funrama:

THE NEW YORK FIVE

VERTIGO/DC Comics. Coming in Janauray 2011.

Vertigo Graphic Content

“I’m a little teapot…” As seen on LAShTAL.

Quiver and quail, Thelemites, for ?? ???? ??????‘s whelping day is upon us. What better way to acknowledge the degenerate rice-cooker than with one of David Tibet‘s crowning musical/lyrical achievements, a magickal rap ditty called “Crowleymass Unveiled”?

File this one under the ultra specific hybrid category of “Can’t believe this actually exists/Can’t stop laughing.” Along with this. Also, this.

Full “Crowleymass” lyrics posted after the jump.

Read the rest of Crowleymass, LOLeymass

Post tags: Crackpot Visionary, Geekdom, Goth, Music, Occult, Religion, Sexuality, Silly-looking types, Testing your faith

Yog-Sothoth, from The Haunter of the Dark

Discerning seekers of rare or obscure artists will eventually stumble upon John Coulthart?s Feuilleton at some point in their virtual journeys. An artist himself, and a blogger ?of some repute?, his site is a veritable Holy Grail treasure collection of luminous paintings, ornate illustrations & woodcuts, and salty vintage photographs that run the gamut from fin de siecle European art magazines to antique occult bookplates to queer themed eye candy from a bygone era for which to titillate our salacious modern sensibilities. One with an interest in such things could literally lose hours perusing his archives. It is with the striking of a dazed and dreamy midnight hour, head filled with inspiration and amazing discoveries, that one realizes where the time has gone.

John is perhaps best known for his own striking and complex “genre-defying” artistry; working with various styles and media in his singular, chimeric aesthetic, he is a successful graphic designer for a variety of mediums including album covers, book covers comic books and graphic novels.

“As a comic artist John produced the Lord Horror series Reverbstorm with David Britton for Savoy Books, and received the dubious accolade of having an earlier Savoy title, Hard Core Horror 5, declared obscene in a British court of law. … His collection of HP Lovecraft adaptations and illustrations, The Haunter of the Dark and Other Grotesque Visions, was republished in 2006 by Creation Oneiros.

As a book designer and illustrator John continues to work for Savoy Books, and in 2003 designed the acclaimed Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts.

John?s work has been showcased via Rapid Eye, Critical Vision, Clive Barker?s A-Z of Horror, EsoTerra, CNN.com and the Channel 4 television series Banned in the UK.”

See below the cut for a Q&A in which John discusses fleeting fascinations, enduring enthusiasms, how the mystical and macabre manifests itself in his projects,�and the mercurial nature of design.

Read the rest of Stimulating Juxtapostions: The Art of John Coulthart

Post tags: Art, Books, Cthulhu, Design, Horror, Interview, Queer

Josh Rosner, a well respected banking analyst (via Naked Capitalism).  He maintains:  What if nearly all of the mortgages that were securitized (mortgage loans that were bundled and sold as securities) over the last decade are actually unsecured or worthless paper?  A couple court cases forced by actions like this, could set off the stampede.  

For more detail check out Yves (the author of Naked Capitalism) on BNN.  With mortgage securitization, the entire system of distrust created by transactional morality is being hoisted on the petard of its own complexity and greed.

Nerdcore. Chiptune. Gamewave. Bands Influenced by Video Games. It’s almost a given that we, as People of the Web, have heard at least one track we can assign to this genre. With MC Fronalot, Anamanaguchi, and Minibosses among the names at its forefront, this movement is a love letter to all things nerdy and wonderful. The Protomen may be lesser-known than some of the aforementioned folks right now, but not for long.

No, not for long.

Panther, the lead vocalist, is joined by a cast of nine, who, in his words, “noticed a void in rock and roll. A hole that could only really be filled with grown men and women painting up like robots and playing some fierce and furious rock music based on a 1980′s video game.” Having just released their second album, the Nashville-based, Mega Man-inspired, silver-painted space cowboys [and girls] have been on a national tour since summer, and if you have the chance, you should definitely check ‘em out. These guys are young, hilarious, and they’re damn good.

Despite all the tight production and shiny web design, this band is meant to be experienced live. As the countless performance clips on YouTube prove, you can expect some form of a mosh pit, costumes, eager audience participation, theatrics and a whole lot of RAWKK. Also, the odd Journey cover, or better yet, Clap Danzatar, a Pat Benatar and Danzig mash-up which must be heard to be understood. Simply put, if you like things like rock operas, video games, or fun, and can tolerate a little retro-worship, do yourself a favor and get into The Protomen. This fan-made video for Unrest in the House of Light, a track off their first album, is a good place to start.

Post tags: Cosmos, Gaming, Geekdom, Music, Sci-fi

The latest big title launch on iPad is Esquire, with its October issue getting an iTunes App Store release just a few days ago. Although Esquire has had an iPhone version for a while now with fluctuating prices (older issues are currently being sold for $2), the first iPad version is priced at $5, although it appears that nothing is set in stone yet.

It’s currently a single app download with no in-app store, but we’ve already seen a lot of first issues come out this way, and so there’s a very good chance that from next month the app will be updated to include a store component.

The first thing you should do is go here and watch the video the publisher has put together, which showcases what to expect from the magazine. Overall, I’ll say that it’s not a bad first foray in the world of digital magazines on iPad, but it’s far from perfect. Let me also start by noting that this is one of the first major titles to stick with one layout mode only, in this case portrait — switching your iPad to landscape mode will not rotate the page. Leslie over at MagCulture had been suggesting that this would happen soon, but I didn’t think it would happen this fast. Let’s see how long it takes for others to follow suit.

