Have you ever noticed how the Great Unwashed keep away from anything even vaguely country & western* like it carries bubonic plague or something, but whenever something C&W hits the mainstream, like Firefly or Crazy Heart, everyone runs around falling over themselves to say how good it is.
Well guess what, world? There's plenty more where that came from! Open your eyes, stop being genre snobs and you might find a lot more that you like outside the goddam sqeaky clean mainstream you cling to like a bland, vanilla security blanket.
*Yes, i've heard that one quote from Blues Brothers about a billion times. Aren't you clever.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
H P Lovecraft Had A Really Big Head
The title of this enblogulation may seem incorrect to those of you who have seen the several pictures currently doing the rounds on the internet purporting to be of H P Lovecraft. While it is true that these pictures DO show the idiosyncratic facial qualities of the author in question, they are an early example of trick photography.
H P Lovecraft was shunned by boys in his early years due to his massively enlarged cranium and strange, pervasive odour. The strange smell came from the turnip and sarsparilla poultice his mother made him wear constantly. This isolation from other boys (and the necessity to sleep on a pillow shaped like a piece of cheese) made him insular and bookish. This well-read boy would one day write some of the most astonishing fiction the world has ever known, but at a cost. As his fiction became more and more popular the media clamoured for more information about him. While his publishers released a short, modest brief at his behest he pleaded with them not to release details of his strange cranial gigantism or his ant farming fetish (at the time the urge to ant-farm was not understood as readily as today and was considered a form of low-grade witchcraft). However, the public's thirst for knowledge about their newly-crowned dark king did not abate, so H P was forced to engage the services of Mr Hyman T Spunkfelcher: a well-known photographer and vaudeville illusionist. Using all of the knowledge that his twin professions gave him Spunkfelcher was able to make a photograph in which Lovecraft's freakish head appeared seated on his shoulders quite in normal proportion.
Interestingly, the knowledge of 'perspective photography' was lost when Spunkfelcher unfortunately went missing off the coast of Innsmouth in 1923 and was only rediscovered late last century, in time for Peter Jackson to make Lord Of The Rings.
H P Lovecraft was shunned by boys in his early years due to his massively enlarged cranium and strange, pervasive odour. The strange smell came from the turnip and sarsparilla poultice his mother made him wear constantly. This isolation from other boys (and the necessity to sleep on a pillow shaped like a piece of cheese) made him insular and bookish. This well-read boy would one day write some of the most astonishing fiction the world has ever known, but at a cost. As his fiction became more and more popular the media clamoured for more information about him. While his publishers released a short, modest brief at his behest he pleaded with them not to release details of his strange cranial gigantism or his ant farming fetish (at the time the urge to ant-farm was not understood as readily as today and was considered a form of low-grade witchcraft). However, the public's thirst for knowledge about their newly-crowned dark king did not abate, so H P was forced to engage the services of Mr Hyman T Spunkfelcher: a well-known photographer and vaudeville illusionist. Using all of the knowledge that his twin professions gave him Spunkfelcher was able to make a photograph in which Lovecraft's freakish head appeared seated on his shoulders quite in normal proportion.
Interestingly, the knowledge of 'perspective photography' was lost when Spunkfelcher unfortunately went missing off the coast of Innsmouth in 1923 and was only rediscovered late last century, in time for Peter Jackson to make Lord Of The Rings.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Superheroes Of Nashville
Johnny Cash: After snorting cocaine from the buttock-cleft of an irradiated groupie, this mild-mannered country singer began to discover superpowers he had not previously possessed. Simply by singing a song and accompanying himself on his trusty Gibson 6-string, Trigger, anyone within hearing distance was instantly compelled to obey. Henceforth, Johnny made a vow to make villains everywhere walk the line.
Kris Kristofferson: While driving his 18-wheeler with the rubber duck on the hood through the Nevada desert at midnight, Kris gave a ride to a strange female hitchhiker whom he subsequently rooted and who looked a bit like Ali McGraw. In exchange she granted him the boon of being able to shoot heat rays from his eyes. But was it a boon, or a curse? Sadly, though he has pursued her ghostly figure all over the highways of the world, Kris has never been able to catch her again.
Waylon Jennings: After giving up his seat on the American Pie to Richie Valens, Waylon begins to be plagued by voices of his dead comrades inside his head. He soon learns that now he has three guardian angels he can summon at will: Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper. He becomes the voiceover man for the Dukes Of Hazzard anyway.
Willie Nelson: When his tour bus accidentally catapulted itself off the side of a cliff, Willie Nelson was struck by lightning. For Willie the world stopped and he met with the Guardians of the Time-Sphere, who told him that he could not die, as he had important work to do. He awoke atop the cliff unharmed, but now when he becomes angry his ponytail grows to massive size and carries an electrical current strong as lightning. Willie learned to crack his ponytail like a whip, and his mission is to fight the enemies of the Time-Stream.
These four heroes work alone, amid the entertainment world by day and in the seamy, crime-ridden ghettos by night. However, occasionally they unite to become an evil-fighting force the like of which the world has never known*: They are The Highwaymen.
*Since Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but that's a whole OTHER story**.
**And Simon and Garfunkel and their time-travelling Kombi, for long-term readers.
Kris Kristofferson: While driving his 18-wheeler with the rubber duck on the hood through the Nevada desert at midnight, Kris gave a ride to a strange female hitchhiker whom he subsequently rooted and who looked a bit like Ali McGraw. In exchange she granted him the boon of being able to shoot heat rays from his eyes. But was it a boon, or a curse? Sadly, though he has pursued her ghostly figure all over the highways of the world, Kris has never been able to catch her again.
Waylon Jennings: After giving up his seat on the American Pie to Richie Valens, Waylon begins to be plagued by voices of his dead comrades inside his head. He soon learns that now he has three guardian angels he can summon at will: Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper. He becomes the voiceover man for the Dukes Of Hazzard anyway.
Willie Nelson: When his tour bus accidentally catapulted itself off the side of a cliff, Willie Nelson was struck by lightning. For Willie the world stopped and he met with the Guardians of the Time-Sphere, who told him that he could not die, as he had important work to do. He awoke atop the cliff unharmed, but now when he becomes angry his ponytail grows to massive size and carries an electrical current strong as lightning. Willie learned to crack his ponytail like a whip, and his mission is to fight the enemies of the Time-Stream.
These four heroes work alone, amid the entertainment world by day and in the seamy, crime-ridden ghettos by night. However, occasionally they unite to become an evil-fighting force the like of which the world has never known*: They are The Highwaymen.
*Since Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but that's a whole OTHER story**.
**And Simon and Garfunkel and their time-travelling Kombi, for long-term readers.
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