A moustachioed mortician and his assistant make a plaster death mask, circa 1908.

The old and lost art to make mortuary masks. [vintagephoto]

You know, I’ve never actually really believed that death is inevitable. I just think it’s a rumor.

- David Carradine

David Carradine Dies [New York Times]

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again… the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.

-J.G. Ballard

Thanks for the quote, Nadya!

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

John Updike

John Updike, Author, Dies at 76 [New York Times]

In some circles this represents perhaps the greatest of all possible Christmas gifts; the Platonic Ideal of Yuletide moments if you will. It is only in the the closing moments of the clip that reality steps in and imposes its harsh will upon the scene.

STAR WARS LIGHT SABER CHRISTMAS GIFT [YouTube] : Blame It On The Voices

“I want to be remembered as I was when I was young and in my golden times. I want to be remembered as a woman who changed people’s perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form.”

Bettie Page, Queen of Pinups, Dies at 85 [The New York Times]

Monkey Dust is a hard cartoon to describe without completely blowing the premise and turning people away from it insofar as it comes off as completely disturbed. Which it most certainly is. Nevertheless, I have been obsessed with it since I found out about it and, like most obsessions, it needs to be shared.

Monkey Dust is a nightmare vision of Britain, a dark, twisted other world full of giant advertising conglomerates like Labia, who takes the job of rebranding cancer as “Closure”, an attractive end-of-life option. Its citizens are no less bizarre. Take Mr. Ivan Dobsky, The Meat-Safe Murderer or so he was known until he was cleared 27 years later. He himself always said he “never done it. I only said I done it so they would take the electrodes of me nipples.” Then there’s Geoff, the first-time cottager, who despite his meek, introverted personality holds the lofty goal of fellating a complete stranger in a public place. There’s also Clive, who constantly comes home late only to tell his wife a lie based on the lyrics to The Eagles’s “Hotel California”, inept chat-room pedophiles, pretentious yuppies, and classically trained actors.

These series of interconnected vignettes and recurring characters make for a delightfully sick experience but it is no doubt one you will either love or hate. Some may be turned off by the humor on display here as it is unapologetically dark; but for those who enjoy their laughs more on the grim side of things you are in for quite a treat.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XLVI: Monkey Dust: Season 1 [YouTube]

Erica il Cane’s figures — strange fusions of human and animal — form surreal, haunting vignettes. Each character impresses me with their ability to portray emotion while retaining each animal’s distinctive qualities and convey a history, some series of events that led up to the moment illustrated. In the above I can’t help but wonder, is this fox preparing to spring an elaborate trap or is it perhaps a truly, legitimate practice, a version of healthcare singular to this other world?

Ericailcane [Artist’s Site]

Starting off your Saturday on a bit of a down note, Ectomo presents Isao Takahata’s Hotaru no Haka, Grave of the Fireflies, based on the book by Akiyuki Nosaka of the same name. Released in 1988, with animation production by Studio Ghibli, Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of Seita and his younger sister Setsuko, orphaned after the loss of their parents in World War II; their mother in the fiire-bombing of Kobe, and their father who served in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Forced to live with a relative, who treats them as little more than a burden while selling their mother’s kimono’s to buy rice for herself, they eventually leave and take up residence in an abandoned bomb shelter.

Grave of the Fireflies is a tough film to watch, and a movie which begins with the death of the young, main character was probably not what many audiences were expecting to see when it was released in Japan as a double feature with Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro. It is also the only Studio Ghibli movie the Disney does not have the rights to distribute in the U.S., meaning that it has not seen the same, widespread release here. It is a film that should be seen at least once, whether one is a fan of animated features or not, remaining just as powerful now as it was 20 years ago.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XLIV: Grave of the Fireflies [YouTube]

One minute you’re digging through someone’s garbage can and the next some hairless ape has killed you, stuffed your corpse, and put you on display holding a serving tray bearing your own genitals.

The Fossils of SoHo [bioephemera]

Uzbek director Nazim Tulyakhodzhayev’s short, animated adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s short story of the same name. The tale of a robotic house mindlessly continuing its tasks even after the human residents have been wiped out by nuclear war.

