For those who don’t know it Coney Island is about to get the 42nd Street treatment and everything that’s fun, shabby, sexy and possibly life-threatening will be bleached right the f*** out of it.
The Brooklyn Museum is hosting a retrospective (and memorial) photo exhibit and has started this Flickr pool of Coney Images. Please visit and contribute.
#1. A gallery of vintage condom wrappers from the 1930s-40s with great colorful graphics. I can’t imagine more ephemeral bits of paper. If your grandparents weren’t in such a hurry that they ripped them to shreds (or crumpled them in shame), then the contents of the packet should have moldered and ruined them. Gallery curated by Ethan Persoff, link via Silent Porn Star.
#2. Bookhunter, hard-boiled adventures of library police. A 1970s-set, crime thriller comic about the recovery of a rare tome, stolen from the Oakland Public Library. Loosely based on a real case, the comic is manga-paced with CSI details of book-binding knots and card catalogs. The art is a bit on the crude side but stick with it. Shiga Books, link via Making Light.
#5. Who is N.R. De Mexico? by Fender Tucker: A print article in Paperback Parade #69 on the mysterious pulp novelist who penned the highly sought-after 1951 novel Marijuana Girl (which has been snatched from my claws TWICE now). Purchase an omnibus of De Mexico’s work from Ramble House here.
The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you’ve admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted! Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).
First this great Robert Bonfils skin-diving cover (I love the frame of undulating seaweed and the shorts tanline): Venus of Lesbos by Steve Bell (Newsstand Library 1961).
and then Slim by William Wister Haines (Bantam, 1959). The text of this book isn’t explicitly gay, but come on…
Not sure who the artist was.
Slim was made into the 1937 film Starring Henry Fonda.
Lastly Paul Rader’s fantastic cover for Her Private Hell (Midwood, 1963), featuring a really innovative use of side-boob.
I found this Gift Certificate and ad for a Marilyn Chamber’s endorsed love oil in a 1981 issue of Club Magazine. Marilyn was a former Ivory Snow Girl and star of the classic porno-chic film Beyond the Green Door.
The certificate links to the full ad (NWS) with a Chamber’s testimonial and a run-down of the ingredients.
The Aphrodite Project is designing a high-tech, feature-packed shoe for the use of sex workers.
The shoes feature an alarm system that will send an emergency signal to the police (or a support network), GPS, a customizable video billboard and speakers, plus they’re part of an integrated program that includes access to chatrooms, e-mail and an online calender. These are still in the beta phase and I’m not sure when/if they will make their way to the sore feet of the world’s sex workers.
Also showing were dioramas by–and a short film about–the work of stop-motion animator Michael Sullivan, who turns industrial scraps and Barbie dolls into gigantic and witty robot bacchanals.
Here’s an artist profile and making-of video:
The completed trailer (for the work-in-progress film) was pulled from Youtube. It’s supposedly hosted by Wired here but it’s just load spinning for me. I’d love to find a full version of the video if someone can point me to it. What I saw was incredible and looked like a rusty Bosch painting.
Possibly my favorite exhibit was a terminal that let you search through (at least) dozens of patents for sex apparatus–mostly of the discouraging variety–all with new CAD drawing. Who knew there were so many painful and embarrassing ways to prevent masturbation? I wish MoSex would host some of these on their website.
All in all it was a good time. I had a few complaints though. The first floor of exhibits are layed-out from right to left (which feels backwards). That, paired with the minuscule signage and numbering, led to a lot of crossed paths and blocked views. The “Sex and the Moving Image” exhibit was interestingly installed (with many of the films projected downward onto podiums on the floor) but the room was stifling and if you’ve paid attention to Something Weird’s video releases (or grew up in NYC in the 70s) there’s probably not much you haven’t seen. The most interesting part of this exhibit was the side booths featuring interviews with film-makers, stars and audiences but these were difficult to get to and I gave up quickly.
Also–with their hushed reference, ancient artifacts and smart/well-put together people–I’ve always found museums sexy. But MoSex was just not doing it for me. Maybe it was all the tourists and the awkward giggling or the fact that (since Alice had a stomach flu and stayed home) I was kind a third wheel and felt like a pervert whenever I slipped-up next to another patron to admire a well-designed dildo….something was missing. Maybe they should spray pheromones.
#1. Maureen Johnson, author of Devilish, 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and the (banned in Oklahoma) Bermudez Triangle is guest-blogging at Inside A Dog. She’s hosting an inspired contest asking readers to insert a zombie into otherwise tragically zombieless books. I submitted Remembrance of THINGS Past and Notes from the Underground…Looks like their server is having trouble at the moment (no doubt due to its having been shoved in front of a window to hold off the the relentless dead), so try back later.
#2. Diary of the Dead: Against her better impulses, I convinced Alice to go to last night’s preview screening of the new installment in George Romero’s Dead cycle. This one is a low budget throwback to his indy days and attempts to take on the youtube, blogging generation. It’s uneven, and a bit creaky (as you can probably tell from the MySpace link) but the best moments are blackly funny and inventive. I’m perculating a more complete review of this…
#3. Gospel of the Living Dead by Kim Paffenroth: An analysis of the ethics and theology of Romero’s Dead films, particularly his representations of original sin and his parallels with Dante. The book makes some very interesting points–the fact that zombies are the only movie monster that you don’t envy on some level (since they don’t have any sexy powers) never occurred to me–but perhaps over-emphasizes some plot conveniences into dogma.
Okay enough with the zombies.
#4. Alta-Glamour.com is selling a large collection of cover paintings, pin-up photos, illustrations, and cartoons from vintage men’s paperbacks and magazines (and at very affordable prices). Take Bush’s tax bribe and revitalize the economy in a way he would never approve. REQUEST: the reproductions could be larger.
#5. Publishers’ Bindings Online, 1815-1930 is hosting a huge gallery of decoratively bound hardcover books. Some of these are incredibly stunning and this is a great resource for designers. It will, however, make you very sad about the current state of book production.
The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you’ve admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted! Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).
I just received another nice lot of Tijuana Bibles. These ones found me because of my previous Betty Boop TJ scan so–to keep building the karma–I’m going to post another one.
My favorite of this lot stars Fritzi Ritz, the saucy flapper and parental figure in Ernie Bushmiller’s sublimely dumb, Nancy.
Click on the image to read (NWS).
Though Nancy doesn’t appear in this (thankfully), the technique of having two characters stare over a wall at off-stage action feels like a nod to Bushmiller’s minimalism.
Bob and Betty Cragmore are celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary by returning to the scene of their honeymoon…
to their horror, they find it a blood-soaked landscape plagued by hunger-maddened grizzly bears. Thankfully their Hehr recreational vehicle is near impregnable, and they are well-armed.
from a 1970 issue of Mobile Life. Illustration signature looks like D. (something). Head
#2. Death Photo of War Reporter Pyle Found: 63-years after his death, the first publication of battlefield photo of the remains of Ernie Pyle, one of the best-loved and widely-read correspondents in WWII, Comcast.net News, Associated Press
The purpose of this meme is to give high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you’ve admired during the week. I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 5 high-fives on Friday. Trackbacks, pings, linky widgets, comment links accepted! Visiting fellow High-Fivers is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your High-Fives in others comments (please note if NWS).
Hang Fire Books 