Post-apocalyptic and dystopian sci-fi was all the rage when I was a kid. A lot of it was inspired by the Cold War, but it was also a natural reaction to the malaise of the early stages of American de-industrialization.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
2012 Olympics: London Mascots

For casual readers not familiar with the repeating alien motifs attached to the Olympic Games, here's a nice primer from the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles...
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Sunday Matinee: God Told Me To
Seeing as how we seem to be stuck in an endless tapeloop of the 1970s, today's feature presentation is more timely than ever. Larry Cohen's God Told Me To is one of the great grindhouse/drive-in classics that seems to know a lot more than it's saying out loud.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Rent "The Box" this weekend. Seriously.
Once in a very great while, an artist comes out of nowhere and channels the most ineffably unconscious currents of an age into pop culture artifacts. Often it seems as if these artists are only half-aware of what it is they are channeling. Richard Kelly is one of these.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Psilocybin-Fueled Sci-Fi
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Frank Frazetta, Artist Laureate of the American Id

There's something wild, free and savagely self-confident about Frazetta's artwork, qualities that have been sucked out of our culture by political correctness, corporate team-building, pea-brained paranoia and discount store religion. Frazetta was the poet laureate of untrammeled Id, and his art captured an America at the height of its powers and chronicled the start of its decline.
This is why the cultural elite might embrace a Robert Crumb or even a Jack Kirby, but Frazetta's work is untameable. You can't pretty it up or pretend it's not exactly what is; an face-grabbing immersion into lust and rage, a guiltless celebration of the human machine obeying its most primal impulses.
Indeed, if there's one word that best sums up Frazetta's work, it would be 'tumescent'.
Here's a brief sketch of the man's life and work, taken from Erotic Art Village:
Frazetta was born in Brooklyn in 1928 and showed prodigious talent from a very early age. His kindergarten teachers were amazed that he could draw better than most 10-year olds, and at the age of 8 he began studying in the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts with Italian fine artist Michael Falanga...Despite Frazetta's classical training, his art is not so much Italian Renaissance as Etruscan. There's no time for social or artistic convention - only sex, sorcery and swordplay.At the age of 16 he began doing illustrations for Standard Publishing. That led to work in the comic book industry for several different publishers...
(Frazetta's) Buck Rogers covers gained the attention of Li'l Abner creator Al Capp, who hired Frazetta...They worked together for nine years, after which they had a falling out and Frank reentered the world of regular comic books.
The artist did find work eventually, particularly for men's magazines...He also drew the comic strip parody Lil' Annie Fannie for Playboy Magazine...In the mid-60s Frazetta's talent was recognized in Hollywood and the publishing industry.
And more sex.
Sex was Frazetta's muse- the testosterone explodes nearly from every brushstroke. His women - with their cat eyes, ample hips and thighs, their full, firm asses and modest busts - ooze an idealized Mediterranean fecundity, straight out of ancient Greek or Egyptian art. And for every prostrate barbarian moll, Frazetta served up half a dozen wild jungle girls and witchy women, every bit as imposing as his men. No doubt Frazetta was inspired by the tough-skinned Brooklyn girls of his youth, as well as his strong-willed wife, Ellie.











Art is eternal but bullshit is very, very temporary.
NOTE: This piece is a bit rushed, but I wanted to get this out while the topic is still timely. I will probably give this piece a polish or three and stick it up on the Solar Seminar. Frazetta is a huge part of my worldview and I want to do the man justice.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Wyrd New Jersey: The Necropolis, or Ritual Done Right

The thing about New Jersey is that you never know what you might find hiding in plain sight. The place is so littered with arcane symbolism it's easy to take for granted.
For instance, this cemetery in the rolling hills at the foot of the Skylands caught the attention of even a jaded symbol-junkie like myself.
That strange obelisk sans capstone is particularly interesting in and of itself, given that it's oriented to the cardinal points. Even more so when placed in context with some of the other items around it.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
A Sirius Crisis in Greece?

Thursday, May 06, 2010
Inanna Montana, Revisited
"I'm not a mistake, I'm not a fake,
It's set in my DNA"
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Monday, May 03, 2010
Secret Sunday: Beltane Edition
Well, Saturday was May Day and there was chaos and confusion all across the globe, including an alleged failed IED in Times Square. There were also several protests over the new Arizona immigration law. But you can read about all of that on any old website: let's go to Edinburgh for the yearly Beltane Fire Festival, which drew 12,000 people this year.
A goodly number of them were nude and smeared in red body paint, I might add.
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