Twelve years ago I found myself at Cinefile Video in West Los Angeles when I happened to notice a movie poster on the wall for the 1967 film, The President’s Analyst. The duotone pink and green poster depicted James Coburn wearing a `60s mod wig and sunglasses holding two gong mallets in his hand with the tagline, “Is your football helmet crushing the flowers in your hair?” What the hell kind of movie is this? I had recently developed a fascination with James Coburn after discovering the sixties spy-spoof films Our Man Flint, and the sequel, In Like Flint. Perhaps it was due to exposure to late `90s pop culture references like the Beastie Boys album Hello Nasty or the movie Austin Powers (both of which named dropped the character Derek Flint) that Coburn had been embedded into my subconscious at that time.

I went home that night and watched The President’s Analyst. It was absolutely fantastic in the way it ridiculed virtually every important `60s institution—establishment and anti-establishment alike. But unlike most 1960s-era political satires and comedies, it was surprisingly fresh, relevant, and still laugh-out-loud funny in the present age. A man I had never heard of named Theodore J. Flicker was credited as the film’s writer and director. After repeated viewings I began to wonder: who is Theodore J. Flicker? How come nobody’s ever heard of him? How is it possible for someone to make a film this good and then vanish completely from sight? The lack of information available on the internet only fueled my interest, but I eventually learned that Mr. Flicker had been blacklisted from Hollywood. But why, how could that happen? I would end up going to great lengths to answer these questions, including a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico to find Flicker, who spent the last twenty years of his life as a sculptor.
 

Ted Flicker in Santa Fe, Sept 2013. Photo by Doug Jones

After failing to open a theater of his own in New York City, Theodore J. Flicker headed to Chicago in 1954 to check out the improvisational Compass Theatre by recommendation of his college friend Severn Darden. According to Flicker, the Compass was in terrible shape when he entered: the players were unprofessional, wore street clothes, had a lack of respect amongst their fellow performers, and were basically “all over the place.” However, Flicker saw potential in the company and in 1957 he launched his own wing of The Compass Players at the Crystal Palace in St. Louis. Mike Nichols and Elaine May arrived in St. Louis, and Flicker auditioned Del Close who had come highly recommended by Darden despite the fact that he had no previous improv experience. Ted hired Del on the spot after seeing him perform a fire-breathing act from the work of Flaminio Scala. They all felt that the “meandering” Chicago style of improv did not sustain the audience’s attention for an entire show. Realizing that new techniques were needed if improvisation were to transform from an acting exercise into an art form, Flicker began developing a new technique which he referred to as “louder, faster, funnier”… the audiences responded. His goal was to re-create the Chicago Compass without any of the people involved and without the experience of Viola Spolin’s teachings, Flicker wanted to invent his own way. Every morning after a show, he would sit down with Elaine May and examine what went wrong the previous night and then determine how it could be corrected. Through these sessions “The Rules” for publicly-performed improv were formulated, including the importance of the Who? Where? and What? of each scene needing to be expressed, avoiding transaction scenes, arguments, and conflict as they usually lead to dead ends, and playing at the top of one’s intelligence. “We came up with a teachable formula for performing improvisation in public in two weeks,” Flicker said. These new rules differed greatly from the rules of Viola Spolin, who wasn’t a performer and explored improv only as an acting exercise. This was a new era of improvisation.

Following the collapse of The Compass Players, Paul Sills launched the successor troupe “The Second City” in 1959. Nichols and May went on to become a smash hit on Broadway. Del Close moved back to Chicago and spent the rest of his life developing, refining, and experimenting with Ted’s rules. Del became an improvisational guru for three decades with a student roster that included Dan Aykroyd, John and James Belushi, John Candy, Bill Murray, Chris Farley, Andy Dick, Harold Ramis, Mike Myers, Bob Odenkirk, Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Andy Richter, Tina Fey, and all three founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade (Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, and Amy Poehler.) Unquestionably some of the biggest and most influential names in the comedy world, and it all circles back to Flicker. “I never could have done it without the sheer force of Ted’s will and discipline,” Close said.

