1. Guinness Extra
Stout Ice Cream Float
Use vanilla ice cream,
and any variety of Guinness' dark beer (I find Extra Stout works best).
Make sure the beer is chilled. This is unexpectedly fantastic! I find a
dash of cinnamon on top is nice as well. I have also tried this experiment
with coffee ice cream (did not work)... and I "accidentally" tried it with
mint chocolate chip ice cream and, although the results were debatable
- it wasn't awful!
2. Popcorn Goober
Anchovy Surprise
I do not even want
to tell you what was going on the night I discovered this. Prepare to make
popcorn the old-fashioned way (in a large pot with a lid and oil in the
bottom, on the stove). Put good quality olive oil in the bottom of the
pot. Open a tin of good anchovies packed in olive oil, squeeze all of the
oil from the tin and mix it in with the olive oil in the pot that you are
going to pop the popcorn with (squeeze as much oil out of the tin as you
can, so as to make the anchovies as dry as possible). Take the anchovies
out and dice them up into small pieces with a knife, put them aside. Pop
the popcorn. Do NOT add salt! Have one or two boxes of Goobers peanut chocolate
candy at the ready. When the popcorn is done and still hot, put the Goobers
in the pot with the popcorn, close the lid and carefully shake it up so
them mix all around and get melted. Then take the diced anchovies and put
them in, shake again. Eat immediately. Note: have ChapStick at the ready.
Oh, also: do not substitute Raisinettes for the Goobers. The chocolate
melts off the rasins and, along with the sharp taste and stringy texture
of the anchovies... you slowly get the creepy feeling that you are eating
popcorn that is infested with roaches. Maybe then you could change the
name of the snack to "Popcorn Kafka Surprise."
3. The Foie Gras
Big Mac
For those that don't
know, foie gras is pate made from the engorged livers of ducks and geese
that have been forced fed with giant hose machines at PETA-enraging, mass
animal torture farms in France - where this product is considered a national
pride. Many people are, of course, familiar with McDonald's Big Macs and
the weirdly similar American pride associated with this "hamburger sandwich."
These two national
pride-foods are at ultimate odds with each other on every level imaginable!
But together - they are the very essence of ying and yang, the ultimate
odd couple!
Make sure the Big Mac
is fresh and hot, and pre-chill the foie gras in your fridge beforehand
(this warm and cold contrast, you'll find, is key). Also: when buying foie
gras, it's important not to gamble with poor or even average quality product
- only use the best foie gras will do! Gob the foie gras very thickly between
the top layer of meat and top bun on the Big Mac. Foie gras is off-putting
the first time you try it, but after you eat it you instantly start craving
more because your nervous system and brain instantly connect to it's very,
very high fat content. This is key! The instant gratification of the fatty
Big Mac taste compliments the oddly bitter, but ecstatically fatty (and
mostly mental) after-taste of the foie gras. It's like a high/low-brow,
one-two punch! I don't know why they don't serve this brilliant, class-defying,
food combination at the McDonald's in Paris! If they started to, you know
the headlines in the french papers the next day would read: "Today,
We Are All Americans."
Oh and of course: do
not eat a foie gras Big Mac with fries and a Coke! I suggest a fine wine
perhaps.
4. Real Meat Products
Mixed With Vegetarian Faux-Meat Products (in the same dish)
My husband Jim Krewson
turned me onto this, and he is a skilled expert at it. In a sandwich, use
Amy's brand tofurkey slices, alternately layered with slices of the real
deal from Oscar Meyer. Make a spaghetti sauce with meatballs from Jimmy
Dean sausage along with meatballs made from Gimme Lean vegetarian fake
sausage. Can you tell which is which? Turn dinner time into a politically-loaded,
baffling ordeal!
