Twentieth Century
Follies of the Madmen #470
Imagine your lungs as a barn...
Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 28, 2020 -
Comments (1)
Category: Addictions, Business, Advertising, Tobacco and Smoking, Surrealism, Twentieth Century
Johanna Went
Let us know when you bail.
Halfway through 1984’s Knife Boxing, Johanna Went interrupts her incessant frenzied bopping to thrust her hands into a crudely made body part—half-buttocks, half-vagina—suspended from the roof of Club Lingerie.1 A vicious viscous excremental substance seeps down her arm. She brings her face close and sucks the stuff into her mouth before hauling out a giant goo-covered tampon that she aggressively flings at the audience. Some cringe, others laugh. Quickly she pulls on a costume, a huge mask-headed apron covered in sex doll heads, all the while screaming her unique tongue, a babble from Hell channeled through Lolita-cum-Medea. Screeching tape loops accompany her, along with a blaring saxophone and a loud percussive racket emanating from a woman drumming on found objects.2 A monstrous vagina appears stage right. Went extracts more tampons, heaving each into the mesmerized mosh pit. Completely at one with her, the audience starts hurling these back in a game of volleyball gone mad. After all, this show was held to coincide with the Los Angeles Olympics. Much art programming accompanied that event, but Went was not part of the roster. Instead, she held her own celebration of sports, on the stage of a punk club, flanked by headless stockinette figures replete with genitalia parodying the elegant cast metal kouroi made by Robert Graham to decorate the official Olympic stadiums.
Source of quote, long essay.
Another essay on the creator, here.
Her Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 13, 2020 -
Comments (9)
Category: Ambiguity, Uncertainty and Deliberate Obscurity, Antisocial Activities, Armageddon and Apocalypses, Bad Habits, Neuroses and Psychoses, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Music, Avant Garde, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, Twentieth Century
Mystery Illustration 93
This man is the son of one of the superstar actors of the twentieth century. Without googling, just by resemblance, can you say who the father was?Answer is here.
And after the jump.
More in extended >>
Posted By: Paul - Wed Feb 26, 2020 -
Comments (4)
Category: Movies, Children, Parents, Twentieth Century
The Dangerous Sports Club at the Golden Gate Bridge
Article source.
Their Wikipedia page.
Article about other bungee-ers at the bridge.
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Feb 18, 2020 -
Comments (1)
Category: Antisocial Activities, Architecture, Crime, Daredevils, Stuntpeople and Thrillseekers, Twentieth Century, Twenty-first Century
Becoming Leslie
More info here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Feb 11, 2020 -
Comments (0)
Category: Eccentrics, Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies and Slackers, Regionalism, Documentaries, Twentieth Century, Twenty-first Century
Lew Lehr’s Inventions
His Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Feb 09, 2020 -
Comments (1)
Category: Inventions, Chindogu, Movies, Twentieth Century
Follies of the Madmen #465
Source.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Feb 06, 2020 -
Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Cryptozoology, Twentieth Century, Hair and Hairstyling
The Antikamnia Calendar
Not certain that skeletons were the best imagery for a patent medicine company.You can see a lot more calendar pages here, the results of Google Image Search.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Jan 26, 2020 -
Comments (5)
Category: Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, Twentieth Century, Skulls, Bones and Skeletons
Dorothy Ashby, Bebop Harp
Unlike most of the music we revel in here at WU, this piece is actually beautiful and accomplished. The weirdness factor is the chosen instrument, the harp, not generally accorded a place in jazz.The Wikipedia page for Dorothy Ashby.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Jan 25, 2020 -
Comments (1)
Category: Music, Twentieth Century
Gaddafi: A Living Myth
With Libya in the news, perhaps it's time to revisit Gaddafi: A Living Myth, the 2006 opera that was billed as an "all singing, all dancing, free-spirited version of the Dictator's life."
Here's a catalog of contemporary reactions.
Speaking before the September premiere of his new commission, Gaddafi: A Living Myth, English National Opera artistic director John Berry averred that it could "redefine opera".
The piece, written by members of Asian Dub Foundation, was billed in advance as a venture of extraordinary audacity, addressing contemporary politics in music that would set our old friend the Classical Music Establishment by its ears.
Some of us had doubts long before the premiere. In December 2005, writing in this paper about the state of affairs at English National Opera, I said: "A commissioned opera from Asian Dub Foundation has had to be put off - and it's not hard to guess why."
When it was finally unveiled, there was not much pleasure to be had from seeing this gloomy prognostication confirmed.
The critics did their worst: "Cliche and bombast ... "repetitive and incoherent ... laughably wooden" ... "as cynical as Simon Cowell" ... "embarrassingly redolent of sixth-form earnestness" ... "long stretches of jaw-dropping banality" ... "risible moments that look and sound like a Middle Eastern version of Springtime For Hitler". Worst of all, almost every review used the word "brave".
Alas, I cannot find a video of the actual production. Here are two of the creators discussing it.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 23, 2020 -
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Category: Bombast, Bloviation and Pretentiousness, Crowds, Groups, Mobs and Other Mass Movements, Dictators, Tyrants and Other Harsh Rulers, Music, Avant Garde, Twentieth Century, Twenty-first Century, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |