I miss mom so much.

The Number To Heaven [YouTube]

A fine preview of the newest offering from Quirk Classics, who previously released the wonderful Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Not content to rest on their laurels, they continue to spice up the torturous ramblings of Miss Austen, this time with the help of murderous tentacles. Judging from Miss Dashwood’s dress, it took them a few takes, so stick around and make sure the effort hasn’t been wasted.

Quirk Classics #2: Book Trailer [YouTube] : Irreference

A gallery owner (I won’t say who) tried to tell me how great someone’s brushwork was, and he really had no clue about what constitutes “good brushwork.” Folks, there is a significant difference between having a strong style that exaggerates anatomy, and exaggeration because of a lack of anatomical knowledge. I’m not saying I’d like to see all things painted realistically or naturalistically, but I would prefer that the artists know how to draw something, at least. I’ve seen so many artists whose drawing was so bad I can’t believe they got shows.

- Travis Louie

Interview with Travis Louie [Erratic Phenomena : via Creep Machine]

Depending on your musical proclivities you may either love or loathe MGMT and their pretentious, indie, keyboard stylings. I have seemed to avoid just enough hype in order to enjoy them, having been exposed to them by one of my employers. Either that or I am simply not indie enough. This is always a possibility.

They took their time releasing a video for the ubiquitous single, “Kids”, and the results are interesting. It has been pointed out that the child being accosted by putrescent, otherworldly beings and people with degloved faces seems to be distressed in a way that may not be entirely due to his acting chops. I can say that I do not disagree and that, were I grabbed by taloned monster hands as a neonate, I too may have been agitated. Still, that is a situation best left to child services and, really, it’s none of my business. Stranger, perhaps, is the silver leotards and spaceman/tribal face paint. Neither is as egregious as attributing a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche to Mark Twain. Maybe it’s some sort of inside joke, the origins of which I am not privy to, or perhaps it’s a mistake. Either way it’s unconscionable.

Update: In my rush to find an embeddable version of this I failed to notice that I picked a video that cut off the last minute or so. This is why it pays to watch the video all the way through, kids! This new version shows it in its entirety. The link below, to MGMT’s official YouTube account with non-embeddable version, remains unchanged. Thanks, chiablo.

MGMT – Kids – Official Video [YouTube]

Woe is the giant monster movie. In recent years it has fallen by the wayside, its corpse bludgeoned by the likes of Matthew Broderick and shaky-cam footage. For the giant monster movie enthusiast, the film landscape is a wasteland, populated by the picked over bones of long forgotten titans. Luckily there are those that remember fondly the heady days of Godzilla and Gamera.

The Asylum are a group of such like-minded people and do they have the perfect film for you, Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Even the title lets you know that they are not fucking around. There will be no philosophical exposition here about, say, man’s impact on the environment. No, this movie is about a shark that can eat the Golden Gate bridge and an octopus that can crush a submarine with one arm going head to head to see just who is the most bad-ass imaginary monster in the world. Period. End of story.

What, you need more? How about Lorenzo Lamas and Deborah Gibson? Yeah, you read that correctly. Go ahead, picture it in your mind: A silhouette of a man on steel wheels rises over the hill, a blood red sky to his back. Suddenly, a voice!

He was an octopus cop, and good at his job. But he committed the ultimate sin, and testified against other octopus cops gone bad. Octopus cops that tried to kill him, but got the shark he loved instead. Framed for murder, now he prowls the badlands. An outlaw hunting outlaws, a bounty hunter, a Renegade.

Then, BAM, right into “Foolish Beat”. Then a giant shark jumps out of the water and eats a goddamn jumbo jet.

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus trailer : poeTV : Thanks, kid icarus!

The above photograph has, according to the Daily Mail, sparked “a huge debate” over its authenticity. It was supposedly “taken by a member of a disaster team monitoring flood regions by helicopter” and purports to depict a huge serpent swimming down the Balleh River in Borneo.

I have no doubt that it may, indeed, show the Balleh River.

Picture of 100ft-long ’snake’ sparks fears of mythical monster in Borneo [Daily Mail]

MONSTER BRAINS is a blog devoted entirely to the depiction of monsters, generally, in art both modern and antique.

MONSTER BRAINS [Blogspot]

Artist M.S. Corley has a fantastic collection of illustrations under the title Horrors of Literature which, along with more famous examples like Frankenstein’s monster and Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde also includes cult favorites like the Swine Thing from William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland and, of course, a few Lovecraft mainstays like the Deep Ones. He has yet to do everyone’s favorite dreamer but had previously created a portrait of the great Cthulhu, found after the jump.

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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]

Welcome to Ectomo’s 33rd Mostly-Weekly Saturday Morning Cartoons Show. Today we present to you a smorgasbord of delectable animated dishes; a smattering of drama, horror, humor, and vintage erotica served up steaming hot for your enjoyment. So sit back, relax, and prepare to have you senses assaulted with ‘toonage!.

• Don Hertzfeldt. welcomes you to the show!

• Transformers: “”More Than Meets the Eye Parts 1-3″. Over an hour of thinly veiled toy commercials masquerading as a children’s cartoon. Learn how the Autobots and the Decepticons came to Earth and which plastic and die-cast metal action figure to beg for! Seriously though, while the cartoon doesn’t hold up particularly well and while it is just a glorified toy commercial, I still can’t shake my love for Transformers.

• Comedian Louis C.K. uses animation to explore some of his father issues.

• Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure: A piece of animation history; the first pornographic cartoon. Rumor is that it was made for a private party in honor of the great Windsor McKay and that such visionaries as Max Fleischer and the Mutt and Jeff studio were involved.

• The Real Ghostbusters: “The Boogieman Cometh”. One of my favorite episodes of this show, the design for the Boogieman is just brilliant, his oversized head, replete with glass-shard like teeth, and cloven hooves makes for a great image.

• Intermission, by Don Hertzfeldt.

• Welcome To Eltingville: “Bring me the Head of Boba Fett”. The first and only episode of this cartoon based on Evan Dorkin’s Eisner-Award-winning “Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing Club” published in the pages of Dork. Featuring four gentleman — Bill Dickey, Josh Levy, Pete DiNunzio, and Jerry Stokes — who are friends of a fashion, but geeks to the fullest. In this episode a battle erupts over the ownership of a Boba Fett figurine and hilarity thus ensues. Cameo by MC Chris, which I’m pretty sure was a prerequisite for [adult swim] cartoons for a while.

• Paranoia Agent: “The Holy Warrior”. Detectives Ikari and Maniwa interrogate Lil’ Slugger who confuses his realities and believes that the world around him is a medieval-style RPG while his quest is to defeat the evil Gouma who possesses other people to fight. Ikari and Maniwa follows Lil’ Slugger through his “journey” and see that it does coincide with all of the attacks — all except for Tsukiko Sagi. However, Lil’ Slugger points the detectives to where the old lady is who may posses the truth.

• The end of the show, by Don Hertzfeldt.

Saturday Morning Cartoons XXXIII: Action Figures And Porn Edition [YouTube]

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.

Isn’t pretending fun?!

Fred and Sharon’s movies [Youtube : Thanks, Grisella!]

Part of me feels that the title should read S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters!!! as the exuberant enthusiasm that the phrase “Cthulhu Monsters” evokes is deserving of the additional punctuation.

Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters [Amazon] :
ztatic.net

Chris Ryniak has a gallery full of odd, toothy little creatures, both in illustrated and sculptural form.

Chris Ryniak [Artist's Site] : armchair aquarium

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.

Monster Skin Rug [Thanks, Fredrickson Saru!]

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.

Isabel Samaras [Drawn!]