But what was next for Theodore J. Flicker? In the sixties he wed Barbara Joyce Perkins, television actress and star of dozens if not hundreds of commercials, and the two set their sights on Hollywood. Theodore’s first feature film The Troublemaker, which he co-wrote with Buck Henry, described as an “improvised adventure” and was a moderate success, and the next thing he knew the phone started ringing. He was offered to write a feature film to launch the careers of Sonny and Cher; however, when the project fell through Flicker instead penned a screenplay for Elvis Presley, the 1966 “racecar musical comedy” Spinout.
 

 
It was Paramount Pictures that gave Flicker a chance to write and direct a major motion picture studio film in 1967, the first movie Robert Evans greenlit as a studio executive. The President’s Analyst was a fantastic, on-target satire. James Coburn plays Dr. Sidney Schaefer, who is awarded the job of the President’s top secret psychoanalyst. When Dr. Schaefer’s paranoia sinks in and he realizes he “knows too much,” he decides to run away and the film becomes a fast-paced action adventure romp involving spies, assassins, the FBI, CIA, a suburban family station wagon, flower power hippies, and even a British pop group. An unusual sci-fi plot twist reveals the movie’s most surprising villain: The Telephone Company (referred to in the film as “TPC”).
 

 
Problems began when the FBI got ahold of the screenplay. Robert Evans claims he was visited by FBI Special Agents who didn’t appreciate their unflattering and incompetent portrayal in the film. When Evans denied their request to cease production, they began conducting surveillance on the film’s set. Evans refused their demands, but increasing pressure led to extensive overdubs during the film’s post-production phase: the FBI became the FBR, and the CIA became the CEA. Even the Telephone Company got wind of their negative portrayal in the film, and Evans believed that his telephone had begun to be monitored by either the Bureau or the phone company. Evans’ paranoia would ironically mirror that of James Coburn’s character in the film’s storyline.
 

 
The President’s Analyst hit theaters on December 21st, 1967, the same day as Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. Both films were instant hits and received critical and box office praise. Roger Ebert called The President’s Analyst one of the “funniest movies of the year.” However, two weeks later Flicker received an unsettling phone call from his agent who told him, “You’ll never work in this town again.” Apparently FBI head J. Edgar Hoover had seen the film and was outraged by 4’7” actor Walter Burke whose character name Lux (like Hoover, a popular brand of vacuum cleaner) as the head of the “FBR” was blatantly poking fun at him. J. Edgar called the White House who called Charles Bluhdorn at Paramount, who called Flicker’s agent to inform him they were pulling the movie from theaters immediately. “What the hell are you trying to do to me?” Bluhdorn said on a phone, “But we have a hit!” “What the hell do I care about your hit, I have 27 companies that do business in Washington?” A millionaire at age 30, Charlie Bluhdorn didn’t just own Paramount; he owned Gulf and Western, Madison Square Garden, and Simon & Schuster publishing. As Flicker delicately put it, “The shit hit the fan.” Overnight he was officially no longer part of Hollywood’s A-list. He and Barbara had to foreclose their home and his agent stopped returning his phone calls.

More on the life and times of Ted Flicker after the jump…

From the Dangerous Minds archive, a post about John Sex on what would have been his 59th birthday.

John Sex was a New York City-based performance artist, male stripper and disco singer who was a standout personality of the East Village art scene of the 1980s. He’d sing schmaltzy Vegas numbers in glittery smoking jackets, shiny Ziggy Stardust-esque zip-up jumpsuits, 10-inch platform heels, and assless leather pants. His trademark was his bleached-blond hair which stood straight up on his head in an exaggerated pompadour which he said was held aloft by “a combination of Dippity-do, Aqua Net, egg whites, beer, and semen.” He also had a pet python, named “Delilah,” and a suit made of 500 light bulbs. In his X-rated version of the Sinatra standard “That’s Life,” he’d sing “I’ve been a hustler, a hooker, a honcho, a hero, a dyke and a queen.”