5. Crest Peppermint,
Cinnamon or Strong Mint toothpaste on a Saltine Cracker
I can't believe how
good this is! These new Crest flavors of toothpaste are un-real - like
brushing your teeth with an ice cream sundae. I also tried this on Wheat
Thins, and other whole grain crackers - but it wasn't the same. It did
work well spread thinly between two slices of white bread (white flour
seems to be the key), but oddly did not work spread on a plain bagel. Go
figure. You know, I once read a news story about two women who were stranded
on a boat off the coast of Florida, and they survived four days on nothing
but a tube of toothpaste and a half bottle of flat, warm champagne. The
warm champagne sounds gross to me... but I now know I could survive on
toothpaste in a life-threatening situation.
6. Burned Beets
Take some olive oil
(good quality) and then take beets that have been sliced relatively thin
(in sticks or disc shapes) and fry them in the oil until they are burned.
Like house-fire, black-as-coal burned. Then take them out, let them cool,
sprinkle a little salt on them, and eat them. Something about burning the
beets compounds and carmalizes their sugar content in a really alien way.
It ends up tasting like some kind of post-apocalyptic, super candy - but
still has a weird, earthy taste. Really odd, weirdly addictive, also possibly
cancer-causing because of all the burned-ness.
7. Wise Brand
Cheez Doodles (by themselves)
One of the most perfectly
realized modern food products ever concocted! These rorschach-like globs
of fried dough covered in cheese powder come in a bright blue and yellow
plastic bag that has a clear window from which you can experience their
blinding hue: an unearthly plutonium orange that almost seems to vibrate.
Their nuclear visual intensity may seer your retinas, but their taste (cathartic,
visceral, mink-like, concentrated velvet cheese powder) and unique, collapsing
texture (the oral equivalant of popping bubble wrap) will make the nerve
endings that connect your tongue to your brain feel like they've just found
a million dollars in the street, and make your tongue glow with happiness
(note: you may experience bleeding gums afterwards). After eating them,
you'll feel cool, smart, and sexy - like the first few months of regular
heroin or crystal meth use. No I'm not kidding, they're that good. You
have no idea the desperate lengths I've gone to to track these down when
my local bodega was out. Price: only 99 cents for a bag conveniently designed
to the size of the average human stomach. Do not confuse the Wise brand
with similarly-packaged knock offs by Utz, etc., these imitations are of
very poor quality (even the Cheetos brand is laughably weak in comparison...
and for $3.49? Stupid!). Also: Cheez Doodles are also fantastic when spread
on, and mixed with, creamy white elements: vanilla ice cream (yes!), cream
cheese, etc. I have not tried them with milk poured over them in a bowl
(like cereal) yet, but plan to.
8. Crushed Peanuts
With La Salle Dulce De Leche Ice Cream
Two 50 cent bags of
salted peanuts, crushed up with a hammer and then sprinkled/mixed in with
La Salle brand Dulce De Leche flavor ice cream. La Salle is a fantastically
deliscious, relatively unknown (and inexpensive!) ice cream brand
for sale only in Spanish-oriented markets. Their Dulce De Leche flavor
is mindblowing, and eating it with the crushed peanuts is so fantastically
good, you'll feel like you're doing something illegal. Also: you must not
show restraint when eating this combination, or slow down to "savor" it
- it should be inhaled as quickly as your inner child wants to (the abundance
of caramelized milk, chocolate and crushed peanuts seems to prevent the
onset of an ice cream headache). eat this without holding back, and with
no sense of decency. Think of Jackson Pollock's painting style while eating.
9. The Pasta With
Pesto Sauce at Downtown Cipriani's in Manhattan
What was I doing at
Cipriani's? I don't know! I've had several things on the menu there, but
nothing compares to their pasta with pesto sauce (although it's hardly
their specialty)!
It is served on a big
white plate in orb-form, swirled in a blobby sphere (softball-sized) around
a fork which sticks out of the top like a caramel apple. When I saw it
I thought it looked a little dissapointing, but after I unravelled it and
took one bite, I immediately hunched over my plate and devoured the whole
thing uncontrollably like a wild primate (which will get you noticed at
a place like Cipriani's). Who knew pasta with pesto could actually taste
like a plant? Well whaddya know... pesto is a plant! Of course now all
other variations of pasta with pesto are forever ruined for me. When eating
this, I began to get a hint of why some people only believe in the finer
things in life... but the feeling didn't last, because...
