"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."

“Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank, and buy a revolver.”

- Countess Markievicz, 19th century Irish revolutionary, dispensing eternally relevant fashion advice (via caterinasforzas)

When I started going off piste and stopped testing with bricks and mortar glamour agencies but instead first with strippers then girls from the internet, it was then I started gradually encountering what is broadly known as the sex industry, which seems to range from kiss-a-grams to prostitution. This is one episode.

In about 1999, I was photographing a club night for a vodka company that were sponsoring it. Towards the end of the evening I photographed a girl who pulled up her skirt to show a devil tattoo on her buttock. She seemed game enough and always on the look out for suitable models, I asked her if she would pose for me. She told me she was an assistant manager at Pret-a-Manger (a chain of sandwich shops here in Britain), but worked some evenings at a gentleman’s club and it would be better for her to take them there. She said it had differently themed rooms and handed me a card. My vision of a gentleman’s club was of the traditional ones, established in the Victorian era with old gentlemen in wing-back leather chairs, that I had seen on TV. I guessed by the subtle tone in which she said it, that it was not quite like that, especially if they engaged girls who would show their arses at the drop of a hat. I had the feeling it might be be a lap dancing club or something. Anyway, it sounded well appointed and I imagined it would be an interesting place with nice decor.

I always like to see a location before a shoot if I get the chance and phoned to make an appointment to see the place the following Saturday. The place was a big double fronted house in Ilford, on the outskirts of London, next to Ilford County Court. I met the owner, a genial enough middle aged guy, who showed me around the place. It turned out the place was being used a brothel. I thought that pretty audacious as the grounds of magistrates court started from the end of the back garden. It was not, however the well appointed place I had imagined and the decor ran between kitsch and tacky. The themed rooms each had a painting on the door and decorated in a rather homemade way. It was on two or three floors with a sunbed in the basement and a pool table on an upper floor. It had enough interest though for me to decide to shoot in there.
The owner told me, to my surprise, that he had previously run it as a children’s home but after its second fire decided to try something else. He reckoned that the lad who raised the alarm both times was the one who had set it alight so he could be a hero. He did not mention his suspicions to the authorities because if it had been him then the place would not have been insured for that. Maybe the children of children’s homes are always are always trying to burn them down.

On the appointed evening I turned up early and got there before my model. I met the madam, a woman in her mid to late thirties, who was not exactly hard faced but did look like she would give you short shrift if the occasion demanded it. I met two or three other girls. One I remember was a model/stroke lap dancer and another was a petite, good looking Indian girl, who apparently worked in an office by day and whored the occasional few evenings a week. I asked them all to pose for me but they refused. Things seemed pretty slow. No punters turned up while I was there and there were hardly any phone calls. This did not seem to be the kind of place you needed to be a gentleman to join, nor required membership in any case.

When my model did finally arrived, to my astonishment, she told me she did not want to take her clothes off. I had to regroup and formulate a plan B. We talked while I prepared to take the pictures. I asked what an assistant manageress was doing in a place like this and she told me she was inspired by a biography of an escort (years later I met another such girl). The nights she worked depended on her other engagements. She also had a boyfriend who knew nothing about her other life. By the time I had packed up and left there still were no customers.

Four years later I was listening to London radio and it announced that a couple who ran a brothel next to next to Ilford County court were being sentenced.

————————————————–

It just occurred to me to do a quick search and this is what I found.

Sentencing
Damaged cop cars

Back in the 1970s the makers of BBC's Dr. Who could not find a location big enough to accommodate a story set on the surface of a desolate moon.

Scarfolk Council generously offered to demolish two hospices, an orphanage and a battered dolphin sanctuary to create the necessary space. However, the council neglected to warn the residents before they flattened the buildings.

Fortunately, the Dr. Who story also required an immense battlefield to be littered with dead and injured aliens.

Happy 50th anniversary!
 
(Click to enlarge).

I thought you might be interested in these intriguing old B&W photos I found while roadtripping in New Mexico. On our way to Roswell (maybe it's the aliens that led us there…), my friends and I passed through Vaughn and we were compelled to stop when we saw the strange motel signs and abandoned gas station. It felt like the set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something! My friend had quite a shock when he realized he had been staring right in the eye of an old man through a window for a few seconds (no kidding). Fortunately, the old man was pretty nice… and pretty weird too. He sent us down a street to find more abandoned buildings and houses. That's where I went through a broken door to find all these amazing photographs, scattered all over the floor. I thought: I need to post these to Flickr, find these folks and send them their photos back!

Photo found by: Marjorie Lapointe-Aubert

//////////////////~ submit your photos to: potd(at)fecalface.com ~ make sure they're at least 700 pixels in width.

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Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Marvelized god-aliens fight CGI dramatically. ACTION-y — but action-genre’s one-dimensional boob-carrying penis-receptacles noticeably absent, replaced w/non-threatening wifey/beard type. Much muscle torso! Very fighting! Many manliness! Loki so brooding. So bad. So brooding. What are these feels?

 

MYTHOLOGY: 2.5 out of 5.0

            
Nice spaceship, god-guy. Y R U the size of a human person?

 

SHIT TO LOOK AT: 4.5 out of 5.0

     

<3 this entertaining nosense EXPLOSIONS and like portal jumping and space stuff and magic hammer flying very hard and other entertaining shit and underneath thinly spread dab of plot these little bubbles of classic heroism pop so cathartic-like yeah blow that shit up and also space like woah

 

SHOULD HAVE GONE TO SEE SOKUROV’S FAUST AT THE LINCOLN FILM CENTER INSTEAD AND JUST TORRENTED SHIT TON OF EMIR KUSTURICA AND ISN’T THERE A DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL AT IFC FUUUUCK SHOULDA GONE TO THAT BUT THEN: 1.5 out of 5.0

 

fuck it

 

Minimalist review: Marina Galperina
Minimalist graphics: Nate Cepis
More: All Minimalist Film Reviews

 

The post Minimalist Film Reviews:
Thor: The Dark World appeared first on ANIMAL.

