A fantastic embroidered piece by Australian artist, Adipocere.
Based in Melbourne, Australia, the embroidery artist known as “Adipocere,” adopted a word that has several somewhat sinister synonyms such as “grave wax,” “corpse wax,” or “mortuary wax.” By definition, adipocere is a light-gray substance produced by a cadaver as their fatty tissue decomposes—making the word a perfect match for the artist’s delightfully dreadful embroidery.
Adipocere (aka “Josh”) has been involved in the craft of embroidery since 2014 and currently his Instagram has 63.7K followers. On his Instagram feed the artist makes note of the fact that he also does embroidery on human skin. His work has been shown in galleries across the world, and according to the artist himself, he is aware of at least 60 people who have tattooed images of his dark embroidery onto their own skin. I understand that he occasionally sells his pieces and also has a few other items up for purchase via Big Cartel. The images below are slightly NSFW.
Blondie is, per Kirsty Young, “the most successful American band ever in the UK.” In December of ‘79, having just topped the chart yet again with Eat to the Beat, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein paid a visit to the BBC’s Saturday morning kids’ show Swap Shop—apparently a rival of Tiswas whose full legal name was Multi-Coloured Swap Shop—where guests offered swag to lucky contestants who wrote in with the correct answer to a trivia question. Some of the dry goods on this episode come from the recently completed “rock and roll comedy” Roadie, in which Blondie’s co-stars were Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper, Roy Orbison and Art Carney.
During the best parts of the episode, Chris and Debbie press phones to their ears as the tiny, halting voices of English schoolchildren blurt out questions and wishes for a happy Christmas:
Ian Rutledge: I wanted to ask Debbie, did she participate in any sports?
Beverly Chinnick: Um, Debbie, who designs your clothes, and um, do you choose them?
Samantha Jarrett: Um, um, Debbie, did you name your group after your hair?
Paulette Baker: Can I ask Debbie a question? Was her hair always that fair color, or was it brown like the other members of her group?
Because the proceedings are so sweet, the mention of the disgraced TV host Jimmy Savile, who was revealed to have been a serial rapist of children shortly after his death, is startling. Brace yourself. (Savile does not appear on the show, though the gross likeness of his gross hair does.)
If Wikipedia is right, BBC wiped its archival tape of this episode in the late eighties. Three cheers for home recording.
Fumio Miyashita was the leader of one of Japan’s most far out space rock units, The Far East Family Band, which also included the future new age composer, Kitaro. The Boffomundo Show was a Los Angeles public access television show focusing on prog rock in the late 70s and early 80s. Boffomundo producers Aaron Weiner and Ron Curtiss partnered with a well-connected guy named Tony Harrington of a label called All Ears Records to create The All Ears Boffomundo Show, which is how Fumio Miyashita came to appear on the show, twice, all of which is soon getting a release on vinyl by Drag City.
I asked Ron Curtiss a few questions via email:
First off, tell the readers about The Boffomundo Show.
Ron Curtiss: Aaron Weiner and I started The Boffomundo Show in 1979, which featured sit-down interviews with our progrock heroes. As cable television expanded, it mandated a “public access” broadcasting option allowing local subscribers to produce their own shows. Boffomundo roughly means “big world.” Watching the TV show, Happy Days, and hearing Fonzie say “correctomundo,” I replaced the “correcto” part with “boffo,” which refers to high grosses in show biz talk and voila! At a progressive music festival in Downtown LA we met a former A&R executive from Atlantic Records called Tony Harrington, who had traveled the world in the mid-70’s with King Crimson, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Genesis. He provided us with a brilliant litany of guests: Robert Fripp and John Wetton (King Crimson); Bernardo Lanzetti (PFM); Phil Collins and John Goodsall (Genesis and Brand X) and of course, Fumio Miyashita. The show continued after Tony, into the 80’s and 90’s, where we interviewed King Crimson’s Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford (Yes, Genesis, King Crimson) and fusion guitarists, Larry Coryell and Al Di Meola.
How did you come into contact with Fumio Miyashita and arrange for him to be on the show?