10. The Aroma
of Human Ass and Cigarettes
This one is not a food,
but an odor: it's the smell on your finger tips after scratching your ass
and also smoking cigarettes. I discovered this one steamy summer night
while sitting on the couch watching television and smoking Marlboro 100s.
I had just taken a shower that evening, but I guess I had a little jock
itch or something... anyway, the musky smell under my fingernails from
the repeated scratching, and that permanent smell of tabbaco that collects
on your hands after smoking a lot... I dunno, there was something about
the two combined together that was really intoxicating. When I sniffed
my fingers, I couldn't believe how good it smelled! I thought; "Wow! Someone
should make a cologne out of this! I'd buy it!" But it didn't stop there,
right there in the flickering blue light of the TV in the darkened room,
I quickly flew into a pheromone/tobacco-induced hypnotic frenzy... I kept
scratching my ass more and more and smoking cigarette after cigarette...
then stopping to vigorously inhale while my fingertips were practically
jammed up my nostrils. I almost reverted into an animal state. What an
intoxicating aroma! Then I started licking my fingers! OK I'll stop the
story here...
Mark
Allen's Top Five for 12/14/05:
1. My tough-love
review of Ang Lee's sweet and bleak Brokeback Mountain - (warning:
tons of spoilers)
First of all, within
the capacity of what I think the film is (simple in it's seductive sweetness,
and way-multifaceted in it's bleakness) I must say I found it very enjoyable
(I loved watching it!), but the experience of viewing the picture
was narrow in many ways.
Fussed-over and coiffed
even in its gritty moments, the film is oddly fairy tale-like throughout...
despite its almost sickeningly blighted ending. On the film's surface it
is picturesque, poetic, dreamy, slow and subtle. Skilled director Ang Lee
casts the rugged wilderness of Wyoming as a gorgeous, ever-turning Marlboro
ad kaleidoscope - his take on the beauty of nature would have made Andy
Warhol blush. Fitting, because at it's sad, sweet heart, the story being
celebrated in the media as "new" and "shocking" - is only so within it's
own slim mainstream pop culture bandwidth. The story's two main characters,
Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) play cowboys
who take a job herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming during 1963.
The two fall into a gay relationship on the isolated mountain, and despite
one living in Wyoming and one living in Texas, maintain the relationship
for over two decades, using the mountain for an ongoing several-a-year
rendezvous spot where they can see each other in blissful secret, away
from the people and events that have developed in their own lives over
that time.
Sound romantic? Heavenly
so. Which is why Ennis and Jack almost seem like angels, or ghosts. The
two main protagonists, despite one fantastic performance and one debatable
one, seem like fauxhemian robots in a lot of ways.
It makes sense seeing
as how the entire logic and energy of the film is (and forever will be)
enslaved by the grandly bland-ing tradition of Hollywood films that are
disciplined in anticipation for an Oscar and Golden Globe vortex parade.
Remember how BOYS DON'T CRY ('99) swept the Oscars? Remember the film?
No, really... can you remember it? I find this realization regrettable
about BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, because I genuinely enjoyed the picture, and
was sincerely rooting for it (for many reasons) when I was first steamrolled
by it's media hype (over two years ago!) - I just wish the end product
had turned out as less of a pose.
Will BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
forever be branded by the garish spotlight already overcrowded by skull-crushingly
dumb product like WILL AND GRACE, QUEER AS FOLK, or QUEER EYE FOR
THE STRAIGHT GUY? Not exactly. Ang Lee's film is in the same solar system
as those media-washed nightmares - just on a further planet (FYI: Gus Van
Sant's MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO ['91] is not even in that same universe...
and John Schlesinger's MIDNIGHT COWBOY ['69] is in another dimension altogether).
