Actress Maria Germanova in character as a fairy for the 1908 stage production of ‘The Blue Bird.’
 
The captivating images of actors in full costume and character for a performance of The Blue Bird are apparently the only extant visual reminders of the play as it premiered, originally directed by Konstantin Stanislavski in 1908 at Moscow Art Theatre. Written by Belgian playwright and poet Maurice Maeterlinck, it has had many adaptations throughout the decades since, most notably the 1940 film by director Walter Lang who cast a twelve-year-old Shirley Temple as an irritable child who, with her brother, set out in search of the Bluebird of Happiness. The intention of 20th Century Fox was to give the smash The Wizard of Oz a run for its money, but it was a dismal box office failure. To its credit, the film would later be nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. Another notable adaptation would come in 1976 when director George Cukor would try his had at another remake of the film this time with starring Elizabeth Taylor. Though it was packed with star power—including Jane Fonda and Ava Gardner—it was a twelve million dollar flop.

At its foundation, Maeterlinck’s play is a story of wistful yearning told from the perspective of a brother and sister who are dissatisfied with their lives. When a fairy becomes aware of their discontent, she sets them off in search of the Blue Bird of Happiness. The pair travel through various fantasy worlds in search of the elusive bird—which serves as a metaphor for their search for their own spirituality. If after reading this description you feel a little lightheaded—it’s perfectly understandable. The Blue Bird is a weirdly, wonderful story that closely parallels plotlines in The Wizard of Oz. The concept for the wildly creative costumes worn by the actors at the Moscow Art Theatre was conceived by the theater’s owner Constantin Stanislavski who enlisted the help of artist V. E. Yevgenoff to create them.

According to historians well versed on the Moscow Art Theatre, which at the time was considered one of the most vital dramatic arts communities in the world, anything connected with the 1908 production was destroyed once WWI commenced in 1914, with the exception of these photographs. Despite their age and lack of color, they are remarkably vivid. While they are all stunning, the images of actress Maria Germanova (who played the mythical fairy in The Blue Bird and is best known for her role in the silent film based on Leo Tolstoy’s novel Ana Karenina) are particularly arresting.
 

Maria Germanova.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
In 2012 Penguin published a new “deluxe” edition of the Kama Sutra translated by A. N. D. Haksar. For the cover art Penguin hired a brilliant graphic artist named Malika Favre, who incontestably came up with a marvelous and witty design by inventing an entire sexy alphabet based on the positions in the book.
 

 
If you take the jacket off of the hardcover edition and spread it out, it spells “KAMA SUTRA” in Favre’s alphabet.

There’s a website dedicated to the alphabet in which you can see the entire alphabet ... in motion! On the site you could once purchase lovely prints of individual letters, but it looks like they’re all sold out.
 
A closer look at the individual letters, after the jump…...
 

 
If you have ever taken a serious art class, you probably used a guide to drawing the human figure, such as Harold Speed’s The Practice and Science of Drawing, Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, or some other one. Not everyone is born with top-notch draftsmanship skills, so for the rest of us such instructional resources can be indispensable in helping incipient artistes bring some order and proportion to their imagery. 

In Japan there is a new manual that specializes in drawing what can be described as “lazy people in casual poses.” No, really—the title of the book is Daratto shita Pose Catalogue, which translates to “Lazing About Pose Catalogue.” Sure enough, many of its 800 pictures feature young men and women slumped down, slouching, draped over a table listlessly, lolling around in bed, and so on.

Why, it’s enough to make your average member of the Baby Boom generation have a fit! Quit that lollygagging and get a job!!
 

 
It’s difficult to know how accurately to take that translation, “Lazing About Pose Catalogue”; it could be that the original verbiage means “casual” without much judgment. And this could also partly be an offshoot of what Americans regard as a more formal public culture in Japan—maybe it’s a little bit harder to get models to simulate a state of repose, thus creating a demand for a book like this as a counter-measure. Who knows, it’s all possible.

Even if all of the above might be true, let’s face it, judging from the pictures, this book really does feature models hitting some exceptionally lazy-looking poses!

This one spread is useful for depicting lazy people on a variety of furniture, such as chairs and sofas.

 
The book is available from Amazon Japan for 2,700 yen (about $23) starting March 6.
 