Ron Curtis: Tony Harrington had his own record label called All Ears Records. He had connections to progressive bands in Japan, including Fumio, whose Far East Family Band was already legendary. The award-winning synthesist, Kitaro, was a member and they had the honor of having Tangerine Dream’s Klaus Schulze provide production work on several of their albums. Tony brought Fumio to Los Angeles in 1978, where a new version of The Far East Family Band performed at the world famous Troubadour for two nights in March of that year. In 1979, Tony invited us to Fumio’s home, where we discussed a solo appearance on The Boffomundo Show. We had never tried live music before. The studio was the size of a small bedroom, but that didn’t stop us!
Anything notable that happened behind-the-scenes during the taping?
Ron Curtiss: Fumio showed up at Theta Cable Studios in Santa Monica, CA with many synthesizers, gongs, mixers and various percussion. Somehow the Theta Cable staff pumped all the sound through one small bookshelf speaker. The speaker sat on a wooden stool with a single microphone! The sound quality was very good considering nothing like this had never been done in that studio before. In 1980, Fumio with a guitarist and bass player, graced The Boffomundo Show a second time. Both performances are brilliantly captured on the new album.
How did the release of this come about?
Ron Curtiss: Last August I got a message on our Boffomundo Facebook page from Scott McGaughey at Drag City Records. It seems that he and Animal Collective member, Brian “Geo” Weitz were fans of the show and of Fumio in particular. They wanted to remaster the sound and edit together portions of both the 1979 and 1980 shows for vinyl. Vinyl is perfect. We are honored to have these shows memorialized and dedicate the record to the memories of Fumio Miyashita and Tony Harrington.
Will there be more like it?
Since we remastered the old shows and posted them on YouTube some years ago, we have close to a million hits. The old fans and new prog kids support us all around the world. The shows were not seen by a lot of folks at the time. They capture the end of the original progressive rock movement. The highlights are the fresh memories of these amazing musicians, avoiding the softening of opinions over many years. We offered the musicians a forum to tell their tales on TV, in an intelligent, uncommercial venue. A few years ago I was approached to do a book, Robert Fripp The Boffomundo Interview 1979 and now a record! We are humbled by the reaction to the old shows and always welcome original ideas to present them to an even wider audience.
Fumio Miyashita Live on the Boffomundo Show comes out on September 22 from Drag City. Pre-order it here.
An excerpt from Fumio Miyashita’s appearance on ‘The Boffomundo Show’
Everyone gives George Lois huge props for his attention-getting use of celebrities and his sharp eye for an arresting image, but he wasn’t the only one in advertising or publishing treading that terrain. Through the late 1950s and the 1960s, Smirnoff Vodka had a well-known series of ads that used some pretty hip people, from Vincent Price and Langston Hughes to Woody Allen and Eartha Kitt.
Smirnoff was intent on pushing the Moscow Mule during this phase, so it comes up in a lot of the ads. Kitt and Allen both pose with the same wooden donkey to drive the point home, and a few of the ads feature the distinctive copper cup intended to be used for Moscow Mules.
The campaign used a great many African-American celebrities, which may have been forward-thinking at the time, but it also may have pushed the ball forward on homosexual imagery to some degree. In 2000 the Advocate singled out the Joseph Cotten ad below as an example of a subversive advertisement reaching out to homosexuals in a coded way.
These ads all reek of Sterling Cooper, and Robert Morse is among the celebrities just to make it that much more of a Mad Men kind of post.
This is interesting—as I always thought Trypophobia was a phobia—but according to Discover Magazine, Trypophobia is an innate response to stimuli and cannot be unlearned like most phobias can be.
If this image gives you the willies, you may have what has been called trypophobia–the fear of clusters of small holes. It has been hypothesized that this fear stems from a resemblance of the holes to patterns on poisonous animals. Although thousands of people find images like this really disturbing, it’s not enough to make it a phobia, which is a learned response that can be unlearned. These scientists studied preschoolers to determine whether trypophobia is an instinctive human response that can never be unlearned. To do this, they showed the kids pictures of venomous animals with and without overlaid images of trypophobia-inducing holes. Because only the pictures with holes upset the kids, the researchers believe that the fear is innate, and not a learned association with poisonous animals. So there you have it: if that tree makes you feel horrible, there is nothing you can do about it.
Basically, there’s not a damned thing you can do about it if this image of the hand (above) affects you.
