Ever wanted a giant skull chair to relax in? Well, have I got just the giant skull chair for you. Chicsin Design on Etsy makes the skull chair for $450 with free shipping worldwide. I’ve never ordered from this shop before, so I can’t vouch for the quality of their merch. I do, however, totally dig it.
According to the listing, it “will require assembling before use.” I hope it’s not complicated. You may want to contact Chicsin Design before purchasing to find out. I mean if IKEA can end marriages, what damage might a difficult to assemble giant skull chair cause?
If you have a cat then you know you’re in thrall to that little furball pussy-paws. Your cat rules your life and only lets you live because you feed it, empty its litter tray, and sometimes you can be quite amusing like a smelly old court jester telling fart jokes. You know your place. And so does your goddam cat. So isn’t it time you just admit who’s boss in your household? Who’s the veritable Regent of all it surveys? And give your cutesy cat god the throne it deserves like maybe the one from Game of Thrones?
Made for Pets make “pet furniture” for your favorite feline (or even canine) to snuggle-up in. Among the many designs on offer is this “Iron Throne” cat bed as inspired by the hit book and TV series Game of Thrones. It’s a bit pricey at around $200 (£158.64) but if you love your cat and you know it’s really the protector of the realm, the top feline of all the Seven Kingdoms, etc. etc. etc. then you know damn fine your kitty deserves its very own Iron Throne. See details here.
Inspect more of your cats new bed, after the jump…
The little-known German band, Night Sun, is one of the earliest groups to blend heavy metal with progressive rock—and they did it really well. They were around for just a few short years, and released only one record, but it’s a MONSTER.
Night Sun were based out of Mannheim, and though many members passed through the Night Sun ranks—including former servicemen of the British army stationed in Germany—their identities are largely unknown. But we do know the lineup that appears on their lone album, Mournin’: Walter Kirchgässner played guitar; Ulrich Staudt was the drummer; multi-instrumentalist Knut Rössler took on piano, organ, saxophone, trumpet, and trombone; bassist Bruno Schaab was also the singer, voicing all of the lyrics in English.
The most famous individual to orbit the Night Sun universe was the producer/engineer of Mournin’, the great Conny Plank (Krafterwerk, Neu!, etc, etc). In the LP credits, the producer is listed as “Aamok Musikproducktion,” which was the name of Plank’s company. The album was released by Zebra Records, a German label, and was distributed by Polydor International.
Night Sun comes out blazing with the opening track on Mournin’, “Plastic Shotgun.” The mix of Deep Purple’s organ-driven hard rock and heavy metal masters Black Sabbath, executed with the speed and precision of prog rock, is startlingly great. Get ready, ‘cause “Plastic Shotgun” is gonna blow your head off.
Other groups that come to mind while listening to Mournin’ include King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, and Billy Joel’s wild, pre-fame two-piece, Attila. After the jump, we’ll embed a few more of our favorites from the Night Sun record, but if you like what you hear—and we assume you will—check out the entire LP here.
Call me disputatious—or else DON’T, it’s entirely up to you—my favorite Stones album has always been Their Satanic Majesties Request. It’s practically the only one that I still play all the way through. It sounds so amazing as one great big, trippy chunk, that it would be a shame not to experience the whole thing in one go. Many Stones fans and music critics hated TSMR when it came out and saw the album as a weak attempt to out weird the Beatles after they’d unleashed Sgt Pepper’s on the world, but time has been very kind to Their Satanic Majesties Request. To me, it’s just a thing of great beauty, with the normal blues-based Stones sound thrown out the window and replaced with a colorful sonic palette the likes of which they would never return to. It’s a fantastic headphones album, too, the closest they ever got to doing a Pink Floyd (and it’s NOT a Sgt Pepper’s wannabe, okay? Obviously TSMR (badly) wants to be the Stones’ Piper at the Gates of Dawn!)
Anyway, I’m not saying that it IS the best Stones album, I’m just saying that it’s MY favorite. (For the record, my favorite Stones song is “Monkey Man,” followed by “Stray Cat Blues,” then “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)”—dark horses, all, I grant you. I’m also partial to “I Don’t Know Why,” but the Glimmer Twins didn’t write that one—it’s a Stevie Wonder cover.)
