Everyone likes to be first. Historians and other seekers of cultural truffles always like to uncover the first person who did this, or the first person who invented that, or the first person who outraged society by doing something utterly daring which even today some may think of as being socially dangerous.
Sutherland Macdonald (1860-1942) is now considered as “the first identifiable professional tattooist” in England. Sutherland was the first professional tattooist to run a tattoo parlor out of premises at 76 Jermyn Street, London. He was also the first man to be registered as a “tattooist” in the London Post Office Directory in 1894. While there may have been many tattooers across the land, Macdonald was the first “tattooist” simply because he was the man who devised the word. Tattooist is a shortening of the term “tattoo artist.” Macdonald preferred the title “tattooist” to “tattooer” as it sounded more upmarket, more professional, and far more descriptive for the talents of an artist who drew pictures on the skin.
Macdonald started his career while serving with the British Army during the Anglo-Zulu War in the 1870s. On return to England, he set up his first tattoo parlor sometime around 1880-82 in the military town of Aldershot, a place best known as the “Home of the British Army.” Macdonald was a very talented artist which together with his connections in the army made for his success. As George Burchett, a rival tattooist, later wrote in his memoirs:
[Macdonald] had already tattooed officers in many of the famous regiments, including the Brigade of Guards. One of his earliest clients, Lord Byng of Vimy, when a young officer in the 10th Hussare, introduced Macdonald to scores of young bloods in his circle. When Macdonald exchanged his sergeant-major’s uniform for the white coat of a full-time tattoo artist he was already assured of a good following.
By 1889, Macdonald had moved his business from Aldershot to a small basement parlor under the Hamam Turkish Baths off the main drag of gentleman’s clubs on Jermyn Street, London. He offered his customers any design (“Heraldic, Sporting, Oriental”) at fixed prices and claimed he operated “Under the Patronage of the Highest Imperial and Royal Personages in Europe.” The rumor that he had inked royalty made Macdonald’s tattoo parlor exceedingly popular with the patriotic Victorian public. As Burchett wrote:
For nearly forty years crowned heads and famous people climbed the narrow staircase in Jermyn Street to visit Macdonald and to leave bearing some of the most wonderful ornaments ever placed on human skin. A well spoken, intelligent and gentle man, Sutherland Macdonald made friends of his customers, who treated him as an equal.
Apart form his dazzling skill as a tattoo artist, Macdonald also patented an electric tattooing machine (patent #3035) in 1894. He is now considered as “one of the greatest artists in the history of tattooing.” And from the examples below, one can understand why.
See more fantastic works by the first ‘tattooist,’ after the jump….
Facing boredom in your food-life? Ever wondered what it takes to become “Wickedest Chef In The World”? Then why not try spicing up your culinary time—as well as your kitchen decor—with these Aleister Crowley-themed cooking utensils?
Sprung from the mind and will of Sheffield-based visual artist Stuart Faulkner, these hand-tooled (and strictly limited edition) sets of kitchenware are available to buy from the website of occult gift shop Airy Fairy, or directly from the artist himself at his website stuartfaulkner.com.
The spoons cost just a measly £6.66 (what else?) and the chopping board can be yours for only £23.
I myself am looking forward to getting stuck into Cook Of The Law, a compendium of The Great Beast’s favorite recipes which (rumor has it) was dictated by his spirit to the second most evil Brit of modern times, Gordon Ramsey…
It’s the 40th anniversary of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen,” and you know what that means: it’s the 40th anniversary of the letter of support William S. Burroughs sent the band, along with his own all-purpose slogan and answer song, “Bugger the Queen.”
Victor Bockris writes that Burroughs’ piece predated the Sex Pistols’ single by three years, but even so, “God Save the Queen” was the occasion for its debut. As far as I can tell, Burroughs never mentioned “Bugger the Queen” without reference to the Sex Pistols. In October ‘77, writing from Naropa, Burroughs sent Brion Gysin a Rolling Stone feature on the Sex Pistols (presumably Charles M. Young’s contemporary cover story) along with the words to “Bugger the Queen,” which he referred to as a new song he might record with Patti Smith. Though the published letters haven’t yet caught up to the punk rock period, Ken Lopez Bookseller has made the typescript of this one available. Punctuation and spelling are WSB’s:
Dear Brion:
Enclose article from the Rolling Stone on the Sex Pistols and punk rock, in case you didnt see it. This explains the action in Paris. I guess we are classified with Mick Jaeger. I am writing some songs and may do a record with Patti Smith. Here’s one
My husband and I
The old school tie
Hyphonated names
Tired old games
It belongs in the bog
With the restofthe sog
Pull the chain onBuckingham
The drain calls you MAM.
