May 22, 2007

Ministry of Truth, The


Kim Jong Il's People's Republic of North Korea is a gigantic installation, a simulation, a play. Eva Munz, Christian Kracht and Lukas Nikol traveled to this land to take pictures of a country from which there are no pictures. What they show in The Ministry of Truth is a window view of the gigantic 3D production of Kim Jong Il, who writes the nation's statistics and authors its film script.

Here is the state as the ultimate environmental art, a living dispute to American propaganda.

Posted by admin_09 at 5:23 PM | Comments (0)

Ministry of Truth, The


Kim Jong Il's People's Republic of North Korea is a gigantic installation, a simulation, a play. Eva Munz, Christian Kracht and Lukas Nikol traveled to this land to take pictures of a country from which there are no pictures. What they show in The Ministry of Truth is a window view of the gigantic 3D production of Kim Jong Il, who writes the nation's statistics and authors its film script.

Here is the state as the ultimate environmental art, a living dispute to American propaganda.

Posted by admin_09 at 5:23 PM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2005

When Sex Was Dirty

Welcome to the twilight days of debauchery, when porn was filth and sex was still dirty.

Josh Alan Friedman, author of Tales of Times Square (Feral House), provides face-to-face reporting from licentious New York City of the 1980s--a compelling assortment of pimp laureates, porn starlets, evangelical strippers, bizarre 42nd Street inhabitants, Screw magazine staffers, "the strikeout king," and his stud-like counterpart, "God’s Gift to Women."

Josh Alan Friedman is also the co-author (with Drew Friedman) of Warts and All, co-editor (with Nile Southern) of Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 (Grove Press), and contributor to It’s a Man’s World: Men’s Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps (Feral House).

"Now follow along with veteran sex reporter Josh Alan Friedman as he revisits 1980s New York City 'when porn was filth and sex was still dirty.' His book When Sex Was Dirty chronicles the freaks of 42nd Street and all the starlets, studs, strippers, and 'strike-out artists' who made the era of getting screwed, screwed over, and screwed up, fascinating. So dirty you'll want to shower afterwards, but so compelling, you'll keep coming back for more."
--- Playgirl

"...(B)rings readers vividly back to the oversexed Manhattan nightclubs of the mid-'80s... 'The Rise and Fall of Al Goldstein'---the collection's most memorable entry---traces with empathy and amazement the arc of the infamous pornographer, for whom Friedman once worked. The book... will interest Friedman's (and the old Times Square's) admirers."
--- Publishers Weekly

Posted by feral at 3:57 PM | Comments (0)

May 9, 2005

Two Thousand Formulas, Recipes and Trade Secrets

Early in the twentieth century, pharmacists/druggists were regarded as de facto physicians, psychologists, chiropractors, and veterinarians to the common man, while their stores sold housewares, office supplies, gifts, toilet preparations, tobacco, and hard drugs that were at the time freely sold over the counter.

During the Great Depression, books of pharmaceutical and chemical formulas were reformatted for layman readers, promising that they could "save hundreds of dollars by making things for yourself and your friends." In the 1930s, these books were seen in most homes next to yearly almanacs and Webster’s Dictionaries.

The most practical and scientifically correct formula book, as edited by the chemist Harry Bennett, was one called The Standard Book of Formulas: How to Make What You Use... Over 2,000 Practical Modern Working Formulas for Making Useful Products, now available again from Feral House as Two Thousand Formulas, Recipes and Trade Secrets.

Posted by feral at 3:47 PM | Comments (0)

Struwwelpeter

Since 1845, millions of parents have purchased Struwwelpeter, a book that threatens their children with the consequences that befall the disordered and disorderly. Thumbs are sheared off, eyes fall out of sockets, faces are pecked to death and bodies waste to nothing.
Though castigated in recent years for its sadistic approach to child-rearing, Struwwelpeter remains a cultural phenomenon ... translated into many languages, the subject of a popular German museum, and the unmistakable influence of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which also disposes of wretched kids in rhyme.

The Feral House edition includes Sarita Vendetta's macabre illustrations to Heinrich Hoffmann's verse, the entire original edition in color, Struwwelpeter-inspired wartime propaganda titled Struwwelhitler, and a revealing introduction by Jack Zipes, an authority on folklore and children's literature, whose journal, The Lion and the Unicorn, devoted an entire issue to Heinrich Hoffman and Struwwelpeter.


** UPDATE, 12/14/07: ** Struwwelpeter dies from popularity! No more copies of this book available! Sorry!

Posted by feral at 3:38 PM | Comments (0)

Scorched Art

Fine Art, Graphic Design, Underground Comics … and Zippos®? The lines between art and commerce blur, get crossed and fully rewired in this art opus documenting the history of FlameRite, the first commercial artists to recognize the potential of Zippo lighters’ one-and-a-half by two inch metal canvas. In addition to being an American icon recognized the world over and highly sought after by collectors, Zippos have an appeal that cut across all markets. Throw that in the blender with over thirty genre-destroying artists ranging in style from Robt. Williams to Daniel Clowes to Shag, and you have Scorched Art: The Incendiary Aesthetic of FlameRite Zippos.
More than just a collection of lighters, Scorched Art is the chronicle of a unique art movement that has as one of its hallmarks an affinity to products, graphic design and marketing—an arena heretofore scorned by the art establishment.

The editor and book designer is the notorious indie Amphetamine Reptile rock producer Haze XXL (AKA Tom Hazelmyer). The book itself features every FlameRite Zippo produced, including all rare and out-of-print models. In addition, the book includes exclusive, never-before-seen art from 20 artists in the FlameRite lineup, including Peter Agee, Glenn Barr, Tim Biskup, Charles Burns, Saiman Chow, Dan Clowes, Coop, R. Crumb, Evan Dorkin, Shepard Fairey, Los Bros Hernandez, Derek Hess, Kaz, Dan Kelly, Frank Kozik, W. Kelly Lucas, Chris Mars, Tony Millionaire, Niagara, Gary Panter, Pizz, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Savage Pencil, Shag, R.K. Sloane, Spumco, Von Dutch, Shannon Wheeler, Robert Williams, Suzanne Williams and Basil Wolverton.

"Flame Rite has created portable art, simply beautiful both in form and function. But it is muscle bound, tattooed art inspired by fifties and graffiti art pulled up from the underground of a burgeoning scene of comic books, rock posters and street art and it's in your face. For Scorched Art, Hazelmyer has brought collaborators and new artists together to design the best in lighter art. The images are beautifully transferred to the page with depth of colour that demonstrates the ability of a tiny object to become more than a miniature billboard for corporate logos. Hazelmyer has solid design credentials from record sleeves, posters, t-shirts and matchbooks, and as an art form Flame Rite have created a nice chunk of metallic apple pie."
--- Bookmunch

"You've smoked your last cigarette, and all the corner stores are closed. Spend a long night torturing yourself through withdrawal with Scorched Art: The Incendiary Aesthetic of Flame Rite Zippos, a smokin' new book of all of Flame Rite's fabulous custom-art Zippo lighters over the years. If you've been as obsessive as the average Pez dispenser collector, maybe you're lucky enough to have amassed a chrome mini-museum of the actual Flame Rite art lighters. But if convenience and cost efficiency are your first priorities, pay one flat fee for the book and view this unbeatable pocket-sized underground art collection on paper. With Robert and Suzanne Williams, R. Crumb, Coop, Von Dutch, Niagara, Ed Roth and Gary Panter all counted among the licensing artists, this is the healthiest nic fix you'll ever get."
--- Juxtapoz

"Founder of the noise rock label Amphetamine Reptile back when 'indie' actually meant something, Hazelmyer was a Zippo collector who was tired of designs that were no more challenging than 'your average greeting card.' The famed lighters have been icons of smoker cool since the 1930s, but were first logo-ed 20 years later, but by the early '90s they had, in Hazelmyer's view, become staid. He thus 'scoured the art underworld for all that was amazing and started slapping it on a Zippo' -- drawing heavily on the burgeoning indie comics scene for talent. Under the name Flame Rite (after being sued as 'Smoke King'), designs from Peter Bagge, Shepard Fairey (creator of the ubiquitous 'Andre the Giant has a posse' tags) and R. Crumb appeared in the early years; altogether, Hazelmyer has gathered 35 artists from the last decade. The smooth page design has a 1950s-tinged, slickly lurid feel. Shades of blue, orange and yellow are the backdrop for each Zippo, annotated with the name of its artist and date of creation. No artist bios are included, but there is a bibliography of Web sites for each designer."
--- Publishers Weekly

Posted by feral at 3:29 PM | Comments (0)

Grossed-Out Surgeon Vomits Inside Patient!

The papers that occupy supermarket checkout stands are no longer the object of derision; they're the mainstay of American media. How do they work? How did they start? Who's behind them, and why? Former tab writer Jim Hogshire turns the tables on the papers that shape how and what America thinks with an important and entertaining book.