The “character” of John Sex was not all that much off from the “real” John Sex, but more of a mythical version of himself as an omnisexual rockstar parody or phallocentric version of Tom Jones. He couldn’t turn it off if he wanted to, which I can assure you, he did not. He would often claim that his parents were immigrants who “Americanized” their original Irish surname “Sexton” to “Sex” so they would fit in better, then adding “and if you believe that one…”  The real story is that during a period of “rampant promiscuity,” Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi renamed art student John McLaughlin, the nice Catholic boy from Long Island who was everything his mother never wanted him to be, “Sex” and for obvious reasons, I think the name just stuck!
 
John Sex with Ann Magnuson, early 1980s
 
John Sex was a smart, super creative, fun, funny and endlessly inventive guy. Everyone loved him. There was absolutely no reason not to. John was a total sweetheart, a great raconteur and he always had the best showbiz stories and gay gossip you ever heard. He is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. There was constant laughter when he was around. You can see a little bit of what John Sex was like in this clip shot by video artist Nelson Sullivan. John and his friend Craig Vandenberg (who often played John’s washed-up showbiz loser father in shows they’d do together) trade lines in the basement of the Pyramid Club, warming up before a performance there. His boyfriend, Willfredo, the guy with sunglasses, is seen taking pictures about 2:45 in. You can see the performance itself here.
 

 
With his female backing singers, The Bodacious TaTa’s (Wendy Wild, April Palmieri, Micki French, Myra Schiller and others) and wearing his exaggerated showbiz finery courtesy of his friend (and sometime TaTa) fashion designer Katy K, John Sex played to nightclub audiences at venues like Club 57, the Pyramid Club, Danceteria, Limelight, The Palladium and The Saint. Many of his shows would end with him stripping down to a glittery jock strap, or beyond, during a song called “Jet Set.” Some of his other notable numbers were “Hustle With My Muscle” (see clip below), “Sex Appeal,” “Bump and Grind It” and “Rock Your Body,” a song he did with noted hip hop producer Man Parrish, that I made a music video for in 1988 (see bottom clip).
 

“Hustle With My Muscle” directed by Tom Rubnitz, This was shot at the Area nightclub in 1986 when the theme of the decor was something like “rednecks” or “trailer trash.”

John Sex only released two records during his lifetime. His sole non local news or NYC cable access TV appearance might have been on the short-lived talkshow hosted by comedian/actor Richard Belzer in the 80s, but I could be wrong about that. He was in the Cars video for “Hello Again” directed by Andy Warhol. He did a notable ad for LA Eyeworks that was widely seen in a lot of magazines in the mid-80s. He was also included, with a very memorable performance of “Hustle With My Muscle” featuring ejaculating prop penises, in the underground film Mondo New York which is often still seen on IFC and the Sundance Channel late at night. This is how most people hear of him these days. There was not exactly a large body of work left behind when John died in 1990.

In 1981, I visited New York on a 36-hour long school trip to see Broadway plays (two matinees, two evening performances). I saw two very striking, very fashionable people (John and Katy K) walking down St. Marks Place. There I bought an issue of the Village Voice that I *studied* for the next year, because the back pages and apartment rental listings told me everything I needed to know to be able to make my way from my hometown back to the Big Apple. In that issue was an Amy Arbus portrait of the two of them. I recall thinking “Hey it’s THAT GUY!“ the first time I saw John in a nightclub. He was one of those people who was a celebrity, but only in lower Manhattan. The whole Warhol “Superstar” glamor also rubbed off on John, who was friends with the artist.

I don’t really recall how John and I met, but when his “Rock Your Body” record came out, I proposed that I direct a music video for it and he enthusiastically accepted. This was another of the videos I co-directed with my friend Alan Henderson, and in fact it was the first one we did together. [I’ve posted about the one for Bongwater’s “Power of Pussy” here and the one for The Beme Seed’s “God Inside” here.]

John had a lot of fun ideas (surfing on the wave of his own hair, the flying carpet bit were his) and this spurred Alan and I on, too. Since we were shooting everything on “green screen” we were able to attempt many of these ideas, despite the budget essentially being pretty much nothing. It was shot and edited at Windsor Digital, the high tech video post production house where both Alan and I were employed at the time. We had a limited amount of time to shoot this, so certain things worked out better than others.
 