BUGGER THE QUEEN
Whole skit goes withit illustratting everything I dont like about England.
“Bugger the Queen” was still on Burroughs’ mind one year later when he told a writer for the San Francisco punk zine Search & Destroy about his letter to the Sex Pistols (as quoted by Victor Bockris):
I am not a punk and I don’t know why anybody would consider me the Godfather of Punk. How do you define punk? The only definition of the word is that it might refer to a young person who is simply called a punk because he is young, or some kind of petty criminal. In this sense some of my characters may be considered punks, but the word simply did not exist in the fifties. I suppose you could say James Dean epitomized it in Rebel Without a Cause, but still, what is it? I think the so-called punk movement is indeed a media creation. I did however send a letter of support to the Sex Pistols when they released “God Save the Queen” in England because I’ve always said that the country doesn’t stand a chance until you have 20,000 people saying BUGGER THE QUEEN! And I support the Sex Pistols because this is constructive, necessary criticism of a country which is bankrupt.
The cover (cropped) of ‘Little Caesar’ #9, the first publication of ‘Bugger the Queen’ (via dennis-cooper.net)
The “skit” Burroughs mentions in the letter to Gysin, or a later version of it, is one of the entries in the essay collection The Adding Machine. Burroughs read it toward the end of 1978 at the Nova Conventioncelebrating his work. It was first published in the ninth issue of Dennis Cooper’s zine Little Caesar, whose previous number featured an interview with Johnny Rotten; International Times ran it too. The gist: chants of “Bugger the Queen” lead to a spontaneous uprising that forces Her Maj to abdicate. From the opening, a few words of inspiration, and the annotated lyrics:
I guess you read about the trouble the Sex Pistols had in England over their song “God Save the Queen (It’s a Fascist Regime).” Johnny Rotten got hit with an iron bar wielded by HER Loyal Subjects. It’s almost treason in England to say anything against what they call “OUR Queen.” I don’t think of Reagan as OUR President, do you? He’s just the one we happen to be stuck with at the moment. So in memory of the years I spent in England—and in this connection I am reminded of a silly old Dwight Fisk song: “Thank you a lot, Mrs. Lousberry Goodberry, for an infinite weekend with you . . . (five years that weekend lasted) . . . For your cocktails that were hot and your baths that were not . . .”—so in fond memory of those five years I have composed this lyric which I hope someday someone will sing in England. It’s entitled: Bugger the Queen.
My husband and I (The Queen always starts her spiel that way) The old school tie
Hyphenated names
Tired old games
It belongs in the bog (Bog is punk for W.C.) With the rest of the sog
Pull the chain on Buckingham
The drain calls you, MA’AM (Have to call the Queen “Ma’am” you know) BUGGER THE QUEEN!
The audience takes up the refrain as they surge into the streets screaming “BUGGER THE QUEEN!”
Suddenly a retired major sticks his head out a window, showing his great yellow horse-teeth as he clips out: “Buggah the Queen!”
A vast dam has broken.
Alas, no one has stepped up to record “Bugger the Queen” during the intervening decades. I hold out hope Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye will set it to music. Below, for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in June 1977, the Pistols make themselves heard from a boat on the River Thames in what must surely be Sex Pistols Number 2.
1968 was a great year in music, to be sure, great enough that in addition to all of the uncontested masterpieces, it coughed up its fair share of noteworthy oddities, including, among others, Sagittarius’ Present Tense, Dr. John’s Gris-Gris, God Bless Tiny Tim, The Monkees’ Head, and the first LPs by both Os Mutantes and the Silver Apples.
It was a rich and resonant year, so much so that a record as great and unusual as Dorothy Ashby’s incredible jazz-funk harp masterpiece Afro-Harping almost gets lost in the shuffle.
Almost.