Their Satanic Majesties Request is getting re-released on September 22 by ABKCO in a 50th anniversary deluxe box set that’s packaged in a slick, limited edition bespoke box set that comes with two records (a stereo and mono pressing of the album, remastered by Bob Ludwig, with the lacquers cut at Abbey Road Studios) and two SACDs (which will still play in a normal CD player) of the stereo and mono mixes. Overkill? Oh probably, but then again I already own two copies of the original stereo LP with the 3-D lenticular cover, the 2002 SACD and a DSD download of the mono mix from that recent Rolling Stones in Mono box set. Maybe I’m the wrong middle-aged guy to ask. (It sounds very nice, by the way. Not sure it’s going to displace my original wax, but it sounds quite tasty in case you were wondering. The mono mix reveals a far punkier-sounding album and is absolutely worth having.)
Anyway, if you ask me, the Stones’ “demonic” phase, inaugurated, if you will, by their association with the Magus of Cinema, Kenneth Anger, was when the band were truly at their peak. Mick was still quite into his Satan/Lucifer thing well into the Let It Bleed/Gimme Shelter-era, but after Altamont, Jagger was often seen wearing a crucifix around his neck, perhaps seeking to put down all that chaotic hoodoo Age of Horus energy he’d help raise? Have sympathy for the poor devil. Jagger had a shamanic current running through his body during the Sixties that killed quite a few of his friends and contemporaries. Today, like a rock and roll Dorian Gray, he hardly looks any worse for the wear.
Kenneth Anger’s “Invocation of My Demon Brother” with a bleating one-note (but super effective!) Moog synthesizer soundtrack by Mick Jagger.
Pastor Dick had good news to share on April 1, 1999. “This is a song I just wrote backstage with Steven Curtis Chapman!” Dick announced, as “Home Run”—which is in fact by the Christian rock juggernaut Geoff Moore & the Distance—blared from the speakers and rows of white crosses glowed on the screen behind the stage.
As Geoff Moore gave way to a church organ, Dick laid out the reasons to be glad: Satan’s plan to corrupt America through pop music, like San Francisco’s scheme to drag the God-fearing people of nearby Concord down into depravity, was coming to light. Almost imperceptibly, the organ music shifted into “Lay Lady Lay,” and Pastor Dick began to inveigh against the sinful works of Bob Dylan. Citing his recent audience with Pope John Paul II as evidence that the singer was “no longer walking with the Lord,” Pastor Dick concluded his homily by wishing that “another heart attack or stroke or age-related illness” would cause Dylan to repent.
Much of the rest of this half-hour cut of the show consists of Dispepsi-era Negativland material; happily, Negativland is the rare group whose music can stand up to choppy editing. Towards the end, the Weatherman completes the transition from faith to empiricism, demonstrating the sounds you can make with a bicycle horn submerged in a bowl of water, a bottle of Vaseline® Intensive Care™ hand lotion, and an ordinary cable TV remote control.
Did you know that sometimes roosters will kill and eat deadly snakes? I didn’t know that until today. This is totally nuts.
The video below contains raw nature scenes and is not for the squeamish or ophiophiles. In it, we see what appears to be a deadly king cobra, with hood inflated, missing several strikes at a rooster. The rooster positions itself to grab the snake in its beak a number of times, dazing it, until ultimately swallowing the snake whole.
Cobras, even small cobras such as this one, are extremely venomous, with a single bite being able to kill an elephant. They typically eat eggs and birds. In this case, the tables were turned by a boss rooster that clearly gives no fucks.
Russell MacEwan was a member of the Canadian House of Commons from the late 1950s to the early 1970s before passing away in 2008.
Actually, that is not the Russell MacEwan we’re interested in today. That Russell MacEwan is a Scottish artist who is neither a politician nor dead and has produced a great deal of high-quality work of sci-fi subjects as well as portraits of postpunk and experimental music heroes.
MacEwan is an extraordinarily skilled draftsman, as you can see for yourself, who is currently Professor Emeritus at the City of Glasgow College. Virtually all of his output is black-and white, and he works in oils, charcoal, and pencils—his pencil drawings often resemble sketches that on other days might get “filled out” to form a painting, but he just leaves it as is for the viewer to contemplate.
The artist has mentioned that Joy Division is his favorite musical subject as well as the band he’d most like to be compared to, but he also has an abiding interest in the world of Coil, particularly How to Destroy Angels, the band’s first release from 1984. We’ve selected a few of the images of Curtis (whatever was available online, in fact) for your perusal.
MacEwan has an abiding interest in World War I topics and often draws inspiration from Hollywood and comic books, as his images of Logan, Clint Eastwood, and Catwoman indicate.
MacEwan has a book out called Black Sun: Art of Russell MacEwan and you can see much more of his portfolio here.