 
I can’t recall exactly what all of the late 80s video devices were that we used to edit it together, but at the time they were mostly newly introduced and the gear there cost way into the millions. Very few people would have had access to this stuff at the time and here we were two young guys (I was 22 at the time) who could get our hands on them, so we used ‘em. To record, one of us would have to run to the control room and hit record on two machines simultaneously and then run back into the studio. Alan basically taught himself effects editing on the project and now works for Fox Sports. We did all kinds of things, just experimenting, to see what would happen and what it would look like. A colleague and friend of ours there, Laurie Salladay helped out with some Paintbox work.

The peeling banana effect was achieved by taking a banana held in place by a nail and peeling it slowly and scooping out the meat as we pulled the skin away in a cheap and cheerful version of stop motion using frame by frame analog video animation (hardly optimal, to say the least). The digital video device known as the Quantel Mirage (everyone who knows what that was just smiled to themselves) wrapped the next scene in the shape of a peeled banana, tucked it in and then out it jumps, on the beat, in a cheesy jungle homage to the Velvet Underground! At least that is what I think we were thinking…

The bit where John is in the car, that car was taken from a still frame from a VHS tape of Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill and then colorized on a Quantel Paintbox. It was layered like this: random footage we had shot out the window of a moving car; the back seat, John (who was supposed have have a prop steering wheel in his hand, but we forgot it and had to use a film reel); then the top layer of the car.

John’s hair gave us tons of trouble, as you can see in the final product, because the lights would go right through it, and fuck up the clean silhouette of the green screen footage (which was recorded on a separate reel of videotape as a black and white “keyhole” and then matted together later with a third video recorder). This wasn’t something that we counted on and we were often limited with what footage we could use because of this.

Today, you could do this all on After Effects with minimal effort, but in 1988, I can assure you that you’d have to have been a fucking maniac to attempt this stuff on analog video. (The videos for Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance” and Boy George’s “No Clause 28” pioneering gay rights protest song were the first ones done on this equipment, as I recall, and you can see how similar they are if you follow the links). I’m not posting this because it’s so great or anything—this is a no budget video done by two young guys in their early 20s—I’m posting it because it’s of interest, hopefully, to a lot of people, who would have no exposure to John Sex otherwise, and who are interested in the East Village scene of the 1980s. John Sex was one of the seminal personalities of that era in New York City and it would be a shame if he’s forgotten.

Incidentally, we shot the video on the first day of the Tompkins Square Park Riot, August 6th, 1988 and as I returned home late that night, I fell asleep in the cab. When the driver stopped and told me he could go no further, I woke up to find my entire neighborhood on fire and cops everywhere. Good times!

When the video was finished, we were thrilled and shocked that MTV picked it up. They even did a story about it on MTV News. After a few months of the video circulating to nightclubs via the RockAmerica VJ tapes, John called me up one day to tell me that his asking price as a “track act” (i.e. nightclub performer with backing tapes) has risen to $3500 per gig and that he was getting offers to play in discotheques and gay clubs in places like Miami Beach, Palm Springs and Atlanta.

Sadly, his newfound success was not to continue for much longer as John was diagnosed with HIV. I don’t think any of his friends were really that surprised—he was a pretty randy fellow—but boy were we all saddened. It just seemed colossally unfair. Someone blessed with such charisma, good looks, smarts… so funny and so sweet. I can still recall how numbed I was when I heard the news he was sick. AIDS was still terra incognita back then, the idea of John dying slowly was a depressing thing to contemplate. He wasn’t the first friend of mine to get sick and he wouldn’t be the last.

John Sex’s last public performance was at the Mars nightclub in New York in 1989. I was the doorman of the upstairs VIP room at the club—Vin Diesel worked the front door—and saw the show. He was still a high energy performer, but the medication he was taking made him puffy and his hair had started to fall out and so he was obliged to cut off his trademark hairdo, fashioning the hair that was left into a jeweled crown.