Its title proudly emblazoned in futuristic 120-point Amelia (a typeface most often associated with Alvin Toffler), Afro-Harping is a landmark in jazz music, a truly funky album with the harp as the primary focus. Ashby already had several albums to her name but this remarkable project came about as a collaboration between herself and a producer named Richard Evans, whose biggest successes for Cadet Records to that point had been two albums by the Soulful Strings, 1966’s Paint It Black and 1967’s Groovin’ with the Soulful Strings. Evans had the brilliant idea of adding flute and theremin (!) as well as an enticing syncopated beat to make the album’s first track, “Soul Vibrations” an unforgettable piece of music. (It recently popped up in the opening credits of an episode of Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series Master of None.)
Here it is:
Born in 1930, Ashby was from Detroit, the daughter of noted jazz guitarist Wiley Thompson. Thompson used to invite his jazz buddies over to play, and Ashby (née Thompson, natch) would join in on the piano. She attended Cass Technical High School and Wayne State University, and somewhere along the way she drifted from the piano to the harp.
In the 1950s she toured with her own jazz trio of harp, string bass, and drums. The small size of the ensemble made it possible to feature the jazz harp player as soloist and as leading musician. The principle theme (riff) of the piece could be stated by the harp and all three instruments could alternate with solo verses and choruses. Blues, bebop, swing, and the “cool” jazz of Miles Davis all inspired Dorothy Ashby’s style. She was known for her pedal-slides which created “blue-notes” and her “spacious” melodic improvisations.
I love the idea of a harp “riff”!
It’s actually difficult to find out much about Afro-Harping. Much of the album has a distinctive Henry Mancini feel, the perfect spice to any swinging party, but there’s not much on it that feels very “Afro” (aside from the smooth funk, of course). It features a cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “The Look of Love” and a composition by Freddie Hubbard as well as the theme music to Valley of the Dolls by André and Dory Previn.
The challenges of making harp the centerpiece of an ensemble were not minor in nature. As Rensch observes,
When it became evident that the harp was not easily heard, even in so small an ensemble, early attempts at amplification began. ... Ashby’s husband placed two large microphones on the soundboard of her harp and put another one inside the instrument’s soundbox. To further enhance the acoustics, the harp’s inner body was carpeted and Dorothy played with small pieces of carpet glued to her shoes. Such ingenuity might have presented some difficulties to a player, but Dorothy Ashby’s smooth interpretations gave no indication of this.
Sadly, unsung pioneers like Ashby are always sorely in need of greater recognition. You can hear her harp on classic songs by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, and Bobby Womack and she’s been sampled by Common, The Pharcyde, J Dilla, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Pete Rock, The GZA, Phife Dawg, Flying Lotus, Madlib, Jurassic 5, Angie Stone and Ghostface Killah. Belle and Sebastian did their part by placing “Soul Vibrations” onto their 2012 compilation Late Night Tales, Vol. II. Putting the song into your own mix matrix will make you the coolest cat on your block, no doubt.
A curious oil painting by artist Erik Thor Sandberg.
In the “personal interests” section on his Facebook page, Quantico, Virginia-based artist Erik Thor Sandberg includes the following “things”: dead things; naked things; vintage things; antique things; disturbingly cute things, and acutely disturbing things. All of which rather accurately describe Sandberg’s art, which borders on the genre of Magic Realism. The term was first used by art historian and photographer Franz Roh to identify artists operating within that realm following the Post-Expressionism period, a term used to describe artistic movements that occurred following WWI, which was also coined by Roh. If this is at all confusing to you, that’s okay. Let’s just say that the calling card of an artist associated with Magic Realism includes the incorporation of realistic images and scenarios into fantasy-based situations. Which is exactly what Sandberg excels at—creating beautifully weird and deeply disturbing paintings of people in peril or impossibly bizarre, often erotic-themed situations.
Sandberg’s nudes are uncompromising and at times preposterously proportioned. Perhaps they are missing a limb or trapped in an impossible-looking contraption or circumstance. His work also possesses distinct dream-like qualities—or perhaps more accurately a nightmare that involves narratives that defy any logical explanation. Many of Sandberg’s works incorporate animals, so perhaps a fox is silently gnawing off a naked toddler’s foot in a tranquil setting under a tree. Or maybe it’s a pair of semi-nude women involved in a tryst on top of an angry lion clutching a small dog in his enourmous paw. Anything goes really, and that’s the beauty of Sandberg’s wonderful mind and remarkable talent as a painter: his complete committment to conveying both the grotesque and imperfect nature of human beings in ways that push the boundaries of the imagination. I’ve posted a selection of Sandberg’s paintings below and every last one of them is NSFW. Bravo!