 

 
More lazy-ass poses after the jump….....

Black River Falls’ Miss Congeniality circa 1890

Between the years 1890 and 1900, something terribly wrong happened to the good people of Black River Falls, Wisconsin. A tiny mining town populated mostly by Norwegian and German immigrants lured by the promise of cheap land, the once-bustling community fell into disrepair in the late 1880s when the inhospitable climate caused the mines to shut down, essentially dooming the town and everyone in it. While the town did ultimately survive, the ensuing decade was merciless to Black River Falls residents. A thick, impenetrable darkness descended on the town as the population withered, succumbing to poverty, disease, madness, murder, and worse.
 

 
In 1973, Michael Lesy told the terrible true tale of Black River Falls in Wisconsin Death Trip, a book that juxtaposed stark images shot by photographer Charles Van Schaick, who documented the town’s downward spiral in a series of jarring portraits, with matter-of-fact newspaper reports of all the murder, mayhem, devil-worship, suicide, hauntings and general bedlam that infected the town like a virus. If ever a place was cursed, it was Black River Falls, and Wisconsin Death Trip remains one of the bleakest, most devastating accounts of rural American life ever published. Seriously, this place was essentially Hell on Earth.
 

All this and diphtheria, too: a typically unsettling slice of life death in Black River Falls.
 
Witness, if you will, just a smattering of the horrors within:

A ten-year-old boy and his younger brother run away from home, find a remote farm several miles away and promptly blow the owner’s head off. They spend the rest of the summer frolicking at the ill-gotten farmhouse until the farmer’s brother comes for a visit. The boy is sentenced to life in jail.

A funeral director is suspected of botching a burial. The woman’s body is exhumed and the woman is found to have been buried alive, her fingers bitten half off in madness after discovering her horrific fate.

A sixty-year-old woman, afraid that the rash on her back would kill her, steps into her backyard, douses herself with gasoline and self-immolates.

A young mother takes her three children out for a day at the beach, and then drowns them, one by one, while the others watch. A fifteen-year-old Polish girl burns down her employer’s barn—and his house—because she wanted some “excitement.” 

A young German man, having only moved to Black River Falls a month prior, attempts suicide by train, lying down on the tracks and refusing to move. He is finally removed by four men. He later vanishes.

A teenage girl, jilted at the altar by her fiance, goes mad with grief, hanging herself in the local asylum. Meanwhile a young man, also recently jilted, shoots his ex-fiance and then himself. A recently divorced man shoots his ex-wife and her family dead in the crowded town square.

An outbreak of diphtheria kills off a score of local children. The school is closed and the houses of the afflicted burned to the ground. A formerly world famous opera singer moves to town and within a month is reduced to eating chicken feed to survive.

A farmer decapitates all of his chickens and burns down his farmhouse, convinced that the devil has taken over his farm. A drifter is taken in by a kindly family. He has dinner with them and as they sleep, he shoots them all and then himself.

And there’s more, so much more. Just endless misery death, murder, mutilation, arson, starvation, cruelty and unrelenting depression. And all in the space of just a few years.
 

 
In 1999, a highly unsettling documentary based on Lesy’s book was released. Also titled Wisconsin Death Trip, it showed the photographs, recounted the newspaper reports, and recreated many of the crimes in black and white, bringing Black River Falls’ grisly past to life. The film also juxtaposes the town’s lunatic ancestors with dead-eyed portraits of the then-current residents, less murderous but still as dazed and depressed as ever, staring blankly into the camera at nursing homes or bus stops, clearly waiting for the Lord or somebody merciful to end their dreary, pointless existences. I would not recommend consuming both the book and the documentary in one sitting unless you have a bucket of Prozac handy, but I will say this: You might think you’re pretty goth ‘n all with your serial killer books and your Bauhaus records, but you are definitely not Black River Falls goth. Those motherfuckers were the real deal.

Watch ‘Wisconsin Death Trip’ after the jump…

‘Hell.’
 
Welcome to Hell!