Alfonso Elola


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Alfonso Elola

Alfonso Elola

Hey geeks! Story Collider (think "This American Life" for geeks) is doing a fundraiser. check it out!

vagisodium:

at-the-drive-through:

imagine carrying this into your dorm room on the first day of college and meeting your room mate

"oh don’t tell me you bought one too"

freshprinceofeternia:

2087:

Gregory Kloehn’s livable dumpster

No rent. No property taxes. And it can’t get accidentally dumped by garbage trucks because that’s a paid service. I just wonder about heating and cooling. Also, I would have made it less preppy looking and more industrial and incognito, maybe even let some graffiti artist friends tag it. It can’t be about gentrifying dumpsters, it’s got to be about desperation and survival. Otherwise this will be hijacked and whored out and eventually just as absurdly expensive as everything else.

finally an appropriate home for me

besturlonhere:

magic-murder-bag:

ironinomicon:

mineralists:

Rhodochrosite
Huachocolpa Mine, Peru

wow it’s a rock made out of roses this is soft grunge as fuck

A mineral made out of roses. C’mon people

☾✞♡Enter my world of transparent vintage/grunge♡✞☽

allcoveredinglitter:

Karene B

Concept: Jon Emmony, Lou Stoppard

Direction: Jon Emmony

whoopingcranes:

ocebutt:

the-water-crown:

surya-bhakti:

babablacksheeeep:

My life at this very moment in time.

MY GOD THIS IS ME EVERY SINGLE DAY

The realization that you are stuck in this cycle is sort of liberating.

which hyperbole and a half is this from? I don’t recognize it.

Might be from the book that got imported online. I haven’t read the whole thing yet so I’m not sure.

Yeah it’s definitely in the book

it is a good book everyone go buy it

vanessapeterson:

So excited to hear that one of my all-time favourite photographic artists, Lorna Simpson, has been nominated for the prestigious 2014 Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. Simpson uses various mediums (photography, writing, video) to explore gender & race, with a particular emphasis on African-American women.

Simpson’s retrospective at Paris’s Jeu de Paume is up against the photobook Autorretrato/Self-Portrait by Alberto García-Alix, Jochen Lempert’s Hamburger Kuntshalle show and probably the most well-known out of the 4 nominations,  Richard Mosse’s The Enclave. Mosse, who represented the Republic of Ireland at this year’s Venice Bienalle, used infrared film to document rebel leaders in eastern Congo.

Vlad Gusev.

Illustrations by Vlad Gusev:

Vlad Gusev: Website

Matthew Quick.

Paintings by Australian artist Matthew Quick:

Matthew Quick: Website

Kaci Tansey by Jason Bassett

The áo dài is a Vietnamese national costume, now most commonly worn by women. In its current form, it is a tight-fitting silk tunic worn over pantaloons. Áo classifies the item as a piece of clothing on the upper part of the body. Dài means "long". Here's a small collection of Vietnamese women in Ao dai in the 1960's.






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Christian Louboutin Fall 2013 LookBook by Peter Lippman

akatako:

from "Becoming Friends…" premium edition
by Fuyuko Matsui

roachpatrol:

nonomella:

I made this powerpoint for this week’s lesson - Regional/Iconic American Foods. I went back through and replaced all the text with my student’s reactions.

this is so cute

niggawitdreadz:

toohot-tohoot:

niggawitdreadz:

How to spoon:

• Dick hard on the butt
• Titty in my hand
• Kiss ya neck
• Hell yeah

What

HOW TO SPOON

• DICK HARD ON THE BUTT
• TITTY IN MY HAND
• KISS YA NECK
• H E L L Y E A H

Good news for people who hate their eardrums: Our favorite Mexican experimental death metal band, VirginTurtleWhore, has finally released their latest LP. It’s called Evolution and you can download the whole thing for the low, low price of nothing at Archive.org. Gracias, dudes! Now pardon me while I crank this killer track called “Albino Meat Pod” to levels that actually cause the walls of my bedroom to ripple like a face in a wind tunnel.

Spoiler alert: Evolution actually starts out so quiet you might think your speakers are busted, but it’s just to trick you into cranking the volume to levels that are suicidal once you get into the rest of the album. Very sneaky, VirginTurtleWhore.

Our thanks to VTW singer/manager NioX, aka Irrealidad Continua Continua Irrealidad, for sharing the insanity with us and our readers. By the way, if you’re not a cheap bastard like me, you can also support VirginTurtleWhore by purchasing Evolution via Bandcamp. You can name your price in U.S. dollars, Mexican pesos or or any other global currency, up to and including pints of virgin blood.

What’s that? I can’t hear you over my tinnitus. Oh,  you say you want to hear a sample? Sure thing. Here’s one of the album’s most batshit tracks, “Holocene Exogenesis.” Strap in, kids.

mortem-et-necromantia:

"I was afraid in the beginning, but I got used to it in time," Stojanovic told Reuters. "Now I am more afraid of the living than of the dead."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/man-lives-abandoned-cemetery-15-years-article-1.1262356

darksilenceinsuburbia:

Sasha Vinogradova. Styles of Russian Folk Painting.

Click bigger

Cecily Brown.

Oil paintings by British artist Cecily Brown:

Cecily Brown: Website