THE LEATHER NUN and Other Incredibly Strange Comics; Hardcover
(2008) 128 pages, Used
Entertaining, erotic, and utterly surreal, this eclectic collection is a delirious collage of the 50 most weird and wonderful comics ever published. From leather nuns, surreal Japanese baseball dramas, gigantic alien monsters in swimming trunks, hip-hop superheroes fighting street crime, and peasant girls worshipping the swastika, this amazing collection is the result of a trawl of the strangest comics worldwide. Containing titles such as Barnyard of Fear, Chaplains at War, Amputee Love, and Cannibal Romance, these bizarre tales are not for the faint of heart. Alongside each comic is a colorful double-page spread and an informative introduction that places the comics in context. This is the perfect quirky gift for collectors of curiosities, anyone with a taste for offbeat humor, and comic fans who think they've seen it all.
DESIGN FOR DYING: Timothy Leary; Hardcover
256 pages (1997), Used
As the fringe guru himself put it, "Mademoiselle Cancer moved in to share [his] body." But in the days before he died, Leary -- never one to miss an opportunity for a party -- used his approaching death to create an exuberant new vision of what dying can be. Optimism, courage, joy and spirituality were central to Leary's final days and his death. Design for Dying -- Leary's last book -- shows us how we too can make dying the high point of life. Irreverent, thought-provoking and hilarious, Leary's parting shot pioneers new ways to die and new ways for the living to think about death. Urging us to take control of our deaths (and even to determine when and how we will die), Leary relates his own plan for "directed dying," a death we plan and orchestrate to reflect our own lives and values. And the psychedelic prophet flings open a whole new range of beyond-death possibilites for the wired generation. From downloading consciousness onto the Net -- so that our souls can outlive our bodies -- to the way technology can enhance the final days of the dying to the far-out promises of cryogenics, Leary provides fascinating insights into how technology may eventually help us improve, and even sidestep, death. A thorough guide to death and dying resources and to online tools and further reading lists completes this surprising, funny and totally original look at the new frontiers of death. Speaking to everyone who has ever wondered if there's more to death - -if there's life beyond the final frontier, if death really means the end, if dirges and hearses and funeral flowers are really how we want to be remembered -- Leary's flamboyant final statement reveals revolutionary ways to die and redefines, with Leary's trademark creativity and joy, how the living can think about death.
NASTY TALES: Sex, Drugs, Rock 'N Roll & Violence in the British Underground; Paperback
David Huxley (2002) 192 pages, Used
Though never on the scale of its American counterpart, there was indeed a comics underground in Great Britain. Many of these comics were obscure limited print run productions and few were financially successful. But with subject matter that was anarchic and sexually unrestrained, this political pornography' did indeed have an impact-and invariably caught the wary eye of the law, resulting in several landmark Obscenity cases. From their origins in the 1960s, Nasty Tales covers the turbulent history of these comics and the cultural instability from which they emerged.
LIVE.....SUBURBIA!; Paperback
(2011) 240 pages, Used
Live...Suburbia! is a collection of stories and images of the post-1960s subcultures that define America. It’s kids taking their urethane wheels to empty pools, picking British Punk in broad downstrokes and creating Hardcore, it’s skinheads wearing sneakers and moshing in Connecticut warehouses. Live...Suburbia! is dedicated to denim devils twirling butterfly knives and hasty tags thrown down with Rust-Oleum touch-up paint stolen from your parent’s garage. Most importantly Live...Suburbia! is a new approach in compiling a book. We have Tumblr, Facebook, Flickr and thousands of blogs documenting subcultures, but we’re interested in the other side: real people’s archives and memories, the ones that haven’t been passed around so many times that we have no idea where they came from. The book begins with Kiss. From there Live...Suburbia! rushes through years packed with ninjas, long metal hair, BMX dirt jumps, karate, seven-ply skateboards, bathroom mohawks, skinheads, jockey hardcore kids, basement DJs, graffiti murals behind supermarkets, and finally we arrive in the 1990s where it all collides. This is just fucking awesome!!
CAN: Tago Mago (33 1/3); Paperback
151 pages (2014), Used
A brilliant exploration of the German rock band Can's 1971 album Tago Mago. This hugely unique and influential album deserves close analysis from a fan, rather than a musicologist. Novelist Alan Warner details the concrete music we hear on the album, how it was composed, executed and recorded--including the history of the album in terms of its release, promotion and art work. This tale of Tago Mago is also the tale of a young man obsessed with record collecting in the dark and mysterious period of pop music before Google. Warner includes a backtracking of the history of the band up to that point and also some description of Can's unique recording approach taking into account their home studio set up. Interviews with the two surviving members: drummer Jaki Liebezeit, keyboardist Irmin Schmidt and bassist Holger Czukay make this a hilariously personal and illuminating picture of Can.