Once upon a time, in the land of Persia, there lived a very wise old King called Anushirvan who had heard of an ancient book of tales told by animals and reptiles and the birds of the air. The King he decided he would very much like to read this book as he had read all of the other books in his library and he desperately wanted something new to read at bedtime so he could completely relax after his wearisome day ruling and begetting stuff and doing kingly things. The King asked his doctor, Burzuyah, who was the smartest man he knew, to go off in search of this book and bring it back to him. One bright early morning before the birds started singing, Burzuyah left the King’s palace and went off in search of this fantastic book of tales.
The book is called Anvār-i Suhaylī or Lights of Canopus and that is how our story begins. It sets the frame within which we are told a series of inter-related fables mostly involving animals that are intended to offer good counsel to the reader.
For example, one story (which sounds a bit like The Gruffalo) tells of a big, greedy, ferocious lion and a smart, little hare. When the lion meets the hare, he asks him why he is so late as he was due to be the lion’s dinner hours ago. The hare is most apologetic and tells the lion he is ever so sorry for being late but an even bigger, greedier, far more ferocious lion had stopped him on his way and tried to eat him. Thankfully, the hare escaped otherwise he would never have been in time for his dinner appointment. The lion thinks he’s got a rival so asks the hare to lead him to this other lion. The hare does so, taking the lion to the still of a pond where he points to the lion’s reflection on the surface of the water. The lion is so enraged by the look of this other ferocious beast that he jumps straight into the water and drowns.
Another tale recounts how a cat is caught in the net of a hunter’s trap. The rat the cat had been chasing is happy to see his old adversary caught. But then the rat realizes that without the cat’s protection, he is vulnerable to attack from some of the cat’s other prey like the owl and the weasel. Knowing the cat is trapped, the owl circles the sky looking for the rat to feast on. While the weasel sneaks behind a tree waiting for the rat to return home, so he can have him for his dinner. The rat decides it would be best to free the cat and begins to gnaw through the ropes that hold him. All the while, the rat implores the cat not to eat when he is free. The cat agrees but somehow his words never quite reassure the rat. So the rat decides to set the cat free at the very last moment when the hunter returns. The hunter returns. The owl flies away. The weasel runs home. The rat bites through the last rope. The cat flees from the trap and hides up a tree. And the rat goes back to his home knowing he is safe once again.
You get the drift.
And so the stories go with one tale setting up the next and so on. The idea is that the reader will learn something from these stories about human nature and perhaps about themselves…
Hugh Cornwell, who was once the lead singer and guitarist in the Stranglers, has a new internet radio show devoted to movies and their music. You wouldn’t know it from his most famous song about Hollywood, but Hugh loves the moving pictures.
MrDeMilleFM is Cornwell’s second internet radio venture dedicated to film. (The interviews he did with Debbie Harry and Brian Eno for the first one, the now-defunct Sound Trax FM, have vanished along with their former home, but Cornwell says they will return in time.)
Jane Birkin (with her famous wicker basket in hand) and Serge Gainsbourg, 1969.
According to Jane Birkin’s brother Andrew, Serge Gainsbourg was the love of her life. When he passed away in 1991 at the age of 62 from a heart attack (likely brought on by his epic chain-smoking and equally epic consumption of booze), Birkin, though she and Gainsbourg had long since separated, was devastated and she and her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg mourned his death by staying with Serge’s body for three days. When Gainsbourg was finally laid to rest, Birkin placed her “Munckey” a toy monkey that she kept since childhood, in her former lover’s coffin.
The pair met on the set of the 1968 French film L’amour et l’amour (aka Slogan) and at first, Birkin was just not that into Gainsbourg and referred to her co-star as “horrible,” “arrogant,” and “snobbish.” Andrew Birkin also recalled that his sister was so turned-off by Serge that she had difficulty pronouncing his last name and would mangle it by calling him “Serge Bourguigon.” Birkin’s distaste for Serge would not last, however, and the two would become one of the most celebrated celebrity couples in France during the decade or so that they were together. As you might imagine, there are many mythical stories concerning the exploits of Gainsbourg and Birkin—many which have the lovebirds battling it out in public spats. One of the more infamous tales involves Birkin hurling a custard tart in Serge’s face after she discovered him digging through her wicker handbag. The skirmish continued with Birkin chasing Gainsbourg down the Boulevard Saint-Germain screaming before she jumped into Seine river. In 2013 Birkin’s brother Andrew published Jane & Serge: A Family Album, a beautiful book containing photos Andrew took of the couple during their time together, some of which have never been previously published. The book also contains Andrew’s intimate insights into Jane’s childhood and her deep connection to Serge.
I’ve posted numerous images of Birkin and Gainsbourg below looking happy and in love. Some are slightly NSFW.