Posted by feral at 3:20 PM | Comments (0)

May 5, 2005

Rollerderby

Young Lisa Carver, aka "Lisa Suckdog," writer / editor / publisher of the popular 'zine, Rollerderby, would rather have you forget all about Generation X. She's stumping for "Generation L"—a generation that follows the dictates of Lisa Carver herself. Generation L's love their parents, clean up after themselves, and are not the pathetic, grungy losers epitomized by the media perception of Generation X.

Lisa Carver's take-no-prisoners, explicit, feminist-but-girlie ROLLERDERBY, collected here in book form by Feral House for the first time, has been acknowledged by many critics as one of the most important and interesting 'zines. The Utne Reader named Lisa Carver one of the 100 most influential visionaries of our time.

Posted by feral at 1:54 PM | Comments (0)

Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin, The

A sister to Feral House’s innovative Voluptuous Panic, by Mel Gordon, The Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin investigates four aspects of European sexuality before Nazism took hold and devastated a remarkably open-minded culture that occurred four decades prior to America’s sexual revolution.

Author Barbara Ulrich opens her exploration of the period with "Awake In a Dream," in which pagan holidays are celebrated with fashionable masquerades. The "Modern Gift" lays out Berlin’s drug culture, and the exotic debauch specific to each chemical. "Kind Mistress" looks into kinky Weimar-period scholarship and the fetishism of powerful women and masochistic men. The various enclaves of Berlin’s Sapphic culture are revealed in "The Scorpion’s Kiss," which excerpts and illustrates Anna Elisabet Weirauch’s lesbian novel, The Scorpion. The Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin culminates with an illustration of the final party before the Nazis came to power and burned the kind of books listed in Ulrich’s bibliography.

Shot through with excerpts of period diaries, memoirs and song lyrics, and illustrated with over 120 paintings, illustrations and photographs, The Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin paints an unforgettable picture of a period known to modern audiences through the character of Sally Bowles and the play and movie, Cabaret. Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight, Plainclothes Naked and Perv: A Love Story, provides the book’s introduction.

A bi-coastal resident of Manhattan and Berkeley, and documentary filmmaker whose satirical movies include Nuns in Love and I Was Bigfoot’s Love Slave, this is Barbara Ulrich’s first book.


** This title now out of print and unavailable **

"...beguiling... Suffused with a palpable erotic charge, this is a book that screams, or perhaps huskily whispers, 'decadence'. A largely pictorial account of one of the most fascinating periods in Twentieth Century Germany's complex and fragmented history, this is an intoxicating and lurid look at both a city and an epoch that were at once rapidly disintegrating and bursting with desire..."
--- Richard Shepard, Amazon.co.uk Hip Gift Guide

"...a truly impressive and highly readable/viewable book containing precious pieces of queer social history."
--- Darklady, JUST OUT

WEIMAR VIXENS: "Nestled somewhere between the mustard gas of World War I and the genocide of World War II, Berliners of the Weimar Republic succumbed to a pleasure-drunk dementia fueled by cheap drugs and consenting m·dchen. The city was home to fetishists of every stripe. Barbara Ulrich's HOT GIRLS OF WEIMAR BERLIN (Feral House) evokes an era when sexual orientation was a laughing matter and cruel boots were not."
--- Playboy

"Trapped between the two World Wars the decadent Hot Girls of Weimar Berlin indulged in smack-fueled lesbian romps and pagan-inspired orgies. This collection of contemporary material provides a glimpse into their world..."
--- Bizarre

"...paints a beguiling picture of the times... an evocative collection. It certainly made me want to go back in time, take drugs, stay up late and behave very badly indeed... I loved it."
--- Erotic Review

"This is a fascinating book filled with startling images and quotations from writers, artists, scientists and sociologists all reporting on the sexual and chemical revolution which took place in Berlin during the 1920s and '30s. The pictures may be over 70 years old but they are still fresh and sexy. In her book Ulrich follows the liberated adventures of Weimar Berlin in an informative and accessible way. These girls invented the word decadence."
--- G3

"In the twenty years before Hitler's rise to power, Berlin had more gay bars and periodicals than New York. Barbara Ulrich documents the lesbian side of Germany's Roaring Twenties debauchery... Ulrich's extremely explicit collection isn't just good reading; it's valuable documentation of the rich lesbian subculture that existed before WWII."
--- Girlfriends