Like it says in the title, “What could possible go wrong?” A lot of these vintage images are from the Los Angeles Alligator Farm located in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The singularly stupid tourist attraction was opened in 1907. In 1953 the attraction moved to Buena Park, California where it was renamed the California Alligator Farm. The farm closed its doors in 1984 due to poor attendance. I’m shocked it was allowed to go on that long, quite honestly.
According to Wikipedia (and I truly hope this is true) the alligators were moved to a private estate in Florida where we can presume no one tried to ride them… (The word about the gators had probably gotten out by then, you’d think.)
Not long ago, L.A. producer/promoter/sonic hellraiser Sean Carnage posted a video to his Facebook page of a rather curious street musician called “Mrs. Smith.” It wasn’t immediately clear whether the performer was an aging trans woman with uncommonly conservative fashion sense or a cross-dressing man affecting a matronly vibe for laughs, but either way, s/he was absolutely KILLING IT on guitar, and the frisson of image and sound was as jaw-dropping as the guitar playing. Though it seemed to me like a one-note joke, a trip down a YouTube rabbit hole reveals that this isn’t merely a busker with a great hook for getting spectators to post phone videos, but rather a fully fleshed-out character with history and a backstory, a twisted and hilarious collision of Little Edie Bouvier and Monty Python’s Pepperpots.
The actor/guitarist who created Mrs. Smith—he asked that his real name be left out of this story to preserve the character’s mystique, a request I will honor—started her life sans shred, as an aging socialite who did a series of cat advice videos, though her own beloved cat, Carlyle, has long been missing. Smith grew an audience performing at the Emerging America Festival, Upright Citizen’s Brigade, and even starred in the bonkers musical Mrs. Smith’s Broadway Cat-Tacular!, which eventually landed at NYC’s 47th St Theater—not at all far from actual Broadway—in 2015.
Smith did some guitar playing in that production, but not very much. It was when she submitted an entry to the Guitar Gods Festival that her shredder rep took off. That’s an annual metal guitar event in Miami Beach that features performances by ‘80s guitar magazine mainstays like Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen, plus performances by contest winners selected by those luminaries. Not only did Mrs. Smith make the cut, she wowed the crowd. (It’s worth noting that there is a contingent of Mrs. Smith fans who are unshakably convinced that she IS Vai in drag. Having actually had a conversation with her alter-ego, I can authoritatively say no. She is not Steve Vai in drag. She does use an old ‘80s model of Vai’s signature Ibanez guitar, which she refers to as her “flower guitar.”)
It’s weird that Smith found her biggest following in the metal guitar world—she made FUNNY CAT VIDEOS for fuck’s sake, that’s usually the key to the internet kingdom, no? But her guitar playing went viral after Vai started sharing her videos, which led to gear review videos (in characterand hilarious), and then I shit you not an appearance in a Gucci commercial.
Having occupied the worlds of comedy and music, she became a chimera of less-than-reputable art forms, namely drag and shred. But make no mistake, this is no ordinary drag performance. Smith isn’t a drag queen affecting a campy persona and lip-synching Thelma Houston songs in a club (though that of course IS tremendously fun in its own right), she can really fucking play in a technically challenging idiom. In fact, the whole conceit would fall flat if she was a bad musician. And as to the question of how she learned to play so well, I tried, dear reader, to get an out-of-character interview. When Mrs. Smith’s creator does such an interview, you’ll be in for a treat. Off record he was a funny and engaging conversationalist, but to my delight the in character interview turned out to be totally around-the-bend. I asked one question and Mrs. Smith just started riffing. Maybe watch some of her cat advicevideos before you read this to get a sense of her vocal cadences. Seriously.
MRS. SMITH: Oh, Ron, you’re catching me at a really bad time. I’m going to answer your questions, but you ARE catching me at a really tough time. I just want to put that out there. But I’m going to set that aside and try to answer with integrity, go ahead.