As your tour guide today to our great Satanic Majesty’s diabolic underworld, may I suggest you pay close attention to the handy stereoscopic guide which was issued to you on your arrival. This is our most up-to-date edition which was published in 1875. Now I know some of you are already complaining it’s not on Kindle or Oculus Rift or whatever that new-fangled virtual reality shit you have up there. Well, this is Hell. Things aren’t meant to be easy here. In fact everything is meant to be a pain in the ass—though admittedly the music is pretty good down here. Anyway…

Stereoscopic images are very popular here as they once were back in the 1800s. It’s a simple way to see things in 3-D.

This infernal guide book was produced by two Frenchmen, François Benjamin Lamiche and Adolphe Block, sometime during the late 1860s and early 1870s. And as you can see from their exquisite handcrafted models—which always remind me of those skeletons Ray Harryhausen made for Jason and the Argonauts—Hell has plenty of interesting torments, punishments and the odd occasional pleasure…but not for you.

So, why not browse the brochure and get ready for some unrelenting torment, hm? Any questions? What? Oh, no, no, no. There are no rest rooms down here—you should surely know by now Hell is an eternity without relief.

Click on the double images for a closer look.
 

‘Hell.’
 

‘The railway to Hell.’
 
More old fashioned 3-D pictures of Hell, after the jump…

 
In the early ‘60s, a distinctive anti-hero theme emerged in Italian comics. It was typified by Diabolik and Kriminal—both masters of disguise, and both thieves who preyed upon other criminals. Diabolik came first, in 1962, and Kriminal followed in 1964, adding the wrinkle that the protagonist was also a remorseless killer.

And in 1966, Killing blew both of them out of the water. The title character swiped Kriminal’s costume—a skeleton costume topped with a skull mask—but Kriminal’s was bright yellow, and Killing sported a more standard Halloween-issue black and white union suit. Killing (a/k/a Satanik, a/k/a Sadistik, a/k/a Kilink…) further upped the ante in the violence department by eschewing comic book style drawings in favor of photo illustrations, so all the violence was represented graphically with Grand Guignol theatrical effects. The resulting book was misogynistic as hell and utterly without redeeming value, so naturally it became a trans-oceanic phenomenon, published under the various names listed above not just in Italy, but Germany, Belgium, and several South American nations.
 

 

 
Much more mayhem and ‘Killing’ after the jump…

The cover of 1989’s ‘The Betty Page 3-D Picture Book.’

Though I’m sure the first thing you will notice about this book of photos and illustrations by Hugh Fleming (and others) of Bettie Page is that her name is not-so-curiously misspelled as “Betty” and not “Bettie.” The alternative spelling of Page’s name as “Betty” is actually fairly common, and its use can likely be traced back to photographer Bunny Yeager who worked with Page in the mid-50s. We also see the alternate spelling of Page’s name credited to Dave Stevens, the illustrator behind early 80s comic The Rocketeer and a Bettie Page superfan. In the comic “Betty,” the girlfriend of “Cliff Secord” (the Rocketeer’s alter-ego) was modeled after Page. Then in 1987 a fanzine detailing the bombshell’s real-life exploits called The Betty Pages became hugely popular thanks to its founder Greg Theakston. There are also other, more modern publications that also refer to Page as “Betty” including this naughty fetish book by Dirk Vermin that we’ve previously featured here on Dangerous Minds.

According to the introduction written by Dave Stevens, the photos that were used in the book came to him through a man named Walter Sigg who had a stash of color photos of Page in what Stevens refers to as “3-D,” many of which had never been seen before. Stevens’ mention of “Walter Sigg” is also curious as the only Walter Sigg of note that I able to conclusively identify was a Swiss graphic designer from Zurich. While I was frustrated by the fact that is seems Walter Sigg might not even exist, as Stevens’ notes in the book’s introduction color 3-D stereo slides of Page do exist and sometimes pop up on auction sites on sale for as much as $500 bucks. When it comes to the book itself, you can find copies of it for anywhere from $10 to $100 depending on its condition on eBay. I’ve included a few photos from the book which is an absolute must-have piece of memorabilia for any Bettie Page fanatic, below. And since this is Bettie Page we’re talking about, they are NSFW.
 

 

 
More Betty/Bettie in 3-D after the jump…

‘This is Where Its Fuckin At (At Least It Used to Be),’ artist Harland Miller’s take on what I wish was a real vintage Penguin book.

