A collection of tiny hand-made doll heads in jars by artist Polina Verbitskaya.
 
Ukrainian Artist Polina Verbitskaya is a self-described illustrator, dollmaker and “body artist” who lives and works in Kiev. Of all the oddities I found in Verbitskaya Etsy shop, I was instantly drawn to her macabre pendants made from little glass jars, each with a tiny hand-made doll head inside. Verbitskaya fills the jars with clear resin to make it appear as if the disembodied doll heads are floating in formaldehyde. Fantastic.

If these creepy charms don’t bring out your inner ghoul—I don’t know what will. Each single doll-head-in-a-jar necklace will run you $30 plus shipping from the Ukraine. I’ve posted images of Verbitskaya’s sinister doll-head jewelry below.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

Rockets.
 
Okay, all you adventurous Dangerous Minds readers—come take a ride with me to early 1970s Paris to witness the birth of “space rock” band Rockets. As this post does not include any herbal cerebral enhancement other than the words I’ve written about Rockets and the out-of-sight images of the band dressed up like disco versions of KISS’ Ace Frehley, you might want to take a moment to enhance your perception before continuing with a lil’ “entertainment insurance.” Of course, this is merely a recommendation and should not be taken seriously (yes it should) as I don’t advocate the use of drugs, alcohol or other party favors (yes I do) to help one fully appreciate a visual/auditory experience such as this. Half-assed disclaimers out of the way, let’s learn more about France’s electro-extraterrestrials, Rockets.

In the early 70s, the band was playing bars sans space gear and calling themselves “Crystal” until sometime later in the mid-70s when they decided to change it to “Rocket Men,” known also as “Rocketters” (and then Rockets). Not to be confused with long-time Detroit rock band the Rockets, Rockets went all in with their kooky outer-space look with all five members painting their skin silver and decked out in futuristic-looking spacesuits. Their live shows were as spectacular as you might imagine a gig by a bunch of French disco-loving aliens would be. And more. There were of course lasers, vocoders (a type of “talking synthesizer” that modulates speech) and Rockets vocalist Christian Le Bartz would often regale the audience by spraying them with sparks and smoke that spewed from a sort of cannon gun while he robotically marched around on stage.

So what about the music of Rockets? Well, it’s pretty groovy if you dig Krautrock, DEVO and disco (because, who doesn’t), and for a short time the band was very commercially successful. After releasing their first self-titled album in 1976, Rockets would start making a name for themselves thanks to their live shows and their notorious television appearances. Their second album, On the Road Again,  sent Rockets touring across the world including stops in the U.S. for the first time. In 1979 they released Plasteroid, which sold over 200,000 copies in Italy alone. The follow-up to Plasteriod, 1980’s Galaxy would eclipse this achievement by selling over a million copies worldwide. Despite this success, by 1983 the group began to dissolve starting with the departure of Le Bartz and drummer Alain Groetzinger. Bassist Gerard L’Her would say farewell a year later in 1984.

Far-out footage of Rockets performing numbers from Galaxy and On the Road Again is posted below as well as some surreal photos of the band in their intergalactic getups from back in the day.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
Every morning I get up, look in the mirror and say “How the hell did you get to be so handsome?” Well, if I don’t think I’m good looking, then who the hell will? Not that many would ever agree with my unbiased assessment, but what do I care? I know at least with a face like mine I can scare the kids every Halloween with minimal effort.

According to a recent survey, it’s estimated women will spend an average of $300,000 on face products alone during their lifetime. Beauty may be skin deep and in the eye of the beholder but it’s also a very BIG business.

Our strange obsession with attaining some kind of artificial ideal of beauty is the focus of Latvian photographer Evija Laiviņa’s series of portraits Beauty Warriors. With each photograph, Laiviņa presents a portrait of a woman wearing some kind of bizarre beauty product which promises the wearer instant perfection. These gadgets were bought on eBay and range from lip-enhancers and nose straighteners, to devices for measuring just how out of whack our faces are. Which reminds me, I once interviewed a plastic surgeon in LA for a TV show, who offered to straighten my nose (broken in a barroom fight with a cop—long story) and remove the over-stuffed suitcases from under my eyes for some obscene amount of money. I kindly demurred—but in not so many words. He wasn’t too impressed with my reply.

Laiviņa took up photography in 2007. As soon as she got her hands on a camera, she knew this was the thing for her as a camera offered unlimited possibilities for creating art. In 2009, Laiviņa emigrated to Inverness, Scotland where she studied Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Highlands and Islands. She took an interest in identity, psychological problems, and human relationships. She also studied portraiture and staged photography. Which brings us back to Laiviņa’s critically-acclaimed series of portraits Beauty Warriors which questions our relationship with the beauty industry. As Laiviņa explains:

To be successful, you must be perfect and look perfect—these are our society’s rules, which we all follow without even realizing how ridiculous the standards are. We often forget about the importance of inner beauty.