DANGEROUS MINDS: Sorry you’re having a rough patch, but thanks for making the time anyway.
MRS. SMITH: I HAD TO. I adore Dangerous Minds! I see what you’re doing, I love it.
DM: Kind of you to say so, I assure you that respect is mutual. So tell me about your background. You’re certainly a singular figure, there’s not a whole lot of—I hope the word “matronly” doesn’t offend—but matronly older women in the shred guitar world. So I’m curious as to how you acquired those skills.
MRS. SMITH: [sighs] Soooo funny, it’s actually good, I have a loooong, um, every year my psychoanalyst and I go on a long retreat. They’re not rituals; he’s a Jungian, so they are ritualistic, but they’re practices, to evaluate where we’ve been, where we’re going, where the relationship is, and I leave for this retreat in about two hours, and what I’m about to talk about will reeeeaaaally, if you think I’m in a bad spot now, it will really just send me, but I WILL talk about it. For Dangerous Minds. And for you. I will talk about troubling matters.
This is the topic of my show, that I do with my band, my band is called The Rage, Mrs. Smith and the Rage. [draws long breath] We have a show called “While My Guitar Gently Shrieks,” it sold out Joe’s Pub, it played La Poisson Rouge, and we’re going to return with the show, and whatnot, and this is why it’s happening, what am I seeing—people see this person on the sidewalk giving voice to grief and rage with a guitar, with such an unexpected…vocabulary. WHY is this happening? HOW did this happen? The show answers it all, but the short version is that in the ‘90s, I was kidnapped and held for ransom by a Norwegian death metal band. I suffered Stockholm Syndrome. And if that seems like a lot of Scandinavia for one anecdote, WELCOME TO MY LIFE.
Before the kidnapping, I was living, I was living kind of a living death. I was wrapped in a Chanel suit sitting at luncheons and galas and fundraisers thinking this was what I wanted. This is what I was taught to want, you do what you must and you become one of the ladies who lunch. I love that song! That song is real! I have lived that song! That song is, I mean, of course, Sondheim knows of this world. It is absolutely true, it is absolutely real, it is absolutely a nightmare! Imagine, you listen to that song and you think “wow, that’s dark,” well imagine LIVING IT. I did. And it is a living death. Yes, you have seemingly limitless resources, but at what cost?
So there I was, FOSSILIZED in this uppercrust, Upper East Side reality, and SMASH, through the door come these hooded figures dressed in black with those EYES! I thought that Beelzebub himself and his army had burst through the dimensional wall and had come to take me to literal Hell. I’d gone through social hell, and now I was going to literal Hell. I thought “Did I die?” You know, strike that, don’t use the word “Hell,” it’s a swear word to some people, I’m going to the Underworld. HADES itself has come to consume me. But NO, this was just a very desperate group of boys. They were musicians, they were Norwegian, and they had hit upon this as the way they’d strike their fortune, this was the way to strike notoriety. And you know, it was lightly covered in the press, in those sort of news-of-the-bizarre columns, and it was just so insulting! They dragged me to Norway and put me in this closet for three months.
Jim Hutton and Freddie Mercury with Dorothy the cat, Munich 1986.
The first time Jim Hutton met Freddie Mercury, he told him to “fuck off.” They were in the Copacabana, a gay club in the basement of a hotel in South Kensington, one weekend in late 1983. Jim was at the bar with his lover, John Alexander, drinking from a can of lager. When John went to the lavatory, Freddie pushed his way through the crowd and offered to buy Jim a drink. Jim, who had almost a full can in his hand, said, “No, thank you.” When Freddie then asked what he was doing that night, Jim told him to “Fuck off.” Freddie quietly wandered back to join his friends.
When John returned, Jim told him someone had just tried to chat him up. John asked, “Who?” Jim pointed him out—a slight figure with a mustache in jeans and a white t-shirt. He wasn’t Jim’s type—he preferred his men “bigger and butcher.” John was dumbfounded. Didn’t he know who that was? “That’s Freddie Mercury,” he said. “Freddie who?” The name meant nothing to Jim, who carried on sipping his beer.
