Joseph Sigenthaler has spent the last 22 years creating strangely proportioned busts from all manner of materials including oil, resin, hair, acrylic, wax, and fabric. His work is regarded as grotesque by many but I find it strangely endearing. The odd other-worldlyness of each sculpture reflects my own unique strangeness, seemingly saying, “In this place, there are others like you.”
From Tom Horacek’s new book “All We Ever Do Is Talk About Wood“, a cavalcade of horrors, hydrocephalia, and hopelessness wrapped up in a darkly humorous package that features each of its characters at a moment of existential crisis. This is Ectomo’s kind of humor, rife with the bitterness and misanthropy we’ve all come to know, love, and assimilate.
There’s two ways you can take this advertisement for Fred’s “Video Movie” and animation services. The first is as a hilariously perplexing display of the kind of human tragedy lurking within the seething morass of “normal” people. That interpretation is really more than enough to keep you amused as you watch the rest of Fred’s inexplicably edited and composed videos.
There is however, a second, far more insidious (and I think more accurate) interpretation. You see Fred is no ordinary Canadian man with a video camera, computer, and delusions of film-making grandeur. Fred is a monster, an evil man that has conducted horrific experiments in the unspeakable regions of science that no self-respecting man or woman gives any thought to lest they run shrieking into the night. That lifeless lump of audibly monotone flesh is not his wife, but an automota created in his hideous lab simply to see if he could accomplish the feat.
She was probably once a beautiful woman, rife with vim and vigor, full of the promise and untapped potential our parents and Disney have led us to believe we all have inside. Now the poor thing is nothing more than a shapeless mound atop a wheeled stool (adjustable in height of course, even mad scientists need their rocks off once in a while) shuffled around to be put on display as Fred’s greatest accomplishment. You can almost hear the screams of a shattered psyche echoing in her mind as she mumbles the speeches Fred has programmed her prior to show time.
In spite of what you may have heard, our beloved mascot wasn’t the result of a stroke of genius (or just a stroke depending on your opinions on the matter) leaping full born from the hideous brains of our inimitable editors-in-chief.
Oh no, there were countless inhumane experiments in cutting edge Octopus/Insect combination technology. While the aforementioned editor’s gruesome experimentation resulted in flabbergasting advances in the field, it also resulted in a trail of adorable abominations such as the above.
While I sure do love the little Beetlepus “gifted” to me by John and Eliza (and would never begrudge him the space in my bathroom); who ever heard of an octopus that’s afraid of water?
The internet is a wondrous thing. With it we can have the most basic goods and services delivered to our doorstep, communicate with friends long scattered to the wind, entertain ourselves for hours at the expense of our fellow man, and most importantly indulge our most deviant, disgusting fantasies.
You see, I have long thought that I was alone in my desire for a companion upon whom I could lavish a bouqet of adorable ape-centric pet names. As I laid awake at night, dreaming of women with long braids of silken arm-hair from which I might lazily swing, I was filled with a deep shame, compounded by the seemingly singular nature of my peccadilloes. Thankfully, the festering primordial stew that is our collective electronic Id proves its worth once more, serving up a cornucopia of my beastly heart’s desire.
No longer am I filled with shame, disgust yes, fear possibly, but not shame. The sun shines and the birds sing as arm in arm my deviant brethren march into a future bereft of lonely shame, upper lips stiffened at the knowledge that we are not alone.
Gaze in wonderment and horror at the monstrous marvels of Italian illustrator Cesko. Much of his work is the kind of stuff you’d expect to tumble out of the head of a hopelessly deranged psychopath, and as such seems to have found its way home, nestled snugly amongst the disgusting afterbirth we’ve all come to know and love.
For some reason bear skin rugs seem fairly popular here in the Pacific Northwest. My daily net-based bargain hunting usually brings me across at least one, although often I find several of varying sizes and description. Now while the pelt of an animal that could easily rend me limb from limb gracing my floors is an appealing prospect the compulsory indoctrination of all Seattle residents to be animal-loving waterheads took root long ago and I simply can’t bring myself to buy a bear skin.
But that’s ok; for while killing a bear for its pelt is a horrendous thought to me, the idea of a horrific, child-eating monster meeting justice as my rug is just fine. I will sleep well at night, my belly full of “cruelty-free” faux-chicken and green tea, secure in the knowledge that these hideous freaks simply must be destroyed.