The finished photographs go beyond being just amusing (or sad) to a point where we recognize the real beauty that’s in all of us. See more of Laiviņa’s work here.
 

 

 
See more beauty portraits, after the jump…
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds, m’colleague Cherrybomb highlighted the amusing trend in Asia for wearing wildly offensive t-shirts and wondered whether the wearers of such sartorial eloquence knew what their shock tops actually meant?

The answer is: probably not.

These fashion statements are like those unfortunate Chinese tattoos hipsters sport which identify the wearer as being “Ugly,” or “Unclean,” or a “Pimp.” But at least with a t-shirt, the offending words are not so permanent and can be easily replaced with something more suitable.

Certainly, it’s unclear whether all of these fashion faux pas are worn by accident rather than by design. I doubt the children know what they’re broadcasting (“I ♡ Female Orgasm”—but of course you do!), though do think a few of the college students just might (“I may not be Mr. Right but…” etc.). It’s probably just “cool” to wear something written in English. Like when I was a kid, I thought it cool to wear a fashionable dress shirt covered in pictures of Steve McQueen and various quotes from the film Papillon. The text was tiny but on closer examination, discovered it contained a litany of “fucks” and “fuckings” and a paragraph all about masturbation and how it sapped strength. Who knew? I certainly didn’t, nor did my parents—until it was too late. But knowing that this shirt may have caused offense or have people think I was some kind of compulsive masturbator never once stopped me from wearing it. Why would it?

All of these pictures are the work of street photographer Alex Greenberg, who documents every day life, its quirks and fashions, on Shanghai’s busy streets. He shares his pictures via his Shanghai Observed Instagram and Facebook accounts and for amusement purposes alone is well worth following.
 

 

 
More sartorial eloquence, after the jump…
 

 
It’s a fair bet that a large part of many (most?) record collections includes a good percentage of covers by the legendary London-based graphic designers Hipgnosis.

Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell who were the original founders of Hipgnosis turned out a massive array of iconic designs for bands as varied as Pink Floyd (who had been the first band to commission the duo), T.Rex, Hawkwind, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, 10CC, Wings, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Genesis, Jon Anderson, Depeche Mode, XTC, ABC, Megadeth, and even England’s former poet laureate John Betjeman.

Apart from album covers, Hipgnosis also designed a series of fashion spreads for the softcore porn mag Club International and its more hardcore American edition Club.

Club International was founded by porn supremo Paul Raymond, who ran the legendary strip club the Raymond Revuebar in London’s seedy Soho district and a series of best-selling porn mags. Under its first editor Tony Power, Club International was intended as a high-quality adult entertainment magazine mixing the best of writers with the finest photographers and designers.

Hipgnosis was hired to add a classy touch to the magazine’s fashion spreads. The gig allowed Thorgerson and Powell to try-out a few ideas which they would later re-use on album covers—the flasher who would reappear on Pink Floyd’s A Nice Pair, for instance, while the water-in-the-face shots would feature on Peter Frampton’s Something’s Happened. See more Hipgnosis glorious work here.
 

 

 
See more of Hipgnosis’ fashion work for Club International, after the jump…
 

“Fuck Off” socks. Get them here.
 
While I’m a huge fan of the word “fuck,” it’s not always as easy to slip it into conversation as I’d like it to be. What’s more is that the word, or the phrase “fuck off,” are sort of like a “final straw” kind of threat to hurl at someone after you’ve burned through every other conceivable response to shitty human behavior. I used to think it would have been swell to come up with a way to flash the phrase at someone in traffic by way of an electronic sign on the back of my car—but like most of my ideas that have never come to fruition, it probably would have gotten me shot. Especially given the road-ragey drivers on the streets these days who would just run you off the highway because you were sporting the “wrong” kind of bumper sticker on your wheels.

But let’s get back to the point of this post which concerns a line of explicit socks emblazoned with the glorious phrase (or its sister slogan “fuck you”) in different places such as the sole of the sock- or my favorite—the small bit that peeks up over the back of your sneakers. I’m a crass person by nature as clearly stated in my Dangerous Minds bio where I list “cursing” as one of my “interests.” Although I don’t much care for the phenomenon that are “message” shirts and wearables, I am 100% down with my socks speaking for me when I feel like I need to hold my tongue. Which is almost never. I should work on that. Images and links where you can order the aggressive hosiery follow.
 