Speaking of space,
you know that weird logic in films where two characters will be having
a conversation as they walk through a setting, and one will ask another
one about something, and the other character will be answering the question
posed, but the two characters have obviously walked a great distance, like
all the way from the exit of a cafe to the entrance of a park... and it
seems like they held a pause in their conversation just so they could be
in another interesting setting for the director to cut to? Well, that happens
a lot in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - except instead of settings, whole decades
seem to pass before Ennis answers Jack's questions about how best to deal
with their relationship. While watching the film, one gets the idea that
the two men never say anything to each other, or discuss anything at all
amongst themselves, all those years the camera was not on them.
Does it really take twenty-five years for them to dramatically confront
one another about having to always escape to the mountain, and the status
of their secret relationship (in a powerful scene near the film's end)?
This of course keeps things simple, but ends up giving a lot of the film
a high-school-play feel.
The screenplay was
adapted from a short story by Annie Proulx that originally appeared in
The
New Yorker magazine, and within that context it was probably blissful.
But on the grand, all-seeing-eye scale of a full-length motion picture,
which simultaneously enlarges and flattens fiction... Proulx's story suffers
from improbability that you wonder about later. Is it cynical to think
that two people will still feel so strongly for each other after twenty-five
year's long time... with so much happening in their own lives, and in having
to see each other in such a hassling arrangement over and over and over,
month after month, year after year? Also, Ennis and Jack meet in the 1960s
and hold a hidden gay relationship all the way up to the 1980s, keeping
hush hush the whole time. But were they even aware of the changing culture
around them at all? It's like the two characters were inside a time machine
that was whizzing them throughout the decades that frame the film's timeline,
so the outside world (and 1/4 of a century) was a blur that affected them
in no way. An excellent adventure? Probably not, but then again the culture
at large within the reality of the film doesn't affect Ennis and Jack because
Lee chooses to never show it (to them). And of course I'm getting carried
away; whatever structure a director creates in order to diorama a story
they want to tell is fine, if it works... and for the story he wanted to
get across here - it certainly functions. And changes in the culture outside
of their "secret" are touched upon in a few subtle ways: in the beginning
of the film, passage to Brokeback Mountain is totally remote and removed
from society and prying eyes, accessible only by a prickly journey with
a sure-footed mule. But by film's end, Ennis and Jack are able to drive
their trucks literally right up to their usual camping spot, via an obviously
well-traveled dirt road.
Heath Ledger's portrayal
of Ennis Del Mar is that of a leathery, simple farm-bot with a squinty
drawl and sasquatch gait - which he enacts beautifully. Reminding me (to
death) of the exact types of men I grew up around during my adolescence
in Texas (yes I know this is Wyoming), you must trust me when I tell you
he gets every nuance spot-on. The scene of Ledger automatically putting
his thumbs in his jean pockets at an empty country western bar and starting
a typical plywood-style dance-sway when a girl drags him onto the floor
had me howling with nostalgic laughter (especially when contrasted against
the twirling, laughing, sex-ritual bounce of his female partner). This
casual cardboard cut-out dance style is reserved only for the most self-conscious
he-men in country dance bars - and is exactly how Ledger's character would
have unconsciously handled the situation. Ledger has countless great scenes,
but they were so grizzly real to me while watching the film that it's almost
painful to write about them now.
Unfortunately, Ledger's
great performance casts a shadow over Jake Gyllenhaal's earnest but twee
inhabitation of a similar role, a shadow from which Gyllenhaal can occasionally
shine out of using his anime-like large cartoon eyes. I can't help but
be reminded of the way Seth Green's excellent interpretation of extro-freak
James St. James commanded the camera from a mis-cast lead Macaulay Culkin
in the disappointing PARTY MONSTER ('03), or the way Charlize Theron's
hypnotically sick performance of Aileen Wuornos obliterates Christina Ricci's
blither-blather sidekick role in the half-great MONSTER ('03). Also of
note: Ledger's mannerisms in the film and their obvious similarity to our
sitting president is unquestionable. I doubt the makers of the film meant
it to turn out that way from the start, although along the way I doubt
anyone involved (even Ledger?) thought to tone the similarities down.
