After watching this clip of the Ross Sisters’s performance from the 1944 musical Broadway Rhythm one may be forgiven for wondering just what is meant by the phrase “solid potato salad.” You may be thinking that, certainly there is some ulterior meaning here, some sort of perverse inference to be made hinting at an unspeakable taboo; an act unfit for the polite society of your grandparents but universally understood nevertheless. Surely, you might think, they cannot merely be soliloquizing a starchy side dish, no matter how good it may have been.
To this I would respond: does it matter? After watching a trio of lithe nymphets fold themselves in half, does the meaning of such an innocuous phrase still bear contemplation? At the point that a sprightly girl twists and descends like a coiled snake to pluck an apple with her mouth, is innuendo even an issue? I would maintain that, should they have chosen to, they could just as well have read the back of a cereal box and still held the audience’s attention just as effectively.
I’ve seen the work of cheesecake illustrator George Petty scattered here and there but I never gave a good look to his occasionally questionable depictions of the female form. This one may be my favorite. Here we can see Miss April being driven mad by the rapid expansion of her skull. One can only assume that it was not long before the poor girl’s head cracked and split open like an overripe watermelon.
Depicted here is the extraordinarily rare Zombie-Faced Mermaid, a creature not unlike the flounder and the fiddler crab in its stunning asymmetry, and voracious appetite for sailor sex.
Although Marilyn Monroe’s version of “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” is certainly not the most artfully wrought rendition of the song, nor even my personal favorite (Count Basie’s Decca recording of the tune holds that honor), it is elevated to sublimity by Marilyn’s ditzy vivaciousness and boom-boom curves, an opening monologue forcefully tying the song to Nabokov’s immortal nymphet and the insinuating leers of the perverts ogling her from the back row.
Gisli Ari Hafsteinsson is the winner of this years Coiffure Awards, an event held in the Netherlands for the last six years which has somehow escaped my notice until now. The galleries from prior years are well worth navigating the inscrutable moonspeak of which the site appears to be composed. Random clicking is highly encouraged as interesting cuts and inspiration lurk beneath strange links composed of a language only twins speak.
If my Roman numerology is correct, today’s SMC is indeed XXX, dictating a theme even before I start typing in “bugs bunny crossdressing” into YouTube (surprisingly few results). These cartoons are probably too hot for office viewing, so beware.
1. Spicy City Episode 1: “Love is a Download”, recommended by Shayne
Ralph Bakshi has always offended me with his goopy, off-model, lackadaisiacal approach to cartooning. All style to which he lays claim is copied hamhandedly from the artists unfortunate enough to work with him (see Wizards [Vaughn Bode’s art] and Fire and Ice [Frank Frazetta]). I offer this here more as a historical monument to mediocrity, than anything. Also, tits.
2. Colorful Episode 2, recommended by zanbowser
Colorful appears to be an anime series devoted entirely to tableaux lampooning the Japanese national pastime: sexual perversion. A parade of microstories, more like three-panel strips than anything, depict hideously hard-up men transfixed by panties, bras, buttons, unbuttons, bicycle seats, and other items which seem strange in our publicly pornographic Western context.
3. Who Framed Roger Rabbit - “The Ink and Paint Club”
4. Who Framed Roger Rabbit - “I’m Just Drawn That Way”
Jessica Rabbit is probably the first lady that comes to mind when someone says “sexy cartoon”, and these scenes are the ones that made her an icon. To this day, I keep “Why Don’t You Do Right” on hand (and in mind) as a last-minute audition piece, karaoke song, or party trick. Though my favorite performance in the first scene is actually by Betty Boop, voiced at the time by an aging Mae Questal, still as boop-a-doop as ever. It always hurt me a little to see Betty serving drinks to the riffraff, while Jess chewed the scenery in a slinky slip.
5. Tex Avery’s “Red Hot Riding Hood”, suggested by Mordred
Tex had a winning formula, and he stuck to it: put a redhead with gamine gams in a skimpy outfit, a little song, a little dance, a little cross-species sexual harassment.
6. Tex Avery’s “Little Rural Riding Hood”
See above.
7. Pepe le Pew in “Wild Over”
The smell of LOVE.
8. Cartoon Sushi - “Science Fact: Fish Have No Memory”
In closing, something I thought was hilarious when I was eleven years old and actually watched MTV (and MTV was worth watching).
Teeth is being released in the UK on June 20th and in preparation it is being advertised with the use of, among other things, a website explaining the condition known as vagina dentata, complete with a short educational film about the malady that affects one in twelve million women worldwide.
Or so it would appear at first blush until you realize that the legs of these lovely ladies are a bit on the masculine side. I’m not sure what the story is with the severe looking gentleman and his standard poodles but part of me feels that this was taken at some sort of summer camp for acrobats. No doubt it was all a front and the campers were used as labor in a salt mine. It seems quite likely that this photo was staged in order to convince nervous parents that all was well and a great time was being had by all. The poodles seem to have been used to keep everyone in line.
Amazon has a whole book of these fantastic lurid magazine covers, It’s A Man’s World.
They run the gamut from Man attacked by Animals, Man attacked by Fish, Man attacked by Nazis, and Man attacked by Hippies.
The greatest, however, is an image of a mad Nazi doktor sawing off a girl’s arm, his “special” assistant is bringing him the freshly removed (and bandaged!) arm of a gorilla, which is seen sulking morosely in a cage in the background.
Comment by Haux — April 24, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
Too right you are friend Haux. This is quite possibly the best image I’ve seen a while which, considering the madness I deposit here on a regular basis, is no mean feat. It’s A Man’s World is currently available for ridiculously cheap; having just purchased a copy I suggest you do the same. A high res version of the above image is available upon request.
When life throws you a terrible curse in which you vomit squid, make calamari. Thanks, Michael!
Yeesh, lady, don’t play with your food. Set is NSFW. Thanks, Karenw!
The beautiful Anna Lucylle sent us a photo of her fantastic, Lovecraftian tattoo; as well as photos of it in its various stages. The ModBlog post contains a wonderfully heated, pedantic discussion on the correct pluralization of “octopus” as well.
As an aspiring artist obsessed with the theme of duplicity I am entranced by this piece by Paul Moschel. All too often in my attempts at making inroads to what I would consider a display of artistic acumen I forget that simplicity can reveal far more than detail, and the work of Moschel serves as a strong reminder. The basic linework of his pieces in concert with the strange dead-eyed girls that feature as subjects in his work touch the horrible places inside my brain I’d hoped to forget, and present a take on the youth of today that many of us have often broached yet never had fully quantified.
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.
