How many photos can one book have of a nearly nude fellow intensely pelvic thrusting? Almost 300 in the case of “Sexercises,” the glorious sixties guide to improving your marital relations through a relentless series of thrusts and squats, each given its own specific taxonomy, such as the “Front Laying, Resting Weight on Forearms, Backwards Downwards Pelvic Thrust.” Also, there’s lots of interesting/funny quotes and scans.
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
“Remember that however much you may harbor hermit tendencies, it is impossible to avoid all human associations,” Ethel Cotton writes in one of the 12 booklets that make up her 1960 Course in Conversation — a course in which Cotton commands her students to recite Wordsworth, keep multiple journals, seek out trivia for doling out later, practice the surreptitious guiding of group discussions, and to become citizens of the spoken word no matter how much you hate talking to people.
Here’s lots of her advice. Much of its goofy like this:
“Do not refer to divorce in mixed company if you are unfamiliar with the marital conditions of every member present.”
And then there’s some that should be studied by anyone who ever posts a review to GoodReads or Amazon or whatever:
“In expressing praise or censure of a play or book do not make such remarks as ‘the greatest play ever produced’ or ‘the finest book ever written.’ Such exaggerations are annoying to your hearers. They indicate a limitation of standards of comparison.”
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
Filmmaker Gary Huggins found this 26 minute “industrial” short directed by Robert Altman … at a drive-in flea market in Altman’s hometown of Kansas City. The short, titled “Modern Football,” is work-for-hire apprentice stuff, but it’s still fascinating, occasionally gorgeous, and stamped with Altman’s masterful technique. Huggins being a good guy, the well-preserved 16mm print has been digitized and uploaded for the world’s edification!
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
According to this re-translation of a 1978 Russian article, “The Star War” was the story of Obi-Wan Knob, “Robot Erdva Dedva and fragile robot Trepio,” and “a menagerie of monsters and freaks, which may arise, perhaps, only in a drunken stupor.” And even in this interview Lucas promised to make smaller, personal films!
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
Throughout the 1970s, the editors of FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin would on occasion devote the inside of the back cover to a photograph of some fascinating jerry-rigged contraption cops someplace had seized. These are often terrifying, awesome, and/or ridiculous. Here’s a death Frisbee, a lethal loaf of bread, pen and pencils that kill, and much more.
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
Oh, man, this is terrifying genius design work. Giant teeth, multiple mouths, unsightly hair — “In Masks the Times Proceed: The Works of Make-Up Artist Wolfgang Utz” offers makes grade-A horror out of primitive materials. Now on display in San Francisco.
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
There really were “Dune” coloring books for kid, filled with the visionary/terrifying images David Lynch and company cooked up for his doomed, fascinating movie adaptation. Here’s lots of crazy and scary scans from it, as well as some from a few other ridiculous, wonderful forgotten coloring books.
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
Glenn Beck’s web-site is a masterpiece of stock-photo megalomania. Its poor designers have some 12 photos of Beck to work with, yet on the site’s mainpage they tend to run anywhere from 17 to 20 photos of Beck at a time. Here’s a breakdown of great (dumb) Beck stock-photo weirdness, including the amazing instance of a stock photo of Beck introducing an ad featuring the same stock photo of Beck.
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
Maybe the door-to-door in-person religion isn’t all that up to speed on why people connect online. But a chance to enjoy these five ridiculous photo illustrations are worth hearing a spiel from a proselytizer. Did you know you can social network in an igloo? And that African women text while balancing fruit on their heads?
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
Evangelical author C.S. Lovett wrote crazy books in the 70s like “Jogging WIth Jesus” and “Help Lord, The Devil Wants Me Fat.” Here’s a review of two books of his, “Jogging WIth Jesus” and “Unequally Yoked Wives.” In the latter, he advises Christian wives about how to win their unsaved husbands to Jesus. He proposes “The Nutcracker Technique,” in which wives “squeeze” until their husbands “crack.” Being a bit of a genius crank, Lovett illustrates this with photos of walnuts in the jaws of nutcrackers.
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
In 1970, apocalypse profiteer Salem Kirban published “666,” an end-times novel that anticipates silly junk like “Left Behind.” Words weren’t enough for Kirban, so he whipped up some astonishing photo illustrations: a giant Christ Bot, a jetpacked army, the anti-christ’s ruby laser gun, the destruction of New York City, corpses in the streets, pictaphones, and so much more. Many shots are appropriated news photos — a bizarre example of pre-PhotoShop image manipulation.
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
Lez on Wheels! Hobo Girl! Swap I Must! An illustrated history of “auto-erotic devices”! Book after book of wonderfully lurid pre-hardcore sleaze Arranged into categories like “Ballbusters,” “Catholic Guilt,” “Nurses!” (titles include Hard Doctor and What Ever Happened to Doctor Sex?), and “Campus Hi-Jinks” (School of Desire; Phi Betta Fanny), the Kayo Books stock is something of a timeline charting America’s sexual development — and the Supreme Court’s obscenity rulings.
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
A funny review from Studies in Crap looking at the ridiculous evidence that a self published writer named Stephen Kirk has put together to claim Jesus mentioned Obama in the bible.
Kirk’s argument for why God only makes this clear now through obscure and crazy clues is great. He says “Agatha Christie’s mysteries would likewise have less impact if all the clues were revealed immediately from the start with no mind searching requiring by the audience”
God = Agatha Christie!
View Link [blogs.sfweekly.com]
Early animal photography from a 1901 nature magazine. Lots of funny, horrifying captions equating apes and gorillas with native Africans, but also lots of memorable pix of beautiful animals taken right before Teddy Roosevelt or whoever shot them. From Village Voice’s Studies in Crao
View Link [blogs.villagevoice.com]
In ’73 King Features put lovable ass-kicking sailor Popeye in a comic book created to teach kids about careers in home economics. The result is sad, sad, sad, and very funny. Lots of scans and quotes!
View Link [blogs.laweekly.com]
Lots and lots of L.A. crazy with shots of bizarre and awful thrift and antique shop paintings ranging from the quasi professional (the Little Racal’s prodigiously breasted nude) to the achingly amateur (the painting of the Arc de Triumph in a field of blood flowers.)
View Link [blogs.laweekly.com]
Scans and quotes from an amazing ’69 strokebook that pretended to be a medical guide to ladies’ plumbing for confused men. (Images are censored with original poster’s Colorform collection!) the laws at the time wouldn’t allow the distribution of “obscene” images unless they had some social value. That means the dirty pictures had to be balanced with fake educational information, and since nobody was ever expected to actually read this stuff, it’s full of bizarre claims and typos! Fascinating stuff.
View Link [blogs.pitch.com]
From Studies in Crap: Scans of old body building magazine Young Physique, it was a gay mag before we had names for such things. Male models in funny poses but also posed with a sweet softness now gone from the muscle culture. Amazing stuff, especially the silly ways the photographers come up with to cover junk!
View Link [blogs.villagevoice.com]
Funny scans from biblical coloring books. Jonah writhes around on the beach like madonna in the Cherish video and two camels play Human (or Camel) Centipede. Funny, bizarre, Studies in Crap.
View Link [blogs.pitch.com]
Xeni Jardin is discussing.
Xeni Jardin 1:16 pm on 08/19/2010 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Nice. Blogging!