Speaking of shadowy
presidents, I have to say found the obvious politicization of hot topics
in the story (which were perhaps inserted into it) to be off-putting and
forced, even tired; heterosexual marriages are dysfunctional! Traditional
family get-togethers are a nightmare! Ohhhh... rise and shine Christian
Family Values America!
The death of Jack is
being called a shameless analogy to Matthew Shepard's martyrdom. Shepard
was also from Wyoming. I weirdly didn't pick this up when I saw the film,
perhaps because I've always eye-rollingly ignored the Shepard legacy out
of semi-disgust. Any simple research into the Shepard case reveals complexities
in the personas and situations of the victim and his perpetrators that
contradict what political activists (on both sides) have tried to turn
the whole thing into. Perhaps why I didn't love BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
in a nutshell?
The over-budgeted fabrication
of most of the greeting-card/home-cataloge-ish settings (particularly in
the second half of the film) is often depressing, especially when your
eye is allowed to wander during many of the long takes. One wonders if
it's just an attempt to not confuse or disturb an audience that the creators
thought didn't want to face ugly images, or if it's just due to lazy, unimaginative
design teams. Gyllenhaal sports a way-obvious fake mustache towards the
end of the film (let's hope the added pot belly is also a prosthetic).
In one scene during a Thanksgiving dinner at Jack's "real" family's house
(set in the 1970s), the characters arranged carefully around the table
are dressed in so many blatantly obvious costume and hair choices, and
the showroom style dining area has so many barefaced 70s-nostalgia props
and furniture pieces placed perfectly around the room, with nary a molecule
out of place (even the turkey looks plastic!), that the whole scenario
begins to resemble a scene from Todd Haynes' lost and excellent SUPERSTAR:
THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY ('87).
Although having condescendingly
"scrooged" my way through most of the above points, I must confess optimistically
that director Lee obviously wasn't afraid to show in his film other complexities
within troublesome life situations; particularly the devastation that secret
affairs can have on established families (and Lee doesn't waste time on
glass menagerie clichés). The claustrophobia and pain imposed on
Alma Beers Del Mar's (Michelle Williams) world is shown no-holds-barred
on screen when she first learns the un-faceable realities of her husband's
clandestine affair. And since Williams' excellent performance only makes
you care about what happens to her... it's heart-wrenching to see her have
to live with the undisclosed arrangement for many more years (when the
two were finally shown getting a divorce, I practically fell out of my
seat cheering for her - '...that's right! Divorce that lying gay creep!')
Perhaps
the down-to-earth Alma should have taken a hint from Jack's wife Lureen
Newsome Twist (Anne Hathaway), who deals with her husband's secret gay
life the only way a Texas power-woman can; practicing reinforced obliviousness
while dripping in diamonds. In a heartbreaking scene where Lureen is telling
Ennis an obviously made-up story of how her husband died, she's shown reciting
the tall tale over the phone in a bored monotone, perched in a gorgeous
all-white living room, dripping in silver, turquoise and platinum mile-high
hair... any look of emotion on her face obscured by mountains of Mary Kay.
"Nature vs. nurture"
debate thrill-seakers will be either love or loathe the events depicted
leading up to Ennis and Jack's initial domino coital spark. Rather than
an awakening of something deep inside both of them, Lee plays out their
first deflowering as the result of the two men being isolated and bored
for a great length of time, with no women around.
Other moral symbols
are luridly touched upon in obvious manners, yet still work. After Ennis
and Jack's first late-night drunken tryst, Ennis symbolically pays for
his sins by discovering the carcass of a gruesomely eviscerated lamb, slaughtered
by wolves the night before when it should have been kept safe under his
paid night watch. Whether you're rebelling against the laws of structural
society, nature, or man... or just following your heart... something
has to be sacrificed as a result.