Let me lay this on you, Jim: Sometimes you surf the tubes, looking for strange diversions with which to entertain your readers. Sometimes you find something a little too strange. Maybe it’s a nude man. Maybe this nude man is wearing a number of different, inventive thongs. The aforementioned, mostly nude, thong wearing man may, perhaps, also be wearing a horse mask and maybe, just maybe, he’s dancing while he gathers, sautés, and consumes wild mushrooms. Make no mistake friend, when that time comes, you better be prepared.
Say what you want about organized religion, but if the birth of Christ had featured the original members of the Monster Squad with The Bride of Frankenstein as the mother I’d be rolling in the aisles with the best of them.
By request, The Inhumanoids: How those of us at Ectomo have missed The Inhumanoids so far is beyond me; rife with unintentional hilarity and a giant mutant monster bearing a resemblance to our dark lord, The Inhumanoids is right up Ectomo’s alley.
The Head Saves the Earth-The Date: A classic tale; boy meets alien, alien takes up residence in boy’s head, boy meets girl, alien takes up residence in girl’s head.
Ah: A gorgeously rendered tale of soup worlds and small zombie children. As often as I despair at the state of CG film, it is the small art films like Ah that reach out a hastily constructed metaphoric hand to stroke my expansive, gelatinous forehead and remind me that everything will be alright.
Bump In The Night: Stop motion animated closet monsters combine forces with their rag-doll cohorts to scare the ever-loving shit out of each other. I have such fond memories of this show as a child, the passing frequency of stop motion animation from the early 90’s is at least lamentable and at worst a tragedy.
The Sunshine Makers: Happy elves inflict horrific chemical warfare on their gloomy, freakish, incredibly dapper cousins. Remember kids, if anyone looks, feels, or acts differently from you it is your solemn duty to poison and/or medicate them until they too enjoy a good red-assed frolicking.
Ectomo wishes you and yours the very best on this joyous Christmas Day. We hope that while opening your presents you keep in mind the true spirit of the holiday and remember the story of little baby Santa Claus, born to a traveling encyclopedia salesman, Joe, and his wife, Mary, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the pool shed behind the Holiday Inn Express, for the hotel was sold out and yea, it was indeed Joe’s fault for truly he traveled much and should have known better.
But lo, in the morning did three housekeepers, made to work but getting time and a half, bring them gifts of towels and shampoo and soap and let them bathe in the employee bathroom and were, perhaps, slightly aghast and confused as to why Mary decided to give birth in a pool shed instead of going to the hospital but they did not pry for it was, indeed, none of their business and they had rooms to turn down. So rejoice ye Ectomites! Rejoice, for Santa is born, so that one day he may die for your sins and, on the third day and on that day for every year after, rise from the dead delivering gifts while continuing to quell his eternal hunger for brains. Merry Christmas!
Jean Libbera “The Double Bodied Man” and his “brother Jacques. Truly a man of distinction he sports a fine handlebar. He married, had four children, and passed away in 1936 still possessed of both brother and follicular facial adornment.
Barnaby Whitfield’s work is akin to taking a tour of hell as illustrated by a seven year-old girl with a severe case of coulrophobia. It is a credit to his abilities that he manages to so perfectly juxtapose the hideous and macabre with the hilariously absurd. Certainly when one first espies the portrait of an Oompa-Loompa, gazing lecherously at the viewer, or a lipstick smeared maiden riding a purple Pegasus, one realizes that they are in for a special kind of perverse magic, however it is only a taste of the bizarre scenery that lays ahead. Beware: may not be safe for work.
The above is an ad for Herringbone, a clothing company, which tells the story of Henri, a man born with tiny, tiny hands. All his life he lives in shame of his diminutive appendages, which are too small, even, to pull the trigger of the gun he uses to attempt suicide with. However, with the help of God he finds that he is capable of the most sublime and delicate stitching. Thus, a long and storied career as head tailor begins. Inexplicably, the workers he oversees are not children laboring in a third-world sweatshop, which seems to fly in the face of, what I might be forgiven for seeing as, an extended, and less than tasteful, metaphor. Of course, that particular reading may be merely a symptom of my own cynicism. I leave it to the viewer to decide.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