Before comedian Scott Rogowsky took to the New York Subway with his hilariously subversive “fake” book covers such as Ass Eating Made Simple, English novelist and artist Harland Miller was busy creating a series of dubious and inflammatory paintings based on the classic covers of vintage of Penguin Books in 2001. And like the books Rogowsky used to shock weary NY subway riders, I’d love to imagine stumbling across a vintage paperback with the title Health and Safety is Killing Bondage. Don’t laugh, it could happen.

Many of our Dangerous Minds readers are likely already acquainted with Miller’s contributions to the world of literature. His 2000 novel, Slow down Arthur, Stick to Thirty centered around a young child who sets off to explore the northern parts of England with a David Bowie impersonator. Even the cover of Miller’s debut is worth bragging about as it includes a small image of Bowie as Ziggy clad in ski gear embroidered on a sweater. The paintings Miller composed for his Penguin Book series are huge—perhaps over six feet in length. His nostalgic works are lovingly realistic thanks to his skilled painting technique by which he is able to create the tactile appearance of wear and tear on a book’s spine, or the distressing of color due to age, sun damage or mistreatment. Miller’s caustic sense of humor is on full display with these faux covers and of the many images I’ve included in this post below, I can guarantee there is something that everyone will identify with. Which helps to reinforce what a treasure Mr. Miller is.

Seemingly unstoppable, Miller has kept churning out more of his charmingly debaucherous book covers. The artist has sold many of his original paintings, and when he does they go for anywhere between $5,000 to more than $30,000. Some contain language and concepts that are slightly NSFW.
 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

 
Photo comics—if we define them as narratives built from sequential still photos with captions and/or speech bubbles—have been with us since probably the 1940s, when the earliest examples emerged in Italy. By the ‘60s, the popularity of the form had spread across the Atlantic, finding one of its foremost expressions in Help!, a satire magazine founded by MAD founder-in-exile Harvey Kurtzman, which, among many others, once ran a memorable photo comic starring a young, pre-Monty Python John Cleese.

In 1995, the form took a huge visual leap with the publication of Diatom. Taking advantage of the increasingly accessible image editing power made possible by the digital revolution, Photographer Couto and art director Glen Hanson started with uncommonly high-end photography for photo comics, and applied the new image editing tech to create then unheard-of fantastic dreamscapes, in the service of a sexed-up, futuristic tale of innocents debauched. Juxtapoz Erotica Volume II described it thusly:

Couto and Hanson spared no expense and went to incredible extremes to get their photos just right. Each set took between one and two weeks to construct, and professional models were employed. After Couto developed the photographs, Hanson took the scanned images and superimposed mystical backgrounds to create simultaneously bizarre and realistic scenes of battle and seduction.

Paris and Apollonia are two chaste and immaculate lovers from Halcyon, a pristine world of light, chosen as emissaries to retrieve an antidote for the contaminant in Halcyon’s spring water that could render their people extinct. Their quest takes them to Skuld, a world of carnal excess ruled by Salatia De Voura, the evil but alluring epitome of dangerous sexuality and temptation, with help from her dwarf assistant, Ruderich.

Couto continues to work as a digital photographer, and the images that follow are from his Behance portfolio.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
There are reports, rumors and wild speculations popping up everywhere that the undisputed kings of bedraggled pop metal Ratt are reuniting and touring in 2017.  That’s good news, maybe the first good news in months. After the woeful year we’ve just had, we deserve a little Ratt n’ Roll, man. Let us not forget the plastic-fantastic majesty of mid-80’s Ratt: “Round and Round,” “Lay It Down.” “Wanted Man,” “Way Cool Jr.,” “Body Talk,” “Slip of the Lip,”  “Shame Shame Shame,” “Lack of Communication,” I mean it’s endless, this parade of big dumb hits these cats laid on us. And like many survivors of the glam wars, times have not always been easy for Ratt. They barreled headfirst into the grunge era and became one of its first victims. The hits dried up, the audiences shrank, and the kids found cooler, mopier ego stars to worship. In 2001, classic-era guitarist Robbin Crosby—the preening blonde golden-god of the gang—died of a heroin overdose, after wrestling with addiction and HIV for years. The rest of the band succumbed to infighting, forming half-assed versions of Ratt and scrambling for the last scraps of faded glory as they toured dismal suburban rock dives playing the hits for wistful, middle-aged Gen X-ers. Everyone had lost the goddamn plot.