“In the past 10 years, thousands of people have claimed to be affected by trypophobia, which is the fear of objects with small holes. Recent research suggests that people do not fear the holes; rather, images of clustered holes, which share basic visual characteristics with venomous organisms, lead to nonconscious fear. In the present study, both self-reported measures and the Preschool Single Category Implicit Association Test were adapted for use with preschoolers to investigate whether discomfort related to trypophobic stimuli was grounded in their visual features or based on a nonconsciously associated fear of venomous animals. The results indicated that trypophobic stimuli were associated with discomfort in children. This discomfort seemed to be related to the typical visual characteristics and pattern properties of trypophobic stimuli rather than to nonconscious associations with venomous animals. The association between trypophobic stimuli and venomous animals vanished when the typical visual characteristics of trypophobic features were removed from colored photos of venomous animals. Thus, the discomfort felt toward trypophobic images might be an instinctive response to their visual characteristics rather than the result of a learned but nonconscious association with venomous animals. Therefore, it is questionable whether it is justified to legitimize trypophobia.”
Now, to make matters worse, here are some images of tiny clusters of holes!
As 1968 rolled around, Ike and Tina had been performing as the “Ike & Tina Turner Revue” since the early 60s, doing tons of television appearances but they were only treading water, especially in America. Their luck had started to change in England in 1966 when they had a big hit on their hands in the UK thanks to producer Phil Spector and the song “River Deep – Mountain High” (written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich—the prolific husband and wife songwriting team who gave us, among other earwigs, “Da Doo Ron Ron.”). Though Ike is credited on “River Deep – Mountain High,” he was allegedly paid $20,000 by Spector to fuck off during the session which according to Tina was about as much fun as “carving furniture.” Spector considers the song to be his single greatest achievement, but when the single didn’t do that much in the U.S. this is what seemed to prompt his withdrawal from the music industry. That didn’t stop the Rolling Stones from tapping the Revue to open a dozen shows for them during their British tour that same year. (Where do you think Mick got his moves from? Tina Turner and Inez Foxx!)
Still, the Revue was still technically without a hit in the U.S. Undaunted, Ike, Tina and the band would take up a residency in Las Vegas. They also recorded a few albums that year and in 1969 including, The Hunter, which would yield a Grammy nomination for Tina for her vocal work on the title track. Ike would also get a Grammy nod in the Best Rhythm & Blues Instrumental Performance category for his record A Black Man’s Soul while leading his other funky outfit, Ike Turner & The Kings of Rhythm. At the end of 1969, the busy Revue was touring yet again with The Rolling Stones.
Here’s a clip of Tina’s absolutely incendiary performance of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” taken from Gimme Shelter documentary.
I’m not entirely sure how I managed to missed this one, but in 2015 photographer Inge Prader brought Gustav Klimt’s paintings to “life.” Prader shot these gorgeous images for the 2015 Life Ball in Vienna. (Life Ball is an annual AIDS charity event.)
These are simply jaw-dropping. The details are impeccable. If you’d like to see more of Prader’s series, please visit DesignBoom.
“Past success is no guarantee of future success, and anything is possible. It’s something that I try not to forget.”
—Artist Alex Gross on what keeps him going.
You may already be familiar with the work of New York-based artist Alex Gross as his striking surrealist pop creations have been seen in many publications including The Los Angeles Times. His warped, hyperrealistic artwork was also compiled into a couple of books—one in 2008 by Bruce Sterling, The Art of Alex Gross: Paintings and Other Works, and another published in 2014, Future Tense, Paintings by Alex Gross, 2010-2014.
It’s clear from Gross’ take on modern times that, like many of us, he may have already abandoned hope for the future. And his most recent gallery show, “Antisocial Network,” his first in nearly ten years back in February of this year, is a perfect example of his perhaps dim outlook on our collective existence. The work featured in the show was the result of two years of observation and reflection while the world began its downward spiral and the U.S. somehow ended up with a “president” that says shit like this.
Many of the paintings I’ve featured in this post involve people interacting with their smartphones while mayhem ensues behind them, unnoticed, which seems entirely plausible as it happens every goddamn day. I mean, people are so attached to their smartphones that they have panic attacks when they can’t find them and quite literally fall into holes in the sidewalk because they can’t bear to not stare into them while simply walking down the street. Despite perpetuating the notion that we all might end up in a hole in the sidewalk never to be seen again, Gross says that he hopes that his work helps people connect with each other. I’m all for that.
If you’d like to add some of Gross’ artwork to your collection, you can pick up limited edition prints at his website.
