The Dark Knight Working: Alchemy is a Joker

The always-revelatory Inside the Cosmic Cube is looking into the alchemical origins of the Joker. I'd just like to add that the Joker's original incarnation as the Red Hood reminds me of the Rubeo from Alchemical iconography...

The Dark Knight Working: Killing Joker

Jack Nicholson warned Heath Ledger on 'Joker' role

BY JOE NEUMAIER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, January 24th 2008, 3:18 AM

Heath Ledger thought landing the demanding role of the Joker was a dream come true - but now some think it was a nightmare that led to his tragic death.

Jack Nicholson, who played the Joker in 1989 - and who was furious he wasn't consulted about the creepy role - offered a cryptic comment when told Ledger was dead.

Dream of Californication

My favorite new show, Californication, features none other than Fox Mulder himself playing a sex-addicted writer trying to resurrect his career. 

Killing Joker

The Mystery deepens to untold levels. Looking at the Dark Knight trailer, it's so painfully obvious that someone was looking very carefully at Killing Joke's video "Hosannas From the Basements of Hell." 

The Eternals: Pyramid Power

Radiohead's 2001 classic "The Pyramid Song"- 

the future Atlantis in a year of Revelation. 

 

My two biggest influences from the pop art world are Jack Kirby and Chris Carter. 

Not so much stylistic influences that I want to emulate, but artists who completely changed the filters on my life-lens. And both of whom deeply explored Astronaut Theology (aka "Ancient Astronaut Theory") to the point that it's a fair bet that they believed in it. So what does that say about me? 

The Dark Knight Working: Up From the Underworld

Heath Ledger's untimely death has people talking about the various symbols that are always put into play from events like this. Adam is digging into the the portents that no one paid attention to in his new piece, "This Joke is Not Funny."

Sync Log: Bees

Last night (meaning Monday night) I dreamed my wife and I were searching for something in the forest. We were ascending a hill, being careful to keep on the flagstones because our feet were bare. But we dislodged one of the stones and underneath was a bee hive. 

The bees started swarming but were very tiny and their stings didn't hurt much. Still, it was a swarm of frigging bees. In the dream I quoted a classic line from Bully, exclaiming "Nature sucks!"

I wake up, fix my coffee, open up my email and this is waiting for me, spam for Diego's Buzzing Bee Adventure...



I wonder if my exclamation was inspired by the recent, untimely death of Brad Renfro...

The Leprechaun

One of my biggest influences is Graham Hancock, the pioneering British journalist and explorer. In my opinion, Hancock is a giant of our times and his influence on popular culture is as huge as it is unacknowledged.

 

ClownShow 2008: Like a Puddle of Sick

I think leftover fishguts rotting beneath the dinner table would be less nauseating than this despicable parade of shills. It's good to see that some people are starting to wake up to just how risible these self-appointed pundits are. Their canned homilies, their ridiculous predictions, their slavish adherence to conventional wisdom are all starting to lose their satanic spell over thinking human beings.

Don't Take My Word for It...

Sometimes there is a point when the Collective Unconscious answers your incessant knocking at its door.

Mindbomb, Part 3: They Only Come Out at Night

A pack of gluttonous, raccoon-eyed paranoids drunk on consumerism, Calvinism and overstimulation. An expert diagnosis of Bush-era America? Well, that's a bit outside of the Secret Sun's province. 

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Stargate in the Sky

As I mentioned before, Jake picked up the Kirby ball and took it to the semiotic endzone. Not having read the comics as of yet, he may not have been aware that the Madbomb, that infernal mind control weapon of the Anglophile Elite, was devised by the aptly-named Mason Harding.

Fine Art Friday: The Delphic Oracle

In honor of the Siren.

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Iran, the CIA and the Lord of Light

Given Kirby's long history of prescience and myth-making, it was inevitable that those in the cloak-and-dagger community would eventually catch on to him. And when that day came it would be only natural that the collision would be a symbolically-charged as you could possibly imagine.

Science: "All Children Hate Clowns"

You heard it here first on the Secret Sun, now Science proves it: Kids hate clowns.

Money quote: "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable."

Please Give Me a Time Machine

Cocteau Twins and The Smiths on back to back nights in a tiny club in Manhattan? Are you KIDDING me?

A door opened in 1984- everyone felt it. There were incredible energies flying around in the air above our heads. It was so brief and fleeting- but absolutely exhilarating.

No one realized it at the time, but it was actually the end of a cycle when everyone thought it was the beginning. 

But that's the Janus Point- the moments in time when the revolving door turns and all sorts of interesting things slip in before it closes again. The aftershocks lasted for a while longer, but sloppy seconds are never fun. 

It was like that in 1979, the real start of the 80's. After that, 1980 itself was a major letdown in comparison.

Hollywood is Out of Ideas, Part 3,193

Diane Lane continues her slide back towards the B list with a new 'thriller' whose plot is stolen outright from an old Millennium episode called 'The Mikado'.

The Siren, Part 3: Sea, Swallow Me

Smitten by her luminescent interpretation of his father's song, Jeff Buckley sought out Elizabeth Fraser while he was working on his debut LP for Columbia Records, Grace. Sometime around 1994, he and Fraser began a passionate, whirlwind affair.

Fire Festivals: Art is the Door

I posted this before, but you need to realize that this is how it all works. You start with this...

And it becomes this...

This is how these things manifest themselves into our reality. Things that few people notice at the time resonate with the motivated sensitives who use that inspiration to redefine the culture. Perhaps a motivated sensitive saw that music video and a process began that lead to a massive, annual Beltane celebration in the heart of Edinburgh.