Well, fuck all that. The band (plus or minus contentious drummer Bobby Blotzer, jury’s still out) are back, presumably better than ever. They even plan on recording a new album. I am 100% sure it will be chock full of tasty, fishnetty hard rock jams. We’re all gonna get laid. Maybe your hair will even grow back.

To celebrate the impending invasion of your privacy, here are some of the best/worst moments of Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy’s 2013 autobiography, Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life in Rock. I interviewed Pearcy for Classic Rock a few years ago and found him to be level-headed, enlightened, and even a little humble. None of those traits are evidenced in the book, which is all sex and mayhem, all the time. A stone-cold classic, in other words. Honestly, it might be the best (genital) warts n’ all rock bio you ever read.

Page 33, after ending up in the hospital with two broken legs at age 15 and banging the nurse who was giving him a sponge bath: “I discovered a crucial law that afternoon: Women adore broken men. They cannot resist the urge to fuck you back to health. I would use this secret off and on for the rest of my life.” Tuck that advice into your back pocket, boys

Some fashion advice (page 50): “Vests covered with pins and buttons, worn without a shirt, could always get you in the door, but on wilder, drunker occasions, bathrobes and open-necked karate uniforms were good choices.” Admittedly this sartorial advice might work best for skinny guys in hair metal bands.

Stephen Pearcy in therapy, talking about the time he partied with Ron Jeremy: “He was all sweaty and hairy, and his chick had these tits that were so fake it looked like if you grabbed them you could feel the plastic wrinkling under her skin. It was awesome.” Therapist: “Why did you want to watch?” Stephen: “Because it was cool. Because it was weird, and really gross. I’m into that kind of thing.”

On 1981: “It was a very good time to be young and in heat.”

Page 113: “Ratt had a new philosophy of heavy metal. Slay, steal, pillage, fuck, inspire twenty-chick orgies, all that good stuff. But in a classy sort of way, no devil worship.”

“You smell ridiculous, bro.” - Tommy Lee, after finding Pearcy on his living room floor.
 

 
While Pearcy rarely gets around to talking about Ratt’s music, he did write at length about shooting the cover of the first EP, which features rats crawling up model Tawny Kitaen’s legs.
Page 149: “Tawny flounced off to the dressing room, and Neil waited until she was out of earshot. “I want to throw some live rats at her,” he said. “Perfect,” I said.”

“We drank for an hour, smoking weed and listening to Black Sabbath, until a man in dented Toyota van bearing the inscription Rent-A-Rat arrived.”

“For one amazing hour, Robbin and I tossed rats at the hottest chick in Los Angeles.”

Page 167: “My doctor gave me the best advice: ‘Always look in the mouth,’ he said. ‘If the mouth’s filthy, then you’ve got a filthy snatch.’”

Page 174: “I pulled my pants down around my ankles and received the blowjob of my life while losing to Blotzer at Pong. And yet, part of me feels like I won.”

Page 183: “In a parking lot, true sluttiness knows no bounds.”

Page 206: “Connie,” I said, “You don’t want what I have.” “Oh,” she said seductively. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, what is it?” “Diarrhea dick,” I said chummily.

Page 221: “Robbin and I became permanent fixtures at the Sunset Marquis, the bull-goose lunatics of the insane asylum. Often Robbin walked around the halls fully nude in the middle of the day. “Cover yourself, sir!” a surprised clerk yelled. Robbin just looked down at his belly, shocked to find he had no pants on. “Hey, right. I’ll go do that.”

“I got trim in here that would make you sick to your stomach.” - Rodney Dangerfield, another permanent fixture of the Sunset Marquis.

Page 226: “You know, Joe, I almost died last night. Drank some weird alcohol out of a jar with cow balls in it.”

Page 232: “And then the cup was full, on the table, yellow and stinking - seventy-two ounces of tour piss. You could smell it from a mile away. “Well,” said Joe, “who’s gonna drink it?”

“Fuck, I just got a threatening phone call from OJ Simpson.” “What the hell for?” “He says if I don’t stop seeing Tawny, he’ll cut my hands off.”

More from Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy after the jump…