"Hot on the heels of the critically acclaimed VOLUPTUOUS PANIC comes this glamorous, beautifully illustrated book, containing revelations about Berlin in the Twenties and Thirties. Not that we aren't familiar with all the kinky cabarets, SM clubs, brothels, cheap narcotics, fetishists, lesbian and male TVs in Berlin at this time, but the book is devoted to the Hot Girls who transformed their village fertility rites into the quintessentially modern sex holiday...(T)here is something for everybody in THE HOT GIRLS OF WEIMAR BERLIN... sizzlingly, spankingly hot..."
--- Forum

"Barbara Ulrich orchestrates a lovely collection of drawings, photos, and writing oozing with sex and the awakening shock of a society drenched in newfound inhibitions."
--- Flaunt

"...deftly captures with illustrations, photographs and excerpted text from respected books of the day this heady time in German history —1919 through 1932 —that served as an archetypal era of lesbian chic."
--- Out

"Fascinating snapshots and artworks of the women of that incredible time and place... Delicious, decadent and delightful."
--- Frontiers

"...Ulrich's offering is splendid...tremendous beauty and style...These HOT GIRLS do sizzle. Ulrich has amassed a treasure trove of artwork from when the twenties truly roared in Berlin...[and] culled some illuminating quotes from personal accounts of the time that can't help but resonate within our own economically depressed, terror-stricken souls... [I]f you want to explore the erotic spirit of Weimar and some of the most exquisite, sensational and often comical artwork of the period featuring fantastic females in all states of sensuous debauchery, treat yourself to HOT GIRLS."
--- Dr. Susan Block

** This title now out of print and unavailable **

Posted by feral at 1:45 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2002

Cult Rapture

Contents:

* The Gods Must be Crazy: The Latter Days of UNARIUS
* From Russia, With Love: The Business of Mail-Order Brides
* The Devil and Andrea Dworkin
* The Girlfriend Who Last Saw Elvis Alive Fan Club
* Will Somebody Please Find a Mate for this Nice, Well-Mannered, Aryan Psycho-Killer?
* The Sex Economy of Nazi Germany
* The Endangered Freak
* Please May I Touch Your Scar?: Queasy Hours Among I CAN, a Cult of Sex-Obsessed Cripples
* Citizen Keane: The Sordid Saga of the Weepy Waifs
* God, Christ, Satan or Con?: Westerners Worship a Hindu Godman
* Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment
* G. G. Goes to Heaven
* Riding the Downardian Nightmare
* Project Monarch
* Guns, Gold, Groceries, Guts 'n' Gritz
* SWAT in Theme Park Land
* How to Frame a Patriot
* Linda Thompson's War
* Finding Our Way out of Oklahoma

"Adam Parfrey is the caustic chronicler of America's Wrong Stuff, and Cult Rapture is his chainsaw tour through the neuroses of the millennium. From cults and conspiracies to isolated loons, from fakes and grifters to the painfully sincere and the seriously terrifying, Parfrey lucidly explores a sampling of the nation's rarely acknowledged subcultures. This is America as only Parfrey can reveal it."
--- Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

"In Cult Rapture, Adam Parfrey shows himself to be unique among investigative journalists: one unafraid to go where barkers fear to tread."
--- Nick Tosches, author of Dino, Hellfire and Trinities.

"A paranoid fusion of H.L. Mencken and evil scientist Yacub, Adam Parfrey is the world's foremost eschatological humorist. While his oceanic intellect and ability to concoct cruelly precise turns of phrase should be apparent to anyone who can read, it's his sense of humor which is most often overlooked - he's one of the funniest writers in the biz! ... With the world nearly a decade closer to Ragnarok than when Apocalypse Culture first hatched, Cult Rapture is a much needed dose of Schadenfreudian therapy."
--- Jim Goad, ANSWER Me!, The Redneck Manifesto

"Most disturbing was the piece about the crippled sex cult. Adam Parfrey is to be commended not only for his journalistic skills but also for his cast-iron stomach."
--- Daniel Clowes, Eightball

"Parfrey has influenced the publishing industry greatly within the last decade. In Cult Rapture, he encompasses a new thoughtfulness, and one can only say, 'More, More, More.' It's a book that makes me laugh outloud, and that's rare. His journalism takes us closer to the truth than anyone else's."
--- Crispin Glover

"Mind-blowing! A landmark of journalism ... The piece on the Oklahoma City bombing is the best thing I've read on agitprop theater."
--- Jim Martin, Flatland

"Look nowhere else, ladies and gentleman, Cult Rapture takes you to the center of the margins of American culture. ... Devastating ..."
--- Len Bracken, biographer of Guy Debord: Revolutionary

Posted by Parker at 6:41 PM | Comments (0)