Whenever I was around John in the last year of his life, he always seemed to be in generally good spirits, all things considered and would even indulge in “gallows humor” at his own expense (like when he made me take about half of his record collection home with me, because he wasn’t going to be needing it). The last time I saw him, I stopped by his apartment (which always smelled heavily of curry because of the Indian restaurant downstairs) on St. Marks Place, with my then-girlfriend, Jesse. (She is the blonde seen in the X-ray glasses bit of the “Rock Your Body” video). His tiny place at that point was set up like a hospital room and he looked terrible. His hair was nearly gone and he looked like a baby bird. Still, he was as mentally sharp as ever, and although it was obvious he was going to die soon, at least around me, he didn’t dwell much on it conversationally.

Jesse and I had a lot of shopping with us and John insisted that we leave it at his place so we didn’t have to carry it around all day. When we left him, he was full of energy and alert. When we came back about a bit later, he had an IV drip in his arm and seemed to have no idea who I was. I don’t recall how many weeks went by, before John passed, but it wasn’t too many. He died the day before my 24th birthday, on October 24, 1990.

 
At Babylon Falling I stumbled across this remarkable full-page image of countercultural satire at its sharpest and most dangerous. Fifteen trading cards for the “Outlaws of Amerika,” featuring radical rock stars like Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver and Huey Newton and less known figures like Cha Cha Jimenez and Roger Priest. This image has been variously attributed to The Chicago Seed and the Black Panther publication Lumpen. According to this article in the Atlantic Monthly, the BAMN Anthology from Penguin claims that it was created for the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

However, according to this listing on abebooks, it definitely appeared in the “Second Birthday Issue” of RAT Subterranean News, March 7-21, 1969. (This reddit thread gets this information substantially correct but blows the year.) Whether it appeared anywhere before that, I can’t say.

The artist was Lester Dore, who went by the nickname “Wanderoo” (you can barely read his signature at the bottom). The All-Stars are classified into “Social Deviants,” “Third World Revolutionaries,” and, in a single instance, “Native Americans.” The cards wittily use icons such as a raised fist (protest), a bomb (use of bombs), an M-16 (violence), a tomahawk (Indians’ rights), a marijuana leaf (drugs), an electric chair (outlaw is on death row), and an ohm symbol (resistance). On the right hand side, in small print, it reads “Save a complete collection ... If sent with a Wanted Poster or reasonable facsimile thereof, good for: a wig, a complete set of phony I.D., and am M-16.” On the bottom it reads, “Wait for the second series of Amerikan Outlaw Trading Cards ... You may be next!!!” The logo on every card is “KOPPS,” a play on Topps, which had well-nigh monopolistic control of the baseball card market for many years until rival companies entered the market in the 1980s.

(In case you are wondering, yes, Afeni Shakur is Tupac‘s mother.)
 
(Click below for a larger version of this image.)

 

 
More of Amerika’s outlaws, class of 1969, after the jump…

 
Rarely do we here at Dangerous Minds get a chance to report on the fast-paced (?) world of botany, but rarely is a gorgeous new cultivar of carnivorous plant named for H.R. Giger! This beautiful (if a little monstrously vaginal) specimen of Nepenthes—or “pitcher plant”—was only recently registered with the International Carnivorous Plant Society by photographer and horticulturist, Matthew M Kaelin, who explains the plant’s name in his submission:

I named this plant Nepenthes ‘H.R. Giger’ in October 2014 in memory of the recently passed Surrealist Artist from Switzerland who is perhaps best-known for creating the Alien creature for director Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien”, which earned him an Academy Award for the Best Achievement in Visual Effects for his designs of the film’s title character, the stages of its lifecycle, and the film’s extraterrestrial environments. As the innovator of the nightmarish “Biomechanical” style, he had a long and well-respected career as a globally influential fine artist in the disciplines of painting, sculpture, industrial design, and interior design. When viewed extremely close and at an angle, the intersection of the peristome teeth and the lid spikes of the cultivar create a frightening alien landscape akin to those imagined by the late H.R. Giger (Fig. 6). This, and because the plant is darkly colored and has such a nightmarish appearance, I feel that it would be a fitting tribute to name the cultivar for the late visionary genius Hans Ruedi Giger.