One of the magazine’s strengths is the way it deals with video, especially how it gets incorporated within the pages. Opening the app, you are first greeted by the screen-filling head of actor Javier Bardem (above, in color), the feature for the issue. It may sound hokey, but it comes off looking rather nice, and it’s one of the first times — as far as I remember — that I see the use of full-screen video in portrait mode. The same technique is also used within the feature itself, this time with a black & white Bardem reciting a poem in Spanish (above) — it’s a great addition to the article, and manages to bring me closer to the subject.

Another great example of video use is pictured below, for the issue’s “2010 Esquire Car Awards” feature. Unlike most times I experience video in a magazine on iPad — where you are clearly greeted by a video box — the intro video in the article is framed as if it was just another image, but gives a nice bit of motion to the intro page, especially fitting since we’re dealing with cars.

In terms of layout, the opening section of the magazine — the “Man at His Best” bits — follows a very blog-like structure (a constant sidebar on the left lets you navigate to the different sections), but the designers have managed to dress it up in a way that doesn’t feel too web-like, with an aesthetic similar to what you get in the print edition. When it comes to the “articles” though, some issues crop up.

The first thing to note is that all of the text in the magazine is in fact selectable, but that’s all you can do. No matter how many times I tried, I was unable to get the “copy” option to pop up, and so I don’t understand what the point of HTML-ing the text is, if there’s absolutely nothing you can do with it. Even stranger, the app includes a survey — I filled it out because you run a chance of getting a 6-issue subscription — and it mentions sharing features, but there are none to be found. Something that is planned but wasn’t ready in time for the launch of this issue?

But the biggest issue I have with the text is that although it uses vertical page flipping instead of scrolling — something I generally prefer, as it’s done in Wired — the page cuts have not been clearly indicated, and so you end up with a lot of unreadable sentences that are cut in half (see below). Sure, you can hold your finger on the screen to gently move the page up or down to read it, but this is not very elegant, and these awkward cuts are found throughout — and as you see in the example below, they cut images as well.

Other than that, you get a lot of interactive features like we’re used to seeing in Wired, like the fashion page below that lets you rotate the model, with his jacket (and accompanying description) changing on the fly. One problem I encountered a few times on these pages was lag when you started touching — other pages also took some time to load, so this is not limited to the interactive features.

But the most annoying part of the magazine is how they’ve decided to handle ads. Unlike other magazines that include regular ad pages throughout, this issue of Esquire is entirely sponsored by Lexus. Now there’s nothing wrong with a magazine having just one sponsor, but it’s the execution that is annoying. Instead of being placed at regular intervals, it randomly pops up while you’re reading. And not only is it the same ad every time, but it’s an interactive ad (you’re supposed to zoom in with your fingers to see a video of a car in action) and it often takes a bit of time to load (or rather, to exit the page).

Another thing that I found slightly annoying was that I never had a good sense of where I was inside the magazine. The only table of contents that you can access opens up at the bottom of the screen, and there’s absolutely no indication of where you are in relation to the rest of the magazine.

Despite all these criticisms, it’s still an interesting first try, and from the editor’s intro, it does seem like they are looking to take in feedback and improve things for upcoming issues. Pricing is also a big problem — I’m certainly never going to buy another issue at $5 — but it does sound like they are going to be experimenting with that, just as they have with their iPhone app.

The following video shows off a proof of concept for an upcoming web-based digital hip-hop magazine formatted for iPad called Hoodgrown Digital — notice anything familiar? It’s rather shocking how clearly they have ripped off Flipboard for the main interface, right down to the exact placement of selections. Even worse, this is being sold as a new platform, called Tablazines. Via @twitsplosion

Just want to take a moment to say how much I need to thank everyone for the avalanche of feedback, emails, tweets, retweets, and blog mentions that I’ve received since I started doing more magazine/digital coverage here, in just the short few weeks I’ve been doing it. It’s funny that I removed all comments on this site just before I started writing stuff that people actually had a lot of things to comment on or add to, but as I hoped, it hasn’t stopped the feedback from coming, it’s just been delivered in a variety of places, and in a more direct way.

I’ll also point out that it’s because of this method I have of dealing with feedback that you end up getting a post like this one, with Craig’s responses to my previous post. How many people would have read his comments if they had just appeared in a comment thread, a day after the post went live, which is also probably after most people ended up reading the post in the first place.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been a letter reader in magazines, and have always felt like they’re a waste of space. But I do like the way Wired handles it, especially in its iPad edition (I haven’t seen a print copy in a while, so don’t know if they do it there too), which is to run excerpts, along with editorial comment. This is the kind of interaction I’d rather read: Seeing “condensed” feedback from the readership, and seeing how editors feel about it, in a tightly written paragraph.

Anyway, I digress, but again, thank for all the kind of words, and please keep on reading — the digital age of magazine design is just starting, and so there’s never been a more exciting time to follow and comment on all of this stuff.

You might be wondering what Justin Timberlake, Jimmy Fallon, and a hip-hop medley are doing here. After all, we live in a world where hip-hop very nearly is the mainstream, right? Two reasons. One: it was not always so. Two: the clip is guaranteed to make you grin, and we care about your grin quota.

[Three: Justin Timberlake is pretty great, in general]

Watch below as JT, together with JF and The Roots, delivers a mini-lesson in the history of American rap, starting with the Sugarhill Gang and ending with Jay-Z. I dare you to watch it just once. Dare!

Post tags: Dance, Music, Television