Main | December 2002 » November 27, 2002

Nibbles

How many time have you wondered where you could get a really top quality ham the size of a penny?

Celeste is an artist who makes one inch mini food sculptures handcrafted from polymer. Yes, tiny hand-made ham. Celeste also makes desserts, breakfasts, Chinese foods, cakes, cereal, cheese, vegetables and fruit.

I don't know if it's art, but it sure is tiny.

http://nibbles.miniature.net/showcase.htm

Posted by Kadrey at 01:16 AM | Comments (0) November 22, 2002

Deep Cold

I was born at the beginning of the US-Soviet space race, the year the first man made satellite, Sputnik, went into orbit. Just about any American in their late thirties and up took space for granted. There would always be manned rockets to space. When we were kids, we knew for certain that we'd all end up astronauts, even if that only meant we'd take our family vacations on the moon.

Well, things didn't quite work out that way. But they could have. The US and Soviets could have kept the space race going, sending bigger and more dangerous ships out into the black. The race to the moon was never really about science, but national prestige and military might. If that military posturing had continued through the space age and beyond in an unbroken testosterone chain, what would the space program have looked like?

Deep Cold answers that question with designs for US and Russian space craft and programs that could have been, but never were. Full of nicely rendered images that evoke both nostalgia and fear, Deep Cold is a fascinating visual alternate history of the space age.

And if you’re an astronaut geek, the site has great space program links.

http://www.deepcold.com

Posted by Kadrey at 01:27 PM | Comments (0) November 19, 2002

Car Art

Who says the US doesn't have culture? Or ancient monuments?

Move over Stonehenge and Coliseum. We have Carhenge and Cadillac Ranch.

Carhenge, off highway 87 in Nebraska, is a recreation/re-invention/re-interpretation of the soggy old Druid ruin, substituting full-size autos for the stones that give Stonehenge its name. In fact Carhenge's creator, artist Jim Reinders, lived in England and studied Stonehenge, before building his Americanized version in '87.

Cadillac Ranch, near Amarillo, Texas, is the older of the two car art monuments. Originally built back in '74 (then moved in 97 to escape encroaching urban sprawl), by the experimental art group, Ant Farm, Cadillac Ranch is both American folk art and white trash wet dream. After acquiring 10 junked Caddys from local lots and junk yards. In May of 74, the Ant Farm team started burying the cars with their front ends deep In the dirt, as if they'd fallen in a perfect row from the cargo hold of some extraterrestrial repo truck.

Anyone for a road trip?

Carhenge
Cadillac Ranch

Posted by Kadrey at 01:25 PM | Comments (0) November 15, 2002

The Bomb Project

When Stanley Kubrick choreographed images of nuclear explosions to the strains of "We'll Meet Again" in his film Dr. Strangelove, he was appropriating some of the most horrific weapons ever designed for his own aesthetic needs. The good news is, you don't have to be a big-time filmmaker to slice a piece of the nuclear pie off for yourself.

The Bomb Project is, in their own words, "a comprehensive on-line compendium of nuclear-related links, imagery and documentation. It is intended specifically as a resource for artists, and encourages those working in all media, from net.art, film and video, eco-intervention and site-specific installation to more traditional forms of agitprop."

Here, you'll find dozens of links to images, government labs, NGOs, activist and veteran groups, industrial documents and nuclear accident studies. The Bomb Project is everything you ever wanted to know about nuke culture and more. Atomic porn. The world's biggest gang bang.

http://www.firstpulseprojects.net/bombproject/Index.html

Posted by Kadrey at 01:22 PM | Comments (0) November 13, 2002

Coney Island Sideshow

Look twice at the photo with this entry. That's not a thin guy. That's Jennifer Miller-Zenobia, the fast-talking, straight jacket-escaping bearded lady from the Coney Island Sideshow. She's real and the beard is real. How do I know? I once had the honor of coming on stage and chaining her up as part of her escape act.