Despite it all, did
I take anything away from the film besides the melancholy and pensive mood
it left me in as I walked out of the theater? I learned a great new phrase,
slurred-with-daggers by Ennis and Jack's first boss Joe Aguirre (a deliciously
beady eyed Randy Quaid), who leeringly accuses them of "..stemming the
rose," although strangely I originally had an audial hallucination
and heard it as "thorning the lily" (even better!) I've never
heard this real term, or the imaginary one... and plan on using both repeatedly
in the bedroom with my boyfriend Jim! See? BAREBACK MOUNTAIN
has
strengthened my relationship with my longtime companion!
Speaking of, I found
the initial intimate sexual scenes, hyped and debated widely in the press
as the film was being made, to be incredibly awkward and really not done
very well at all. In their first encounter in the tent, with all the spastic
pushing, slap-punching, violent face-butting and pants-ripping, Ledger
and Gyllenhaal display the intimacy of a pair of drunken paraplegics fighting
over the last belt buckle at a Western Wear closing sale. With the way
these scenes have been pointlessly debated in salivating gay blogs for
their poignancy or daring (nope!), I can't imagine the horrors these images
might have on impressionable gay adolescents anticipating their first dates.
But hey, what's a virgin gay sex experience without Keystone Kops-style
faux-rape anyway?
Beyond that nit-picking,
and in an a much larger sense; the film does have a nice balance. Jack's
initial enthusiasm in looking forward to the life that the two could possibly
have if only Ennis would let go of his fear in the film's first half, is
mirrored at the end with Ennis looking regretfully back on the life the
two could have had if only he had done so.
When Ennis goes to
Jack's childhood home of his own accord to meet his parents after his death,
he finds a spooky, confused old rural couple in a depressingly run-down
farm in the middle of nowhere, obviously at odds with what really happened
to their son. Even more at unease with who Ennis appears to be, Jack's
stubborn, skeleton-like father (Peter McRobbie) refuses Jack's wish for
his ashes to be spread "...on some place called Brokeback Mountain,"
and sternly puts his foot down about the remains being laid on the nearby
family plot. After this is expressed, Jack's kind and reservedly suppressed
mother (Roberta Maxwell), obviously of a different mindset about her son
and who Ennis appears to be, stands at the front door and looks right into
Ennis' eyes (out of view of her husband) and politely intones the usual
"You
come back and see us sometime... you hear now?" with a very poignant,
telling look in her eyes - seeming to suggest that she wants Ennis to return
at a later date and somehow get Jack's ashes from her out of the watch
of her husband, because she wants her son's wishes to be fulfilled. I found
this to be a very subtle, open-ended move in Lee's direction (and Maxwell's
short performance), which was very touching.
Basically, BROKEBACK
MOUNTAIN is a story of loss, and regret - and ultimately of memory and
emotion attached to physical spaces (or times), and the price and value
of escaping to them. Ennis is show at film's end (presumably middle aged)
relatively alone and somewhat broken. He stands in his trailer and is shown
cherishing a jacket Jack wore on their first encounter, with the shirt
Ennis wore underneath (a secret momento he discovered hanging in the bedroom
closet of Jack's family's house), alongside the most recent mountain invite
picture postcard Jack had sent him before he died. Both items are displayed
on the inside of a closet door that, when opened, obscures a window view
of the outside world (a barren, windswept plain). Ennis swears out loud
to keep the upcoming date of what is now the last rendezvous, presumably
to fulfill Jack's wish to deliver his remains to his favorite place in
the world: a safe space Lureen said Jack had once drunkenly described as
"...a
place where the blue birds sing all day and the rivers run with whiskey,"
(mirroring Ennis' criticism of how he thought Jack foolishly saw the mountain
hideaway during an argument years before), where "...one could be so
at peace that one could sleep while still standing standing up, just like
a horse does," a place that, in his mind, Jack was ultimately resigned
to accept as paradise; a dreamy fantasy world removed from the worrisome
responsibilities of heterosexual families, children, and even work - exactly
how the radical right has been trying to portray the gay lifestyle for
eons now.
"They have mixed and fixed
everything in my life..."
2. Factum Non
Fabula: Julie Andrews / Adolf Hitler - Bastards & Blood
Can the mere appearance
of schizophrenic tendencies in an individual be endearing? Can an aura
of scariness in a person ever be considered sweet? The fact that these
questions don't really need to be asked does not erase the fact that I
ponder them daily... preferably from a distance. The value of human nuttiness
and the value of the internet are two great tastes that go great together.