Taste the RAINBOW! The jumbo rainbow dick pop, that is. Get yours here.
Oh, the places I go to keep all you wonderful Dangerous Minds readers entertained on a daily basis. I took one for team DM today as my “research” for this post took me to places I would never have innocently wandered myself unless I was planning on pranking a pal by sending them a Piña Colada-flavored candy penis. To answer Jimmy Buffet’s age old question regarding my current disposition on Piña Coladas, no. No, I do not like Piña Coladas, Sam-I-Am. Not anymore anyway.
So here’s the thing, after digging up a few different varieties of edible candy dicks, I found a bunch of other goofy foodstuffs like “Dickorice” which is marketed to people who love dick and licorice equally as well as the awful-as-it-sounds “Gum Job” candy that you put on your teeth before you engage in oral sex. There are even gummy handcuffs that for some baffling reason exist. Of all the weird sexy candy in this post, I can’t lie—I am partial to the lollipop by Naughty Talk Pops that says “Let’s Fuck,” because sometimes you just need to be direct. I’ve posted links along with the NSFW images below on where you can get these naughty novelties out there on the Internet.
Piña Colada-flavored “Cocktail” flavored sucker. Get it here.
The world is ever divided into the superstitious and the enlightened, and while the enlightened have shown the clear trend of being on the rise, it doesn’t always seem so. Ghosts and horoscopes and good-luck charms abound, and poindexterish explanations of why they are all poppycock merely tend to make one an un-adored party pooper—even though this is certainly the correct view.
There’s a tendency to consign all of pre-modernity to the superstitious (one might say “religious”) camp, but that really isn’t the case. Mathematicians and scientists have existed for the entirety of recorded history, which must be the case since language and writing technologies are products of the experimental mindset. The Enlightenment was a turning point, as rationality was increasingly given a central place in the arrangement of social affairs, and even if irreligious skeptics were (and are) outnumbered, you could still always count on finding someone in the vicinity willing to scoff at the hocus-pocus of superstition.
In the 19th century, some scholars were able to use interest in the paranormal to undermine its premises entirely. One such person was J.H. Brown, who published a book in New York City under the title Spectropia; or, Surprising spectral illusions showing ghosts everywhere and of any colour in 1864. The book was popular enough to merit a print run in London in 1865 and a Dutch edition in 1866.
Here is the cover of the U.S. edition:
To produce his popular occult-adjacent book, Brown relied on the optical phenomenon of “cone fatigue,” whereby prolonged exposure to an image of a specific color produces an afterimage (with reversed colors) in the eye for a few seconds after the initial image is replaced with a white field. A common example is an inverted image of the U.S. flag, which produces a more or less color-accurate version in the eye afterward.
Brown didn’t use the flag—he used pictures of demons and angels and skeletons. In the book Brown stated that his goal was
the extinction of the superstitious belief that apparitions are actual spirits, by showing some of the many ways in which our senses may be deceived, and that, in fact, no so-called ghost has ever appeared, without its being referable either to mental or physiological deception, or, in those instances where several persons have seen a spectre at the same time, to natural objects
Here are Brown’s instructions on how to see the “spectres”:
To see the spectres, it is only necessary to look steadily at the dot, or asterisk, which is to be found on each of the plates, for about a quarter of a minute, or while counting about twenty, the plate being well illuminated by either artificial or day light. Then turning the eyes to the ceiling, the wall, the sky, or better still to a white sheet hung on the wall of a darkened room (not totally dark), and looking rather steadily at any one point, the spectre will soon begin to make its appearance, increasing in intensity, and then gradually vanishing, to reappear and again vanish ; it will continue to do so several times in succession, each reappearance being fainter than the one preceding. Winking the eyes, or passing a finger rapidly to and fro before them, will frequently hasten the appearance of the spectre, especially if the plate has been strongly illuminated.
Here’s an amusing item from the New York Daily Tribune of September 13, 1864, in which the publisher introduces to the public “the new ghost marvel” that can produce “without apparatus, machine, or expense” all manner of demons and ghosts “upon the wall, the doors, the curtains, or any white surface whatever!!”
I figure this was sort of the Magic Eye of its day. Below are some of the images from Spectropia, but you can see the whole book at Public Domain Review.
More spectral demons and skeletons after the jump…....