 
A more subtle pair of “Fuck Off” socks. Get a pair here.
 

A long pair of “Fuck Off” socks. Get them here.
 
More after the jump…

An inspired retro t-shirt design by graphic artist, Steven Rhodes.
 
Steven Rhodes, a graphic designer who hails from Brisbane, Australia, is the excellent individual responsible for the hysterical retro-style t-shirts in this post. Loosely based on the popular series of exploitive riffs on Little Golden Activity Books that have made the rounds on the Internet, Rhodes has taken things one step beyond with his shirt designs by making up alternate scenarios involving young tykes experiencing their first knife fight or ritualistic cult sacrifice. Excellent.

Rhodes has loads of cool shirts in his shop including alternative takes on Twin Peaks, a few based on the films of Wes Anderson, and others which homage the awesome neon-lit 80s. For my money, and as the shirts will run you $20-$25 bucks a pop depending on the style, I have to give it up to Rhodes’ peculiar illustrations of kids doing things I wish I had done when I was their age. I’ve included a few of my favorite shirts from Rhodes’ collection below. To see the rest and to order one of your very own, click here. Screw you, Toby! Time to DIE!
 

 

 
More macabre mirth after the jump…

 
Summer is almost over, but it doesn’t mean there’s still isn’t time to sport some fish flip flops. Why not? There’s not really much to say about these except… here they are in all their fishy glory.

From the semi-English product description:

• polypropylene
• Dare to be little eccentric, new trend.
• MD sole. MD is a lightweight, elastic and shockproof material for making soles.
• Funny indoor slipper. Fish-shaped slippers, a great gift and collection.
• With high density, high elastic anti-skidding sole, no glue, light not only, more wear-resisting.
• Suitable for beach, swimming, and other leisure casual occasions. Easy to wear and wash.

 
These fishy flip flops sell for $25.99 here.

 

 
via Boing Boing

 
There’s an axiom I have about life which states “If it looked good on David Bowie then it’ll look shit on you.”

The obvious example was that daft craze for Bowie pants in the late 1970s early 1980s around Bowie’s Thin White Duke phase. These narrow-waist, wide-thighed yet tightly tapered at the ankle trousers looked the biz on the Main Man but let’s be honest they looked utter shit on everybody else. They were like giant incontinence trousers for men. It was a mere hop and skip to imagine the gallons of urine slopping around inside each pant leg when seen on wannabe cool guys up town on a Saturday night.

Another fine (and let’s be honest probably the best) example was the car crash of a hairstyle known as the Mullet.

Bowie popped up with one in the early 1970s when he was doing Aladdin Sane and singing “Life on Mars.” Bowie looked cool. He looked exotic. He looked taboo. But when the very same hairstyle was sported by various hairy soccer stars and bland TV personalities a decade or so later in the 1980s, it was like inmates from the Bide-a-wee care home for the criminally attired had escaped.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “the Mullet was “coined” by the Beastie Boys (really?) in their song “Mullet Head” in 1994. But I’m not sure this is correct as I recall the term being used with abandon during the 1980s in the UK.

The mullet was a strange welding together of two different hairstyles—usually a flat top or feather cut on top with long rat’s tails at the back. It was an aberration, sure, but it is an aberration that still persists to this day like knotweed in gardens. Here for your delectation and education is a small selection of the hairstyle every sensible person should avoid at all cost.
 

David Bowie—the only person who can sport a mullet and not look stupid.
 

Y’see what I mean…
 

English soccer star Chris Waddle seemed to have this hairstyle longer than his playing career.
 

 
More of the hairstyle that time forgot, after the jump…
 

A photo from AMBUSH’s ad campaign for their ‘Holy Mountain’ line of jewelry and accessories, 2012.
 

“You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.”

—a quote from “The Alchemist” (played by Alejandro Jodorowsky) in The Holy Mountain

Back in 2012 Tokyo company AMBUSH created a line of jewelry and accessories based on the messed up imagery from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film, The Holy Mountain. AMBUSH’s ad campaign for the line was ambitious, to say the least, and, as you might imagine, the line sold out quicker than you can say “The grave receives you with love.” It is possible to track some of the unique pieces down out there on the Internet such as Wrong Weather, Grailed, Big Cartel and sometimes eBay. I can’t lie, I want nearly everything from AMBUSH’s wearable homage to one of my favorite films of all time.

I’ve posted images from the ad campaign as well as several photos of items in the collection that are just too fucking cool. Some are NSFW, much like Mr. Jodorowsky himself.
 

“Eye Ring.”
 

Pin set. Available here.
 

Clutch with design inspired by ‘The Holy Mountain.’
 
More after the jump…