There Will Come Soft Rains [YouTube] : DIGITAL DJ

Last week, while the rest of the staff suffered under the harsh, pungent glare of The Gauger’s awakening, I was continuing my annual tour of New England, a beautiful land from which I can flee in less than a day’s time when, invariably, the sun and other humans wear my sanity down to a raw nub. This year I was in the lilliputian state of Vermont, which plays host to rolling hills, rolling hills with cows, and W.A.S.P.s, who, if they roll, did so out of sight.

While traipsing though the cow-laden countryside, we came into the town of Barre which can claim one of the Northeast’s more elaborate cemeteries. Here immigrant stonemasons from Italy and Spain settled, working their magic upon the granite from the surrounding hills. It was here, after having soaked in the majesty of a solid granite stock car and having been admonished for forgetting the face of Jesus by a couple of verbose pyramids, that I noticed the first stony visage, bearing that most glorious of facial adornments.

So it began. Our excitement at having espied our first moustache barely contained, we stood, scanning the horizon. She noticed one and immediately set off for it. In this manner it continued, we facial hair connoisseurs, gazing determinedly into the distance before one or the other gesturing at a specific point, letting loose an exuberant cry of “MOUSTACHE!”, before gleefully bounding off, past the massive stone phalli rising majestically into the air, to capture its image.

Not the most appropriate behavior for such a place, perhaps, but we did not care, for with nothing but the stoic faces of long dead gentleman to censure us, and our jubilant cries swallowed up by the drone of the caretakers’s lawnmowers, I have no doubt that we did little to disrupt that place, leaving it no less reserved than when we came upon it.

The Moustaches of Hope Cemetery [Flickr]

Ah, Canada, that frozen wonderland to the north, with its lush, rolling fields of moose, beer waterfalls, and socialized medicine. Truly, it is a snow covered Eden. This week’s Saturday Morning Cartoons is (mostly) presented by Canada, featuring animators (mostly) from Canada, or films distributed (mostly) by The National Film Board of Canada. If you are so inclined (and you should be) all of these videos, with the exception of the first, can be viewed in a higher resolution on YouTube.

• The Cat Came Back: From Cordell Barker. Mr. Johnson has a yellow cat, which he is desperately trying to rid himself of. His efforts prove…unsuccessful.

• Last Time in Clerkenwell: Russian animator Alex Budovsky’s follow-up to Bathtime in Clerkenwell featuring more mind bending flash animation and infectious music.

• The Danish Poet: Torill Kove’s 2007 Oscar winning mediation on her birth, and the serendipitous events which led to it. Simple, clean lines lend this one a children’s book aesthetic which works perfectly.

• Ryan: Directed by Chris Landreth, Ryan is an animated tribute to Canadian animator Ryan Larkin. Thirty years ago, at the National Film Board of Canada, Ryan produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Winner of an Oscar in 2005, it’s a film whose visuals tell just as much of its story as its dialogue does.

• How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels: Craig Welch’s fantastic, creepy, surreal, Gorey-esque little film about a scientist’s quest for knowledge that is, perhaps, reserved for beings other than mere mortals. Cross hatching should be used more often in animation.

• Yellow Sticky Notes: Nine years worth of Jeff Chiba Stearns’s To-Do lists, written on sticky notes, animated with, well, sticky notes. Trust me, it works.

• Harvey Krumpet: I’m a big fan of Australian animator Adam Elliot’s work, having first seen his shorts Brother, Uncle, and Cousin through The Animation Show. Harvey Krumpet, narrated by Geoffrey Rush, continues the tradition of Elliot’s intimate storytelling; detailing the life of Harvey Krumpet, from his birth in Poland to the end of his life in Australia.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XXXIX: Oh Canada (Mostly) [YouTube]

When he awakens, death will come to claim us all.

Not sure who the artist is. If anyone knows, make yourself heard in the comments.

Cthulhu Rises Through The Mist [My Confined Space]

“A bull sarcophagus in which a member of the Ubud royal family was cremated burns during the funeral ceremony Tuesday July 15, 2008 in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.”

A Royal Farewell in Bali [The Big Picture]