Bearded ladies, sideshows and freak shows are as rare as black pearls and becoming rarer everyday. Beauty is in and human anomalies are not only not celebrated, they're shunned. But why shouldn't tattooed freaks, bearded ladies, snake charmers and entertaining grifters be role models, too? Priests, captains of industry, the clergy and artists are our official role models, but they're as lousy with convicted felons as any crack house in the south Bronx.

Loving our freaks and our carnies is loving yourself. Who do you think settled the US? Freaks. Lunatics so annoying, even the Dutch wanted them to get the hell out of Europe. We're not the Beautiful People. We're a country of hustlers, tall tale spinners and card sharks. In the best of all possible worlds, sideshows would be our White House. The Capitol dome would be a big tent full of sword swallowers and pickpockets, bearded ladies and surly lobster men.

You don't have to be a genetic anomaly to join the freak parade. Not only does the Coney Island Sideshow site offer an online museum and links to Coney Island entertainment, history and sideshow info, but you can also sign up for classes. Learn to paint sideshow banners or join the show itself by learning its essential arts, such as sword swallowing, broken glass walking, lying on a bed of nails, surviving an electric chair and carnival barking.

http://www.coneyislandusa.com/sideshow.shtml

Posted by Kadrey at 03:44 PM | Comments (0) November 08, 2002

Crackerpacks

Sometimes it's not enough to just blow things up. Sometimes you have to stop and admire what covers your explosives, especially firecrackers. Firecracker wrappers are an international underground artform, and the Crackerpacks site brogans you 400 examples of incendiary artwork from all over the world.

On the site, you'll find not only the art, but the fabulous names of the crackers, names like Flying Fairy Thunder Crackers, Thunder Bomb-Ladyfingers, Pagoda Flashbombs, Super Shark-brick, Texas Giant, Bango Martian and many more.

Besides the great art, there's also a guide for firecracker collectors.

Posted by Kadrey at 04:47 PM | Comments (0) November 05, 2002

GOMI LAND

I'm supposed to tell you why I started this blog, but I'm not sure I'm supposed to cop to the truth. The truth, you see, is too simple: Warren Ellis asked me to do it.

The longer answer is that I'm a writer which means that by default, I'm an asshole with a lot of theories. I also spend a lot of time online doing research and in the process I stumble onto some pretty sweet sites. This blog will be my chance to share some of the more interesting ones with you and, with any luck, one will inspire you, too, to become an asshole with theories. It's a lot of fun and a nice way to make a living. It's better than working, though there are seldom free Cokes in the fridge or Krispy Kreme donuts in the lunch room.

I've just finished a novel (tentatively titled Blind Shrike) and am doing preliminary research on a new novel and a comic, as well as several short stories. You'll probably find a lot of weird science, art and myth/religion-related topics in my blog, with the occasional what-the-hell-is-this weirdo site thrown in just to break up the symmetry. I hate symmetry. Symmetry is fascist. (I told you I had theories.) Right now, I'm boning up on topics such as the mythology of
amber (the rock, not Zelazny's cash cow fiefdom), the Mayan afterlife, prions, prosthetics, recent Hong Kong cinema (I was a big HK buff until the output turned so shitty, now I'm going back and checking out the scene again), Southeast Asian gangs and the history of the LA basin.

I'm calling this blog Gomi Land because "gomi" means "trash" and I believe in the power of trash to transform and enhance our lives. We live in a Pop world and most of us who write fiction are parts of the great and vast Pop machine. As readers, we don't approach Pop trash the same way we approach High Art—with our defenses up and schoolboy/girl thinking caps on. Good trash bypasses all that and cruise missiles right to the backbrain where it can infest minds with subversive thoughts and mutant ideas. Trash is the our great secret weapon in the war on rational thought and good taste.

I hope you find some of the sites I'll post here useful. Hell, whether you do or not, my advice to you is the same. Start your own blog. Start writing articles and reviews. Inflict your well-informed opinions on others. But try not to be a jerk about it (this last isn't just advice, it's a rule for living).

Posted by Kadrey at 04:38 PM | Comments (0)