Or this: Following a 1986 revival showing in San Francisco of the obscure British film, The Wicker Man becomes "Burning Man" and comes to define the lives of tens of thousands of people. In the end, there's only one criteria for the worth of an idea- its resonance.

I feel extremely fortunate to have been alive at a time when so many powerful forces were manifesting practically unnoticed into this reality through Art. There was a period during the early-to-mid 80's when all of this weirdness was slipping into this world and building itself a home.

The reason I fixate on the things I do is that they are ripe to the point of bursting with resonance and meaning.

The Siren, Part 1: Swim to Me

And so it began. With a band name taken from Hamlet- the Shakespeare Company's most portentious drama- and a song written by a doomed, modern day Celtic bard in honor of the great destroyer of men, the Eternal Drama found a new, real-world expression in the voice of Elizabeth Fraser, the not-quite-human Scottish thrush who would enchant not only David Lynch, but also the son of the song's composer. 

Not-Quite-Human: The Millennium Show

This song was first performed by Elizabeth Fraser with Peter Gabriel in the Millennium Dome in the year 2000.

In the first stanza, Elizabeth sings:

I looked up at the tallest building
Felt it falling down
I could feel my balance shifting
Everything was moving around
These streets so fixed and solid
A shimmering haze
And everything that I relied on disappeared

Where there's fire, there's smoke...

Chills the Blood, Doesn't He?

The big news this past week was that Tony Baloney was signed on as a pasha for JP Morgan. 

Who Can Turn the World On?

Michael's been analyzing the hidden semiotics in some Mary Tyler Moore graphics. Which made me think of the Process again...

Sync Log: Ladytron

Joe turned me on to this band, whose lyrics are filled with fascinating snippets of deeper meaning. 

Tear My Heart Out

Something is happening in the Collective Unconscious. Walls of separation are coming down. The unbearably potent music of Scotland's Boards of Canada is triggering collective memories, which are rippling across the Internet (which I see at the OuterMind). 

Shocker! Roman History Whitewashed!

Why, whatever shall I do? Moneyed elites give us a watered-down version of history and ferret away Rome's treasures for their personal amusement? Shock, horror! 

Phasing In and Out of Our Reality

Through a quirk in scheduling, I've been spending a lot of my time delving back into the symbols. And it's having a powerful effect on my dreams, which have become extremely huge and vivid.

The Eternals: Astronaut Theology

Note that Claire is wearing a OMAC resonator on her jersey...

In this installment, we will further look into the eerie prescience of Kirby's work, it's further influence on Heroes and a real time synchronicity afoot that no one in the comics press seemed to have noticed...

"I Will Live to Regret This, But..." Dept.

This hyperbolic headline first made me scoff, but after taking my walk on this unseasonably warm winter day I suddenly saw the wisdom in it. 

Secret Cinema: Dog Day Afternoon

While Jake was probably putting the finishing touches on his latest video last Saturday night, the missus and I watched the classic 1975 film, Dog Day Afternoon. 

 I haven't seen the film in, uh, a dog's age, and hadn't remembered it was the first major role of none other than Mr. Millennium himself, Lance Henriksen.

Jack Kirby - Gods, Demons, and Fallen Angels

 

In this interview, Kirby speaks of his adventures exploring the Collective Unconscious and his role in creating the new mythology. 

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Move Over, Nostradamus

Had the attacks in 2001 never happened, September 11 may have been best known as the day George Bush Sr. addressed the US Congress making his case for war against Iraq, who had invaded and occupied the oil duchy known as Kuwait.

Clown Show 2008: Survival Tip

As exciting as the symbolism of the Obama victory in the Iowa Caucus was, the cynical voice inside my head was not stilled. I'm very happy that he won, but he's just one man in a sea of clowns. 

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Down the Rabbit Hole

It seems that nearly every major theme discussed in the more speculative branches of conspiracy research finds a synchronistic antecedent in three obscure Jack Kirby comic books. So many of the thematic strands that we now see bubbling up from the conspiracy underground seem to hover around these books like a Lovecraftian spectre.

Long Overdue: Jack Staff returns

There are so many incredibly talented illustrators in mainstream comics, but so few cartoonists. Tragically, "cartoony" is the worst thing you call an comics artist these days. Paul Grist is one of the intrepid souls who draws superhero stories with an unapologetically cartoon style, reminiscent of some unholy recombination of Bruce Timm and Pat Boyette. 

He's relaunching Jack Staff this month, and here's hoping he inspires other cartoonists to try their hand at genre material. Sadly, the animation and video game industries seem to scoop up all the guys with Paul's chops and we never end up being able to enjoy their work.

Astronaut Theology: Kirby Does Kubrick

Jake asked where to start delving into the weird and wild world of Jack Kirby. It's difficult to say. 

The Telegraph of London Reviews Spandex!

Robert Hudson of the Telegraph gives Spandex a very nice review. Read it here.

Gods, Not Wearing Spandex

double-click to enlarge

Can you name them all?

Song & Album of the Year: 2007

My favorite song of the year is probably pretty obscure to some people, which just shows how pathetic the music industry has become. 

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Silver Star, Heroes and 9/11

This past July, Image Comics released a gorgeous hardcover volume of Jack Kirby's 1983 mini-series Silver Star. Though not one of Kirby's more celebrated works (his drafting skills were beginning to wane by this point), to me it's one of his more fascinating creations. It's also rife with unsettlingly specific 9/11 signifiers that strain the definition of "coincidence."