Category Archives: death

Fitness Fun: the Pranciest damn exercise videos you’ll ever see

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I’m not even kidding. Nobody can top the description MichaelK came up with for the outfit. Joanna Rohrback resembles nothing so much as a freeze-dried Rosanna Arquette, adorned with:

Trace Cyrus galloping through a lavender field while getting attacked by bees. If you really want to look like a professional prancer who is serious about prancing, put a 30 pound wig on top of your head, a gorgeous QVC necklace around your neck, a coral Talbots cardigan on your body and ankle weights (which kind of look like rolled socks, glamour!) around your ankles.

You don’t think that can be possible, do you? You don’t think the reality could possibly live up to that description. Well, you haven’t met Rohrback yet, have you. Behold.

Prancercise

Prancercise

The thing is…the thing nobody is saying is…these are all actually the same goddam move, gramma. Stop this “Prancersise Walk, Prancercise Trot, Prancercise Gallop, Prancercise Box” foollery and take those ridiculous shoulderpads out! There is no such thing as a “Power Cardi.”

Well, we lied. The arm movements that, at the walk, are passably chic and make you think that Gramma must have really gotten her groove on back in the 70’s, devolve as the pace escalates to the “Broken-winged eagle trying to lift off” and then to the truly pitiful “Crushed Butterfly.”

Butterflies aren't free, clearly

Butterflies aren’t free, clearly

Even in life, there is the reminder of death. Yea, even in Prancercise.

OddityCentral calls this the most awkward workout of all time. Clearly, they haven’t watched the Julian Assange version of Prancersise. Yes, it’s true; would I lie to you? From time to time the bobbies let him out of the embassy for some fresh air, as long as he promises to be back in time for tea. And here he is.

And, of course, there’s a strong showing from an 80’s hair model.

Your votes?

How to Facebook

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How to properly scream

How to properly scream

As I remarked on Facebook earlier today, I really find it impossible to understand the kind of person who goes to Facebook, looks around, and decides “What this place needs is some more photos of executions.” As if it weren’t unpleasant enough, what with all the Its Complicateds and photographs of sub-par risottos and animals with adorable birth defects.

But yeah, if that’s what you really want on your Facebook wall I guess you can put it there. You gotta be you, right? Amirite?

Ah Pook is here

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William S Burroughs is on target!

William S Burroughs is on target!

Who knows why founding Beat poet and professional reprobate William S. Burroughs chose to fixate on the minor Mayan death god Ah Puch (which he spelled “Ah Pook” probably because it sounds like a dirty phrase in his native Midwestern dialect), but once he did, Ah Pook was resurrected from his sojourn in Limbo and elevated to the Pantheon of immortals, thanks to this bizarre prose poem, now immortalized as an unforgettable, gruesome, beautiful, award-winning animated film.

Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves. Ah Pook is here.

AH POOK IS HERE – This 1994 stop-frame interpretation of recordings by the late William S. Burroughs, was crafted around a selection of tracks from the album “Dead City Radio” produced by Hal Willner & Nelson Lyon – and featuring music by John Cale.

AH POOK received Ten international film awards, was archived in the Goethe institute, and was part of the Burroughs retrospective PORTS OF ENTRY. AH POOK was also voted ‘BEST OF THE BEST’ at the 2010 Stuttgart International Trickfilm festival.

The Guardian review:
“Phillip Hunt’s gorgeous, grisly animation mates William Burroughs’s gravelly narration of Ah Pook The Destroyer’s death-dealing parable with music by John Cale at his creepiest. Hunt’s deliberate and disgusting illustrations of Burrough’s monsters of the mind are a revelation; delicately articulated puppets riddled with revolting detail. Turn down the lights, get out the headphones, and give yourself over to The Master’s ghastly visions and sonorous warnings (“The world cannot be controlled, except by accident”) for six gut-churning minutes.”
-Kate Stables / The Guardian

Director Philip Hunt
Producer Eddel Beck
Music Hal Wilner & John Cale
Produced at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg
Distributor BFI & The British Council

PS (still reading? eh?)

You might like the following story ( spoiler alert!):
The final scene of the film is an unbroken take wherein Pook puts the gun in his mouth and we pull back until we hear a gunshot and see a red flash, cutting back into the stars… and the spirit of Pook intoning ‘falling in Love again’ among the Heavens…
The original intention was to pull the camera all the way back a good respectful distance and show Pook’s body flinch backward etc.. But we had a small problem while shooting. Now, back in the day (‘94) we did this part on film and in-camera without video assist etc. and the entire sequence was one continuous camera track made frame by frame …all adjusted incrementally by hand.
When we were nearing the end of the shot we realised the focus had messed up & we were shooting blur. We had no way of knowing how long we had been shooting blur either.. The simple shot had taken us all day to shoot due to the awkward nature of the set up and we despondently wrapped for the day and sent the film off for processing ( a 2 day turnaround due to the location we shot in at that time). Now, the films audio was pre edited, the master mix already had the gunshot set as part of the audio track. So, after 2 days we got the processed rushes back & synched them up to the audio and played out to see how much of the animation had been captured before the accidental focus pull screwed it all up…
By some bizarre co-incidence.. The moment of blur synched up EXACTLY with the gunshot.. And so that’s how we left it.
Still freaks me out even now…

How Easter Started

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How Easter Started

How Easter Started

Lesson learned: Don’t give The Big Guy any crazy ideas, duh.

Dead Cottingley Fairy discovered

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mummified cottingley fairy is mummified, akshuly

mummified cottingley fairy is mummified, akshuly

This time not in Devonshire; this time, it’s a Yorkshire fairy, eeeeh bee goom.

Well, strike me mum! Here’s yet more proof (if any were in fact required, and we are ALL ABOUT PROOF around these parts, as you know) that dead fairies are real. Or. Well. WERE real and are now post-real and in fact mummified, if not petrified, and who knew they had stagefright in the first place, eh?

Answer me that!

Yes, today via Propnomicon comes word that back in the dark days of January another former fairy has come to light from the collection of a prominent also-formerly-alive American archaeologist. Here is the update, via the El Dodo Albino news organization:

Octavius Zedock was a prominent cryptozoologist belonging to the Theosophical Society in New York who dedicated his life to the study of creatures whose existence has been denied by science for years.
His research was extensive and in his lifetime collected a large number of specimens not officially classified, and that for years have been kept by the Company. Today, the silence was broken and the specimens come to light for the first time … is time to learn, it’s time to discover the truth behind the myths.
The specimen collected in the city of Cottingley , England in the 20’s, shows the reality of the existence of fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was right, there was something magical in the forests of that place…

There is more, but I can’t read Spanish anymore than I can read Elvish (somewhat less, thanks to a miss-spent youth, actually) so you’ll have to Babelfish it yourselves.

The emergence of this long-lost mummy raises interesting questions about the cultural heritage of the UK, particularly in the age of the EU. Can the country prevent its fairies from slipping away to foreign shores in the company of shifty Yanks in khakis? Only time, at about ₤300 an hour, can tell.

This forms the latest in our ongoing scientific investigation of the very real, and very hushed-up, phenomenon of dead fairies. If you have or are a dead fairy, or even a live one, you are encouraged to contact the editor of this blog via the comments section here or on the original Mummified Fairy post, where you will have lots of company. About 2200 iterations of company, in fact.