SUPER 7: International Toy Pirates (2007), Hardcover
Brian Flynn, 288 pages, Used
The term mook has long been used to describe printed material that is neither a book, nor a magazine, but the ultimate fusion of the two. Super 7 has elevated this form to the highest possible pinnacle with the new redesign of their magazine as a deluxe twice a year release. Elegant to the extreme in a slip cased black and silver Flexi-bound, this beautifully designed and immaculately photographed title is a museum quality catalogue for collectors, aficionados or self proclaimed toy geeks . Super 7 International Toy Pirates takes you on a nostalgic journey to the endless days of youth and summers spent watching Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan battle for world supremacy. Contains features and interviews of the quality we have come to expect from the editors of Super 7.
THE BOOK OF GRASS An Anthology Of Indian Hemp; Paperback
60's counterculture - 242 pages (1968), Used
Indian hemp and its products, marihuana and hashish - variously known as pot, weed, reefer, boo, tea, mezzo, hash, or the 'grass' of the title - is a much discussed and - perhaps - a greatly maligned herb.
This volume (revised and up-dated for Penguin Books) offers a wide range of writings about this ancient plant, its remarkable products, and its long and varied history. Among the authors represented are Rabelais, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Aldous Huxley, Gerard de Nerval, Allen Ginsberg, C. G. Jung, Henry Miller, Hermann Hesse, Alan Watts, Lewis Carroll, William James, Anthony Storr, William Burroughs, and Paul Bowles. Extraordinary, illuminating, fascinating essays by many great minds on this plant. There's even an entry from George Washington's diary notes of 1765 saying he sowed Hemp by a Swamp and that he was rather too late separating the Male from the Female hemp. (Book cover may be different than picture shown)
Disinformation: The Interviews Richard Metzger; Paperback
176 pages (2002), Used
The best and most revealing interviews from the prococative TV series/DVD of the same name.
Richard Metzger presents the most compelling interviews from the hit TV series Disinformation, revealing mindblowing thoughts from modern culture's most radical thinkers:
Paul Laffoley on how to build a working time machine and a house made of vegetables
Douglas Rushkoff explains "media viruses"
Lucifer Principle author Howard Bloom on the coming biological apocalypse
Genesis POrridge on what it's like to be the leader of your own cult
Joe Coleman's collection of weird stuff
Robert Anton Wilson on The Illuminati and Aleister Crowley
Kembra Pfahler on The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black
Duncan Laurie on the forbidden science of radionics
Comic book author Grant Morrison (The Invisibles, JLA, XMen) on sex magick
Hollywood's interest in underground culture and the best alien abduction story you'll ever hear!
Plus, many more modern revolutionaries (including philosopher Peter Russell, futurist Mark Pesce, and Apocalypse Culture's Adam Parfrey) expressing their thoughts, fears, enthusiasms, and predictions.
EDGYCUTE: From Neo-Pop to Low Brow and Back Again; Hardcover
176 pages (2009)
The resurgence in the popularity of illustrative art can be attributed to an array of factors. Although the acceptance of graphic novels as something more than 'just comic books' has been established for quite some time, when McSweeney's released its all comics issue in 2004, the mainstream media's reaction elevated the medium, its words and images, to something beyond genre. As a result, such drawings and illustrations have found their ways into marketing campaigns, ads and galleries. While the work of individual artists varies greatly, much of it strikes an irresistible pose, whether viewers are staring at enlarged heads on distorted bodies or a shot-dead bird, its killer and a birdhouse both crying. The work is at once disturbing but oddly attractive. this has been dubbed this quality "EdgyCute."
Those Were the Days When I Used to Drive Around with a Horse's Head on; Hardcover
Espen R Krukhaug 64 pages (2014) Photobook, Hardcover
The title refers to a period in the artist’s life when he toured with several punk and metal bands, traveling through Europe, China, and America…rock’n’roll style. Going for days without sufficient sleep, his only real rest came late late at night, when the musicians themselves were sleeping; and he never knew what the next day would bring…only that there would be a new town, a new show, a new party, and possibly a fight. Everyone knows what bands do when they are on stage, but these images are from behind the scenes, from the traveling and the partying, They document the world through the windows of a van, as these modern-day nomads rush from one city to the next, through unknown landscapes, with never enough time to really stop. Though unable to explore these cities the way a typical tourist might, Krukhaug manages to capture his images from a unique point of view, seeing things that a normal visitor just might miss. The result is a provocative series of photographs about the life of the tour, the perpetual motion, the late night parties, as well as the quiet moments of endless waiting; waiting for the next city to appear on the horizon, waiting for a definitive photographic moment, and waiting for the next show to finally begin.
GIVE MY REGARDS TO EIGHTH STREET : Collected Writings of Morton Feldman; Paperback
(2004) 256 pages, Used
Composer Morton Feldman (1926-87) was a crucial figure in the post-war New York art world, using elements of chance composition to construct exquisite, quietly powerful scores that produce wonderfully varied interpretations. In Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, Feldman reflects on his own work and ideas, as well as on those of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank O'Hara, John Cage and many others. If "Silence is my substitute for counterpoint," these occasional articulations give us a way into it.
"There are people who say, "If music's that easy to write, I could do it." Of course they could, but they don't. I find Feldman's own statement more affirmative. We were driving back from some place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily. Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, "Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do." And then he went back to sleep." - John Cage