For your scientific edification: pitcher plants are vines, and tend to climb up trees or sprawl close to the ground—the H.R. Giger cultivar has grown over six feet long, but could grow up to 30. Pitcher plants normally eat insects, but can also consume small vertebrates. Kaelin also notes that the flowers smell “like a pile of dirty sweatsocks”—charming!

And a fitting dedication to a master of body horror brilliance!
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Hajime Sorayama’s porny futurism is one of those 1980’s aesthetics that is somehow simultaneously hilarious yet incredibly impressive. The cheeky pin-up “gynoids” are so sleek and gorgeous—but so utterly ridiculous—it’s difficult to tell if the work is actually fetish or satire or some combination of both—although his years illustrating more “conventional” fetish art for Penthouse and Playboy suggest some interest in niche lusts. When asked last year in an interview about some of his favorite work, Sorayama replied:

I do have a few, actually. Penthouse started to run the section called “Great American Pissing Contest” after it published the image of a woman pissing on an expensive sofa. When the big Canadian distributer stopped importing that issue of Penthouse because of excessive S&M scenes, a movie director who is also my friend blessed me by saying, “Congratulations, country boy! You became famous.” This was decades ago…

In that light, doesn’t “cheesecake robot” sound kind of tame? Sorayama’s gynoids have had a cult following since his 1983 book, Sexy Robot (yes, it’s actually called that), but although he continues to produce cyber-smut (his latest, Sorayama: XL came out in 2014), it’s not often you see his work displayed. San Francisco will soon lucky enough to host an exhibit of prints that spans his entire career (with some for purchase), at Fifty24SF Gallery starting April 4th.
 

 

 
More sexy robots after the jump…

 
Locals who live in Celoron, N.Y.—Lucille Ball’s hometown, btw—are mad as shit at a life-size Lucille Ball statue erected there in her honor. The bronze statue sits sadly at the Lucille Ball Memorial Park in Celoron.

Lucy fans think it’s a disgrace to the legendary actress, comedian, model, and TV studio executive. Residents want the statue to either be remade, recast or removed entirely. Looking at it, I can’t say I blame them.

There’s a Facebook page called We Love Lucy! Get Rid of this Statue. The man who started the page wants to remain anonymous but told Yahoo, “I think it looks like a monster. That is just my opinion,” he said. “When you see it at night, it is frightening.”

I’d probably crap my pants if I saw this thing at night.

Celoron Mayor Scott Schrecengost told the Jamestown Post-Journal that it would cost a lot of money — between $8,000 and $10,000 — to have the original artist recast the statue, which was unveiled in 2009.

Schrecengost told the newspaper that he has no interest in using taxpayer dollars to fix it. Instead, a fund has been set up to raise the money, according to the daily newspaper.

The artist, Dave Poulin, has remained silent on the issue. I believe Mr. Poulin has got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Update: The We Love Lucy! Get Rid of this Statue page on Facebook writes:

I would urge anyone who would like to donate money for another statue to NOT donate to the City of Celoron so the same artist can “repair” this. Please wait until another Kickerstarter or GoFundMe account is set up where we can get a NEW artist and a NEW statue. Again… Please do NOT donate money to the City of Celoron to fix this.

 

 
Images via We Love Lucy! Get Rid of this Statue

 
Frida Kahlo’s marriage with husband Diego Rivera was non-traditional, to say the least. Scandalous stories of their sex lives usually center on Frida’s bisexuality or Diego’s infidelity (however libertine they may have considered themselves, she was most certainly not okay with him sleeping with her sister), but Frida also had a lesser-known, incredibly intense affair with Spanish painter José Bartoli. He inspired over 100 pages of adoring, sometimes quite erotic love letters, all of which he kept, and the entire collection is now up for auction.

Kahlo and Bartoli met in New York, when a 39-year-old Frida was enduring spinal surgery, one of the many painful medical treatments she received throughout her life to deal with the debilitating chronic injuries sustained in a bus accident at the age of 18. The letters are desperately passionate, with Frida’s physical pain and emerging morphine use fevering her words, her desire for health and vitality entwined with her desire for Bertoli. Her marriage was predictably unhappy at the time of correspondence, and she found herself doubting her talent and unable to work. The thought of Bertoli brought her both longing and relief.

