..
___________________
Vote on Tuesday and ruin Mitt Romney's holidays. And now, this to remind you why. Amazing how little changed in 20 years..
___________________
Labels: election 2012, film, music, right wing, satire
¶ Sunday, November 04, 2012 0 Comments
02 November 2012
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Neame, 1969)
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing that they like.
___________________
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing that they like.
___________________
Labels: 1960s, education, fascists, film, my influences, scotland, women
¶ Friday, November 02, 2012 0 Comments
Exclusive News Update For Star Wars Fans!
Ready?
YOU'RE 40.
___________________
Ready?
YOU'RE 40.
___________________
Labels: bad ideas, capitalism, film, MAKE IT STOP, science fiction
¶ Friday, November 02, 2012 0 Comments