Eighteen months later, on Saturday, March 23rd, 1985, Jim had been out drinking for most of the day. Instead of going home to his rented rooms in Sutton, he decided to spend his last five quid on a night out in Heaven—the large gay nightclub at Charing Cross. Usually, Jim didn’t go to clubs like Heaven. He thought they were too large, anonymous, and noisy. But that night, he wanted to dance. As he stood at the bar, a slight figure slipped in beside him and offered to buy him a drink. It was that bloke from the Copacabana again, Freddie whatsit? Slightly tipsy, Jim’s defenses were down and he offered to buy Freddie a drink. “A large vodka,” came the reply. There went most of Jim’s five quid.
Freddie then asked, “How big’s your dick?” It was his usual opening gambit. Jim ignored him saying something like, “Well, you’ll have to find out,” before telling the singer to drop the phony American accent. “But I don’t have an American accent.” Freddie protested before inviting Jim to join him and his friends.
What Jim didn’t know was that Freddie had spent part of the previous eighteen months checking up on him. He had found out where Jim drank and would send one of his assistants in to see if he was at the bar. Freddie liked men who looked like burly truck drivers. Though Jim didn’t quite fit that bill—he was a hairdresser—he did have the look that Freddie found utterly desirable.
Freddie invited Jim back to his apartment on Stafford Terrace, where they eventually fell drunkenly into bed, cuddling and talking until they fell asleep. When they awoke, they continued talking where they left off. Freddie made Jim tea, then they exchanged phone numbers. It was the start of their relationship that lasted until Freddie’s untimely death in November 1991.
Long before same-sex marriage ceremonies, Freddie called Jim his husband and they exchanged rings. Freddie wore his until the day he died.
I met Jim a few times when I was producing a documentary on Freddie’s friendship with Kenny Everett in 2002. He was a charming, warm-hearted and genuinely kind man. Straightforward, down-to-earth, and instantly likable. It was easy to see why Freddie fell for him. Jim sadly died in 2010.
The following photographs give some idea of the great love Jim and Freddie had for each other. The pictures come mainly from Jim’s personal collection, many of which were included in his memoir about Freddie, Mercury and Me.
The very first time Freddie Mercury took Jim Hutton to see his home Garden Lodge, 1985.
Freddie and Jim at the start of their relationship.
What Jim described as ‘sparring partners’ with Freddie on Queen’s ‘Magic’ tour 1986.
Working with my friend LeRoy Stevens of the record label Small World, the LA-based artist Jeff Hassay has created an audio souvenir of Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson’s childhood home in Hawthorne, California. Now you can own a piece of the idyllic spot where their father, Murry Wilson, used to take out his glass eye and make his boys look into the empty socket. “I said a major third goddammit!”
Dirt Sounds is a field recording of the Wilsons’ old neighborhood, pressed on a record made partly of soil from the site of their former dwelling. Small World explains:
Beach Boys House: Dirt Sounds is a hand-made record containing soil from the house where Brian Wilson grew up in Hawthorne, California. The house no longer exists. There is a modest statue commemorating the location in a small, slightly derelict neighborhood. Dogs, cats, birds, cars, planes, a helicopter and various gardeners’ power tools all lend their sonic presence along with the wind and Jeff’s occasionally audible breath as he wanders the neighborhood. The audio is an 18 minute field recording of the location on an afternoon in 2016, almost exactly 50 years after the album Pet Sounds was released.
The records were made by pouring clear resin and dirt into silicone molds. Produced over a six month period by Jeff Hassay and LeRoy Stevens, each record is unique and weighs between 400 and 600 grams.
The LP and poster set drops on June 6 in a limited edition of 100. Pre-order it here.
After the jump, watch LeRoy and Jeff making the records by hand…
Today we bring you the very similar output created by a shadowy figure named Steelberg, whose wildly entertaining Instagram account uses the handle iamsteelberg. The only things we really know about Steelberg is that he or she lives in California and really, really loves old VHS rental tapes from the 1980s. The cheesy details on these fanciful re-creations are priceless, from the ragged and sometimes splintered edges of the plastic casing to the gratuitous non-sequitur stickers some clerk popped on there years ago to the uninspiring typefaces.
It almost makes you want to reach for the tracking button to clear away some of the “snow” off the TV screen.
I must say that I dig Steelberg’s taste in movies. Many of my recent faves are accounted for—I was especially pleased to see The Lobster, Blue Ruin, Bone Tomahawk, and It Follows represented.