Not all of the letters are published, but the auction house has published excerpts and a synopses of Kahlo’s life at the time. Here are some of the more stirring parts.
 

“Bartoli—last night I felt as if many wings caressed me all over, as if your finger tips had mouths that kissed my skin. The atoms of my body are yours and they vibrate together so that we love each other. I want to live and be strong in order to love you with all the tenderness that you deserve, to give you everything that is good in me, so that you will not feel alone.

“From the little bed where I lay I looked at the elegant line of your neck, the refinement of your face, your shoulders, and your broad and strong back. I tried to get as close to you as I could in order to sense you, to enjoy your incomparable caress, the pleasure that it is to touch you…. if I do not touch you my hands, my mouth and my whole body lose sensation. I know I will have to [imagine you] when you are gone.”

apart from love-making I know there is something indestructible and positive that unites us. It gives me equal pleasure to kiss you, to make love, to listen to you, to look at you, to watch you sleep, to know your inner life…. Let me tell you how I delight in retaining in my senses your caresses, your words, how I feel full of an interior light when I hear you say to me, ‘my Mara, my dove, my Tehuana.’

My Bartoli-Jose-Guiseppe-my red one, I don’t know how to write love letters. But I wanted to tell you that my whole being opened for you. Since I fell in love with you everything is transformed and is full of beauty. I would like to give you the prettiest colors, I want to kiss you…[I want] our dream worlds to be one. I would like to see from your eyes, hear from your ears, feel with your skin, kiss with your mouth. In order to see you from below [I would like] to be the shadow that is born from the soles of your feet and that lengthens along the ground upon which you walk…. I want to be the water the bathes you, the light that gives you form, [I wish] that my substance were your substance, that your voice should come out of my throat so as to caress me from inside.… in your desire and in your revolutionary struggle to make a better human life for everyone, I [want to] accompany you and help you, loving you, and in your laughter to find my joy

If sometimes you suffer, I want to fill you with tenderness so that you feel better. When you need me you will always find me near you. Waiting for you always. And I would like to be light and subtle when you want to be alone.”

It was the thirst of many years contained in our body…. Forgive me if all these things that I write are perhaps for you stupidities, but I believe that in love there is neither intelligence nor stupidity, love is like an aroma, like a current, like rain. You know, my sky, you rain on me and I, like the earth, receive you. Mara”

 
Via The Observer

 
Here’s some confusing cosplay: a woman dressed-up as a sexified version of Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. When you think you’ve seen everything the Internet has to offer, something like this pops up and you’re left speechless. And then you think to yourself, “Nothing is going to top this one.” But something inevitably does… the very next day. Very Aphex Twin, ain’t it?

I demand to see more sexy versions of Tyrion Lannister this Halloween, please and thank you in advance.

 

 

 
via Geekologie

 
Gluten Free Museum is a Tumblr dedicated to painstakingly removing all gluten products from famous works of art. Gluten free art is where it’s at now. Get hip to this shit, okay?

The last one I included may not be a classic painting, but it’s pure genius.

 

 

 
More gluten free art after the jump…
 

 
Like every generation before them, millennials endure the scorn of their amnestic elders with obliviousness and eyerolls. I’ll concede that bitterly railing about “kids these days” is the prerogative of anyone over 45 forced to listen to Miley Cyrus, but I truly think intergenerational amity is a worthy and plausible goal—and I’d advise all those baffled by millennial bullshit to start by looking at the margins of youth culture, rather than their commercial representatives, who are obviously appointed by old millionaires anyway. 

Photographer Poem Baker‘s captivating series,Hymns from the Bedroom, shows a gorgeous array of young people—some bending gender, some subverting conventions, some simply looking beautiful. Her subjects are her friends, and she captures them with a vulnerability that reveals the intimacy of the shoot—an informal affair where she might snap only a few unpretentious candids before putting away the camera. From her site:

Hymns from the Bedroom is a personal journal of friends and people I’ve encountered whilst wandering around London. Most of whom are creative twenty-something’s on the threshold of their dreams and ambitions, ranging from performance artists, musicians, actors and fashion designers to strippers, transvestites and those who live on the fringes of society.

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…