The experience of dipping into other people's inner worlds is a sport that
thrives on the internet... with it's endless, almost zoo-like hallways
of human exhibits held safely behind cathode-ray glass walls... allowing
one to privately sift through and gawk at a leisurely pace without the
aid of a tour guide.
Ahhh... World Wide
Web, you are such a sweet and endless pie... what's that? Why yes, I would
love another crunchy slice of you! Why, thank you so much... mmmm... oh
wait, what are you doing? Put down that gun! OH MY GOD NO!!!
Anyway, in the grand
and esteemed tradition of web masterpieces like Timecube,
American
Spy Cow, Toothphone,
Mucus
Fat, Santa = SATAN?!,
Baron
Von Volsung,
George
Dahl, Elizabeth
Brady Cabot Winslow, Francis
E. Dec, and Theodore
Kaczynski... comes Mikko (Michael) Juhani (John) Jack, who is apparently
the first born son of actress Julie Andrews.
Mr. Jack, it appears,
is yet another sibling-of-the-famous oddity. He list a few of his favorite
things in his rather remarkable, rather fascinating, ode-to-mom web page
"Factum Non Fabula: Julie Andrews/Adolf
Hitler - Bastards & Blood," and respectfully gives us a very sweet
slice of his own mind, to ponder and pick at from behind the cathode-ray
glass exhibit wall (which is there for your protection ladies and gentlemen...
please do not tap on the glass).
Rated G
3. Meanwhile,
Back at the Secret Lair of the Confirmed Bachelor...
Thanks much to
reader Coye who sent me the
link to SuperDickery.com, a
growing collection of covers and snippets of pages from the golden age
of comic books (mostly the 40s, 50s and 60s), that can obviously be looked
at very differently today. SuperDickery.com's main gallery page is here
(pick your old-fashioned vice), but of interest is the "Seduction
of the Innocent" section, which milks that good old reliable in super
hero comics: homosexual overtones, for everything it's worth and then some
(examples left and right - click to enlarge). Even the most naive and optimistic
among us cannot deny that by today's standards these examples are shocking.
Intentional or not? Have a look and you'll agree it's hard to tell exactly.
Were these earnest attempts at wholesome comic art in their day, seen only
now as value-corrupting, amoral sleaze because of our society's increasingly
jaded addiction to lurid sensation? Or were these old comics cruel pranks
created by sick perverts with malformed brains who secretly knew exactly
what they were drawing? Far be it from me to reveal their true identity.
I suppose in a day when you couldn't view women's ankles, guys had to get
their thrills the old fashioned way: by drawing Robin "unintentionally"
giving a bank robber a rim
job while tackling him from behind. Kind of makes you wonder how Mike
Diana's Boiled Angel will be looked at decades from now.
"Vision of a world united,
beyond all science knowing!"
4. "On a clear
day you can see... um..."
The Association
of International Glaucoma Societies presented an operatic hymn about
glaucoma in June of 2005 at the Imperial Viennese Glaucoma Ball. Written
and composed by Erik Greve and performed by the lovely soprano MelanieGreve
(above, please squint). You can download an MP3 of the song here,
or hear the song and read the lyrics at the AIGS home page here.
"Hello God, are you
there? It's me Margaret."
5. "A phone that
gives you access to your belief wherever you are..."
Niche marketing heaven:
Ilkone offers the world's first and only Islamic
cell phone, a mobile phone for Muslims that "...gives you access to
your belief wherever you are." Equipped with a 5-times-a-day prayer alarm
reminder and a GPS-enabled compass, users can now easily find the direction
of Mecca. Phone includes the complete Holy Quran (with approved translation
by Al-Azhar), and accesses the voices of Azan of Mecca, Madina and Cairo
from anywhere in the world, as well as appropriate designs on the casing
and screen.
Copyright 2005 Mark Allen
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